After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

by Unknown

  He woke to the smack of a gunshot. Sick rose in his throat and someone to the left of him swore and rolled off his bunk to the floor.

  ‘What the fuck’s happening?’ someone else yelled, but there were no more shots. Outside there was shouting, the tramp of boots, a thud. The first waves of light had lifted the night sky and peering low out of the barracks with the rest of the men he saw the scuffle on the ground, three men by the noticeboard. Clive was underneath Pete and Cray was crouching next to them. Pete gave Clive a heavy smack across the mouth and Clive lay still. Pete shook his head and looked up at the rest of the men holding on to their rifles uncertainly.

  ‘Stupid bloody idiot shot the noticeboard.’ The shot was a good one, Leon saw in the morning, a hole right through the pink bow at the top of the letter.

  13

  In Bi-Lo, Frank could not decide what he should eat, what he should wash with, what he needed and what he should have. He did one full lap of the supermarket and at the end all he had was a loaf of sliced white and a tin of Milo, and he thought, When have I ever drunk Milo? He put the malt powder back in the wrong place, next to microwaveable sausages.

  Back at the beginning again he started with the grapefruits and oranges, gawking at apples, trying to figure out which ones. When he felt sure that all the people who arrived at roughly the same time as him were at home unpacking, he made it to the checkout, a few bags of grey-looking greens, some potatoes, milk, bread, beer, nuts and a new toothbrush. The toothbrush had glitter in it, which he noticed when he was already queuing and couldn’t be bothered to change. He’d pretend it was for his daughter if anyone looked funny at him.

  The shopping of the lady in front of him was curious. White envelopes and chicken livers. He imagined her at home, sitting at her kitchen table, scribbling addresses on the envelopes, stamping them and placing a chicken liver in each one, licking the seal shut; a pile of bleeding mail growing next to her, ready for the post.

  A small boy stood by a pyramid of chocolate rabbits, alone, a deep crease appearing on the bridge of his nose. He turned his head before any other part of his body, top heavy and wobbly. Frank looked around him for a parent, but there was no one by the tills who looked the slightest bit concerned. When just looking didn’t solve the problem, the child’s eyes widened and he started to run, standing as tall as he could to try to see over shelves and through walls and round corners. He appeared at the end of an aisle, adrift and abandoned, looking for someone to ask but without the words, quite. His chin wobbled, his face reddened.

  Frank felt heat in his stomach. The kid’s mother was probably at the meat counter, distracted, and would yell the kid’s name any minute. The boy murmured for his mother, not loud enough for her to hear but loud enough that Frank could, then he disappeared again and the calling got louder, and now it was angry, so that the kid was yelling in the voice of an older child, deep and furious.

  Frank was nudged by the lady behind him and realised his shopping had collected past the checkout girl and she was waiting for him to pay. ‘Sorry.’ He said, digging around in his wallet for a note, trying simultaneously to throw his shopping into a bag. The checkout lady smiled at him, handing him his sparkle toothbrush and his change.

  He was backing out of the car park before he thought about the kid again and he wished he’d stuck around to see him find his mother.

  Back home, time passed strangely. He spent twenty minutes putting his food away and thirty just sitting inside, watching a black beetle as it moved across the room following the sun stripes. It seemed like a good life, following the yellow strip of heat, basking for a few moments, then following where it took you. The beetle wouldn’t be worried about what happened when it got to the end of the room. Perhaps this beetle had sticky feet and could walk up the wall. But then eventually the heat would go and what would it do then? How long did a beetle live? Guessing from its size, not very long. Perhaps it would only live as long as it took to reach the corner of the room. When it finally bumped its nose on the wall, he went over to it and thought for a while about treading on it. But once he’d thought it he knew he wouldn’t – the beetle was watching him and hoping he’d leave it alone. He prodded it with his index finger, trying to make it walk on to his hand, but the beetle pulled in its legs and he had to sweep it upside-down and into his palm. He threw it high in the air outside, but apparently the beetle wasn’t expecting this, or else it didn’t have wings. Either way, Kirk rushed forward and swallowed it in a second.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ Frank called.

  ‘What does the bunyip look like?’

