Blood & Dust

by Jason Nahrung

'I'll drink to that,' Budgie said, raising a glass, but there was a nasty edge to his voice.

  'So why stop now?' Taipan continued as though Budgie hadn't spoken, as though he didn't have an entire pack gathered around the table. 'This young fella wouldn't eat much, wouldya fella?'

  Bhagwan's face tightened, his words coming out like a tyre losing air. 'I don't take sides, you know that. I give VS their blood, I give it to you. You all leave me alone. That's the deal.'

  'And all I'm askin' is that you share ya even-handedness with this young fella here, till his system's had a good flushin' and he's ready to hit the road. Never to be seen by you, or me, again.'

  'And you're leaving-'

  'Sunset. First thing.'

  Bhagwan darted a look at Kevin, then back at Taipan as the biker disengaged and picked up his glass. 'Maybe.' He glanced toward the kitchen as a woman's laugh cut the air.

  'I like ya myxo,' Taipan said. 'She smells like, like golden syrup. 'Member that stuff? Come in tins, eh. Usedta eat it by the gallon.'

  Bhagwan crumpled. 'Sure, sure, the pup can stay. But you're going, right? Sundown. No tearing up the town, no going into Rocky to raise merry hell.'

  'Glad to hear it,' Taipan said. 'A week, Bhaggy, just till he's clean.'

  'You made him - how clean can he possibly get?'

  'Cleanish, then. He's got a hard-on to go back west, set up a business, have some kids. White picket fence, all'a that.'

  Bhagwan smiled weakly.

  Reg, setting down a fresh jug of cows' blood, laughed. 'The great Aussie dream.' He clanged his glass against Kevin's empty mug.

  Kevin extricated himself from the gathering. His fate appeared to have been decided; he had no interest in what further mayhem Taipan was planning. He walked into the kitchen to tell Kala the good news, but his presence immediately shut down the conversation where a gaggle of red-eyes sat eating and drinking around a Formica table. The scents rushed around him - food, wine, beer.

  'Did you want more?' Bhagwan's woman asked, and the man added cheekily, 'Light or heavy?'

  'Just returning my glass.'

  'Sink's there, knock yourself out,' the woman said. The man stared at him, calculating.

  'Okay, Kevvie?' Kala asked over a half-demolished plate of T-bone and vegies.

  Taipan loomed in the doorway behind him. 'Bedtime, kids. And whitefella,' he said, looking at Kala, 'Bhagwan says you can stay. He'll get you a set of wheels when it's time to go. All right?'

  As if he had a choice.

  Kala's face was a blank mask as she rose. Penny slouched up after her, looking exhausted still.

  'C'mon,' Taipan said. 'We're campin' in the quarters, there. Bhaggy don't want us upsettin' his "ambience".'

  They marched onto the veranda, Taipan's hand on Kala's neck, guiding her, and Reg - his face as red as a stoplight - with his arm around Penny's shoulders.

  'I'll be down in a minute,' Kevin said.

  'Suit yourself,' Taipan said, 'but don't stay up too late. Wouldn't wanna get Bhaggy's nose outta joint.'

  Eventually, with pink staining the sky, the male red-eye fetched Kevin. The man looked weary and dark-eyed; he smelled of sex and fresh blood. Kevin thought he detected Reg's scent on him, but maybe that was a holdover from having had his helmeted nose pushed into the biker's back for hours. The man's shirt was open almost to the navel. A tattoo showed over his heart - one of those loopy Egyptian crosses in tarnished silver.

  'Hear you'll be staying with us for a time,' the man said, reaching out his hand. The red-eye had a firm grip, a work-rough palm and fingers. A touch of wolfbite coloured his cheeks; a four-dot pattern like Penny's decorated his throat above his collar. Kevin followed him to one of two ramshackle quarters sitting side by side near a set of stockyards. A horseshoe hung over the door of one.

  'Budgie's bunch is in that one,' the man said, pointing to the hut without the shoe. 'Your boss wants you in this one. With him.'

  'About your boss,' Kevin said, 'everyone says Bhagwan's a veggo, but he drinks your - human - blood.'

  'It's a renewable resource, y'know.'

  'But he cuts himself when he does it. As though it's wrong.'

  'It's hard for him to admit he needs it.' The man shrugged, as though they were talking about an eccentric aunt rather than a creature existing on the blood of others. 'I don't mind.'

  'Is it worth it?'

  'I get this.' He pulled his shirt open to show the curvy cross etched into his skin.

