Draw the Brisbane Line

by P. A. Fenton

  Even though she was shouting, most of her words were lost when Tait lifted one of the windows and the noise poured into the house like a swarm of monsters, throwing back the heavy curtains as though they were little more than sheer netting.

  ‘You two better go and get dressed,’ Jenny shouted.

  Banksia and Tait jogged away to find their clothes. Jenny peered out the window through the fluttering gap in the curtains, but it was difficult to make out much against the blinding gaze of the chopper’s spotlight. She thought she saw someone get out of the machine and run at a crouch towards the front gate, then through it and up to the house. Three heavy knocks on the front door, felt more than heard, told her she hadn’t been seeing things.

  Jesus, she thought. What now? What now? What now? She felt too tired to be properly panicked.

  She stepped back from the window and was about to move to the door, but she saw that Greta was already there, opening up to receive this visitor in her flapping lavender nightgown. She said something that was probably who are you, or perhaps a more colourful variant, but her voice didn’t carry. A man’s hand crossed the threshold and jabbed a finger towards the back of the house, pointing to the kitchen. Greta nodded and stood aside to let the visitor in. Aldous Weir stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. Gone was the farmer’s ensemble of Moleskin trousers and battered R.M. Williams boots; he was dressed in full military fatigues, a camouflage pattern of greens and browns. He looked over to Jenny, and although his face was lit up by the spotlight beam still pushing its way between the gaps in the curtains, his expression was flat, unreadable. Uncommunicative. He nodded his head to her once and walked to the kitchen. She and Greta both followed.

  ‘I need you to come with me,’ Al said.

  Banksia shook her head slightly, but it didn’t seem to be in disagreement. Jenny suspected if she were disagreeing with Al she would simply tell him to fuck off. This gesture seemed more like she was trying to shake loose a notion from her head, but it clung tight.

  ‘You tagged us,’ she said to him. ‘Didn’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘Your car. Sorry, but times like this we need to keep track of our assets.’

  ‘I am not your asset!’ she spat at him.

  He shrugged, his expression still travelling in neutral. ‘Better that than a hostile. That’s how Jim wants you portrayed.’

  The kitchen provided some protection from the cacophony outside, but not so much that they could be heard without shouting. Tait dragged a small cabinet out of the way so they could close the door. It was old and warped, and he had to lean into it with all his weight to get the latch to lock into place. It made little difference from where Jenny was standing.

  ‘Where?’ Jenny said. ‘Where do you want to take us?’

  Al lifted a folded and creased pouch of Virginia Gold from his shirt pocket and slipped a paper out from beneath the flap. Before he could even prepare to tap out some tobacco, Greta swiped at the small white sheet and knocked it to the floor.

  ‘Not in here,’ Greta said.

  ‘I wasn’t going to light it.’

  ‘I don’t care. It took me two years to quit the fags when I was fifty. I don’t need any reminders of what I’m missing.’

  Al nodded, and returned the pouch to his pocket. ‘Apologies ma’am. And sorry about the intrusion.’ Greta waved it away. Al returned his attention to Jenny. ‘We’re going to Brisbane,’ he said. ‘There’s a meeting this morning, I’d really like you both to be there.’

  ‘What about Tait?’ Jenny said. ‘If we’re flying to Brisbane, he’s coming too.’

  ‘Fine,’ Al said. ‘What about you, ma’am?’ he said to Greta. ‘You want a lift too?’

  ‘What on earth for?’ Greta said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Banksia said to Jenny, speaking straight into her ear. ‘Are you sure you want to be a part of his agenda?’

  ‘I don’t know much about any agenda,’ Jenny replied in a whisper-shout, right into Banksia’s ear. ‘But I would like to get as far south as I can, to Sydney if possible, and I don’t think we’re going to do that on the road right now. Are we?’ Then she turned to Al and said, ‘Whatever you want us to do, want us to say … I’ll hear you out, but I’m not making any promises. You understand that, right?’

  Al nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘I do have one demand,’ Jenny said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Before I go anywhere, I want to speak to Dave.’

