Blood & Dust

by Jason Nahrung

  Bikies, Reece confirmed for Smith's notebook. Amphetamines. Heroin. The works. He and his partner had been tracking them, and the gang had rumbled them when they'd pulled in for fuel and a cuppa. The hunters hunted, and Smith shared that look that said to lose a partner was a hell of a thing. His sergeant was laid up in Charleville after a traffic accident and he still didn't have a replacement. Probably going to close the station anyway, he reckoned, and Reece thought it was a shame for the cop that they hadn't, because if the young constable got wind of the real story, well, an accident and some sick leave was the absolute best he could hope for.

  'Narc, huh?' Smith asked, and Reece said, 'Yeah, kind of,' more interested in getting Dave looked after than playing nice with the plods. Smith, after several attempts to convince Reece to a) see a doctor, and b) stay with him in the station's residence, gave him a lift into town.

  In tourism brochures Barlow's Siding could be called quaint or historic, but in more general conversation it'd be called a shithole. Two pubs sat at either end of the main street as though keeping the place from blowing away in the next dust storm. He noted a post office outlet, a half-dozen shops selling nothing you'd want if you had the choice, a takeaway with 1970s plastic strips on the door to keep the flies out. The cop shop was a bungalow at the crossroads where the statue of a Digger stood permanent watch atop the war memorial. The empty shops outnumbered the open ones.

  Smith pointed out the all-purpose general store, in case Reece needed painkillers or cough drops, but Reece said he would be all right, a little flash burn on the face, some singeing, smoke inhalation. He'd take a room at the hotel, not that he didn't appreciate the offer of a bed, but his people would want their space when they arrived. Smith dropped him at the hotel with the better rooms to wait for his people from Brissie. It'd be interesting to see how the firm handled it. What smoke and mirrors bullshit would VS pull on this clusterfuck?

  The bar was already filled with conversation, and in the time it took for them to realise who he was and go quiet so they could listen, he'd heard enough.

  How was Diana Matheson going to cope? Where were they going to buy their fuel now? It was an hour to the nearest garage at 'Nancy' and the fella there was a half-arsed mechanic, not like Tommy Matheson; even his son was pretty bloody handy by comparison, and not even twenty. It was a bastard shame, so few young folk staying around as it was.

  They tried to ask him, the copper from the big smoke, but he pleaded exhaustion and retreated to his room for a drink, a room-service steak and a good lie down. Might as well make the most of it. And with Mira coming out this far west of the ranges, it could mean only that things were going to get worse.

  At least the newborn had gone up in smoke. That was some consolation. Kevin Matheson was one loose end they didn't need to tie up.

  FOUR

  Kevin awoke to darkness and to silence. The world stank of diesel, ash, dirt. He was starving and aching, his mouth dry and his eyes itching. A suffocating weight pinned him down. He felt the grit under him, on top of him; dug into it with his panicked fingers. Gasped it in as he realised he'd been buried alive!

  Choking, he flailed upward. Soil cascaded from him, leaving his skin - his entire body - feeling as if he'd been sand-blasted. Blazing heat and brightness scorched his naked body as he dragged himself like a newborn calf into the nearest shade: the rusted shell of the Ford truck. All around, the grass was burnt and littered with wreckage. The service station was a tumbled ruin, blackened timbers thrusting toward the sky amid sheets of buckled iron and tangles of wire. A listless line of yellow plastic tape hanging from short iron pegs bordered the devastation.

  Across the singed fence, he saw his home, sagging wearily on its posts. Meg's little Suzuki soft top was parked out the front near his father's work ute. His Commodore and his mother's sedan were vague shapes hidden by the slats that walled in the ground floor.

  He clambered over the fence. Fire had sneaked through the palings and scored the lawn; a few scorched patches showed where embers had landed but failed to spread. He crawled more than walked, sheltering in the shade of the sparse, threadbare fruit trees and two towering gums, their bark hanging shredded and curled as though from torture. Sheets hung limp on the Hill's Hoist. He barely noticed the ash spotting them before he yanked one down and wrapped it around himself, grateful for any defence against the sunshine that baked his skin.

  The dogs didn't come out to greet him; there was no sign of either of them.

