by P. J. Sky
Ari lowered the blade and slid it back into its sheath. The blade left a small, red mark on the Commander’s neck. Ari picked up the paper with the Jackroller seal.
“So we’ll be goin’ now.”
“I’ll find you,” said the Commander, “an’ this is on you. Jackrolla or no Jackrolla, wherever you go, you’ve made this your fight now.”
“Come on kid,” said Ari, “let’s get outa here.”
Keshia scrambled to her feet. Her hands were shaking. She kept the gun barrel on the Commander.
“Ya makin’ a mistake,” said the Commander. “An’ ya gonna pay for it.”
Ari backed away to the doorway. Outside, gunfire continued to clatter.
“Ari?” said Keshia.
“Out the door, kid.”
Keshia disappeared behind the curtain. The Commander leapt to his feet.
“Ya better run, cause when I find ya…”
And Ari was out the door too, into the chaos of the street outside.
Chapter 14
Inky, black smoke filled the square. From Ari’s vantage point, at the top of the metal staircase, the square seemed to have largely cleared of anyone not in uniform. Soldiers in fatigues scrambled between the burning tanks while others hunched behind makeshift barricades. The air tasted metallic and smelt oddly sweet.
Keshia ran ahead, down the metal staircase. Ari hurried behind.
On the ground, the cracks of automatic gunfire echoed through the petrified buildings. Looking up, Ari could see people with guns running across the metal rooftops. Tongues of orange gunfire spat from sniper points high up in the skeletal ruins and soldiers on the ground returned fire.
Instinctively, Ari slipped behind the metal staircase and pressed herself against the wall. She watched Keshia wave the pistol around her. Behind Keshia, the squat turret of a tank burst open like an over-boiling pot. From the metal innards of the vehicle, a fiery figure emerged like a human torch, entirely engulfed in orange flames. The figure started to walk away, as if this was somehow entirely normal, and then folded into the ground in a flaming heap.
“Kid,” called Ari, “over ‘ere.”
Keshia darted behind the stairway.
Above them, Ari heard the heavy footsteps of the Commander descend. He got to the bottom of the staircase and looked left to right, his back to them, without appearing to make any attempt to take cover. Bullets popped around his feet like little bursts of steam.
Ari’s eyes bored into the back of the Commander’s head.
Don’t look round, she thought. Don’t look round.
Her heart thumped against her chest. Projectiles whizzed through the air and with each bullet pop, like rocks hitting a tin roof, she flinched. It was impossible to tell where the bullets were coming from, it felt like they were coming from every direction.
The Commander nodded to himself and started to walk towards a group of soldiers that had hidden themselves behind what looked like an overturned market stall. He stepped over the body of a fallen soldier as if he were doing something no more unusual than finding solid footing on uneven ground. As Ari watched, the Commander stood by the hunched soldiers and began pointing towards the sniper positions on the roofs. Still, he made no attempt to take cover. He opened his top pocket, slid out the long, tubular form of a cigar, and slipped the end between his lips.
The Commander was clearly crazy.
Ari’s eyes fell on a fallen child, her body twisted, arms above her head as if she’d been in the process of surrender. In the middle of her chest, a round, red stain soaked through her yellow dress. She looked up to the sky, eyes open but empty.
Open like Koora’s; open like Jirra’s.
Ari started to shake and bile rose up her throat.
Open like the one good eye of the milky-eyed man.
Ari thought of the blade pressed up to the Commander's throat, and then how it felt to slide it between the ribs of the milky-eyed man. A cold shudder worked its way up her spine.
I almost did it again, she thought, how easy it might have been to slit the Commander's throat and watch the life slip away from him as it had the milky-eyed man. And then I’d have one more life on my conscience, not a good life perhaps, but one more still. But is his life worth any more than mine? Who am I to pick and choose?
Ari saw the cold, dead eyes of her mother, staring up from her deathbed, through the ceiling, as if the soul left the body through the eyes and not the chest, as if it flew upwards, finally free of its cage, even as the body returned to the earth.
