Amongst the Dead

by Robert Gott

  ‘It’s all right, mate,’ I said uselessly, somehow hoping that the word ‘mate’ would do instead of morphine. His mouth opened and closed, and he squeezed his eyes shut before releasing a roar so shocking and so loud that we were pushed back by it. He slumped into an open-eyed stupor, his breathing laboured but strong. God help him, I thought — he’s not going to die.

  We were both badly shaken by the driver’s ordeal.

  ‘We need to eat,’ I said, as if this might restore some calm.

  ‘And how do you suggest we open the tins?’

  ‘This bloke must have a knife at least.’

  When I said this I felt Farrell stiffen, as if the mention of a weapon offered an opportunity. It was too dark now to see whether or not the driver had a knife on his belt — I hadn’t noticed one earlier.

  ‘We need to check him,’ I said.

  This simple task was made complicated by the obvious uncertainty about what the person who found it first would do with it. We solved this by running our hands over the driver’s body in the same place at the same time. It was both ludicrous and disgusting fumbling about in the blood and pulp of his midriff. There was no knife. We agreed to go outside, clean our hands, and search the jeep. Perhaps the key to the handcuffs might turn up, too. This was much more difficult than expected and, as the wind became more violent, it was also frightening. Having been caught in a cyclone in Maryborough I had no wish to revisit the experience.

  A great, hot scribble of lightning ran across the sky, and in the surgical whiteness of its light I saw Farrell’s stricken face. I’d seen that look before on other brontophobes. When the thunder crashed about us he jerked involuntarily and waved his cuffed hands in a circle as if he might conjure an axe or a club with which to defend himself against its force. More thunder exploded, and the sky became alive with great veins of lightning forming an almost continuous display. I’d never seen an electrical storm of this magnitude. In any other circumstances, it might have been magnificent; here, it reinforced our vulnerability, and filled me with dread.

  We searched the jeep cursorily, both of us nervous about being out in the open. I was worried about being struck by lightning; Farrell, it seemed, was worried about dying of thunder. We hurried back to the hopelessly inadequate shelter of the hut. I failed to mention to Farrell that I’d discovered a knife, caught between the front seat and the side door of the jeep. It was mere chance that my hands had found it and not his, and in his distracted state he hadn’t noticed that I’d managed to drop it down the front of my shirt. It was a sleight-of-hand of which Glen would have been proud. In one quick motion I feigned scratching an itch on my neck, and dropped it through my open collar. It slipped down and sat where the shirt was tucked into the trousers. Now at least I had something with which to defend myself, and I was prepared to go hungry rather than tell Farrell about it.

  The constant washes of white light and chest-rattling peals of thunder conspired to drive Farrell and me into a corner of the hut. The rain blew in and the ground was saturated, but I think Farrell felt safe hunched at the place where two flimsy walls met. I sat with him, having no other choice, and I almost felt sorry for him. The storm had unmanned him. The Wet season must have been a nightmare for him. I wondered, indeed, if it had driven him mad, and that his crimes weren’t symptoms of his insanity. He put his head between his knees, and his body was eloquent in speaking for the trauma he was undergoing.

  The wind now howled, and in a burst of light I saw that the driver’s mouth was open and that he was screaming; but his screams were lost in the general cacophony. We must have been sitting in our corner for half an hour when Farrell leaned into my ear and shouted, ‘I need a piss!’

  We stood up. I thought he’d do it where he stood, but he indicated that he wanted to do it outside. I was surprised, but grateful. We took just a few steps away from the hut, and were astonished by the force of the wind. Farrell fumbled at his flies and I looked away. A shriek of metal put my teeth on edge, and I turned back to Farrell to ask him to hurry up. Just then, an extended and brilliant wash of lightning exposed the horror of what had happened in an instant. Farrell’s torso, his hands still holding his penis, swayed, stunned into remaining upright, despite his head having been cleanly sliced from his body by the guillotine of flying roof-iron. His trunk, teetering uncertainly, was peculiarly expressive of a profound surprise. It collapsed at my feet.

