The Irishman lit a cigarette and turned to the South African. “Well, this is it, old friend. There’s no turnin’ back now. We do this, we go all the way.” The South African nodded a slow nod, looking to the ground in thought, then he looked to the Irishman and gave a single, definitive nod. The Irishman snapped his finger at the black Inuit, who seemed to understand this as a command. She ducked her head inside the ute Roger, the South African, and the Aboriginal had driven from Karratha and turned the headlights off, then she pulled out a handgun stuffed into the back of her military-looking pants, pulling the top part back until it clicked.
The Chechen pulled a big, long shotgun from the cab of their ute—the Irishman had driven with the black Inuit and Chechen—and gave it a single pump, pulled a shell from his pocket, and put it into the bottom of the gun. His shotgun seemed to closely favor the Aboriginal’s; indeed, the two could have been identical for all Roger knew about the subject. As the Chechen and the black Inuit crouched down, the Irishman grabbed a backpack from the driver’s side, walked around, and laid it on the ground next to the front left tire of his ute.
Without the headlights, the sky became dominant overhead. The sounds seemed louder, and just then, Roger had to piss really, really badly. He kept looking south for two or three minutes until he saw it: three sets of headlights headed down the road towards the fork. The lights flickered as they went past trees lining the sides of the road, then straightened out and slowed as they came onto the dirt section. They crept forward, dust kicking up in front of their headlights, stopping three-wide in the road next to the water tank.
A distant thundering along the road accompanied a row of headlights that approached from the distance. The three utes remained straddled across the road, their headlights on, as a progression of large road trains rumbled to a stop in a line behind them.
The Irishman walked out to stand in the road in front of the three trucks. The ute nearest the water tank was an older green long bed, bulky and heavy-looking. The middle was a larger truck, white, patched with rust spots. The third, on the far side, was a faded sky blue color, older, with a wooden tray.
The headlights on the green truck dimmed and a man stepped out. He was older, maybe mid-fifties, stocky, overalls, and a wide brimmed hat.
“Come on,” the South African said to Roger, “let’s go.”
Roger grabbed the South African by the arm and pointed at him. “I’m in charge here, you understand? I’m the one paying all of you.”
The South African nodded, and he and Roger walked towards the man in overalls, who was approaching the Irishman.
“Name’s Howard,” the man said, extending his hand.
The South African extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Roger extended his hand. “Roger Clark.”
The man in overalls ignored him, instead staring at the Irishman. “And you are?”
“Irish,” the Irishman said with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He then winked and smiled through his thick salt and pepper beard. “What’s the matter with your friends, lad, they shy?”
The man in overalls turned and motioned. A young man stepped out from the sky blue ute, and two men, older, stepped from the white ute. From the bed of the long green one came a rumbling. The machine creaked to stand vertical, extended two legs over the back of the tailgate, and planting itself onto the ground, made its way to the congregation.
“Fuck me,” the Irishman said, eying the unit. “Where’d you get that thing from?”
The man in overalls inspected his metal beast. It was an older model, re-fashioned by these Aussie bush rednecks for violent business. “Bits here, bits there,” the man said, blind pride oozing through slurred words.
“Good,” the Irishman said, surveying the five. He puffed his cigarette and looked to the sky.
“She’s a still night,” the man in overalls said.
“Aye, she is. Still and quiet. Good night for fishin’, I reckon.”
“There’s no fish out here.”
“No people, neither.”
“Park’s been closed near on two years now.”
“Aye. Yet here we are.”
The man in overalls shifted uncomfortably. “So, what are you doin’ out here, Irishman?”
The Irishman shook his head slowly, as if in disagreement. Then pointing to the fork, he said, “I got here the same way you did. I went straight at that there fork.” The Irishman was captivating, Roger had to give him that. He took a long drag of his cigarette, then pulling it from his mouth, examined the burning end as he exhaled the smoke. “That’s life though, ain’t it? Everyday we’ve got forks, and we decide, takin’ this road and that. And the fucked-up thing is, we always reckon we know where each road leads.” He flicked the long ash from his cigarette, watching it fall to the ground. “But we never really do.”
The man in overalls looked to his companions as if they could make some sense of the Irishman’s words. When they offered none, he turned to the South African, who stared back with a blank face. Turning back to the Irishman, he said, “Alright, Irishman. Enough philosophy. We came here to do business.”
“I know exactly why you came here. So, your proposal…”
“Our proposal is for the sale of a million brand spankin’ new solar panels and ten thousand wind turbines.”
“And they’re here with you?”
The man pointed behind him with his right thumb. “Loaded in the trains. But, uh, our proposal… Well, it involves a bit of a markup.”
“Oh?” The Irishman sounded as though he had expected that.
“Yeah, well, we hafta cover transport costs, fuel, security, all that.”
“The price quoted to us includes all that. It includes makin’ sure none of these stinkin’ fuckin’ nomads nab ‘em.”
The man shrugged. “Well, forty percent extra’s what it’s gonna’ cost ya.”
The Irishman nodded, this time in agreement. “And you do this sort of thing with everybody you do business with?”
