Kaiju Canyon

by S. T. Cartledge

  KAIJU CANYON

  S.T. CARTLEDGE

  Copyright 2016 by S.T. CARTLEDGE

  www.severedpress.com

  THE SUICIDE FOREST

  Some people called Cooper a functioning alcoholic, but they didn’t know him very well. Few did.

  He entered the local pub, the Suicide Forest, and found it empty. It was a place of dark-wood furniture and low-hanging lights. The TV was muted. The fans didn’t stop spinning. This time of year, they never stopped spinning. The bartender had dark eyes like a spider. She leaned against the counter with her skin softly, slowly transforming from a solid to a liquid state. She stared at Cooper all the way from the door to the barstool.

  Cooper placed a file on the bar, examined the spirits on the wall, and said, “I’ll take a Kraken with cola.” Sweat dripped from his hair and beaded on his forehead.

  “You’re the new cop, yeah?” she asked, placing the spiced rum on the bar.

  He nodded. Took a sip. “I’m the new detective, yeah,” he said. “Name’s Cooper. You heard anything about the missing persons around here?”

  She laughed and held out her hand. “Mia.” They shook hands. “You’re a big city guy, aren’t you?”

  He nodded again. “I came here from Melbourne, yeah. Why’s that?”

  She leaned in a little. “Rumours spread quick in towns like this. Everyone around here knows about the missing people. This is your first case, huh?”

  “Yeah, I started today. What can you tell me about the people. You know their names, yeah? Know what they’ve been up to?” He picked up his file and flicked through it.

  Mia pointed at the two seats next to Cooper. “The Hodgins brothers, Mark and Lewis.” She pointed at Cooper’s seat. “Josh.” She continued along the bar, giving names to the stools. “Carol. Steph and Chris Foster. Domino. All in their thirties. They drove down south about a week ago for a hunting trip. They were meant to be back a few days ago, but no one has heard from them.”

  “What were they hunting?” Cooper asked.

  “Rabbits and foxes, mostly. Maybe kangaroo.” She shrugged. “They were meant to be back two days ago.”

  “Huh,” he said. He couldn’t imagine going hunting in this weather. He couldn’t imagine an animal existing in this heat that didn’t turn to soup or vaporise. The sun outside was merciless.

  Mia wet a tea towel and wrapped it around her neck. The water dripped from her collarbone, mingled with her sweat, and ran down her chest.

  He closed the file. “What kind of a name is Domino?”

  “It’s European. He came to Australia with his parents when he was a teenager. He’s lived here probably twenty years or so. Big guy. He’s like a second father to me. Are you on your lunch break or something?”

  He was halfway through his drink. “Something like that, yeah. These people, they’re all like family to you?”

  Mia nodded. “What’s your plan? Rally up the locals, get a big search party going?”

  He wiped the perspiration off his glass and ran the cool water across his forehead. He shook his head. “Can’t do that. Haven’t you heard about the earthquakes?”

  “I’ve heard about them. I wasn’t sure it was true. I thought it was a joke. We didn’t feel anything here. We don’t get earthquakes often, and when we do, the news is all over it. We just had rumours to go off.”

  “No, they were real. I’m guessing they were too far from town to make headlines. Either way, it’s not safe to send volunteers into an area so far out when we don’t even know the damage.” Cooper had been here one day and already he felt drained. He finished his drink.

  “But the damage is already done. If the earthquakes are what caused them to get stuck, the more people we have to help the better. The earthquakes must have happened, what, at least two or three days ago? The land should have settled by now. There shouldn’t be any risk left when we get there.”

  “The risk is that the earthquakes haven’t stopped. They’re still going strong. I’ve never come across anything like it. We have no idea what’s going on. I think they wanted to keep people from going into panic mode.”

  “No shit,” Mia said. She stepped back from the bar and leaned on the bench behind her.

