Blood & Dust

by Jason Nahrung

  'Gimme a hand, eh,' Taipan said. 'We gotta shift these drums here.'

  Kevin paused, waiting for a trick. Then said, 'sure', and hopped over to where Taipan manoeuvred drums. Kevin did his best to help, using the drums for support as he heaved them along.

  'They're full,' he said, bemused yet again at his own strength. 'Fuel?' He didn't really need to ask. The smell was obvious, raw against the hay and dust.

  'Yeah. One of me stashes.'

  Kevin didn't reply, feeling stupid.

  'Stop ya worryin'.' Taipan groped around on the floor, unconcerned about exposing his back. 'Things've gone to shit, that's for sure, but it ain't ya fault. I'm not sayin' I like you any more than I done before, and I think you're too soft most of the time, but I ain't gonna kill you, if that's what you're afraid'a. Now, get some rest. I don't think VS will foller us out here, but this is as far as we go till we know for sure.'

  'Why wouldn't they?'

  'We're goin' bush. That mob don't last too good out here.'

  'Aren't you scared that Mira will trace me? Even with that necklace - can it stop her from getting inside my head? Sending that chopper after us again?'

  'They ain't hit us yet. Nah, I figure we slipped the noose. Can you sense her, anythin' at all?'

  Kevin shrugged. All he felt was pain in his foot and a general cloud of despair.

  'That bloodhag might have some idea - prob'ly why it took'em so long to find us, eh. Maybe had to fly right over the top to know for sure. Maybe even then, they just let that rocket off on spec, out of frustration-like. Maybe they was fed up with Bhaggy - who knows how that mob thinks?' The biker pulled up a trapdoor, causing a wave of choking dust to roll across the floor. 'You can sleep in here, fella.'

  'You're kidding.' About four men could fit in the hole, lying side by side.

  'It's plenny safe. Bin used lotsa times.'

  'Where are you gonna sleep?'

  'I got me own place.' He must have sensed Kevin's flaring suspicion because he pointed to the dirt. 'A safe place. Nowhere near you.' He stood, brushed off his clothes and walked to the door.

  'I thought we had to stay close.'

  'We got some good miles behind us. A few more feet of earth ain't gonna hurt. 'Less you want me in there with you.'

  'So you can take another slurp? I'll take my chances with Mira's pornos, thanks.'

  'Thought so.' He turned back to the door.

  Kevin glanced at the slice of lightening sky he could see through the doorway. Dawn's approach teasing his skin, like ants creeping under the surface. 'You're going outside?'

  'Goin' to ground,' he said with a wink, then added, 'Not too far.' A hand pressed against the medallion under his shirt. 'If I'm not here when you get up, you can have the bike.'

  Kevin laughed bitterly. 'Fat lot of good that's gonna do me.' He hopped to the trapdoor.

  'Don't worry, fella,' Taipan said. 'A coupla days, you'll be just like new. Won't even hafta think about it too hard. The body remembers, better'n we do.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Ya foot. Unless you wanna pretty it up. Grow a sixth toe or somethin'.'

  'Wait. You mean I can control what happens to my body?'

  'Sure. Mind over matter.' He tapped his forehead.

  'But Bhagwan said you had to use silver-somethin'.'

  'I like Bhagwan - I hope the mad bastard made it - but for a bloke who reckons he's some kind of guru, he can be as thick as a post sometimes. He just uses the silver nitrate to help him focus on what he wants. But he don't need it.'

  'So my foot is gonna grow back, whether I think about it or not. Like my chest did when you shot me. And when you staked me.'

  'That'd be about it.'

  Kevin rubbed the stump below his knee, gently prodding it to prove to himself it was real. It was already longer, down almost to the ankle. He tried to keep his mind completely blank; tried not to think of chicken feet. Just how much concentration would he need to make something happen?

  'Rest up, now,' Taipan said. 'Got a bitova drive tomorra before we get to the nest. Mother can show you some stuff to help keep that head on ya shoulders. Then you can do what you wanna. Me, I aim to get even.'

  'And who is "Mother"?'

  Taipan yawned. 'I'm goin' outside for a bit. Tuck yourself in.'

