“A police officer or someone like that was waiting for me at the security check at Canberra,” he said. “They gave him my ID card. He took me to an office under Parliament House. There’s a giant under Parliament House!”
Penny giggled. “Like the troll that lives under the bridge?”
“His name is Martyn Boas. He’s over seven feet, Pen, honest to God.” He felt a wave of shame for having given Michael's message to Martyn. He had hoped she would not ask too many questions. Now, he couldn’t stop himself from telling her all about it.
“I don't know where to begin. There is so much they are not telling us! Life and death stuff. About the kind of people who control things. We don’t see them but they already know everything Michael has been telling us. They knew all the time. They just don't want to tell us.”
“Oh, come on, Storm,” Penny said, and she laughed.
“Yeah, like I said I don't even know how I can begin to tell you...” Storm began. “It sounds crazy—I sound paranoid, right?”
“I-I'm-sorry,” she said gasping with laughter. “It's too much.”
He pulled out of arms. “People are dying because of this, Pen.”
“I know that!” She said. She stopped laughing and stared at him. “Don’t you think I know that already. Everything is so very fucked up! The fire. Poor Karl. The meteors. Mom! I'm scared!”
“They will be leaving tomorrow morning for a safe place,” he said. “Matthew told me he has a camper van parked down by the river. We'll all be going together.”
“And how long are we going to be hiding?” She asked.
“We're not hiding,” he told her. “We're taking shelter.”
“If there's something coming that's so bad, surely the government would warn us? They would have shelters for us. Are they doing that?” She pushed him in the chest and he fell back. “No, Storm, they're not! They are hunting terrorists. That's what they're doing. Trying to protect us.”
“For fuck's sake, Pen. The government's not protecting us at all. Martyn said we're being played for fools.”
“I think Martyn stole the information Dad gave you. I think he had that poor astronomer killed. And I bet you anything he had something to with the fire.”
“That isn't what happened.”
“It isn't? How can you be so sure?”
“I believe him,” Storm exclaimed.
“So you are saying he knows everything—but he didn't know about the fire?” She grabbed his arm and held it tight. “Come on, Storm!”
“I don't understand that either. But everything he said fits with what Michael has said.”
Penny felt sick. She didn't like any of what her Dad was saying. She had been clinging to the hope that he was wrong. “How come we've never heard about all of that before now!”
“Penny—because they don't want us to know! They don't encourage us to think. They're afraid we might come together.”
“And do what?” She asked. “Fix everything?”
“Well—yeah! Eventually.”
“The world doesn't work that way, Storm. I wouldn't trust anything this Martyn has told you. I wouldn't be so sure about what Alistair has told you either.”
He sighed. “Your dad suggested we catch up with you in the Pilliga forest.”
“Please be careful,” she whispered and hugged him tightly.
He felt her warmth and her tears wet on his neck. They did not let her go of each other for a long time.
“So, how you going for gas?” Matthew asked, pointing at the fuel gauge. He was determined to make sure Storm did not forget anything important. Something that might prevent picking up the items on Franchette's request list, or worse still his safe return.
“Filled her up the other day,” Storm replied. “I'll fill up again in Coona.”
“Are you clear about our rendezvous point? About how to find it?”
“The forest clearing off the highway, right? You've already shown me on the map.”
“Have you got the map?”
“Don't worry! I have it. I only have to pick up Pete. You have the whole camp to keep together. That's far more to worry about.”
Matthew poked Storm in the chest. “I'm not traveling alone. You are! A lot can go wrong. So be careful.”
“I got it!” Storm insisted.
“If I were you, I'd find a better vehicle,” Matthew said eyeing the battered vehicle. “This is too light for the type of country we are going to be traveling through.”
“It's all I have!” Storm protested.
“I'm just saying, you should keep an eye open for something else.”
“What am I going to do? Steal an SUV?”
“A four-wheel drive would be better. If you can find one in good condition.”
Matthew tried to make his smile last for as long as they shook hands, but he was worried. “Take care of yourself,” he told Storm.
Storm slammed the door shut and hung his arm through the open car window. He slapped the side of the door. “Hey! Don't worry about me so much. I'm going to be fine.”
But he didn't feel fine.
In a few hours, he and his dad would be on the highway making haste to join up with the others. Still, he couldn't shake an awful pensive feeling about what lay ahead. He told himself not to think about it anymore.
39
Anyone Home?
He drove down the long gravel drive and came to a stop before the empty garage. The open gate to the house had been left pushed back against the fence, and there was no sign of old man Harris. His housekeeper didn't seem to be around either. She was each and every weekday morning. She would be there until noon, and sometimes later if the farmer asked her to stay and help him. Usually, at this hour, the washing would be on the clothesline.
Perhaps she was sick. Or maybe Harris had taken a turn and was this very minute lying in a hospital bed. Something was not right. An overwhelming stillness hung over the place like an invisible blanket broken only by the hungry howls of the farm dogs in their kennels.
