by Paul Taylor
For the next twelve hours, Ben lay in a haze of pain. Mercifully, he was mostly unconscious, because when he awoke, it was to a world that felt like his whole body had been skinned and rolled in salt.
When Ben had first gone to Sydney, in what seemed another life now, he'd caught the overnight Countrylink, stupidly thinking he'd be able to sleep most of the way. He rode the train through the dismal, pre-dawn hours of the morning, dozing only briefly and waking up frequently. When he finally managed to doze off for a little while he'd woken up in a mad panic, thinking he'd missed his stop. Gradually peace returned when he realised he still had some way to go.
That was what those long twelve hours that he lay semi-conscious were like. Ben would snap out of it for a moment, irrationally terrified. When this happened, Shade would lay a hand on his shoulder and whisper low words to him until Ben drifted off again. As the day wore down to midnight, Ben fancied he could feel the pain receding, ebbing away like water at low tide. Until finally, the pain was gone altogether.
He swam up to full wakefulness from a deep ocean full of half-glimpsed shadows, like manta rays sliding through the water all around him, and he came up gasping for air.
"What the hell did you do to me?" he whispered to Shade when he finally caught his breath.
"I took your shadow," said Shade and, incredibly, smiled.
"What the hell did you do that for?"
He smiled again, and if Ben had had the energy he would have strangled him. "So you'll have the strength to find Kath and beat the living shit out of Neil."
Ben knew Shade was trying to rev him up but he didn't care. It was working.
"Of course," said Ben. "Won't we have to find him first?"
They spent fruitless hours criss-crossing the deserted streets of Casino in Ben's battered old Valiant. Ben drove, the better for Shade to "tune in" to Neil or the other Shadoweaters' frequencies, and as he drove, he stared morbidly out at the deserted streets.
"Where is everyone, do you think?" Ben asked, driving on the opposite side of the street to skirt an overturned skip. Its guts of cardboard boxes, fat, bulging plastic bags and food scraps spilt across the road like blood.
"Gone," said Shade. Matter-of-fact as ever.
Ben was about to slap him across the back of the head when Shade resumed speaking.
"A lot of them have been shadowed. More than you'd think, probably. Fodder for the swelling ranks of the Shadoweaters. Some, the smarter, quicker ones, would have left town as soon as the stink of death rose on the wind."
"And the rest?" asked Ben. Centre Street, the main shopping drag, was a mess. Cars sat abandoned and burnt out in the middle of the road, shop windows were staved in like beaten skulls, the stores' insides picked clean as if by vultures or hyenas.
"The rest," Shade sighed. "The rest have become Shadoweaters themselves, or tools of the Shadoweaters. Their army is probably two or three thousand strong. Three thousand mindless drones, all perfectly willing to go to their death for that one great chance to extinguish the Light for good. Pull over here," he said suddenly.
They were in front of Mitre Ten, its plate glass window cracked but not broken. Obviously the looters had decided hardware wasn't going to be necessary in their brave new world.
"What for?" Ben asked, pulling to a sudden halt, pointed in at the store. "This is hardly the time for Father's Day shopping."
"Ha-ha," said Shade, easing out of the car. "Do you have a club lock, or something I can smash the window with?"
Ben twisted around in his seat, looking down the back, when he heard Shade exclaim. "Never mind, I got a bin."
Shade hefted the garbage bin and swung it in hard against the window and the glass shattered like a flock of seagulls taking flight. Ben flinched at the sudden crash and looked around guiltily, expecting a police car to come flying around the corner at any second. But none did.
The sudden thought of police made Ben think of Rich and what might have happened to him. He hoped Rich was one of the smarter ones who'd gotten out while the getting was good, but he doubted it. Not Rich's intelligence, God no. But that Rich would cut his losses and run, not while his town needed protecting, he wouldn't. Ben felt the dull certainty, like a lead ball in his stomach, that Rich had died standing watch.
Shade carefully removed the jagged, stabbing pieces of glass from the shattered window and climbed through. Ben sat in the car and wondered how long he was going to be. After a while, he climbed out of the car, wandered up to the window and peered in.
"Hey," he called.
There was a noise from the back and Shade's voice, a surprised "Shit!" Then, "I'm back here, come on in, I won't be long."
"I'll wait out here, thanks," said Ben. The empty streets felt like a ghost town, but he knew what the inside of one of these abandoned stores would feel like. Cool, dark, and quiet as a tomb.
As he waited, Ben realised where the Shadoweaters were probably hiding out. He and Neil were so stupid not to have thought of it before. If it wasn't Neil and Kath's house, where they hadn't been when Ben and Shade drove by ("How can you tell from out here?" Ben had asked. "I just know," Shade had replied tersely.), then it had to be the motel. The good old Settlers where Ben had first made the Shadoweaters' acquaintance.
Eventually Shade returned from the interior of the store, materialising out of the gloom carrying things in both his hands. In one hand he held what appeared to be two large spotlights.
"What are those for?" said Ben. "We going spotlighting?"
"In a manner of speaking," said Shade. He sat his "purchases" on the boot of the car and returned back into the store. He returned a few minutes later carrying three spare globes and a pack of batteries.
"There was no one serving so I just left your credit card on the counter, okay?" he said, grinning as he put the stuff into the boot of the car.
"Did you write down my PIN so they can get cash advances, too?" said Ben, going to help him. "So are you going to tell me what all this shit's for, or do I have to guess?"
"Guess what?" said Shade. "You already had it right. We're going spot-lighting."
And that, infuriatingly, seemed to be it, for Shade would give no further information. And when Ben suggested they go to the Motel, Shade merely nodded and said, "I wondered how long it would take you to think of that."
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR