Near Extinction

by R. A. Spratt

  Loretta stifled a snigger. She nudged Joe in the ribs and mouthed, ‘Horatio!’ Her eyes were sparkling with delight.

  Mr Lang held out his hand to shake the pink-haired woman’s.

  ‘Georgia,’ she said.

  Mr Lang stared for a moment, ‘Do I know you? You look familiar.’

  Georgia looked uncomfortable. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘You are mechanics, aren’t you?’ asked Mr Lang.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Georgia.

  The man stepped forward to stand by Georgia. Mr Lang peered at him. It was hard to see, the only light was from the street lamp behind him. ‘I don’t think I know you either.’ Mr Lang chuckled nervously. It’s pretty uncommon when you’re a high school teacher in a country town for twenty years to bump into anyone under the age of forty that you don’t know.

  ‘This is Bruce. We’re not from Currawong,’ said Georgia.

  Bruce grunted. It seemed to be a sign of agreement but it was hard to be sure.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ said Mr Lang laughing. ‘In Currawong we know how to make a good pie, and how to throw a daffodil festival, but for some reason we’ve never had a good mechanic. Come on, you’d better have a look.’ Mr Lang turned and led Georgia and Bruce towards the bus.

  ‘So Constable Pike sent you?’ asked Mr Lang. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t come himself. But I remember he didn’t do well at shop class. It’s much better that he sent someone who could help with the bus engine. Did you bring tools? The starter motor is completely shot.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Bruce. ‘Let’s have a look at it. Then we’ll see what we can do.’

  Georgia turned on a powerful hand torch and pointed it out across the park. It lit up the bus with the dinosaur collapsed along the roof.

  ‘I think I can see the problem,’ said Georgia. ‘You’ve got a T-Rex stuck on your bus.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr Lang a little testily. ‘We would try and reverse the bus out, but we can’t get it started.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Bruce. ‘I’m sure we’ll figure something out.’

  ‘I don’t know much about engines,’ admitted Mr Lang.

  ‘We’ll have it fixed in a jiffy,’ said Georgia. ‘Why don’t you go and sit by the fire. Keep an eye on the kids. There’s no need for you to stand and watch and get cold.’

  ‘I’ll get some more tools,’ said Bruce, going back to the car.

  ‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ said Mr Lang, retreating back to the warmth of the glowing embers.

  It was very quiet in the laundry. The sirens in the distance had been turned off. There were no footsteps or angry voices. Dad was alone at the bottom of the massive laundry hamper. It smelled gross in there, of sweat and other worse things. He had to get out, of the hamper and preferably out of the prison.

  Dad swung his leg over the edge and tried to vault sideways out of the basket, but he was not a coordinated man. He ended up falling on the ground on all fours. He paused for a moment. Praying that no one had heard. There was no sound. He hurried to the door and looked out into the corridor. He had entered the building on the ground floor, then fallen a long way down in the laundry shoot. He must be several floors below ground level now. He needed to find a staircase and make his way back up to the floor with the main exit. Without Ingrid’s help he was going to struggle. He needed to find someone who knew what they were doing.

  Dad tiptoed down the dark corridor. The fluorescent lights had changed from blinding white to black lights. No doubt so the prisoners couldn’t see properly if they were trying to break out, only the guard with special visors would know what was going on. At the end of the corridor, Dad turned into another passage with a staircase leading up. He started to jog towards it.

  He could hear an industrial rumbling sound from the other side of the wall. Presumably the generator was housed down here. The prison couldn’t be on mains power, that would be too easy to cut off outside. Dad was just twenty metres from the staircase when he noticed a viewing window. He skidded to a halt. If there was someone on the other side, they would be able to see him.

  Then Dad remembered he was dressed as a prison guard. Hiding would be much more suspicious than boldly walking past it. He strode forward towards the staircase, trying to look calm. As he walked past he glanced through the window for a fraction of a second. But what he saw made him freeze.

