by Pete Aldin
“You know, we could stay here a couple more days, get our strength up, and stock up. There's an older car back behind the milking shed that might work if we can't find parts for ours.”
“Stock up? On what?”
Elliot nodded toward the animals. “Meat.”
*
They spent forty-five back-straining minutes maneuvering two cows along the cattle run into the shed and hand-milking them. While the animals stood in their corral shuffling their feet, Elliot jogged back to the house and returned with two clean mugs which he dipped in the bucket they'd used. He handed one to Lewis who just watched him.
He took a long gulp of his own, felt the warm fluid filling in some cracks of his hunger. The more he thought of it, staying here might be good for both of them as long as the bikers didn't think of this place. Meat. Milk. Eggs. He might even put some weight back on and get some put on Lewis. And a new thought occurred to him, an entirely unwelcome one. What if Lewis had no grandparents, not anymore? What if they were dead or turned? The teenager was showing signs of life today. Perhaps he could be taught. Perhaps he could learn to do what he had to in order to survive. Perhaps in time, if Elliot couldn't find him a community to join, Lewis could watch Elliot's back; they could partner up if the kid could grow a pair.
Lewis sniffed at it, sipped and screwed up his face. “Yech!”
And perhaps not.
“You're citified, Lewis,” he sighed. “This is way it's meant to taste.”
“But the germs.”
Elliot considered, thinking back on reading he'd done years ago while waiting for deployment. To be fair, it was a reasonable objection. There was the argument for unprocessed milk holding onto more vitamins and enzymes, while the argument against it echoed Lewis' very concerns about bacteria such as E. coli and Listeria.
“Well, the science says that the unprocessed milk humans have been drinking for millennia can protect you against gut conditions. But it can also cause gut conditions. Your guess is as good as mine. You wanna boil it first, go right ahead. If you think you know what you're doing.” He gulped the rest of his and dropped the mug in a steel wash-trough.
“How do I boil it?” Lewis asked, swishing the liquid around his mug. “There's no power in the house.”
“Gas-bottle-fed barbeque behind the house. Used it for the eggs. Fire it up but keep some gas for later.”
Lewis' eyes flickered to one of the cows and back. “You didn't mean that, did you?”
“About fresh meat? Damn straight I did.”
“But we have eggs. We've got tins and packets.”
“Eggs are nearly gone. Tins are suspect. You're telling me you never ate a steak before? A roast chicken? Well. What's the difference?”
Lewis shrugged and considered his feet. “Seems cruel.”
“Lewis, come over here.” He led the young man to one of the cows, whose eye swiveled to study them. Elliot lay a hand on its neck, stroked velvet. “This here is a domesticated animal. It was domesticated to provide milk and meat. That's its purpose in life. You think if we set them all free to wander the highways round here they'll live long and happy lives? Maybe they will. Maybe someone else will come across them and eat 'em. Maybe the owner will come back and do it. Maybe a herd of deaders will. Maybe they'll all get hit by cars.” He stroked the neck again. “We're not going to hurt it. We'll kill it cleanly and then set about cutting it up, cooking some steaks and curing some for later. Might take a week, but I think your grandparents would be pretty damn happy if we showed up with real meat.”
Lewis just blinked and avoided eye contact. He reached out a hand to pet the cow too. “I guess,” he said in a small voice.
Elliot took out his SIG, grabbed a dirty towel from a nearby bench and wadded it over the muzzle to absorb some of the sound. He returned to the cow and grabbed Lewis' right hand, pressed the handgun into it, flicked off the safety and let go. He pointed to a spot on the animal's temple.
“One round, exactly here. She won't feel a thing.”
Lewis' eyes grew round again and he stepped back, holding the gun away from his side. The towel slipped to the ground. “I'm not doing it.”
“Why not?”
“I'm not killing it.”
“You never killed anything?”
“N-no.”
“Time to start then,” he said.
“I'm not killing it.” Lewis tried to hand the gun back but Elliot crossed his arms.
“Brave new world, Cochise.”