  “You’re not going to panic, are you?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe it. I was hoping they just had such a good time they lost track of the days, or they forgot to call us up and tell us they’d be back a little later.”

  “Well,” Cooper said. He collected his file and stood up. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “That’s it?” Mia said. “Is there anything else I can do to help? I know these people.”

  “Sorry, but everything I need is in this file. I’ll see you when I get back.”

  “Wait.” She came around the other side of the bar. “If you had everything you needed to know, why come here?”

  “They didn’t have anything to drink back at the police station.” He thought it was odd to call a pub the Suicide Forest. Even more odd that this was the only one close to the police station and that all its patrons had vanished on a hunting trip while the outside world was on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

  “You’re going to search for them right now? On your own?” She grabbed his arm.

  He stopped. “Sure, why not? I’m just wasting time waiting around the office for the others to get their act together.”

  “But you don’t know the area. You don’t know the people. You said it yourself—it’s dangerous out there and there’s no knowing what it’s going to be like when you get there.”

  “Are you done lecturing me?”

  She sighed. Shook her head. “You’re right. We can’t waste time while they could be out there dying. I’m coming with you.”

  He turned away from her and pushed through the door. She hung back a moment, her head stuck in a tailspin, trying to process the information. What did she just commit to? She ran the scenario through her head again. Cooper had short hair and blue eyes. Big muscles. Why did that matter? He was the new cop in town. He had no idea what he was doing. Of course she couldn’t let him go off on his own. She threw her towel on the bar, grabbed her bag, turned off all the lights, and switched the open sign to closed.

  He was on the phone when she came outside. She locked the pub. There were only the two vehicles in the dirt parking lot. She hopped in the passenger seat of his Land Cruiser and waited for his call to end.

  He paced around the car a few minutes, staring at the ground, kicking up dust. Mia could hear lots of “yeah’s” and “nah’s” and other short replies before he hung up. He hopped in the driver’s seat, glanced at Mia, and started the engine.

  “That was the police chief, yeah?” Mia played with the radio station.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “He doesn’t want you going off on your own, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you didn’t tell him, did you?”

  “I didn’t tell him, no.”

  “He knows you’re going anyway. But he doesn’t know you kidnapped his daughter.” She watched Cooper for a reaction. A surprise at the relation between the two.

  “Police Chief Harris is your father, huh?” he said. He turned the radio down a little and he turned the air con up. “That’s gotta suck.”

  Mia shrugged. “He is who he is. Turn left up here,” she pointed out the intersection. “You don’t seem to care what he thinks of you.”

  “I don’t even really know the guy.” He turned.

  “So you don’t really care what anyone thinks then, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Not really, no.”

  The road became wide and empty ahead. The signpost listed a few towns ahead spread far apart. The remote middle Austr
alian bushland became more remote by the kilometre.

  THE TOWN WITH NO NAME

  Robert and Rodney sat across from each other in the conference room, a large map spread out on the table between them. There were countless markings scribbled across it. Black lines drawn for possible paths taken. Red circles carved out giant blocks of land to search. Blue crosses marked likely camping spots. The sections of the conference table that weren’t covered by map had fistfuls of paper littered across them. Notes, photos, witness statements, all the latest data from the weather bureau.

  There were two giant coffee mugs on the table which they drank from religiously.

  All this had come together over the past sleepless twenty-four hours. Robert and Rodney both agreed this was the worst time to get a new guy on the squad. Robert lifted his mug for the fourth time since he’d finished it off.

  “Where’s that new guy at?” he asked. “The least he could do is make us some damn coffee.”

  Rodney nodded. “Doesn’t he realise what we’re working on at the moment? There’s no time for a …” he checked his watch, “two-hour-long lunch break. I’ll need another cup in a minute, too. I bet this guy won’t last a week.”

  “I bet he won’t last a day,” Robert said.

