Trucksong

by Andrew Macrae

  Chapter 19

  More days in the shack. I ate up that manual. Flipping through the diagrams and puzzling words from the past time. I started to think on the beginnings of a plan. I studied the shapes of the King’s circuits and the patterning of its form. It didn’t make much sense, it were like a lotta things from back then, it’d got its own meaning lost and now it was just markings in the file. Still if you look at something long enough you can start to see the patterns forming like with Smoov’s notes, if there’s stuff that comes up again and again, shapes and pictures, it starts to build its own thing. I thought I could recognise something from the markings and how the King looked those times when I’d seen it and I started to think I’d found something I could exploit. For three days me head swam with all the inner circuits and buried secrets of the Brumby King’s insides scrolling behind me eyes. Shapes of truckforms and designs and things I couldn’t of had a chance at knowing, maps of lost times, dead end diagrams sketching out the darkness inside of the King’s dark heart. If such a thing as the King could be said to have a heart at all.

  Then I seen something. A line from the donk, a power line that run the length of the King’s chassis, a feedline that all the other circuits was drawn to like moths to a campfire lamp. I followed that line through the designs, doubling back when a branch run to its end, but then I thought I seen something I could use. There was a place right underneath the truckcab where the line poked its head near the King’s metal skin, where the armour wasn’t so thick on the underbelly. I reckoned if I could cut the line, the King would be crippled.

  Flushed with the knowing, I gathered me last possessions, packed up me tote and me typewriter and some last of the roady for the climb back up the mountain towards the lair of the Brumby King. I’d got no truck no more. All I had was me wits. Sinnerman was gunna be up there as well, made me feel sad and angered, plus I was gunna face down a whole Brumby mob. There was the Left Tenant and Storm and all manner of robos and droans slaved to the King. There was a mob of about six wild indie trucks that would be decalled and painted in shimmering glyphs and smiling colors and signs from the Wotcher. If the manual weren’t right, I could try to wrangle them with a custom patch if I needed to, at least it would mess with their program. Just getting in there would be hard but I had to do it to save Isa and then everything would be ok. We could go roading together and she could show and I could wrangle trucks. So it was that I gone up the track to the mountain, step after step.

  The slope was steep but there was a track carved by little wallabies through the brush. Hunkered down on me knees sometimes and sometimes walking tall. I sweated and skanked me way up the hillside over damp gullies and rocky ridges on me way up to where I would find the lair. By the time I come up close to the treeline the landscape was desolate and wearied and worried by fallen timbers and bent rain from oldtime chemicals that was spat up outta the ground. Passed a twisted tree trunk muted and barren. I walked through the ash like it was fallen snow, up through the grey rocks and stones towards the Brumby King. What would the inside of a real life brumby lair be like? Would there be burning fires of trucktyres or would it be black as night coz they would use sensors to see in the dark? On and on I climbed up through them strange trees in that strange time of broken light.

  At first there was no sign of anything living or dead, machine or animal. Then I come up on a track that wound up the mountain and it was recent used, heavy tracks and indeed even I could make out the tracks of the Brumby King itself, wide tyres bitten into the ground with strong metal teeth. I skirted out the other side of the road, I didn’t wanna leave any tracks of me own. Wandering up and up I came to a plain of fresh downed trees and it was hefty trunks and a tangle of branches and leaves everywhere. I sweated and sweated the cool air damp and me heart pumping. When you see a tree growing in the ground, you think when it’s down it’s just a matter of stepping over the trunk and on you go. But it’s not like that. There’s branches up high what when they’re on the ground they’re all tangled and when there’s a whole bunch of them together there’s almost no way through. It was slow going. Though I was a lot stronger since last I past this way when Sinnerman betrayed me, I still was not in the best shape. I tried to find a different path around the wreckage of the trees but it took me out across the top of a cliff face, wind howling, whipped up by some demon of the sky. Scattered rain and clouds and ice drumming down, the mist closed in. I lost the path. There was whiteness below and whiteness above and whiteness on the inside of me head where I tried not to think what lay up ahead for me.