  'You got a tattoo?' Kevin asked, suspecting he was being toyed with.

  'You are a little virgin, aren't you?' The man stood close to Kevin, a hand cupping his cheek. His eyes were red spots, hypnotising. 'How old do you think I am?' His hips pushed against Kevin, backing him up against the veranda rail. Beer, musky sex, his steak dinner, his blood, Reg and his road-stained leather. The man's blood, his desire, rising to the surface. His hand, rough on Kevin's cheek. His eyes, huge, twin bloody moons filling Kevin's vision. His voice, husky, saying, 'He drinks, I drink. It's a win-win situation.'

  But, Kevin thought, variety is the spice of life.

  The door thumped open behind them. The man started, dropped his hand, but didn't move back. He looked over Kevin's shoulder toward the door, from where the stench of Taipan's freshly lit cigarette rolled down.

  'Givin' me boy a lesson there, myxo?'

  'He did ask,' the man said, hands on his hips.

  'Well, you can give him all the answers he can handle after we've gone,' Taipan said. 'Now piss off.'

  The man gave a surly smile and stalked off toward the main house.

  'Get inside before you make Kala jealous,' Taipan told Kevin. 'Last night together and all'a that.'

  Kevin shook his head, groggy with confusion. Normally, if a bloke had bailed him up like that, he'd have given him a thrashing. But all he'd wanted to do to this fella was - taste him. He rubbed his forearms as they crawled with the thought of Bhagwan's scars. He'd have to watch himself around Bhagwan and his pair of misfits. Still, they couldn't be worse than Taipan's bloody gang. Could they?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Oh-four-hundred on Saturday morning. Not even twelve hours since the men with the clipboards had given Mira's helicopter the thumbs up. Which meant he'd been released from the veritable banishment of hanging around the workshop getting in people's way, a brooding symbol of their mistress's displeasure. On the plus side, he had caught up on some much-needed sleep, reading and drinking, interrupted only by calls for updates from the Strigoi and invitations from smart-arse technicians to look at pieces of incomprehensible machinery. The guns, though: those had been cool.

  The alarm buzzed again and Reece slammed the clock, only to realise, finally, that it was his intercom making the racket.

  Up. Yawning, fur-tongued, he hit the answer button. Yes?

  Shit.

  Yes, Strigoi. Right away, Strigoi. Three bags full, Strigoi.

  And my, wasn't she excited. Someone was in for a bollocking.

  Unshaved and clad in full kit, he made his way to the helipad, pronto. There, squatting on its skids like a malignant beetle, the matt black machine looked even deadlier than it had under lights in the workshop. The waxing half moon hung low over the hills in the west, weak in comparison to the city's wattage.

  There were few stars, not like that amazing starscape he'd seen out west. A view like that, you could almost understand the attraction of living in the middle of nowhere. Almost.

  Mira met him on the roof. The hilts of her swords poked out of the gap where she held her cape-like Driza-Bone shut against the downdraft of the rotor blades. A squad of Gespenstenstaffel already huddled inside, armed with automatic weapons and standard issue broadswords.

  'Bit early for a test flight, isn't it?' he asked, shouting over the engine noise, squinting into the wind. 'First light's less than an hour.'

  'I've had a most pleasant dream,' she told him. 'I'm fairly certain I know where Taipan and the grease monkey are holed up. Problem is,
Taipan's getting ready to ditch the boy, which means-'

  'Not very fatherly,' Reece said.

  'Which means,' she continued, her irritation clear, but quickly passing as she ushered him to the door and her excitement took over again, shining green and bright in her eyes, 'this is my last chance to catch that slimy little biker. Now stop annoying me and get on board. I have to get back into that grease monkey's head and make sure he doesn't go anywhere before we get there. Daylight or not, Reece, we are going to kill more than a few birds with this stone.'

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The wooden walls pulsate with a dark violet glow; it's as though the cabin has been enfolded within a heart, purplish light streaming through its membranes as the beat makes the floor reverberate. As Kevin's eyes adjust, he sees Mira standing behind Meg, slowly peeling off the girl's blouse to reveal her lacy bra, the generous swell of breast. Meg bites her lip as Mira's hands strip back the cloth to show her stomach, navel, knickers.

  'Jesus, Meg,' Kevin says. 'Where are your strides?'

  Meg smiles. 'Where are yours, Kev?' She kisses Mira as her blouse folds like a sleeping dove around her naked ankles.

  Kevin looks down. Naked. He's naked in the dorm, but none of Taipan's gang are around. It's just the three of them. The three of them and a white shape propped on a sofa.