  He grabbed the rail of the rear stairs like an old man clutching a walking frame and hauled himself up, one painful, lead-heavy step at a time, until he reached the shade of the verandah. He went to open the back door but his legs gave out and he lurched into it; the door fell open under his weight and he sprawled on the lino near the dining table.

  Voices came from the living room; footsteps; gasps. Hands rolled him over, and tears soaked his mother's cheeks as she looked down on him in shock and wonder.

  'My God, Kevin, they said… The police said they looked everywhere. Where have you been?' She hugged him, her body painfully hot, and he clung to her, shivering.

  Meg stood nearby, hands to her face, eyes wide. She was in jeans, T-shirt and cardigan, her hazel curls bouncing loose around her face.

  'Let's get him into the bedroom.' His mother's voice faded in and out like a radio off-station.

  They helped him to his room at the far end of the house. Meg drew the curtains, blocking out the cracked and shattered windows, the view of the devastated service station.

  'Meg, go call for an ambulance,' his mother said.

  'That's two hours. Maybe we should drive him ourselves?'

  'Just go call triple-0.'

  Meg left and his mother told him, lullaby-style, to lie still; to tell her if this hurt; or this, or this. His mother's hands probed and lifted. 'I think you're all right, under all that dirt and muck.' She sounded surprised through the sniffles. 'Let's get you cleaned up.'

  'Mum?' he mumbled, reaching tiredly. 'Megs?'

  'Relax, Kevin, you're safe now. Safe. I'll be back in a jiffy.'

  She brought a bowl and some towels. When she'd washed him down and pulled the blanket up, she sat by his side, holding his hand and feeding him sips of water. It didn't bring much relief. Maybe it was the smoke or maybe the dirt he'd swallowed, but the thirst just wouldn't go away. His throat was so raw and tight; the water hurt like pebbles going down.

  'You're cold, Kevin,' his mother said. 'You want more blankets?'

  'Hot.' He took another sip of water, choked it down.

  'You're okay,' she told him, sniffling, her eyes red and puffy. 'Dehydration, sunburn. Shock.'

  'Where's Dad?'

  His mother dabbed at her eyes with a bunched tissue. 'He's gone, son.'

  'Gone?'

  'Found him in the servo, after they'd put the fire out. So they think. Took him to Charleville, to be sure.'

  She sniffed and pulled herself straight. 'Thought you were in there, too. The policeman, he said you were both… He said he'd seen you both, before he dragged his partner out, before it burnt down. Thank God he was wrong.'

  'I don't understand.'

  'They even killed Bill and Ben.'

  Kevin closed his eyes against the memories, the scarlet-tinged playback of his world falling apart: his father and the biker talking, gunshots, the sound of Molotovs exploding, the rush of heat and smoke. Boots, pointing to the ceiling, over by the door; scuffed and stained, a split in the side - his father's most comfortable pair, 'still a few miles left in them'. That cheeky grin.

  'A gang, the police said. The Night Riders.' His mother pronounced their name as though it was a foreign language; something curious. 'They wanted to get their leader back. Bad luck, the policeman said. Just bad luck.'

  'The leader, he was-' More memories: dark skin and white eyes and even whiter teeth. Kevin kneaded his temples as though he could massage the thoughts into some kind of sense.

  Meg came back and sat
by his side, her brow creased, those honey-brown eyebrows almost meeting. 'I rang Smithy. He's on his way.'

  Kevin heaved himself into a sitting position. 'Did he say anything about that city cop, Hunter?' The more he thought about Hunter and his partner Dave, the more he thought that maybe calling the cops wasn't the best idea.

  'No, Kev, just that he'd be straight out,' Meg said.

  'What about Hunter? He tell you about that bikie? About what happened to Dad and me?'

  'Just what I told you already,' his mother said, plucking at the fallen sheet. 'But I don't think Hunter was his name.'

  'And I'm okay?' He examined his stomach, his chest, his throat. 'I haven't been, like, shot or cut or nothing?'

  'No, nothing.' Her brows wrinkled with concern as she touched his forehead, her hand like a branding iron against his skin. 'A touch of fever, maybe.' She dabbed him with a wet cloth. He was so thirsty! He could suck that towel dry. He reached for it, but his mother had moved away.

  'Take it easy.' Meg patted his arm. 'It's okay.'

  He caught her hand and pulled her in, her scent wrapping around him, but she extricated herself from his desperate pawing and stood up.