“Pretty much. So, do we have a deal?”
“We have a proposal for you.”
“Oh?” The man put his arm around his machine friend.
“Yeah. Unload all those panels and turbines, every single one. Then turn around and drive the fuck out of here. We’ll take the whole lot.”
The man in overalls laughed. There was an uneasiness that Roger didn’t like. “What, for free?” the man said. “You’ve lost your bloody fuckin’ mind, Irishman!”
The Irishman nodded, then turned to look at the South African and smiled. “Life and its forks.” He turned to the man in overalls. “I’ve always wondered what it’s like, to wake up one morning knowing that was the day you were going to die.”
The South African grabbed the back of Roger’s shirt at the small of his back in a bear grip as strong as Roger had ever felt.
The man in overalls flicked a switch on the back of the machine. Lurching forward, its back hatch opened, a large gun with a long barrel emerging, aiming at the Irishman. The man smiled. “Well, I didn’t realize that this morning.”
A loud single shot boomed from behind, slicing through the Outback night. The machine went limp, its gun tilting downwards, before it fell backwards, striking the orange ground with a loud thud.
“You realize it now,” the Irishman said. Flicking his cigarette at the man, he said, “You got here by going straight at that fork.”
“Sure did.”
The Irishman smiled. “You shoulda gone left.”
The man in overalls went to pull a gun from his back pocket. From somewhere behind him, the Irishman pulled a knife even larger than the black Inuit’s, and leaning forward, thrust it into the man’s chest through his overalls. He lifted him off the ground with the handle of the knife as the
man screeched.
At the same moment, the South African threw Roger behind him and pulled a handgun with his right hand, shooting the young man directly in front of him in the head. A light pink mist flew from the man’s head as it flung back, illuminating for a moment in the headlights of the ute he had driven there.
The men on either side of the elevated man in overalls scrambled to pull their guns out, but they were painfully slow. The Chechen rose like a formidable shadow clad in black against the darkness, and fired two quick, booming shots on either side of the Irishman, blowing the two men back several meters. The man in overalls’ screech turned to a moan as the Irishman threw him from his knife to the ground.
Just then, the Aboriginal did something Roger could not believe he was seeing. He ran around the far side of the Irishman and jumped onto the hood of the sky blue ute, then on to the top of the cabin. Standing in the center, he aimed his shotgun downwards and fired a shot through each side of the hood. Thick red splotches flew onto the windscreen. He then turned towards the road train parked directly behind the three utes and fired a single shot into the driver’s side of the windscreen. He turned to look at the black Inuit and motioned with his head.
She stood and threw something through the hole of the windshield with the form and speed of a professional baseball pitcher. The cab of the truck filled with smoke and both doors flung open to the sound of coughing.
“Nigga, you gonna let him show yo ass up like that?” the black Inuit said to the Chechen, then she slapped him on the bum with such force that he seemed to propel forward, stalking up the driver’s side of the big truck. The Aboriginal followed suit up the passenger’s side, each shooting the man that came out of the truck on their side.
Roger was still on the ground, clutching at a piece of scrub, when he finally let out a long painful exhale. A tension headache was wrapping around the back of his head where it met his neck, and his heart was pounding hard and erratically. He could hear the engines of the other road trains switching on as their headlights flickered; after a few seconds, though, he realized the engines were actually switching off. One by one, the headlights flicked off until once again darkness was all around them.
Roger could see the orange glow off the tip of the Irishman’s cigarette—when the fuck had he managed to light a fresh fag in the middle of all this?! Then he heard something strange above him. It was a hum of sorts, getting louder and louder, and it seemed to be all around him.
The Irishman pulled something from his pocket, and a moment later, lights enveloped the area. Only they shone down from above, and only then did Roger see what was producing the humming: spaceships. Well, they looked like spaceships to Roger. As they descended, Roger could see they were actually long rectangular boxes suspended with large rotors. They hovered above the earth much like a helicopter.
The Irishman let out a low, wicked laugh, noticing Roger’s astonishment and confusion. “They’re multirotors, lad.” The Irishman made it an art form, talking with a cigarette in his mouth; he did it better than anyone Roger had ever met. “Those are multirotor aircraft hovering at a coupla hundred feet off tha’ ground—quadcopters, to be exact. You see that bit in the middle?” He pointed to the rectangular section between the four rotors. “Ooh, she’s a real beauty, lad. She’s got spotlights, obviously. Plus onboard EMP, err, electromagnetic pulse; that’s what took out the truck engines. Laser-guided missiles, automatic firearms, of course. And, well…” He looked up to the platform suspended just above him. “There’s lots of other goodies we’ve got back at the warehouse. Ya know, she’s a lot lighter than she looks, all that up there. And they’ve come from a long ways away. Yep, these were zooming over the Antarctic just this morning. Now, you figure that one out and I’ll give ya a buffalo nickel.”
Roger’s stomach turned over. Several trucks away, a door opened, and as soon as it did, two shots rained down on the men from above, a red laser tracking one man as he stumbled and fell. Another door opened, and another, and another. If the aircraft did not gun the men down, then the Chechen and Aboriginal took care of it, doing what they did best—drawing blood.