  Part of the deal, it seemed, of Sal’s good work in the vegetable garden was this asking of questions. He’d hoped she’d ask something more survival-based, because he’d thought they could go down and hunt for pippies in the sand and bake them in their shells over a fire.

  ‘The bunyip? Well, it doesn’t look like anything.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t exist. Bunyip’s just like Father Christmas, mate.’

  ‘You mean adults pretend to be him?’

  ‘No. Not that I’m aware of. I mean he’s just a story to scare kids.’

  ‘Father Christmas doesn’t scare kids.’

  ‘Okay, well, forget Father Christmas. Think ghosts. Bogeyman.’

  ‘Ghosts exist.’

  ‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion.’

  ‘It is my opinion that ghosts exist.’

  ‘And good for you.’

  She took a long slow drink out of the tin cup he’d given her, eyes fixed stonily on his. ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

  He pretended to think hard. ‘Sort of roundish with legs.’

  ‘You are making that up.’

  Frank sighed. ‘Okay; you’ve got a kangaroo’s tail – the size of an emu.’ He thought a bit – some children’s book from when he was a kid. ‘Sort of a beak, I think, and these funny bobbles on his head. Feathers – but no wings. Scales. And maybe fins. Big sharp teeth.’

  ‘Is it always a man?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is there only one bunyip and is it a he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose there might be more than one. And maybe he has a girlfriend.’

  Sal was unimpressed and turned her face away. ‘You’re making it up. You don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Well, be fair. I’ve never met one.’

  ‘Ha! So it does exist!’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Eat your sandwich.’

  She picked up a prawn and galloped it round the plate. ‘Anyway. I know he exists,’ she said, teeth clenched together.

  ‘And how’s that?’

  ‘Bunyip got my sister.’

  The sheets bunched damply under his ribs, and his eyelids were light and wouldn’t close. It was hot, the air in the shack hadn’t moved since the sun had breathed into the room that morning. He thought about trying to sleep on the veranda, but Jesus roamed the cane and it made him less inclined to move from his sagging bed. He remembered wading through that cane, leaving Bo by the fire. He had been fogged up to the neck with gasoline and the leaves of the cane threatened to cut open his eyes. He’d sat in the firelight the night Bo’s ear was bleeding all over the place, and they’d passed the gas and rag back and forth between them.

  Bo’d talked to billy-o. ‘I dunno, man,’ he’d been saying, ‘we should shoot through, move up north, there’s jobs for people like us up there, there’s fruit picking and farm work, and we could pick up a new couple of chicks just like that. Or the girls could come with us. Could hitch up there, or even if it’s just the two of us, I dunno which is best. Man, we could get fish outta the sea and we could get us a tent or maybe we’ll get a VW and we can sleep in that, self-contained like.’ And he went on and on like that, and to Frank it seemed like there was something evil in the fat-mouthed idiot all of a sudden. Sat there with blood crusted round his earhole, his fat neck creasing at the back, he looked like someone you’d see molesting do
gs in the park. He thought of his dad’s nose, the nostrils black with dried blood, a busted blood vessel in his eye, after the pub.

  Something heavy was on Frank’s chest. ‘I’m going to go,’ he interrupted Bo, who was still talking about how their sleeping quarters would look, how they could get one of those chemical toilets or they could do their craps in paper bags and throw them out the window.

  Bo blinked. ‘Going where? How d’you mean?’ He cocked his head to look up at Frank, shielded the bad side of his face with his hand against the fire. ‘Jeeze, you look like your old man tonight.’

  Frank took a heave on the gasoline rag and ink spilled out of the dark that twitched and churned at the edge of the fire. It looked like things beetled all around them, and when he turned his head they flowed from Bo’s mouth and attached themselves to his eye sockets then disappeared back in again. And there was one big one that chewed at Bo’s ear, drooled and snotted and rapped his skull with its fingernails, which split and then multiplied and its eyes were the eyes of a cooked fish, white and blind and popping out of their sockets. And Bo was fat and content to let it lick at his face, let it eat from inside his mouth, pull on his tongue, this terrible fat lump with a bloody ear.

  Frank stood up and walked slowly round Bo, looking him over, and Bo looked back dully, thickly. Frank kicked some sand at the fire and Bo flinched. He kicked sand at Bo and Bo shielded his face. ‘Fuckoff.’