  Down below on the bottom of that cliff there were mountain shapes shifting in the mist. I kept moving one foot in front of the other across the top of the lip and pretty soon I was around and on the wrong side of the mountain and lost all together. The wind blowed and I shivered in me trucksuit that was not warm enough for this clime. I hunkered down and ate some roady and waited for the storm to pass. Night come on and me mind started to fill. It were the old fears come lurching back, Smoov’s face the face of Crow and above it all there was Isa. She was so close now, I could almost feel her thoughts and feelings. She would be in pain and she would be in need of being freed and I wondered and I fretted on the time we would first lay eyes on each other again but I couldn’t picture the moment in me head. I had a shock, I couldn’t quite remember her face but I had memories of her eyes and her smiles and her hair and her smell and the way her skin feeled under me touch that time we did it and how wet she was where I touched her before I slid it in. I didn’t want to sleep but I needed me wits. There was strange creatures from the dream land groaning in the hollows of rock and stone, creatures with hearts made from bleached bone. The wind sung a trucksong in me ears like the whine of a trancemission like the beating of a donk and I woke in the freezing cold dark and the stars were out shining so bright like millions of points of white light so cold and far and I realised the sound I could hear was a donk, a brumby donk rumbling off in the darkness below. I wasn’t as far off beam as what maybe I’d thought. I crept off in that way looking for whatever signs as could be found.

  Circling to the edge of the road I saw the gaping mouth of the brumby lair and a sensor clipped sweet and not yet tripped. I didn’t want them to know I was coming so I steered clear, watching out for any others as I might come across them. It was a long way up and the day was coming on. Still mountain air rang in me ears with a silent high pitch whine and that big burning sun rose over the mountains in the easterling. The light shifted from soft gold to harsh yeller as it got its fire on. I couldn’t rely on force to get through. I just had to go on me own two feet and try for the sneek so I steered clear of the road and skirted to the top. I figured them brumbies was too smart to have not left a hatch at the back, even if it were only small enough to take a meched truckmind in a telly presents droan. So thats how I spent me next day under the harsh light so close up to the sun’s firey eye, scouting round and staying well clear of any sensors I could find, looking for a backdoor hatch.

  Birds scattered all around and I went up and up on that lonely mountain. Again I heard the rumbling of brumby donks and I skirted to where I could see and not be seen over the road. A line of trucks coming up to the summit from the entrance. They were led by the Left Tenant and I wondered what they were doing up there. Next come Storm, Sinnerman’s treacherous partner. Then there was others from the brumby mob. I read their names in glyphs as they come on, Silverfish with sparkling silver paints. Gelgoogle and Bauntaun and Little Cab and Ashsmash the last one, all of them decked out and working on through the dragline of the morning sun. Ashmash was all in yeller and black stripes, a towtruck, only the yeller were dirty from years of soot and the black was pock marked with rust and bullet holes old and recent too, lined with silver not rusted yet. It towed the truckbody of a fallen brothertruck on the surface of that mountain. They looked sad as bandicoots on a burnt out ridge, slow and mournfull trucksong booming out in the still air. And pretty soon the flapples come down o
ut of the sky and scavenging droans come to pick the parts off of the dead truck bodies carried up by Ashsmash. Then I looked closer and I recognised some of the panels on the truckbody.

  They were from Sinnerman.

  Them brumbies had took what they wanted from me poor old truck and left the rest for the flapples that could digest all but the chassis.

  Storm was leading the procession. It wasn’t obviously overjoyed to see its mate Sinnerman laid out for flapple meat and I felt sad at that. There was a droaning trucksong coming from their sound systems, deep long bass waves and a leaking high pitch keening wailing, sad with no beats except for the rhythm of sadness. I felt that sadness and I was sorry that Sinnerman sold me out for nothing in the end. Would of been a bit different if Storm had at least wanted the same thing. But as it was, it looked like the brumbies had got their hydraulics into Storm. I reckoned Sinner had tried to lure Storm away from the Brumby King but Storm wasn’t going to have a bar of it and Sinner wasn’t going to budge and become brumby neither so it were curtains for Sinnerman.

