The Undercurrent

by Paula Weston

  A defiant half-shrug. ‘Whatever Peta Paxton tells you to do.’

  The anger is instant. ‘Careful, private. You’re still a soldier in the Australian Army until I say otherwise.’

  ‘What does that even mean? We’re shooting at ex-soldiers and dropping grenades on Australian soil. How does that work, sir?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how it works. Your job—your only job—is to follow orders. But that’s never been your strong suit, has it Walsh?’

  French clears her throat. ‘You got this, sir? I should check the audio and police channels.’

  The Major grunts. Weak as piss, the lot of them. These kids can’t handle a bollocking—not even watching a mate wear one.

  ‘Go.’

  French slings her rifle over her shoulder and disappears into the tech van. The Major paces in front of Walsh and Julianne, his phantom foot throbbing.

  ‘You think you’re hard done by, don’t you, Walsh? Giving up five years to get yourself a new knee?’ He stops and yanks up the leg of his pants. ‘What do you think that cost me?’

  Walsh stares. No smartarse comeback this time.

  ‘It cost close to a decade and responsibility for this shit show. So save me your sob story.’

  A heavy pause, and Julianne says: ‘Is that cyto-bionic?’

  ‘From the knee down.’

  ‘Supplied by Pax Fed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  She sounds so much like her mother it throws him for a good three seconds.

  ‘Their nanotech helped speed recovery,’ he says. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘You benefited from the illegal testing done on my father.’

  A train horn sounds again in the distance, loud enough to cut through the gunfire on the salt flats.

  ‘How was I supposed to know that?’

  ‘And you’re comfortable with them getting away with it? What they did to my dad? To me? What they still want to do?’

  The Major grinds his jaw. If she wants him to take on the Australian military and Paxton Federation, she can think again. He’s not Angie De Marchi.

  The train horn comes again. More insistent. Police sirens swell closer. There’s only one road off the sun farm, and without a Paxton on site to talk down the local law enforcement, this scenario is going to be tricky to explain. Where the hell is Khan? This is what he needed her for.

  ‘Sir—’ French bursts out of the van. ‘Xavier’s on the freight tracks. Waylon and De Marchi are with him. He’s—’

  The night splits with the sound of screeching steel followed by an almighty crash that reverberates through the earth.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ French says, aghast. ‘They’ve hit the train.’

  65

  It doesn’t stop. The scream of twisting metal and the earth-pounding thuds as wagon after wagon jackknifes.

  Ryan redlines the van, bouncing over saltbush. Wind whips in through the open window, swirling chewing-gum wrappers on the floor and sliding icy fingers down the back of his jumper. Jules is in the passenger seat, silent and pale. Broken glass litters the carpet and the cab stinks of burning upholstery from the Z12 SUV bonfire.

  They’re smashing through scrub as the carnage mounts ahead of them. Freight wagons spear towards the sky and topple sideways, radwaste casks bolted to them. If one of those casks has a breach there won’t be a safe place within a hundred kilometres, but all Ryan can think about is Waylo.

  His mate would not have stayed in that ute. No way. Unless he couldn’t get Angie out…Ryan’s focus flits from the road to the track, knee jiggling.

  ‘We don’t know for sure where Angie and Waylo were when it hit,’ Frenchie says. She’s in the back of the van, dominating the rearview mirror and trying to convince herself as much as him. She and the Major are hanging on with one hand and reloading rifles with the other. Ryan caught sight of a Steyr 882 fitted with a grenade launcher. They’re done playing games. If Z12 gets between them and the crash site, all bets are off.

  Ryan’s gone bush to find the most direct route to the wreckage but what are they going to find when they get there? He’s scared to look at Jules. She hasn’t spoken since they left the compound, even when they jolted over a washout or rabbit warren. He finds another hole now—he can’t see them in time—and his head meets the roof. The other two bounce around in the back but nobody complains, not even the Major.

  Ahead of them, momentum carries the train in a slow, tired slide. Less spectacular but no less horrifying. Dust plumes up around the locomotive and wagons. There’s no sign of Xavier’s vehicle. Ryan’s headlights find the cyclone fence bordering the track. He stomps the brakes and the van shudders to a stop. He kills the engine, leaves the lights on. ‘Cutters?’

