by Hercules
The Quokka Menace
Hercules Bantas
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Copyright © 2017 by Hercules Bantas
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 1
WARNING: The characters in this book are all CRIMINALS and PIRATES and use really, really bad language
The afternoon sun was high and burning bright in the clear blue skies above Rosetown, a shabby suburb at the very heart of the upwardly mobile city of Melbourne. Its hot rays caused beads of sweat to accumulate on the upper lip of an auctioneer who was hollering at a crowd gathered outside an old hotel. To a casual observer, the auctioneer was ranting incoherent gibberish, but the crowd seemed to understand. Every so often, one would raise a hand and the intensity of the auctioneer's verbal torrent would renew.
Across the road from the pulsating auction, in the cool shadows offered by the shuttered doorway of a defunct haberdashery store, Metho lurked and watched. Auctioneers selling Rosetown properties to non-Rosetown folk had become a common sight of late, which had come as a bit of a surprise to Metho and his crew of ne'er–do–wells. As a destination, Rosetown's one redeeming feature was its proximity to the city centre, and its one saving grace was the cheap and plentiful supply of narcotics on its streets. People actually wanting to live in the place was a novelty.
As far as Metho knew, your average Melbourne citizen saw Rosetown as an unpleasant but necessary stop on the way to the rave. And the newfound desirability of his home town couldn't have been due to the wave of chrome and glass bars that had been popping up wherever there was an empty shop front. Customers rarely crossed their excitingly minimalist thresholds, probably because they weren't a patch on the traditional Rosetown drinking establishment.
Your average Rosetown drinking hole was a dark and dingy cave, where the no-smoking signs had been torn from the walls and converted into ashtrays. They invariably had a bar against a wall at one end—so the staff could have solid brick at their backs—and a host of denizens who gathered to fuck, fight, or play pool with one another. Such was the place that was being auctioned off before Metho's eyes—the infamous Belgradia Hotel, one-time King of Rosetown drinking holes and formerly his favourite pub.
Unlike the non–descript nature of the auctioneer and his audience, Metho was very descript. There was no way that anyone who laid eyes upon him could ever mistake him for someone else, even if they shared the same face. The combination of clothes he wore marked him as a unique individual because they could not possible exist in any other wardrobe.
The visible layer was a blue button-up shirt that had seen better days, matched with pale blue slacks that were far too tight and had a faded white patch over the groin. Decorating his torso was a white tie with a pink silhouette of a naked woman at its centre, and his feet were covered by huge black boots with prominent steel caps over the toes. The overall effect would make your average fashionista either cry out in horror or bow down in supplication to a fashion god.
Another of the old–time residents of Rosetown—obvious by his descript nature—skulked his way into the shadows beside Metho. The new denizen of the darkness was dressed in a paisley outfit that was, remarkably, even more tasteless than Metho's blue ensemble.
'Well?' Metho asked without taking his eyes off the activity across the road.
'Fuck all,' muttered the paisley wearer. People whose doom it was to have regular dealings with him called him Tits, but no one had had the gumption to ask him where the name came from. He was obviously unhappy.
Across the road, the auctioneer brought his gavel down onto his free hand. 'GOING HW–ONCE,' he screamed at the crowd.
'They're gunna turn the Belgradia into fucken apartments, did you know that?' Metho said. 'An' they'll probably stick a shitty cafe in at the bottom so the fuckers can buy their fucken deconstructed fucken coffees.'
Tits shrugged. 'Could be a good thing. More customers.'
The shadows sprouted a third occupant, but unlike his fellow lurkers he wasn't dressed like an extra from a bad eighties film. Skip was his name and he liked to think that he had a little more taste and elegance than his peers. 'You know, I don't reckon the smart casual thing is working,' he said, and pulled a cigarette from the packet he kept in the sleeve of his shirt.
Metho looked at Tits and sighed. 'Yeah, I reckon you're right,' he said. 'How'd you go?'
Skip lit his cancer stick and drew a deep lungful of tainted air, then launched into a stupendous fit of coughing.
'You know they puts cough suppressants in cigarettes now?' Metho said.
'Really?' Skip wheezed between coughs.
'Yeah, and when did you start smoking?' Metho asked, and then raised his hand to stop an answer that wasn't forthcoming in any case. 'Actually, I don't care. The important question is, did you make anything?'
'Nah. Place is full of them new aspirational fuckers that Little Spaz keeps talking about.'
'Yeah, same as where I was,' Tits said.
'An' it looks like there'll be more here soon,' Metho said, 'one of 'em just bought the Belgradia.'
'Not surprisin' considerin' how much houses costs around here these days,' Tits said. 'My uncle sold his place for a bomb last week.'
'Wot, Big Tits?' Skip asked.
'Nah, nah, wrong uncle. This one's from my mother's side. Mr Fithopoulos. He's Snake's old man.'
'Oh wow, is Snake moving out of Rosetown?' Skip asked.
'Snake moved out years ago. Got married an' had kids an' that. Lives in one of those posh places over the other side of the river. It's his parents that just sold out.'
