“Were you planning on letting us in on your investigation, Detective Cooper?” Robert said. “Or do all the city cops do the lone wolf thing?”
Cooper walked up to Robert. “I just had a hunch that I’d have more luck finding the missing persons by actually looking for them. I could have told you they weren’t hiding out in the police station, but I didn’t want to spoil your fun.”
Rodney had wandered around the back of the vehicles and was on the phone to Police Chief Harris.
“What’s he doing, ratting me out to the boss, yeah?” Cooper walked around Robert and approached Rodney. “You tell Harris if he’s got a problem with me going out in the field he’s going to have to come out here and deal with me himself.”
“You hear that, boss?” Rodney said. “He’s got Mia here. Want us to bring her back to town?”
“Look around, guys. Don’t ditch the case just so you can bring the girl home. She wanted to help. Why don’t you ask her if she wants to stay or go? You hear that, boss?” Cooper hopped in his Land Cruiser and rolled down the window. “Your call, Mia. What’s it going to be?”
Rodney hung up and the twins approached Mia.
“I want to find these guys. I want to bring them home. I know you do, too,” Mia walked around them to join Cooper. “Don’t make stupid decisions because that’s what my father wants.”
“He’s on his way down,” Rodney said. “We should at least wait for him.”
“He’ll catch up, guys,” Cooper said. “The campsite’s not far up ahead. You can hang around town if you want, but I’m telling you now, you don’t want to.”
The twins remained standing there, staring at Cooper and Mia as they drove off into the distance. Cooper may have been an insubordinate jerk, but at least he seemed determined to solve this case. At a glance, the town was a smouldering mess. It didn’t make sense for the hunting party to have stopped here. There was nothing here that their campsite wouldn’t have provided. They would have just made the straight run back to Alice Springs.
Out of curiosity the twins took a few moments to check out the town, just in case there was anything to clue them in on the case, something the new guy might have overlooked. They didn’t question his dedication. His skills were yet to be proven. His attitude had already been revealed. They found the community hall crumbled away; bodies spilled across the ground. With handkerchiefs held over their mouths, they took a closer look at the burned people. All definitely dead. None of them the people they were looking for.
There was a haunting feeling about the place. How could so many people live so close to Alice Springs and none among them be a familiar face? Even accounting for the burns, they found nothing close to someone they knew. Cooper was right. They couldn’t linger.
The road beckoned them to follow. The bush was wide and vast. The tremors were real.
THE BLOODHAWKS
Harris hung up the phone and threw it across the room. He yelled and kicked over his chair. At this time of night, the office was empty. He snatched up his phone and threw open the door. It banged against the wall and swung slowly back. He leaned against the door frame, sinking into it. He closed his eyes and disappeared into his mind, where his counselor spoke to him in a soothing voice, telling him to take a deep breath in. Hold it. Let it out. Take a deep breath in. Hold it. Let it out.
He cursed Cooper for endangering his only child, and he cursed himself for letting this guy rattle him so easily. His counselor would be disappointed. She wouldn’t use that word, though—disappointed. It was such a negative word. She would tell him that the negative energy was clouding his judgement. But venting was part of the process. He needed to find the calm within himself, to find his focus. She would tell him to rationalise the situation from Cooper’s perspective. But Cooper didn’t even know Mia. She was just a girl. She didn’t deserve to be put in danger like that. He had no right. And how could she do that to her father? How could the thought of him not even cross her mind? Couldn’t she see how much it would hurt him if anything happened to her? Couldn’t she see that he needed her as much as she needed him?
He could feel the anger bleeding through his body, that negative energy bubbling within. Cooper was reckless. A fool. Yes, he wanted to solve the case, but he was exposing himself and, more importantly, Mia to unnecessary danger by failing to stop and assess the risks involved. Guys like that, Harris knew, they were just a time bomb waiting to go off. It wouldn’t be long before someone got hurt, and he’d be damned if it would be his daughter.
Harris scrawled a barely legible note and left it on the front desk on his way out. Instructions for the officers on the early shift tomorrow. Then he was gone.
He closed his eyes again, digging through the curses to find the shrinking space where his counselor was hiding, where she too had her eyes closed; he breathed deeply and prayed he would find the strength within himself to pull through these toxic thoughts and find a more healthy object to focus his mind on.
He opened his eyes to the dark road ahead, void of all traffic. He pictured in the distance the names and faces of all the missing people somewhere out there. Do it for them. He lit a cigarette, match hovering in front of his face in shaking hands. The cigarette helped with the breathing, helped with the focus, helped to blow the clouds of negative energy away.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d left the office for a case like this.
***
Mia’s phone rang, her father trying to get in touch with her again. She let it ring out again. He left another message.
Hi, honey. Um, it’s me again. I got a call from Uncle Rod saying you’re heading down to the campsite with Cooper. [A deep breath.]
Yeah, I just wanted you to know I’m not mad at you. I’m just… I worry about you, you know. I’m coming down so, uh, I’ll see you soon. Love you. Call me back. Bye.
