by P. A. Fenton
Banksia nodded. ‘Looks that way.’
Jenny heard what they were saying, absorbed some of it, but she was still transfixed by the flickering images of violence and chaos on the television. She glanced over at Tait who was equally absorbed by the televised destruction and random violence. Jenny remembered why he was travelling with them, to find his uncle in Brisbane. Had he seen any familiar streets or landmarks in the montage of mindless vandalism to give him cause to worry? Jenny wanted to go over to where he was sitting and put her arm around his shoulder, tell him sweet lies that everything would be alright, that they’d find his uncle in his home waiting for him and that everything would be alright. She wanted to … she wanted to … sleep. She let her eyelids touch for a second, and wasn’t even aware of the moment sleep reached up inside her skull and flicked the off switch.
When she awoke, she was still on the sofa, sunlight slicing through gaps in the curtains and illuminating swarms of dust motes, and a violent noise physically assaulted the house, drumming the thin windows and rattling the big television in its mount. It was a familiar noise, something she’d experienced during one of her earlier film roles, an all-female remake of the A-Team.
It was a helicopter, and it sounded like it was right outside the house.
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Chapter 34
When they reached Tenterfield they cut inland on the Bruxner Highway. Highway was a generous title for what was little more than a narrow strip of blacktop flanked by grassy banks and paddocks. If a big enough truck came at them from the other direction, they’d have to go off-road, but that didn’t lighten Papetti’s pressure on the pedal.
‘Try not to drive us into a tree,’ he said to her. ‘This is a big car, but it’s not the Humvee.’
‘I’ve driven faster than this on much hairier roads,’ she said, sounding almost bored by his caution. ‘Never had an accident. And hey, why don’t you call me Pia from now on. Papetti sounds too formal, too military. I am in disguise.’
‘I could call you Celia.’
‘Not if you want me to acknowledge you.’
So that was it. She was now Pia.
She turned the radio on when they were passing through a quiet stretch which the car’s sat-nav system flagged as Bolivia. Dave had drifted off to sleep somewhere near Armidale, and hearing the newsreader reeling out words like riot and looting and casualties, then with the name Bolivia flashing up on the car’s dashboard display … for a moment he forgot where he was, when he was.
Then he remembered: Jenny, Pia Papetti and the abrupt end of Curly the gunman.
And James Cain of course. A short walk off his balcony, with Dave all but helping him over.
Bile rose in his throat, and he swallowed it back.
Dave still couldn’t get any joy from his phone. No missed calls, and all attempts to get through to Tom were met by a friendly female robot telling him sorry, but that number doesn’t seem to be available. Are you sure you dialled the right number? Of course he was sure, he just jabbed his thumb into the grinning image of his brother, like he always did.
The talking head on the radio was focusing a lot on the civil unrest in south-east Queensland and the Tweed border. Dave and Pia were both big-name news items now too. He could only imagine what the television coverage was like.
Every now and then, a car would pass them on the other side of the road, going as fast as they were or sometimes faster. Abandoned vehicles dotted the grass verge at regular intervals, like milestones, but they never saw a single hitch-hiker. Pia stopped at one old diesel Land Rover to suck the petrol out of it, but found it dry.
Dave stared at the phone in his hands. He felt like he’d been clutching it for days. He was so used to checking it for constant updates, emails and calls and tweets and Facebook notifications, he didn’t know how to stop. His wallpaper image was a shot of Jenny goosing a giant Oscar statue. He’d taken that photo only two months ago, on his last trip to LA, but now it seemed an age away. It wasn’t long after that day that they learned of Jenny’s pregnancy. The arguments started soon after.
He was such a dickhead. Why hadn’t he listened to her? Hell, why hadn’t he listened to Tom? He’d told Dave he should pack himself off to the States as fast as he could — that he should do what Jenny wanted.
Something flickered on his screen. He looked closely to spot the change. What was it? Then he saw it.
‘Signal!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got mobile signal!’
‘Hallelujah,’ Pia drawled.
He brought up his contacts list and opened Jenny’s details. He wanted to see how Kirsty was faring. Before he pressed the call icon, he looked over at Pia. ‘Aren’t you going to warn me not to make a call?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because I might give away our position?’
‘Who would you possibly give away our position to?’
‘I don’t know, the police?’
Pia shook her head. ‘With the mess your networks are in, I doubt they’ll be even trying to use cellular triangulation.’
‘What about these other guys then, the QTA? They might be keen to have a chat.’
‘Yes, they might Dave. Yes. They. Might.’
Dave stared at her. ‘Why do I get the feeling you want them to find us?’
‘Can you think of a better way to locate Jenny?’ Pia said. ‘They apparently know where she is, whereas we don’t.’
‘And you think they’re going to tell us? After what you did?’
Pia turned her head to look at Dave and fixed him with an emotionless gaze. The hairs on the back of neck prickled, a primitive warning system which had lost its relevance in the modern world, but one which persisted regardless. What could he do, jump out of the speeding car? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’ll tell us. If we ask nicely.’
