by Shane Carrow
He’d brought other stuff back, too, starting with a few boxes of antibiotics. “Take two every day,” he said.
“What are you, a doctor now?”
“You got shot in the shoulder and I pulled the bullet out myself and patched it up and, no, I’m not a doctor, which is why you need the antibiotics,” he said. “And a thank you would be nice, because those were fucking hard to get.”
“I’m just kidding,” I said. “If you hadn’t found me I don’t know what the fuck I would’ve done. So – is Harrison’s boat still there?”
“I didn’t watch it all night,” Rahvi said, rifling through his bag, “but I doubt he was off trying to flog the codebook at three in the morning. But it’s a beautiful new day, mate, and you’ve had a good night’s sleep, so we need to get out there. First things first. You need to look different.”
He took a pair of scissors from the bag. I haven’t cut my hair since some time in Eucla, and it’s starting to get pretty shaggy and shoulder-length – not to mention fucking filthy, after the last week in the bush. So it was a bit of relief to lean over the sink and let Rahvi start trimming it off.
“So what exactly have you been doing for the last week?” I said, watching locks of my hair dropped down around the brass ring of the plughole. “You didn’t exactly fill me in on the details.”
“Well, after the Globemaster got hit, it was fucking chaos, as you well know,” Rahvi said. “I went out as soon as I realised you were gone, but I don’t know how long that was. Didn’t have any fucking idea you had the codebook, or that Blake was under the truck. But even a few minutes, at that altitude, that speed – that’s how we ended up so far apart.
“So I came down in the bush, and put as much distance between me and the landing zone as I could that night. Found a servo that morning, and that was still in use, convoys and shit coming through. It had a wall, some sandbags and stuff, a few sentries, but it wasn’t exactly Fort Knox. Snuck in there, got onboard a semi-trailer that was loading up, got into Bundarra a few hours later.”
Something told me that if I’d tried that I would have been gunned down right there at the servo.
“I lay low once I was in here,” Rahvi said. “Got myself a fake ID – that’s next for you – and tried to keep up with the news about the Globemaster. It must have crashed south of here, but some of them must have survived and got away with the nuke. If Draeger had captured a nuke he’d be crowing about it, believe me, it would be all anybody was talking about. But he’s not. You know anything more about that?”
“They’re on the run, but they don’t have contact with Jagungal,” I said. “Aaron says they came down somewhere near Tamworth and headed south. Jagungal only knows what they can pick up from New England – coded broadcasts or something, I guess, I don’t mean what you’re hearing in the pubs. But like you said, if New England catches them, we’ll know about it. No news is good news, is what Aaron said.”
“Tamworth?” Rahvi said. “Christ. That’s still basically smack bang in the middle of New England.”
“But they must have a vehicle,” I said. “They must have managed to keep the truck, or get something else, or something. They can’t be carrying a fucking nuke around on foot.”
“Well, look, it’s not our problem right now,” Rahvi said. “Our problem is finding the codebook.”
“Right. So, Harrison…”
“No, hang on,” he said. “Cavalli and Jones. You need to know about them. They must have come down near here too, and got in like me – I’d been here three days and bumped into them on the street. You remember either of them?”
“Who are they again?”
“Petty Officer Cavalli, he’s a clearance diver. Airman Jones was part of the skeleton RAAF crew at Brisbane Airport.”
“I must have met them both, or seen them at least,” I said. “But no, I don’t remember them. Maybe I’d remember their faces.”
“Well, I must have too, but I wouldn’t have recognised them either,” Rahvi said. “Not walking down the street in Bundarra. Cavalli recognised me – he knew I was one of the SAS guys on the Canberra – he approached me on the street here, would have been three days in. It was those two who found this place.”
“So where are they?” I said. “Did they get caught?”
“No. Now, Cavalli said what I’d been thinking, which was that we could all do a lot more good on the inside of New England than out. No point striking off trying to get back to Jagungal – if Draeger gets his hands on the nuke, then the only chance we really have of retrieving it is to be right here inside New England. And now we need to recover the codebook, anyway.”
