Draw the Brisbane Line

by P. A. Fenton

  ‘Brown snake,’ Tait said. ‘Big one.’

  It twisted back and forth, striking at this big thing which had landed on its back, but not finding purchase for its fangs.

  Tait moved closer to the car.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘The snake.’

  ‘I’ll keep out of range.’

  ‘The fire.’

  ‘I won’t touch it.’

  ‘It might explode.’

  He turned back and grinned at her, boyish mischief punching dimples in his cheeks. ‘Only in the movies.’

  He gave the snake a wide berth and she could see him trying to get up on his toes to see inside the driver’s window, but the flames rolling up the undercarriage kept him back.

  ‘Hello?’ he shouted. ‘Can anyone hear me?’

  She listened with him, but all she could hear was the occasional thump of the snake’s head against the bonnet. Not even a groan.

  Tait looked around and moved to a nearby wattle tree. He started to climb. When he got as high as the tree would let him without bending back to the ground, he leaned over and peered down into the car. It was only a brief glance, but she saw him screw his eyes shut and look away with an appalled grimace.

  Hee, hee, hee.

  Every follicle on her body puckered. She straightened and said to Tait, ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Sounds like a dog,’ he said, jumping down from the tree.

  ‘No dog I’ve ever heard.’

  But he was right, there was an unmistakable canine quality to the drawn out keening, the wail. Whatever it was, it was in pain, and it was close.

  ‘Over there,’ Tait said, coming back to where she was standing.

  ‘Watch the sick,’ she said, pointing at the patch of damp orange, and followed his gaze.

  A man walked through the trees, a bear of a farmer lumbering towards the car. He wore a red flannel shirt and Moleskins, his thick brown boots grinding the twigs and leaves on the ground to powder and crumbs. A battered Akubra sagged down low over his eyes. In his right hand he held a keening, bloodied beagle by its scruff.

  ‘I was right behind them,’ the man said, projecting his voice through his Roman nose. ‘Saw the dog thrown free, launched out of the sunroof.’

  ‘You went to the dog first?’

  ‘Love, I saw the crash. Figured the dog was the only one with a chance of survival.’

  Tait nodded short and sharp and closed his eyes to the image.

  ‘The hell are you two doing out here?’

  ‘Running,’ she said, still breathing hard. ‘What are you going to do … with the dog?’

  The fur on the beagle’s head was soaked flat with blood, running down its neck and legs and dripping onto the ground.

  ‘Got a twenty-two in the car,’ the farmer said. ‘Plan to put the poor little bugger out of his misery. I’m pretty sure his back’s broken.’

  She looked into the dog’s wide staring eyes, rolling around like some malfunctioning children’s toy while its jaw worked out another dying whine of hee, hee, hee. She nodded.

  The farmer pushed his hat up away from his eyes, regarding her, almost appraising her, she thought. His creased and tanned eyelids dipped low at the corners, partially covering irises the colour of a faded Tiffany bag. Would he even know a Tiffany bag if he saw one? Probably not. Call it chambray then, a sweat-stained and sun-bleached chambray work shirt. He probably had a few hanging in the wardrobe back at the homestead. She thought he was waiting to see if she’d object to his plans for the beagle, maybe insist on some irrational bout of girlish folly that he find a vet, that the beagle deserved a shot at survival.

  Sure. Tell that to Mr and Mrs Roadkill in the Mercedes.

  He settled the Akubra back down over his brow and turned in the direction of the road.

  ‘You folks might want to follow me,’ he said. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t mind a lift somewhere.’

  ‘My car was stolen,’ she said.

  He grunted. ‘Whole state’s gone to bits.’

  Hee, hee, heeee.

  The dog seemed to be winding down, its twisting growing more lethargic, and its keening less piercing.

  ‘You certainly don’t want to stay on foot around here, you’d be done in by the bush-fire. It’ll be here soon enough.’

  Jenny looked more closely at the ground they were walking on, the paper-dry leaves and twigs and branches, the brown grass, the peeling bark on the trees. The whole forest was a fire trap.

  ‘Would it be OK if you gave us a lift? Just out of the rain forest?’