And then there was no more gunfire. There was only the ominous hum from above. And there was the sound of boots on gravel as the Chechen and Aboriginal made their way back to the water tower, lazily carrying their big shotguns.
The Irishman walked up to the Chechen, put his hands on his cheeks, and kissed his forehead. “Fuckin’ good shootin’, lad.”
The Chechen nodded, then walked over to the black Inuit and tapped her on the shoulder. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a mango, cut a slice with her long knife, and handed it to him. He attacked the slice, gnawing at the flesh.
The aircraft above turned their lights off at once, and their hum faded as they lifted and headed off, their presence swallowed by the Outback entirely.
The South African finally stopped. “I like it out here,” he said, looking up to the sky. “I think maybe I’ll put an office out here.” It was the first time Roger had seen him smile.
The Irishman laughed. “Yeah, you would do somethin’ like that, mate.”
“I—” Roger hadn’t noticed, but now he felt the warm streak running down his right leg. “What now?”
The Irishman turned to face Roger, lighting a fresh cigarette. “Tell me a story, Aussie.”
Roger managed to breathe, feeling his heart thumping in a funny rhythm. The Irishman spoke as though they were standing on a street corner waiting for the traffic lights to change. Despite the gunfire that had moments before rained down, and the smell of death in the air, the Irishman’s drag on that cigarette was slow. His speech was steady.
The Irishman took another drag, and bile forced its way up Roger’s throat. He bent over and threw up what must have been two days’ worth of food. “I don’t have any stories,” Roger said between wretches.
The Irishman nodded as he took another drag. “Then I don’t reckon there’s any reason to keep ya alive.” He reached behind him and pulled a gun.
“Wait!” Roger screamed. “Wait, just wait. You don’t—”
“I don’t have to do this? Sure, you’re right. I don’t.” The Irishman lowered his head for a moment in thought, then pointing north, said, “Well, I’d tell you to take off runnin’, but if you head that way, tha’ thirsties will getcha. You ever seen what a thirsty man will do to a person for a drink of water?” He pointed east. “Head that way, and there’s nothin’ but a whole lotta nasties waitin’ for ya. Of course, you could head back the way you came, but then if the road you came in on brought you here, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t find another way back.” He took one final drag, then dropped the cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. He pulled the gun forward and crossed his hands in front of him. “Tell you what. If you can tell me where Elvis Presley was born, then I’ll letcha head back outta here.”
“What?”
The Irishman pointed the gun straight at Roger. “Where was Elvis Presley born?”
“I-I don’t know! How the fuck would I know that?”
“A guess, then?”
“America?”
“Too generic.”
“No! I—”
The Irishman pulled the trigger. Roger fell to the ground, awkward, slumping over himself.
The Irishman looked behind him to the water tower, where the name of this place was written on the side: KARIJINI. He pulled the tap on the side of the tank, and a trickle of cold water fell into his hands. He splashed the water against his face, pulling his hands down along his cheeks. The cold against his hot face made him feel alive.
The Inuit reached into a wooden crate in the back of the Irishman’s ute and pulled a mango out. She began peeling, handing a slice to everyone. She stopped mid-chew to watch the Chechen picking the flesh from the skin. “Wha’? You don’t eat tha skin?�
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The Chechen shook his head as he slurped mango juice from his hand.
“Pussy.” She shook her head, shoving a mango half into her mouth. Juice sprayed out with the first several bites. “Well, I’d eat tha shit outta this every goddamn day. And it’s good to see you graduated from those faggot-ass two and three quarter-inch shells.” She eyed the Chechen’s shotgun. He looked down at it and nodded between bites.
Nodding The Inuit pulled a case from the back of the ute. “Aight people, it’s time.” She pulled the tattoo gun from the case, plugging the cord into the ute’s cigarette lighter port. “Who’s first?”
The Irishman stepped forward. “I started all this. I’ll go first.”
The Inuit smiled. “My man.” She pulled the ute’s tailgate down. “Come on.”
The Irishman sat, watching his soldier mark a black ace of spades on the underside of his left wrist. Branding him forever an outcast with a final purpose. When she finished she handed him a tube of cream. “Four times a day for a week,” she said, then motioned for the South African.
The South African chose as his mark a rhinoceros head weeping black tears, on his right forearm. The Chechen was marked on the right side of his neck with a puddle of black blood dripping down onto four skulls. The Inuit branded the Aboriginal on his right peck with black fire consuming a small town.
The Irishman watched in wonder as the Inuit marked herself in impressive form with a black smoking gun across her right forearm. He had never met an ambidextrous tattoo artist.
Rubbing ointment onto the wound on his left wrist, the Irishman looked up to the sky. The Milky Way splattered its stars out through the gulf of space. He spent two whole minutes looking from horizon to horizon, soaking in every star the way a plant would sunlight. He knelt down, scooped a handful of dirt, and smelt it. Tossing it to the ground and wiping his hands, he stood, closed his eyes, and breathed in the hot Pilbara air.
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