It was Pete who introduced Storm to old man Harris several years ago. Storm was in high school and keen to earn pocket money during his summer break. Pete had told him the farmer wasn't a bad bloke once you got used to his ways. It was true that Harris did have a vicious tongue able to cut strips off the toughest jackaroo, but he was not a mean man, and although some said he was a little crazy, Storm knew he wasn't.
“Mr. Harris?” Storm yelled as he walked up to the back door of the kitchen. “Hello? Anyone home?”
He rapped his knuckles on the door and watched it swing open.
Pete told Storm once, that Harris had married, but it ended when his wife ran away to Melbourne with a local real estate agent. Three years later, his two daughters followed their mother. Right after they graduated from high school.
Storm stood on the doorstep and looked across the backyard at the sheds. He saw the farmer's truck parked in the port next to the workshop. Harris used the Ute to drive everywhere after he had crashed his car earlier in the year. Locals said the old man had attempted to drive home one night after drinking himself silly at the local pub. The evening ended badly when he ran off the road and into a ditch. He high-tailed the crash scene. No one, not even his housekeeper, saw a sign of him for several days.
Storm walked back down the steps and took a walk around the house. He listened for any sound that might be a cry for help, but he heard nothing apart from the dogs.
He returned to the kitchen door and pushed it open. The ripe smell of food scraps sitting too long in the warm air drove him back outside. He held the door ajar long enough for the fresh air outside to move through the room before he walked into the house.
The remains of a meal littered the table in the center of the room. Flies buzzed open milk cartons, greasy plates, and cutlery. He had never seen the place in such a state. There were eight settings on the table. That surprised him. Harris didn't usually have more than a single guest at a time. Usually, a tradesman
or a neighbor, and only for a cup of tea and sandwiches. He really was a lonely farmer living a solitary life. But, there were times he had reached out.
One afternoon, Harris asked Storm to help him with the fencing. Once the job was done, the farmer invited him in for a cold beer. The old man had warmed to the boy. He complained the rabbits were eating him out of grass. While they supped their beer, he suggested Storm take one of his guns and the Ute and cull as many of the pests as he could find. He took Storm through to the living room and, for reasons known only to the farmer, he showed the boy his hidden gun cabinet.
The tall trophy cabinet was fixed against a sidewall at the entrance to the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Storm ran his hands under the wood edge until he found the button and depressed it. With a metallic click, the cabinet pivoted out from the wall to reveal a room just big enough for two people to step inside.
Harris told Storm that eventually, he would fill the wall rack with guns. It was just his hobby he said, and he made Storm promise to keep quiet about the hidden gun cabinet.
Storm asked Harris about the shotgun he had leaning against the wall opposite the gun cabinet.
The old man told him he kept it loaded with birdshot, ready to scare away troublemakers. He told Storm, for an entire summer the year before, a gang of hot-rodders and bikers tore up and down the stretch of road outside the farm on almost every weekend. The noise of their machines frightened the stock. The old man was not keen to confront the young buggers, so he never did get to see any of their faces. He said it was a good thing he hadn't tried to confront them, because nothing good ever came of doing something like that.
Storm feigned horror and reflected on his own good luck. He and his friends had ended their speed trials when Ethan lost interest in spending his spare dollars on gasoline and tires.
As he looked at the gun rack, he considered if he was to take one what Harris might say. The farmer had shown him his gun cabinet, and that was a fact. Surely, in an exceptional circumstance such as this, it was as good as an invitation to take one of the weapons. Storm decided he was going to interpret things that way. It didn't look like Harris would be returning to the house anytime soon.
He pulled the 308 Winchester from the rack.
Harris said he kept the large rifle for kangaroos. It felt too heavy and cumbersome to lug around and he returned it carefully to its place. He decided on the lighter caliber rifle the farmer had given him to shoot the rabbits.
He told himself it really was for show—just in case. In case of what exactly, he wasn't too sure, but it seemed a good idea. So long as he was not confronted by a band of gun-toting hostiles, having the weapon in his hand would give most pause for thought.
He opened the first drawer below the rack. It was packed tight with boxes of rounds. He slung the rabbit gun over his shoulder, found the cartridges in the draw and backed out of the room cradling several boxes in the crux of his arm. It was only when he closed the cabinet that he noticed the shotgun was no longer in its place, resting against the wall.
The dogs began barking with added intensity when he walked past the sheds. Desperate with hunger and thirst, they pawed at the doors of their kennels. They had been in their cages for days.
He picked up a hose lying in the dust and filled their metal bowls from outside the cages. He looked on in dismay when in their overwhelming eagerness to quench their thirst they stepped in the dishes and spilled the water between the floor planks. It was a wasted effort.
“Come on, guys,” he called out as he flipped the bolts on the doors of the three cages.
The hungry animals needed no coaxing. They leaped to the ground and bounded off in the direction of the sheds and the possibility of something to eat.