  'Rest now, Kev. When you're better, you can tell me what happened with your clothes, eh?'

  A kiss on his forehead and she was gone, they were both gone, leaving him alone in the dark, a vague hunger gnawing at his insides, fevered exhaustion smothering him.

  As the weariness claimed him, the loneliness swept in; swept him up and threw him, litter in a willy-willy, and dropped him on a different bed, in another house, in another time.

  A white woman straddles him in a room smelling of violets and the heavy, sweet aroma of sugar cane. It's him, but it's not him; his skin is black, and yet it is him. Sweat beads on her lip and dangling breasts as she gasps above him. Then her teeth grow, mesmerising in the candlelight, four fangs gleaming. Nails, clear and sharp, slice into his chest where, in another age, he might have worn the charcoal-filled scars of manhood. His mind screams at the wrongness as she bends over him, breasts pointed and firm, stomach flat, hips wide. She pins him, then latches onto his throat. He flows into her. He is in her and she is in him and it is rapture, rapture that tears his soul as a cockatoo's scream slices across their panting. She bleeds for him, binding him to her - for now but not forever.

  A flash of white by the bed. A girl - Willa - in bleached blouse and skirt, a ghostly presence in the fluttering candlelight.

  'Welcome, Chris,' she says, and places a hand on the woman's sweaty shoulder where her hair sticks like weed on rocks. 'Welcome to the family.'

  He screams in fury. In shame. In hate. Then he is free. Free to run. Free, too late.

  Kevin jerked awake, fighting the bedclothes, his chest heaving. What the hell was that about? He grabbed the bedhead for support as he levered himself up. Still a bit weak around the knees. And very, very thirsty. Running a fever, maybe, like his mum said. Is this what having concussion meant - weird dreams and a cold sweat? It was so quiet: midnight quiet. He cracked the curtain - just gone sundown. He shook his head - hadn't been out that long, then - and dug jocks and jeans and a shirt out of the drawers. A crow's call rasped like a rusty hacksaw as he left the room. The hallway light was on, making him squint against the brightness. The house was still, like a museum. It felt as if they were leaving, as if everything was just waiting for the removalists to come. It was not a happy move. Tea. He could smell tea. Hear the chinking of china; murmured conversation interspersed with sobs. Voices: his mother and Meg.

  He walked faster, bare feet making barely a sound on the threadbare runner, its burgundy faded to brown. To his left, the familiar sofa and armchairs and television, the front door; straight ahead, the breakfast bar with the kitchen beyond; and to his right, the dining room, just big enough for a cabinet and table. The women were at the table, his mother facing him at the kitchen end, Meg on the far side from him near the back door. His father's .243 leaned in the corner behind his mother with a box of bullets nearby on the bench. Strange, to see the rifle there instead of in the gun safe. Strange to see it there without his father holding it.

  'Mum?'

  She jumped, knocked her tea over. Swore, dabbed at the mess, then ignored it to hug him. She smelled of English Breakfast and sweat; she wore sorrow like an overcoat. The lines in her face had never seemed so deep. Fresh tears brimmed and she gestured for him to sit at the table. It was as old as he was, big enough to comfortably seat six though there'd only ever been the three. Knife cuts, coffee stains and teapot burns marred the timber. Looking at it now, running his fingers over that abused surface, it was as if he'd never seen it before.

  Meg fetched a cloth and mopped up the spilt tea where it puddled around the little glass vase in the centre of the table; a single rose curling to brown drooped over its lip.

  'You should be lying down, Kev,' his mother said. 'How do you feel?'

  'Just hungry.'

  'That's a good sign. I had snags out for dinner.'

  'Don't, Mum, it's okay.'

  'Don't be silly. We have to eat.'

  She went into the kitchen and dug out utensils.

  Meg pulled up a chair next to Kevin and said, voice low and anxious, 'Smithy only let us come back to collect some stuff. We weren't meant to stay.'

  God, she was beautiful. That tanned skin, smooth there on her chest and the side of her throat where her pulse bobbed. His throat constricted, his stomach tightened with love or lust or both. He needed her, needed to bury himself in her smell and her heat and -

  A sharp clank made him jump. He swallowed, aware of the tension in his muscles, the shame of his distracted daydream; here she was, all care and concern, while he could think only of jumping her bones. And with his mother standing right there, too. With his mother standing right there, and his father not.

