by Greg McLean
The noise will cover his entrance. He runs around the back of one of the corrugated sheds and ducks behind. He peers around the corner to survey the lay. The abandoned mine’s a semi-circular gouge into the side of the mountain, scattered with empty sheds and a rusted piece of drilling equipment too big to haul out that juts against the sky like a statue. The ground between the buildings is a hardened mud pit criss-crossed by tyre tracks all from one car: the pedo’s ute.
It’s now parked beneath a rusted carport, but the man himself is somewhere out of view – maybe in one of the sheds – and Mick circles around the border of the camp to check the pedo’s not lying in wait for him. But the surrounds are clear and Mick pulls back into the darkness.
There aren’t any drums visible. He’ll have to search the buildings.
The music’s coming from the large rear shed. Mick could wait now that he’s found the place – stay until the man leaves, then search the whole place. But he finds himself edging around the back of the buildings towards the shed.
The music’s blaring now and Mick bends to peek into a series of empty rivet holes at waist level shooting slivers of light out into the night. Inside, the shed’s huge, but except for a long work table at one end and a doorway leading to a back office with its light on, it’s empty. No sign of Jerry the Fiddler.
Mick hesitates. He should hang back, wait for the guy to leave.
But something about the sick fuck’s struck him deep. He can feel his blood boiling, his pulse thumping in hisears. He keeps remembering the two girls in the pub . . .
He clutches the .22 tight, frozen, undecided.
Then there’s a noise from inside and Mick looks through the hole again. There’s a shadow in there now: someone in the back room with a radio on. Then Ol’ Jerry passes the doorway, and despite the cold of the desert night, the bloke’s naked and Mick sees the white spread of his gut, the dark thatch of pubic hair and tiny bulb of his circumcised penis.
Mick tears his eyes away, props his back against the wall. What the hell’s the bloke doing in there?
Then a thought comes. He could just take the man out now – steal in and come up behind the nude freak and cut him quiet, haul him off in the ute.
Even without the knife the Others are a threat. What if they’re able to read him like Cutter had? One of them sees him one day, detects something in him and uses it against him as the shooter had tried – or takes him out, like a predator protecting its territory.
That’s another reason he can’t just disappear, can’t just put enough distance between himself and this place he’d come to and stirred up so much trouble. Because it’s gonna happen eventually. These killers – or others like them – will come for him, just as Cutter had.
At least this way he can take ’em out first.
Yet he hesitates. What if the Others know of each other? If he takes this one out without identifying the others first, they could come after him. Then what the fuck does he do? Not only that, he was one of thirty people in the pub the night the fat bastard disappears. It wouldn’t take long for the coppers to whittle down the suspects. It’d be a cockup.
Shit’s sake, what’s he doing? He’s getting ahead of himself. Letting the worm Cutter’s plan had planted in his head grow and take over his thinking.
All he needs is his knife back. Everything else can go to hell.
He pushes off the wall and there’s a flash of shadow from inside and he risks a last look.
Jerry crosses the gap again and Mick nearly doesn’t see the tiny bundle in his arms. Then he’s gone.
Was that . . .?
He’s not sure, but he thinks the bastard has a kid with him. There hadn’t been one in the car, maybe he stashed one here, tied up perhaps. And now the sick prick was going to . . . what? What was he going to do with it?
A flush of anger surges through Mick, a confusion of feeling.
Despite his resolve just a moment ago not to do this he ducks low and comes around the building. The music – some sort of modern crap from America with too much bass and gospel singing – echoes tinnily out across the derelict camp, disappears into the night sky, out of place in the uncaring stillness of the desert. He’s about to crack open the metal door into the dimly lit shed when the song finishes and he has to wait for the next. He tries to hold his breath as he crouches, in case the man can hear him in the silence.