  'That's right, Liebchen,' Mira says. 'Just us. Don't worry about that silly slut. She died happy.'

  The white shape comes into focus - a sheet covering someone sitting on the old sofa. It slips down, revealing the head and torso of the girl the Night Riders killed, still in her bloodstained nightdress. She looks at Kevin, her mouth open silently. He smells again the burning hair and wants to vomit. The girl dissolves into ash.

  'I said not to worry about her,' Mira says, her voice crackling with command. 'Watch us. Stay with us.'

  A gash appears on Kevin's arm and bleeds silver. He grabs the wound, but then another appears, and another, climbing up his arm. Then they vanish.

  'Pay attention,' Mira says.

  Her lips run down Meg's throat, across her shoulder. She eases the bra strap off, leaving a depression. Licks it. Meg sighs, holds her bra to her chest as the strap slides down her bicep. Mira slips the other strap down and pulls Meg's hands away to let the garment fall. Meg's nipples are hard points. Mira cups the girl's breasts, making her lean back, eyes closed, lips parted and glistening. Mira bites down and Meg cries out. Blood washes from her shoulder, across her breasts. A line of crimson wriggles across her stomach, slowly staining her knickers.

  Kevin shouts Meg's name. Her eyes flicker open. 'What?' she asks dreamily.

  'What the hell are you doing? With her?'

  'What you asking me for? It's your dick she's sucking.'

  He looks down, aware of his nakedness, of his aching erection and the touch of lips and tongue, wet warmth sliding down the shaft, fingernails stroking his thighs and balls.

  Mira laughs up at him. 'Got something for me, Grease Monkey?' Her fingers pump his shaft, nails bright scarlet against his flesh. Before he can protest, he comes, spraying red with the pressure of a burst fire hose. Mira laughs again, lapping up the flow as it splashes across her face and breasts.

  'Come for me, Liebchen, that's the way,' she cackles. 'Give me all you've got.'

  Kevin hauls her to her feet, her skin slippery under the bloody shower, and throws her face-first against the wall of the dorm so hard it shakes. He parts her legs as blood streams down her back and across her buttocks. Above their heads, a red neon horseshoe rattles against the timber. It winks on and off like a cheap 'Open' sign.

  He shoves himself into her. He wants to hear her scream, but all she does is laugh.

  Kevin woke, breathless. A heavy bass beat filled his ears. He stared around the darkened room, his eyes picking out the glow of sunlight through the cracked weatherboards, the floating dust, the bodies of his companions sprawled in the one main room of the cottage.

  He stared, surprised not to see bloody handprints on the wall where he'd fucked Mira in his dream. He swallowed hard. Just a nightmare, a terrible bloody nightmare. The bass rhythm faded.

  Kala stared at him, her eyes a feral red. 'What is it?'

  'Bad dream,' he said. 'That's all.'

  'A dream? Or something in your lifestream - a memory?'

  'A nightmare, actually.'

  She crawled across to where he lay. She was wearing just a singlet and knickers. 'What did you see?'

  He blushed. 'My girlfriend.'

  'And what was happening?'

  'I'd rather not say.'

  'Was she the only person in it? This is important, Kevvie. You need to be straight with me.'

  'No,' he conceded, 'Mira was there, too.'

  'Tai: you hear that?' Kala nudged the biker, then shook his shoulder until he stopped batting at her and actually opened his eyes. 'I think the bloodhag's been sending to Kev.'

  'What?' Taipan looked at Kevin, bleary-eyed.

  'Kevin dreamed about Mira.'

  'Now that's some kinda wet dream. So where you seen that bitch before, fella?'

  'Just at the farm. The Crawfords' farm. During the attack.'

  Taipan got up, and faster than fast, a knife appeared in his hand, broad bladed and curved to a point. A gutting knife. 'We all saw her there, fella, but you're the only one gettin' hot and sweaty 'bout her.'

  'It was a nightmare, that's all.'

  'We don't dream, fella. All you got in ya head is what you put there. Well, you and me, right? And I sure as shit ain't had that bitch's fangs in me. So tell me again, how come you've got her in ya noggin'?'

  'How would I know?' Kevin looked around: the door? A window? Would he last longer outside in the sun than he would in here? The myxos would hunt him down, hunt him down and drag him back to Taipan and that'd be that.

  Kala stood between Kevin and Taipan. 'Leave it alone, Tai. He's only a pup. He could see anything in the blood and not even know what it is.'