  ‘Of course. I can take you as far as Brisbane if you’d like.’

  ‘Nah, yeah,’ Tait said. ‘That’d be awesome.’

  ‘Awesome,’ the farmer said, mocking Tait’s surfer tone. ‘Dude.’

  Hee, hee, heee.

  An old green LandCruiser was parked on the shoulder of the road, and traffic slowed as it passed to gawk at the crash. No-one stopped though. The farmer went to the rear of the big off-roader and laid the dog out on the grass. It wasn’t moving a great deal by that stage, only panting out faint hee, hee, hee sounds and twitching its forelegs as though it was dreaming of chasing rabbits. Jenny hoped that’s what it was doing, dreaming of haring after bunnies in some lush open paddock. She hoped it wasn’t aware of the farmer as he settled the rifle’s muzzle half a foot from its head and sent him off to doggie heaven with a flat crack. He returned the rifle to the LandCruiser and carried the dog’s limp body about five metres downslope from the road, where he set it down on the open ground.

  ‘You’re not going to bury it?’ she said to him on his way back.

  ‘She can have a cremation,’ he said. ‘Fire’ll take her.’

  She. Jenny hadn’t even thought to check.

  ‘Hop in,’ he said. ‘One of you’ll have to make some room in the back, I’ve got quite a bit of gear thrown in there.’

  Tait went straight to the back door and started moving around bags and boxes and other loose pieces clothing and kitchenalia to free up some space for him to squeeze in. Jenny took the front seat, fastened her belt and realised in that enclosed space just how hard she was still breathing. Her legs applauded at the respite from running and standing, and they tingled and twitched and threatened to cramp if she didn’t rehydrate soon.

  ‘Do you have any water?’ she said to the farmer when he pulled himself in behind the wheel.

  ‘Sure, there are cases of it in the boot, a few loose bottles packed somewhere near your friend. Help yourself.’

  Tait rummage around the piles in the back and handed her a large bottle of mineral water. She drank about half of it without stopping to breathe.

  ‘Does this mean a toilet break in ten minutes?’ the farmer said with a dry smile scooped into the well-worn creases at the sides of his mouth.

  ‘I’m pregnant. There’ll be toilet breaks every ten minutes. I’m Jenny, that’s Tait.’

  Fuck Dave and fuck Clary White, she thought to herself. I will tell everyone and anyone I meet from here on out that I am pregnant if there’s the slimmest of chances it will see me to safety.

  ‘Hi,’ Tait said from the back.

  ‘Aldous Weir. Call me Al.’

  She smiled. ‘Do I have to sing it?’

  He frowned. ‘Why would you sing it?’

  ‘You know … the song? Call Me Al?’

  He held that frown for a good ten seconds before he let it relax. ‘Just playing with you. I know the song. It’s not like I live in a cave. I even have television on the farm, that’s how I know who you are, Miss Jennifer Lucas.’

  ‘That’s Ms Jennifer Lucas, if you’re going to refer to my Hollywood persona.’

  ‘Pardon moi, Ms Jennifer Lucas.’

  She allowed herself a giggle, and it lasted about as long as it took her to think about the dead couple in the Mercedes, their dog de-brained by a bullet. Her stomach began to twist but she forced it to be calm, to relax. She focused on the interior of the LandCruiser, the pervasive odour
of dried mud mixed with manure mixed with hay mixed with stale cigarette smoke. The sound of the diesel engine chugging away became a background constant, moving them along at a brisk pace until they hit traffic.

  ‘How far to the highway from here?’ Tait said when they came to a standstill.

  ‘Couple of ks yet, but I don’t think it’s going to get any better. I think this is the start of the gridlock that’ll run into Brisbane and probably a good way out the other side.’

  ‘Shit,’ Tait said. ‘It’ll take us all day to get to Brisbane.’

  ‘Yep, I reckon so,’ Al said. ‘And maybe a bit of tomorrow, too. Of course, if you folks are amenable, I know a few shortcuts further inland which might get us past the worst of the traffic.’

  ‘Please!’ she said. ‘Shortcuts, yes, take them!’

  ‘It’ll be a bit bumpy. Some of the roads are unpaved, and in places there are no roads.’

