by TJ Park
“Yes. The rest of us had nothing to do with it.”
He couldn’t look Janet in the eye, because it wasn’t exactly true. Mick had let it happen. If Warlock had been there, he would have been a walkover, too. And Doug himself had given Cutter free rein by way of his own bad judgement.
Janet’s face tightened. “Was that her blood on your shirt?”
The mare’s nostrils flared. Her head jerked this way and that.
“I wasn’t there when it happened, Janet.”
“Right. Well, it’s good we sorted that out,” she said. “I’d hate to think you weren’t a decent bloke.”
Doug got back on the bike, kickstarted it, missed. “You’ve got it upside down.”
“You forget, chum, I was there when you told a ten-year-old boy you’d shoot his mum if he didn’t do as he was told.”
“There was a police marksman in that copter. I was in a tight spot.”
“I’ve watched you since you’ve shown your true faces. You’re the leader of this little gang, that’s obvious. You led them to the woman this Cutter murdered and then you led them here. That’s the truth, right?”
The mare tried to set off in another spin. Janet pulled her back to stay in position. The grimace she made while doing it lingered as she gazed at Doug.
“Where’s this Cutter now?”
“Killed.”
“You?”
“The woman did it.”
Her eyes went tighter with new suspicion. “You said he killed her.”
“She got him first. He died later.”
Janet looked away briefly, connecting with a woman she’d never met, understanding the necessity of ugly things that had to be done regardless of what happened next. Perhaps she was being inspired. She returned her attention to Doug.
“And this Cutter? If he weren’t dead, where would he be right now?”
Doug gauged the distance between him and the mare’s jittery, stamping hooves. He didn’t answer.
“That’s what I thought,” Janet said.
She dug her heels into the mare’s flanks, and Doug thought she would ride him down, anyway, bike and all. But at the last moment she pulled the mare over into the direction of the far paddocks, urging her mount into a faster gallop, as if she could never be far enough away from him.
***
There was no need to open the last gate. It was torn off its hinges. A chain was the only thing keeping it off the ground, so it lay like a sloped cattle-grid, making it a bad place for the cattle that had stumbled onto it.
One heifer lay in front of the gate, thrown free, but with all four legs bent at wrong angles. It was alive, but not by much. A smashed foreleg pulled rubbery, convulsive strokes through the air. The head was crushed on one side, at a guess done by other cattle trampling it.
On both sides of the gate, the fence was torn down or bowed, and the twisted bodies of cattle were bound up in the wires. Janet had a torch in her saddlebag and its beam hurried over them, trying to take it in. Most of the animals were lifeless, a combination of shock, asphyxiation and blood loss. Where they weren’t trampled or crushed, they were either garotted by the razor-like wire of the electric fence or torn up by the barbed wire that ran parallel to it. The electrics had shorted out long before, leaving behind a low-lying pall of smoke mixing with the stink of boiled blood and cooked excrement.
The few stock still alive were effectively trapped. Moist, bulging eyes and wet gaping mouths pulsed like stranded fish inside the heaped dead. Hoarse bellows filled the air. The survivors were being slowly crushed by the immovable weight of the dead. Some had given birth in their death throes. The newborn calves hadn’t stood a chance.
Janet dismounted at the terrible sight, though the mare would only be harder to restrain on foot. “Give me the rifle,” she said, pressing the reins on Doug. No matter she would find the rifle impossible to operate with her tied wrists. She was crying.
“No.”
But there was not much force in his refusal. He was in shock as well. Janet might have succeeded if she thought to pull the rifle away from his shoulder at that moment.
“We can’t leave them this way!”
A cow was strung upright in slings of wire. Leaping erect in an attempt to pull away from the fence, the heifer was yanked back into it again. It waited a moment to catch a breath, had another go. Its back was smouldering. Doug could hear a calf over the far side of the fence keening for its mother.
Janet scrubbed her face savagely with her hands to put away the tears, her stubborn, practical self quickly reinstated. Mostly.
“Something panicked them, drove them into the fence.”
“The dogs?”