  Kevin fumed as he watched Taipan walk out. What was the big deal about this Mother person? He could just make out Taipan's shape, sitting cross-legged on the bare ground not far from the shed, an orange glow and pungent odour indicating he was smoking a final cigarette before bunking down. If he feared the imminent dawn, he gave no sign.

  Kevin eyed the hole in the floor, swore, then hobbled over and awkwardly lowered himself. He fought back a moment's claustrophobia, then pulled the door shut above himself and was trapped in the cold, dark space. Panic scratched at his insides when he thought of Taipan standing above him, pouring fuel over the door and setting it alight. Then he felt dawn pressing down outside the walls of the shelter and grudgingly embraced the oblivion that sleep brought. The dreams, though - the memories - he could do without them…

  TWENTY-NINE

  Naked, the night air so cool on his flesh, he owns the world as he falls into an effortless lope. He throws the stake he's made and a gym bag over the fence, then takes a run-up and jumps, thrilling with his athleticism as he springs to a post, sticks, then uses it to vault without touching the wire. But the impact is enough to trigger a motion sensor running with the strands of barbed wire across the top of the mesh. Spotlights beam out.

  He hits the ground, hurls the bag out of sight onto a shed roof, then grabs the wooden stake and - sinks. Earth closes in, warm, welcoming, safe. Footsteps and voices vibrate through the soil and then fade. He waits, letting his senses range, and only when he's absolutely sure no-one's around, he surfaces, the dirt falling from him like water from a Driza-Bone. A shake, heeler-style, a puff of dust, and he claws up to reclaim his bag. Is a little surprised to find it still there. Dressed, he tucks the stake, as long as his arm, uncomfortably into his belt and begins his search. He creeps through the dark toward the house where lights show through cracks in curtains. No dogs - this mob don't like them, and the feeling is mutual, he suspects. Best friend to man but choosy about the monsters.

  He's a shadow, he's a mote of dust, he's the breeze. He wafts on to the verandah, ears sweeping for danger, nose sniffing for that familiar scent. Jasmine Turner, all blood and stale air and mustiness, and there, his sister, ti-tree and creek water, the earth after rain. His heart beats faster as he creeps to a door and cracks it open. Kitchen smells drift from the rear of the house, but he's looking at a dining room lit by candles - no, electric bulbs shaped like candles, though he does smell wax, wax and violets, cooked beef, wine: too many to count, too many to sift, these scents that belong to another him, a younger him, back before that world ended and this new, night-clad one began.

  A piano plunks a distracted scale, and the stillness adds an element of threat to those half-hearted notes, a soundtrack for something not quite right. The notes range higher as he creeps, almost in time, and he wonders how they can possibly know he's here and, conversely, how they can let him penetrate this far.

  But she's here, just on the other side of that screen: a set of collapsible doors that divide this dining area from the space beyond. He can smell her. Feel her. Beams of light show through the vertical slats and he detects slight changes of movement as the pianist shifts on the stool. He reaches the edge of the divider, left open to form a narrow doorway, and he sees her in her white dress with its high collar and sleeves to the wrists, skirts to the ankles and the dainty shoes with bows, another bow in her hair tying back that luxurious midnight mane.

  She hits a final, jarring note and turns her face to him, and his heart breaks open. Time has not healed this wound, merely scabbed it over; seeing her rips it raw again and he reels, grips that timber slider for support as he sways under the impact of an avalanche of moments, each one a bleedin
g ulcer on his soul.

  He fights through to her, to the here and now, and her name is an ember on his tongue.

  'Willa?'

  'Chris? What the hell are you doing here?'

  'Don't call me that,' he begs.

  'You prefer "Taipan"? Is that who you are now?'

  'It's what they've made me.'

  'No, Chris, you've made that all by yourself.'

  'Come with me. We can talk about it out there, on the road, where we belong.'

  'Why can't you understand, Christopher; I don't belong out there. That's not what I want.'

  'And this is? Bloodsack for that bitch?'

  She seems almost amused, sitting there, hands in fingerless lace gloves in her lap. 'I do hope this isn't a lesbian thing.'

  'I don't give a shit about that and you know it. Blood's blood, pure and simple; I don't care if it comes in a tube or a jar. It's what she's done to you that I can't stomach. Made you inta a little white doll, just like her, and now she's feedin' off'a you.'

