by Greg McLean
As his door opens she glimpses the van parked by the trees and she crumples, begins to cry: tears of despair that rise to screaming fury and he slams the door on her. Her wailing follows him as he walks to the Kombi.
He drags the boy’s body out, then runs the van hard into one of the trees. Leaving the doors open, he takes a couple of bottles of water, then carries the man as far as he can. He empties the water next to him then breaks one of the man’s brittle legs as if he’d dragged himself as far as he could after the accident.
Then Mick waits for the dogs. When they come slinking out of the night, waiting on the edge of vision, he turns and heads back to the ute, his mind racing to avoid thinking about the girl.
Even if the bloke’s somehow found it won’t be obvious what happened. The dogs’ll eat the soft tissue around the stab wounds. It’ll look like a stupid tourist went searching for a campsite, had an accident in the dark, then got munched. Even if it didn’t, what’d Mick care? It couldn’t be traced to him.
As he walks through the darkness his hands shake: from adrenaline; from the defiance of the girl; from the idea still unformed in his mind slipping away with every word she spat at him.
And then the choice is taken from him.
He can’t hear her crying anymore.
He sprints around the side of the ute. The passenger door’s open.
‘Shit!’ The old door handle has been ripped off. Mick freezes, listening beyond the whisper of the wind and the impatience of the dogs. Her pounding feet sound somewhere behind as she runs towards the road.
He jumps in the ute and tears after her, sweeping the roo light ahead. A figure on the edge of the light crashes into the buffel grass and low wilgas and disappears. He slows, scanning the undergrowth but she could be anywhere, and if she doubles back on him the bare plain stretched forever and he might never find her. If she goes off on an angle, he’d never guess which way she went. No doubt she’d die out there with no water – probably a few days – but he didn’t want to leave that to chance.
He pulls up. He hadn’t seen her head back past. And in the silence of the night he’d probably still be able to hear her running. But there’s nothing. So she must be hiding close. Waiting in the long grass, clamping her mouth shut, before trying to run for the van perhaps, where there’s provisions.
‘That what you’re doing, sweetheart?’ he calls, even though his heart’s pounding. ‘Gonna head back to yer car? You know yer boyfriend’s there, right? Dead as a doornail. Didn’t know when to shut up.’ Like you, he wants to say, but the words catch. ‘But way I see it: one less hippie in the world’s not gonna hurt anyone.’ There’s no response, not even a sob. Pretty cool customer if she is waiting him out.
He stands, thinking a mile a minute, scans the surrounding grass then looks again at the road.
It’s too enticing. Makes too much sense to try to get back to it: like it’s civilisation, other people or something. She’d be focused on that. If she’s not so manic she’s found something to club him with. But that’s the chance he’ll have to take.
He shuts off the light, walks away noisily for a bit, then sits. Just like his father did hunting dingoes – letting them think he’s moved on.
She waits at least five minutes – not bad, he gives her that.
Then like a jackrabbit she suddenly bolts from beneath a clump of spiky bluegrass. He jumps up and swings the torch on her but she’s further away than he expected. Although she cries out and stumbles at the light, hands still tied behind her back, she’s able to keep her feet and zips between the shrubs towards the road.
He snarls and fixates on the trailing cable – pictures himself grabbing it and hauling her back, wrapping it around her throat for thinking she could outsmart him, for talking back, for making him feel so small. For fucking this whole thing up more than it already is.
She’s so much quicker than him, though, and his gimpy legs stumble and slip on the uneven ground. She’s almost at the road before he can even get used to the terrain. Then she finally snags something – a rabbit-hole – and tumbles as if shot, and he smirks and forces himself on. But she doesn’t even cry out – just picks herself up and keeps on, limping heavily on her left leg.
‘Fuck you,’ he hears her saying into the night, back at him. ‘Fuck you, you scareda’cunt prick.’ Her voice too close, right into his ear. ‘Fuck you, limp-dick.’ A gust of wind sweeps over him, threatening to drain his legs of resolve.
