‘Fuck!’ he roared but fought through it and quickly gripped the door, putting his shoulder to the pillar while the soldier scrabbled beneath the dashboard. First yanking down wires then tearing away at them.
Dave barely focused on her though. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't keep his eyes off the apartment block across the street. He kept trying to tell himself the shadows had not shifted or multiplied. Though a little voice wouldn’t stop screaming at the back of his brain, telling him their numbers had swelled each time he looked.
The one roaring that they were massing, ready for the final charge.
‘Hey, you ready?’ Sally called and Dave awkwardly canted across to see her dump some multicoloured wires down, twiddle with a couple of knobs on the dashboard then wrestle the gear stick into neutral while her foot pumped away at the clutch peddle. ‘Are you ready? David?’ She wrestled the stick back up into first and then gripped the handbrake.
‘Yes,’ David gasped as she dropped the brake and the car slowly started to roll forward.
‘Then push!’ she cried and David obeyed.
At first he thought he lacked the energy. If there hadn’t been an incline it would have been impossible. But as it was, gravity did most of the muscle work.
It still hurt though.
Hurt a lot.
But at least that took his mind off the shadows. All he could focus on was putting one foot in front of the other while he slowly built up to a slow jog. His legs and back screamed in pain. By the time he made it ten paces his body felt like jelly and he shuddered on the verge of collapse.
He groaned and looked across at the soldier, gasping, trying to find the breath for words. Sally wasn't even looking his way though. Instead she pumped the pedals and peered over the steering wheel at...
What's she frowning at?
Dave stumbled as he tried to see and decided it'd be best to focus on the task at hand. He yelled, dug deep and picked up the speed again, trying his best not to picture that they were heading straight into a swarm of shadows.
Just focusing on momentum, moving forward until...
Dave started and almost tripped as the engine roared to life, sputtered, and died.
'FASTER!' Sally yelled from inside and Dave gritted his teeth.
Easy for you to... ARRRGGGGHHHH!!
Dave gave it everything he had until a strange popping raced up and down his legs and his hamstrings felt on the verge of snapping. Ocean roar filled his ears and Dave was about to give it all away. Just let go and collapse to the ground to await the shadows or whatever other fate awaited him. Then the engine roared, stalled briefly causing the pillar to knock the wind out of Dave when the car briefly halted... then roared to life again as Sally continued to pump the accelerator and Dave struggled not to double over and vomit.
'GET IN!' the soldier roared as she gunned the engine a few times and Dave winced at the tinny, rattling noise the car made.
He collapsed into the car and it took all his strength to yank the door closed after him.
The respite was only brief. He lay back gasping and his eyes dipped closed for a second but abruptly sprang back open as Sally forced the car into a screeching u-turn and he was slammed into the door.
'What the...' Dave's protest died on his lips. The glimpse he caught of what the soldier had swerved to avoid silenced him instantly.
Not more that twenty metre away, down the end of Sussex Street where it intersected with Bent, lay a sight that took Dave's breath away. Black and glinting in the early morning air, a large ink stain of shadow tattooed nearly the entire intersection.
Dave couldn't take his eyes off it. He shifted around, his gaze locked on, certain it'd come hurtling after them at any second. Even once they'd completed the u-turn and Sally sent them careening down the street, Dave looked away. He swivelled in his seat to stare out the rear window, past where the kid lay amid the shattered glass with his hands over his head.
It kind of hit him in stages how close he'd come to being minced and the longer he stared, the shorter his breath got and the more he felt like bursting into tears.
'Which way?' Sally's voice intruded, forcing back the feeling.
'Sorry.'
'Which way are we going?'
'What?' Dave couldn't drag his eyes away even though the shadow didn't appear to be following. The absurd idea had taken hold that it would be the moment he looked away that it'd choose to pounce.
'WHICH WAY ARE WE FUCKING GOING!!?'
Dave started at the sheer volume Sally used.
He looked across and saw her glaring as she steered down the street one armed.