She didn’t understand.
“The dogs that attacked your son. The boy I saved,” he reminded her.
Everything was wrong about the situation. He didn’t think she could explain it. The stink of burned cowhide drove nails into his head. He was suffocating in the reek of blood and raw fear. He desperately wanted to leave. Nothing here spoke of a natural event. But he refused to give in that easily to the heebie-jeebies.
Janet shook her head. “Can’t be.” She thought of a different tack. “We’ve had feral dogs bother the cattle sometimes, usually dingo-crosses. But nothing like this. Only one or two heifers should have got caught up in the fence at most. Wild dogs run them to ground until they’re too weak to look after their calves. This …” She waved vaguely at what confronted them. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“I wouldn’t have thought there was enough juice in these things to singe an animal, let alone –”
“There isn’t! The voltage was boosted. Look at it! Most of the wire has melted.”
“Could it have been a lightning strike?” He was the one reaching for straws now.
Janet turned a pleading face to him. “None of it makes sense! Those flashes of light we saw from the house. That should have driven them away from the fence, not into it. I feel sick.” Again, she crowded Doug. “Give me the rifle!”
The mare stamped and reared back, pulling Janet away from him. He moved up alongside her to keep the mare from bolting. He knew from their short association that Janet was not the type to simply let go of the reins. She would end up dragged the length of the field.
The mare kicked and whinnied.
“Let the horse go!” He threw away his portion of the reins and tried to tear the rest from her hands, but she wouldn’t give them up.
“Let go, Janet! It’ll find its way back to the house. You can ride pillion with me!”
Her face was suffused with loathing.
The mare stumbled into them broadside. Her rear legs lashed out in a near-miss.
Janet darted forward and hung onto the mare’s bridle, stroking her nose and speaking encouraging words into her ear. The mare began to settle. Uneasy legs kicked out again, but it was only a flutter. Janet was able to gather up more of the reins. The mare walked nervously on the spot, hooves thumping the dirt. She gave the reins the occasional brisk tug, but did not contest its hold on her again. Her head rose high and alert and she nodded to unseen ciphers only she could interpret.
Doug followed the horse’s lead. He became more attentive to his surroundings.
The lone calf, still unseen on the far side of the fence, did not mewl solely for its mother any more. There was urgency in the call now. Without warning, the cries stopped. The bellows and noise of the remaining cattle fell away. Ears were straining instead of throats. The heifer held in her wire harness of fencing ceased her efforts to escape, letting the binds take on the weight. Her legs finally buckled beneath her, not in exhaustion, but in surrender. The animal was resigned. Waiting.
Doug’s eyes pored over the dark backdrop beyond the heaps of cattle. “Get on the horse and go,” he whispered.
“What?”
He tore at the tape binding Janet’s wrists together and freed her arms. He wasn’t gentle about it. “Go! Get home! I’ll stay and put the animals out o
f their bloody misery.”
He meant to do no such thing of course. He would be running for his life as soon as she was gone from sight.
“No!” His offer of doing the mercy killing – lie or not – seemed to offend her more than anything else.
He didn’t give a damn about that. He could taste it like a base metal in his mouth. He could feel it lifting his scalp. The fine hairs on his arms and neck rose up, responding to a gathering voltage in the air that had nothing to do with faulty electric fences. “Go on! Get out! Before it gets here!”
She stared at him. He was shocked by the claim he had made.
He tried again. It started less certainly, didn’t finish that way. “The cattle risked the fence because something worse is coming.”
Fear enormous in her, Janet spoke. “What have you done?”
The mare was beyond resisting any more. She stood in place, trembling violently.
“Move!” Doug screamed into Janet’s face. He boosted her up onto the saddle with rough hands, nearly toppling her over the other side. The trapped cattle called again, only a few bellows offered. A last weak hurrah. They quietened down into a vital, expectant silence.
Doug threw the reins at Janet. “It’s nearly here! Go! GO!”
And still he had no idea what it was that was coming.
