by Tim Winton
I thought of them bees at home again. Because once I finally heard them I was always listening for them. And I even caught meself listening for them when I knew they were dead and gone. One time before Wankbag brung the diesel out I went and put me head against that split tree. The sound of it was low and steady like you’d maybe hear on a ship, with the engine deep under the decks right down below the waterline, keeping everything going. The whole world smelt of honey. I wished I could have Lee there with me so we could lean our heads in together and feel the hot sweet breath coming out the black mouth of that tree. And remembering it made me so fucking miserable I could of cried.
And then I couldn’t stand to lay there another minute. I got up and pulled on me boots and futzed about finding me treehole in the dark and then I dug the phone out of it and got back in me swag and switched it on. Just to look at old stuff from before Christmas, texts and posts and shit. Just to see Lee’s face, look into her uneven eyes. And you wouldn’t believe it but for a moment the bloody thing lit up, said no service, emergency calls only, and it was like a miracle. But before I could even thumb up a pic the fucker died on me. All I had was that pale blue light burnt into the back of me eyes and it stayed in me like moonlight glowing on inside me head.
Then I knew I didn’t even need a lame-arse phone. I had the light of her in me. Had her face right there in front of me. So I stared hard into her eyes, the green one first and then the grey, knowing she’d feel me there in her room, in the dark, up at Magnet. She always got me, Lee, and now I knew she’d get me tonight, laying there in her bed, feel me like a sheet on her so she could pull me up to her chin and be safe. Lee. Lee. Jesus, Lee. I was aching like a hungry animal, glowing like a fucking bushfire and I knew she felt me. There was no bloody way she couldn’t. I was a storm on the way. The smell of food, the sound of clean water. There isn’t one thing in the world hot and hard as knowing there’s someone waiting, coming, pressing, wanting you. Even a priest understands it, I get that now. But that night it was like food falling from the sky.
I got a horn like a lonely rhino just thinking about her. I coulda knocked one out right there and then and be done with it but it woulda felt cheap. So I layed back down aching and after a while I was calm again. Tomorrow I’d tell Fintan I was off. I was charged and ready.
I woke up in the night with a little sweat on. And right away I knew something was off. Different I mean. The moon was already set behind me and the stars had rolled over but whatever had changed so much it woke me up was closer to home than that. First light wasn’t so far off but the birds were still asleep. There was no lamp on in the hut and no sound from down that way.
I sat up and got me boots on. Then I put me head against the tree the way Wankbag taught me. He used to say a good sailor could hear surf on a reef in the dark if he pressed himself to the mast and listened up. Now I heard a steady hum. Like the world idling along. And then something else. A hitch in the hum, like a beat missing from it now and then. The unevenness is what I caught. The sound itself was too normal to hear.
And then the salmon gums shivered over me and a warm wind come in from the north. I took me boots off but only to drag me camo strides on. I felt for everything round me in the dark, the binoculars, the rifle and ammo, the waterjug. I pulled me shirt on and yanked the hunting jacket down off a branch.
That sound only come in fits on the wind but it was there alright.
I got me duds on and snatched me kit together.
Once I got a fire going out by the hut I went inside to find the billy. I was slow and quiet but the old man stirred anyway. Christ knows, he couldn’t have heard me. And I was fresh washed so he didn’t sniff me out neither. But even asleep the old bugger felt me there.
Whoever you are, he said, you should know I have a shotgun.
Don’t be fucking wet, I said. I’m standing right next to it.
Jaxie? What are you doing?
Get up, I said. We got a problem.
What’re you talking about, boy?
You deaf bastard, you got neighbours.
The light come up while we were sitting out by the fire. The sky started off pink but it was already turning grey again, like a front was on the way. The wind was still in the north and getting up a bit. We grilled some chops and drank a full can of tea. By the time the first sun touched the lake I had me shit sorted. Fintan was all for heading out with me but I wouldn’t have it. He was too old and slow, no point pretending he wasn’t.
At first he hadn’t believed me about that noise. With day here and the trees clattering and the birds going on like shopping ladies you couldn’t catch it anymore anyway. But I told him what it was, what it had to be. That was the sound of a generator I heard, a genny running low on petrol. And he looked at me funny and rolled his mouth round like it was a stone I give him to taste. Then he said it didn’t really matter, if there was someone north of here they weren’t bothering us. I said that was rich coming from a bloke who thought I was the end of days. I said it was better to know who was there than be surprised all of a sudden. He didn’t want to agree with that. I could see it wasn’t the fact of it he had a problem with, it was just he preferred to pretend everything was alright, that nothing had changed, because he liked how things were now. But in the end he give in to it. A generator close enough to hear, no, that wasn’t good. All the same it looked like he was more rattled by the idea of me leaving him than by the thought of some other bastard out there we didn’t know. It spooked me how careless he’d got.
How long have you been hearing this? he asked while I filled the waterjug. He was following me round like a little kid.
I dunno, I said. Now I’ve noticed it I think it coulda been there all along. Only this northerly means it’s carrying.