  I closed my eyes against the unspeakable thing that had just happened — closed them against the gouts of blood that were pumping from Farrell’s arteries. When I opened them I couldn’t bring myself to look around for his head. The thought of it staring at me in a sudden flash of illumination was so disturbing that I resolutely kept my eyes straight ahead. It was only when I began to walk away that I realised I was still attached to Rufus Farrell.

  This was a situation unique in my experience, so a solution didn’t immediately present itself. I couldn’t remain standing in this tempest, so I half-dragged, half-carried Farrell’s decapitated corpse back into the hut with me. A gap in the roof showed where the guilty piece of metal had clung. Because I didn’t know what else to do, I sat down in the corner — so numb that I didn’t flinch as, one by one, the remaining sheets of iron were prised from the hut’s frame by the wind’s fingers, and thrown into the night.

  For hour upon hour, the three of us sat or lay, exposed to the furious elements in the scrawny timbers of the hut picked clean of all protection by the hammering wind. I discovered that when the human mind is deluged with fear and despair, and yet survives, it enters into a dull acceptance that grotesque extremes are somehow not just normal but right and proper. Which is why I decided to use the knife I’d secreted to cut Farrells’ foot off, above the point at which the shackle encircled it.

  Having made the decision, I knew I had to do it immediately. If I waited I’d lose my nerve, and it was an action suited to the violence of the storm — it felt almost like it was part of it. It proved to be a difficult task. I rolled up his trouser leg and began sawing. The blade met the resistance of bone quickly, and no amount of sawing with the heavy but blunt knife was going to sever the foot. I eventually managed it with brutal chopping motions. When the final thread of tendon came away, a rush of bile pushed its way up from my gut to my mouth, and I began to sob. The violation was made no less obscene by the fact that this was the body of a murderer.

  As if to perform some sort of penance, I crawled across to the driver. His eyes were open, staring at Farrell’s corpse, but unseeing, I supposed. He’d stopped screaming, although his mouth was moving soundlessly. I put my ear to it to hear what he might be saying, but all I could pick up was the faint susurration of weakly expelled breath. He couldn’t last much longer.

  The wind dropped, the rain became a benign patter, and the lightning played across the sky silently. I can’t now understand how I did it, but I slept until the dreadful whine of mosquitoes woke me to a dim dawn and to a rising brightness that would reveal the hideous reality of the night’s work. I glimpsed Farrell’s head, and scrambled to my feet, anxious to remove myself from it and from the shape that I knew to be the rest of him.

  In daylight it was an easy walk to the upturned jeep, and when I reached it I was surprised to see an Aboriginal man standing by it. He was wearing shorts and carried no weapons, and the sight of me with my hands cuffed and with a chain trailing from one leg must have so alarmed him that he took off before we could exchange a single word.

  For want of anything better to do, and to keep my mind off what lay behind me, I searched the jeep thoroughly, hoping to find a key to my manacles. I found nothing that was useful — no gun and no key. There was a roughly drawn map of what I recognised as the route in and out of Roper Bar, with side tracks along which caches of food, ammunition, and petrol had doubtless been stored. There was, however, no indication of which track was which, and no way of knowing which of the
lines represented our current position. There was also a log book. I didn’t linger, but returned quickly to where the driver lay.

  I averted my eyes from Farrell, and tried to shoo away the flies that had settled amongst the ruins of the driver’s legs. I could see that, if he wasn’t soon to become more maggot than man, I’d have to build a smoking fire. There was no problem finding wet vegetation, but dry kindling was scarce, and I didn’t have any matches. I checked the driver’s pockets, and found in one of them an expensive-looking cigarette case — thin, gold, and beautifully tooled — that didn’t fit the bulk and demeanour of the driver at all. It was the kind of object that I would have expected Archie Warmington to have about his person. I opened it to find half-a-dozen cigarettes and a dozen-or-so matches. There was also a striking-pad machined into the back of the case. An inscription in the lid read, ‘To Clarence. Always. Always. Always. Always.’ Despite Oscar Wilde’s dictum that it is an ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case, I found this strangely affecting.