'Bloody hell! Snake? Kids? How?' Skip exclaimed. 'He would shit himself every time a girl talked to him.'
'He found it easier to meet women after he got his law degree.'
While Tits and Skip had been chatting, Metho had been glaring at the non-descript crowd outside the place he had once loved more than any other in all of Rosetown. 'The bastards are fucking up my neighbourhood,' he said and gestured towards his two comrades, then pointed to one of the auction participants who had broken away from the crowd. 'It's time to get us a little profit the old fashioned way,'
'Watch out, there are cops,' Skip said.
'What? Where?' Metho said, then looked to where Skip was pointing. 'Fuck me, so there are. I wonder what's happened.'
The three watched as the police officers strolled along the road.
'You know,' Skip said, after a few moments, 'I don't think anything's happened. I reckon they're just, like, walking around.'
'Nah, that's stupid.'
'Yeah, I know, but I seen it before. In Brighton.'
A perplexed look crossed Metho's face. 'What, just walking around? An' who're they gunna catch in Brighton, anyway? All those fuckers come here to score.'
'They call it patrolling, and they're not after anyone in particular. Not specific, like. Just wandering around to prevent shit happening.'
'But they're in uniform,' Metho protested, 'even someone like Tits could see that they is cops.'
Skip shrugged. 'I know, it's stupid but they do it over there, and it looks like they're going to start doin' it over here too.'
'Fuck me,' Metho said, and smiled a crooked smile, because everything about Metho was crooked. 'If they wanna walk around like dicks in uniform, let 'em. 'Snot like they's gunna catch anyone.'
'Except Tits.'
'Fuck you both,' Tits said, but without rancour. He was bright enough to understand his own intellectual shortcomings.
'Okay, I'll give ya that one,' Metho said. 'We'll just make sure Tits is on runner duty whenever we spot strolling cop–cocks.'
'Problem is, right, problem is, if these fuckers start doing this regular, they could scare off the customers. Most of 'em are scared enough already without having to worry about wanderin' coppers.'
Metho considered the ambling policemen. 'Yeah, I see wot you mean. So wot are we gunna do? First we gets disrupted by the internet and now we get aspirationals and their strolling cop friends fucking up business.'
'We could move the business to Sunni, I s'pose. No one wants to live there,' Skip said.
'Of course no one wants to live there. It's a shit hole full of fucked up fuckers,' Metho said, with feeling. He pondered the thinning crowd across the road, some of whom were chatting to the patrolling police officers. 'Sunni is too far from the city. If we wanna stay in business, we has to stay here, which means we're gunna have to put a stop to this gentrification bullshit.'
'Yeah, right,' Skip said. 'Not even you can beat progress, mate. What are you gunna do? Break the kneecaps of everyone who comes here to buy a house?'
Metho smiled his crooked smile again. 'Mate, I like progress, I just don't like it when things change. And I got nothing against these aspirational fuckers, I just don't want them coming into our suburb and buying our houses. You both know I'm a reasonable man who would rather have peaceful relations with everyone,' Metho said, and his eyes dared either of them to refute his statement, but neither man thought it worth the hospital stay. 'I don't wanna beat the fuckers up, I just want to make them not want to live here.'
Skip considered telling Metho that progress was all about change, but decided against it. Metho was famed for punching people in the head if they said something that annoyed him. 'How you gunna do that without violence?' he asked instead.
Tits, who had been staring at the auction crowd, cut in before Metho could answer. 'Ya know what's strange?'
'Apart from your face, you mean?' Skip said, always ready with a witty witticism.
'Na,' Tits replied, completely missing Skip's insult. 'Look at 'em. The empty eyes, the shallow smiles. They is all off their faces.'
Metho's face suggested he was very close to a violent outburst. 'Big Spaz wouldn't let anyone else operate this side of the river, you dumarse.'
Tits was adamant, even in the face of a beating. 'Just look at 'em, for fucks sake. They're fucken stoned.'
'Maybe they is mail ordering 'em on the internet,' Skip said.
'Nah, I got a cousin who's a postie,' Tits said. 'He's been on the lookout for that sort of thing cos it's a free score as far as he's concerned. He reckons he was finding one a day for a couple of months, but it's dried up.'
'I heard they shut them drug sites down,' Skip said. 'The idiot who was doin' it all put his actual address on the website by accident.'
'Strange as this may sound, I think Tits is right,' Metho said, 'those fuckers have got to be on something.' The tone of his voice made it abundantly clear that he was displeased with the fuckers and was planning on doing something painful to them. 'Let's go talk to Big Spaz.'
(ii)
As Metho, Skip, and Tits hurried through the streets of Rosetown towards the home of Big Spaz, a strange scene was unfolding in a cavern deep beneath their feet. They were not alone in their ignorance, however, because it was a secret cavern, unknown to the civil authorities and therefore a cavern that did not have the requisite permits and licences to exist.
This is unusual in Rosetown, which is governed by a local authority that is scrupulous in the collection of licence fees and penalties because experience had shown that separating the average Rosetown resident from their—usually ill-earned—cash was no easy task. As a result, Rosetown City Council Inspectors were an elite workforce, specially trained to find licence and permit requirements in almost any situation, and to extract maximum cash with minimum resources.
