Getting Home

by Angus McLean

  She wondered what her sister Carla was doing, her husband Ryan, the girls, Steffi and Rose. Where were they? Were they safe? Were they at the farm – the girls always called the Dobsons’ place the farm, even though it was only a few acres – with Mark and Archie and their parents? She and Carla had always clashed, ever since childhood, but she would give anything to see her sister right now. To hug her nieces.

  She washed down the second chocolate bar and shoved the empty bottle and wrappers into her bag. No need to litter, even now when the road was dotted with abandoned cars.

  ‘At least our bags will be getting lighter,’ Alex said, following suit. ‘Have you got much left?’

  They did a quick assessment of their supplies, working out they had enough food and water for probably another day. As long as they kept making headway, they’d be okay. Any hold-ups could cause them problems.

  Closing his bag up, Alex asked, ‘So where do we go from here?’

  Gemma had been considering that herself. ‘I think the safest way will be cross-country. If we go by road we’re bound to run into people, but we can get right down near home by cutting across country, and hopefully we won’t run into anyone.’

  ‘Across peoples’ farms?’

  ‘Mostly, yeah. Although once we get to Bombay there’s public ground round Mount William, I guess it’s part of the ranges.’ She watched him pondering that. ‘I guess there’s a risk in cutting across peoples’ land, but it’s probably less risk than walking by the motorway.’

  Alex nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess so. We haven’t met too many nice people so far, and I could do with a break from them.’

  ‘Same. Let’s go.’

  They stood, hauling on their bags. Alex picked up the Marlin carbine, looked past Gemma, then grabbed her and pulled her down.

  ‘Get down.’

  They flattened themselves and she waited, holding her breath. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A car, over there.’ His eyes were locked onto something beyond her. ‘Stay still.’

  She lay there, the bag heavy on her back, the holstered pistol digging into her hip. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A car pulled up, by the crash over there. I can’t see the driver but the other person got out. Can’t see them very well, but I think it might be them.’

  Gemma lay still, waiting, trusting Alex to be her eyes. She strained her ears to listen but heard nothing other than bird noise in the nearby trees and the whup-whup of helicopter blades in the distance.

  She presumed that it was the bad guys looking for them. Somehow they’d latched onto their trail again. Hopefully the motorway crash would deter them. It would be nice to think that, once she and Alex got past that, they’d have a clear run home. Somehow she doubted that would happen.

  ‘Yep…shit, it’s them alright,’ Alex breathed. ‘He’s massive, that guy. He’s like a mountain. He’s looking around.’

  ‘He hasn’t seen us?’

  ‘Don’t think so…he’s got up on a car…shit.’

  Alex ducked his head down and Gemma pressed herself into the grass, not daring to move.

  ‘He’s looking all around. It’s like he knows we’re here.’

  ‘Ssshh. He doesn’t know we’re here.’ Gemma sounded calmer than she felt. ‘Just hold tight.’

  She could mentally visualise the scene behind her but it was frustrating not having eyes on it for herself. She didn’t know how exposed they were nor how well Alex was interpreting what he saw. If the bad guys saw them and came running, how quickly would he react? Hopefully fast enough that they could either get away or defend themselves.

  She was pretty sure the gun the girl had used was a sawn-off shotgun, and she knew that it would be pretty inaccurate unless they were close up. Although one lucky shot at distance could be all that was needed. She determined then and there that if these two came for them, she would unleash hell on them. There was no way she wanted them getting their hands on her.

  ‘Wait…he’s getting down…he’s stopped for a piss.’ A few more beats, then, ‘He’s getting back in the car…yep, they’re turning round…and they’re going. They’re heading back up the motorway in the wrong direction…I can’t see them now.’

  Gemma let out a breath and eased herself up on her elbows.

  ‘These bastards don’t give up, do they?’

  Twenty-Eight

  Curtis Green wheeled the red and silver truck onto the footpath and around the pile of shit on the road.

  A sofa, broken pieces of wood, a table and a mattress were piled on top of bags of what looked like household rubbish, obviously placed as some sort of roadblock. For what purpose, he could only guess. He saw a group of hood rats standing in a long driveway, watching him as the truck went by. He slowed, eyeing them through the open driver’s window, letting them know he saw them. Whatever they had been planning to do, they dropped their nuts and hung back.