  “He’s left town on his own already.” Harris stood in the doorway. “I just got off the phone with him. He said he was doing some more investigations around town, but I don’t buy it. I just think he didn’t like playing secretary to you two and decided to have a crack at playing real cop instead.”

  “Come on,” Rodney said.

  “We weren’t that hard on him,” Robert replied. “Besides, he doesn’t have the experience of a bush detective.”

  Harris entered the conference room and examined the map. “I know. I’m with you on this. But I’ve got a cop on his own, disregarding orders, heading out into unknown and unforgiving territory. What direction do you think he would have gone in?”

  Rodney circled a red ring with his finger. “Here’s the most likely area. It’s a popular hunting spot and the group has been known to go there on occasion. There are a few outlying areas here and here they could have gone.” He pointed other spots out. “But he’ll be heading down here to begin with. There’s no other place he’d start his search. You want us to go find him?”

  “I want you to go find him. Pack up and go. Call me when you track him down.” Harris left the twins shuffling their paper into boxes. They folded the map, cleared the table, and in minutes it was like they were never there.

  ***

  When Cooper put his sunglasses on, it felt as though the world had been dipped in chrome. The reds of the desert became golden. The sun became steel. The old dusty road stretching out for days became futuristic, shimmering heat rising up and forming a molten mirror of the sky. Cooper pushed the Land Cruiser beyond one twenty, one thirty kilometres an hour, chewing up the road and spitting out dust clouds that arose in the rearview mirror.

  There was dirt and dry bushlands everywhere they looked. Trees so dry their branches looked like bones. Like ancient animals who had died reaching to the sky. Reaching out and pleading for the mercy of the gods. Shouting at Mia and Cooper as they drove by, indifferent. The trees made no sound but the wind through dead leaves.

  They didn’t care much for dead leaves. Dead people were the ones they cared for. They’d have liked to keep them living if they could.

  “I’ll bet that my dad has already sent the Jackson twins to come find us,” Mia said. Her feet were propped up on the dashboard.

  “Good,” Cooper said. “They were getting nowhere doodling on maps.” He went to turn the air con up, but it was already blasting on coolest. “Have those guys ever dealt with a missing persons case before?”

  “There have been a couple,” she said. “None that they’ve actually solved though. You’ve solved a few?”

  “Yeah, I’ve solved a few. And I didn’t solve them sitting around a conference table debating every single goddamn option.”

  Mia’s phone rang. She checked the number, let it ring out.

  “Who’s that, your father?” Cooper asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. A few moments later, a voicemail appeared.

  Hi, honey, just checking up on you. I noticed you’ve closed up the pub early. I know you’re concerned about the missing people, but I hope you’re not planning on doing anything foolish, like heading out bush on your own. It’s dangerous, but everything’s going to be okay. I’m on the case. Just … call me when you get this, okay? Love you. Bye.

  The voicemail played loud enough for Cooper to hear. He pressed through the silence. “What’s it like having him as your dad? Can’t be easy.”

  “He just thinks he knows everything. He wants to always know where I am and what I’m doing, who I’m doing it with. I mean … he’s just overprotective, is all.”

  Cooper’s phone rang. He checked the number. Harris. He let it ring out, no message. “Just a little overprotective? He’s high-strung. I want to like the man, but he doesn’t make it easy.”

  “He’s not a saint, okay? He’s human. You’ll just have to get used to it.” Mia shifted to face out the window.

  The trees darkened and grew deeper shadows. The sky grew purple in the dusk.

  “What’s your mother like, then?”

  She shrugged and said quietly, “I don’t remember.”

  The stars blossomed and hung there like ever-watching eyes. Sleepless, the constellations counted on Mia and Cooper to find the missing hunters and bring them safely home. They told themselves they would. They drove fast and quiet into the night.

  ***

  They didn’t speak for hours. They didn’t really need to. The Land Cruiser speeding through the bush formed a mechanical lullaby which kept them tempered against the fury in their heads, calming them against the stress of loss and failure. The constant reminder these people need you hammering deep into both their skulls. There was an urgency here that went beyond simple concern and well-wishing for others.