“So what happened to Cavalli and Jones?”
“They went to Armidale. And I was going to head to Tamworth myself – that’s the second-biggest city – but then you showed up. And thank Christ I spotted you, otherwise… well, what were you going to do? Go in guns blazing?”
“No,” I said. “Give me a little credit. They probably think I’m dead. I was going to try to sneak onboard and steal it.”
“Which probably…”
“Yeah, yeah, no shit,” I said, still staring at the plughole. “What did you want me to do? Fucking give up? I had to try!”
Rahvi paused clipping for a moment. “Fair enough,” he said, and resumed. “I’m just saying. Good thing I found you.”
“So if those two are off in Armidale, how are you staying in touch with them?”
“Well, I can’t,” Rahvi said. “Which is why we agreed to set up a rendezvous point and some dates. I don’t have a map, Cavalli took it, but I need you to remember this, okay? There’s a town called Bendeemer. Tiny place, abandoned. It’s south of here, maybe 60 kays, on the New England Highway and the McDonald River. Now, another four or five kays south of that, there’s a little abandoned quarry. That’s our meet-up point. You can remember that?”
I repeated it in my head. New England Highway, McDonald River, Bendeemer. Quarry, five or six kays south. “I think so,” I said. “I’ll tell Aaron and get him to write it down, anyway.”
“Don’t fucking write it…” Rahvi said, then thought for a second. “Oh. No, yeah, get Aaron to, that’s fine. So we have one rendezvous on September 17. And another one September 30.”
“That’s, like, the whole month!”
“Well, we need to see how the situation settles,” Rahvi says. “When we decided that, we still thought the codebook was with the nuke. Best case scenario, we learned they made it back to Jagungal safely, so we could head off after them. Now I’d have to say best case scenario is that we recover that codebook, manage to avoid upsetting the authorities for another two weeks, and meanwhile the Globemaster survivors – Christ, I hope Sergeant Blake made it out of there – get out of New England and get back to Jagungal with the nuke. Then we can meet up at the quarry and get out of here ourselves.”
Okay. That was a plan. It was a plan with a lot of assumption and hopes, but it was a better plan than I’d had last night.
“Do you know if there’s any others?” I said. “Who parachuted out?”
“You, me, Cavalli, Jones, and that poor bastard Sullivan,” Rahvi said. “That’s all that I’ve seen.”
“They got Rickenbacker,” I said.
“Fuck. You came down with him?”
“No, but I saw him. Out on a highway. They got him alive, took him off to God knows where.”
“Armidale,” Rahvi said. “Fucking hell. Poor kid.”
“Aaron says they got Khoury, too,” I said. “One of the clearance divers.”
“Even better,” Rahvi said bitterly. “You know – I’m hoping Harrison’s kept things to himself, while he weighs his options up. Draeger might not even know the nuke needs PAL codes. We didn’t, until we talked to the Americans. But if he’s got Rickenbacker and Khoury, and Christ knows who else – somebody will crack. Somebody will tell him.”
“There was another one as well,” I said. “Perry. Navy, I think. Found him in his parachu
te, he was dead.”
“Dead how?”
“I don’t know. His parachute deployed but he was hanging in it dead. Maybe he got injured when the plane was hit.”
“Maybe,” Rahvi said. “Well. That makes four alive, two captured, one dead. That we know of.”
“How many do you think got out?”
“I don’t know. Blake was handing parachutes out to everyone – it was chaos up there. But we’ve got at least four of us still at large. Four is a good, solid number. We’ll be all right with just us.”
I’d asked for a number because I’d thought – in the back of my head – we had an obligation to everybody else who’d come out of the Globemaster. I remembered what that week had been like, starving and cold and tired and hunted, and what it had felt like to find Rahvi. If we were collating resources, surviving, melting into the background of New England… part of me felt like it was on us to find the other survivors.