‘Bitch,’ he whispers, and then a light appears on the horizon and Mick feels a stab of fear ripple through him. Out on the far scar of the highway a road train blisters down the dead-straight road towards them. And at this rate he’ll never make it to her in time.
As it gets closer her realises it must be doing eighty, even ninety miles an hour, and it’s going to be touch and go whether the girl makes it herself. It might be the one vehicle to pass the whole night. If she misses it, he’s got her. And he can silence her once and for all. Silence them all.
She’s yelling now, in the distance, calling out to the truck, and Mick can only hope she falls and he can jump on her so they won’t be seen. Because if she’s able to get to that road and flag the truck down . . .
He looks at the knife in his hands, the blade still crusted with the hippie’s blood.
Then he’ll take her out and the driver too. He can’t let them escape and identify him.
Desperation’s fuelling her and she makes the road, beats him. All she has to do is step into the middle of the highway and dance around until the trucker sees her and then Mick’ll have to —
But the truck doesn’t even slow.
The girl makes the bitumen and stumbles out, arms still tied behind her, and tries to free herself to wave the driver down. Mick stops, mesmerised as the truck barrels down, apparently oblivious.
Then at the last moment the truck flicks up extra lights, screeches its airbrakes, but doesn’t have time to swerve. The girl realises her mistake and tries to duck to one side, but her injured leg buckles. The truck’s grille hits her halfway up her torso and cuts short her scream.
The brakes sound again as the truck bounces lightly as if over cattlegrids, then comes to a stop.
Mick, hunkered low, blows out air softly as he takes in the dark evidence of roadkill behind the truck, partly illuminated in its brake lights. Two men jump out and run back, either side.
Mick licks his lip and thinks about rushing in, taking them both out, then checks himself. No need. She’s done.
One of the truckers points out something on the road, then rushes back to the cabin. The other one checks it out – the cables around the girl’s wrists? The one with the gun looks out around on both sides of the road, searching the darkness. He even sweeps over Mick’s position.
Mick, shitting himself, dashes in a crouch the whole mile back to his car. By then the men could’ve already got the police on the CB. Might call in a chopper to search the surrounding area, or even local crop-dusting planes.
Mick spots the van with the already partially eaten body some distance beyond, but doesn’t have time to do anything else with the scene. Until he thinks of something and slams the brakes. He retrieves Cutter’s knife hidden against his back and jumps out, scattering the dingoes, then stabs the mutilated corpse a couple of times. He wipes the handle of his fingerprints and chucks it near the van. That should get their attention. The station’s logo and Cutter’s initials are clearly visible, the hippie’s blood on the blade.
He has to sit in the darkness near Rose’s for ten full minutes before his hands will stop shaking, the defiance of the blonde girl eating at him like cancer. He tries to think through the implications of what’s happened.
He only knows for sure he’s fucked up big time.
The house is empty when he returns. He finds Rose still in the loft, curled up on the straw with only her ragged dress for warmth.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says softly when he climbs up. ‘I didn’t realise.’
/> He says nothing as he sits across from her. His hands have stopped shaking. The memory of the girl’s blazing eyes has faded. The lamp, down low, reveals Rose’s goosebumps and he gives her his jacket. She snuggles beneath it and lies staring up at the overhead window.
‘The sky’s so big here, don’t you think?’ she says after a while. ‘Every time I see it . . . When I was young my father would take me out here and I’d lie staring up and all I could see was pure blue above and I could’ve been anywhere. America, England, Antarctica even. I promised myself when I had enough money I’d leave. Escape this place and live in London or New York or places where things like that didn’t happen.’