  But Frank kicked some more and Bo roared, but it wasn’t anger, he was just scared and then he was even more repulsive, and Frank kicked him in the fat gut to see what would happen, and Bo rolled on to his side and lowed like a cow, his face wet, and he kicked him again and then went running into the thick black, and the sounds of the bush got louder and something far away crowed a victory.

  The thing that really scared him was the pit toilet. He could smell it, he could imagine the thick-backed beetles that lived down there, the little ticking crabs and the bandy-legged rats. How far down was it? It was far, it was far enough that there’d be no getting out, and the sides were slime shit and you’d be up to your waist in it, if you were lucky. And all there’d be would be that crescent moon of the toilet hole all the way up there, where the lid peeped open. It felt like his next step would be into that hole and for a time he stood still on the spot, sweating, too scared to put his foot out into the dark. Then he got a hold on himself. It was the gasoline he could smell, still all up in his nose, and he could aim himself towards the bush through the cane and that way he wouldn’t even come close to the dunny. He listened to the cicadas and went towards them, then when the cane started flicking past his ears and across his eyes he ran full tilt at the sound, the rib-rib-rib, and he felt the air, wet around him. He heard the strange crow again and headed for it, deep into the deep black.

  He’d slept a night, or perhaps a night and a day, on the dry leaf ground. Ants had tickled at his neck, mosquitoes had made his eyes pinholes. Watched by a million different things that didn’t expect him to stay so long. The sound of something hopping through the dry leaves like a thing on a spring, of a nightbird mooing like a calf. The swish of a snake in the dark. And past all that he’d been listening for something else.

  He woke in an apple-pie bed at a hospital and his old man was there, pale and red but sober. He’d touched Frank’s foot through the blankets. Frank wanted to speak, wanted to know what had happened, but he couldn’t, a kind of lockjaw. Before he fell back to sleep his father said, ‘We’ll have to chain youse to the bloody radiator, mate,’ and inside Frank had felt a sarcastic laugh at his dad who kept a photo album of dead men under his bed, a grubby little cache of death porn to look at on nights he wasn’t screwing some drunk woman who made the whole house smell.

  It could only have been his imagination, but in the dark he felt things moving. Things too lumpy and heavy to be held up by their thin legs, things with brown spines and slits for eyes, cat-sized rodents with teeth that grew as long as their bodies, things that reached out for his face with their blind hands with claws like knitting needles. He felt air move close to his face and shut his eyes, waiting between the howls of Jesus in the bush, waited for the claws to close in on his cheek, to poke up a nostril and push into his mouth. At points he thought he heard it get closer and once he heard a scraping at the door, a snuffling, a scritch-scratch, and all that he could do was close himself up, his eyes, his palms and his ears, and hide in bed like a child. If it thinks I’m asleep it’ll leave me alone, as long as I don’t move it will drag itself past my bed.

  14

  Leon’s feet felt wet in his boots even though he’d just towelled them, even though he’d wiped out the insides and let them dry overnight. When he’d banged them against the ground in the morning, a red centipede as thick as his thumb rizzled out, its stalk antennae up and pointing like two warning fingers. Rod cleaned his feet with his towel, which he’d managed to keep fairly free of dirt, considering. Delicately, he threaded the stubby end of it between each of his toes and then round the nails, wincing at the little toe, which looked pretty red. Leon smoked a cigarette – the ritual was too much to pass up – a cup of bad coffee, a mouthful of biscuit and a smoke. It dried you out so that your insides felt drier than your outsides. With half an inch of cold coffee left in his tin, he dipped his fingers in and rubbed it into his chin and cheeks for a bit of a shave. His razor was not sharp and it tugged at his hairs, but it was another good thing, he decided. The noise was like stripping wallpaper, but it was good to imagine yourself in a bathroom, foamed up to the gills and rinsing your razor in warm water, not old coffee, and as long as there was no mirror, well, that was okay. He finished it off with a wipe from his towel, which had been everywhere, foot and bum and face, and he felt pampered as all get-out.

  Pete issued the order that they were moving out, and gave Leon a nod and a wink. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Fancy.’