The rolling bass of the next song starts and he slips inside. ‘You can run, babee,’ some crazy bitch is singing, ‘but ya can’t hide. Ain’ta never gonna let you go.’ The voice drifts out like the wailing of the dead. A hanging electrical light barely reaches its fingers into the corners of the room, but it’s enough to expose him and Mick aims the rifle as he edges along the far wall in case the man passes and sees him. Rests his finger on the trigger knowing he may only have one shot. He keeps his steps light on the swept dirt as if stalking an animal. The only way the man’s gonna take him is bad luck. Or if he’s known Mick’s here all along. Either way, he can’t back out now.
Halfway down the shed, Mick can see Jerry’s shadow on the inside wall rocking back and forth.
Mick grits his teeth and tightens the trigger.
He nearly forgets to check the ground for wires or other signals as he moves, and he almost misses the trapdoor in the back corner, hidden by a long worktable. No time to check it out.
A mirror’s planted on the length of the open door, so the man can see back into the shed if he needs to, and Mick crouches lower. But as he rounds the table he catches a glimpse of flab and realises there’s no point. If he can see the man, he can be seen too and he stands and raises the rifle and walks in.
The fat bastard’s thrusting into something strapped to a table in time with the music. His fleshy buttocks squeeze and dimple with every push. His stubby fingers hold the table and Mick comes up behind him and aims the gun, then thinks better of it and pulls Cutter’s knife.
A smell of death – old death. Desiccated skin flakes fall onto the wood. As Mick eases around he sees what’s strapped to the table.
His stomach lurches and he nearly vomits down the sweaty back of the sick bastard in front of him.
‘You’re still okay, my little Elsie,’ the man blubbers. ‘You’re okay.’
Mick gets a snapshot glimpse of trophies from victims lining the rest of the table: a row of shoes, some flattened-out necklaces, a teddy bear missing an eye. A shelf of bottles containing floating hunks of almost-familiar meat.
But he’s already stumbling backwards, and when the man senses something and looks behind mid-thrust Mick’s not there any longer.
Mick freezes against the wall around the corner. His head spins with the nightmare image, unable to take in what he’d just seen.
Shit – he’d nearly exposed himself to the Others, killed this one and clued the rest in, for what? For nothing.
The sight is seared onto his eyes.
The shadow moves. Mick’ll never get out of the shed in time. But he can’t kill the bloke either, not yet, and he runs for the trapdoor, hefts the heavy handle as quiet as he can and slips into the swallowing darkness.
Just as the music snaps off.
In stifling pitch-black Mick grips the rungs of the ladder and toes blindly for a foothold.
There isn’t one.
He almost falls and swings in the darkness, desperately wrapping his arms around the top rung. A fetid stench washes up from below but he can’t cover his mouth. Bile in his throat. He has to swallow it.
Footsteps sound above and Mick fumbles for the rifle hanging off his shoulder and swivels it up to where the grate should be. He’ll blow the man’s head off if he has to.
He holds his breath listening like a hawk at the soon-to-be-dead fucker’s feet padding out into the shed. Wonders if the man can see his footprints.
But then the music cuts back on again. Bloke must have blue balls. Mick nearly gags at that.
He wedges his armpit around the rung so he can reach up for th
e manhole, hoping the man isn’t squatting above waiting to take his head off with a machete. But without the strength of a foothold Mick’s unbalanced and as he reaches up the rifle swings behind his back and he loses balance. He falls backwards into darkness.
He hits the mud with a squelching crack.
Something breaks beneath him like a gunshot and he lies gasping for breath, sucking in great chestfuls of putrid air. He grasps for the rifle in the dark in case the man heard him. Watches for that crack of light.
There’s no movement above and after he’s learnt how to breathe again he flicks on his torch for a risked second.
A face stares back at him.
Mick throws a punch and his hand goes through a chest cavity that bursts beneath his weight like a bag of meat. Gases escape and he clutches over and vomits as corpse-bloat steams out over him. He flashes the torch left and right, taking in the horror around him, then quickly flicks it off. Sits breathing terror in the dark.