  ‘Got ’em,’ French says.

  They don’t wait for the dust to clear before they’re out of the van. Ryan peels back the wire as Frenchie cuts, and the Major goes through first. Jules is stone-like in the van with her hands tucked between her knees, staring at the train. It’s still sliding, centimetre by centimetre.

  Ryan opens her door. ‘We have to go the rest of the way on foot, come on.’

  ‘What if she’s dead? I don’t…I can’t…’ Jules curls in on herself and Ryan reaches across to undo the seatbelt. He takes her face in his hands and makes her look at him.

  ‘What if she’s not?’

  Jules takes a shaky breath and wipes her cheek on her shoulder, lets him help her from the van. He guides her through the fence, metres from a wagon with its axles in the air like an overturned beetle. The wreckage has finally come to rest. Twelve freight wagons: twelve steel radwaste casks packed with spent fuel rods.

  Frenchie is already jogging up the line, the Steyr on her back and a first-aid kit in hand. The locomotive must have jumped the tracks after impact and careened down the embankment, sliding onto its side and setting off the chain reaction pile-up. God knows how the driver’s fared in all that. The point of impact was east, closer to the highway, and Ryan leads Jules in that direction, following the Major. His commanding officer sweeps the saltbush with the torch beam.

  Ryan sees it a second before the Major calls out: a vehicle on its roof in the scrub. He hangs on to Jules until they’re close enough to smell diesel.

  ‘Wait here,’ he says.

  Even without the benefit of a torch, Ryan can see that the headlights, bumper and grille have been ripped away and the engine shunted sideways. The passenger-side front panel is a mangled mess of twisted metal, the front wheel bent sideways like a broken wing, the cabin crumpled into itself. Fear uncoils under his ribs. Nobody could have survived that.

  Jules waits beside the tracks, arms around herself, framed in the moonlight by a jackknifed radwaste container.

  The Major jimmies open the passenger door. It groans as he forces the hinges. Ryan squats down, his legs numb and heart thrashing. He doesn’t want to see. But he has to. He has to know.

  The Major shines the light into the cab—

  The relief sets Ryan on his arse. There’s a solitary figure inside. He wouldn’t have recognised Xavier without the beard and man bun. The Agitator leader’s face is covered in blood and gore, a glint of bone where the skin has peeled away from his cheek. He hangs in his seatbelt, blood dripping down loose strands of hair. His right arm dangles at a weird angle, the shoulder dislocated or broken. Ryan fends off an onslaught of nausea.

  The Major climbs into the cab and presses fingers against Xavier’s neck. ‘He’s dead. Search the track.’

  Ryan scrambles to his feet and catches the torch the Major tosses to him. ‘They’re not in the ute,’ he yells to Jules.

  She takes off before he can get back up the bank to her. ‘Mum. Mum!’ She’s stumbling around the wreckage, screaming into the dark.

  Ryan forces himself to go slower so he can scan the saltbush. If Waylo and Angie managed to jump before impact, they can’t have landed far from the track, but they could be either side of the train. He vaults over a coupling b
etween wagons and makes his way down the other embankment. The salty night air is overlaid with diesel and grease.

  He sees the fallen power-line tower a few hundred metres away—closer to the camp—and the spot fires burning around it. It’s only now he realises the nuclear plant is dark as well as silent.

  More sirens on the highway, speeding from Port Augusta. The cops who’d been closing in on Happy Growers must have doubled back, because they’re now turning into the track from the main road. They’re only minutes away.

  ‘Walsh.’

  French is standing on the high end of a radwaste cask holding the Steyr like she intends to use it. It’s almost as tall as she is, but he’s seen her in action on the range. He knows how well she handles it.

  ‘You find the driver?’ he asks, springing up beside her to get a better vantage.

  ‘Yeah. In shock, but stable. Lacerations, concussion.’ She lifts the rifle to her shoulder and checks the night-vision scope. ‘Z12 are incoming. Eight o’clock. Scrub buggy, no lights. Two hundred metres out, heading for a break in the fence. They must have cut it earlier.’

