Dark Horse by Honey Brown Page B

that struck her as both a friendly and an over-friendly thing to do.
    ‘We should work out the beds. You can take the van, I’ve got a bedroll, I’ll sleep here in front of the fire.’
    ‘There’s no way I’m taking the van.’ He levelled a tired gaze across at her. ‘You have it. I’ll stay here.’
    ‘I want to be near Tansy, in case she gets a fright.’
    ‘It doesn’t seem right me getting the bed.’
    ‘I’m not going to sleep. I’m just going to lie down.’
    ‘You can have both the blankets. That’s my compromise.’
    ‘There are two more blankets in the van anyway.’
    ‘All right,’ he conceded and started getting to his feet. ‘I’ll keep this, you have yours plus the other two.’ He stood with his blanket around him. Collecting up his wet pants and shirt, he said, ‘I’ll wash these tomorrow, so no need to dry them tonight. Thanks again, Sarah.’
    ‘Take the lamp on the table. I’ve got my torch.’
    ‘You sure?’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘I’ll bring the blankets out.’
    He took the lamp and his wet clothes and climbed the steps into the van. He didn’t limp. Not even so much as a slight favouring of his left side. Sarah swung her gaze away, confronted by his balanced gait, confused by it.
    Although she felt like stepping backwards, creating sudden distance between them, she made herself stand and step forward. She put herself at the van door, one foot on the step, smiling softly with her hand out when he reappeared, the blankets a heavy bundle in his arms.
    ‘Thanks, Heath.’
    ‘Goodnight, Sarah.’

A heavy bout of rain woke her. Sarah sat up on her bedroll. The fire had burned low. Water was sheeting down from the overflowing gutters. In her dream Heath had wiped off the mud after the bog and turned out to be her husband.
    Sarah’s grasp on the dream faded as she got her bearings. Her heart had been racing, now it slowed. The roar of the flash flood was background noise in her mind. Wide-awake but bone-tired, Sarah sat thinking. She scratched her scalp, reached around to rub a knuckle up and down her spine. Her skin was itchy. Looking down at her lap, she noticed in the dim firelight that her bed somehow wasn’t right. It was . . . moving.
    It took a couple of seconds for Sarah to work out that the blankets were covered with crawling insects. She didn’t scream but made a hissing, rattlesnake sound between her teeth, the skin tightened on her face, and her teeth were suddenly cold with the suck of air. She leapt to her feet, brushing herself down, hitting her own body, stumbling back, too alarmed to scream, her throat closed tight, her muscles taut and cramping in her neck. The itch she’d been feeling on her neck, arms and legs, what she’d believed to be the normal itch of damp, unwashed skin, wasn’t that – it had been the tiny legs of beetles and the bigger legs of spiders, it had been the sticky legs of moths and the many legs of centipedes.
    ‘Oh hell,’ she managed to issue once clear of the bed and as she rubbed her hands over her limbs, checking every piece of her skin was clear of creeping bodies, and over all her clothing, in the folds and pockets of her shirt and shorts, and behind her ears. Sarah combed her fingers through her hair. She shuddered every five seconds, the same amount of time it took for her to tell herself she was okay, that there weren’t any more insects on her, before the panic that there had been returned to grip her once again. Compulsively, she kept running her hands over her body. Her torch was in her bed. Sarah stamped her feet and shuddered and twitched on the other side of the table. She worked up the courage to return to her bed and feel for the torch.
    Sarah shook her blankets out. The torch rolled onto the dirt floor. Soft thuds of insects dropping off her bedding and landing on the dirt were repulsive. Sarah turned on the torch and shone it around.
    ‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’
    Dry parts of the shed floor had been overrun with