The soldier’s treatment of Brendan was another thing to factor into his already confusing calculations. With the rapid rate at which things were degenerating around him, Dave could feel even the lacklustre safety of the skyscraper slowly fading.
He barely even noticed that he’d started scrawling a circle around the Ciamantti’s logo until his pen started to tear through the pad.
A jumble of words and images somersaulted through his head. The gun butt crashing down. Over and over. Overlaid by Monty’s lisping voice: you need to do it now. They’re coming. Then the soldier’s smile on the roof. I already know you’ve chosen a possible child. Why do you keep lying to yourself that you haven’t? Naomi’s tattered body leaking all over the parquetry floor that was her mother’s pride and joy.
Then something else bubbling up out of the depths: old debts require old magic to keep them in check. The oldest there is. The most powerful of all. Sealed in blood.
Another chestnut from Monty. Some of the last words he’d said to Dave in the flesh. Just before Dave had clubbed him and the cops had kicked the door in.
After events had so quickly spiralled out of control.
But I could put it right. Dave’s pen froze in mid-scrawl as the image of the boy he’d chosen flashed into his head. The boy from the cubicle two down from his that he saw every day on his trips to and from the foyer. It would be easy enough to do. Mother’s sick. Shock or something. Down for the count. Boy’s not going to last long anyway, fending for himself. Couldn’t see any of the others lending a hand. Just another mouth to feed…
He even looks like the other one. The original… Dave’s thoughts stalled as another flash hit. Of him, down on the ground with a cop kneeling on his back – it was hard to blame them, at that point they’d had no idea what was going on – his nose pressed into the sticky bluestones as they slapped the cuffs on and the weeping boy was carried from the room. The cop screaming something in his ear as Dave twisted his head to see three cops were playing stacks on with Monty even though the old man was still reeling on the ground.
A snapshot from just after he’d made the worst decision of his thirty two years.
And although he tried he wasn’t able to clamp down on it this time. Instead, as the pen clattered to the floor beside him and his hands flew to his temples, Dave felt himself going backwards as it all rushed in.
Back past the slaughter in the streets and the panicked shepherding of survivors into the skyscrapers in Melbourne’s CBD. Falling fast. Past the horrified news reports as they shifted from rumour mongering to outright doom saying. The first hints appearing. The first of the disappearances. Past the all too brief flurry of adulation he’d received for his heroism during events at Hent. Back past there even. Before the horrific day itself, back before he even pulled the Tiida into the car park of the Gallo’s Hotel in the pouring rain.
And Dave gave it one last burst of his familiar lament: should have killed the goddamned kid, as he went right back to the very beginning. Where everything had gone wrong…
… When Naomi had turned and said the last words she’d ever spoken to him before she stormed out of their flat. You’re a fucking cunt. A fucking poisonous person.
It had been a night of firsts for Dave.
First time he’d ever heard her yell.
First time he’d ever heard her swear.
First time it dawned on him that there’d be no forgiveness this time.
The first time he'd honestly felt like his heart had just fragmented into a million different pieces.
The first time that words alone were enough to send him weak at the knees.
Everything had gone awry so quickly afterwards that Dave often wondered how different things would be if that night just hadn’t happened. If, for once, he’d just said no when Timbo had made the glasses up gesture from across the office. He’d been on the verge of refusing – the blow up the previous week being front and centre in his mind – but then he’d seen that clock hit five thirty and the smile spread across Timbo’s face.
He clearly remembered thinking: a couple of pints, that’s all. Surely she can’t object to a couple of pints, what’s the harm?
What possible damage could a couple of pints do?
Dave had to shake his head ruefully from his position in the hoarded office furniture.
Only unleash a fucking apocalypse.
It sounded ridiculously ridiculous but he could link it back.
Minus the pints and he wouldn’t have travelled to Hent alone. Minus the pints and he wouldn’t have been holding up the bar in some bumfuck bar when the old geezer with the crazy eyes had stepped in. He’d have been wrapped up all nice and snug in the bed with Naomi.