  ‘Okay,’ Al said, and pulled a large handset from a holster on his web belt. He handed it to her, and Jenny took it. ‘A lot of the mobile networks are smoothing out now, but this beast will work in all weather. Sat-phone.’

  ‘How do I use it?’

  ‘Just push the buttons for the number, then the green call button. You remember buttons don’t you?’

  Jenny retreated to the far corner of the kitchen and punched in Dave’s number. A wave of nausea swelled from down deep inside, surging up on a king tide. Was it fear or morning sickness? Maybe both. Her fingers trembled as they brushed over the rubbery keys in search of his digits. She finished dialling and brought the handset up to her ear. Please ring, please ring, please ring. A ring tone started up, and she let out a long breath and an acid burp. It burned her throat. She plugged her finger into her left ear canal to muffle the sound of the helicopter. Now pick up, pick up, PICK UP!

  He answered on the third ring.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Dave?’

  ‘Jenny? Jenny, is that you?’

  She felt something in her chest break loose, something she didn’t realise had been stuck until she heard his voice. It might have been fear, and it snagged on things as it slid past her heart, catching in her throat.

  ‘Oh God, Dave. You’re OK. Thank God, you’re OK.’

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, but are you OK? Are you safe?’

  His voice was shaking. How silly, she thought, they’ve only been apart a week and he’s going to pieces. She was going to have a dig, tell him to man up, but she was distracted by the tears dripping onto the phone’s mouthpiece. She wiped them from the hard plastic, from her face.

  ‘Dave, what’s happening? I saw you on the TV. That man … that woman …’

  ‘It’s fine, Jenny, everything’s fine.’

  ‘Don’t tell me everything’s fine. I saw it on the news. She shot that guy in the head, Dave. Now you tell me what’s going on.’ She wanted to keep the tremor out of her voice, but she couldn’t.

  ‘She’s here with me, Jenny. She’s US military. She’s helping.’

  ‘Helping? Helping how? The news said you were somewhere near Newcastle. Why aren’t you in Sydney?’

  ‘I … I can’t really talk about it now Jen. But I need to see you. Urgently.’

  Jenny felt a tug at her elbow. Tait was trying to lead her back through the house, making a whirly-bird signal with his index finger. Banksia and Al had already left, and Greta was smiling at Jenny, waving. She thought about trying to convince the old dear to go with them, but she knew her words would be wasted. She blew her a farewell kiss with her free hand and let Tait drag her out of the kitchen.

  ‘I have to go, Dave,’ she said, raising her voice to a near-shout as the noise of the chopper pulsed through the house. ‘I’m on my way to Brisbane.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘Helicopter.’

  ‘A helicopter? Jenny, who are you with?’

  She stopped in the middle of the living room. ‘Dave, it’s getting too loud.’ She tapped Tait and said, ‘Phone?’

  Tait slipped his phone out from the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to Jenny. She swiped the screen to life and checked the status icons. He had signal, two bars.

  ‘Dave,’ she said. ‘I’m going to send you a text from another phone. You can text me back on that number.’

  Jenny stepped out the front door with Tait, and the wind thrown up
from the helicopter blades hit her straight in the face. She had to drop her head and look away to keep moving forward. She heard Dave saying her name somewhere in the cacophony, but that only stood out because she was familiar with the sound of the word, his way of saying it. The rest of his voice was lost.

  ‘Dave!’ she shouted. ‘I have to go now. I’ll text you in a minute. I love you!’

  She thought he probably said I love you back, and probably be careful, but as Al helped her up the step into the air-slicing monster, she could only assume these things. She ended the call and returned the sat-phone to Al as he helped strap her in. Two rows of seats faced each other, and Banksia gave her leg a reassuring squeeze from the next seat. The seats opposite were folded up and a large trunk-like suitcase filled the space, secured with wide black nylon straps.

  Jenny had been in helicopters before, but never anything like this. Those other rides she’d taken had been in small choppers, just enough room for three passengers and the pilot. The trips were mostly for transportation to remote shooting locations, high altitudes and deserts. While the interiors of those birds had been almost like a taxi, basic but comfortable, the inside of the Blackhawk looked like it had just come off the assembly line and the upholstery department had forgotten to do their bit. The seats folded down from the bare steel shell which hummed with power and sound, conducting the bedlam racket directly into her head. Through the window, she could see Greta standing at her front door, one hand holding her hair out of her face and the other waving goodbye. Jenny waved back, though she was all but certain Greta had no way of seeing her through the dim morning light and the dark glass.