  'You don't think that maybe I made myself like this? That I actually care for her? That we share each other's blood because we like it?' Anger in her voice, for the first time, real anger, and the situation is slipping out of his control.

  'It's her blood in you. She's all but feedin' off herself.'

  'Familiarity can just as easily breed security as contempt, Chris. I made my choice and you made yours. Why can't you just let it be?'

  Words won't come. Because, he wants to say. Because. The love wells up, the love and the loss, and it's as big as the sky and it feels as if his skin will burst with the attempt to contain it.

  'Oh Chris.' Her hand lifts, then falls, the distance between them uncrossed. She stands, and her voice takes on a quiet, urgent tone. 'Did you bring that for me?'

  He fingers the stake, a foot of mulga sharpened to a point.

  'Never.'

  'Kind of old school.'

  'Some places, only the natural stuff can go, eh.'

  'We don't have metal detectors here; not yet. May I see it?'

  He hesitates.

  'They know you're here. They've probably rung Brisbane already.'

  'I couldn't believe it when I heard she'd left the coast.' He hands it over. He'd hardened the tip over a fire, imagining the whole time ramming it into Jasmine's heart. 'I had to see you.'

  'If they catch you-'

  'It'll be worth it.'

  'Chris-'

  A door eases open, a footstep sounds, and he knows, down in that place where his senses prowl ceaselessly, that they've been out there for a while now, waiting for whatever signal.

  'They'll kill you, Chris.'

  'They can try.' He turns, putting himself between her and the door.

  'They will. Unless I stop them.'

  She's quicker than he realised - must be all that old girl's blood in her, he thinks, but he doesn't dodge, doesn't defend; is too startled, maybe too resigned. Hell, he's too slow, plain and simple. He didn't really think she'd come away with him, but he didn't think she'd betray him, either. So he stands, mouth open, surprised, as she rams the crude stake into his back, all her uncanny strength driving it into his heart. For a moment he stands, and then the heart gives up, skewered and useless, and the power is cut and he falls, dead but not dead, and he looks up at her and takes one small glimmer of hope with him - in her eye, quickly wiped as the men rush into the room, a single crimson tear.

  Something tugs at his insides.

  He isn't Taipan anymore.

  He's Kevin, and he's lying still, pinned down. Bruise-purple daylight pushes through cracks in the wall. Dirt. He's in the dirt. Petrol. Petrol and dirt. The servo? He remembers being buried, but not scared. And now he's buried again, but he's scared. Scared of-

  'Hey.' Mira sits astride him, her skirt up around her thighs, her scarlet nails tapping on his naked chest. 'What are you doing down there, Grease Monkey?'

  He pushes against her presence, not just on his body, but in his mind, too. This isn't right. This isn't how he remembers - how he knows - it happened.

  'Where are you?' she asks. 'It looks nice.'

  But he doesn't rightly know and he clamps down on the road signs, on the vague idea he's got. Instead, he thinks of home. Mira seems distant, as though she's leaning through a gauzy curtain, and it's tightening, thickening, as he becomes more aware of her, aware of the fact that this is not a memory. This is not real. He imagines the curtain wrapping around her, tighter and tighter, as tight as a cocoon, as tight as a mummy's bandages.

  'Now Kevvie, is that anyway to treat an old flame? I thought you'd be happy to see me, me and your little friend here.'

  The body in the curtain is Kala, the material tight around her naked body, and blood seeps out, expanding stains from her eyes and throat, arms, groin.

  The curtain tears away and Mira, in a blood-red body suit, steps out like some kind of glossy butterfly leaving a cocoon. Kala stands behind her, strapped to a vertical X.

  'She's quite upset that you left without saying goodbye. She's not the only thing you left behind, is she?'

  Mira dangles a foot, the ankle a torn and bloody stub, like a lost sock.

  'Don't worry, Kevin, we'll look after your little friend for you.' She runs a claw down Kala's chest, making the girl squirm. 'Yes, we'll look after her.'

  'Don't you hurt her,' he cries.