  ‘As long as we’re moving, I don’t care.’

  ‘Same here,’ Tait said. ‘I’m for the shortcut.’

  ‘Shortcut it is then,’ Al said. ‘Let’s just hope we can get to it before the traffic locks us in for good.’

  Chapter 13

  ‘So why exactly aren’t we flying?’ Dave asked Papetti.

  ‘Because we’re in a Humvee?’ Papetti said. ‘Humvees can’t fly, pumpkin.’

  ‘But what about military aircraft? That has its own air traffic control, doesn’t it? They don’t go on strike.’

  ‘One, the US Air Force doesn’t have a base in Sydney, and two, even if it did, the US military machine is not a damn taxi company.’

  ‘And yet here you are,’ Dave said. ‘Driving me to wherever it is we’re going, picking up my fiancée on the way.’

  Papetti separated hydrogen from oxygen molecules in the saliva she ground between her teeth.

  Dave mentally slapped himself. He was forgetting one of Clary White’s central rules for public relations: Don’t be a smart arse with someone you don’t know, and that goes double for Americans. Dave figured he could probably double it again for armed military personnel.

  ‘I shouldn’t say any more, Mr Holden,’ she said.

  Traffic heading north was heavy, but not as bad as it should have been. The southbound carriageway, on the other hand, looked like the world’s longest, narrowest car park. Dave found the radio on the dashboard and tuned it to one of the less commercial stations, and was just in time for the news. The introductory news music faded, and misery began to leak from the speakers.

  Property prices across the country were now down over twenty-eight percent year-on-year.

  Striking air traffic controllers had been joined in an utterly unnecessary display of unity by baggage handlers, flight attendants and airport catering crew.

  Looting had broken out in the Queensland resort towns of Noosa Heads and Mooloolaba, with reports of home invasions and sporadic assaults.

  Central Queensland towns of Mackay, Moranbah and Emerald were reporting outbreaks of fighting and property destruction, while there were six new murder investigations open in Rockhampton.

  Traffic was approaching gridlock on the Pacific Highway southbound from the Sunshine Coast as residents and holidaymakers fled south from the growing chaos.

  In international news, data from China was suggesting a 12% drop in GDP from the same time last year, marking an unquestionable entry into recession.

  In sport, the Australian cricket team were beaten by three wickets in the first test against Bangladesh, dropping them in the world rankings to an all-time low of fifth, behind New Zealand.

  In weather, it was going to be hot, hot, hot.

  The weather report was the nail in the coffin of Dave’s mood. The Humvee was really starting to heat up. His shirt felt like the sticky white skin which floats around in a glass of microwave-heated milk.

  ‘Those look like air-con controls,’ he said, pointing to a button bearing the universal snowflake symbol.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Can we turn it on?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Doesn’t it work?’

  ‘It works, but I’m not to operate it unless the internal temperature passes thirty-five degrees Celsius.’

  ‘And what is it now?’

  She glanced at the dash. ‘Thirty-one.’

  ‘Ooh. Brisk.’

  ‘If I turn on the air, we’ll go through fuel that little bit faster.’

  ‘I heard that that’s not actually true. That air-con makes no difference to fuel usage.’

  ‘Oh really? Well I heard different, and I don’t want to risk it. We might struggle for gas at some point. If this rioting really kicks off, panic will spread. There could be a run on fuel. Roads are already looking pretty solid. I’m going to pull off at this station up ahead.’

  ‘Are we low?’

  ‘No, and I don’t want to be.’

  She took the exit without slowing and pulled in behind a brown Mitsubishi wagon in the station forecourt beneath a looming green and yellow BP awning. The tyres grabbed hold of the cement and Dave lurched forward into the tight embrace of his seat belt. ‘You want to get out and stretch your legs, maybe take a leak and get some snacks?’

  ‘I probably should,’ Dave said, carefully checking his ribs. ‘You want anything?’

  ‘Grab me a Coke?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He stepped out of the truck and was greeted by a light breeze. It wasn’t particularly cool, but it was a welcome change to the steamy interior of the Humvee. He peeled the shirt from his back where the sweat had stuck it to his skin and it came with a sucking smack.