'Back to the freeway...' he mumbled and his eyes returned to catch a final glimpse of the shadow before Sally screeched around the corner and it disappeared from view.
He felt his blood turning cold as he caught a quick final glint and something gripped at his heart, squeezing it until he felt all lightheaded and dizzy.
Then abruptly the kid started screaming. Pure, panicked screeches as though he'd been stabbed. The shock of the sudden noise snapped Dave out of his strange reverie.
He stared into the backseat dumbfounded while the soldier drove on muttering over and over, 'Shit, shit, shit, shit. shit...'
18.
The screaming only lasted a couple of minutes but it threw everything off kilter. Dave spent the time staring in open mouthed shock at the sheer noise the boy was making.
Even as they turned onto the freeway and the soldier gunned the engine – probably more than she should while driving one handed – Dave stared back, wary that the hunched figure lying face down in the shattered glass would explode again. He had no idea what to do if he did. After so much silence and zombie like behaviour from the kid, he'd been completely caught off guard by the outburst.
Dave swallowed and watched the kid's shoulders hitch and shudder. He wondered if maybe he should be saying something. Although he couldn't hear sobs over the roar of wind through the broken window he was pretty sure that the kid was crying. He only managed to lick at his dried lips.
What would I say anyway?
He really had no words to deal with the situation. It was easier to pretend the kid's shudders were getting less violent and turn and face the soldier instead. Her scowls left him just as tongue tied though so in the end Dave settled for the window as they rocketed down the expanse of the four-lane freeway.
It was surprisingly deserted and the soldier gunned the old rust bucket for all it was worth, pushing them up to a shuddering one-twenty while they streamed passed the occasional abandoned car pushed to the shoulder by the army during the evacuation. Otherwise there was nothing to distract from the dismal and depressing view that surrounded them.
Smoke billowed and eddied across the sky and the quick peeks Dave caught between the sound dampening barriers just showed complete and utter destruction. Nothing but snippets of rubble and scorched, still-burning earth.
Silence reigned as Melbourne's outskirts whipped by. It briefly lifted when Dave nervously muttered the first turn they needed to make on the road to Hent. But quickly slammed back down when the soldier only nodded in response. She followed his instructions though, effortlessly crossing the four lanes that in their past lives had used to clog so badly with traffic and turned onto the Tullamarine highway that wound its way out past the airport.
More destruction awaited there. The large shopping strips that lined the road lay in flaming ruins and Sally was finally forced to slow down to weave around the rubble from a fallen pedestrian overpass. Everything around them seemed to hammer home the end so strongly that it made it bitterly amusing when they passed a row of surviving billboards that, although scorched, still stood proud.
WANT TO LAST LONGER?, the three boards queried as they headed past the shattered remains of the mammoth Sexy Land. Dave had never had the guts to visit it even though he'd frequently passed on his way to Naomi's flat in Airport West when they'd first started dating.
He read
it over and stifled a short giggle. He thought about pointing it out to Sally in an attempt to break the tension but decided against it, uncertain as to whether or not she'd see the funny side.
Not that his humour lasted much longer.
Just ten minutes later when they reached the airport it had vanished completely.
The soldier muttered, ‘Fuck,’ under her breath and slowed as they passed the road leading into the massive complex.
‘Fuck,’ Dave echoed, his jaw dropping open.
A hastily erected barricade still half-blocked the road. Burnt out husks of trucks, cars and aircraft support vehicles threaded through with glinting razor wire that clearly had little success in halting the shadows. Dave could tell that easily enough. It wasn’t the barricade that had caused Sally to slow. It was what lay behind it. Stretching away down the tarmac, leading a path to the unscathed signs that indicated parking, international and domestic departures – all of which, judging by the mammoth smoke plume, now lay in ruins beyond.
Dave felt his stomach somersault. The scent of decay tugged at his nostrils and even though he figured most of it had to be his imagination running wild – triggered by the sight before him – bile still crept into his throat.
The lumpy and congealed mess that coated the tarmac left Dave’s brain reeling, trying to comprehend the scale of the slaughter.
