Blood & Dust

by Jason Nahrung

  Kala stared at the floor, and when she spoke, her voice was a low monotone, rimmed with shame. 'I was to contact Mira when I knew for a fact that you were here. But I wouldn't have. They couldn't have programmed me that well, not with Tai's blood in me.'

  'You got no idea what that bloodhag can do once she's got her fangs in you,' Taipan said.

  'Tai, that's enough!' Danica glared at him. 'Should I send you out, too?'

  He looked not so much chastened by Danica's outburst, as restrained. His muscles were tight as he spoke, the words driving out like steam, 'They could be on their way now, ridin' a trace, just like they did with the boy.'

  'While she's awake? Here? It's most unlikely. But I should've gone with Hippie to collect her. I should've checked her out there without endangering the camp.'

  'No,' Taipan said. 'That woulda been too big a risk. Coulda bin Hunters or anythin' trackin' that girl. No, she shoulda stayed the hell away.'

  Kala rubbed at her arms, her throat. 'How can I stay away? After 40 years, how the fuck can I stay away?'

  'Leave her alone.' Kevin lifted Kala to her feet and wrapped her in his arms. 'You've hurt her enough.'

  'Gods, enough, the lot of you,' Danica said. 'The horse has bolted. But they can't have seen this place, Tai. My wards are stronger than that.'

  'Close enough is good enough.'

  'Jesus,' Kevin said. 'Doesn't anyone even care what they did to her? You're talking as if Kala doesn't even matter.'

  'It's our lives, fella.' Taipan pointed at Kala. 'She knows it. We can't allow VS to get their hands on Mother. She's the only thing holdin' us together.'

  Danica laid a hand on his shoulder. 'None of us is more important than any other.' She took Kala's face in her hands. Kevin squeezed Kala's arm so she knew she wasn't alone. That not everyone was ready to feed her to the wolves.

  'What happened?' Danica asked.

  'Mira - she got me.' Kala collapsed like a balloon deflating, her admission the last puff of air.

  'And how did you escape?'

  Kala looked away, down at her feet, her answer a mere mumble. 'She let me go.'

  'I need to see. May I?'

  Kala pulled back, shaking.

  'It's all right, Kala. I'm not going to hurt you. I just need to see what happened.'

  'What are you gonna do?' Kevin asked.

  'Nothing I haven't done with you,' Danica said.

  'It's okay, Kevvie,' Kala told him, breaking away from his touch to face Danica square on. 'I don't mind.'

  'Let me see,' Danica said.

  A bite. A blood rush.

  Kevin sensed the connection form between the two women.

  Danica emerged, blinking. She bit her own forearm and smeared blood on Kala's wounds. Then she told her, 'Taste me. Take me into you.'

  Kala licked Danica's forearm, then began to suckle.

  Danica gave a single, sharp, 'ah'. Her eyes showed purple through slit lids. Then she murmured, 'There's something more - locked; bloodlocked.' Her gaze found Kevin, her brow furrowed, then she slowly disengaged from Kala.

  'Hold her,' she told him as Kala sagged into his arms.

  'Did you see?' Danica asked Taipan. She looked at Kevin, then back to Taipan.

  'Did you see what?' Kevin asked. 'What'd they do to her?'

  Taipan ignored him, his focus on Danica. 'I saw her with Mira, nothin' more.'

  'It was Mira,' Danica said. 'She forged a link; she's very good.' There was measure of respect in her voice, of admiration. 'I've dampened it. I doubt it would've penetrated my wards; but still, they've probably got some idea where we are. We move out tonight as planned.'

  'Where we gonna go, eh?' Taipan stalked to a window and looked out, as though expecting - hoping - that VS storm troopers would come crashing into the compound at any moment. 'All this runnin' and hidin', I'm plenny sick of it. When we gonna hit back?'

  'When we can win. For now, the road is our only sanctuary.'

  'We should hunt Mira. We know she's in Rocky. We know she's only got a few men with her. We could take her by surprise. That'd be a big loss for Maximilian von Shitter.'

  'No.'

  'Sooner or later, it has to come to this. My money's on sooner.'

  'And I say later.'

  'I want out,' Kevin said. 'Out for me and Kala. You lot can do what you want, but I want no part of it.'