Any Rosetown inspector who accidentally discovered the secret cavern would instantly start a report on his specially designed notepad, where each page is split in two. On one side he would list of licenses and permits that the no-longer-secret cavern would require, and the penalties that had accrued for not them prior to commencing construction. The other side is to count how much money the council was owed.
After making his way inside (Rosetown inspectors are renown for being sneaky), the first thing the inspector would note in his report would be the sheer size of the place; it was so vast that the far end was lost to view (Large Structure License $320, Underground Structure License $280, penalty for operating a large underground venue without a license $1000), and that it was filled to the brim with all manner of mushroom (Commercial Agriculture License $1200, penalty for growing mushrooms without a license $1000). Wooden garden beds, stacked ten high, stood like high rise towers of fungus. Strange tubular mushrooms grew down out of sacks that hung from the ceiling, and long thing mushrooms grew up out of low tubs scattered across the floor. Finally, just before taking to his toes and fleeing, the inspector would have written about the unworldly squat figures, wandering between the mushroom beds and wearing what appeared to be space suits (Foreign Worker Permit $870, insurance and indemnity fee $125, penalty for having unregistered foreign workers $1000).
Although he probably would not have put it in his report, the fleeing inspector may have seen that three of the figures were standing apart from their fungus-tending peers and appeared to be arguing amongst themselves. Despite the fact that the voices were not human and the language they used had never been spoken by a native of the planet Earth, it would have been obvious to anyone in the vicinity that the discussion was not a happy one. The following conversation is a translation of that argument, and would not have been understood by the terrified inspector, even if he had bothered to stop and eavesdrop.
'We've set it all up like you said, sir, but it's not working. The humans are not patronising the new establishments,' said the first unworldly squat shapes. Even with a suit that covered its entire body, it gave off the air of an individual that was getting blamed for something that was not its fault.
'I told you that's what would happen,' said the second unworldly squat being. 'Humans are too stupid to appreciate a good eating establishment. Back home, they'd be breaking down the doors!'
'But this isn't home, you daft bastard. We have to come up with another plan otherwise the acquisition program will stall,' said the third unworldly squat being, in a tone that suggested it wanted to kick the second being's arse clear up through its earhole. Assuming, of course, that it had both an arse and an earhole hidden somewhere in its suit.
'Maybe we're over extending ourselves,' suggested the second of the three. 'Let's pull back a bit and focus on the shrooms.'
'Listen, you dopey fuckwit, this isn't the heart of the home forest, you understand?' said the third of the three. 'We've got to take every advantage while we're here cos we don't know how long we're gunna be here.'
The second of the three appeared ready to respond but was interrupted by the first of the three, who was concerned because they had all partaken of mushrooms prior to their meeting and weren't thinking clearly. 'Well, if they won't go to the flabby,' it said, 'why don't we take the flabby to them?'
'Wow, what a good idea,' said the second of the three. 'We'll just go topside, find a nice human and say, hey there primitive idiot, you wanna buy some alien drugs?'
The third of the three stood stock still for a moment and then did a small, but joyous, jump in the air. 'You are a fucking genius,' it said to the first of the three, then kicked the second in its midsection. 'Why didn't you think of that,' it said as the second rolled on the floor in pain.
(iii)
The sculptures in the front garden of Big Spaz's house were legend in Rosetown, but Metho found them a little distu
rbing. Pride of place was given to a tiger sculpted from white marble. It sat on a huge rock behind the box hedge fence and stared imperiously out at the street beyond. It was, Metho thought, a stone masterpiece and was so realistic that neighbours out dog walking avoided the house because the sight of the giant cat drove their pets out of their tiny canine minds.
As a symbol of power and prestige, Metho considered a stone tiger exactly what a crime lord should have in his garden. It was the other statue that was the source of his discomfort. After all, theirs was a dangerous business where reputation and image meant almost everything. Only an idiot or a complete psychopath would have a giant chicken in his front yard, and Metho knew that Big Spaz was no fool.
'What sort of a stooge has a giant fucken chook in his garden,' Skip whispered as they waited on the doorstep.
Metho glared at his friend. 'Shut up dickhead, he's not the sort of bloke you piss off.'
'Who shouldn't we annoy?' Tits asked loudly, just as the door opened to reveal a stately, middle aged woman wearing an evening dress that she could have worn to the wedding of a princess.
'Hello boys,' she said, 'it's a little early in the day for a visit, isn't it? Shouldn't you be at work?'
'There's been a problem, Mrs Spazevski,' Metho said, in a voice that he intended to sound gruff and commanding but which came out strangulated and squeaky. 'We need to speak to your husband.'
'You better come in then,' she said, and stood aside to allow them to pass.
Unlike the cluttered yard, the house inside was spacious and sparsely furnished. A herd of miniature bronze horses galloped along the far wall where the plaster ducks would have been in times gone by. Under their hooves sat a bar made of fake walnut wood, with knots and swirls that reminded Metho of all the creepy stories his older brother had forced upon him when he was a child.