by Marcus Wynne
With her help he pulled himself up. From the top they had a good vantage point; he could see almost a hundred yards to their rear in the dim light. He looked back over the field of termite mounds and felt a cold emptiness in the pit of his belly.
Yes, he'd seen this place before.
In the dim starlight it seemed as though everything rippled for a moment, like the still water of a pond ripples under a faint breeze. He heard the voice of Robert the Aboriginal elder saying, "You've been to this place before… now you'll see it through."
"Did you hear something?" Charlie said to Kativa.
She paused, listening. "No," she said. "Did you?"
"I can't tell," Charley said. "I don't know anymore."
Charley counted his shotgun shells. Four shells remained in the magazine and he had two loose ones in his pocket. He thumbed those two into the magazine. That gave him six rounds of buckshot. He took the magazine out of the silenced Walther and counted four rounds in there with one spare magazine of eight rounds. He'd lost the policeman's revolver in the mad scramble in the cave. The Aborigine's machine pistol would be effective at close range, but Charley could reach out farther with the shotgun. Alfie would know that to use his weapon to maximum advantage, he'd have to get in close. Charley meant to deny him that opportunity. He'd keep him out farther with the ambush he was preparing, where he could punish the hunter with the heavy fire-power from the shotgun. Then he could move in close and finish him with the Walther.
Right here was where it would finish.
There were several other rock outcroppings he could have chosen, but this one, while not the most desirable, would work. Alfie had been a ground fighter, an infantry man, who knew how to read the terrain and he would be watching the most favorable bits for an ambush. Charley hoped to stay one move ahead of him by picking a bit that wasn't as choice but would still serve.
"Wonk! Wonk!"
He was closer still.
3.23
It surprised Alfie that they made no attempt to clear their trail. Someone with Payne's background would at least try, not that it made much difference to a tracker of Alfie's skill. But maybe the time spent as a photographer had dulled Charley Payne's operator instincts. He was limping badly and he had the woman with him, and both were slowing him down. He would be burdened with the fear of anything happening to her and that was a significant handicap. They would be somewhere just ahead, he knew. The place of their final confrontation was as well known to him as the cave he'd wormed out of. Like Kativa and Charley, his Dreaming had led him to that place before.
Up ahead was the field of rock outcroppings that surrounded the clearing where the termite mounds waited in long rows. If they were going to strike back, they'd pick a place like that. Alfie slowed and let his senses, enhanced by his altered state, probe slowly forward. There was something… he crouched low in the dim light and looked closely at their trail. He saw sign: a rock tipped up, exposing the dark side still matted with dirt, a single thread hanging from a thorn, the compressed dirt where a man's heavy weight and booted feet had been. He was still on track. Charley Payne was angry and alive and still mobile and he had that shotgun. For a moment, the old SAS trooper in Alfie was angry for bringing a knife to a gunfight, but then he squelched the thought: that's not how it was meant to be.
He inched forward, every sense alert, aided by his vision that seemed preternaturally keen, which limned each rock with a little nimbus of light like an aura. Each tree branch seemed to speak to him in the movement made by the breeze. He sniffed for scent that spoke to him, the smell of sweaty humans and a trace of the scented deodorant that Kativa wore.
They were close. Very close.
3.24
Charley saw the dim figure moving from rock to rock. The Aborigine sensed an ambush, but he moved forward carefully and well. There was only a hint of a hitch in his stride to indicate he'd been wounded; the man still moved with the supple flow of a healthy animal. Charley watched him with dread. The hunter was cutting their sign and like a good soldier, he was looking ahead for possible ambush sites. He'd slowed, and it seemed to Charley that their hunter was sniffing the air as though he could scent them.
The gold aiming bead on the muzzle of the Mossberg shotgun shivered a bit as Charley eased the long gun into a braced position on the rock. A hundred yards was too far for buckshot and he didn't want to mess about working with another hasty slug. He had to wait until Alfie was close enough to get most of the buckshot into him and that meant twenty-five yards. The Aborigine was carrying something in his hand that wasn't a submachine gun; it looked like a longish club.