  Taipan ignored him, his focus on Danica. 'Like I said, what's important is keepin' you out of their claws. Nothin' else. And the best way of doin' that is smashin' 'em.' He drove his fist into his palm. 'If this fella has any balls at all, he'll help. Otherwise, he can just piss off, and take anyone who can't stomach a fight with him.'

  Danica held out a hand, palm up, to hush Taipan as she asked Kevin, 'You don't want to avenge your father?'

  Kevin resisted her gentle goading. 'I got family who need me to look after them. I've seen what the VS guys can do and I've seen what you can do, and I'm not gonna join some suicide mission and leave my mum with another grave to cry over.'

  'So what you gonna do, fella?' Taipan asked. 'Throw that girl there on the back of a bike and see the world? How far will you get with that bloodhag on your tail?'

  'A damn sight further than if I go with you, that's for sure. They've got a gunship, for Christ's sake!'

  'Don't worry 'bout that bird. I got a little surprise for it down there in the garage.'

  'Sure you have. It worked great at The Farm.'

  Taipan's eyes narrowed, and for a moment Kevin thought he was going to attack. The man trembled, his hands fisted. 'Never figured you for a coward, fella.'

  'Ain't nothin' cowardly about looking after your own.'

  'Yeah? Just who do you think ya own is these days, eh? Take it from me - there ain't no goin' back.'

  'I'll take my chances.'

  'Enough,' Danica said. 'Kevin, take Kala out, let her rest. I need to think about this. Tai, let's find Acacia and work out our next move.'

  The hallway was crowded: Acacia, Cassie, Hippie, a bunch of others, all clustered around the door. They looked at Kevin and Kala with naked curiosity, perhaps pity.

  'What're you two doin' here?' Taipan snapped, singling Mohawk and Lions out of the crush. 'Get out to that fence.

  You want that VS mob to catch us with our pants down?'

  'We heard the dogs,' Mohawk said, but Lions hit him in the arm and they shouldered their way out.

  'We're in it up to our necks,' Taipan told them. 'Can't afford to be slackin' off.'

  Danica stepped out by his side, looking pensive.

  'We need more troops,' he told her, then swept his gaze around the assembled Night Riders. 'Reinforcements. Full-blooded.'

  'Don't look at me, man,' Hippie said, backing away till he hit the wall, a stubby of beer clutched protectively against his stomach. 'I like my dreams just the way they are.'

  Taipan snorted. 'Didn't think you'd have the spine for it, Hippie. Too fond of ya pizza.' He mimed having a cigarette, then shoved Kevin and Kala. 'Make yourself useful and take these two to the demountables. Separate, eh? And keep an eye on 'em.'

  'You want me to-'

  'Just do it! We're in deep shit here.'

  Acacia pushed to the front to drape her arm around Cassie's shoulder. 'What's goin' on?'

  'Come into the kitchen,' Danica said. 'The rest of you, keep packing.'

  'C'mon, Hippie,' Kevin said. 'You want to show us where Kala can bunk down?'

  'Yeah, sure man. Looks like you're outta the house, eh, Kay?' He glanced at Taipan.

  'Looks like it,' she muttered.

  He waved a half-empty stubby down the hall. 'This way.' He opened the front door and had to dodge as the two dogs bolted inside. 'Everyone's in a rush tonight.' On the veranda, he rested the stubby on the rail and pulled out a cigarette packet and thumbed his lighter. Cigarette in mouth, he mumbled, 'So what's the story?'

  'Those your wheels?' Kevin asked, indicating the ute.

  'In a communal kinda way.'

&
nbsp; 'You got the keys?'

  'Hey, man, I don't want any trouble.'

  'Then give me the keys.'

  'Kevvie?' Kala asked.

  'You heard Tai. We're prisoners here. If we don't go now, we might not be able to.'

  'I don't-'

  'You'd rather stay here - with him?'

  A long silence, and then, 'No.'

  'Gimme the keys, Hippie. I can belt you if it makes it easier.'

  'Nah, it's cool.' He handed them over. 'Um, good luck, I guess.'

  'Keep it. You'll need all you can get if Taipan has his way and you all go on the warpath.'

  Hippie looked back at the house, his face a mask of anguish. He puffed furiously on his cigarette.

  He was still standing there, a picture of indecision, when Kevin floored the ute. Mohawk and Lions raised their hands, but Kevin accelerated, aware of them unslinging their rifles, and behind him, Byely and Cherny barking where they raced in the ute's dust. He gritted his teeth and locked his hands on the wheel and kept the pedal pressed to the floor. Kala cried out and ducked down, arms over her head. The engine howled, threatening to blow its guts out.