“Wh-what about the cow out there? It's already dead. Eat that.”
Elliot shuddered. “After the pusbags have been sucking on it? Not a fan of infection, Lewis. This cow is fresh and fresh is good.”
“No way.”
“Sooner or later, you have to kill something. May as well be sooner.”
“No way!”
“You like eating?”
“I'll eat tins then.”
“Tins don't grow on trees. Tins don't roam the fields or live in the bush.”
“There's thousands of them around.”
“And they won't last forever. And tins might be poisoned. You're thirteen. You want to live to thirty, you gotta kill meat.”
“I'll … I'll eat vegetables. I can grow vegetables. And fruit. Mum and Dad did. I can too.”
Good to know. Maybe you can teach me.
“You're an omnivore, Lewis, not a herbivore. You want to be big and strong—and you need to be big and strong these days—then you gotta eat meat. So shoot the cow.”
Lewis had the presence of mind to squat and place the gun on the ground rather than toss it. Then he retreated from it until his ass was against the shed wall.
Flies buzzed around the milk bucket and cow patties. The air in the shed grew warm with the morning sun beating on metal walls. Magpies warbled somewhere outside. Elliot regarded Lewis a long time before stooping for the pistol and towel. He turned, popped one in the cow's temple and moved out of the way of the falling animal.
“What the hell!” Lewis cried.
Elliot waited for the kicking and trembling to stop, tossing away the ragged remnants of the makeshift silencer.
“Why'd you do that!”
“Told you—”
“You didn't have to do—!” The teenager whirled around, hand over mouth, retching and stormed out, his footsteps crunching gravel all the way up until the laundry room door slammed.
Elliot swiped sweat from his brow and flicked it away. He regarded the dead cow sullenly. He heaved a sigh and swore.
Stupid thing was, Lewis might be right: he really didn't have to do that. What the hell was he thinking, slaughtering a cow? Was he really going to hang around and butcher a carcass that big? How long did he want to stay on this farm, curing meat, inviting deaders to the party because of the smell, risking the return of the farmer or the bikers and an unnecessary confrontation?
He poked the wadded towel with his toe and scratched his neck. His stomach gurgled. And Elliot decided that hell, yeah, he wanted to cook up a big ass steak.
He used carving knives from the kitchen to fashion five long and thick slices of meat from the cow's haunches, regretting the waste. Properly gutted and hung up to drain, the animal might have offered up a couple hundred pounds of beef. With time to experiment, he'd have found a way to smoke it, make jerky, source solar panels and fire up a freezer for the rest of the meat. As it was …
He dragged the gas-barbecue inside the house for privacy and soon filled the air with the maddening aroma of frying meat. It was almost ready when Lewis finally appeared from his bedroom, where presumably he'd been drawing since the paper and pencils had disappeared from the table. He handed the teenager a plate and asked him to find some condiments. Lewis appeared flat again, not angry or anxious, just lifeless, like a blanket had been laid over his personality, his emotions. He dug a single red bottle from a pantry without comment, putting it on the kitchen table. Elliot turned off the gas, poked the steaks again and used tongs t
o drop two of them on a plate which he handed to Lewis. The young man got a knife and fork from a drawer for himself, smothered the steaks in ketchup and disappeared back into his room.
“You're welcome,” Elliot called after him.
He left one of the remaining steaks on the hotplate where he hoped it would dry out enough to keep until night time for them to share. The other two went on his plate with a sprinkling of pepper since pepper should have been safe. He spent the next twenty minutes chewing slowly, savoring his meal and washing his early lunch down with a “stubbie” of Crown Lager he'd found sitting alone in a beer fridge in the shed. It was warm, but he didn't care. It complemented the meat perfectly. He was left with a protruding belly and a satisfied feeling. With midday approaching, it was one of those warm Australian days where the sun threatened tyranny and the best defence was a retreat into slackery. He easily could have taken a nap on the couch, flicked on the TV, watched a game …
Elliot forced himself up and took the rifle outside, checked around the house, then returned to the cattle run. He opened the gates at both ends wide and wedged them open with bricks. He left the shed door open and released the other cow still standing in the milking brackets. It scampered out of the building and halfway along the driveway towards the road before stopping to eye its sisters across the fence.