  The Papakura Military Camp was back behind them now – he’d taken care to work his way around that, having no wish to tangle with the SAS dudes he knew were based there. Those fuckers were lethal, and even though he’d killed four men so far today, Curtis knew his limits.

  Four men. Men who had disrespected his family, robbed them and left them for dead. He would happily kill four more for doing that. He’d kill however many he needed to kill. It had been a while since his last hit, him and Lena having stopped and had a couple of pipes after they’d found their boys. He could feel his nerves jangling and he was getting twitchy.

  The boys were in the tray of the truck now, wrapped in a tarpaulin. They’d be buried later.

  ‘Hey.’ He stared at Lena until she turned away from the window and looked at him. Her eyes were puffy and red and she had a snotty nose. Jesus Christ, she looked fucking terrible. Where had the Lena gone that he used to know? The hot young thing that could suck a golf ball through a garden hose, who had a sense of adventure?

  ‘What?’ There was resentment in her eyes.

  ‘Whaddaya mean, what?’

  ‘What?’ Her tone was tired, irritated. She always did have a mouth on her.

  Curtis slowed again, staring at her. He stopped in the middle of the road.

  ‘Don’t you fuckin’ talk to me like that, woman,’ he growled. ‘Watch your fuckin’ tone.’

  ‘Or what?’ Full defiance now, like she hadn’t shown in years. ‘You’ll get me killed too?’

  Curtis’ eyes narrowed, getting that mean look he got. He knew what she meant. He knew exactly what she meant.

  His left fist shot out, a straight jab to the mouth. Her lip split under the impact, blood immediately staining her chin, and her head snapped back. He reached over with his left and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her savagely across the wide bench seat towards him. She tensed up but knew better than to fight back.

  Curtis’ right hand locked onto her throat like a clamp and her breath cut off.

  ‘Don’t you fuckin’ talk to me like that, you ugly fuckin’ slut,’ he hissed in her face. ‘I’ll fuckin’ kill you right now. You want me to kill you right now?’

  Lena couldn’t breathe let alone respond. She clung onto his forearm with both hands, with not a hope in hell of breaking his grip.

  ‘You fuckin’ disgust me,’ he growled. He shoved her back across the seat. ‘Tidy yourself up.’

  She looked at him with weeping eyes, a hand to her throat while she tried to get some air into her lungs. She said nothing, but he knew what she was thinking. He turned towards her, ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, and spat in her face.

  ‘You’re nothing,’ he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. He turned away and moved off again.

  Lena rested against the door, her breathing slowly coming back under control. Her eyes fell to the shotgun in the footwell.

  Twenty-Nine

  Cooking smells were wafting across our property as I trudged back up the driveway, and my stomach gave me a loud reminder that I’d been neglecting it.

  Rob
was at the barbecue on the deck, a drink in one hand and tongs in the other, Archie at his side. Archie was obviously feeling much better, chattering away while he “helped” Poppa cook dinner. Jethro bounded from my side up onto the deck and went to the boy for a slobbery cuddle.

  ‘Smells good,’ I said, following him up.

  ‘It’s about five minutes away,’ Rob said. He lifted his glass. ‘The ladies are nearly ready inside, grab yourself a drink.’

  I found the ladies in the dining room, setting the table. They had a steaming bowl of potatoes and another bowl of beans and carrots, both of which I’d last seen boiling on the BBQ hot plate.

  I quickly washed my hands, poured myself a short bourbon and water – weak, seeing as how I still needed to be ready to respond – and joined them in the dining room just as Archie came in carrying a dish of meat. There were chicken pieces, sausages and pork chops, more than we needed for one meal. The generator fuel wasn’t going to last forever but while it did, we were going to work our way through the freezer methodically, using the red meat last. The leftovers from tonight would be good for the next day.

  I helped Archie sort himself out and sat beside him, Granny across from us and Nana and Poppa at the ends.

  ‘So,’ I said, cutting into a chop, ‘what’re you grateful for today, Archie?’