  Without kindling, I had no choice but to use the map and pages from the log book to create a fire that was all smoke and no flame. It was minimally effective, but when the last pages of the log book had caught there still wasn’t a sustainable blaze. I would have to sit by Clarence and swat the flies away. First, though, I opened a can with the knife and ate its contents, which were foul strips of cabbage in a sour liquid that might once have been vinegar. I sat by Clarence and prayed for rain.

  The rain didn’t come but, a few hours later, with a grinding of gears and a complaining engine, a Ford V8 truck did. It stopped at the jeep, and two Nackeroos got out. I stood up and called to them. One of them was carrying a rifle, the other a pistol and, as they came towards me, both weapons were pointed at my chest. I was offended by the implication — although, on reflection I understood that the sight of a manacled, shackled man with a headless body nearby and a bloodied, wounded soldier at his feet was not, perhaps, encouraging.

  The conversation that ensued was limited to a barked command that I step away from Clarence. A brief reconnoitre of the ghastly scene was so distressing for one of them that he was sick. The other one looked at me warily and with barely contained hatred, as if he held me personally responsible for the bloody mayhem. When his lips began quivering, and after he’d struck me sharply across the face, I realised that he did, in fact, hold me personally responsible. I was about to upbraid him when he stuck the barrel of his pistol in my mouth.

  ‘If you say one word, just one, I’ll blow your murdering, fucking brains out.’

  I didn’t doubt him, and made no move to challenge the hopelessly incorrect conclusion to which he’d jumped. He ordered me into the back of the truck, and when I’d clambered up into it he followed and tied my already restrained hands to a metal strut. It wasn’t him I had to convince of my innocence, so I settled my nerves by breathing deeply and telling myself that everything would be fine as soon as the people in Katherine were presented with my testimony.

  Considerable time elapsed before I saw the newly arrived Nackeroos again and, when I did, one of them — the one who’d been sick — appeared at the back of the truck with Clarence slung across his shoulders. The other jumped up into the truck and, as carefully and tenderly as he could, took Clarence and laid him down on the floor. Although moving Clarence would only have compounded his injuries, there was no other option. They placed him as far away from me as possible. When they collected Rufus Farrell’s corpse they weren’t quite so careful. They wrapped his head and foot in sacking, but had none to spare for his torso, which they deposited rather closer to me than I would have preferred. They did, however, treat his body with great respect. All their contempt they reserved for me.

  The trip to Mataranka was torture for Clarence, who was bumped and jarred and jolted, first into a frenzy of screaming and then into blessed unconsciousness — blessed for both of us. I’ve never been able to hear the evidence of another person’s pain without sinking into a white-knuckled, sweaty swoon. I thought everything would be better when we reached Katherine. It wasn’t.

  Chapter Ten

  brocks creek

  THE OFFICERS IN KATHERINE had been expecting a jeep carrying two prisoners, each of whom had declared the other the killer of two Nackeroos — the deaths of whom had not, prior to these mutual accusations, been counted as suspicious. They were certainly not expecting a truck, in the back of which was a distressed actor, the dismembered pieces of one Nackeroo, and the crushed remains of another. From the look of dismay on the face of the officer who peered in at us, I could tell that this was going to take some sorting out.