The hunter slowed to a stalk; there was no doubt that he sensed something. He came forward, foot by cautious foot, as though he expected them to spring from the bushes. But his attention was on the rock outcroppings. As Charley hoped, Alfie needed to follow their trail into the rocks and that would bring him in close enough for the shotgun to be the decisive factor.
He hoped.
3.25
Alfie saw that the trail led into the rock. It looked as if they had slowed before they got there. Were they cautious entering the boulder field, as he was, or had they been surveying for a likely ambush site? Charley would want to fight. He would have circled back on this trail before now but for the woman. From the look of her tracks, she was nearly exhausted, dragging her feet, and Alfie knew that her long night of fear had nearly broken her. That was one of the things Alfie was counting on: the white man was tired, in country he didn't know, and he had someone else to tend to. Alfie could get close to them, run them ragged, then circle around in front and take them at close range.
But there was something in these rocks.
Be careful, a voice in his head said. The man is close. Alfie nodded in agreement, and then other voices rose within him.
Anurra, it's time. All this is over for you, Anurra, go back to the cave if you want to live. Anurra, look over there, what is that? Anurra, look over here, what is that? Are we out here, too, Anurra? Old Men of the Law, the Law Men, remember us, Anurra? We're here now to see you. No more humbug, no more evil from the thing that used to be Alfie Woodard. He'd been a good boy before you, but that is done and now you, Anurra, you have to go. The Old Men are watching you and we will see you die.
Alfie stayed frozen in place as those voices came and went in his head. He paused to listen, and he thought he heard the far off drone of a didgeridoo and voices raised together in a song that was singing his death. He skinned his teeth back and said, "Not tonight, Old Men. Not tonight, with your feeble songs."
He forced himself to concentrate on the trail in front of him. He picked up his pace and turned his anger into immediate action. The wound in his shoulder burned as though someone had thrust a burning ember into it and twisted it clockwise, just as the spear heated hot had burned in his leg when the Law Men wounded him as a boy.
"Piss off," Alfie said loudly, as though the voices in his head could hear him.
He stalked closer to what waited for him in the rocks ahead.
3.26
Charley watched the Aborigine hunter shake his head as though deviled by insects; he stumbled forward and touched his wounded shoulder as he slowed his pace. Then he seemed to recover himself and he came toward the rocks that concealed Charley and Kativa. Charley held the gold bead sight of his shotgun on the growing figure and counted off the paces as the hunter came straight on, the caution in his pace changing to hurry. Something was bothering him, perhaps the wound or else the time he'd already spent cautiously stalking them. Alfie glided smooth and dark, part of the night, and he looked like one of the figures from the cave wall come to life, a long shadow striding between shadows coming for them.
He was almost there. A few more steps and the ambush would work. Charley guessed him to be twenty yards away and then saw that what the hunter carried for a weapon was a long ornate club. Alfie's eyes gleamed fiercely in the dark, his hair matted with sweat and blood, his body covered with smeare
d paints, the wound in his shoulder massive and black, still running blood. The club was firm in his hand and there was something clipped in the string of his loincloth as well.
He was close enough.
Charley held the gold bead on the Aborigine's midsection and clicked the safety off the shotgun.
Alfie threw himself to one side in a long roll that took him behind a rock even as the shotgun blasted a long tongue of flame at the rock. Charley cursed and racked the shotgun again and again, filling the night with the sing and whine of ricocheting buckshot pellets. Six rounds and the shotgun clicked empty and still he wasn't sure, though he knew he had the hunter in his sights. They had to move fast. He abandoned the shotgun and grabbed Kativa's hand. He pulled her up and they leaped from the top of the boulder and fell the six feet to the ground. When they crumpled to the ground, Charley's ankle collapsed beneath him.
"Damn!" he said.
Kativa shouted, "Charley!"