Free of the pain, free of the suffering, free of the illness that, in those final weeks, had ravaged her mother’s body.
Black smoke stung the back of Ari’s throat. She felt a tug at her arm.
“Ari, come on, we have to go.”
Ari turned and looked into Keshia’s bright eyes.
She’ll be dead soon, she thought, just like the child on the ground nearby, just like my mother, just like Jirra and Koora and everyone else, and like everyone else, I’ll have made it happen.
“Ari…”
“I did it…” Ari whispered. “It's my fault.” She started to shake her head.
Keshia tugged at her arm. “Ari, we have to go.”
“You’re not even here, kid.”
Keshia slapped Ari. A burst of red heat spread across Ari’s cheek.
“Ari, we gotta go now.”
Keshia pulled at Ari’s arm and they stumbled along the edge of the wall. Tiny round holes peppered the white plaster.
Ari stumbled. She looked down, and a soldier lay motionless at her feet, dead eyes staring towards the rooftops of the skeletal buildings. She reached down and pulled the rifle from his fingers. It was still warm. Ari felt the weight of the rifle in her hands, surprisingly light, like the one she’d held before, the one she’d lost down the river. She felt the spectre of the lives this weapon had taken, or would ultimately take. The rifle wasn’t a tool like a blade or an axe, it was a weapon of only one purpose.
A shiver ran down Ari’s spine.
The wall exploded.
Ari landed hard in a shower of rubble. Light danced across her vision and an acrid odour filled the metallic air.
“Ari,” cried Keshia.
Keshia’s voice was barely audible over the ringing in Ari’s ears. She saw Keshia’s face emerge from a haze of bright light.
“Come on.”
Keshia’s voice sounded far away. Turning away, Ari looked about herself, at the boots of the soldiers that ran on by; at the black smoke that curled from the charred rubble; at the single, discarded foot, still secure inside its flax sandal.
“You’re okay,” said Keshia, “come on.”
Keshia slipped her hands beneath Ari’s shoulders and pulled her to her feet. Ari staggered, dazed, and stumbled on, the rifle loose in her hand.
Keshia dragged Ari through a doorway into one of the demolished buildings. The tiled floor was covered in rotten fruit full of tiny, white maggots.
A muffled explosion echoed around the surviving walls.
They clambered over blackened rubble, through a second doorway, and into a tall, vaulted space. The last of the evening light cast curved shadows through the collapsed roof and bathed the atrium in an orange glow. At the end of the hall, blackened but still quite recognisable, was the shape of a cross.
Snap out of this Ari, she thought.
Her ears were beginning to clear. Somewhere beyond the surviving walls, from the direction of the square, she could hear an engine wheezing.
You can do this, you brought the kid here, now you have to get her out of this.
An explosion rumbled like thunder, chased by a clatter of fresh gunfire. Ari winced.
I should have left the kid in Bo, she thought. I should have left her with the captain. Instead, at every chance, my mind’s been on other things, and now I’ve brought her here into this burning world of death and destruction.
As Ari watched, Keshia paused in front of the cross
and touched her head and then each of her shoulders.
A cross, thought Ari, like the one Keshia wore around her neck. The one still in my pocket.
“So this ya God?”
Keshia nodded. “I suppose so. Not that I talk to him much, but yes.”
“Well, I don’t talk to the Maka much either, I dunno if ‘e always listens, but right now ‘is help could be kinda useful.”
Beyond the blackened walls, gunfire continued to clatter.
Keshia turned to Ari. “Are you okay?”
Ari grinned. “Sure kid, for a moment I just forgot where I was. It gets in ya head, ya know.”
Keshia nodded. “I know. But churches should be sanctuaries.”
“This is all very touchin’” said a voice from behind them. “I hate to break it up.”
A woman’s voice; short, gruff.
They turned and a woman in a grey dress, a shawl around her head, her eyes like two dark coals, was holding a gun up to them. “But we saw ya with the Mulga, so ya got some explainin’.”
