Amongst the Dead

by Robert Gott

  ‘You won’t have any visitors. The advice from Katherine is that you are to remain isolated, especially from your brother Brian and …’, he checked a note in front of him, ‘Corporal Glen Pyers. He’s a magician, I believe.’

  He said this with an unmistakable sneer. I felt obliged to defend Glen against the slur.

  ‘He’s a fine magician, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Nevertheless, unless he can walk through walls, you won’t be seeing him. A guard will be posted outside the door, and if you need to go to the toilet he’ll escort you. I can assure you, Private Power, that we won’t be idle while you’re cooling your heels here.’

  I presumed he meant that some attempt was being made to gather evidence. I didn’t like their chances of finding anything significant.

  Archie spoke. ‘I should warn you in advance, Will, that between here and Mataranka you won’t be under armed guard. We can’t spare the men and, like I say, we don’t have any provosts here anyway.’

  I indicated that the absence of a guard was perfectly understandable, and neither here nor there as far as I was concerned. Archie cleared his throat.

  ‘The road between here and Mataranka isn’t good, and you’ll be bloody lucky to get through without getting bogged.’

  I wasn’t sure where this traffic report was headed.

  ‘The thing is, Will, that you and Farrell will be shackled.’ He paused. ‘Together.’

  My eyes opened wide in disbelief.

  ‘You have to see it from our point of view,’ Archie said quickly. ‘At some point you’re going to have to push the vehicle. If you were shackled individually, one of you might try to make a run for it, however awkward that might be. We don’t want the driver to be worried about keeping an eye on you both. If you’re locked together, you’ll keep an eye on each other.’

  ‘You’re going to chain me to a murderer?’

  Captain Dench very smartly said, ‘Maybe we’re chaining Private Farrell to a murderer.’

  I offered him a withering look.

  ‘If he kills me, I suppose you’ll think it’s an efficient solution to the case.’

  Dench shrugged.

  ‘It would certainly be strong evidence in favour of your innocence.’

  Throughout this interview Captain Dench had been growing in confidence. He’d been uncomfortable at first, but now he was beginning to enjoy himself.

  ‘When this war’s over,’ I said, ‘you should think about being a policeman. They need smarmy, oily little bastards like you.’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ he said airily. ‘I wanted to be a copper before the war. I was told I was too short.’

  He said it defiantly, daring me to make a remark that might justify a physical response from him. Archie intervened.

  ‘I think that’ll be all for the moment, Captain Dench.’

  Dench obediently got to his feet, saluted, and left the room.

  ‘He’s a good man, Will. If it’d been anyone else he’d have put you on a charge for insubordination. Brian did say you had a special gift for making enemies.’

  He said it lightly, and smiled, and was gone before I could reply.

  My bedding had been brought to me, and I spent a comfortable night — possibly my most comfortable since leaving Ingleburn. It gave me petty pleasure to demand to be taken to the latrines well after midnight and, despite the ghastly prospect of being chained to Rufus Farrell for many, many hours, when I returned to the room I slept soundly, oblivious even to the buzzing of a few mosquitoes.

  At daylight I was taken from my room and obliged to wait beside a jeep that had seen better days. If this crate made it to Mataranka it would be a miracle. If the engine even turned over, I thought, I might have to reassess my religious beliefs. My hands were cuffed in front of me by a Nackeroo who said nothing, and on whose neck sat a tick. I didn’t draw his attention to it, which was mean of me, but my Good Samaritan urges were at a low ebb. I couldn’t see the wharf from where I was standing, but I assumed The Hurricane had arrived and that Rufus Farrell would soon join me.

  When I first caught sight of him, walking towards me between two formally attired Nackeroos, it struck me how young he was. As he came closer it was evident that he was nervous, as well he might have been, knowing that in a short time he could be facing a firing squad. I didn’t know if successful court martials led to execution; but as I watched Farrell, I thought a traitor’s death an appropriate end for him. A man, however young, who had killed other men had very little to offer the society that spawned him.