  Ryan strains to see or hear the vehicle but the Z12 soldiers are running electric and they’re too far away for him to see without tech. The cop car keeps coming up the track from the opposite direction, back end sliding out as it manoeuvres around the wagons.

  ‘Orders?’ he asks.

  ‘They’re not getting near this train. I’ve got this. Find Waylon and De Marchi. We’ve got under a minute before those cops get here.’

  ‘What about our guys?’ The gunfire has stopped, but the rest of Q18 are still out in the scrub. As far as Ryan can tell, the protesters are all headed back to the camp. A radioactive train wreck will have that effect.

  ‘They’re coming in at nine o’clock covering the flank. I can see them, Walsh. They’re clear.’

  He hesitates, adrenaline burning through him. It feels wrong. It’s one thing to put a shot in a vest at twenty metres; something else to fire a grenade into a buggy full of ex-soldiers. ‘You can’t fire on them, not from this range. The margin for error’s too great.’

  ‘Not my call.’

  Ryan scans the track to the south, his mind racing. ‘What if they’re retreating? To intercept the protesters they had to go bush from the sun farm like we did. They’re in range and haven’t fired. They could be trying to get out of the way.’

  French drops to one knee and takes aim through the scope.

  Ryan peers down the track beyond the locomotive. He can finally make out a vague buggy-size shape about a hundred metres away. It scrambles up the bank—Ryan braces for French to loose a grenade—and then the buggy bounces over the rails and sleepers and down the other side. Tail-lights wink as it races through the scrub towards the solar field. No shots are fired.

  French stands. ‘Go,’ she snaps, but he can hear the relief. ‘Deal with the cops.’ She drops down to the eastern side of the train as the patrol unit slides to a stop in the churned dirt. The passenger door opens and Ryan shows his hands, ready to dive for cover if the Port Augusta coppers are feeling trigger-happy tonight.

  It’s Khan who climbs out. She levels a torch beam at him so he has to shield his eyes. The patrol siren shuts off, but the lights keep blinking red and blue. ‘Walsh, what happened here?’

  ‘Xavier rammed the train. He’s dead in a ute over there.’ Ryan gestures to the other side of the wreckage. ‘He had Angie in the cab with him and Waylo on the back but they’re not there now and we need to find them.’

  The beam shifts. ‘Holster your weapons.’ The command is to the two uniformed cops with her. They’re young blokes, built like brick shithouses. ‘Where’s the Major?’

  ‘Here.’ The Major appears from the shadows. ‘You’re wasting time. Help or get out of the way. The driver’s clear of the loco but needs attention.’

  ‘Where’s Julianne?’

  On cue they hear her call out for Angie in the dark, frantic. She’s on their side of the track now, further down the line. Khan shrugs deeper into her jacket and heads after her, walking backwards long enough to send one cop to confirm Xavier’s death, and the other to interview the driver. Ryan is about to jump down from the train when a movement in the scrub catches his eye. He swings the torch beam over the saltbush. Was that a hand? His chest tightens. ‘Over there!’

  He leaps from the radwaste cask—absorbs the impact in his knees, old and new—and keeps the beam on the patch of saltbush as he sprints for the spot, aware others are running after him. Closer, closer and then he sees khaki pants, boots…

  It’s them.

  He props in the dirt and for a devastated, suspended breath, all he can do is stand there with his heart hammering. Waylon’s lying awkwardly in a washed-out rut, head lolled to one side. Angie’s two metres away, facedown and not moving. Waylo must have been breathing a second ago to raise his hand, but seeing him bent up so badly momentarily paralyses Ryan—until he’s knocked back into the moment by Khan on her way to Angie.

  ‘Mum!’

  Ryan catches Jules before she can get any closer, using her momentum to swing her into his arms. She squirms, pushing at his chest. ‘I need to see,’ she sobs.

  ‘Give them space.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake get that light back here,’ the Major barks.

  Ryan angles the torch on to Angie and Waylon. Jules shudders inside her hoodie, her fingers in constant motion at her throat. Ryan forces himself to take a proper look at Angie. Her femur is broken—the bone has speared through flesh and denim—and her face and arms are grazed and bloodied. Is she breathing? Khan rests fingers against Angie’s throat—

  Waylo groans and Ryan’s legs dissolve. He’s alive. Waylo opens one eye and tries to focus on the Major.