Minus the pints and he wouldn’t have had to choose.
* * *
...'Trouble?!' John parroted George's words. 'Trouble?! What the fuck is this?!'
The abrupt change in John's demeanour caught everyone off guard.
Jess gasped as he blinked and abruptly John was standing while the chair clattered across the floor. The sheer speed at which he'd moved took Jess's breath away.
'Whoa!' George held up his hands placatingly while Jess stared in disbelief at John, narrowing his eyes.
Is that something moving beneath his skin? Is it–
He didn't get time to finish his thought.
'WHOAH!!' George repeated a lot louder and a lot more panicky as splatters of blood and flesh sprayed across the office and spikes abruptly exploded from all over John's skin, reducing his skin into fleshy curtains of tattered flesh as they emerged. Jess couldn't stop staring at the bony protuberances that bristled all over the client's body. Particularly the glinting barbs they all seemed to end in.
He's one of the bonded! The realisation hit Jess like a fist and suddenly the deference his uncle had shown made perfect sense.
John leant forward over the desk and the other two nearly tripped over themselves getting out of their chairs.
'Easy, John, Easy. Fuck, he didn't mean nothing.' Dean's voice was so far removed from his usual gravel that for a second, Jess was certain his uncle was taking the piss. 'Come on, he was just making conversation.'
John hissed something in reply that Jess couldn't quite make out. Obviously it was a step in the right direction though, judging by George's reaction. His uncle's partner carefully maneuvered himself from behind the large coffee ringed desk, cooing away, 'Easy, easy, easy,' while his shiny shirt gleamed beneath the fluorescents above.
John stared at him for a long second. Jess felt certain he was about to attack the man as George lent over and picked the chair off the ground before setting it back in place. He had to choose his steps well to avoid squelching through some of the larger sprays John's transformation had unleashed.
'I was just making conversation.' George reinforced the message as he made a show of dusting off the fallen chair. After another long second, John abruptly sucked all the spikes back in.
It happened so quickly that a blink of an eye was enough for Jess to miss the majority of it. He got a brief glimpse of flesh knitting back together; the splattered fragments that dotted the office rising and flying across to be reabsorbed by John as though caught in some extreme gravitational pull.
Then blink! and John was back to his usual unassuming, chubby, crazy-haired appearance.
He still looked a little surly while he stared around the office but George and his uncle shared a relieved glance as the older man returned to his chair. From his perch in the corner, Jess did his utmost to draw as little attention as possible toward himself.
'I'm sorry if he offended you,' Dean chirped up, breaking the silence that had just started to drift into awkward territory. 'I assure you that wasn't his intention. I mean, you know the motto we stand by here: Ask no questions. Always take payment in advance. As long as it's paid for whatever the client does with their leased property is their business....'
Jess shook his head as his uncle launched into the spiel that he'd already heard o
ne hundred times that week. The one he'd already come to think of as the slumlord's creed.
Of course he'd never say that to his uncle's face. He was inordinately proud of the script that ended with:
'...essentially put, we don't care.'
After another second of staring John's face suddenly split into a bright smile as though nothing had happened in the preceding couple of minutes. He threw himself back into the chair with a casual, 'Sorry, it's been an edgy couple of days.'
'That's fine, that's fine. Let's just agree to move on now, yes? I think it would be best for everyone.'
Dean nodded emphatically at George's words, John gave a slight incline of his head and even Jess found his chin bobbing. He'd had his first glimpse of a bonded person in action and he found himself wishing for nothing more than to never see its like again.
'So... instead let's talk details, yeah? So far we've got out of the way and off the radar but what else are you after?'
'Well, I haven't really thought about it too much. Something not dissimilar to the last one would be good. But whatever, really. I mean I have always enjoyed a bit of renovating.'