‘Your . . . father? He took you here to —’
‘I left eventually. I moved to Sydney. Started studying psychology. Got myself a flat. But the problems followed me. Nothing made me happy: study, sex, drugs. I ran out of money and dropped out, lived in a sharehouse for a while, getting into harder and harder stuff, and there’s only one way to pay for that. One of the girls there – Tilly – saw that I was trying to kill the hurt in me by killing myself and she’d talk to me about the universe. How everything’s connected and we’re all just part of the same atoms. We’re made of the earth and the dinosaurs and everything that’s come before us, and we’ll break apart and make new things when we’re gone. Our past and our future is with us always, and we can never run from what we are or what we’ll become.’ He tenses but doesn’t say anything. ‘She said I’ve never faced what happened to me and it’s destroying me. But what we’ve experienced makes us who we are. Then she went off to join a commune and left me to fight what she said for a while, before realising it was the truth.
‘My father was dead by cancer then so I couldn’t confront him. But I could buy this place back. Force myself to deal with what happened here.’
‘So this is all getting back at your dad?’
‘This is taking control of my life. Making it so no fuck ever does something I don’t want again.’ There’s a cold vehemence in her voice when she says this. A confronting defiance. Like the hippie girl. It grates on him but he doesn’t know why. She’s so small, but there’s something disconcerting about her resolve sometimes. Something that made him feel small. ‘But I didn’t realise what it might do to you. It’s not what you need.’ He can sense her eyes on him. Her voice soft when she speaks next: ‘What do you need, Mick? Is it to return after your father? Get him back for what he did to you? See him scared? Make him beg?’
His mouth goes dry. He can’t say anything, just looks back at her.
‘If that’s what it is, you need to confront it. I’m not saying you should confront him. But if it’s been holding you back all these years you need to do something at least. Talk about it. Face your fears. It’s destroying you, for God’s sake.’
She waits for him to speak. When he doesn’t she mistakes his hesitation for holding back from her.
‘That’s all I get?’ Her voice quivers with anger. ‘I tell you my deepest secrets and nothing? You’re happy to stay here, fuck me when you want. But give nothing? You’re still hiding yourself from me.’
‘No, I’m —’
She flashes her eyes up at him and they’re wild with tears, searching him, finding him wanting. ‘I know when I’m being bullshitted, Mick. I’m starting to feel something for you. And I don’t even know who you are.’
Her words are like razor blades across his skin. ‘You . . . You shouldn’t . . . I’m not what you think I am.’
‘You’re right about that.’
He stares up through the window, thinks of the turmoil that’ll hit the town tomorrow with the deaths of the hippies. Wonders where that leaves them, how this could have all fucked up so badly. He’s not in control of anything. Never has been. That’s all he’s ever wanted – to control the whole fucken world. Not so much to ask . . . But how can he tell her that? ‘We had a . . . television at the camp,’ he says, surprised he’s saying this. ‘The government must of thought it’d help the blackfellas integrate. I used to sit there when I could get it to myself, when the others were out hunting or something and I could fob out of it. I’d watch these happy families on the telly with their shiny houses filled with stuff and I’d think, “Why didn’t I have that? Why’d I get born into the shithole I did? Why am I here now?”’ He stares up at the sky, sees only stars. ‘I never dreamed of other cities. Never liked the look of them. Too busy.’
‘But you wanted a family.’
He thinks about that a while. ‘Me dad said our family’s cursed. Maybe he was right.’
‘Then don’t you see, Mick? That’s why you went to the station. For family. And that got taken away from you too.’
He doesn’t blink.
‘You want what you never had. Which is maybe why you’re still here.’ She rests her head on his shoulder. It’s the closest he’s ever felt to another human being. He doesn’t understand the sensation. But doesn’t fight it either.
Maybe . . .
It won’t be safe here anymore. Not with what he’s done. And certainly not if Rose discovers the truth. But for now, she’s all he has.
14
The street is lined with cars. Sweltering reporters in suit jackets and hats mill outside the police station, notepads in hand, photographers at their shoulders.
The Black Shanty is deafening with talk when Mick walks in. He knows the truckies hadn’t seen him, and didn’t think anyone saw him come back through town. But he has to be sure.