Cooper glanced at Mia. He waited for her to say something.
She didn’t.
“He’s like two different people right there,” Cooper said. “That’s not the same father who sent the twins out to spy on you.”
“I know,” Mia said. “I’ve grown up around detectives. I know their game.”
“Do you know my game?”
“Sure,” she said. “You knew you’d never get those guys out of the office so long as you were honest with them. You know time is crucial. You wanted to get straight to the job. You did what was necessary to get to it. You knew my father wouldn’t want you taking the lead so you did what was necessary to get them out here to get the job done. That’s all you want. That’s all you ever want out of a case, to get the job done, right?”
Cooper nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”
“If my father weren’t so strict you wouldn’t have had to drag him into this mess. He hasn’t been out in the field in years.”
“I think it’ll do him some good. Right now it seems like he’s got no idea what he’s doing. He was too hesitant. These things cost lives.”
“Why did you let me come with you? How can you be sure I’ll be an asset, not a risk?” Mia asked.
“I can use all the help I can get. You follow your gut. You know these people and you know the land. You wanted to help; I can’t deny you that.”
“And you really think we can find them?”
“Sure we can, yeah.”
The earth rumbled. Cooper gripped the wheel tight and slowed down a little.
“Did you feel that?” he asked.
“Was that another earthquake?”
He nodded. “Feels like it.”
The tremors grew stronger down the road. The Land Cruiser jostled like it was falling apart, and they slowed to a crawl that took them far too long to reach the campsite.
The bush was awakening to a blood red dawn. The tremors stopped and gave way to a harsh silence. The stillness in the air was electric. Even the wind itself was muted. Up ahead, the road was deformed. A chasm split open wide across the bush, wider than they thought it possible
for an earthquake to yawn.
As they drove closer to it, they saw the birds circling overhead. They looked like hawks in shape and phoenixes in colour. There were a few of them landed at the edge of the chasm, pecking at some carcass on the road. Cooper and Mia pulled up nearby. The birds were big. The carcass was bigger. A kangaroo? Cooper ran at the birds to shoo them. A couple of them fluttered a few metres away. The others screeched at Cooper and went back to digging into their meal. They were bigger than a small child. Their bronze beaks were stained with blood, and their feathers were too, but the natural fiery red of their feathers created a camouflage so you couldn’t tell where the bloodstains ended and their natural colour began.
That carcass was no kangaroo. A limb fell out. Bloody fingers, wrist slit from sharp talons. A shirt sleeve torn to shreds.
“Oh my god, it’s Josh!” Mia ran at the bloodhawks and jumped over the body, trying to protect it from them.
They screeched and flapped. Eyes golden black, enraged, they scratched their claws at her back. Cooper yelled at them and flapped his arms to shoo them off her. They pecked at Josh’s feet and fingers. Their bellies were filled with flesh, but their beaks were still craving. Cooper ran and stomped and yelled; he picked up rocks and threw them at the soulless birds until they flew off, dipping into the chasm, leaving the two of them with hearts pumping hard and sweat sticking their hair and clothes and blood to them.
Mia lay over Josh protecting him long after the birds were gone. Her body shuddered, and she sobbed hard into Josh’s lifeless shoulder.
Cooper stood there breathing heavy, doubled over, wincing.
The twins pulled up and got out of their vehicle. They stared from Cooper to Mia sobbing and hugging the body. Back and forth between the two they stared.
“What happened here?” Robert asked.
“We found Josh,” Cooper said, indicating the body. “Ravaged by wild birds.”
The twins ran over to Mia and Josh. When Mia pulled herself up, the twins flinched at the sight of the bloody corpse. “What the fuck!” Robert said.
They turned away. Rodney got on the phone to Harris. “Hey, boss, yeah, it’s real bad. Found Josh mauled to death. The others are M.I.A. There’s a … looks like a canyon’s formed out here. Must have been from all the earthquakes. Their camp site must have been destroyed. Just keep coming out this way and you’ll find us. We’ll be waiting for you.” He hung up. “Oh, god.”
THE CANYON
“We’ll be waiting for you?” Cooper said. “Really? There are six others missing down there and you want to wait around for the boss?”
Rodney glared at Cooper. “What else do you expect us to do? We can cover more ground with all of us here. Just give him some time.”
“We don’t have time. You saw what those birds did to that body. I don’t want the same thing happening to the others if I can help it.” Cooper opened up the back of the Land Cruiser and ripped into his backpack, digging for his water bottle. He pulled out a towel and handed it to Mia. “You’ve got blood on you.”
She wiped off the blood. “Please,” she said. “We just want to find the others. Don’t make this about following orders.”
“I can’t believe you two,” Robert said. “You,” he pointed at Cooper, “you’ve got no right coming out here and calling the shots. And you,” he pointed at Mia, “you should show more respect for your father.”
“I would if he granted me that same respect. And you two aren’t any better.” She handed the towel back to Cooper. “Let’s go. You need me to carry anything?”
