by Shane Carrow
Caiguna. It was on a turn-off from the main road, but I caught a glimpse through the scruffy gum trees: a roadhouse, boarded up, a concrete toilet block and empty campground, a sad little plastic playground. Abandoned, by the look of it.
I was starting to feel hopeful. Like maybe we’d get a clean run all the way to Eucla.
That was a mistake.
The next roadhouse was only another forty minutes. Cocklebiddy. As we approached I could see there’d been a pile-up; another jack-knifed roadtrain, a few cars smashed up around it. It blocked both lanes but the ground was flat and scrubby, we had a ute, we just had to slow down and skirt around it…
And that was how they got us. From behind the trailer a spike strip suddenly rolled out, not homemade but a proper police one, unfurling like a rolled-up carpet. I slammed the brakes on and we skidded to a halt just in time, but even now a pair of men were stepping out, one with a Steyr Aug and one with a hunting rifle, both levelled at the windshield. In the wing mirror I caught a glimpse of another ambusher emerging from the scrub behind us with a revolver; and there was movement from amongst the cars that were banked up behind the trailer.
I had a split second to decide what to do. I could have thrown it into reverse, tried to go back the way we’d come – but then what? Besides, the guy with the Steyr could have shredded us from that range.
“Hands on the wheel!” the guy with the hunting rifle barked, running towards us. “Driver, keep your hands on the wheel!” He was wearing a faded baseball cap, expensive-looking sunglasses, a chequered scarf around his mouth to keep out the dust that was blowing in on the wind. “Everyone else, hands in the air, hands in the air!” The two behind us, with handguns, were both women. The guy with the Steyr stayed where he was, aiming it at the windshield.
Baseball cap opened the driver’s door, took the keys out, but even as he was about to pull me out of the car he saw Cara and the baby in the passenger seat. To my left, one of the women had pulled her door open, to see the same thing. “Ah, fuck,” the guy said.
“You’ve got a baby?” the woman said in disbelief.
“Nice to meet you, too,” Cara said contemptuously.
They’d been about to pull us all out of the car and frisk us, I think, but the baby threw them off. They weren’t totally ruthless in the first place, otherwise they would have just opened fire on the car as we approached and picked through the remains. And they’d rolled the spike strip out plenty early; I’d had time to stop. They just wanted to rob us of some things, I guess – food, fuel – then send us on our way, Collie style.
I glanced at Aaron in the backseat. He wasn’t holding the Glock; maybe he’d stashed it somewhere.
“Alright,” the guy with the baseball cap said, “No, come on, get out.”
They made us stand nearby – the baby was crying now, Cara trying to soothe it, which I hope was plucking at their heart strings a bit – while one of them talked into a CB radio. Glancing over at Cocklebiddy I could see that it was definitely inhabited; there was the outline of a gunman on the station roof, little sniper perches up there with sandbags and the glint of a telescope. A campground behind that, with a few RVs and the flash of colour here and there where a tent was set up.
“Where are you from?” the guy with the baseball cap said. He was talking to Brian, the oldest, but I answered instead.
“Perth,” I said, “Originally. We were in Albany for a while. Then we ended up near Kalgoorlie.”
“Kalgoorlie still alive?” he said.
“Last I heard,” I said. “If you’re thinking of going there, don’t. They don’t like outsiders.”
“Nah,” he said. “Nah, I reckon they don’t. Not many people do these days.”
“What are you going to do with us?” I said.
He looked back at the ute, where the women were unloading some of our jerry cans. “Think of it as a tax,” he said. “You want to pass on our highway, you pay the taxman.” Then he looked at the baby again. “Look, where exactly are you guys going?”
I was tempted to lie, but he seemed decent enough – all things considered – and I had to know. “We’ve got family in Eucla,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“My girlfriend’s uncle,” I said. “I forget his name, but he owns the roadhouse there. We got separated, but she was heading there with her dad… is it safe? Is Eucla still safe?”
“Last I heard, yeah.”