  Meg lifted her hand to reveal a set of keys. 'Smithy gave us these. Found them out the back of the servo. Yours, see - the key ring I gave you. It's not scratched up too bad.'

  He mumbled an embarrassed 'thanks', his fingers lingering on hers as he took the keys, the Holden emblem unmarked. He shoved them in his pocket. Keys to a servo that didn't exist, but he'd take them off the ring another time. When he could do it without crying or smashing something.

  'We're going to have your mum stay with us for a few nights, at least until the police are finished down at the servo,' she said. 'You can stay, too. Mum and Dad won't mind.'

  A car drove past, slow, its headlights glaring against the front windows.

  'Is that the ambulance?' his mother asked as the sausages sizzled in the pan. The room filled with the smell of meat frying. 'Or Smithy?'

  'I'll check,' Meg said. 'If it's Smithy, let's hope he's got good news.'

  FIVE

  Reece, barefoot and shirtless, cradled a stubby of beer and forty years of regret. He took in the massive wall of storm clouds building in the west; the humidity had thickened during the day to be almost choking. His body ached all over, as if he'd been dragged here from the roadhouse behind Smith's Land Cruiser rather than in the passenger seat.

  He felt bad for Diana Matheson. She was an impressive woman. If his own mother had been that strong, that stoic, well, maybe he wouldn't have joined the cops. If his mother had stood up to the drunken thug of a husband of hers, maybe Reece would've gone on to a respectable public service job, or even, who knew, if he'd stuck with the schooling, to university. Now that would've been funny. It might've been him brandishing a sign on the street march instead of taking names and busting heads. Maybe he wouldn't have had to drive over to the morgue and ID his sister, just another overdosed prostitute dredged up from a Valley gutter. Or maybe it wouldn't have made any difference at all.

  The story about the Night Riders being drug traffickers wasn't a line. Taipan's bunch would sell anything, do anything, if it meant staying a step ahead of the Hunters. Whereas drugs were the one thing that the Von Schiller organisation would not touch. Despite t
he lure of big turnover, Maximilian would have nothing to do with what he described as pollution in society's bloodstream. His people had carte blanche to deal with drug dealers any way they felt fit, as long as it didn't come back on the firm. Reece had done his share, and it still hadn't made up for the loss of his sister. Hell, he'd never even found out who'd sold her the junk. That'd been the spring of '71 and he'd been on Springbok duty. His path had crossed with Mira's and, well, here he was. Smoking and shooing flies on the back veranda of a decrepit pub in a dying town, waiting for the axe to fall. Him and everyone else here, by the look of the place.

  A presence tickled at the edge of his brooding mind. Mira. It was never a good sign that her control had slipped enough to allow that sensation to filter through their bloodlink. Hunger stirred, different to the steak and eggs he'd polished off. Pavlovian, that's what it was. Needing that taste, needing it today more than ever to ease his many pains. How angry was she? He blew his concerns out with a last lungful of cigarette smoke and ground the butt out.

  Back in his room, he checked his pistol where it lay on the bedside table, then rinsed his face, pulled on shoes and buttoned up his bloodstained shirt. He'd just double-checked that the internal door into the pub was locked when someone knocked on the verandah door. He didn't need to look through the window to know who it was. He could feel her, a seething thunderhead; could see in his mind's eye that boot tapping impatiently on the floor. He opened the door before Mira could kick it in, then stood back with a bob of the head and a muttered 'Strigoi'.

  Mira stood, dark and electric, eyes glinting green from the shade of her hood, her custom Driza-Bone draped about her like bat wings. 'What happened, Reece?'

  'We lost him.'

  She hovered on the threshold, as though waiting for an invitation, considering her options, perhaps, to bleed him or not to bleed him, and he wondered if he had time to get to the bedside table, if perhaps he shouldn't have had the Glock tucked into his belt. Futile, when she was this close. She entered, her shoulder brushing his chest, and flipped the overcoat across the single chair. The material snapped like a matador's cape. Her driver followed, looking boyish in a pants suit, a black ranger cap pushed down on her tightly pulled-back hair. She cleared a space on the small table for a duffel bag, then removed her mirrored sunglasses and tucked them into a pocket. Ponytail, freckles, wide shoulders. Familiar, but he didn't think they'd worked together. 'Nice place,' she said.