But we had no way of knowing how many there might be. In our chaotic departure from Brisbane we didn’t know how many had been on the Globemaster in the first place. If the survivors of the crash had hot-footed it south with the nuke, it’s not like they would have had time to count the dead bodies. And they weren’t in contact with Jagungal anyway.
Well. If anyone else is out there, in the bush, with a price on their heads – we’re all survivors, aren’t we?
Rahvi’s right. We have to think about the codebook. About the mission. About what’s lurking down in Ballarat, and about the survival of every human being. Anyone else who came down by parachute is going to have to look after themselves.
After the haircut my head felt weirdly smooth, and I kept running my hand over it. It seemed patchy and uneven, but Rahvi says that won’t look unusual – plenty of people are going at their own heads with the kitchen scissors these days, it’s not exactly an age of style and fashion. He was busy with a small piece of card and a pen, copying the style of his own ID card – which, I noted, had a photo.
“Why don’t I get a photo?”
“Because unlike the black market guy I bought this off, I don’t have a camera and a printer,” Rahvi said, and I noticed his photo was a cut-out glued onto the card. “Don’t worry, the official ones all look pretty shoddy too. If we’re here long enough I’ll get you a proper one, but this will do for now.”
He handed it to me – a careful copy of his own, except with the words TEMPORARY PERMIT at the top. It gave my name as Mike Webster, and my “port of entry” as TENTERFIELD.
“Where the fuck is that?” I said.
“Just over the border in Queensland. Furthest northern outpost of New England. They get a lot of refugees coming in there from further north. You’re supposed to have a proper ID now, but this is better than having nothing at all. Last touch – what’s your birthday?”
“March 27.”
Rahvi wrote down March 28. “I doubt they have intel that good on any of us, but hey, never hurts. And just one day forward, because…”
“My star sign’s still Aries? Don’t worry, I’ve tried to get into bars with a fake ID before.”
Rahvi grinned. “Good. Well – haircut, ID, you’re all set.”
“Weapon?”
“I’ve just got a Browning, mate. No prohibition on firearms here, but there’s still a shortage for civilians – especially young ones. Don’t worry. You won’t stick out.”
That hadn’t been what I was worried about, but it was what it was.
“Last thing,” Rahvi said. “My name’s Jack Webster, on my ID. But it’ll look suss if I suddenly say I had a family member with me all along. If we get asked, our story is that we’re cousins, I just met you here last night. Chance meeting, we haven’t been surviving together, right? We’re from the Sunshine Coast. Survived separately, ended up here separately, oh my God, what a miracle reunion, et cetera. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said. “So what now?”
“Follow me,” Rahvi said.
And we went up the staircase, opened the door, and emerged into the chilly air of a crisp morning in New England.
It wasn’t yet eight o’clock. The streets around our hideout were mostly silent, but as we approached the river there was more activity – people buying food from stores and stalls, soldiers on horseback, kids running and shouting and playing. I felt my heart rate start to rise again, at the nervous notion of being around so many strangers. What a weird, learned behaviour. Such an utterly normal thing to do, less than a year ago. And now I kept instinctively reaching for a gun that wasn’t there, scanning people’s faces, trying to pick out who’d be the most dangerous in a fight.
“Relax,” Rahvi murmured at me. “It’s freaking you out, I know. But that’s all right. That’s what refugees do. There’s plenty of people here who’ve been living outside New England the last six months, just like you. Even here, it hasn’t been smooth sailing the whole time. Everybody’s got a little bit of PTSD. So don’t feel like you’re sticking out.”
That did make me feel better. I couldn’t make the feelings go away. But it eased the extra anxiety on top of them – the feeling that I was going to get caught, that somebody was going to blow a whistle and level a finger at me.
We went down the riverfront, which was lined with cafes. Not, like, smashed avo and flat white cafes – more like what I imagined cafes here would have been like a hundred years ago, a cheap place to get a cheap meal and some tea or gritty coffee. Yet the bizarre juxtaposition was unavoidable: places full of men and women in grubby clothes, lining up to get watery soup or shitty bread, in a venue still sporting fake plastic plants and fashionable exposed light bulbs and a general hipster aesthetic.