  They hit the gate.

  There was a shriek and the crunch of impact. Metal sliced over the ute like massive bird claws. One panel of mesh slid from the bonnet with a clatter and they were on their way, skidding and rattling out to the highway, headlights blazing their way south.

  'Made it,' Kevin said.

  'Yeah,' Kala said, but she wasn't looking at him. She had her feet up on the dash, her arms around her knees, her face turned toward the door. 'Yeah,' she said again. 'We made it.'

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Kevin checked the mirrors, expecting to see cops or VS or Night Riders appear at any moment. But the road remained empty.

  'I think we'll have enough fuel to make Barlow's Siding,' he said as the gauge hit the one-quarter mark. His voice sounded loud inside their headlight-and-bitumen cocoon.

  'And what then?' Kala asked.

  'I reckon we head back to my place. Check on my mum. Meg. Everyone.'

  'And then?'

  'Open to suggestions.'

  She shrugged. After a few more kilometres of silence, she said, 'I probably would've stayed, you know, if they'd let me.'

  'Loyal to a fault, you are.' He looked at her, but she was staring out the windscreen, and he wondered if she saw the past or the future there. 'Want me to turn back? Drop you off?'

  'No, us leaving was the best thing we could've done. If Mira is tracking us both, we might buy Mother some time. Taipan was right, Kevvie: I was a risk. And I can't blame him for what he did. The nest is home for all of them, probably the only one they've ever known. Even if Taipan and I could dredge up the knowledge of our families - who our mobs were, where they were from - we still couldn't go back. Well, he couldn't, anyway. They think vampires are a white man's disease.'

  'Didn't the Aborigines have vampires before us lot came? I mean, it's not just Dracula and that fella from New Orleans? Y'know, Tom Cruise, is it?'

  Kala laughed. 'Lestat? Wow, that's an old one. But no, it's not just them. Pretty much every culture's got some kind of blood drinker in it - no sparkly ones, though, I don't know where they came from. But Taipan's variety is all Euro. Any blackfella with even one foot still in their country can smell it a mile away. They know he doesn't belong, no matter how much he wants to.'

  'Will people know I'm not the same?'

  'You'll be all okay as long as you keep your head down,' Kala said. 'White folks are pretty good at not noticing things that make them uncomfortable.'

  'I guess. Cross that bridge when we come to it.'

  What if Taipan was right and he couldn't go back - couldn't fit in? And maybe Danica was right, too - maybe he did want revenge. But against who? He knew next to nothing and he was driving farther away from the only people who could teach him. At least he had Kala. Kala knew stuff. She might not be able to get inside his head like Taipan and Danica, but she could fill him in on the theory. That, and keep him fed. His gut twisted at the thought. Is that all Kala would come to mean to him - a meal ticket? Is that all anyone would come to mean to him?

  'So what are the Aboriginal vampires like?' he asked.

  'Dunno, never seen one.'

  Kevin checked the moon-washed, flat nothingness unrolling beyond the windscreen. Not exactly the big city; he could see why the VS mob wouldn't be relaxed out here. No shops, no shade; no veins. 'Yeah, well, I don't think anyone has the right to blame you for what happened. It's not as though you went with Mira willingly.'

  'They caught me, they - she took my blood, and made me drink hers. I knew - well, hoped - she wouldn't be able to track me out west. Not outside of my dreams, anyway. Damn it; it's all gone to hell, Kevvie.'

  'It's just as well we're getting out, then, eh?'

  'Are we?'

  'There must be some place where VS doesn't have all the power. Somewhere we can just be ourselves.'

  'Maybe Perth? I honestly don't know. I think you'll find any place with a lot of people will have someone - some thing - preying on them.'

  'We can worry about that once I've got Mum and Meg out of danger.'

  She paused, then asked, 'Are you thinking of bringing them?'

  'I can't leave them trapped between your lot and Mira.'

  'You don't think that's a good enough reason to try to bring VS down?'

  'I don't want to kill anyone,' he said. 'Not ever again.'

  'Again?'

  He swore under his breath as he felt Nicola knocking at the door in his mind.