  It was a dinner-time routine that Gemma had established, where each night we would share three things we were grateful for that day. It was a good way of seeing the positives when things hadn’t gone so well, and also showing each other gratitude.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m grateful to Poppa for cooking dinner…’

  The ladies both smiled, knowing that as far as he was concerned, the meat was the main event, therefore Poppa had done dinner.

  ‘And to Dad for reading Tintin with me…and…’ Archie skewered a bean on his fork and studied it before shoving it into his mouth. He cocked his head and thought. ‘And to Nana and Grandma for cooking delicious beans.’ He grinned at them both. ‘You make great beans.’

  I felt myself smile and saw my mother doing the same. She began to chortle, then her shoulders were shaking and she stopped eating. Rob and Sandy both caught the bug and soon we were all laughing like fools. It was surreal and absurd but, right at that moment, it was the most natural thing and we all needed and we went with it.

  My gut ached and I had tears in my eyes and I couldn’t stop laughing.

  Thirty

  By the time Shavaunne and Dice reached the barn, Curtis and Lena were already there.

  Shavaunne pulled in around the back and they let themselves in the side door. With dusk falling it was murky inside the barn, but a couple of hurricane lanterns threw a pool of golden light around a workbench of sorts. A door had been placed across two sawhorses and Curtis was there, sorting out weapons. The smell of food cooking came from the corner, where Lena was hunched over a gas ring, stirring something in a pot by torchlight.

  ‘Made it,’ Curtis said. ‘Shut the door.’

  ‘Where’re the boys?’ Shavaunne said, crossing towards him. ‘Maybe they got lucky?’

  Curtis stopped what he was doing and looked at her. ‘They’re dead,’ he said flatly.

  Shavaunne took a step back, grabbing onto Dice’s arm for support. The big retard glanced at her then at his uncle.

  ‘Dead?’ he rumbled.

  Curtis nodded. ‘Both of ’em.’

  ‘What…’ Shavaunne had a million thoughts tumbling through her head but couldn’t think of what to say. ‘What the fuck…’

  Curtis nodded grimly. ‘We gotta bury them.’

  ‘Where…where are they?’

  He turned and pointed towards a tarpaulin against the wall. ‘There.’

  ‘They…those two…’ Shavaunne ran a hand through her greasy hair. ‘Those two do it?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ He gave a thin smile, so cold Shavaunne felt a chill run down her spine. ‘But I found three guys who robbed them.’

  Dice grunted. ‘They dead?’

  Curtis nodded slowly. ‘Fuckin’ A dead, alright.’

  ‘Oh fuck…’ Shavaunne looked at her brother. ‘Fuck…the gun. They had a rifle, I thought it was a twenty-two.’

  ‘Gunner’s Marlin.’ Curtis eyed her and for a moment she thought he was going to erupt. Her fingers closed subconsciously over the sawn-off .410 in her hands. If he saw, he gave no indication, just stared at her, his eyes dark hollows in the light of the lamps.

  ‘Spade?’ Dice moved forward, looking around. He spied a spade hanging on a hook and grabbed it.

  Curtis handed him a torch and he headed outside to dig two graves.

  Shavaunne watched him go then turned to her uncle again. Her nerves were jangling like shit and her and Dice had taken their last hit hours ago. Curtis had gone back to sorting out weapons on the makeshift bench. She joined him, stepping over a length of discarded black polythene marked with dirt, which she presumed the guns had been buried in.

  He had laid out several weapons, and he looked at her when she came across the table from him. The cold aggression of moments ago was gone, replaced by a smile. He picked up the weapons in turn and showed them to her.

  ‘Since you’re first here, you can pick,’ he said. ‘These are the best I’ve got. My gold standard. This is a Norinco .223. Looks like an M16 but it’s not.’

  Shavaunne saw it had a long, curved magazine and looked cool as fuck.

  ‘This is an SKS, a Russian job. This is a Winchester 12-gauge pump action.’ He hefted a larger rifle that looked almost like a machine gun but without the ammo belt hanging off it. ‘This is a BAR, a Browning Automatic Rifle. It’s a three-oh-eight.’ Curtis handled the weapon lovingly. ‘This is the shit. World War Two GIs used this to fuck up the Japs.’ He put it down to the side and grinned at her. ‘You can’t choose that, that’s mine.’ He picked up the last item, a stubby gun with an ugly snout. ‘This is an M3 submachine gun.’