  He looked tired and oddly vulnerable, so that when he was pushed close to me — he had to be pushed — I felt no fear of him. Our legs were chained, and a shackle attached that joined us at the ankle — my left and his right. His hands were cuffed in front of him, in an identical fashion to my own. By now a small crowd of curious gawkers had gathered. Neither Brian nor Glen was amongst them. I imagine they’d been instructed to stay well away.

  Our driver arrived, and he’d been well chosen — he was tall, thick-set, and had the stern, humourless face of a preacher or an executioner. I knew that I would certainly be reluctant to annoy him, in case he tried to preach at me or kill me — a distinction without a difference. Getting into the open jeep was difficult, and required a level of cooperation that neither Farrell nor I was initially willing to exercise. We were helped by our driver, who simply shoved us into our seats, indifferent to the pain and discomfort this caused. I was more fortunate than Farrell. I saw that the metal clamp around his ankle was so forcefully dragged along his flesh that it made it bleed.

  Once seated, we were unable to prevent our legs from touching, and it made me almost physically ill to realise that this was the touch of a killer. It was a small, forced intimacy that felt to me like rape. I looked straight ahead — not only because I still couldn’t turn my head from side-to-side, but also because the thought of looking at Farrell was so abhorrent that I was certain I’d throw up the meagre and unpleasant breakfast I’d recently eaten.

  Within a few minutes of leaving Roper Bar we were in the familiar wilderness of sparse forest, cut through by the rough and inadequate road we were on. The tyres of the jeep threw mud at us in spatters as it tossed and rocked its way through sodden potholes and over fallen branches. Even if I’d been tempted to say something to Farrell, the noise of the engine would have required me to shout, and I certainly had no intention of shouting remarks at him.

  An hour into our journey we became bogged for the first time. The driver ordered us out and instructed us to push. Farrell was uncooperative, and it was difficult to maintain a sensible rhythm to our movements. He dragged his leg heavily, without waiting until I was ready, and the consequence was that the process was made more difficult than it needed to be. At first I thought it was deliberate, but I soon realised that his anxiety about being hobbled with the one man who knew the truth about him was leading him to make involuntary attempts to pull away from me — each of them frustrated by the chains that bound us. When we did manage to get behind the vehicle and push, it came free from its bog quite easily, and we continued the journey.

  Over the next few hours we crossed several streams, and became bogged twice. It took us more than half an hour to free the vehicle on the second occasion. There’d been no conversation since leaving Roper Bar, apart from the instructions given by the driver.

  We stopped for lunch near a slow-moving creek. The air was humid and oppressive, and my clothes, ragged and filthy, stuck to my body with sweat. Farrell and I wordlessly came to an agreement about walking, and made it to the edge of the water without incident. We washed our faces, and drank until the awful feeling of dehydration had been banished. Our driver stripped off his clothes and lay full length in the centre of the stream, allowing it to flow over and around him. This was a luxury denied to Farrell and me. The most we c
ould achieve was filling our cupped hands with water and emptying the dripping contents over our heads and down the front of our shirts. I leaned far enough forward to put my head under water, but thought better of it at the last minute. With the driver several feet away, it could have provided Farrell with the tempting opportunity to drown me.

  After we’d crossed the creek and driven for a few miles, the rain began to fall in earnest, and our progress was slowed as the jeep slid and skidded over the suddenly treacherous track. The rain intensified to the point where visibility was practically zero, and the track began to resemble a flooded creek bed. It was clear that there’d be no let-up for a very long time. This was a monsoonal downpour, not a brief shower.

  To my consternation, the driver seemed determined to plough ahead, but it turned out that he was looking for a track off to the side. He must have been very familiar indeed with this route, because even in good weather I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish one section from another. He, however, turned the jeep into what looked to me like a thick patch of scrub, beyond which was a rudimentary, badly deteriorated, and now liquid track. It fell away quite steeply into an unexpected depression. It wasn’t quite a ravine, but the decline was sufficiently severe to ensure that the jeep’s slide down into it was steady.