Doesn’t make any sense, he said. A breeze comes from that direction periodically. And I’ve never heard it.
Well, duh. They’d have to be firing Scud missiles before you copped on.
It doesn’t seem possible.
What, you think it’s fairies?
No need for that, now.
I know there was a salt mine north of here. But that must be thirty kays off. And I was little then.
Oh, dear God, he said, like he was finally getting it.
So how far have you been up that way? I asked.
Oh, I don’t know, lad. I walked an hour or two. I saw ruins of an old farm property, but there were no sheep, no cattle, no people. Only wild goats and some broken machinery.
When was this?
Whatsay?
When? When did you go there?
Oh. Well, now. Three years ago, mebbe four?
And there was no one at all?
Abandoned.
I screwed the jug lid down and took it back to where I had me gear layed out under the verandah and he tagged me all the way. And when I pulled the pack on he retied the billy and fiddled with the webbing for me, like he was a strapper at the races. In the end I had to shrug the old bugger off and then I felt bad.
Will you be back, I wonder?
That’s the plan, I said.
Well, look at you in your camouflage. A terror to Australia, indeed!
I didn’t know what to say to that. It sounded like he was taking the piss but the look on his face give me a flutter, so I just strapped on the .243 and got going.
I worked north along the lake, keeping to whatever ratty bits of mulga I could see round the edge. Now and then I found a few salmon gums and yorkies for cover but there was a lot of patchy red dirt. And rocky shit that made me glad I brung boots and not me Vans. The northerly was up with a coupla points of west in it and that was all I could hear except birds and the sound of me own breath. I was careful with the water and glad the day was grey because it was warm and I was pushing pretty hard.
About midday, just past a big elbow in the lake, I found the stump of an old windmill and some dry pipe and a few bent up sheets of corry iron. There was a long gravelly spur rising up to the west with a coup
la overgrown ruts winding along it. I turned up it till I come to a bigarse straining post and I stopped next to that for a sip. I sat there for a minute or two to rest me feet. Pulled the glasses out to get me bearings and study things.
When you scanned back down the lake to the south it was like looking at a drawing some kid hadn’t finished, hadn’t got round to sketching the details and didn’t even bother colouring in. You’d never know Fintan was down there in his hut. As far as you could see there was no road or roof or mill, no sign of people at all. And it was no different looking north. If there was still a saltworks up there it was too far away even for binoculars. That lake was like its own country.
Angling off from the straining post you could just make out two overgrown firebreaks meeting. And two lines of fucked out spreaders that were mostly down or gone altogether. So I figured this was a boundary corner. In among the whipsticks and suckers, snakes of rusty wire lay on the ground. I found a half buried gate and saw the faint ruts heading northwest. Any numbnuts could see no vehicle come down this way in years. Hell, if you weren’t paying attention you’d lose the track completely.
Higher on the range line, out in the west, I caught white blobs moving but that was only goats. It was bare rock up there, like they’d et the place down to nothing. It looked like something off the news, like bloody Afghanistan or something. I couldn’t believe anyone was really out this way. Maybe I’d come too far. I figured I’d bail if I didn’t see anything soon. Give it half an hour then turn back to the lake.
I pressed on till I found the rusted out shell of an old F100 with buffel grass growing up through it but that was all there was. I was ready to turn back until I come to another track running straight across me path. It was just a set of ruts with the middle weeded up to me shins but it had a fresh run of treads over it and when I saw them I got a real jolt.
The track seemed to go north–south. To the north there was a low rise and I kept on that way, staying in the scrub at the side to leave no prints and so I always had cover to duck into if someone showed. Now that I looked properly, there were two sets of identical treads. One in and one out. I went slow and careful, low as I could.
Just before the rise I got on me belly and crawled to the crest and saw the land dip into a big plain hemmed in all round by ridges and rocky spurs. I glassed it end to end but there was nothing much to see. Though once I got me breath under control I could hear something. There it was. Still faint but clear enough. The sound of a motor. And nothing to match it up with. No buildings or fences or even a windmill. Just saltbush and low mulga, red dirt and pebbles. I stayed there a long while, straining to see something I knew I should be able to see. No one there, nothing moving, not even a bird. I had the Browning off me shoulder by then. I swapped the glasses for the telescopic sight. And still saw bugger all.
Once I was over that rise and down the other side, the lake was gone behind me. And the further I went the stronger the sound got. The tyre treads were wide and chunky like something off a 4×4. But that engine noise wasn’t any kind of vehicle, I knew that already. I followed the treads through the mulga to a big bare patch of dirt where they did a kind of loop on themself.
But this wasn’t just a turnaround. It was a clearing. A big patch someone had bladed off with a dozer. The sort you make to build a house and sheds on. There was a kind of windrow at one end, just a nest of dead trees left where the machine had pushed it. All the trunks and limbs were grey and dry and ant-eaten. And all over that scraped ground there were weeds and suckers coming up everywhere, except for one totally bare patch in the middle that didn’t look right and I couldn’t figure out. And that was it. There was nothing else down there. Just a big clearing in the middle of the mulga. Which freaked me out a bit because the noise of the engine was clear as anything. Not loud, kind of low and light but it felt close by.