∆∆∆
Between the burnt pews, more stern-faced women appeared, guns levelled with Ari and Keshia.
The first woman spoke. “Put down ya weapons an’ raise ya hands.”
“We ain’t with the Black Mulga,” said Ari.
“They ain’t wearin’ the uniforms,” said another woman.
“Then who are ya?” asked the first.
Ari swallowed. “We’re… with the Jackrollas.”
The woman grinned. “Ya don’t seem too certain of that, do ya girl?”
“It’s true, we got paper.”
“Paper, ha?”
Carefully, Ari leant her gun against one of the burnt pews.
“No sudden movements, now,” said the first woman.
Ari reached towards the inside of her shirt.
Quickly, like a group of wallabies raising their heads above the bush, the woman urged their rifle barrels closer to Ari.
“That’s far enough,” said the woman. “Cass, get the paper.”
A woman in a leather jacket stepped forwards, her dark hair tied tightly back, cheekbones proud. Ari noticed the tattoo just visible above the neck of her collar, like the head of a blue bird, like the piece of china she’d found out in the wasteland, all that time ago.
The woman slid her slender fingers into Ari’s shirt and they brushed against her skin.
Ari shuddered.
The woman grinned, and her deep, dark eyes met Ari’s. Her fingers found the hidden inside pocket and the small square of folded paper.
“Well?” asked the first woman.
The woman with the blue tattoo drew out and unfolded the paper. “Seems like our girl is genuine.”
“Are you…” asked Keshia, “with the syndicate?”
“She is,” said the first woman, nodding towards the woman with the blue tattoo.
The woman refolded the paper and held it to Ari. As Ari took the paper, the woman winked at her.
Ari looked away quickly and felt heat rush to her cheeks.
“And you’re fighting the Black Mulga?” asked Keshia.
“Well kid, someone’s gotta,” answered the first woman.
“But they’ve got tanks and trucks and missiles.”
“An’ we got people. Hungry people make for desperate warriors.”
“I don’t get it,” said Ari, daring to look back at the woman with the blue tattoo. “What’s in it for ya, fightin’ the Mulga?”
The woman with the blue tattoo answered. “Sweetheart, if ya runnin’ a business, ya gotta play both sides. Someone’s gotta pick up the pieces when this is all over. An’ where there’s war, there’s always profit to be made. An’ they can ‘ave the mine, but it don’t do no one no good to ‘ave the Mulga controllin’ everythin’.”
Ari slipped the paper back into her shirt. “Well, we gotta be movin’.”
The woman with the blue tattoo nodded. “We ain’t in the way of ya business.”
“No…” said Ari and looked away again.
“You girls know what ya doin’?” asked the first woman.
“We have a plan,” said Keshia.
Ari looked at Keshia and raised her eyebrows.
Keshia looked back and grinned.
“Be seein’ ya then,” said the woman with the blue tattoo. She grinned at Ari.
“Umm… yeah.”
They backed through the far doorway and into the adjoining structure. Ari could hear the women moving around inside the ruined church.
“Ya gotta plan?”
“Well,” said Keshia. “I hope I do.”
“Ya ain’t fillin’ me with optimism, kid.”
“What was with you and the girl in the leather jacket?”
Ari scowled at Keshia. “There weren’t nothin’.”
Keshia giggled. “You could have fooled me.”
Ari resisted the urge to slap Keshia round the back of the head. It occurred to her that she owed Keshia a slap for earlier. “Did ya say ya had a plan or what?”
“Okay, okay.”
Keshia led the way as they moved on through the skeletal structures and the deeper they got into the ghostly forest, the quieter the gunfire became.
“Where're we goin’?” asked Ari.
“I told you, I have a plan, but you’re going to have to trust me.”
“Well, I guess we’re fast runnin’ out of options.”