  Our momentum was constant and not alarming. I certainly didn’t feel in any danger — which is why, when the jeep’s right front wheel struck a tree root, I was jolted out of something of a reverie. The jeep tipped perilously, came down heavily, and went into a gut-churning slide. The driver wrestled with the wheel to no avail and, before I knew exactly what had happened, Farrell and I were thrown clear in a tangle of painful, wrenching limbs. I don’t think I lost consciousness, but perhaps I did, because I have no memory of hitting the ground. I recall uttering a small cry and then being aware that I was lying on top of Rufus Farrell in a dreadful parody of the missionary position, staring down into his surprised eyes.

  As soon as he’d established that he was relatively uninjured, he began clawing at me and shoving me away simultaneously, a combination of movements that spoke volumes for the confused state of his mind. I rolled off him, and he tried to scrabble to his feet. This was extremely difficult to do so long as I remained lying down — the tugging of the shackle at my ankle was terrible.

  ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Give me a chance to stand up.’

  He didn’t offer any assistance, and it took a moment to adjust our positions so that we could both stand comfortably.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I asked.

  He seemed astonished that I was speaking to him. He leaned his torso away from me and said, ‘I don’t think so. Winded is all.’

  I moved all my limbs gingerly and discovered that I, too, was unhurt.

  There was no need to wonder what had happened. The jeep was upside down, and as there was no sign of the driver we knew that he was pinned underneath.

  ‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea,’ said Farrell, and he began calling, ‘Driver! Driver! Are you all right, mate?’

  There was no answer. We weren’t able to see under any part of the jeep — it had sunk in mud up to its doors.

  ‘He could be drowning under there,’ I said.

  We tried valiantly to tip the jeep over, but it wouldn’t budge. Farrell suggested we look around for a fallen sapling. We found one. All hostilities between us were temporarily suspended, and we were able to move efficiently and use the sapling as a lever to raise the side of the jeep a few inches — high enough to see that the driver was indeed pinned underneath.

  ‘All right,’ Farrell said. ‘One big effort, and this thing should roll onto its side.’

  We heaved, and with very little resistance the jeep did as Farrell predicted. The driver was face down in the mud, and when we pulled him away it became obvious that he wasn’t breathing. Farrell cleared the driver’s nose and mouth, and attempted to resuscitate him. I thought it was hopeless. Farrell breathed into his mouth again and again, in a kind of desperation as if his own life depended on saving the life of this man. A religious person might have declared the sudden choking and spluttering that ensued a miracle.

  However, when I looked down at the driver’s lower body, the miracle of his survival was tempered somewhat by the nature of his injuries. Something was terribly wrong with the angle of his legs, and the top of his trousers had been torn away to reveal a bloody crush of bone and flesh where his right hip ought to have been. Having awoken him from death, Farrell had awoken him to a world of pain and, if he survived, condemned him to life in a chair. He didn’t cry out, though, and seemed oblivious to the destruction of his legs. He looked vaguely at us and sank into unconsciousness.

  ‘Well done,’ I said, and meant it.

  ‘Where are we?’

  The thick rain meant that the only way to find out was to explore the immediate area on foot. There was nothing we could do to help the driver, apart from construct a clumsy lean-to of leaves and bark to keep the worst of the rain out of his face.

  ‘He was coming down here for a reason,’ I said. ‘We should follow the track to the bottom.’

  ‘Don’t try anything,’ Farrell said. ‘I’ll kill you if I think you’re about to try anything.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. You have plenty of experience.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just don’t try anything.’

  ‘Don’t you try anything either, Farrell.’

  We stared at each other, our faces streaming with water. Farrell’s expression was a curious mixture of belligerence and nervousness. I manufactured a look of uncompromising steeliness, and it had the desired effect of making him drop his eyes. Being only a few inches apart, I could see small muscles jumping in his neck and jaw.