  I watched me solid old truckmate that I had roaded through many adventures with as it was towed out to be buried in the sky of the mountains above the brumby lair and the trucks moved in slow patterns and dimmed their lights and sung their sad trucksong while a hungry bunch of flapples hissed and crunched over Sinner’s spent metal bones. Its plates and panels that it was once so proud of was picked to bits and carried off into the sky. I spose it was a fitting in the end and I wondered what Storm wanted with it. Storm stayed longer than the others, doing some of its own mournful sounds and lowing in a slow roll around Sinner’s carcass as it got carried away and up into the sky by the flapping carrion birds. Maybe Storm was remembering times past and working out if things could of been different. But who knows what went on inside them truckminds, they was as baffling as wild animals. Storm started humming a sad lonely groove which I thought were a bit strange since it were clearly responsible for Sinner’s demise. I watched too with a heavy heart.

  It were after all the trucks had gone back down to their lair that I thought it were safe to start moving again. But just as I were getting going there was a rustling of wings and feathers and for a second I thought of Crow and the ark arking voice come to call me to another place, come to sing me hands to different actions to what I wanted them to. But a random freek through the link squawked in me head and through me bones and I realised it was one of the flappling droans. I turned to see it hopping towards me, its beady eyes and vicious beak glinting with metal shavings and shards of glass. I backed away. I’d never heard of a flapple going after flesh before but then I latched on to the number of the random freek. It was Sinnerman’s tag file sig. I lined up a hit of skull death for it and that flapple come easy and quiet as a lamb. There were some strange mechanics afoot, for it seemed what were left of Sinner’s truckmind, was now blipping on the inside of this flapple. I backed away but then I were made stronger by the thought as a plan grew on me that now maybe I would stand a chance of getting inside the lair by myself. The flapple weren’t a threat. It was tryin to make a mend for the trouble Sinner had caused me and I realised I could rig a fix in the camera eye holes of the flapple or I could send it down as a decoy while I climbed in from above. I was so close I may as well die as try so I risked it.

  First up I needed to find another way in besides the main gate so I patched through the droan’s eyes and rigged its vision for infrared so I could see where the exhaust was coming from on the top of the mountain and you know that droan was not Sinnerman but it had parts of Sinner’s same smarts and it was fooled by the brumbies that welched on their deal. Or maybe it didn’t want to go with Sinner and Sinner didn’t want to stay slaved to the Brumby King, so it tried to make a run and it was caught and slaved anyway and then eaten for parts and throwed to the sky for flapple meat. And so now it was up in the sky where I sent it and it soared high on the currents of the clouds and the traffic flows of heated stacks of air rising from the hot ground of the valley below. Pretty soon I had me fix on that exhaust vent and it wasn’t too far away neither so next I climbed over to it and I sent the flapple down to the entrance, ready to trip some sensors in the main gate as I climbed down the funnel into the darkness of the lair.

  Down that channel I went in to the heart of the Brumby King’s world. In to the heart of what would take me closer to Isa. The walls was covered in soot and ash and in the dark I felt me way down the narrow passageway thinking of them creatures that lived in the rocks and stones that came out of the cracks in the night. They are so skinny but they move as one with the world and so I moved closer and closer down, listening with me whole body as I went. Dark wings patterning the darkness with rustling sounds. Things moving far off down in the dark, creepy crawling things, but then I realised that I was a creepy crawling thing myself, and so I rested easier a bit then. I was one with the darkness, I was moving as one with the motions of the earth marked by the signs of the Wotcher. There was nothing to fear in that dark, there was nobody home except myself I thought, and down I crept, down down towards the centre of things, towards the secret centre where all questions would be answered. There was more movement down ahead, a scurrying scuttling sound and the spark of a match flared Crow’s face as he lit a durry and I saw he was young as me. We were getting more and more alike the closer we got together.