How many people died here? How many? In the long few seconds it took to glide past, Dave asked the question repeatedly but couldn't come up with an answer. The lumps and larger segments were strewn everywhere amongst the treacle mix of blood and minced meat. The whole lot baked and shrivelled to a crust that ran the gamut of colours from black to pink to a revolting yellowish green. The shredded remains had firmed like toffee across the tarmac.
Dave could imagine what it’d be like to walk across it. The pungent odours as his feet cracked through the hardened outer coat and sank into the soft gooeyness beneath.
Picturing it made him want to vomit. Even once the soldier sped up again, leaving the charnel scene behind, he had to shake his head to rid it of the lingering image.
It took a lot longer for the imagined smell to disappear from his nostrils.
In the end he resorted to breaking the oppressive silence to escape it.
‘So…’ Dave quailed at the glare the soldier shot him but persevered. ‘Where’d you’d learn how to do all that stuff? You know. With the car and all…’ By the time he’d finished asking, Dave regretted every single word that had exited his mouth. After what they'd just seen, the question sounded ridiculous to him so he could only imagine how another person would view it.
Sally ignored him, staring out the windshield as she steered one handed.
‘Oh, probably teach you stuff like that in the army, yeah,’ Dave supplied his own answer when it became clear she wasn’t going to.
The soldier shook her head but remained mute and Dave gave up and returned to the window, amazed to find that even after everything they’d been through he felt a slight tinge of red creep into his cheeks.
He swallowed it down while he watched the scenery stream by and pretended that he couldn't hear the kid sobbing in the back seat. The effect was weird as the last dregs of the city gave way to large, hilly paddocks, only broken up by the occasional seemingly untouched house. If it wasn’t for how deserted the roads were – all up they only passed one car and that was concertinaed around a tree – Dave would have struggled to pick a difference from the last time he’d made the trip.
The rain maybe, he thought, remembering the long drive through the downpour. Remembering the bitterness that had coursed through his body as he’d chain-smoked…
Cigarettes…
Dave felt a little jolt of excitement when he remembered the pack of smokes the soldier had given him was still tucked away in his pocket. He felt a slight twitch of a grin crease his face as he withdrew the battered packet.
It was crumpled and wilted and the bits that lacked plastic had absorbed a little more sweat than he would have liked but at least it seemed relatively intact. Dave felt his smile wilt a little when the flap tore free and he saw the twisted and torn contents inside. Thankfully, a quick rummage told him most of the damage was superficial and he dragged a cigarette from the middle of the pack, jammed it into the corner of his mouth then retrieved his lighter from his pocket.
Before he lit up, he paused to stifle a yawn. Despite the sleep he'd managed at the flat, he still felt exhausted and now that the adrenaline of their escape had fled his body, he'd really started to pay for pushing the car. His entire body ached and all he really wanted was to curl up and sleep. Somehow he doubted that be a wise course of action.
Don’t even want to think about what I’ll see next time I close my eyes. Dave shielded the lighter from the wind with his hand and lit up. He took a long drag, the sheer pleasure of the smoke hitting his lungs nearly enough for him to pass out.
He cracked the window and blew the smoke out in a thin stream and immediately felt Sally's eyes on the smoke in his hand. For a second Dave panicked, certain she'd tell him to put it out. But then common sense intervened and he realised what was more likely to be behind the stare.
After all, she had given him the smokes in the first place.
‘Want one?’ He waved the lit cigarette in front of her and finally found the thing to get her talking again.
‘Yes,’ she murmured. Then after a second’s pause. ‘Thanks.’
‘Not a problem.’ Dave held the pack out to her. ‘Don’t know if you remember but they were yours to begin with.’
The soldier didn't look like she remembered.
‘You were at the window–‘
‘Could you light it for me? Please?’ she interrupted and nodded at her injured arm. Dave did a double take at the red patches that showed through the sheet. Her exertions getting the car started had obviously had some side effects and Dave felt like a bit of a dick in comparison, moaning over some sore muscles while she calmly bled out next to him.