A club came whistling out of the dark to strike him solidly on the shoulder.
* * *
The click of the safety had warned him to leap for cover. The first two rounds had sent pellets biting into his right side as they glanced off the rocks. Those new wounds had slowed him even more as he blinked to restore his night vision shattered by the muzzle blast of the shotgun, and then he saw them stand and leap from the boulder. He rushed them as they landed, his club held high, and he stumbled just a bit and his blow missed the blond head and hit the shoulder…
* * *
Charley took the blow and spun to face his attacker. He pushed Kativa behind him. She stumbled and fell and Charley bulled forward, tying up Alfie's arms with his, pushing them both back.
"Run!" Charley shouted.
Kativa ran. Charley pushed Alfie back to create distance and fumbled for the Walther stuck down inside his shirt as Alfie swung the nulla-nulla at him again. Charley clawed the pistol out as he stumbled backward to give himself room.
But then Alfie turned away and ran after Kativa.
* * *
Kativa ran. Her fatigue and muscular soreness fell away with the rush of adrenaline her fear used to propel her forward. She looked over her shoulder and saw the face and figure of Alfie Woodard looming up behind her, one hand reaching for her and the other with the club poised high.
* * *
Charley was right behind them and he saw Alfie take her, the quick flash of the club, and then Alfie spun, with Kativa in front of him.
* * *
Alfie held the club across Kativa's thin neck, one end levered into his other arm in a modified figure four choke hold.
"What now, white man?" he said. "Think you can kill me before I snap her pretty little neck?"
He torqued the stick and Kativa choked, her frail hands tugging at the club.
"Put the gun down, Charley Payne. Then we'll settle this proper," Alfie said.
Charley held the weapon out in front of him. His hands trembled as he aligned the sights and kept the suppressor aimed at Alfie. He kept coming forward, but stopped when Alfie torqued the stick tighter and Kativa began to struggle for air.
"Okay," Charley said. He kept the gun aligned on Alfie. "Let her go, Woodard."
"My name's not Woodard anymore, white man. Woodard, that's a white man's name."
"Anurra, then," Charley said.
Alfie laughed. "Not bad, white man." He eased up on the stick and Kativa's breath came in short, rasping chokes.
"Here's what I propose, white man," he said. "You and me, we've men's business to see to. Old men's business, too. Not just the Old Men, but old in time. Don't you feel it? Look around you, at all those watching."
He nodded his head at the termite mounds that surrounded them.
"They're all watching. You know that? The ancestors, they'd take a body and put it in a mound, let the termites eat off all the meat, come back at the end of the season and break it open and take out the bones. They were easier to carry that way, see, and then they'd bring them back to the ancestral grounds. Very important, that. Now my ancestral grounds are run by the white man, my ancestors… I don't even know their names. But I have an adopted family, Charley Payne, a whole slew of adopted ancestors to call on."
Alfie threw his head back, his eyes rolling white in his head, and laughed a guttural laugh. "I've been adopted every which way you can, Charley Payne. Drop your gun. We'll finish this the way it was meant to be. You can't kill me with that .380 before I kill the woman."
Charley hesitated, then a strange certainty rose in him. He lowered the pistol and tossed it aside.
Alfie let the stick down from Kativa's neck, pushed her away, and then brought the club whirling down into a cruel blow on the outside of her leg that collapsed her in a heap, clutching at her numb and useless leg.
"Just to keep her from the gun, mate," Alfie said. He raised his club and charged forward.
Charley went for the CQC-7 knife he kept clipped in his right front pocket. He'd trained and practiced for years and he could draw, open, and slash with that knife in 1.2 seconds. He got the blade open and slashed across Alfie's stomach as he blocked the stick with his other hand. Alfie locked up with him hand to hand, his painted face only inches from Charley's, his breath hot on Charley's face, the Aborigine's face drawn in a rictus of rage, teeth skinned back and something not human glaring out of his eyes. The two men rocked back and forth, then Charley drove a knee hard into Alfie's inner thigh, causing him to stumble enough for Charley to break free and push him back with a front kick.