  The clouds gathered above the dark tips of the rubber trees and it could have been night. When the first fat drops hit, the jungle crackled and a thick sweet smell rose up out of the dirt. The rain bounced off Leon’s face, small pebbles that went up his nose and shot into his eyes. It drowned out the sound of their footsteps and when it hit the mud it was like gunfire. They came to a creek and it could be seen to rise, its belly expanding, its surface was the cross-hatching of elephant skin. Leon waded in after Cray, the water a warm suck on his legs. The mud coated his trousers hotly and stuck like burnt chocolate to his boots. Before the rain had run the mud off him, he saw the back of Cray’s neck tense like a stork that’d seen the fry. Leon held up his arm and felt all movement behind him stop. The rain drummed on the brim of his hat, the trees were still, still, still, there were just the white lines of rain falling steadily down. It got into his clothes, ran down the crack of his arse, licked the backs of his knees. He breathed through his mouth, strained his ears to listen, strained his eyes to see what the signal would be.

  Thumb down. A baddie.

  Five fingers spread open, then four. Nine baddies.

  Cray made a pushing motion at him. A finger to the eyebrow. Wait. Wait till you see the whites of their eyes. Cray sank down and so did he, and everyone behind them was already hidden. He unfolded his tripod, careful not to jog the leaves around him, and attached the gun. No noise broke from it, no unoiled squeak that would grate above the crinkle-pat of rainfall. Even his heart was quiet, although he felt it fast against the bones in his chest. The rain on fat leaves and the drill of it on the brim of his hat. Drips hung off the end of his nose. He waited. He looked behind him to Clive, and Clive was wide-eyed and gave one nod to say ‘Ready’.

  And then a sound above the rain. The break of a stick. A shudder of fern. Beads of water rolled off leaves and fell on the dark ground gone to mud. A black streak of movement and, out of the green, four men’s shadows picking over the ground weightlessly. Even the sound of the rain stopped, even the sound of his own blood was covered over with a pillow. The first fellow carried a rifle over his
shoulder. He had womanly lips and his skin was smooth like unset caramel. He must have been younger than Leon. His black eyes darted from side to side but he didn’t see Leon, not for the longest time. And when he did, all he did was stop and there were three beats of a fast heart while their eyes met, then Leon shot him and it went into his chest, just between the top and the second buttons, and he fell over backwards.

  Leon moved the gun back to the next man before he had a chance to know which way to duck; the tracer bullets moved like jewels against the dark and the noise was like being between two revving motors. He knocked men off as they appeared, four, maybe five men, one after the other. Some shot back, but they could not get through his mess of bullets. He surrounded himself in a force field and by the time he ran out of ammunition there was no need for more, but he loaded up anyway, automatically, his hands steady in spite of the thump of his heart.

  ‘Nice work, old matey,’ said Cray, once they’d searched the bodies and were ready to set off again. ‘First go, eh?’

  Leon nodded. Smiled. Shrugged. He walked up to the boy with the smooth skin and took out his camera. There was blood on the boy’s lips. He set the frame, held the box steady and took a photograph. There had been a look on the kid’s face that said, ‘If I pretend I didn’t see you will you do the same?’

  They moved out and he found himself wishing he’d got someone to take a picture of him with the dead boy. And then he wondered where that had come from.

  15

  Frank felt supremely efficient. He rose early with a light hangover and shook himself clean like a sheet with a swim. He ate a breakfast of eggs and billy-brewed coffee, while Kirk and Mary pecked out the leftovers from the pan. He went through the tomatoes, degrubbing and cutting back leaves, doing a job he was sure Sal would be pleased with. He went back down to the beach and fished from a spot he’d been wanting to try since he arrived. He caught a rock cod and a good-sized black fish in the first hour. The rest of the day he made small adjustments to the shack. He rigged up a pulley and a bucket so that he could have a proper freshwater wash standing up, something he’d gone too long without, and he even put up a few duckboards for a bit of privacy. A satisfying warmth spread from his chest and he would have liked to have shown his handiwork to someone. Bob had said he might swing by for a drink some time, so that would be good; he’d be able to inspect it, ask all the questions, be impressed.