  'I was totally out of it,' he confessed. 'After the Farm, y'know. It was horrible. I kept seeing her, feeling her; I can't do that again. I can't be like him.'

  'So what will you do? Go veggo, like Bhagwan?'

  'Maybe. With the insurance from the servo, maybe we can start over. I could even work daytime, out of the sun. No-one would notice. Plenty of animals out west, too.'

  'You know why they call people who live off animal blood "veggos"? It's because if all you drink is animal blood, you end up a vegetable. You need human blood; you need their lives, their dreams. Their souls, maybe.'

  'That's why Bhagwan had those myx- those red-eyes.'

  'Bingo.'

  He licked his lips, so dry, and he eased off on the accelerator, seized by vertigo, as if he was on the roof of a house, right near the gutter, and the slope was steep and it felt as if the iron was lifting under his feet, sliding him closer and closer to the edge.

  'Would you - do you think - stay with me?' he asked.

  'I'm here, aren't I?'

  A corner, a road sign; he slowed down for the rattle and bump of a cattle grid, and then accelerated again.

  'So what would you do?' he asked.

  'Try to leave - again. Go to Melbourne or Cairns or Darwin, just be a normal, ageing person again. Get a job, pay my taxes, grow old. Die.'

  'Is that why you didn't get Taipan to make you one of us?'

  Her red-brown eyes bored into him. 'I don't regret anything, except for getting caught. I was just lucky Mira thought I was more use to her alive than dead.'

  'So what did happen?'

  'We pulled up in the truck, Penny and me, right? Outside that hut where you lot were waiting. Then the chopper came in and there was dust everywhere, it was very loud, made my teeth rattle. It kind of circled up and around, so it was facing us, and then there was this sound, like an oxy rig lighting up, and there was this puff of smoke from the chopper, and for a minute, I actually thought something had hit it, that Tai had shot it down, y'know. Then the truck just exploded.

  'I don't remember much at all, just lying on the ground wondering what the fuck had happened. That was when they grabbed me. I was a bit banged up, but I was okay. They took me into Rocky, to a hotel. Mira was there; I really don't want to go into it.'

  'It sure got Taipan and Danica excited.'

  'Fine. The bitch took my blood, she made me drink hers. Okay? We were b
loodlinked so she could spy on me. She told me to dob you all in but she knew I wouldn't. She was just using the link to find us, but Mother is too smart for that. That's it. Okay?'

  'I'm not sure what they thought they'd gain from doing that, if they knew they couldn't force you to give us up and that the link wouldn't work.'

  'Desperate, maybe. Maybe because I'm only a myxo, they didn't care. Or maybe they just didn't find anything in my blood worth keeping me for.'

  'It sounds pretty desperate, all right. Once we knew you'd been captured, no-one would trust you. I mean, once you were here, how could Mira possibly force you to go through with it? Did she threaten you?'

  'No, it was just the bloodlink.'

  'It doesn't make sense. There must be more to it. Danica mentioned something. What was it - a bloodlock? What's that?'

  'Hocus pocus. I'm not a bloodhag; how would I know?'

  'And you're sure-'

  'Jesus Christ. Fine. Pull over.'

  'What?'

  'Just do it!'

  'What are you going to do? We're in the middle of nowhere; you can't hitch from here.'

  'Just pull over!'

  He stopped the ute.

  She unzipped her tracksuit jacket. She wasn't wearing anything underneath. 'Help yourself.'

  'What?'

  'You heard me. You want to see what's in my blood - here, help yourself.'

  'That's not what I was saying at all.'

  'How else will you know what Mira did to me? What she wanted me to do? How else will you know you can trust me?'

  'Sorry. Sure. Okay. But not from there. Give me your arm.'

  'Shy?'

  Kevin shrugged.

  Kala zipped her top closed and rolled up her sleeve. He tested her veins, decided on the elbow. She sighed, then gasped as his fangs opened her flesh. Kevin dived into her lifestream and became Kala.

  The explosion sweeps the world out from under his feet. There's blue sky and black smoke and distant, muffled noises that don't make any sense. His body is pain and he crawls away from the heat and flames. Men pick him up - he has no control over his limbs, is slung like a sack of chaff into the back of a car, with cold, tight restraints on his wrists. Slapped for bleeding on the seat. Threatened with a good hard fucking, but the second man in the car warns his friend that 'she' will know, and her orders not to damage the merchandise were explicit.