  The viewing window looked out on a small courtyard. There were high walls on four sides and an oval running track painted on the ground. Two bored guards were watching a prisoner exercise, a woman prisoner. She stopped doing sit-ups, leapt up, grabbed the bars shielding a window and started doing pull-ups. She was incredibly fit and strong. She was wearing prison overalls but the top half was tied around her waist and she was just wearing a grey singlet. Dad could see her muscles rippling. He didn’t even realise he was doing it, but he was counting her pull-ups . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . . fourteen . . . When would she stop? Fifteen . . . she dropped down and started doing star jumps. Dad could see her face now. He gasped. It was the woman from his dreams, and his nightmares – Mum!

  ‘Help has arrived,’ announced Mr Lang.

  The students would have cheered except they were too tired to care much.

  ‘I don’t want to spend the rest of the night out here babysitting you lot,’ continued Mr Lang. ‘So stay out of the way of the mechanics. Let them get on with their job. Hopefully we will be back on the bus and on our way to Currawong soon.’

  ‘Should I go help?’ asked Neil.

  ‘No,’ said Mr Lang firmly. ‘Leave it to the experts.’

  ‘It’s an old diesel engine,’ said Neil. ‘I know about those.’

  ‘Neil,’ said Mr Lang. ‘I appreciate your desire to be useful. But this isn’t a class group project. We want to get home as quickly as possible. Professional mechanics will not want a child helping them.’

  Neil didn’t say any more. He was embarrassed. But Neil also wanted to get home to his nan. He’d never been away from home for the night before. Unlike April however, Neil was not one for confrontation. He just waited until Mr Lang turned away then disappeared into the shadows and made his way over towards the bus.

  ‘You might as well all go back to sleep,’ said Mr Lang, addressing the rest of the students. ‘I’ll wake you when the bus is ready to go.’

  Several kids were lying back down and drifting off already. Indeed, Kieran had never woken up in the first place. He was a deep sleeper. Probably because he wasn’t a deep thinker. He wasn’t the type to lie awake replaying conversations in his head.

  Mr Lang went and lay down himself. If he was going to drive a bus full of kids back to Currawong in the pitch dark he would need as much rest as he could get.

  The only person still standing in the clearing was April. She was looking all around. ‘Pumpkin? Come on, boy, where are you?’ She heard the tinkle of his name tag against his collar. He was over by the bus. April whistled but the dog did not come. This wasn’t really a surprise. She had never trained him to come. She thought it would be demeaning for the dog. She certainly wouldn’t come if someone whistled for her. Except perhaps to attack them for being insulting.

  April trudged over to the carpark. She could see Pumpkin now. He was sniffing around the mechanic’s car. ‘Get away from there,’ said April. ‘Don’t pee on their car. At least not until after they’ve fixed the bus.’

  But the mechanics had left the back door open and Pumpkin had found a slew of fast food wrappers. He was snuffling through them optimistically searching for snacks. April looked into the car. There was only a single bulb in the carpark light. But she could see the inside of the sedan was a mess of wrappers and blankets.

  ‘It looks like someone has been living in this car,’ said April. Pumpkin leapt onto the back seat and pushed his nose under a discarded jacket where he uncovered a half-eaten sausage roll. Pumpkin was ecstatic. But April barely noticed. She was looking at what was underneath that jacket. Two ski masks and a blow
torch. ‘That’s suspicious.’

  April strode over to the bus. The bonnet was open and a light was hanging from the underside, but there was no sign of the mechanics. Neil was standing on a milk crate, using the mechanics’ tools to make adjustments to the engine.

  ‘Where are the mechanics?’ demanded April.

  Neil looked up. He had oil all over his hands and much of his face as well. He just shrugged. He was never chatty at the best of times, but being spoken to by the love his life made him even more inarticulate. April looked around the side of the bus.

  ‘There they are!’ said April.

  Georgia was strapping the T-Rex to the top of the bus using ratchet tie-downs, while Bruce was readying an electric jigsaw.

  April drew breath to yell out to them, just as Bruce switched on the saw. It was a deafening noise. She could see his arms vibrating as he used it to cut a hole in the belly of the T-Rex. It looked like hard work. The fibreglass cut slowly. His arms were shaking. The T-Rex was shaking.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Joe yelled. April could only just hear him above the sound of the jigsaw. She looked up to see Joe standing on the roof of the bus, near the spot where Fin’s head was stuck. Fin was awake now, his arms in the dinosaur’s mouth as well as he tried to shield his ears with his hands.

