The men’s eyes are narrow and unreadable. They’ve come here to do something bad.
Dakota swings her flashlight. ‘All right, fellas,’ she says. ‘You’ve had your fun, but we caught you. Put them down.’
One of them throws something – a gas grenade, smoke billowing out. The second uses his bolt-cutters on an exposed tube in the generator. There’s a bang. All the lights go out in the centre of the camp. There’s nothing now but the black sky, the stars, and these men who have come here to kill them.
Jocelyn points her flashlight wildly around. One of the men is fighting with Dakota and Samara, swinging his baseball bat, shouting a tattered cry. The bat connects with Samara’s head. There’s blood. Fuck, there’s blood. They’ve been trained, the girls are all trained; this isn’t supposed to happen. Even with their power, can this still happen? Tegan’s on him like a wolf, the power in her hands taking out one of his knees, but he kicks her square in the face, and what’s that glinting under his jacket, what has he got, what the fuck has he got? Jocelyn runs for him, she’ll hold him down and get whatever it is away from him, but as she goes a hand grabs for her ankle and she topples forward, face into the sandy earth.
She scrambles on to all fours, crawling towards the flashlight, but before she can get there it’s picked up, pointed at her. She waits for the blow. But it’s Dakota holding the light. Dakota with a bruise across her cheek, and Tegan next to her. And one of the men, kneeling on the ground at Tegan’s feet. She thinks it was the one she was fighting with. His balaclava’s off, and he’s young. Younger than she’d thought. Maybe only a year or two older than her. His lip is cut and there’s a fern-like scar unfurling across his jaw.
‘Got him,’ says Dakota.
‘Fuck you,’ says the man. ‘We stand for freedom!’
Tegan lifts up his head by his hair and jolts him again, just under the ear, a painful place.
‘Who sent you here?’ says Dakota.
But he doesn’t answer.
‘Jos,’ says Dakota, ‘show him we mean business.’
Jocelyn doesn’t know where the other two women have gone. ‘Shouldn’t we wait,’ she says, ‘for back-up?’
Dakota says, ‘Goddamn pzit. You can’t do it, can you?’
The boy’s cowering on the floor. She doesn’t need to do it; no one needs to do it now.
Tegan says, ‘Has he got a skein? She wants to fuck him.’
The others laugh. Yeah, they mutter, that’s what she likes. Weird men, deformed men. Disgusting, strange, repulsive men. That’s what she likes.
If she fucking cries in front of them, they’ll never forget it. Anyway, she’s not what they think. She didn’t even like it so much with Ryan, she didn’t; she’s thought about it since they broke up and she thinks the other girls are right. It’s better with a man who can’t do it; it’s more normal, anyway. She’s been with a couple of other guys since, guys who liked it when she gave them a jolt and even asked her for it in quiet voices close up to her ear, saying, ‘Please.’ It’s better like that, and she wishes they’d just forget that Ryan ever existed; she’s forgotten him, it was just a teenage thing, and the drugs have normalized her power more than ever. She’s normal now, completely normal.
What would a normal girl do now?
Dakota says, ‘Fuck off, Cleary, I’ll do it,’ and Jocelyn says, ‘No, you fuck off.’
The boy on the floor whispers, ‘Please.’ Like they do.
Jocelyn pushes Dakota out of the way and leans down and gives him a jolt in his head. Just to teach him what he’s got coming if he messes with them.
She’s emotional, though. Her trainer’s told her to watch out for that. There are surges going through her body. Hormones and electrolytes mess with everything.
She can feel as it leaves her body that it’s too much. She tries to hold it back, but it’s too late.
His scalp crisps under her hand.
He screams.
Inside his skull, liquid is cooking. Delicate parts are fusing and congealing. The lines of power are scarring him, faster than thought.
She can’t hold it back. It’s not a good way to go. She didn’t mean to do it.
There’s a smell of burned hair and flesh.
Tegan says, ‘Fuck.’
And there’s an arc light on them, suddenly. It’s two of the NorthStar people, a man and a woman; Jos has met them before: Esther and Johnny. At last. They must have rigged up a light from a back-up generator. Jocelyn’s mind is working very quickly, even though her body is slow. Her hand is still on the boy’s head. There’s a faint wisp of smoke at her fingertips.
Johnny says, ‘Jesus.’
Esther says, ‘Were there more? The girl said there were three.’
Dakota’s still staring at the boy. Jocelyn peels her fingers off him one by one and she doesn’t think about it at all. She has the sense that if she starts to think about it she’ll tumble down into the deep, dark water; there’s a black ocean waiting for her now, it will always be waiting. She takes her fingers off, not thinking about it, and she pulls her sticky palm up, not thinking about it, and the body tumbles forward, face first into the dirt.
Esther says, ‘Johnny, go and get a fucking medic. Now.’
Johnny’s staring at the body, too. He makes a little laugh, and says, ‘Medic?’
Esther says, ‘Now. Go and get the fucking medic, Johnny.’
He swallows. His eyes flick to Jocelyn, Tegan, Esther. When he catches Esther’s eye, he nods swiftly. Backs up a few paces. Turns and runs, out of the circle of the arc light and into the dark.
Esther looks round the circle.
Dakota starts to say, ‘What happened was –’
But Esther shakes her head. ‘Let’s see,’ she says.
She kneels down by the body, flips it over with one hand, rummages in his coat. They can’t quite see what’s happening. She finds some gum, a handful of flyers for a men’s protest group. And then there’s a familiar heavy metallic chink.
Esther reaches behind him and there, in her palm, is a gun; thick and snub-nosed, military issue. ‘He pulled his gun on you,’ says Esther.
Jocelyn frowns. She understands, but she can’t stop herself from saying the words.
‘No, he didn’t. He was …’ She stops, as her mouth catches up to her brain.
Esther speaks in a very calm and easy tone. There’s a smile in her voice. Like she’s talking Jos through an equipment maintenance drill. First turn off the power, then apply the lubricating fluid, then adjust the belt using the tightening screw. Simple. One thing, then the next. One, two, three. This is how it has to go.
She says, ‘You saw that he had a gun in the side pocket of his coat, and he was reaching for it. He had already committed an act of violence against us. You perceived a clear and present danger. He reached for the gun and you used proportionate force to stop him.’
Esther uncurls the boy’s fingers and wraps them around the holster of the pistol. ‘It’s simpler to understand this way. He was holding his gun,’ she says. ‘He was about to fire it.’ She looks around the circle of young women, meeting each of their eyes in turn.