by P. J. Sky
A large, dark, shape crawled up the side of the rock. Ari froze.
Don’t scream Starla, she thought. Please don’t move or make a sound.
Its red eyes glinted in the moonlight. A body larger than a man’s, shoulder blades oscillating between ripples of muscle. The creature sniffed the air, steam blew from its big nostrils. Ari’s finger trembled against the trigger. The animal snarled and bared incisors like white daggers. Ari levelled the barrel with the animal and squeezed.
The trigger was heavier than she’d expected, until the final moment when it slipped home suddenly. With a crack, the weapon ricocheted upwards and Ari was thrown backwards.
The creature pounced and landed on top of her.
The dry fur smelt dank and oily. Ari wriggled beneath the heavy animal. Claws tore at her shirt. Its breath smelt metallic like blood. She pressed the barrel of the gun into the creatures belly and fired.
The animal lurched and, from somewhere deep in its gut, escaped a low whine.
Ari heaved the heavy body sideways. It slid off the rock.
Ari tried to catch her breath.
Starla looked down. “Are you…”
“I… I’m good.” Her heart pounded at such a pace it hurt. She rubbed her eyes. Floating in the centre of her vision, she could still see the flash of the gun. Carefully, she got to her feet. “Okay, now move.” Ari leapt onto the top of the next rock and stumbled. She held out her arms, steadying her feet, then turned back at Starla. She hadn’t moved. “Now!”
Starla looked about herself but didn’t jump.
“Sister, ya gotta move.”
“What about the other dingoes?”
“We gotta chance it, ain’t no stayin’ ‘ere.”
Starla leapt and landed with a wobble beside her.
Ari nodded. “Okay, now we keep goin’"
Ari leapt to the next rock, then the next. She heard Starla scramble behind. Ari heard more yelps and howls below, but didn’t stay long enough to explore them.
Ari made it to the tracks first. Standing by the rail, Starla stumbled down after her. She fell on the ground at Ari’s feet and grabbed hold of her leg.
“You came back.”
“Strewth, I told ya to save it.” She kicked her away and Starla sat on her knees and began to weep.
A huge creature slipped out from between the rocks. Ari raised the gun to it and tensed her shoulder muscles, ready for the upwards movement of the gun when it fired. She took a step forward and the animal stopped.
It panted, mouth open, tongue lolling between ugly canines. In the moonlight, its eyes flickered like hot coals.
Ari took another step forward and the animal retracted.
Nothing attracts dingoes like a dead dingo, thought Ari. But they don’t like other dogs, and tonight I’m the dingo. This is my world now.
Ari raised the gun and fired into the air. The crack echoed out around the rocks. The animal whimpered, turned tail, and leapt back among the rocks.
Ari exhaled slowly and smiled.
“The dingoes. They don’t like loud noises.”
Chapter 14
Ari recovered the supplies and they spent the night huddled against the railway tracks. Ari stayed watch, cross-legged and wrapped in salt sacks. She leant against the upright gun and gently shivered. Beside her, Starla slept fitfully. She cried out at one point, perhaps from a dream. She reached out and took Ari’s hand.
Ari flinched.
Starla’s hand gripped tighter. It was soft and warm.
It had been a long time since she’d touched anyone, except the gunman. His body had felt warm too.
Ari shuddered.
She remembered driving the blade into the man’s ribcage, and the way it had grated against the bone.
A shiver ran down her spine.
She’d never killed anyone before. It was easier than she’d thought. Alive, dead, was it so different? Someone is there and then they’re not.
It had to be done. It was him or me.
She remembered her mother.
People die, that’s what they do. Everyone does, they live and they die and they go back to the earth. And I had no choice, it was him or me. We’re safe now. That was because of me. Dingo or man, it’s all the same. Ain’t no difference at all.
She could no longer feel her heart beating, as if an icy hand had reached inside her ribcage and stopped it dead. Now there was only her and the land and Starla and the dingoes and the body among the rocks, but nothing more. The world was smaller now.
Gently, she squeezed Starla’s hand.
She remembered the warmth of the body. The sticky blood on her hands.
She released Starla’s hand.
And she was alone.
∆∆∆
High in his tower, Titus Corinth stood at a large window and surveyed the luminous, ever shifting vista of the city. Monorail trains moved on strings of neon across a sea of blinking lights and between great chasms of steel and glass. The mayor held his hands behind his back, his fingers tightly interlaced. Intermittently with his thumb, he squeezed the fatty lump at the base of his small finger.
“Where was the last contact?”
The voice that answered, muffled in static, came from speakers hidden throughout the room. “Cooper.”
She was lost in the wasteland. The town of Cooper had been searched and searched again, though nothing was easy on the outside. The town was a waste overflow of desperate people. People who wanted to hurt the city. And people they needed. He tensed his fingers. And there was blood in the abandoned van, but it wasn’t Starla’s.
The mayor pursed his lips.
The disembodied voice spoke again. “And what about the girl?”
And, thought the mayor, what about the girl. This girl, whoever she was, was now someone with purpose. People lied to themselves, they thought they needed shelter, food, security, love even. But none of this was true, and when the hour came they’d sacrifice it all for purpose. Purpose is what each and every person really needed. Only then were they truly alive. And now this girl had purpose.