He ran to the bike. Kickstarting it into angry life, he twisted it around on the track to bring up the rear. But Janet hadn’t listened. She was headed the wrong way, going back toward the cattle at the fence.
***
Mick dropped the hood into place. Perhaps it was premature on his part, but he was confident it would not have to be opened again. “Do the honours, Rob.”
Despite being tired, Mick was still sharp enough to step out of the way of the ute before Rob could get settled in the driver’s seat.
Rob climbed in awkwardly, some hopping involved because of the tape tied between his ankles. At first, he seemed humiliated by the improvised shackles when waddling his first straight line, but he had adjusted quickly enough. Just another thing to endure and work around. Mick guessed that the grazier’s outlook was born out of continually adapting to the hardships the land threw at him.
Rob turned on the ignition. Only the dry click of the turning key happened.
“It’s dead.”
Mick was incredulous. “It can’t be. Try again.”
The next go got a cough from the engine. Nothing more.
Rob had another try and kept the key turned on. The engine kept catching, but couldn’t quite get over the invisible wall and start. Rob tried pumping the choke, but nothing happened
“Well, don’t fucking flood it!” Mick’s face fell flat. “Give us another look.”
Rob released the hood. “We missed something.”
“The hell we did.”
Rob hopped down and joined Mick at the engine as he began looking it over. Rob pored over it, too, as concerned as Mick that things should go to plan. Mick pushed past him impatiently, fiddling with the plugs and connections on that side.
“Oh, no bloody wonder,” he exclaimed. He struggled with a recalcitrant nut, grunting from the effort, his black greased fingers slipping over it. “Where’s the wrench?” He grunted again, loudly. “Christ almighty, how bloody tight did you –”
A sixth sense alerted Mick, plus the awkward shuffle back that Rob was forced to make instead of the smooth and primed step he would no doubt have preferred.
Oh, you stupid, stupid old man, Mick berated himself, as he moved much too slowly to get out of the way. The conman conned. And by one of the oldest tricks in the book. Always make your move in the excitement just before the finish, when the mark was most distracted.
Foolish to let his guard down, but smart enough not to duck so the blow could follow him. He weaved sideways instead.
The monkey wrench, meant to cave in his skull, skimmed off his shoulder. For a glancing blow it still struck hard. An enormous numbing pain sank into his arm, travelled the length of it, the nerves singing.
Mick fell back, twisting around, making the added mistake of clapping his hand to the injured shoulder, instead of using it to block the next swing at him. And there was Rob, as he knew he would be, bringing the wrench down again. It hit Mick square in the forehead, thudding off the bone.
Again Mick was saved by the simple fact of Rob’s shackled legs. The grazier was forced to sacrifice strength for aim. If his swing had missed he would have been sent flailing to the ground, so he made sure he struck accurately instead. The resulting blow was piss-weak. Mick was given an instant headache, and he had two out-of-focus Robs to dodge, but that was the extent of it. Even his glasses had stayed in place.
Rob moved back too fast as he tried to put some space between the two of them, and found himself suddenly windmilling for balance, and left wide open. Mick punched him in the throat. The blow bounced the two men off each other. Coughing and wheezing, Rob collapsed to the ground while Mick grabbed the front of the ute to keep him upright. At that moment, Mick would have gladly watched Rob choke to death on a crushed windpipe, but he knew he hadn’t hit him hard enough for that.
Then something occurred to him. Cursing his endless stupidity, he groped for the pistol under his shirt, deciding it was time to end this farce once and for all, even if it meant one dead grazier at the finish of it. But Rob regained his knees, if not his feet, and he swung the wrench the same instant Mick’s hand came out with the pistol. The old man was left dancing on the spot, holding onto his vibrating wrist as the pistol rattled down into the open engine.
It was right then Mick had his best idea all evening. He simply moved out of Rob’s reach. The cow farmer would be tripped by his own shackles.
Rob lunged and fell, but managed to grab hold of Mick’s ankle. With something to hold onto, Rob had no worries about having to reduce force for balance any more. He slammed the head of the wrench into Mick’s calf. Mick fell, his leg thrumming in agony. Both men were down now, but Rob had the advantage, up on his knees with a weapon, while Mick lay on his stomach eating dirt.