“Live long and stay away from deaders,” he told it.
A flash of brown in his peripheral vision. He turned. A huge rat skulked at the far end of the milking shed. It lifted its nose to the air, whiskers twitching, and scurried in behind some wooden pallets.
“The rodents shall inherit the earth,” Elliot muttered.
He gave the fly-covered carcass in the other stall a final look; he'd read enough about curing meat to know that without the proper nitrates and a good smoker, and without a working fridge, the results would be risky. They'd stay here tonight and head out early in the morning, take the farmer's car, get the rest of their gear from the pickup and head toward Minchenbridge. One more night in a nice soft bed sounded good, but he needed to get them back on the road.
He spent some time transferring useful items to the Torana, packing them tight against the sides of the trunk so he could fit things from the pickup in there too. Back in the house, he read some more of the history book, not sure he could believe its claim that Australia had fired the first shot of WW1, targeting a German ship in its waters. A travel agency catalog he picked from under the couch made him swear: probably wasn't much left of the places it advertised. And no one would ever be traveling for pleasure again, not in this world. There were two more eggs in the chicken coop, so he used them and the ones Lewis hadn't eaten—along with some fresh cow's milk—to make a scrappy omelet on the barbecue. He scraped it into two rough semicircles. He reheated the last steak, divided it and served it all up on two plates.
They ate together this time, slouched at opposite ends of the dining table, Lewis watching a large fly butting against a window, Elliot thinking about the wilds of western Tasmania and where he might find the survival information he needed. He was startled by a sob. Lewis dropped his knife and fork, burying his face in the crook of his elbow.
Elliot hesitated then asked, “What's wrong? You … crying about the cow? We needed the strength, Cochise.”
“Not the cow.”
“Is it what happened on the road yesterday? Look, man, crap happens—”
“I don't care about that!”
Elliot pressed his mouth shut and ran a hand over his jaw. Well, I sure as hell care. I was the one nearly got his fingers bit off coz his squadmate was busy daydreaming…
“They were screaming! All of them. Even Dad. I shut my eyes but I couldn't shut my ears and I heard it all and they had me tied up in the ute and one said he was saving me for later and—” Lewis threw himself onto the sofa, sobbing into a throw pillow.
Elliot knew it was the wrong thing to say, but in the absence of anything else, he told Lewis the only truth he knew from experience. “It gets better, man. Well, easier anyway. It won't always feel this bad.”
The pillow dropped, the flushed face reappeared, eyebrows knit. Elliot recoiled from the fury burning there.
“Why did you bring me here?” Lewis said.
“I … I'm taking you to your grandparents.”
“Why won't you let me see them?” Lewis said and sniffed a huge string of snot.
“What? Who?”
“My parents. My sister. I want to see them.”
“Lewis, seriously, you don't.”
“I do.”
“You don't. Not after what those biker pricks did to them.”
He swallowed, eyes darting around as if searching for a handhold. “But not my sister, not Alyssa.”
“What do you mean, Cochise?”
“They took her.” He blinked, doubt surfacing when Elliot didn't reply. “Didn't they?”
“You saw them put her in a car?”
“… no.”
Elliot softened his expression. “Because they didn't. She ended up like your parents, Lewis.” The lie came so easily, rolling off his tongue like honey off hot butter. It was for the best, this lie, this noble untruth. And Elliot felt like shit.
Lewis gaped at him, the little color he had left draining from his cheeks. He heaved a breath. “How do I know what happened?”
“Because I'm telling you. I came upon your house afterwards. Not long afterwards. And I saw the aftermath. Wish to God I didn't. Wish to God it hadn't happened. But it did. And I don't see any point in lying to you.”
You lyin' prick.
There was a moment, a still moment when Elliot thought that Lewis would call him on it. But it passed, Lewis shooting to his feet and fleeing for the bedroom. The slamming of the door was like a gunshot.