We crossed the iron bridge, back on the same side of the river where Harrison was moored. The storm had completely passed overnight, the sky was blue, and I could see his boat very clearly, tied up to the wharf at the end of a long row of others. There was no sign of movement.
“How do you know he hasn’t left?” I said. “While you came back?”
“I had to come back and get you some time,” Rahvi said. “Didn’t I?”
I realised he was running on 24 hours without sleep, a feeling I knew all too well. And he wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t in control, because none of us were in control. I was glad to have found him, but we were still here, just the two of us: on the run, fugitives, hunted, trying to figure out a plan.
We came to a pub that fronted right onto the river, the Imperial Arms, a big three-storey Victorian building. Even at eight o’clock in the morning it reeked of cigarette smoke – maybe out here in the country that was one of the first rules to be repealed in the glorious Republic of New England. Inside it was crowded for the breakfast hour, men and women queuing up with trays along what had once been the pub counter. I grabbed a tray and got in line next to Rahvi, my eyes drifting up to the blackboard mounted behind the counter.
IMPERIAL ARMS – ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT!
WORLD
Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin Nuked By Unknown Actor (March?)
North(?) Korea Invades South(?) Korea (March?)
China Nukes 12(?) Cities As Containment Measure (Late March)
US Shifts Official Capital To Colorado Springs (Rec. March 28)
Siberia Flooded With Chinese Refugees (April)
Chinese Radiation Contaminates Korea, Japan, Siberia (May)
RAN Guns Down Indonesian Refugees By The Thousands (Rec. May 16)
Queen Beatrice Evacuated To Summer Isles As Birkhall Falls To Dead (Rec. Jul. 12)
Icelandic Govt. Overthrown In Police Coup (Rec. Aug. 10)
Pakistan Vows To Continue “Nuclear Containment” On Indian Border (Aug?)
LOCAL
Armidale-Tamworth Railway Reopened For Freight And Passengers (Aug. 4)
Outbreak In Moree Successfully Contained; 12 Casualties (Aug. 11)
Petrol Stockpiles Expected To Last Until 2022 (Aug. 19)
Gen. Draeger Announces Relaxed Ratio
ning Due To Grain Surplus (Aug. 30)
Loyalist Plane Shot Down Near Tamworth While Fleeing Brisbane (Sep. 1)
General Draeger Announces Bounty On Heads Of Loyalist Survivors (Sep. 1)
Manhunt Underway For Fugitive Loyalists; 2 Captured, 1 Dead (Sep. 5)
Copeton Bushfires Contained With Help Of Rain; 8 Dead (Sep. 7)
The local news was dusty and scuffed, as though it was constantly being updated. The world news, on the other hand, looked as though the same ten lines had been sitting there since they were first written.
We took our breakfast – slops of porridge lathered in honey and a mug of instant coffee each, which Rahvi handed over a few ration tokens for – and headed outside onto the verandah, facing the street, and more importantly the river where all the boats were tied up. “That news, on the chalk board,” I said. “Is that accurate?”
“How should I know?” Rahvi said. “Probably the local stuff is accurate, the global stuff is all rumour and hearsay. There’s a newspaper they put out once a week, too, you should get your hands on that. It’s like reading the fucking People’s Daily. You wouldn’t believe what an amazing job General Draeger’s doing all the time…”
I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking of that headline – eight dead, bushfires near Copeton. Bushfires that I started with a crashed ute and some emergency flares. And sloshing all that petrol in the barn probably didn’t help. I wonder, that figure, eight dead – did that include the soldiers I saw? I was still thinking of those men on fire, bursting out of the barn, while Rahvi was talking.
I’ve killed plenty of people and barely felt a twinge. After all – they were trying to kill me. But maybe method matters.
“What about Ballarat?” I whispered to Rahvi. The tables around us were crowded. “What do they know about that?”
“Hmm,” Rahvi said. “Yeah. Well. Everyone knows there’s something down there. Official line is that it’s something from hell, but you hear all sorts of stuff.”