There are at least three bodies in with him. Two girls, their hair long as if still growing, the flesh receded from their gums and around their eyes, yellowed faces drawn as if sucked dry. The body beneath him could be a boy or a girl – he’s flattened it, so it’s unrecognisable.
The air is now laced with vomit too and the stench in the enclosed space is making him dizzy. He forces himself to stand and reaches up blindly for the ladder, not wanting to risk the torch again, but he’s fallen about fifteen feet and the rungs don’t stretch this far.
So, no easy way back up.
In the flash of the torch he’d seen a dark maw in the wall beside him and he edges towards it over the corpses. They’re only shapes now: mushy mounds that collapse and pop beneath him. Just the dead. Nothing he can do for them any longer.
Still, he doesn’t breathe again until he clutches blindly for the tunnel entrance and escapes the sucking corpse-mud.
After crawling some distance from the pit he risks the light again – then suddenly stops dead, remembering the traps Cutter had mentioned. He begins inching ahead instead, sweeping the light over the slurry of mud and worrying he won’t be able to see anything in time. But it’s either keep going or find some way up to the ladder and he doesn’t like his chances of that.
The tunnel branches off ahead, but the left path angles upwards and is more likely to head to the surface. The air’s fresher there, anyway. He keeps crawling and the roof rises away above and soon he’s able to stand hunched and move more easily. At one point he passes another pit and glances down into a black expanse punctuated by the clutching hand of a skeleton, and more bones down there, and he closes his eyes, continues on.
Then he hears a sound.
Soft movement somewhere down one of the side tunnels. He freezes and holds his breath.
‘I know you’re in here,’ Jerry the Fiddler calls.
Mick slaps off the torch. His heart yammers in the darkness – it has to be giving him away.
The fat bastard’s voice is like liquid down the tunnels: syrupy and cloying. ‘What’d you see, huh? Think I’m gonna let you go after that?’
From the east somewhere, down the snaking offshoots. Bloke’ll know the warrens like the back of his hand, and here Mick is not even knowing if he’s going the right way. He shuffles ahead, trying to keep quiet, but the ground beneath is too wet.
‘I can hear youuu . . .’
A snap of a shotgun’s stock. In the narrow tunnels it’ll blow Mick in half. His .22’ll be a mosquito bite.
He starts to run, bent over, and risks a flip of the torch as the tunnel curves. Then he suddenly stops. There’s something about the dirt ahead. He finds a stone and pitches it carefully. A spring-loaded spike rockets out and hangs quivering in the air. Would’ve impaled his nuts.
Laughter floats to him from afar, hearing it. ‘Ya come to my place, ya play my game. Now we’re gonna have some fun.’
The voice is coming closer and Mick legs over the spike as the man croons: ‘Never gonna let you go, baby. Even when the night comes to sweep us away-ee, I’ll still be there. Honey!’
The ground keeps angling upwards and there’s definitely fresh air ahead. Sweet, somehow, cold. It sweeps down the narrow channel and pulls him on even as he hears the sound of the gun chambering again, from a different direction this time. The bloke’s trying to push him like cattle into a trap.
And it’s working. He can’t risk turning back. Doesn’t even know where his pursuer is. The pedo’s footsteps are silent, the only sounds he makes intentional. What he wants his victim to hear.
‘Even though I don’t need you anymore-ah. You’re still mine . . .’
If he glimpses Mick’s torch he’ll know exactly where he is, but Mick has to risk flicking it on in the darkness. He shields it with his fingers, hopes he’s far enough away the illumination doesn’t drift down the corridors.
There have to be more traps. As much as he wants to flee for his life down the dark straight he can’t. If he’d been planting the traps, he’d have spaced another about here too.
And sure enough, the earth is flattened ahead. Mick crouches, shines the shielded beam over the handiwork. It’s so well hidden he’d nearly walked over it.
He clicks off the light, waits a moment, trying to listen behind. If the fat man’s close and Mick triggers the trap he could be on him in seconds. Mick would get maybe one shot before the bastard would end him.