  Just then the jigsaw stopped and a circle of fibreglass, the size of a dinner plate, fell off the T-Rex statue.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ demanded April.

  Bruce looked up.

  ‘Go back to the fire,’ snapped Georgia. ‘We’re sorting it out.’

  ‘I may not know a lot about bus engines,’ said April. ‘But even I know, vandalising a dinosaur statue is not the way to fix them.’

  ‘Get out of here, kid,’ yelled Bruce. His tattoo-covered muscles bulged as he clutched the jigsaw.

  ‘No,’ said April. ‘You can’t make me.’ She crossed her arms and glared. She made this pronouncement frequently, sometimes several times a day. And it always worked on teenagers or propriety conscious teaching staff. It didn’t work today. Bruce dropped the jigsaw, grabbed April by the collar and pulled her into a headlock.

  ‘Hey!’ said Joe, scrambling down from the roof of the bus.

  April did the thing all girls do in the movies. She screamed, ‘Let me gooooooooo!’ She also swung her legs about kicking at Bruce with stomping back swings. But she only weighed fifty kilos and Bruce would have been double that and most of it muscle. Plus she was dangling in the air so she didn’t have any real purchase. She couldn’t get in a good kick.

  Joe rushed forward to help but Georgia scooped up the jigsaw and threatened him with it. ‘Stay back!’

  Just then, Pumpkin finished his half sausage roll and trotted over to see what was going on (perhaps more sausage rolls). He was horrified to see his mistress struggling with a large man. He must rescue her! The little dog launched himself teeth first at Bruce’s bottom. ‘Aaaaaagggghhh’ screamed Bruce, but that first scream was nothing. When Bruce shook his butt from side to side trying to dislodge Pumpkin, the dog sank his teeth in deeper. Soon Bruce was bellowing, ‘Aaa-ahahah-aahh!’ in true Tarzan style.

  ‘Be quiet!’ snapped Georgia. She reached back, with one hand grabbed Pumpkin and shoved him through a window onto the bus. Pumpkin barked wildly from inside.

  ‘Let me go,’ demanded April.

  ‘Shut her up too,’ snapped Georgia.

  Bruce clapped his hand over April’s mouth. She bit it hard. Which was disgusting because Bruce had been working on engines and with power tools, so his hands were covered in dirt and motor oil. Bruce wanted to scream out again, but he knew he shouldn’t. He clenched his teeth and screwed up his face as he tried to get his eyes to stop watering.

  Georgia had stuck her head into the dinosaur’s abdomen. She turned on a torch to light up the inside.

  ‘It’s there, but it’s caught on something up in the neck,’ said Georgia. ‘I’ll have to go in to get it.’ She reached in with one arm. But she couldn’t get her shoulders all the way in. ‘The hole isn’t big enough.’ Georgia picked up the jigsaw ready to enlarge the opening, but when she flicked it on, the motor buzzed for a moment then slowly wound down to a stop. Georgia hit it a couple of times, then tried again. The motor whirred for a second but the blade didn’t even move.

  ‘Did you charge the battery?’ asked Georgia.

  ‘I thought you were going to do it,’ said Bruce.

  ‘Is everything all right over there?’ It was Mr Lang calling out from the other side of the bus.

  ‘Mr L-l-l . . .’ Joe tried to stammer for help.

  ‘Shut it!’ hissed Bruce. He grabbed a spanner and held it threateningly near April’s head. Joe fell silent.

  Georgia stepped out around the side of the bus so Mr Lang could see only her. ‘Yeah, we’re fine. Nearly got it sorted,’ called Georgia. ‘You relax by the fire. We’ll call you when we’re ready.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mr Lang. They heard him trudge away.

  ‘Shove the girl in the dinosaur,’ ordered Georgia, as she came back around. ‘She’s small enough.’

  Bruce did not have to be asked twice. April was still biting his hand and kicking him. He would be glad to get rid of her. He took her to the opening and shoved her headfirst into the dinosaur.

  ‘What are you doing?’ demanded April. ‘Let me out of here.’ Her voice was muffled now.