Keshia led Ari out into an alleyway. At the end, the angular fronts of military trucks were visible, parked up and seemingly abandoned. Keshia skipped around the first one; open topped, chunky tyres, a big, angular bonnet and an open bay at the back. Keshia climbed up into the driver’s seat, behind the big steering wheel.
“Wha’ ya doin’?” asked Ari.
“Get in, quick,” replied Keshia. “This is how we get out of here, and how we get to the mine.”
“But…?”
Keshia reached around, under the wheel, and the engine rumbled into life. Thin, blue exhaust smoke spat out the rear of the truck.
Keshia grinned. “I can drive it.”
Ari raised her eyebrows. “Well, bless the Maka. Maybe, kid, it was worth havin’ ya along after all.”
Ari clambered into the passenger seat next to Keshia.
Located between their seats, Keshia engaged a lever. “Hold on.”
Chapter 15
The truck hurtled through the town gates. From their raised position behind the rumbling engine, Ari ducked as they passed under the bare feet of the strung-up bodies. At the angular, teeth-like defences, soldiers began to fire. Ari ducked down behind the seat and scrambled for the rifle. Keshia turned the truck sharply left and the soldiers were obscured in a thick cloud of red dust.
Ari turned to Keshia. “Not bad. Where did ya learn to drive?”
Keshia grinned. “Back in the convent the baker had an old truck, I used to take it down to the depot to pick up the grain sometimes.”
Ari grinned. She’d never been in a moving truck before, or at least not since she was very small, so not since it really mattered. She remembered her parents had some kind of powered vehicle, but once they were exiled from Alice, her father had traded it for a pony.
The truck rumbled across the rough ground and Ari felt the wind through the bristles on her head and her eyes began to tear. She lifted the yellow goggles from around her neck and secured them over her eyes.
On Ari’s side was a hotchpotch of barbed wire fences, defensive iron spikes, and the jagged remains of shattered buildings. On Keshia’s side, the flat wasteland quickly disappeared into the falling night.
At a wide opening in the barbed wire fence, Keshia pulled the truck left, back into the town, along a wide, deserted avenue.
“Whatcha doin’?” asked Ari.
“The mine’s the other side of town, and we need to find the highway.”
Ari reached around the seat and grabbed her rifle. “I ain’t convinced this is the right way a’ doin’ it.”
>
Palm trees drooped along the edges of the avenue, somehow still standing when all the buildings around them had been crushed. Hooded figures, hidden behind their shawls, huddled on street corners. Most seemed to cower from the sight of the military truck. From somewhere towards the square, Ari could still hear the pop-pop crackle of gunfire. Occasionally, flashes of orange sparked through the petrified remains of buildings.
The truck rumbled past a camel laden with sacks that looked to Ari like the ones that, back in Cooper, she used to see being filled with the salt for the city. It seemed incredible that, in the midst of all this conflict, people continued to work, to trade, and to live their lives. She remembered the worlds of the Commander.
“Ya fight to take what the other guy has.”
Well, these people don’t have much, but I guess the Commander is here to try to take it anyway.
Ari’s eyes fell on a small, bowl-like structure on a street corner.
“Hey, stop.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Keshia pulled the vehicle to the side of the road.
“Give us ya canteen.”
Keshia slipped the strap of her canteen over her head and passed it to Ari.
Ari hopped out of the truck. At the side of the well, she lowered the bucket. When the first bucket came up, she dipped in her canteen and swallowed mouthfuls of the metallic liquid. She choked, then filled the canteen to the brim. She re-lowered the bucket.
She listened to the rumble of the engine, and felt the beat of her own heart beneath her chest. Her eyes traced a tangle of electrical cables to a sparkling white bulb that spilled false moonlight onto the cracked roadway. In the background, the explosions rolled like thunder through the derelict buildings. It was as if these rumbles soaked up all the other sounds, leaving, in the midst of all this chaos, the nearly deserted avenue strangely calm.
Ari heaved the bucket back up and filled the second canteen. Carefully, she tightened the lid.
Bullets ricocheted across the ground in front of her.
Ari jumped.