  Clarence was dealt with first, of course. He was carried on a stretcher to whatever makeshift medical facilities were available — there, I hoped, to be pumped full of morphine. Rufus Farrell was removed next, and I certainly understood the disgust and horror on the faces of the men who took him away. No one said anything to me. I was left sitting in the back of the truck, subject to the stares of passing Nackeroos. They weren’t kind or even curious stares. They were hateful and antagonistic, as if the word had been passed around that I was the killer of their comrades and, worse, that I’d mutilated one of them. I began to feel very afraid that rough justice might take precedence over the rule of law. I knew very little about military law but, as it was my only hope of release and exoneration, I had high hopes that it functioned rationally.

  Eventually I was taken to a small tent inside a square of barbed wire. It contained a chair and a palliasse and nothing else. It was just high enough to stand up in, and it was intolerably hot. I did think that someone should have informed me about what was going on, as a matter of courtesy if not of law. Psychologically, it was unsettling to know nothing — which I suppose was their point. By the time someone arrived to talk to me I’d worked myself up into a mild panic, so that my demeanour must have appeared slightly maniacal.

  The man who entered the tent was informally dressed. If he’d gone to any trouble at all it was to put some pants on, but nothing else.

  ‘I’m Lieutenant Murnane,’ he said, ‘and I’ve drawn the short straw and been told to fill you in on what’s happening.’

  ‘Are you a lawyer?’

  ‘No, mate. In civilian life I’m a tram conductor.’

  ‘They’ve appointed a tram conductor as my defence?’

  ‘I’m just here to tell you what’s up, not to defend you. Some other poor bastard’ll have to do that. Do you understand?’

  My eyes must have had a wild, dissociated look in them.

  ‘Of course I understand,’ I snapped.

  ‘OK. In a little while you’ll be taken across to a tent and there’ll be three officers there who’ll ask you a whole lot of questions and decide whether or not to hold a DCM.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘District Court Martial. In a minute some food will arrive, and by the time you’re finished they’ll be ready for you.’

  The food tasted fine, and it was only afterwards that I realised that it had probably been spat in or despoiled in some other way. The tent where I was to be questioned was spacious and open on one side. The furnishings were ad hoc — a table, a few chairs, a crate, drums, and boxes. Lieutenant Murnane sat me in a chair facing the table, and left me. I was alone for only a few seconds. A guard was posted at the entrance to the tent. Three men who were neatly, formally dressed in the best of Nackeroo clobber came in and sat behind the table. After arranging some papers he’d brought with him, the man in the middle spoke first.

  ‘You are Private William Power?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Please respond verbally.’

  ‘Yes. I am Private William Power.’

  We’d got off to a bad start. My tone was faintly sarcastic, which wasn’t the effect I was after at all. Each of the three men exchanged a brief, telling glance.

  ‘I
’m Major Purefoy. The gentleman on my right is Major Hunt, and the gentleman on my left is Captain Collins. We want you to understand, Private Power, that this is neither a court nor a court martial. We’re here to ask questions and to try to establish just what the hell is going on. It’s informal, although notes will be taken. This is the first stage in what might turn out to be quite a lengthy process.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound very legal to me,’ I said. Again, my state of mild panic invested my tone with an undesirable quality — this time, of churlishness.

  ‘This is the NAOU, Private Power, not the Melbourne Club. We deal with things in our own way. But I assure you that it is perfectly legitimate.’

  The man who said this was Major Hunt, who was sitting closest to the open side of the tent. Grey light from the thickly overcast sky fell across his face and accentuated the pitted legacy of acne.

  ‘Think of this as a conversation rather than an interrogation,’ said Major Purefoy.

  ‘It already feels like a conversation with menaces,’ I replied.

  ‘All right, let’s move past this pointless sparring and proceed. My understanding is that the deaths of two of our men, Corporal Andrew Battel and Private Nicholas Ashe, were at first assumed to be the result of dengue fever in the former case and suicide in the latter.’

  He waited for an acknowledgement that this much was true.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘While you were posted on Gulnare Bluff, according to information radioed to Roper Bar by Private Rufus Farrell, you led him to believe that you had in fact killed the two men and that you were waiting for an opportunity to kill him as well.’