  ‘Fancy seein you down here,’ I said.

  ‘Ha ha. Don’t mind me, I’m just some old bloke who’s been followin you aroun. Or maybe its yer own self who’s been followin me all this time, waitin for the chance to come up on me like this.’

  ‘I ain’t followin you. You’re like me fucken shadow. I can’t shake you.’

  ‘I already told you, we is rollin on the same road. Who’s to say what side of the face casts the shadow?’

  ‘I’m not like you.’

  ‘Why don’t you try this coat and see how it fits?’

  ‘I’m not puttin that filthy thing on. I ain’t no crow. Besides, you’re nuthin, there’s nuthin to you.’

  ‘Well if there’s nuthin to me then what’s this coat hangin on then?’

  He took off the coat. Underneath, he was just a skinny bloke in dirty rags.

  ‘Take it,’ he said.

  Me mind skipped a track like a skittery Wotcher show cut in and out from the trancemission. It threw me off to see him like that, I couldn’t speak.

  ‘Ha ha, we are one and the same, boy. You’re just like me. We been tied together on the roadin and we’re gunna road some more yet,’ he said. ‘I got some more fine truckdream haze and cactusflower grog for you to get yer rocks off on.’

  I looked down and I seen all along I already wore the coat what kept me warm through the nights and hidden on the road during the days. Gifted and passed on down the line. I’d been wearing it so long I forgot even how it come to me in the first place.

  ‘Nah, mate. I don’t wanna bar of it. You’re nuthin, you’re just in me imaginins, makin up suggestions for me,’ I said.

  He was right there in front of me, the creases on his face gone smooth and then the next second there wasn’t nuthin there at all.

  ‘I know you, Crow,’ I said.

  And I had the understanding. It were my coat, I owned it.

  There were no more Crow but I could still hear his voice in me head.

  ‘Well I see you got me number all right. I guess I’ll just go quietly.’

  ‘Nah, Crow it’s not gunna be like that. I know you and I know yer tricks. You’re not a quiet one at all but I call you out now. I’m cawin you.’

  I made a dry rattling cough in me throat and cawed him out. I knew him now, he was me, the I inside the eye. He was the thing down from the inside that moved me hand when I was too scared of Smoov to fight back. If I was ever gunna be free from him I had to start being smart enough to see the connexions between things so Crow didn’t have to put them together for me from what I already knew but were too dumb to see the truth.

 
‘You got no hold on me no more,’ I said.

  There was no reply. Putting it out into words, the knowing of Crow sucked his cawing voice out of me head like poison from a snakebit arm. Because I knew Crow all right, it was just the same as a creature in the rock, it was nothing, it was songsmoke and haze dust so I pulled that trucktyre coat closer round me shoulders and I kept on going down. I wasn’t afraid of Crow no more and maybe he even left me some of his powers.

  Chapter 20

  Into the lair of the Brumby King I crept. Down and down and down into the bloody heart of things, sitting in the chamber like a bullet in the breech. I reckoned facing the King inside, in a small space, would do away with its power, it would equalise us. Passage opened out to a bigger chamber. There were arc lights set up around the place, smell of fuel and solvents and grease and funky mechanic organics wafting through it all, thick rotted meats and sweet red mud. I found me way around the edges, sneaked like a shadow in me trucktyre coat through the wreckage of dead trucks and the bodies of spent droans and robos and the blood and the muck of slaughtered animals that had been pillaged for their bits as well. The brumbies so set on their pathway that they were feeding on meat now too, like a goanna droan would.

  A tangly nest of wires rustled in the half light and it was like a dream where you look down at the ground and first you see one snake but then the whole place is crawling with them and you gotta make your way around them. Slinky snakes, all coiled around each other and writhing together in an oily mess of mating bodies. There were snake eggs and snakeshit white and glowing in the edges of the mangled tangles. And snakes were everywhere, all eating up the leftovers and eating the grease and bits of scavenged parts and robos, a dry scratching sound like fencing wires rasping together.