  The high beams illuminated a distance of the road ahead. Cooper gripped the steering wheel tight with knuckles white and arms tense, searching the bush in the peripheral glow for a kangaroo. Because the last thing they wanted was to crash, becoming stranded out here, becoming another rescue mission, hoping the other detectives were not far off. These were just the mind games that played through Cooper’s head, scenarios of ill fortune, plagues of memories distorted. A side effect of fatigue from driving out here for so long.

  He thought the road would never end. He thought Mia had melted into her seat, a silent accessory to the vehicle. The next posted town was over a hundred kilometres away, yet there was a light up ahead. Mia snapped up from the window and leaned forward.

  “Is that a town?” she asked.

  He saw the light ahead. A red glow and smoke forming in the dark of night. Floodlights cut into buildings broken. A combination of hope and dread. It sure looked like a town.

  “I thought you grew up around these parts,” he said.

  There was a sign on the outskirts of the town. No name, just the words POPULATION: 100. The town itself was less of a town and more of a dump. The streets had no signs. The buildings were collapsed. Most of them had been burning and were now just embers and rubble. The Land Cruiser pulled up, charcoal crumbling beneath tyre; it was impossible to tell what was the black of the roads and what was the black of everything else that had melted to them. There was nothing here to be salvaged or saved. They got out to investigate.

  With a torch between them, Cooper and Mia searched the streets, following the warm glow of embers, searching for anybody around who could fill them in on the details. Clearly the earthquake had destroyed all the buildings, but what had burned them up so wild? A thunderstorm?

  Stranger than all the burned buildings was the lack of bodies. No one dead or alive out here in the streets where the damage had happened not twelve hours ago. Had they all been evacuated? Surely the police de
partment would have known about that. If anything, they would have been evacuated to Alice Springs.

  But this town didn’t even have a name. It barely even had people.

  The one building still standing was still burning. It was the community hall, and it was barely standing on its own, but it was fairly blazing. The smoke blew this way and brought with it the stench of burnt bacon. The wood panels and the door and window frames burned through and fell out one by one, sitting in the dirt, smouldering. Piece by piece, the building became exposed. It revealed the bodies of the townsfolk, a mass of sad bodies blistered and burned. The ground trembled and the community hall cracked and split and the walls fell down. Part of the roof, too.

  There was no saving these people. Even if they called in the fire brigade, what was the location? The town had no name. It was just a small place on a long road where some people had erected some buildings and called themselves a settlement.

  Cooper felt a stab of guilt for bringing Mia into this. But she wanted to come. She knew it was work. She wanted to help.

  She wanted to go with him as much as she knew her father would have wanted her to stay. Her father knew the law as well as any police chief should, but he understood little about the laws of youths. She was forbidden to leave, so she left.

  The road was broken or split in some places. The ongoing quakes were strong. They were transforming the landscape effortlessly. In the night they didn’t care what creatures were swallowed into their gaping abyss. The quakes continued; the town died out. The embers were going, going, gone. The light in the torch was beginning to dim. The replacement batteries were back in the Land Cruiser.

  “I think we’ve seen enough here,” Cooper said. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “I’m good to go,” Mia said.

  The only thing left here was the heartache of strangers. They felt for these people but could do nothing.

  ***

  Back at the Land Cruiser there was another one parked beside it. The twins Robert and Rodney Jackson were waiting for them. Twin detectives on the case, just now catching up. These guys were in their fifties. Tanned skin wrinkled. Receding hairlines, short hair bleached bone white. Eyes a dark brown, almost black. They had nailed the steel gaze of hardened detectives decades ago. They had matching light blue shirts, precisely folded collars, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Grey pinstripe pants. Black leather shoes. Black leather belts. Badges clipped at their waists, shining chrome. Matching aviator sunglasses. Mirror finish.