A wave of relief washed over me. “Have you seen them come through? A girl my age, her dad, he has a beard…”
He cut me off. “Mate, we see a lot of people come through. Not everyone stops, either. We pick our targets. And some of them get through anyway. Not worth chasing them over. Maybe she came through, maybe she didn’t. Good luck to you, though.” He turned back over to the women emptying the tray of the ute. “Hey, girls! They’re just heading to Eucla! Strip the whole thing!”
“What!” Aaron yelled.
“You’ll be right, don’t panic,” he said. “You got nearly a full tank, that’ll get you there. I mean, shit, if I thought you were heading to Adelaide or something we’d go easy, but… mate, Eucla’s down the road.”
“Gee,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
We watched as they unloaded the rest of our stuff – bedrolls, sleeping bags, jerry cans, boxes of food – and then we were allowed back in. “At least tell us about the other places,” I said, as the guy with the baseball cap handed me back the keys. “Madura and Mundrabilla. They gonna pull this same shit?”
“Madura’s empty, everyone there came over here,” he said. “Someone else might have moved in since then, though, I dunno. Mundrabilla, I don’t know either. Just stay on your toes, I guess. Good luck.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Thanks.”
They rolled the tyre spiker back up, and I drove around the trailer and eastwards again, watching them dwindle in the rear-view mirror. Ready to take their next victims.
Aaron was fumbling with the seat dividers, sticking his hand down the crevice separating them in the back. “They find it?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said happily, tucking it back into his belt. Good thing he doesn’t use a holster. An empty holster would have looked a bit suss.
The afternoon was wearing on, the sun sinking towards the west. It was another hour to Madura. Before us the ground rose unexpectedly, a sort of plateau, signs urging trucks to USE LOW GEAR. On the other side was a view of the Nullarbor, sweeping to the horizon in every direction, dotted here and there with trees. It reminded me of the African savannah, and made me suddenly, weirdly sad; thoughts of David Attenborough documentaries Dad used to watch, back home in Perth, a thousand years ago.
We came down the other side and burned right past Madura, which looked as empty as our ambushers had said. Still two hours to Eucla, the sun sinking to the horizon behind us. Chasing our shadows into the east. We passed a broken-down bus, a pair of emus suddenly panicking and dashing off into the scrubland, a burn-out car with a horribly charred carcass curled up in the fetal position next to it. Little events punctuating a long, empty drive.
Mundrabilla, the penultimate stop, I could tell was inhabited even before we got there. There was a long column of smoke, rising into the peachy twilight sky, coming from a cooking fire or a chimney. I could see lights coming on in the gloom, so they had electricity. The sun had just gone down; I kept the headlights off, but there was still light in the sky, and no doubt if they had sentries they could see us approaching.
I tensed as we passed, waiting for a tyre spiker to shoot out or a gunshot to crack the peaceful stillness of the evening. We were going 140 kilometres an hour. We passed the town in a matter of seconds, and nobody tried to stop us. I’m sure they were there, however many of them there were – sentries lurking in the scrub, lying on the roadhouse roof with a rifle scope, waiting, hidden. But we didn’t slow down and they didn’t try to stop us.
Then we were past. Heading east. We passed a green roadsi
gn in the gathering gloom: EUCLA 65KM. Half an hour. In spite of my worst fears, my heart was swelling with excitement.
The last of the grey light vanished from the sky. The stars were coming out. I turned the headlights on. The roadway ahead of us became a cone of light, plunging on into the dark of the desert, hundreds of rabbits darting in and out of the scrub at the edge of the road.
We drove in silence. This was it, we all knew. Eucla, it seemed, was going to be safe – certainly it must be if Mundrabilla was, just thirty minutes down the road. But that wasn’t the only factor. Geoff and Ellie had to be there. If they weren’t – if we had no connection to the place – why would they take in more mouths to feed? There was only a quarter of a tank of fuel left. We had no food or water.
It was more than that. I needed Ellie to be there. Needed her to be okay. That was how I’d got through Kalgoorlie, without losing my mind. Thinking of her. Finding her again. Holding her again.