‘Um... sure,' he stammered even though he wondered whether it was a good idea or not. Doesn’t smoking thin the blood? Or is that aspirin?
He lit up another anyway and after taking a couple of drags to make sure it had caught, held it out for the soldier. She bobbed her head across and snagged the filter in her teeth then sucked in a few quick mouthfuls.
‘Does that… You know?’ Dave pointed to the soldier’s arm. She looked down at the blotchy cloth for a moment.
‘Like a fucking motherfucker,’ Sally admitted and Dave didn’t know why but he snorted laughter.
Sally barked a laugh herself and then coughed a few times as the smoke lodged in her throat.
A little of the icy tension left the air of the car. Even the kid quieted down, his sobs becoming sniffles that Dave found even easier to ignore.
He puffed away, feeling a little more comfortable and shook his head at how quickly things had escalated. Though less than a day had passed, it seemed a life time ago that he'd sat hunched amongst the office furniture in the stairwell, writing a note for the kid's mother and remembering–
'So how far is this place?' Sally spoke around the cigarette, smoke billowing. 'What'd you call it again?'
'Hent... It's about six or so hours. Maybe... I can't really remember. A while.'
'Right. Can you grab the smoke a sec?' the soldier asked as ash broke off the end and fell into her lap.
'Okay,' Dave obeyed awkwardly. He reached out and pinched the cigarette between two fingers.
The soldier exhaled her mouthful and licked her lips. She leaned forward, studying the gauges through the spokes of the steering wheel.
'Six hours or so...I think we're going to have a problem then,' the soldier opined and just like that, the small amount of pleasure Dave had derived from his cigarette vanished.
'Oh shit. Is it the petrol. There's no petrol is there. FUCK!' Dave felt something rising in his throat at the thought of the car stalled in the middle of t
he freeway, exposed and at the mercy of the first shadow that crossed their path and chose to tear them to...
'Relax, we've still got a quarter of a tank. It's just not going to be enough to get us all the way.'
'Oh,' Dave collapsed back against his seat and took a deep shuddery breath.
'Are you okay?' Sally peered sidelong at him with one eyebrow raised.
'Yeah, I'm okay,' he rushed to assure her before attacking his smoke violently.
'Good then. Any chance I can get that smoke back now?'
'Yeah... Yeah sure.' Dave had almost forgotten he still held the other cigarette. He ashed it out the window before slotting it back between the soldier's lips. She took a long inhale then slowed as they eased around a sweeping bend and an abandoned car appeared in the middle of the road, the first vehicle they'd seen since they'd passed the distressing scene at the airport. Judging by the skid marks, the car had been heading the same direction they currently were before something had sent it into a long, screaming one eighty.
Dave nearly choked on his smoke as they were forced onto the shoulder to pass. The car's windows looked like they'd been painted a lumpy brownish-black. A hue that, by now, he knew only too well. Dried blood. It coated the entire interior, blocking any clue of what might have taken place inside. Dave was at least thankful for that.
It wasn't difficult to figure out what was responsible for the damage. As they headed on their way, Dave studied their surrounds, eyeing the passing clumps of trees for shadows. He was grateful that most of the scenery consisted of open paddocks. The further they drew away from the City, the less smoke filled the sky and with the sun blaring down, there were fewer patches of shadows that the things could use for camouflage.
'So this Hent–' Sally's interjection abruptly degenerated into a coughing fit as some smoke went down the wrong way. Dave reached across and snared her cigarette before it could spill into her lap and cause her to careen out of control. 'Ah, fuck me,' she wheezed after a second's recovery. 'It's right up on the opposite side of the river, right? Near Wentworth, yeah?' Dave nodded while he reached forward, yanked out the ashtray and butted out Sally's cigarette. 'Okay, and just so I've got it all straight. It's like this...' The soldier paused, collecting her thoughts. After another drag, Dave stubbed out his own smoke, a sick feeling building in his gut that turned the taste of the last mouthful sour.
Should Have Killed The Kid Page 16