  'I'm askin' the fella some questions here, Kay. Keep ya nose out of it.'

  'What's important isn't how he came to see it, but what he saw. If Mira knows where we are. So Kevvie, what was it like? Did the dream seem real?'

  'Pretty fuckin' real.'

  'And you're sure it was a dream? Not just a memory from before?'

  'No, it was definitely a dream.'

  Kala grabbed Kevin's shoulders, her voice urgent. 'What did Mira say? What happened?'

  'I don't remember, really.'

  Taipan pointed his knife at Kevin. 'What did you tell that bitch 'bout us?'

  'Nothin'. Nothin' at all.'

  'Where were ya - in ya dream?'

  'Here, I think. There was-'

  Taipan swore, started kicking the people around him. 'Get up. We gotta get movin'.' He stared at Kala. 'I reckon they know we're here, all right.'

  'Fuck, Tai,' she said. 'It's daylight.'

  'Don't matter, we gotta run.'

  'It's broad fucking daylight.' She began to pull her jeans on.

  Taipan grabbed her by the arm and shook her so hard she let her pants go. They bunched around her knees. She screamed at him and he released her. Swearing, she reefed her jeans back up. The stud clicked.

  'We hafta get outta here, Kay. You and Penny get up to the house and find us some wheels. Give Budgie's mob a shout on the way past, too.'

  The women left and, shortly after, Budgie's mob crammed in with them.

  Time was measured in heart beats, trickling sweat, the shuffle of boots and squeak of floorboards. Reg clicked the safety of his submachine gun on and off, on and off. 'You wanna send the myxos off, Tai?'

  'Let's give them girls a few more minutes.'

  'What about him?' Reg asked, pointing the gun at Kevin.

  'I'm thinkin' 'bout that.'

  The Night Riders kept watch, the silence painful, the tension claustrophobic as they waited. And waited.

  Kevin, unarmed and ostracised, shrank back against one wall and wished for it to be
over.

  Finally:

  'Car coming,' Budgie said, his voice a whip crack.

  'Kala,' Taipan said. 'About bloody time.'

  'There's something else,' Reg said, looking toward the ceiling.

  Kevin concentrated, heard the rhythm from his dream, low and deep. Looked up, as though he could see the helicopter through the weatherboards and iron.

  'This is gonna be close,' Taipan muttered as he opened the front door and stepped away from the scorching ray of sunshine that splashed on the floor.

  A truck chugged up. Wide timber rails made a cage of the back with a loosely tied canvas tarpaulin for a roof. It stank of cow shit. Penny opened the rear gate. It banged against the sides as the truck started to reverse. Beep, beep, beep. Like an alarm clock going off.

  'Go,' Taipan shouted, and the gang crowded around the door. The truck stopped and Penny lowered a plank as a make-shift ramp.

  Reg, swearing, wheeled his bike past Kevin.

  A shadow passed over them, and it sounded as if they were being run over by a slasher, the helicopter's noise battering the cottage as it turned to face them.

  'Down,' Taipan yelled.

  A whoosh. The world exploded.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Deaf. Blind. Confused. Kevin tried to stand and couldn't, lurching across the floor like a drunk lizard. Heat washed over him. He rolled, crawled, not even sure what direction he was going. Hands hauled him up and he couldn't resist; just stared around at the blurred, smoke-screened world, his hearing filled with the crackle of flames, the mechanical clatter of automatic weapons.

  'Hang on!' someone shouted. He reflexively closed his hands into fists, grasping leather in his hands. The reek of ash and blood filled his nostrils. Sunshine blazed. He shrank away, insecure on the saddle, and the rider swore at him.

  The bike jerked into motion, dust flying around them, the thumping of the chopper like being in a tin drum being beaten with sticks. There was another long burst of automatic fire, deeper than the high-pitched stutter of the Night Riders' weapons. The gun sounded as if it could chew through concrete.

  The bike bucked through scrub, shaking Kevin as though he was a sack of potatoes. Sunlight strobed through leaves. The helicopter moved off behind them, trailing gunfire. Kevin clung like a koala to its mother in the midst of a cyclone. The path smoothed out, the trees gave way to blue sky. The sun cooked him inside his clothes. He shut his eyes against the heat and the pain, let the world shudder by, a strange and deadly thing. Darkness finally closed around them. It was still daytime, but they were out of the sun. Someone prised Kevin's grip loose. He fell helplessly, rocking the bike and making the rider curse. His eyes stung painfully, as though they'd been sprayed with pepper.