Alfie sprang backward and thumbed open the knife he drew from his loincloth. He lunged forward swiping with the knife and then brought the club into play, swinging it in a wide figure eight while he advanced on Charley, the club providing a shield while he looked for an opening to cut.
Charley ducked back, then lunged forward, cutting at Alfie's club hand and yanking his knife back before it was struck away. He tripped over a low rock and fell on his back, kicking out to keep Alfie away and catching an agonizing blow on his leg. He rolled to his feet and flung a hand-sized stone at Alfie, catching him in the chest. Alfie sprang forward, chopping down with his stick. Charley leaped out of range and swiped wildly with his knife to keep the Aborigine at bay.
"Pretty handy with that, white man," Alfie said. "Used it before. I'll take it with me to use on the woman, later."
Alfie lunged forward, poking with the stick and caught Charley a sharp, breaking blow in his ribs. As they circled, Kativa crawled for the Walther. Charley cried out, "No!" as Alfie swung and struck her across the back of her head, laying her out prone on her belly.
"Bastard," Charley hissed.
"She'll come to when I'm snacking on you," Alfie said.
Charley held a rock in one hand and his knife in the other. He feinted as though to throw the stone, then suddenly rushed in and struck Alfie hard on the wounded shoulder. Alfie screamed then, a thin high shriek like a rabbit in a snare. He dropped his club and Charley entered slashing, kicking the club away. Alfie took two long hard cuts on his left arm, but got Charley with a long gouging cut across his pectoral muscles before they both sprang back to create distance and circle once more. The two men circled each other and for each of them it seemed as though the termite mounds around them began to shimmer.
Charley saw a flash of doubt cross Alfie's face and in that moment he knew something was speaking to the hunter. He lunged forward, his knife extended like a fencer's foil, and he buried the blade in Alfie's throat, right in the hollow between the collarbones, and he twisted his knife to cut out and at the same moment felt the cold penetration of Alfie's knife deep in his belly, cold, then hot hot hot, and pushed Alfie away and saw the Aborigine bring both his hands to the terrible wound in his throat as he stumbled and then fell back.
Charley fell onto his back, pressing his hand to his belly and feeling the greasy coil of exposed intestines. Alfie's last cut had opened him, and even in the depth of deepening shock he knew to hold himself together,
to hold himself hard. He lay there on his back, knife still clutched in his fist, feeling his blood pulse over his hands. He seemed to lay there for a long time, listening to his breathing and feeling himself grow cold. Then faces came into his shrinking field of vision, Kativa's and someone else. Sudden fear gripped him as he saw the painted face of an Aborigine peering over her shoulder, but then he heard the voice of Robert, the Law Man, "We've come to take you back."
Then it was as though he was borne by many hands through the bush while a song sung by many voices played in his head as he was carried to a place where the blue lights of an ambulance flashed like so many winking eyes.
3.27
The surgery took weeks to recover from. Multiple cuts and blood loss and a major abdominal wound had led to a serious infection, and Charley spent long days in a dreamy haze fostered by painkillers and fatigue. But he healed well. Kativa stayed at the hospital when she could and at Fredo's when she couldn't. The police had left him alone after long questioning, even though they were barely satisfied with the story of him being set upon by drunken Aborigines who'd robbed and nearly killed him. Kativa had given Fredo the Zip disks and the hard drive Charley had taken from Jay Burrell's computer; that went a long way to making amends. Charley had gotten a bouquet of flowers, with the strong hand of Terry Walker's handwriting on the card: "With Thanks from the Christians in Action."
That told him what he needed to know.
It was toward the end of his hospital stay that Robert the Law Man came to see him.
"You're looking better, mate," the Law Man said.
"Thank you for your help," Charley said.
"It's us that should be thanking you," Robert said. "You saw it through."
Charley reached slowly and carefully into the drawer of his nightstand. He took out the small bone and the quartz crystal.