  Curtis put that down too, and rubbed his jaw. ‘Never thought I’d need to pull all o’ these out for us.’

  He didn’t mention how he had come to have the weapons. She didn’t need to know he’d robbed a militaria collector, taking all his weapons as payment for the guy’s son’s drug debts. The Luger had come from there too, along with various items bang-sticks he’d stashed elsewhere.

  Shavaunne nodded, her eyes lingering on the submachine gun. ‘Things are different now,’ she said. She fidgeted with her hands, picking at a sore on her neck that she’d been picking at all day. It was red and the skin around it was flaky and scratched and there was smears of dried blood.

  ‘Fuckin’ A different, alright,’ Curtis agreed. ‘We’re gunna get some food, get our shit together and in the morning we’ll go and fuck these people up.’ He hefted the BAR in his hands and patted the receiver like it was a goddamn dog. ‘Nobody fucks with the Greens and walks away from it.’

  ‘Fuck yeah,’ Shavaunne agreed. She scratched at her sore some more.

  ‘So what one d’you want?’ Curtis pressed.

  ‘Huh?’

  He scowled. ‘What gun d’you want?’

  ‘Oh, ahh…that one.’ She pointed at the M3.

  Her eyes flicked over to Lena, still hunched over the cooking pot, to the wall, the ceiling, back to the guns. The barn was large enough to hide a couple of trucks, and with no furniture, she guessed they would be sleeping on the ground tonight. She didn’t give a shit right now. Her eyes flicked back to Curtis, who was holding the M3 and looking at her with those sly eyes. The bastard knew what she wanted. Fuck, he knew alright.

  ‘All good, Tricky?’ he said softly.

  Shavaunne scowled. He knew she didn’t like that nickname. It was a hangover from a previous life, turning tricks in a gang-run parlour for sweaty men who helped themselves during the downtime. Fuckin’ Curtis. She picked at her sore.

  ‘Need a lil’ somethin’?’

  She tried to hold out, not wanting to give in easy. He knew she’d be out and she k
new he’d be holding. He was always holding. Her will of iron lasted about three seconds before she nodded.

  ‘Okay.’ Curtis set down the M3 again. ‘Whaddaya got for me?’

  ‘Oh c’mon man.’ Shavaunne hated the whiny tone in her voice but she couldn’t help it. She needed some shit and she needed it now.

  ‘You know the rules, Tricky. I ain’t runnin’ a fuckin’ charity.’ Curtis hitched up his pants and reached into a pocket. He came out with a gram bag. Woulda been seven or eight hundy a few days ago.

  Shavaunne locked onto it, all thoughts of guns and dead cousins and cooking smells gone from her head. She needed that shit so bad she could taste it. Curtis was still holding it, out of reach but oh so close. The thought flashed through her head that she could just shoot him, right here and now. Everybody knew he was a cunt, who would care? Her fingers twitched and her eyes flicked back up to his.

  He was watching her closely and she knew he knew what she was thinking. He fuckin’ knew and he wasn’t scared. The miserable son of a bitch.

  ‘You got nothin’ for me, have you?’ Usually it would be stolen goods or cash, but he knew neither was much use right now.

  Shavaunne shook her head, anticipating his next move. Not the first time.

  Curtis cocked his head. ‘So?’ He got that smirk on his face, that smirk he got when he knew she was on the ropes.

  Fuck it, you son of a bitch. Shavaunne felt her shoulders drop. ‘Okay.’ The resignation was heavy in her voice. ‘After?’

  Curtis almost laughed. ‘I ain’t stupid, Tricky. Now.’

  ‘C’mon, Curtis…’

  ‘Now.’ His voice was harsh. He waggled the bag at her. ‘Then you get some o’ this.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Shavaunne looked past him towards Lena, who still hadn’t turned around. ‘Okay.’

  She turned and headed out the door again, Curtis close behind her.

  Lena finally looked up and watched them go. Her eyes burned as she watched her husband close the door behind him. She turned further and looked at the guns on the table.