Eucla was on a headland, a slight rise, like Madura. As we approached I could see dim lights. They didn’t have electricity, like Madura did, but there was the occasional flash of what might have been a torch, or a candle. I’d expected more than that, but as we drew closer I realised why – it was surrounded by walls. I couldn’t make it out in the darkness, but they looked like sandbags, or wooden planks, or even brick.
I drew the Triton to a halt at the turn-off, then turned slowly, the headlights washing over crushed sandstone roads, past the big sign reading EUCLA and the Caltex sign still displaying petrol prices. The turn-off, like most of the little places dotted across the Nullarbor, had a few scrappy trees growing around it. We drove past them, down towards the town itself, my heart hammering inside my chest. Already, just ahead of us, I could make out what looked like gates…
I’d expected it, but it was still startling when it happened – sudden bursts of light from either side of the car, torches turning on, men screaming at us. In the headlights ahead of us a trio of men had stepped out into our path, all of them holding rifles, and I could see that more had popped their head up above the parapet and were aiming guns at us. Our doors were being yanked open, we were dragged out into the light, told to keep our hands up. Same old story. “My name is Matthew King!” I yelled. “Matthew King! This is my brother Aaron! We’re looking for Geoff and Ellie Rae! Geoff and Ellie, please!”
But they weren’t listening, they just kept on shouting. “Hands in the air! Keep them in the air! Don’t fucking move!”
“This one’s got a gun!”
“Turn around, hands flat on the bonnet! Don’t move!”
“Shit, Andy, they’ve got a baby! They’ve got a baby with them!”
“Yeah, yeah, hang on. Hands flat, flat on the roof!”
“Matthew King,” I said again, trying to keep my voice steady in the clamour of shouting. “My name is Matthew King. Please tell me that Ellie Rae is here. Her uncle… her uncle owns the Amber Hotel...”
None of them would answer me. I heard some of them talking into radios, heard shouts and movement from behind the walls. A dog was barking. Cara’s baby was crying again. I suddenly felt terribly, immensely tired. I hadn’t slept properly in weeks, I’d given up all I had to get us here. There was nothing left in the tank.
Somebody had opened the gates; more people were coming out of the town. I could hear a distant heated argument.
“Matt?”
And I turned, and there she was, standing in the harsh light from the spotlight on top of the gate: track pants, thick grey jumper, dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, staring at me in disbelief, breath misting out in the cold and the light.
I didn’t care if someone was pointing a gun at me. I stumbled towards her, wrapped my arms around her, and buried my face in her hair.
APRIL
“I am compelled into this country.”
- Patrick White, Voss
April 1
5.00pm
I slept for about twelve hours last night. I can’t remember the last time I slept like that – long, deep, dreamless sleep, uninterrupted, in a soft warm bed. Probably not since Perth. Not once have I felt properly safe since then. Not until now, when I woke up in the morning with the sun coming through the window and Ellie curled up beside me. I remembered suddenly where we were, what had happened, and wanted to burst out laughing from sheer relief.
When we got in last night I hadn’t seen much of the town. Or village, or whatever you want to call it – it had a pre-zombie population of about 50. They took all five of us – me, Aaron, Brian, Cara and the baby – straight to the medical centre to be checked over, not just for bites but for any sign of sickness or injury. We were a pretty sorry-looking bunch: malnourished, sleep-deprived, a thousand cuts and bruises and completely filthy. The doctors – there are two of them, but I’ve forgotten their names already – had us scrub ourselves down in the shower block by the caravan park first, before they disinfected and dressed all our various cuts.
A hot shower. I can’t remember when I last had one of those, either. The last time I even splashed water on my face or my body was at Angus’ camp, by the lake, near Kalgoorlie. The shower water was lukewarm and a bit salty - Ellie says they have a little desal plant here - but I don’t think I’ve ever had a better one. There was handwritten signs up all through the block urging people to limit showers to two minutes every three days to conserve water, but we were in there for fifteen minutes or more and nobody stopped us. Maybe you get a free pass if you’ve been stuck in the wilderness for months. They gave us fresh clothes afterwards, too – track pants and jumpers and sneakers all smelling of mothballs, but they were clean: beautifully, wonderfully, amazingly clean.