  She laughs. 'Hurt her? Of course I'm going to hurt her. But that's all right. You run off home now, see if your family, if your girlfriend, will take you back.'

  He's naked in a chair in his kitchen and Meg's sitting in his lap, straddling him. He pushes her skirt up and she's naked and huge and he slides into her, his cock as hard as a crowbar, and she frowns.

  'Kevin,' she says, and then the consternation turns to horror as his cock expands, a real fucking Pinocchio's nose, and he shouts, 'Lie to me, lie to me, bitch!' And his cock is a sharpened stake hardened with flame and hate and he rams it into her, a timber missile looking for her heart. A purple-black light the colour of grape skin bursts from her eyes.

  Taipan looms over him, biting, bleeding, and he screams then…

  He bursts awake with his chest heaving, his mind roiling, and he thinks, just before he smacks into the trap door above him, that he hears Mira scream, too. It's some consolation.

  THIRTY

  Reece sat on the penthouse's balcony, the remains of a greasy breakfast pushed to the far side of the table so he could spread out the morning paper and enjoy his second cigarette of the day. Morning heat was already wrapping its clammy hands around him, dragging sweat from his armpits and down his back, the air barely disturbed by the gentlest of breezes drifting in off the sluggish brown river. Traffic hummed, a constant flow across the city's two bridges; life going on, unaware of the secret battles being fought to maintain its blissfully ignorant security.

  He smiled at the sight of the keys to the Monaro on the table, then turned his attention to the paper. He raised it to block out the glare and that uninspiring vista of tin roofs and thirsty gum trees on the other side of the river, that singular, aerial-studded hump of drought-brown mountain in the distance.

  Yesterday's attack on The Farm had been more exciting than any drug raid from his policing days. The chopper had taken out a few soft targets - Mira had been certain that her bloodwalk had given her enough information to pinpoint Kevin and Taipan well enough to make an entrance without endangering them. His plan would've been to drop the jackals first and let them go in under cover of daylight, use the chopper for fire support, but Mira did like her toys. Only after it had strafed the fuck out of the Farm had it deployed the troops, and then they'd had to work fast before law enforcement and media arrived. Mira was getting lazy, perhaps even careless, in her old age; her pursuit of Taipan was verging on reckless.

  The front page, and yesterday's television and radio coverage, showed they'd got away with it. But it was getting harder to paper over the cracks. Hiding behind his false IDs, calling i
n favours from their plants in the media and the cops and the government; all the bullshit made him long for the good old days of kicking in doors and breaking heads and leaving the explaining to someone else. Where was Felicity when he needed her?

  Still, this gig had its rewards.

  Mira called.

  Reece took a last inhale of his ciggie, a slurp of coffee, scooped the Monaro's keys into his pocket and headed inside.

  He checked the second bedroom. The Night Rider moll lay cuffed to the soiled bed. Mira had spent two long sessions with Kala since they'd brought her in. The second time, after it was clear that Taipan and Kevin Matheson were not among the dead, he was fairly certain the torture had involved some of Mira's hoodoo. The red-eye was barely conscious, but her body was mostly healed. A bath and a decent feed, maybe a transfusion, and she'd be good to go. He picked up his pace, arriving at the master bedroom as Mira called him again. Taipan's escape had infuriated her; sure, she'd found compensation, but he didn't want to risk aggravating her further.

  Clothing littered the carpet like oddly shaped stepping stones. The curtains were closed. The bedside lamplight revealed a wine bottle and glasses, the remnants of room service he'd ordered after midnight. Green eyes regarded him from the gloom. Mira lay, propped up on pillows on the rumpled king size in a white silk robe, remarkably clean amid the splatter. Bhagwan's two red-eyes lolled naked and listless at her side.

  'Think I might've found a suck-up present for Jasmine,' Mira said, her voice languid from her all-nighter. 'These two cow pokes are both very good in the saddle.'

  She slapped the male on the arse and told them both to leave the room.

  Reece waited patiently by the door till they'd slunk out, looking like the survivors from a natural disaster. Chests scratched, skin blotched and pale. Their matching ankh tattoos struck him as being too cute.

  Mira gestured him over. She was surprisingly chipper. The upside of a night of blood drinking, he supposed, her frustrations drowned for the time being.