  The station was busy, which didn’t surprise Dave when he looked back out at the thick stream of steel across the far side of the concrete divider, moving south in short and occasional jerks. Three of four customers held jerry cans, queued up behind the cars at the pumps like starved refugees at a food-drop site. He watched a rake-thin man in shorts and an ugly polo shirt leave the station with a full can, then cross the highway in a staggered sprint, pausing every now and then to allow one of the northbound cars to pass. Horns rebuked him with Doppler screams. When he reached the divider he ran alongside it, staying as close as he could and balancing the heavy canister in his left hand. Then he swung his legs over and ran to what was presumably his car. Another man started to run the same gauntlet while Dave was watching, darting like a rat on railroad tracks.

  Before he went into the shop, he walked around to the men’s bathroom at the back. As his brain caught up to his bladder it became a race to get himself clear of the awkward bloody button-fly of his jeans. Jenny bought them for him. She seemed to buy most of his clothes these days. He had to admit, they fit him just as well as anything Clary’s style consultants had procured for him in the past, but he hadn’t had enough time with them to loosen the damn button holes.

  He grabbed a basket near the store entrance and began filling it with food and drink. Coke for Papetti, water for both of them, a bunch of bananas and some apples, some packaged ham and tuna sandwiches, several bags of chips and nuts, about a dozen muesli bars, and the obligatory packet of Minties. He joined the queue to pay and looked across the forecourt to the Humvee. Papetti had apparently finished filling up.

  The man in front of him turned his shiny head. The guy was big, not quite as round as he was tall but certainly testing the limits of girth. He was bald on top but the hair he had left, around the sides and back, he kept long, and it sprang upwards in a tangle of curls which defied gravity and good taste with equal disdain. Has anyone ever told him to shave the whole lot? They must have. Not a good listener then. He made Dave think of the pointy-haired manager from the Dilbert comics. ‘You’re Dave Holden, aren’t you?’ he said.

  Dave nodded and smiled. Here it comes. Keep smiling. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Big fan,’ Pointy said, and held out his hand. Dave shook it. Of course he shook it.

  Pointy nodded to the Humvee. ‘You been drafted then?’

  Dave lo
oked out to see Papetti back in the driver’s seat, head down and rummaging around for something at her feet, and realised then that they hadn’t established any kind of cover story, or even if he needed one. Could he tell the truth, or should he make something up? A Masters tennis match to entertain the soldiers? Appearing in a commercial for Australia’s war contribution to the Middle East? Or should he just try and avoid giving a direct answer, take a leaf out of Tom’s book?

  He opted for obtuse and evasive. ‘Wish I knew. Lot of madness at the moment.’

  ‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ he said. ‘I’m taking the family up to Gosford to stay with my brother’s family. Lost my job in a downsize and the bank took my house. Just managed to hang onto the car.’

  Oh God, a sharer. Why did he always attract the awkward sharers?

  Clary White says, try to sound genuine when offering sympathy. ‘Sorry,’ Dave said. ‘I’m really sorry.’ Puppy dog eyes, puppy dog eyes.

  ‘Yeah,’ Pointy said. ‘Lots of people are sorry now. My manager was sorry, my bank was sorry. This is it now, this is the big crash we had to have, and everyone’s going to be sorry.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ a guy at the counter paying for his petrol can barked. ‘We’ll have a fucken crash if everyone keeps talking about it. This is just a correction.’

  ‘Really?’ Pointy said? ‘A correction? When everything corrects in a sharply downward direction and stays there, I’d call that a crash.’

  ‘Yeah, you would. Just because you fucked up your own situation, doesn’t mean we’re in a recession.’

  ‘No, the three consecutive quarters of negative growth means we’re in a recession.’

  Back and forth they went, an argument which had been played to death on television, on radio, in online chat-rooms, in every pub and party in the country. In the red corner, the bubble-theorists, claiming Australia has been in a bubble in almost every dark alcove of the economy, from property to wages to currency. And in the blue corner, the deniers, who believed that everything was fine, thank you very much, and the largesse of the Australian economy was down to nothing more than fair and reasonable market forces, and the only way to go for it all was up.