Arrivals don’t come often here, and an excited crowd was gathering around us. It was after dark and apart from the roadhouse and a few streetlights there were only a few scattered flickers of candlelight and torchlight behind curtains. It was disorienting; I couldn’t really grasp the size or the layout of the place, except that it doesn’t seem like a traditional little town on a grid of streets. There’s the pub, the roadhouse, the police station and the medical centre – and then just a scattering of other houses with trees and bushes everywhere. More like a caravan park.
Among the faces pressing around us, asking questions, my gut dropped as I saw a very familiar one.
It was Tom Brook’s wife. I couldn’t even remember her name. Her father was with her, Alan, the wiry old farmer with the semi-automatic rifle he was so proud of. But she remembered our names, all right. “Aaron! Matt! Where’s Tom? What happened to Tom?”
I couldn’t talk. Didn’t know what to say. Ellie squeezed my hand as Tom’s wife let out a wail and collapsed, her father holding her up.
“Give ‘em some space!” someone barked. “Come on, clear off, give ‘em some space!” We were guided towards the medical centre, where the lights were coming on now as well. Ellie was to my right, an arm around me. Aaron was to my left, and for the first time I saw Geoff – cleanshaven, which was why I hadn’t recognised him before. He had an arm around Aaron’s shoulder, a gesture which surprised and moved me.
The medical centre looked like it had only been built a few years ago – brand new, spotless, gleaming clean. There were four beds in the sick bay. Apart from the five of us, Geoff and Ellie crowded in as well, plus about six or seven people I didn’t know. It all felt a bit surreal, all these clean soft people under gleaming electric lights, after the mud and the darkness and the violence of the past few months. Cara’s baby was fussing; Brian looked deeply uncomfortable.
The doctors introduced themselves as Dr Lacer and Dr Buffin. There was a nurse too, Sarah, only a few years older than us. They checked Cara and the baby first.
Of the strangers who’d come in with us, there were two with an immediate air of authority. One was Colin Rae: Geoff’s brother, Ellie’s uncle, the owner and operator of the Amber Hotel, Eucla’s pub/motel combination. He’s a portly bloke, quite a bit older than Geoff, pushing fifty maybe. The oth
er, although he was just dressed in faded blue jeans and a West Coast Eagles windcheater, introduced himself as Sergeant Paul Varley, chief of police for the Nullarbor region.
“You’re in charge?” I asked.
“Yes,” Varley said. “Got a lot of things we’d like to ask you.”
“I’d like to know what happened to Tom,” someone said from the back of the group – Alan.
“Hang on,” Geoff said, “they’ve been through a lot...”
“So had my daughter, and she bloody well wants to know...”
A bit of an argument broke out, Geoff and Alan shouting at each other. “It’s okay,” I said, but Sergeant Varley was already taking Alan outside.
“He’s dead,” Aaron said bleakly. “They need to know that. No... none of that false hope shit. He’s dead. We saw him die.”
Colin nodded. “Okay. He just needs to calm down a bit. Everyone’s riled up, we don’t get newcomers much these days. But you don’t need that.”
“We’re not babies,” I said irritably, even though I knew full well I’d been on the brink of tears when Ellie had come out of the torchlight. “His family has a right to know. He’s dead. Shot dead, straight through the heart. Very quickly. No pain.”
Varley had come back in without me noticing. “Maybe you should start from the beginning,” he said.
So we did, as the doctors moved on from Cara and her baby and started to work on me, Aaron and Brian – blood tests, disinfecting, checking the heart and the lungs and the eyes and the ears. We told them about what had happened on the road north of Norseman, and then in Kalgoorlie. The captivity, the tattooing, the slave labour. Ellie looked close to tears, squeezing my hand like she’d never let it go again.
Somebody – bless them – brought in hot food in tupperware, a rich stew of carrots and potatoes and onion. We inhaled it, speaking in between spoonfuls. Told them about the attack on the work site, about what had happened to Tom. About Angus’ group, the resistance campsite by the lake, Brian and Cara and the baby, our midnight escape. Robbery at Cocklebiddy, then here, finally, safe in Eucla.