Elliot finished his meal in silence, put the plate on the floor and went into the kitchen. He drained two full glasses of water, watching cows meander along the driveway in the golden afternoon light. Before retiring himself, Elliot spent two whole hours walking the darkening house, peering out each window in case Lewis's noise had drawn the dead. Or the living. He covered the remains of Lewis's meal with aluminum foil he found in a drawer in case the teenager got hungry again. He drummed his fingers on the table beside the plate.
The teenager wasn't going to make it. Not unless he hardened up. Grief or no grief, Lewis needed to learn about what it took to survive now. It wouldn't be long before it'd be him looking out for his grandparents, not the other way round. Drawing black and purple pictures might make him feel better, but it wasn't going to fill his stomach. It wasn't going to protect him when—
Elliot froze halfway across the living room as he suddenly realized what had been bothering him about Lewis.
He reminded him of Tommy Harrison.
“Well, don't that take the cake,” he muttered in the dark. “Stuck with a ghost in the land of the dead.”
7
The alien warble of magpies drew him from a shallow sleep. He'd been dreaming of some woman. Maybe he'd met her once; maybe she'd been an amalgam. Whatever the case, he was sorry the dream had evaporated with the approaching dawn.
Something was different in the house, a different quality of sound perhaps. He strained his senses, but nothing came to him and he gave it up as fatigue dicking around with his mind.
He lay on his back for maybe a half hour, listening to birdsong and wind in the eaves, debating how long they should sleep in before getting back on the road and how long he should just lie here. His bladder eventually made that decision for him. He crossed the hallway to the toilet, took a long and joyful piss, and washed his face and hands in the bathroom sink. In the mirror, he looked like himself, only older. The house stank of cooked meat and greasy hotplate. He returned to the bedroom, stuffed the green long-sleeve shirt in his pack and pulled a red flannel one from the farmer's wardrobe and buttoned it up against a chill morning. He headed down the hallway, planning breakfast. He knocked softly on Lewis's door b
efore cracking it open. The sooner he got him to Minchenbridge, the sooner he could get on with his own life. Such as it was.
Lewis wasn't in bed. The swag he'd taken from the Harrietville house wasn't there either.
One step into the living room and he knew both that the teenager was certainly gone and why the house had seemed different when he'd woken. The front door was ajar.
“Sonofa—” He shoved the door closed, locked it, leaned his head against it. The speargun was on the table, but the shotgun and bandolier were missing from the hallway where Elliot had left them. How had he gotten out without waking Elliot?
Am I slipping?
He let loose a sigh. Maybe this was a gift. His “package” was gone, his mission over, any onus on Elliot to escort the teenager further gone with him. And it would serve the little turd right: that was twice in forty-eight hours he'd put Elliot in danger, first by not paying attention on sentry duty and now by leaving the door unlocked while Elliot slept. The smart thing would be to accept the gift, put Lewis from his mind, start up that car and head west.
He tapped his forehead lightly against the door a couple times. “And I always do the smart thing.”
He returned to the bedroom, zipped on his hoody over the shirt, put his SIG in the holster and buckled on his belt. He slung the M4 across his back and took the speargun on his way out.
*
The morning air was especially crisp outside. Elliot smelled rain, noting the clouds scooting across the western horizon. There'd been showers over that way somewhere but they weren't coming here. No, it'd be another warm one once the sun really got going.
Lewis would no doubt have gone toward the pickup because of the maps and supplies left there, but Elliot doubted he'd have taken the driveway to the road. They'd crossed country to get here and he'd probably take the way he knew. He shrugged off the idea of getting in the old “Torana”, instead hunting around near the fences on the east side of the house where they'd come from. On one side of the wire fence, he found a vague shoe print in the dewy grass and fresh dirt kicked up on the other side. He climbed over, leery of the barbed wire along the top and started jogging. It was maybe two minutes later that a shotgun blast disturbed the quiet, scattering birds from gums along the border of the nearby bushland. He picked up his pace, adjusting his direction. It went off again before he reached the trees.