  ‘We’ll let you out, and let everyone go, safe as houses,’ said Georgia. ‘All you’ve got to do is climb up into the dinosaur’s neck and get the package that’s up there.’

  ‘What?’ said April.

  ‘Just d-d-do it, April,’ pleaded Joe. ‘So they go away.’

  But of course, April never did what she was told. Not even when someone asked nicely. ‘Why do you have a package in a dinosaur in the middle of nowhere?’ asked April.

  ‘Mind your own business and get it for us,’ ordered Georgia.

  ‘That’s a contradictory request,’ said April. ‘I can’t mind my own business and take care of your business. What you mean to say is shut up and get it for us.’

  ‘Fine. Shut up and get it for us,’ said Georgia.

  If she’d been able to get her hands on April, Georgia would have loved to have throttled her. They heard April clambering up the inside of the dinosaur.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Fin in an overly loud voice.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Joe called up to him. ‘We’ll have you out soon.’

  ‘Joe, are you there?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Yeah, I’m right here,’ said Joe.

  ‘Joe, where are you?’ said Fin. ‘I can’t hear anything. My ears are ringing so loud.’ The jigsaw had been loud in the desert but it had been deafening inside the dinosaur.

  ‘Everything is going to be okay,’ yelled Joe.

  ‘Joe, are you there?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Get him to shut up,’ urged Georgia. ‘Or he’ll wake up that teacher again.’

  Joe climbed back up on top of the bus, and put his arm around Fin’s shoulders. ‘It’s okay,’ he said.

  ‘Joe?’ Fin asked loudly. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ said Fin. ‘But I can smell you. And you don’t smell as good as Loretta, or even April.’

  ‘I know,’ said Joe. It wasn’t easy being a fifteen-year-old boy.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ cried April from the inside of the dinosaur.

  ‘Hand it out,’ ordered Georgia.

  They heard tape ripping.

  ‘Don’t open it!’ cried Georgia.

  ‘Hey!’ said April. ‘This is jewellery! What do you two want with a big bag of jewellery? Hey, this is stolen property, isn’t it?! I don’t believe you are mechanics at all.’

  ‘Give it to me now!’ yelled Georgia.

  Suddenly the engine of the bus roared to life, revving a couple of times. It sounded better than new. It was running much more smoothly.

  ‘Got the engine
going,’ Neil called. He was leaning out one of the bus’s side windows.

  ‘You got the bus going, well done!’ Mr Lang called from the opposite side of the bus.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Bruce.

  ‘Get out of here,’ said Georgia. ‘Quick!’

  Georgia sprinted to the bus door. Neil was just opening it with the manual lever. Georgia pushed passed him and jumped into the driver’s seat. Bruce jumped onto the steps as Georgia put the bus in gear and started to drive away.

  ‘Hey!’ said Neil.

  ‘This is your stop, kid,’ said Bruce, shoving him hard in the chest so Neil toppled backwards and fell out the door onto the dirt. The door snapped shut as the bus pulled out onto the road. The dinosaur still strapped to the roof, it’s tail dragging along the bitumen as the bus ground it’s way up through the gears trying to get to its top speed. Which admittedly was not even sixty kilometres per hour.

  Dad stood and stared at Mum. She looked totally different. She was so lean and wiry. She dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups. Her biceps bulged. Dad wasn’t sure he could even do one push-up. He definitely knew he didn’t want to do one push-up. Mum was on her feet again, doing air-squats now. She was looking right at him, but obviously couldn’t see him. The window must be one way glass. Thank goodness. The guards would be alarmed if another, unfamiliar guard was standing staring at a prisoner with tears slowly dripping down his face. She turned away to do pull-ups again. Dad wiped his eyes and blew his nose on a handkerchief. He had to pretend to be a prison guard and he was sure that guards did not blubber like watering pots.

  Dad took out the pass-key attached to his belt and ran it through the reader next to the door. There was a beep and a click as the door unlocked. Dad stepped through into the exercise yard.

  Mum turned around mid-pull-up and saw him. Her face did not betray any recognition. But she must have been shocked because she pulled herself up so hard that she slammed the top of her head into the metal bars of the window.

  Dad turned to the two guards watching her. ‘I must escort the prisoner to the interrogation room,’ he said in clipped Russian.