Jess blinked slowly from where he sat, his heart still beating fast and heavy. The abrupt turn of the conversation was difficult to fathom. Veering from rage to polite discussion in the space of a minute. He rubbed at his temples. He could feel a headache coming on.
'Well there's a few doing the rounds at the moment.' Dean paused in mid spiel and unleashed a high-pitched whistle that did nothing to help Jess' brewing headache. 'Make yourself useful, boy. Cupboard on the right there.' Jess hopped off the bench and opened the indicated cupboard beneath. An interior coated in an inch of dust was revealed. 'Top three folders, if you please. Snappy too, if it's not too much to ask.'
* * *
4.
Even through the sleeting rain that nearly obliterated his windshield, Dave saw that the Gallo's Hotel had made a few more promises on it's website than it actually delivered. As he pulled into the bog of the gravel car park, he even tried to convince himself that it was for the best that Naomi had chosen not to accompany him.
There would be fireworks, he thought as he imagined the fuss she would have kicked up upon this scene being revealed. It only made him feel mildly better though and by the time he'd slithered the Tiida into rough alignment with the three utes already in place, the brief grin that had twitched at the corners of his lips quickly reverted back to the bemused sneer he'd worn for the majority of the seven hour car trip he'd just undertaken.
Her words that had pretty much run on a constant loop throughout the trip didn't really help at all. You’re a fucking cunt. A fucking poisonous person.
And just like that, five years down the gurgler, Dave thought and slammed the gear stick into park a little too hard then leant forward over the steering wheel, peering around through the rain smeared window. It was a masterpiece of double storey decrepitude that reared up before him. Dave shook his head at the boarded up windows and half-collapsed verandah that ringed the second floor; the cracked render of the walls – splotchy brown with large chunks missing, revealing the crumbling brick underneath. He snorted at the nearly fossilised outdoor furniture that was haphazardly scattered beneath what still stood of the verandah. Craning his neck up, he saw that the tin on the roof was not actually painted brown like his first glimpse had suggested. Instead the patches not coated in rust appeared as though they had once been a green colour.
No external shots on the website, Dave thought, should have been a tip-off.
The exterior certainly didn't reflect the sumptuous interiors that had been displayed there. But Dave had sort of been expecting that since he crossed over the Murray a good fifteen minutes ago and discovered that the hyperbolic promise of being right on the water's edge was horse shit. The blind turn off the highway into scrub, down the meandering little dirt road that had only been signed by a sheet of plywood tacked to a tree had done little to bolster his confidence. Nor had the one house he'd passed in a clearing midway through the dense stretch of forest; a ramshackle monstrosity of rotted boards and caved-in tin that he had been certain must be abandoned.
But as he'd passed through the stretch of forest he'd emerged on the other side to clearer land and a tarmac road and Dave had felt a flicker of faint hope. Clearly the area around him was in the process of being revamped. Across the road from the Gallo's Hotel twelve brick houses stood in varying states of completion. Their uniformity suggested some manner of estate was in the process of being constructed and, judging by the cleared land and stilled machinery that surrounded them, many more were in the offing.
Although that faint hope had been crushed the second he turned off into the boggy car park and seen that the hotel itself had more in keeping with the house in the forest.
But that's okay, I'm not here for its stunning looks, Dave thought as he slowly breathed in and out and then opened the door. The wind hit him like a knife, cutting straight through his jumper like it was made of mesh. The rain swiftly followed, angled perfectly to fall through the car door and saturate Dave before he even had a chance to clamber out.
As he struggled around to the boot to retrieve his duffle bag, he could almost hear the tone Naomi's voice took on when she was pissed. Don't you even watch the news, David? There's floods up that way at the moment. Why the hell would you book in for a holiday?
And that had been before the real kicker had been revealed.
A pub? A goddamn pub? That had been her reaction.
No, not a pub, a hotel. An old one. You like that kind of stuff, he'd replied.