Mick went for the only chance left to him. He scrambled for the ute and began wriggling under it. The wrench followed him, clanging off grill and fender.
Rob made a snap decision, sitting down on the old coot’s squirming legs before he could pull them in all the way under the ute.
Now the murderous old bastard wouldn’t be going anywhere.
But neither could Rob.
Furtive taps and thumps came from under the ute as the old man’s lower legs twisted from side-to-side beneath Rob. They were not the actions of a man trying to pull free and Rob had to wonder if the old man was in some way suffocating or having a heart attack. Then he realised what was going on. Rob could only listen helplessly as Mick groped around the engine cavity in search of his gun.
***
It was not by choice that Janet rushed to meet the fence. She and the mare were at odds with each other. In struggling to go their own different ways, their efforts combined to drive them in a direction neither wanted.
Its head twisted over by Janet’s pulling on the reins, the mare stumbled sideways into the cattle caught in the fence. It floundered amongst them, briefly squatting on one, a fetlock almost mired in between others. The animal was sure to come crashing down, with Janet driven under.
Doug launched the bike forward to cut between the panicky mare and the fence, the front wheel bouncing back from a heifer’s hard gut. He revved the throttle to a loud roar, in hope of startling the mare away. He did too good a job.
The mare reared up on its hind legs, stumbling backward. Just when it looked ready to topple onto its back, Janet pulled the reins hard around, the mare swivelling to land on all fours out on open ground. Doug quickly turned the bike about and darted in behind the mare, rounding her away from the fence.
With a short, startled kick at Doug’s pass, the mare began to gallop. Doug swung in behind, following, glad she was going all out. He looked bac
k until his neck ached, but he only saw the lumped, grey knolls of dead cattle behind him, swiftly put away by the dark. His first notion was to tail the mare, to act as cattle dog if it went off course again. Then he slowed a little, concerned that Janet might not be able to stop the mare if he hounded it too well.
Suddenly he remembered he needn’t worry about that. A runaway horse would have nowhere to go. The next gate was still shut.
***
Rob had to act. He couldn’t just sit on the old bastard until he recovered his gun or one of his mates came along. He looked around for something to help him and recognised that he had a veritable arsenal hanging from the shed walls. He lurched to his shackled feet and began waddling away.
His own legs suddenly freed, Mick kicked at Rob from under the ute, landing him a good shot in the ankle. The grazier’s reason snapped. He came back and returned the compliment. His hands braced on the ute, he stamped repeatedly on Mick’s legs with both feet, forcing him to retreat all the way under the vehicle.
With Mick gone to ground, Rob duck-walked to the nearest bench and swept up the first cutting tool he saw: an old threshing blade, orange with rust, rescued recently from a distant field and put aside for repair. He bent down and hacked at the knotted tape between his feet. The blade made little headway until he spread his legs and gave tension to the tie. It sawed apart in an instant.
He spun around to deal with Mick next and saw him scrabbling to his feet on the far side of the ute. It was the old man’s turn to hobble this time. Good. Rob ran over to take him and Mick suddenly about-turned with a baling hook in his hand. The sight made Rob furious. The old bastard was using one of Rob’s own tools against him!
In some ways, they were like-minded. The look they gave each other was mutual. No more fucking about.
They rushed each other.
***
Janet had no headlight to warn her about the gate. If Doug didn’t do something, she would slam into it at full gallop. He accelerated, veering from the track onto the bumpier paddock. The mare did shy briefly, but Janet pulled her true again.
Compelled by what looked like Doug’s sudden, fearful flight past them, she urged the mare even faster. She couldn’t help turning and looking over her shoulder, not the wisest thing to do while pressing a terrified horse forward. But she didn’t see anything. The sensible woman in her thought Doug’s fear had no firm cause. It was a city dweller’s natural distrust of the country blown out of proportion. But a bright superstitious jot way down deep in the centre of her was difficult to sway.