  She looked across at Tait as he strapped himself into the seat on the other side of Banksia. He was grinning like a ten-year-old about to ride his first roller-coaster. Banksia was also giving his leg a squeeze, but considerably higher up his thigh and less reassuring in nature.

  ‘Dirty dogs,’ Jenny said, but they couldn’t hear her.

  Al handed them each a pair of headphones before seating himself in the cabin, presumably not to pilot the thing. The cans were large, and a small red light on the side of them indicated some form of electronics at work. She slipped them over her head, leather or faux leather cups forming an effective seal, and the noise of the aircraft dropped considerably. Must be noise isolating, she thought. It was still noisy, just not unbearably so. There was a mild jolt as the aircraft separated from the ground, which became a barely-perceptible wobble as they began to ascend.

  Jenny still had Tait’s phone in a tight grip. She swiped the screen back to life and brought up the text message app. She punched in Dave’s number and typed: Just taken off now.

  The signal still seemed strong, perhaps even stronger than on the ground. She desperately hoped Dave was still able to receive it. The helicopter banked smoothly around to the south, and Jenny could see the lights of thousands of cars strung along the highway like Christmas lights. It didn’t take long before she saw the first fire, two cars ablaze on the northbound side of the highway. She leaned forward to look out the cockpit and saw three more conflagrations lighting up the road ahead.

  Dave’s response came back in about thirty seconds later: Whose helicopter?

  Jenny typed back: Oh, you know, just some of the guys on the football team. It has a wicked sound system.

  Dave’s reply was almost immediate: Whose helicopter?????

  Geez, twitchy much? He should know better. How old is that soldier grrl you’re with? She could hear him screaming, wherever he was.

  I’m not with her, she’s driving me.

  Highly-skilled taxi driver?

  A minute passed before any response came in. *Sigh*. She says she’s twenty-six. OK? Please, Jenny, whose helicopter is it? The message was accompanied by a photo, a close-up and blurred image of Dave putting on his puh-leeze face, with a clearer shot behind him of the soldier. What was her name? Something pasta-sounding. She had both hands pressed together in a pleading gesture. At least she had a sense of humour, though judging by the background blur she also seemed to be driving at speed with her hands off the wheel.

  Jenny tapped Banksia on the shoulder and made the universal click-click gesture for a photograph. Banksia immediately switched to pose-mode and threw her arm around Tait’s shoulder. Jenny held the phone out at selfie distance, took the picture and attached it to the message. Friendly guy named Al, he’s in some kind of club. Like Neighbourhood Watch for Queensland.

  Banksia mouthed Dave? She raised a thumb and her eyebrows. Jenny nodded, gave the thumbs-up. The gesture seemed woefully inadequate to convey the relief she felt. Fiancé not murdered or killed in a road accident: thumbs-up. Love of her life still desperately worried for her, despite stupid yet possibly relationship-ending argument: thumbs-up.

  The next message popped onto the bottom of the thread. Pia says QTA. Dangerous people Jenny. The guy she shot was QTA. You need to get away from them!

  The helicopter began to climb, but something inside her was left behind fifty feet below. The guy she shot was QTA. Fuck! Her heart scaled its way up out of her chest and started pounding hard as it got stuck at the base of her throat. She tried to think what this would mean for her right then, what the implications might be, but her thoughts were like tadpoles swimming in a muddy pond, small and slippery and fragile and hard to pick out from the muck. What was Al doing? Did he want to use Jenny to get to Dave, to get to this Pia girl? Was Jenny a hostage? A prisoner of war? How could she be either of those things and pregnant? The ideas were incongruous. She wished she had more of a bump, firmer evidence of her condition, proof of her passenger.

  Another message from Dave flashed onto the screen: I spoke to Kirsty. She has your phone. She and Doyle are fine, but stuck on the highway. Her coordinates are -27.060043, 152.976723. Tell someone who can get her.