  We walked the short distance to where the track levelled out, and found the remains of what would once have been an insubstantial hut, constructed on all sides of corrugated iron, hammered to a skeleton of bush timbers. One or two pieces of iron had fallen to the ground, but the roof was intact so that, although the weather moved freely through the structure, the ground inside, while soggy, had not suffered the inundation of the area around it.

  ‘We can’t carry him down here,’ I said. ‘His whole lower body’s been crushed.’

  ‘Well, we can’t leave him up there.’

  The pounding rain made thinking difficult.

  ‘We can’t do anything with these bloody handcuffs on!’ I yelled, my frustration boiling over. ‘He must be carrying a key.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be in one of his pockets. He’d have hidden it somewhere in the jeep, just in case either of us had any ideas about overpowering him.’

  I calmed myself down.

  ‘If we drag him by the shoulders, and hope he stays out to it, we probably won’t do any more damage than has already been done.’

  Farrell nodded, and we made our way back to the jeep.

  The driver was heavy, and having to walk backwards, in unison, was tricky. Farrell slipped over once and took me with him. The driver’s head thudded into the mud, which provided some cushion, I suppose. I slipped over next, and the consequences were repeated. When we eventually began moving successfully I tried not to think about what was happening to the driver’s body as it bumped and twisted over the uneven ground. Mercifully, he remained unconscious.

  When we’d laid him in the hut, Farrell said it was probably used by the Nackeroos as a supply cache, and that, somewhere nearby, cans of food and maybe medical supplies would be buried. It didn’t take long to find them. Behind the hut, a less than artfully arranged bundle of thick sticks indicated that the cache was buried beneath.

  ‘We need to be bloody careful,’ Farrell said. ‘Some bastards rig these with a grenade, just in case an Abo finds it and decides to help himself.’

  ‘I’m not h
ungry,’ I said.

  ‘There might be morphine for the driver.’ He began peeling the sticks away one by one.

  ‘If one of these was wired to the grenade pin and we pulled it, we’d be history.’

  ‘Do grenades work in the wet?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘No. Desperate.’

  My whole body began to shake.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, keep still,’ Farrell hissed. He leaned forward and removed another stick with his cuffed hands, and then another. The world swam before my eyes and, unable to do anything about it, I fell into a faint. The remaining sticks rose to meet me as I collapsed on top of them. I heard Farrell scream, and disappeared down the well.

  I must only have been out for a matter of seconds because, when I groggily came to, Farrell was sitting down, his shackled leg pulled away from me, his face drained of all colour, and he was panting hysterically. He suddenly began to laugh.

  ‘No grenade,’ he said.

  I wanted to be sick, but I’d suffered enough humiliation in front of Farrell for one day, so I suppressed the urge.

  My fainting did nothing for my image as a hard man in Farrell’s mind, and he grew in confidence before my eyes. Almost pushing me out of the way, he began digging with his hands. The earth came away easily in great, gloopy dollops, and a tin box was revealed about one foot down. We pulled it out and opened it. There were several unlabelled tins of food and a box of ammunition, but no medical supplies. We helped ourselves to a few tins, and roughly sloshed the mud back over the box. It was beginning to get dark, and the realisation that we’d be spending the night there, chained together, with a critically injured man for company, made me uneasy. If I fell asleep, Farrell could make his move. Of course, being attached to a dead man would be something of an inconvenience for him, but I was sure he’d simply find a way to hack off my foot and free himself from the burden of my corpse.

  Inside the hut, the rain was amplified by the iron, and it swept in when the wind began to rise. The flimsily attached sheets rattled and clattered, and the ominous, wet slap of leaves outside announced that this was to be more than just another monsoonal dump. It had all the makings of a fierce storm. The driver groaned, which was unsettling, and his groans swelled into a horrifying aria of agony. We moved across to him and restrained him. The whites of his eyes showed in the last of the light, and in them I saw naked terror.