Dave pressed the call button on Jenny’s contact window. By now, he knew how many times the ring-tone would sound before it cut over to her voice-mail: eight rings. At five rings his heart began to drop, and at six he got ready to hang up and try again. Kirsty answered it on the seventh.
‘Dave? Dave is that you?’
‘Kirsty, it’s me. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine Dave, Doyle and I are both fine. But Jesus Christ Dave, it’s a zoo here.’
Dave could hear shouting and car horns in the background. The words fucking spastic cut across the conversation like an ugly flasher.
‘Nothing dear, just silly words,’ Kirsty said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, Doyle wants to know what a fucking spastic is,’ Kirsty said in a lowered tone. ‘Such beautiful people here.’
‘Where are you, Kirsty?’
‘I don’t know, stuck somewhere on the M1. We’ve been at a virtual standstill for hours. Dave it’s getting real messy here. There are fender-benders all over the place, and I can see something on fire about a kilometre away. The only cars moving are the ones driving down the northbound side.’
‘Jesus, don’t you even think of joining them, Kirsty.’
‘Couldn’t if I wanted to. I’m in the left lane, and there are at least two break-downs between me and the median. Can’t go forward, can’t go back. I’m almost out of petrol Dave, just a quarter of a tank left.’
‘Do you have food? Water?’
‘Yeah, we packed sandwiches, fruit, water, chips and way too many sugary snacks before we left. But … I’m scared Dave. Some people are ge
tting violent. I’ve seen a couple of guys walking around with jerry cans and hoses. They’ve left us alone so far, but … it’s only a matter of time. And the smoke is getting thicker.’
Dave heard a tear-filled tremor creep into her voice.
‘Shit.’ Dave pressed the heel of his hand into his eye. ‘Can you give me an idea where you are?’
‘The last sign I saw was the exit for Bribie.’
‘Just keep Jenny’s phone on, OK? We can track her phone. There’s an app for that.’
Kirsty laughed. ‘Does she know she has this app, Dave?’
‘I keep meaning to tell her I put it on there, but …’
‘You dog! Keeping tabs on my sister.’
‘It’s not like that, it … It helps, when she’s far away. When I’m talking to her, I like to be able to picture where she is.’
‘OK, OK, that might be sweet. Or creepy. Whatever. I want to conserve battery on this thing, so I’m hanging up. Who’s going to come looking for us, Dave? Who’s going to get us out of this shit?’
‘I’ll find someone Kirsty. You take care now, you and Doyle.’
‘You too Dave.’
He ended the call, then opened up the find-me app. Jenny’s face appeared in a small square framed by a grey border. He needed that border to turn green.
‘Come on Kirsty, come on.’
The border turned green, and he shouted out a triumphant ‘Come on!’
He’d been worried it wouldn’t work, that the data service or satellite signal the app depended on would be out of action, but when he pressed the image of Jenny, a map of the Sunshine Coast resolved on the screen. A little red push-pin landed on the spot where Kirsty was presumably stranded. A small window beneath the map gave the GPS coordinates. He searched the car’s glove box and centre console, and found a blue pen and receipt from a petrol station. He scribbled the coordinates onto the receipt, resting on the dashboard for support. The digits came out scratchy and misaligned, but readable.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now who can we give this to?’
‘What do you mean, who can we give this to?’ Pia said. ‘I’m just an ordinary citizen, driving along in my soccer-mom SUV with my gentleman friend.’ She slapped him on the thigh.
‘Yeah, with enough military hardware in the back to take out the other team and their supporters with them. You must have a radio or a phone. Don’t tell me you left them in your other tank.’
Her smile dropped and her gaze hardened on the road in front of her. ‘No.’
‘No, you don’t have anything?’
Her hands twitched on the wheel. She rubbed the tips of her fingers against the scar on her head, traced the shallow groove. ‘No, I don’t have anything we can use. We’re not calling in with the coordinates for your fiancée’s car. We’re not calling for help, or for orders, or for a fucking air-strike. OK? We’re not calling anyone, ‘cos there’s no-one to call. No-one who can help us.’
She rubbed at the scar like she was trying to scratch it, like it itched her. Even in the dim glow cast by the dashboard lights, Dave could see the welts left behind by her raking nails. Her hand moved faster and faster, and her lips were pulled back against her clenched teeth. Soon there would be blood.
‘Stop,’ he said, and reached out to touch her wrist.
Some animal part of him realised he’d make a mistake, but his human mind didn’t pay attention. He actually tightened his grip. Pia’s eyes snapped open and she stopped scratching. She rolled her left hand out of Dave’s grip and had it wrapped around Dave’s wrist in a stop-motion instant, while her right hand produced a handgun from somewhere and pressed the muzzle into Dave’s left eye.
‘Uh,’ he said. His right eye could see, in hyper-clarity, straight along the length of the weapon to her twitching finger on the trigger. ‘Pia!’
She didn’t hear him. She was breathing fast and shallow, and looking right at him but not seeing him. A vein in her temple, directly beneath the scar in her head, pulsed to a beat unheard by Dave, but a beat no doubt pounding in Pia’s head.