  Damn, stuck on the highway. She’d naively hoped her sister had beaten the crush and was out of the state by now, but as she looked out on the infinite traffic snake lighting the road beneath them, she knew there was no way that could have happened. But at least Dave had managed to get a lock on their position. He must have used that tracking app he installed on her phone, the one he thought she didn’t know about. God bless him and his fucked-up control-freak paranoia.

  There was movement inside the helicopter. She looked up to see Al making his way towards them from the cockpit. He pulled himself along with overhead hand-holds, and his eyes were fixed with grim concern on the phone in Jenny’s hands.

  Jenny suddenly didn’t care about being discovered talking about the QTA. She didn’t care about Al seeing Dave’s warning, or his confirmation that Pia had killed a QTA guy — he probably already knew about that. The only thing she cared about in that moment was the numbers on the screen. She thrust the phone at Al, and despite knowing that he probably wouldn’t hear a word she said, she shouted: ‘We need to go here!’

  #Twitter Board

  Epoch Jones @epoch

  Sydneysiders think they’re safe from the revolution. We’re going to prove them wrong. We’re going to hit them where they holiday, over the border in Byron. This party is crossing the border! #crosstheline #hitthemwheretheyholiday

  Dean Bossman @deebo27

  @epoch, YES! Come on, Queenslanders, push south! Make those fucking cockroaches feel it! #drawtheline #hitthemwheretheyholiday

  Tom Holden @tomholden

  @epoch, you are a brainless, aimless sprog. You’ll be arrested or killed if you push ahead with this. You realise that, don’t you?

  Epoch Jones @epoch

  @tomholden, aimless? Really? Did I mention all the obscene wealth in Byron Bay? Why the fuck do you think we’re heading there?

  Billy Billy Moore @b_billybilly6

  @tomholden, @epoch, and the chance to kick some cockroach head in! QUEENSLANDER!!!!

  Chapter 38

  They reached the coastal towns a couple of hours before sunrise, re-joining the Pacific Highway just outside Ballina against a twit
ching snake of southbound traffic. The only vehicles driving north seemed to be police cars, army trucks and media vans.

  ‘This is the worst possible convoy we could be travelling in,’ Dave said, resisting the urge to avert his face as a highway patrol car passed them on the left.

  ‘Relax,’ Pia said as she choked-out the steering wheel. ‘They’ve got bigger things to deal with. The army, the police, it’s the rioting and looting they’re on the road for.’

  ‘They’re not the ones I’m worried about. If one of those news vans catches sight of us they’ll be harder to shake than any police car.’

  She stretched in her seat and yawned. Dave caught the yawn and heard tiny bones popping in his ears as his jaw stretched wide.

  ‘I need to sleep,’ he said. ‘When was the last time you slept?’

  Pia checked her watch, a simple olive green analogue piece. ‘Three days ago,’ she said.

  ‘Jesus Christ, really?’

  She yawned again. ‘Yeah, we really do need to get off the road and catch some zees. Bite to eat wouldn’t go astray either.’

  Dave’s stomach grumbled at the mention of food. Should hunger even be possible? Shouldn’t he be sick with worry about Jenny? His head said yes, but his stomach was too busy fantasising about bacon and cheeseburgers to pay attention. Ripe avocado, roughed up with some lemon juice and smeared on a toasted slice of sourdough. Fresh croissants, crisp and flaky on the outside, warm and delicate under the crackling skin. He hadn’t eaten a proper meal in over a day. If you could call any of his hastily assembled bachelor-bites meals. His last lunch before Pia came into his life was crunchy peanut butter smeared onto a celery stick. Dinner had been a boiled egg and some tuna eaten straight from the tin with a fork.

  He saw a roadside billboard for McDonalds and was almost ashamed to find himself craving a quarter-pounder. He’d done some ads for the chain in his earlier playing days, but when he began dating a fashion model and vegetarian activist, his management decided that continuing to push Big Macs and cheeseburgers was risking a cognitive conflict among his fan base. Not that he could have really eaten the stuff he was selling. When he was in competition, every calorie he absorbed was first analysed, weighed, deconstructed and reconstituted before he was permitted to put it in his mouth.