I like old architecture, David. I do not like excuses for you to drink yourself stupid. She'd shredded that idea like tissue paper and then the fireworks had really started.
He slammed the Tiida's boot shut a little harder than he had to, then slung the duffle bag across his shoulder and trudged his way across the boggy ground to the relative shelter of the verandah.
Over the thrum of the rain on the tin roof the sound of hammering reached him interspersed with the occasional high pitched whine of a power tool from beyond the propped open flyscreen. As he slicked the excess rain from his hair and eyes, Dave saw what looked like a door that had been transformed into a ramp to bridge the step on the threshold. The white paint was scuffed and tracked with muddy footprints that suddenly left a sinking feeling in Dave's stomach.
Combined with the utes lined up out front and the general state of the building, Dave was starting to think that the marathon drive may have been a wasted one. Surely the place couldn't be in operation?
Though they did take a deposit. He remembered how excited he'd been plugging in his credit card number on the online form. How he'd sat there thinking he'd found the best of both worlds: the old building for Naomi and well, if necessary, he could still get in the odd quick pint.
He could only snort in derision now at how very wrong he'd been.
'Hello?' Dave leaned around the door and called as the hammering and power tools abruptly cut off but there was no response. It was the sort of situation he'd always hated. Although he knew it was ridiculous, he couldn't help feeling that he'd step right through the door and right into the path of a screaming tradesman. What the fuck are you doing?
Almost be easier to just head back to the car, Dave thought, at least until a fresh gust knifed even icier through his saturated clothes and he realised how dumb he was being. What? I'm going to throw away seventy bucks just 'cause I'm worried about coming off as a tool.
Dave let the bluster carry him over the threshold and crunched his way across plastic drop-sheets into a little doglegged alcove, slicking more water free from his hair.
Then he stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw dropping as he turned the corner and entered a completely different world.
One of stained wood, leather and immaculately polished floorboards. So divorced from the exterior that, for a moment, Dave stood gaping. He glanced back, wondering if he'd somehow stepped
through a portal and been transported to a completely different location but the plastic drop-sheet nixed that idea. He shook his head.
Why the hell would anyone put this much effort into the interior of such a dump?
'Hello?' Dave called again as he wiped his feet as best as he could before stepping off the plastic and heading toward the large, dark wood bar that ran the length of the far wall, backed by a mirror and wooden shelves that seemed to scream for lined up bottles.
The floor creaked slightly beneath his feet. Dave couldn't stop looking around. Every glance revealed new glories. Dave didn't have words for most of them. He jammed on the loop of opulence and the phrase "old-world craftsmanship". The only things breaking up the sheer perfection of the room were the boards covering the windows and the plastic drop-sheet that covered the door on the left hand side of the room, obscuring whatever lay deeper into the Hotel.
He kept moving slowly, still half-expecting someone to leap out and demand, 'What the fuck are you doing?'
A large pot belly stove burned away to the right of the bar, a neat stack of logs next to it. Initially that's what Dave headed for. But as he neared his eyes drifted to the gleaming metal taps that lined the bar instead. Go down a treat, he thought, as he picked out the badges topping them. Heineken, Goat's Head, Asahi. Beez Neez, Beck's and, of course, the obligatory Carlton. As he neared, Dave's appreciation grew at the selection. He could taste the first one going down and turned in a quick circle once he reached the bar, no longer quite so concerned about encountering someone. After the long drive, it'd be perfect, Dave thought, bang down one or two. Go have a shower and change out of these wet clothes, then settle in. He had a spare couple of hundred burning a hole in his wallet – originally allocated to a night of fine wining and dining for Naomi – and he was looking forward to not having her there watching him like a hawk. Always ready with a deflating, 'Are you sure you need that one?' or, 'Don't you think you've had enough?'
Not tonight, though. Tonight he was going to get smashed and he would not have to justify a single solitary pint.
Should Have Killed The Kid Page 4