She might prove useful yet.
Unexpectedly, the mayor thought of Starla’s mother. His eyes moved to the inky blackness beyond the wall. He hadn’t thought of her in a long time, not since she’d been cast out from the city, along with her lover and that bastard child. He couldn’t have hidden them any longer. He hadn’t even wanted to.
She’s out there too, he thought. Somewhere in the wasteland…
Elsewhere in the city, Max Panache charged down a long, dark corridor.
If you want something doing, he thought, do it yourself.
At the end of the corridor, a wide doorway lead out onto a landing platform perched on the side of the steel tower. A large, black aircraft waited, squat with dipped wings, each embedded with a round propeller. The propellers spun and the engines hummed. A hatch on the side of the aircraft lay open. A guard in a light blue uniform stood on either side of the hatch, their faces hidden behind heavy visors.
The outside. Max clenched his fists as his father’s words echoed in his mind. “You are a disappointment my boy.”
Well, I’ll show him. Before this is over, he’ll eat his words.
Max got to the top of the ramp. He paused, then turned to look at the two guardsman. “Tell me Gentleman, have you both had breakfast?”
The two guards looked at each other.
“Most important meal of the day, Gentleman. You can’t kill anyone on an empty stomach.”
Chapter 15
“But we’re not supposed to come here.”
“Its fine,” replied Max, striding ahead. The freshly cleared land stretched outwards, hard and red, all the way to the new line of the wall. Starla squinted into the middle distance, towards the large cranes that moved steal plates into place. On the ends of robotic arms, welding arks sparked orange and blue as new guard towers were swung into place.
Earlier, Starla and Max had slipped away from their min
ders. There’d been no school that day. Starla wasn’t sure why she’d followed Max. Max had been taunting her.
“Come on,” he’d said, his big eyes glowing. “That is, unless you’re chicken?”
“Shut up Max,” she’d replied.
“Cuc-cuc-cuck.” Max folded his arms and flapped them, bobbing his head forward and back.
Starla looked away. She squinted as the sun caught the glass of the tall buildings on the other side of the lake.
“If we go now, they won’t see us.” Max nodded towards the two guards who sat dozing against a rock in the sun.
Max started backing away. He flapped his arms and grinned.
Starla rolled her eyes.
The newly reclaimed land was dry and cracked, and nothing like the grassy grounds around the lake. Behind them, the old wall was being dismantled one large section at a time. In this moment, Starla and Max were further than they’d ever been from home, walking on ground that only recently had formed a part of the world of the outside.
“Do you think this ground is safe?” said Starla.
“Of course its safe. If it was contaminated, they wouldn’t take down the old wall.”
Something on the ground caught Starla’s eye. It was small, metallic and half-moon shaped. She bent down and picked it up. She rubbed the surface with her fingers. Faintly, some sort of shape had been stamped into it which looked like a star. Starla almost called out to show it to Max, but then thought better of it. He’d probably take it and not give it back. Instead, she pocketed it.
Max was well ahead now and she called after him. “Wait up.”
Max stopped and turned to her. “I’m not waiting for you.”
Then he took a step forward and disappeared into the ground.
∆∆∆
“So what’s the city like now?” asked Ari, walking a little ahead.
They followed the railway as it cut a wide curve through the red rock. A warm breeze clawing at the dry dust.
Starla wheezed. “What do you mean?”
Though her head was still dizzy and there was a dull ache at the back of her skull, today Starla felt stronger. After she’d woken, Starla had had her fill of water and, after much hesitation, she’d tried a little of the jerky. It had made her teeth hurt and now they felt loose in her gums, but at least she wasn’t quite as hungry. I’m sorry, she’d thought, as she’d chewed at the tiny piece of meat. She’d thought of the dog and the animals in the city zoo. But I must survive this.
It was with a heavy heart that she now thought of the dog. She missed his stocky little body trotting by her heels. All morning, his absence played on her mind. Occasionally, she’d thought she heard him scamper in the dust, or she’d thought she felt his warm, fuzzy body press against her leg. Each time, she’d look down and see nothing but her ill-fitting boots and the red dust.
“The city. Alice,” Ari continued. “I ain’t been there in so long.”
“Well, it’s the city. It’s very different from life outside the wall.”
“Different how?”
What does she want me to say, thought Starla? “Well, the food is better. And there’s more of it.”
With the thought of trays full of syntho cubes, her stomach rolled and her mouth began to salivate. She tried to push the images from her mind.
“And no one’s trying to kill you. There’s that too.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Ari.
“I guess. For me, it was just where I lived. I used to dream of the world beyond the wall.”
“Really? That don’ seem like much of a thing to dream about.”
“I guess.”
“Kinda strange really, now ya think about it, if you were dreamin’ of the world outside the wall, and everyone else was dreamin’ of life inside it.”
“But this isn’t how I pictured it,” said Starla. “There’s nothing here. This place is empty. It’s like all there is here is us and the dingoes.”