  ‘Had to shoot out the window, sir.’ It’s an effort for him to speak. ‘Dragged Angie through…We jumped…I think I landed on her.’ He tries to move and gasps. ‘Ah, shit.’

  French appears and kneels down in the dirt. She unrolls the first-aid kit and pulls out a green pain-relief whistle; helps Waylo hold it steady while he inhales.

  ‘Slower, mate. That’s it.’

  The Major keeps pressing and probing, searching for injuries. ‘Collarbone’s broken,’ he tells Waylo. ‘And that ankle’s suspect, but stay put—’

  ‘I can’t get a pulse,’ Khan says, bent over Angie. ‘I thought I had one, but it’s gone.’

  Jules stops fidgeting in Ryan’s arms.

  Khan rolls Angie onto her side, not caring about broken bones, and sticks fingers down her throat. ‘Airway is clear.’ She repositions Angie on her back—‘Major, help me’—and starts chest compressions.

  Khan counts them out. ‘One, two, three…’

  The Major crawls to Angie’s side. He brushes hair from her face, picking a strand from between her lips with surprising gentleness.

  ‘Oh God,’ Jules whispers.

  Khan is working hard, her small frame rising and falling with each compression.

  She counts out thirty and then the Major bends down and places his mouth on Angie’s. Ryan watches her chest inflate, once, twice.

  Breathe, woman.

  Khan puts her fingers to Angie’s throat. Shakes her head at the Major, stricken.

  They go again.

  Ryan twists around to check on the other flashing lights coming in from the highway. One of them has to be an ambulance but it’s minutes away—maybe longer given the spread of the wreckage. Jules claws at his arm, fingernails breaking skin.

  Another thirty compressions. Another two breaths.

  Nothing.

  The Major lifts his head. His face is bleak in the torchlight but there’s no missing the intent there.

  ‘Julianne. We need you.’

  66

  Her mother is pale. Motionless. Quiet.

  Angie’s heart, so full of fury and fire, is lifeless inside her chest.

  Her mum is dead.

  Just…gone.

  Jules hasn
’t seen Angie in days, hasn’t heard her voice. Why didn’t she insist on making contact? She’s never going to hear that voice again. What if it fades in her memory like her dad’s has? The sky collapses onto her, drives her to her knees. She claws at the clay. Her fingernail tears but it doesn’t hurt. She can’t even feel the current, barely feels Ryan holding her upright.

  ‘De Marchi,’ the Major says. ‘Julianne.’

  ‘She’s dead…’ The words fall on the unforgiving ground between them.

  ‘Your mother’s in cardiac arrest. She’ll only be dead if we can’t restart her heart.’

  Khan snaps her fingers to get her attention. ‘You can bring her back, Julianne, but you have to do it now.’

  The charge flutters as she understands what they’re asking of her.

  ‘I’ll show you where to put your hands. Come on.’

  ‘You can do this,’ Ryan says, guiding her forward. Jules’ teeth chatter. Her mother will live or die depending on whether he’s right.

  Khan hikes up Angie’s T-shirt and jumper to expose bare skin and the frayed bra Jules threatens to throw out every washday. The sight of the tattered fabric almost undoes her.

  Jules positions her hands where Khan demonstrates, one above Angie’s heart on the left, the other beneath it on the right. She’s grateful for Angie’s warmth: her mum feels alive.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Khan says. ‘You only need enough charge to shock the heart into beating again. Start with two hundred volts, okay?’

  Jules has no idea how to deliver a measured charge. Ryan rests his palm in the small of her back. ‘Start with the smallest amount you can release.’

  She closes her eyes and Ryan’s touch falls away.

  ‘Now, Julianne,’ Khan urges.

  Jules sends a jolt of current into her mother. Angie’s legs and arms jerk with a violent spasm and Jules recoils.

  ‘That’s normal,’ Khan tells her and feels for Angie’s pulse. ‘Go again.’

  Jules takes a shallow breath and repositions trembling fingers. Nothing about this is normal. She releases another burst and this time when Angie lurches from the ground Jules smells charred flesh. She snatches back her hands, horrified.