Free Five Parts Dead by Tim Pegler

grave when another able-bodied man is present. One of the other Sutton children, Maggie, is showing signs of fever.
    Pip looks up, wide-eyed. ‘Can you imagine how awful that would have been? One child dead. Another sick. No chance of a doctor unless a passing ship responds to their signal. Even then it might not be safe to dock.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ I nod. ‘They’d be gambling lives against the one they’re trying to save.’
    â€˜It must have been agony for the parents,’ Pip says. ‘They couldn’t do much for their kids except wait.’
    She really gets these people. Their lives feel so real when she describes it like that.
    Pip’s eyes are blazing now. ‘And, on top of worrying about their children, they have this other couple, living metres away, treating them like dirt. I mean, how did these people work together? How did they keep the light burning when they could hardly stand to be in the same room?’
    â€˜The men probably pretended everything was cool,’ I grin, ‘and just grunted at each other at the end of their shifts. Why talk when you don’t need to?’
    She snorts. ‘That’s the male solution, is it? Ignore a problem and hope it goes away.’
    â€˜Something like that. It’s just being practical! If you can’t change a situation, why risk making it worse?’
    Pip eyeballs me and says nothing for a few seconds. I lean back onto the stairs, uncomfortable in the heat of her glare. When I glance back, she’s still staring my way. Then she opens fire.
    â€˜Is that why you lied about the accident, Dan? To the police and to your family and everyone else? Because it was easier to leave things alone than say what really happened?’
    Perspiration erupts all over me. My throat tightens and I retch, fighting for breath. I stand, the tower swaying around me, grab at my crutches and wobble away.

J: ON FIRE. KEEP CLEAR
    I skip lunch and bunker down in my room. To my relief, Mel and Hiroshi return mid-afternoon with a minibus of sunburnt Japanese surfies. They’ve been to check out a reef break and are now planning a pre–New Year’s Eve party, a sort of backpacker training run, two nights before the real deal. Bonfire, booze, the works.
    Mel, Pip and I grab swags and sleeping bags and leave a note, in case Mum and Dad come back early, telling them we’re camping overnight at the farm-stay with Hiroshi and his crew.
    I thought about not going, doing anything I could to avoid Pip.
    How did she know? Shit, how much does she know?
    I ignore her in the bus and squeeze into an aisle seat beside a snoozy, spiky-haired tourist. He jacks an eyelid open wide enough to acknowledge me then slumps back to sleep.
    Up ahead the road cuts a groove through thick scrub. The further we travel from the Cape, the taller the trees are. Within twenty minutes, we’re in dense forest. The bus lurches as the driver brakes to avoid a monster goanna.
    I’m getting dozy myself when the engine note changes. We slow and turn left onto a sandy driveway leading to the host farm where the backpackers are staying. We pass a farmhouse and shearing shed before descending into a natural amphitheatre bordered by a snickering creek. A pair of old-fashioned long-drop outhouses lean towards each other under the wings of a couple of ancient blue gums. A cluster of tents encircles a campfire and a United Nations of tourists greet Hiroshi like a tribal chief returning from a hunting expedition. When I see the slabs stacked under the back seat of the bus, I understand why.
    The surfers tumble out. I wait on board, shunting the slabs towards the door and a posse of campers eager to unload the bullion.
    Cardboard rips and cans hiss open immediately.
    I’m stretching, preparing to clamber from the bus, when Mel swoops back inside.
    â€˜You all right?’
    â€˜Yeah. Why?’
    â€˜You kept to yourself this arvo. I wouldn’t have got