He stuffed the towel in the backpack and put it on. He handed her the water bottle. “You don’t have to make this awkward,” Cooper called back to the twins. “You can come with us if you want. Cases like this, they’re not about who’s right and who’s wrong. They’re not about hierarchies. You just have to get the job done, no matter what. Can’t waste time waiting around.”
The twins thought about it a moment. The new guy made sense. He didn’t seem totally unreasonable. He was an abrasive asshole, but he was right.
“Wait up,” Robert said. “We’ll come with you.”
“I thought you might, yeah,” Cooper said.
“But we’ll be leaving markers for Harris to follow so he can find us,” Rodney said.
“Yeah, go for it, guys. I’d be worried if you didn’t. Grab your shit.”
They got their own backpacks and followed Cooper to the canyon’s edge. They took a moment to scan the area, the earth torn wide open, raw red, a space much larger and deeper than they could have expected. Now the maps became useless. Now they had to read the land, go where the clues led them. They climbed down the rock into the unexplored domain.
Off in the distance they could hear the screeches from the flock of birds.
Rodney pulled a blanket from his backpack, a big red thing. With his knife he hacked a chunk out of it and stuck a rock on top of it. A marker. He checked his phone in case he could get in touch with Harris to let him know about the markers. No reception. Robert checked too. No luck. Cooper and Mia confirmed that they too had no reception.
Cooper set the pace for the others to keep up. He wasn’t wasting any time here.
Robert and Rodney were constantly looking back, keeping an eye on their markers. When one became hard to see in the distance, they stopped and tore off another one and set it down. Harris was a smart guy. He’d be able to track them.
“Have you got an actual plan, Cooper, or are you just running blindly through the bush?” Robert asked.
“I’m not running blindly. The road was leading to the campsite before the canyon formed, yeah?” he said. “I’m just following the course the road would have taken, trying to find where their campsite would have fallen down. From there we should be able to learn more. I’m guessing you’ve never been in this exact situation. Until you come up with a more productive plan, keep your mouth shut and eyes open, yeah?”
The sun came up to noon and burned its way to ‘fucking hot’ in no time. They searched for shade, but all the trees were uprooted. The rocks were hot and unforgiving. There were few shadows to be found.
There were some sections jutting out of the earth where the rock had formed giant columns; there were cracks where massive sheets of earth had split down various paths. Where the rocks hadn’t crumbled, they formed giant cliffs whose tops seemed like a distant heaven. The cliffs provided shadows that deepened as the afternoon progressed.
They never stopped any one place for long, rationing out their food and water sparingly. At this point they didn’t know how many days they were going to be in this canyon, how long they could look and find nothing. It was possible that they could go weeks without finding anything but whatever beasts crawled down here.
No one mentioned the possibility of turning back. The longer they walked the less time they had to make it back to the vehicles. The thought of dying out here was a real fear. Each of them had burned in their memories Josh’s body torn to shreds.
There always seemed the ever-present call of those vicious birds. Here they came, flocks moving far up high, calling to others, echoing amongst the walls and walls of rock, never quite settling in the dirt. Fuck those guys. The sky was filled with enough of them. Bad omens in the sky. Conjured mythic birds with bright red feathers coloured like the blood of devils. Coming to take everything away from them. Stripping them down to nothing, pulling flesh from bone.
There were caves, too. Sections where the earth had cracked and formed an opening big enough to walk through. They didn’t yet feel like spelunking was the answer. There was something strange about them. Some of the caves seemed too cavelike to be formed coincidentally by abnormal earthquakes. The canyon itself became more unsettling the deeper into it they went. Like the canyon and the caves had existed here for hundreds or thousands of years.
The caves could have been home to ancient tribes living off the land. Those bloodhawks which seemed to be everywhere here could have been part of
a massive and vibrant ecosystem which died off hundreds of years ago. Maybe the earthquake had just revealed something which had already existed here for so long, undiscovered, and the hunters, and now the rescue party, were the only ones in the modern world to witness this natural beauty.
Farther along they discovered bushes and trees growing, thriving like this wasn’t an ordinary barren wasteland. A mystery space preserved so completely, yet fragile and subject to change at the turn of another earthquake.
A piercing screech filled the air and pulled the rescue party from their wonderment and placed them back on edge. The hundreds and hundreds of bloodhawks in the sky scattered as a giant bird flew over the canyon. From up high, the prehistoric-looking beast cast its massive shadow across the earth. The group watched, paralysed, as another flock of birds emerged from the beast’s wings. Her children were still larger than any bird they had ever seen, bright red mega-bloodhawks, attacking the smaller ones, tearing them down, a violent skirmish in the sky.
The group moved closer to the cliffs and the caves, watching with a disturbed fascination as the new flock circled lower and lower, their figures looming larger and larger. Screeching murder. The group backed into a cave and waited in the shadows for the moment to pass. The smaller bloodhawks bashed into the rocks and crashed into the ground around them and left them wondering how they could possibly fight off a flock of those things if it came down to that.
Kaiju Canyon Page 2
