Fields

V

I woke up cause Annie was nudging me. "C'mon Camie, time to get up now." I groaned and pulled myself out of bed. I walked over to the set of drawers and slid open the top drawer. Annie yanked the bottom one open and grabbed her clothes for the day. I grabbed out a pair of shorts and a singlet. I closed the drawers and walked sleepily over to the bathroom. I rubbed my eyes and got dressed. I wandered down the hall to the dining room. Everyone was sitting down waiting to eat breakfast except Tedrick. 

"Where's Ted?" I asked the room.

"Taking forever to get ready in my house, that's where." Auntie said.

"I'll go tell him to hurry up." I said as I walked out the door. I walked over to his house and went inside. "Teddy!" I called out. 

"Down here." He yelled from the bedroom. I walked down to where the voice came from. 

"Hurry up please. They're all waiting for you so we can eat." I yelled at the closed door.

He opened the door and came out. "I really don't wanna look at them Cam."

"Not a word about last night remember?" He sighed and we walked back over to my house. We sat down at the table but there was still two empty chairs. One for my Dad when he returns and one for Uncle Craig but he won't return. When we were praying I closed my eyes tight so that no tears could come out. We ate sweet carrots and peas that were layed out on the table. When we had all finished eating mother spoke.

"Come on children, we'll go tend to the shimmer now." We all got up and pushed our chairs in then made our way to the shimmer plot. I walked next to Tedrick the whole time while Annie and Gracie ran and Mum, Auntie and Simon took up the rear. 

"What d'you think our shimmer is actually used for?" Tedrick whispered to me.

"What do you mean?" I was rather confused.

"Well if there's lots of survivors out there, then why do we actually grow it?" I thought long and hard about his question, but I could never find an answer. We didn't talk the rest of the way to the shimmer plot. Once we got there we split up anyway. Going to do our own jobs. I took the left side of the plot while Teddy took the right. I picked all of the plants that were ripe and laid them down in the greenhouse to dry. Once I had done a row, mum would follow me watering them with a steel bucket and Annie would pick out the weeds. Gracie and Auntie would mirror this sequence on Tedrick's side of the plot and Simon would plant new plants when Tedrick or I picked them out. After half an hour we were finished and the greenhouse was getting fuller with shimmer. I walked over to Tedrick and we both walked away. We went to the garage, once we were there, we went inside and shut the door. 

"You wanna explain why it's such a mess in here Cameron?" He raised one eyebrow.

"I was angry about you know. So I sorta annihilated everything in my path." I said in a small voice. "I'm sorry Ted." 

"Don't call me Ted, that's what your father calls me."

"Sorry." 

"So you wanna try and get this box to start talking again?" He picked up all of the stuff I knocked over in my rage and put it on the work bench. I fiddled with the wires till it made a crackling noise then shifted the blue above the red, and the black around the blue. I began to hear muffled voices. I moved the red a bit so it went through the middle instead of at the bottom of all of the wires. I could understand the woman talking apart from a crack every now and then it was perfect. 

Sunny with twenty seven percent humidity in Kingsley today -crrcck- nice summer day high of -crrcck- Paul Fields still missing please con -crrcccckk- department if you see him -crrck- coming up on the tracks eff emm -crrckk- Perry.      duh duh duh   You change your mind like -ccrrcck- clothes, yeah you are a mess like -ccrrcck- know. Cause you hot then your cold. Your yes then your no. You up then your...    

But before it could finish singing what ever it was singing, Tedrick pulled the wires out of the little box. "Why'd you stop it?" I asked.

"Cause it was like when me and you used to sing in the forrest. But it had more noise to it. Like lots of people hitting stuff and playing with things." 

"Well I kinda liked it." I said.

"Well I didn't."

"Anyway we better get out of here in case dad comes home and catches us listening to the box. We might get punished."

"Okay Camie, let's go up the tree again." And with that we both wandered out towards the tall tree. I raced him up and we sat on the same branch as last time, overlooking our paradise. I could see smoke in the distance but it was slowly getting closer. I couldn't tell what it was until I saw the white square that was making the smoke. 

"Father's back." I said.

"See that." Tedrick said still looking at dad's white van getting closer and closer. It stopped just outside the gate and he jumped out. He walked over to the gate and did something. The gate opened while beeping loudly and he drove through into paradise. I could only just here the gate beeping from up this high but I knew everyone else would be at the house, ready to greet him. The gate clanged shut on it's own and stopped beeping. Tedrick looked at me. "What d'you think it runs on?" He asked.

"What? The van?" 

"Yeah, cause I don't think it runs on shimmer." He says.

"Well Dad says it runs on special water he gets from a lake outside some place."

"D'you believe that?" He asks.

"I don't know what to believe anymore."

"Suppose we better go greet him. Don't want to get punished." He starts climbing down the tree and I follow. I don't want to see my father but I definitely don't want a punishment from a murderer.