“Yeah, an’ they ain’t ‘ere for the dust.” Ari turned and looked at Starla. “They’re ‘ere for us.”
“I just think, no wonder the people who built this railway deserted it. This place is dead.”
Ari turned back to the horizon. “Yeah, well that’s why everyone wants in to the city.”
“I never really liked the city,” said Starla. “I mean, its home. Now all I want to do is get back. But I always felt kind of trapped there.”
“What d’ya mean?”
“I don’t know. Everyone was always trying to please me, just to get close to my family. Everyone except the Panache family. They wanted to control me. So did my father.”
Starla thought of Max, her intended fiancé. It all felt so far away now, a part of another life. Maybe, she thought, I should marry Max. He might provide a certain security. Isn’t that what the city does though? Isn’t that why I want to go back? It can’t be that secure though, or I wouldn’t be here.
Then she thought of the old man licking his lips. She thought of the lifeless skull biting into the red dust. She thought of the angry red stain left by the dog. This was what life was, outside the city wall.
“I guess everyone in the city is scared,” said Starla. “No one wants to leave. Exile is the ultimate punishment.”
“Yeah,” said Ari. “Well, I know that.” She sighed. “Sounds like ya got some issues there sister. I tell ya what though, I’ve spent half my life diggin’ up salt that goes to the city. There’s ore mines too, that’s what they make ya buildin’s outta. An’ opals. It all goes to Alice on the camels. How we supposed to build a city out ‘ere when all the ore an’ salt an’ stuff goes to Alice? That’s what I think though. Ya might have problems in Alice, but they ain’t the problems ya have out ‘ere.”
Ahead, a pyramid shaped hill reached upwards. They followed the tracks round, and behind the hill hid a massive metal machine the size of a building, all twisted and rusty pipes. Alongside the machine, the tracks forked. On one side sat a long row of large, rusty carts.
They followed the carts until they reached a stretch of tarmac road, potholed and cracked under the endless sun. Arranged beside the road lay a series of walled enclosures that might once have been buildings, along with a series of crooked metal poles. Starla wondered if, long ago, this might have been a town. Perhaps someone’s attempt to build a city of their own? But, like the rest of the world, it now appeared abandoned and lifeless. A world baked hard under an endless sun.
They left the tracks and followed the road. Among the remnants of ancient buildings, this new world seemed more silent than the open desert and the railway. A breeze whispered around remnants of walls and doorways. Bits of bent metal, their purpose long forgotten, burst like weeds from the red dust. Further back from the road, as if someone had collected them recently, sat a mound of plastic bottles and synthetic materials; perhaps the last remains of whoever may have called this desolate place home.
They walked on, leaving the ghosts of buildings behind, and after a while the tarmac disappeared beneath the red dust and all they had to follow was the long line of crooked metal poles, stretching ahead into the distance. Around them rose low, rocky hills.
And silence…
Then, not silence.
A heavy, clanging sound, quiet at first and then louder as they got closer. Clang, clang, clang-clang.
“What’s that?” asked Starla.
“What’s what?”
“The clanging?”
“Dunno.”
They continued onwards, and around another hill they found a large, square, metal platform that looked like it might once have stood on stilts. Two of its legs had given way and now it stood at an angle, one side digging into the dust, the other suspended. A piece of its rusty panelling dangled down. It flapped intermittently in the wind.
Starla and Ari paused.
Starla lifted her canteen and took several deep gulps.
From under the platform, waving one bony hand, appeared the figure of a scrawny old
man.
∆∆∆
Starla froze. The old man kept moving towards them. Ari raised her gun.
The old man looked as ancient as the landscape from which he’d emerged. It was as if he’d crawled up out of the dirt; a ghostly apparition as old as the rest of this forgotten world. Caked in red dust, his wiry frame was insufficient to fill his tattered rags. The skin that hung from his bones was tanned and leathery and seemingly merged with these wrinkled rags. He reached out one shaking, bony hand; the fingers were long with knuckles like knots in an old rope. His mouth was a toothless grimace but his pale eyes looked kind and gentle.
“No closer,” said Ari, but he didn’t stop.
Before Starla could bring herself to move, the old man had placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Pees,” he whispered. “Pees.”
Starla tried to speak but couldn’t. Something twisted in her gut. She'd no fear of this old man, and had the feeling if she blew hard enough, he might crumble back into the ground. Instead, she pitied him.
Ari put the gun barrel to the old man’s head. “Get off old man.”
“Pees,” he said again. “Wata.”
“Water?” asked Starla.
“Don’t give ‘im any,” said Ari. “We ain’t got spare.”
Starla’s gut twisted and she resisted the urge to slap Ari. They had water, why couldn’t they share a little? Starla glanced at Ari, Ari’s eyes simmered. Defiantly, she offered her canteen to the old man.
The old man grabbed it and fell to his knees. He tipped his head back, lifted the canteen to his parched lips, and began to gulp down the precious liquid.
Ari reached out and snatched the canteen, spilling a little of the water. “We ain’t got spare,” she repeated.
“Pees,” said the old man, holding out his palms, his eyes wide.
Starla looked at Ari. “We’ve got some more.”