So I stayed back for a long time. Didn’t even set foot in that clearing. Kept to where there was hardbaked ground underfoot and saltbush and bluebush growing up through it undisturbed. I put a round up the spout. Because I didn’t feel safe. Because here was this blank bit of ground making a noise like a four-stroke petrol motor. Invisible. And spooky as shit.
I did this half circle creep round the clearing.
It’s so weird to be looking at a sound and not seeing anything. And from this angle it’s not one clean note neither. That genny’s getting the hiccups. And I know what that means. A dirty carby. Or it’s running out of fuel.
Pull out the glasses again. Run them over that clean bit of pindan where nothing’s grown back.
Then I catch a shadow. A kind of hard edge. I scoot round more to the north and the noise is louder. I can even smell it now. And a second later I cop on.
They’ve buried it. Some cunning bugger’s stuck a genny in a box and sunk it in the ground to keep it quiet.
I step out onto that clear stretch and the red dirt’s spongy underfoot. I get on me hands and knees and I feel the earth’s not right. Too soft. Not natural. Like it’s been dug over. And then there it is, an exhaust pipe, just a snout lifted free in a nest of stones someone’s put there real careful. You wouldn’t see the thing unless you nearly stood on it. It’s brilliant. I put me hand over the end and feel the hot breath against me palm. Then I scrape round it and follow it back to something wider, like a car muffler, and pretty soon I find the air intake, just a bit of PVC pipe with a fan down its neck a way. It doesn’t take long to find the first flat bit of fridge panel, same shit a chiller room’s made of, and when I put me hand down there I can feel the vibration. Then I go and grab a stick and scoot along a way until I scratch up a fuel line. Follow that till I hit something hard and dig down to see the corner of a fuel tank. Can’t even guess how big that bugger is. You can bet it won’t be anything small.
I straightened up and stood there a minute, me fingertips gone all prickly. Tell the truth I was kind of pumped. Knowing I wasn’t just imagining that noise at night. Stoked I was good enough to come up here and sniff this setup out. Whatever the hell it was.
And that’s when it dropped on me, plain and hot as daylight. This genny was powering something and whatever that was, it was underground. Other stuff was buried here, something a lot bigger than a petrol motor and a monster fuel tank. And somebody’d gone to a shitload of trouble to hide it.
I walked round in loops for a bit talking to meself like Fintan. Trying to think straight.
This didn’t look like any prospecting setup. The ground was dug over but there was no slag or spoil or whatnot. Also no shaft. If you was digging for gold you needed a way to get the stuff out. Unless they covered it while they were gone to keep the find a secret. But what was the power for? Mines have to pump water out but there was no sign of anything like that, no other hoses, no puddles or even any damp patches.
I thought of those survival dudes on YouTube with their bunkers full of food and water and blankets and ammo and everything. Cool setups some of them but those blokes were all nutburgers, the same bug-eyed Yanks yabbering about world government or Donald Trump or some bullshit. There’s no shortage of crazy-arse bastards in this country neither but nobody’s gunna dig a bomb shelter out here with no water, that’s just mental.
And then I got a horrible thought. Like an idea that was really off, totally wrong. I couldn’t even tell you where it come from. Except there’s shit you see. In movies, online, whatever. I got a creepy cold feeling just thinking it. And it’s kind of embarrassing to say it now but for a second or two the picture I got in me head all of a sudden was kids. Women as well. No clothes on. Covered in dirt and shit. In the dark. All tied up in some dungeon thing. Like a sexy pervy outfit some sick cunt’s rigged up. To get his jollies. Or make vids to sell to dirty sicko scumbags. Just the thought of that. Under me own feet. People trapped down there in a locked room. Like they could be hearing me walking round and talking to meself up here and they’re screaming and calling out for help, poor sods. It was nearly enough to make me yack.
So what is this then? And Fintan, what’s he, the caretaker? Fucking hell, he could be the ringleader. Then he’s got me foxed through and through. Holy shit.
Pretty soon I went from having an act to getting panicky. I had to do something or I’d twist off completely. So I started poking at the dust with the rifle barrel, spearing the soft dirt all over, spiralling out from the genny and fuel tank till I felt a tunk and knew I’d finally hit metal. Chucked the Browning, pulled off the binocs and got down on me knees and scratched the dirt up like a staffy. And there it was, a steel edge. I scuffed up more dust, found a corner. Christ, it was like a buried truck. No, a shipping container. So I hacked a little trench inwards until I saw a different colour metal. And a hinge. A flat shiny panel. Another hinge. When I cleared it properly I saw it was a door. A lid more like.
All of a sudden I wasn’t in such a hurry anymore. I just looked down at that steel hatch. Dusted the latch off. Wondered if I should piss off right now. Like maybe people are right, there’s some things you really don’t wanna know, stuff you can’t wipe clear once you seen it. But if there’s people trapped down there in the dark, women and kids desperate, you can’t just shovel dirt back on them and walk away. Can you?