But what choice does he have? He’s not sure how to disarm it so he’ll have to risk slipping past.
There’s a sound next to him.
Mick freezes. How could the bastard have closed the gap so quick? He crouches, breath hushed, eyes wide at the darkness. Something there —
He aims the gun. Flicks the light.
A sorry-looking dog bursts out of the side tunnel, smashes past him and bolts for the trail of fresh air. A split-second later a trigger snaps and there’s a whistle and the dog’s punched out of midair into the wall. It hangs howling.
Mick gasps for breath. Nearly shit his pants.
‘Fuck’s that?’ a voice calls from too close.
Mick quickly scuffs away his trailing footmarks and edges past the snapping, whimpering animal. Its ribbed sides pant with pain and blood runs dripping to the ground. Teeth inches from Mick’s face, it would strip him clean in its agony if it could.
He eases past, still clearing his marks, and pushes on as a light swings into a distant tunnel behind. He manages to race around a corner before the beam latches onto the dog.
Mick props against the wall. Listens for oncoming footsteps. But there’s only the sound of the dog’s wailing.
‘Fer fuck’s sake,’ Jerry says.
Then there’s a boom in the narrow tunnels that rains dust from the roof. A few more banging sounds, and then footfalls towards Mick.
He runs now. If there’s another trap he’s fucked, and he stumbles on mostly by touch, not willing to use the light. There’s a glimmer of safety ahead and it pulls him on. A shadow arches up the tunnel behind him as the fat man comes.
The end of the tunnel is a hole in the ground almost covered by shrubs, and he grasps the edges and hauls himself out into the night air. He drags his aching legs clear and collapses behind an outcrop of rocks as a light blazes up from the hole and the dead dog is thrown out. Jerry squeezes after it like the ground’s giving birth to fat bastards. He angrily brushes the dirt off his pants and kicks the dog’s head for ruining his night.
Then he drags it by one leg back to camp and Mick’s left clutching the .22 in one hand, knife in the other, in the cold darkness, bloody and covered in rotting flesh and mud and sweat.
Not long after there’s a roar of an engine and a set of taillights pass and wind down the mountain. Mick watches the man’s ute disappear into the distance, its lights like the fading eyes of a demon, then he lays his groaning head back and stares up at the glitter of stars above.
Fucking lucky. But that’s one found, at least.
When his breathing
returns to normal, Mick trudges back into the now-empty camp past a sign reading ‘BARDOCH MINING CO.’ and searches every oil drum and jerry can he can find. There’s a couple in a back room that are completely empty and one or two throughout the property filled only with rainwater. None contain the knife. On the off chance he checks through the sheds in case Cutter had been lying about the drum – maybe he’d hidden it some other way – but he can’t find anything.
He’ll have to follow the man to his house in town as well. But the more he thinks about it, it’s unlikely Cutter planted the knife with this bloke. The shooter had been out all day after Jock’s death so it’s more likely he planted the knife somewhere further away.
Which means Mick’ll have to keep hunting.
He presses as far back into his mind as he can the idea of taking all three of the killers out, seeing as how close this’d been. He’d discovered the pedo’s lair, seen how nicely isolated it is, found ways in without stumbling on the traps. He could find him again if he needs to.
That’ll have to do for now. All that matters is getting that fucken knife and clearing his trail.
As long as the search for it doesn’t kill him.
Rose is already in bed when he returns. As always he drives the last mile to her place without the lights on, checking he’s not being followed before hiding the ute in the shed. All the shit he’d starting doing after he remembered Opey saying he knew about Rose, because if that dumb bastard could work it out others might as well. Then he burns his clothes in the backyard and scrubs himself with everything Rose has in the house to cover the smell. He piles on the Old Spice and slips in bed beside her.
Although she doesn’t move and stays curled on her side he can’t hear the deep breathing of sleep. He lies in the cold bed staring up at the ceiling until slumber eventually takes him.
‘I’ll get my own way home next time,’ is all she says in the morning. She doesn’t cook him breakfast.