‘What’s up, Bruce?’ he asks when he can shoulder up to the counter.
‘Haven’t you heard, Micky? We got ourselves a murderer.’
‘Out here? Bullshit.’
‘Not just the big cities no longer. Looks like it’s spreading to God’s country too. World’s going to hell, I reckon. We got war, these unwashed bums baying for revolution, dropping out and doping up. Morals breaking down. In fact, it’s two of them hippies got killed. One was hit by a road train on the way up to Newtown.’
‘A road train? How’s that murder?’
The old fella he squeezed past to get to the bar turns an eye on him. The man’s white beard’s yellow around his mouth from cigarettes and his nose is like a reddened turnip, but there’s still authority deep in his voice. ‘’Cause her hands were tied, son. Someone was gonna have their way with her.’
Mick looks suitably shocked. ‘There were two —’
‘Boyfriend was found out on the plain,’ the man says. ‘Dumped. Walter Irving spotted him flying his duster over this morning. Reckoned it looked suss. Van’d been run into the only trees for miles. Like on purpose. Probably wouldn’ta found it for ages if the girl hadn’t run. Bloody shame. Only seventeen.’ He takes a wistful swallow of beer and goes back to yarning with the men next to him.
Bruce squirts out a pint and talks a bit lower. ‘Wish I’d had some warning. Already been through two kegs. Gonna run out by tomorrow if this interest keeps up.’
Mick glances around the room. Sees many of the townsfolk in to check out what’s going on, a number of reporters amongst them quenching their thirst and getting any further tidbits they can. ‘Looks like half the ruddy town’s here.’
‘Rest’ll be in the other two up the street. Least those bastards don’t have to worry about babysitting.’ His kids scamper in and around his legs.
Mick squirms to a corner and listens in on conversations, but the old codger at the bar’s still the most informed. Rumours ping back and forth of a gang of locals with spotlights hunting the two hippie victims down like roos, or that the doped-up boyfriend did it himself, or that it was the truck drivers.
Old Kev holds court in his stained underpants. Mick’s about to duck to avoid him, but the bum’s drawn quite a crowd of faces and instead he moves closer.
‘. . . just like up in Darwin,’ the old coot’s saying. ‘Musta been three, four years ago. At the start of sending over troops. This long-hair was in town causing a stir, earbashing anyone who’d liste
n. Started rounding up a bit of a following. Organised a sit-in outside the army barracks, tried to prevent the trucks getting out. Turned violent, some of the police got injured. Then he started picketing the city council meetings. Sure musta upset someone, ’cause they found him dead not two days later. Kicked to death, they reckon, head stomped in. Real gruesome. Said it musta been one of the other dopers turning on him. People don’t think straight when they get on the stuff these bastards do. Mushrooms and LS-fucking-D and all that shit.’
‘And you’d be an expert at thinking straight, Kev,’ one of the men says to laughter.
‘Fuck you, Garrett. You plough the wrong paddock again this year?’
The man frowns. ‘That was me boy’s fault. Said it was the top one, from where he was standing.’
‘That boy of yours weren’t born – he was shat. And he’s just as big a turd as you are.’ Garrett shuts up. ‘All I’m saying,’ Kev continues, ‘is either these two pissed off the wrong people, and soldiers got ’em back. Or there was someone else with them did this, whacked outta their mind. Drugs are the scourge, boys.’
‘Drink to that,’ someone says and even Kev laughs.
Something begins to churn in Mick’s guts. The attention of the state – if not the whole country – is on the town. Which’ll make it obvious to the other killers there’s a new threat nearby, one drawing far too much exposure to their operations.
Even though Mick waits out the afternoon, Jerry the Fiddler doesn’t show his face, and that tightening inside gets worse. He’s heading out to his car – planning to drive past the fat bastard’s home to see if he’s there – when something slows out the corner of his eye. He looks up to the police car beside him. Kravic inside, dark sunglasses like some sort of government agent from telly, and he points a commanding finger to the station then continues on.