40
Gasoline and a Dog
He stared through the dust-streaked windscreen, breathing slow and deep before he tried the ignition once more. Again, the starter motor turned over. Again, the engine didn’t fire. Stella had recently bought a new battery. At least that was not the problem. He gritted his teeth. One more time.
This time it fired up, coughing and spluttering. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, waiting for the motor to settle into a steady roar before lifting his foot off the accelerator. Fumes from the engine invaded the cab, and he thought about how much of a liability his mom's car had been over the last two years. It had been little more than a sinkhole for her money to disappear into.
It was a little after midday when he drove over the bridge into Coona. He stopped in front of the sandstone clock tower at the intersection in the town center. He left the engine running as he pondered his surroundings without getting out. The streets were empty of traffic. There was not a sign of movement, that is, aside from tin cans and plastic rubbish bags propelled across the bitumen by the persistent breeze.
Perhaps the mayor called an emergency public meeting in the town hall? What with all that was happening, Storm imagined he might do that. They had a public meeting when bushfires hit the region a few years back and again when the river flooded. Still—there ought to be someone around. An oddball or two he could make out peering back at him through their kitchen window. But, he could see no one.
The shops were closed. Even the hotel parking lot was bare of vehicles. For as long as he could remember, there had never been a day when the pub was closed. Not even in times of flood. Certainly not on a national holiday. And yet, it absolutely looked deserted. He stared at the closed doors and the empty lot in fascination.
The nearest service station was deserted with the kiosk locked and the pumps switched off. At the second service station, he saw a hose and nozzle lying across the concrete slab in front of the pumps.
A heavy curtain of smoke hung over a good part of the town and he saw that a bushfire of monster proportions burned on the outskirts. Hot embers carried by in the wind presented a clear danger to houses and yet—nothing. There ought to be sirens calling on the volunteers. Instead, the firehouse lay still, draped in a veil of smoke and silence.
He parked the car opposite the black-and-white checkered sign and walked up the tiled steps to the beige concrete entrance. He tested the closed double white doors with a push and found they were bolted tight. When he pressed the call button, he heard the buzzer sounding inside the police station. When no one came to answer the door, he cupped his hands against the thick glass of the door and peered inside at the empty reception area.
He gazed around the entrance for a sign of surveillance. Above his head, a small white dome with a bubble of dark glass hid a camera in the ceiling of the entrance. The unmistakable glow of the bright red diode surely meant his image showed on a monitor somewhere in the building. He waved a hand at the camera and turned back to the doors and shook them.
“Get back in your vehicle and leave,” a weary voice demanded from a speaker in the wall.
“I need gas for my car,” Storm replied.
“You will leave this area, right now!”
The speaker crackled, the noise betraying a loose connection somewhere in the circuitry. The mic had either been moved or switched off.
Storm did not budge. They would have to tell him to bugger off to his face. Eventually, someone would have to come to the door. He pressed his nose against the glass and peered inside again. In the unlit interior, in front of the reception counter, he made out the still figure of a man standing utterly still and watching him.
The man was large and looked disheveled. He wore a standard police department issue blue shirt open to the waist, his hairy beer belly hanging over his belt. It was not a good look. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the man might have been rudely awoken from a deep sleep, but for the handgun held loosely at his side. The gun told Storm the copper was not sleeping well at all.
The man stepped toward the door, and raised the weapon, waving it at Storm in an unmistakable warning.
Storm couldn’t move. He wondered like an idiot if he shouldn’t raise his own hand and wave back.
Then the cop started forward again and this time he was moving rapidly and the business end of the gun was aiming through the door, at Storm’s chest.
Storm turned and stumbled down the steps. The car engine was still running. When he jumped in the cab he looked back, his heart pounding, expecting to see the cop on the steps with his gun leveled at him, but he didn’t. There was no one from the station following him.
He slammed the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. Things were turning to shit in a very bad way.
No one answered the door at Ben’s house. It was the same at Ethan's house. Storm saw that his friend's father's car was parked in the driveway. The front door stood ajar, just like the door at old man Harris's had been. Then again, there was nothing odd about an unlocked house in Coona. People barely bothered to lock their houses even when they went into town to do their shopping.
He sat in the car outside of Ethan's and pondered his situation. Apart from the policeman, the only living creatures he had come across so far were skittish cats and small packs of hungry looking dogs.
By the time he reached Pete's street, he had driven around the boundary of the town. The whole time he had not laid eyes on another person, living or dead.
He saw his dad's old jalopy in the driveway where it had been parked for months. He didn't want to flag his presence by leaving Stella's car on the street. So, he turned into the neighbor's drive and parked at the back of the house. It was just as a precaution. After being confronted with the unfriendly gun-toting copper, it simply made sense to him that he hide the car.
Pete had told Storm he often ran into the old guy buying his groceries. Even so, the old guy would not exchange more than a passing greeting with Pete.
He knocked on the old feller's door and waited. Nothing. He scaled the wooden fence between the two sections. It didn’t look like Pete was home. He dropped to the ground on the other side.
Jubilee Year Page 19