Then Dave did hear something, like distant machine gun fire. Then he realised what it was. The car was driving over the rumble strips.
Because Pia had one hand around Dave’s wrist, and the other wrapped around her gun.
‘Pia Pia Pia!’ he shouted. ‘The car!’
She blinked once, twice. Then she was back in the car with him, her face conveying the horror she felt when she realised what she was doing. She looked back at the road at the same time Dave did, and they both saw a tree looming large in their windscreen.
‘Fuck,’ she said, and the gun clattered between the seat and the door.
She pulled the wheel hard to the right, but the soft earth on the verge must have given out under the rear wheels, and the big car started to fishtail. Rubber squealed on the road as they started to slide, and Dave held his breath and braced himself for the inevitable flip. But they didn’t flip, and they didn’t crash. They came to an eventual stop near the centre line, forty-five degrees away from the direction they were supposed to be aimed at. The engine rumbled on, untroubled, and smoke from their accidental trick-driving drifted past the headlights.
Dave felt something stir in his chest, and it wasn’t nausea. It wasn’t fear either. It was annoyance. Annoyance at having a gun pushed into his face, at being dragged into a shooting, at the stupid bloody country and the stupid bloody airline strikes which forced them onto the road in the first place. Annoyance at James Cain for landing on his balcony. Annoyance at Tom for as-yet unknown background fuckery. Annoyance at Jenny for bailing out on their relationship because Dave dared to want to stay in Australia. Annoyance at … fucking … everything.
‘Right,’ he growled. ‘Get out. I’m driving.’
Chapter 35
Dave felt better behind the wheel. Looking at the road, concentrating on aiming that Everest between the white lines, it occupied his mind. Papetti — Pia, he reminded himself — sagged in the passenger seat, the rigid military posture broken down as if it had been held together by magnets and glue.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, chewing her nails and any loose skin curled more than a knife’s edge away from her fingers.
‘What for?’
‘What for?’
‘I’m not suggesting you have nothing to apologise for. I’m just unsure of which thing in particular you’re sorry about.’
‘You think I should be sorry about Shirley Temple?’ Pia said, nodding and chewing her finger up to the knuckle. ‘You think I was wrong to shoot him, don’t you? You would have liked it better if I just let him shoot you, wouldn’t you, you fucking martyr?’
‘Hey. Did I say that? I know it wasn’t your fault. I know he forced your hand.’
‘Then what am I fucking sorry for Dave? What am I apologising for?’
The road was long and straight ahead as far as the high-beams could shine, so he risked turning his head away from it for a few seconds to look her in the eyes. She stared back at him with a fighting gaze, anxiety and fury fuelling her nervous energy in equal parts.
‘Your potty mouth,’ he said.
Her anger melted in a grin and a giggle. That, Dave decided, was the most worrying thing of all: her recovery speed. There was no depth in a recovery like that.
Two cars blew past them, heading south. The second one, a small Nissan SUV, opened its horn. The receding Doppler whine sounded like a whinge.
‘You think that was meant for us?’
Pia shrugged. ‘Maybe. Like an abandon all hope kinda thing.’
They drove, and Dave’s eyes kept flicking over to the glove box in front of Pia. He wanted her to put the gun in a bag in the boot, or at least the back seat, but she refused to leave it far from reach. The glove box was a compromise, but it was still too close for his comfort. He had a lot of questions for her, but he didn’t want to risk another brain-snap.
He chose to risk it anyway, but he took the Tom Holden approach to information-gat
hering: sideways and roundabout.
‘So where have you been, um … working?’
‘Working?’
‘You know. Fighting.’
‘Oh. Middle East in general, you know. Bit of Iraq, bit of Afghanistan. Syria towards the end.’ Her voice dropped to a mumble on Syria.
‘So you like, finished your tour?’
‘Something like that.’
The way she talked about her time in the Middle East reminded Dave of the way he sometimes talked about his failed tilt at Wimbledon. He had match point in the fourth set, and Radan Jovanovich dropped his return of serve right on the edge of the baseline, a fly’s wingspan beyond his racquet. Dave saw the puff of chalk dust as it clipped the white line. The linesman called it out, but Dave overruled it without stopping to think what he was doing.
Dave. Overruled it.
It was a reflex, the outcome of intensive coaching sessions. Not his tennis coach, but his PR agent, Clary White. He was so used to being liked that he threw away a perfectly good major title, just to maintain his image. He went on to lose in five, but his reputation as the nicest guy in professional tennis would endure. That’s what he traded on, his nice guy image. Not his success.
He wasn’t a loser. No, it was important to make that distinction — or to engineer it. Dave Holden was a good sport. And not just good, but the best. And he had to love that.
Clary went to great pains to emphasise just how successful that loss was. His name might not have made it onto that beautiful famous silver cup, but it would be inked on product endorsement contracts again, and again, and again.
His mood darkened when he was safely away from the camera, with friends or acquaintances. If they brought up the inevitable subject of his painful legacy of failure, the muted response he gave them sounded a lot like Pia’s did now. All her military bravado and confidence was packed away somewhere. Maybe in the glove box.