An Accidental Terrorist

by Steven Lang

  That wasn’t in the script.

  Eyes not yet adjusted to the dark, Carl ran straight off the edge of the platform. Whoever had made the pad had simply pushed the subsoil out in a great mound. Rocks and dirt had piled up against the trunks of the trees. He stumbled down them in a sickening unbalanced gait, crashing into a stand of ti-tree. Kelvin coming down beside him.

  Somewhere in amongst the tumble was the sound of a shot, perhaps more than one. Then everything lit up. A flare. Kelvin was lying on the ground, in foetal position, all the wind gone from his belly. He put a finger over his mouth to silence him. He could hear someone talking through a loudhailer.

  ‘It’s a trap,’ Carl whispered. ‘Can you move?’

  Kelvin rolled onto his belly. He stood. Carl didn’t wait any longer. He took off into the forest, running, crouching low, heedless of noise.

  They were on a steep slope, going down, going fast, his feet heavy on the dried bark and leaves, allowing the weight of his body to carry him, allowing his body to make the decisions for itself, not looking, not even trying to see. His mind had let go at last. The pale red light receded and went out. It made no difference. It occurred to him that this was madness, to run like this in the dark in a forest, but he did not stop. He ran with his arms pushed forward, fingers spread wide, his head down, like a blind man might walk in an unknown room, except he was running, brushing past branches and tree trunks, whipped by undergrowth. This was it, then, the way out. Plan B. The act had, strangely, a familiar feel to it. As if he’d done it as a child, or in a dream. Perhaps that was it. In a dream in Montana in a pine forest, moss heavy on the ground. Strange how you can dream something before it happens, as if time, like some people suggest, is not such a straight line after all. He hoped Kelvin was following. If they got separated now that would be the end.

  He turned his head to listen. He felt, as he did so, the air on his face change. Cold. Registering it but not noticing it, not responding to it, not acting on it, not soon enough. His momentum carrying him out, past the last tree, out into the air, into the darkness.

  Had this emptiness, this weightlessness, this sense of falling been in his dream too? He didn’t think so.

  All he knew was that it extended for long enough for him to think.

  I’m falling.

  Which was all the time in the world.

  thirty-two

  Kelvin ran. One moment he had been crouched on the ground, the air stolen from his body, and the next he was up and running, following Carl through the trees in a purple glow. He could not think what the glow was or why the glow was, he only ran, running down, running into the darkness and the trees, past dogwood and wattle, past stringybark and grey box. The deadness in his body which had made it so difficult to move in the logging dump having found life in him, the deadness had been his terror and the terror which had been on him like a cold hand had found in him this strange new automatic life. He could no longer see Carl, he could only hear him. The light was gone, they were running together in the darkness, stumbling, he was stumbling, he lost his footing and ran faster to catch himself. He was right on top of Carl. He managed to regain some sort of balance but had to stop, had to catch his breath, could no longer run headlong into the darkness with so little knowledge, a mind needs reference points; he held out his hand and his fingers found a tree trunk, smooth-barked, a hand’s width in diameter, and he grasped it, pulled himself up on it, swinging up around it, the tree bending with his weight, this smooth hand’s-widthed tree wrenching his arm and shoulder, darkness in front of him, suddenly silent. He was hearing Carl’s crashing and then he was hearing nothing, nothing at all, nothing for much longer than it should have been possible to hear nothing.

  ‘Carl,’ he said, softly.

  There was no reply.

  He repeated it but still there was nothing. No voices, no disturbance of leaf or bark, nothing, only the rasp of air in and out of his mouth, down his throat and into his lungs, an enormous, heaving, broken noise. He tried to exert control but it was beyond him.

  He looked back along the way they had come. He expected to see torches. All was blackness. He turned back around. He saw stars ahead of him instead of trees. He was alone. He had lost Carl. Without Carl, he was lost. He had no idea where the bike was. Without Carl there was no hope. The terror which had driven him to run had nevertheless been diminished by the movement. Now it came back, as if from outside, settling on him. It shook his body. Made him weak. Where was Carl? He felt about him on the ground. He was standing on bare rock. He felt further out. He was close to the edge of some sort of fall. His breathing was starting to subside. He thought he could hear water trickling.

  Carl must have gone over.

  He looked back again. Still no sign. He wondered if he had heard the fall. There had been a strange sound, distant. But perhaps he imagined that he had heard that. He had no idea how far they had come but it must have been a little way. Perhaps he was not even being pursued. Or not yet. Somewhere in his mind were the words, ‘It’s the police’ and Carl’s voice saying, ‘It’s a trap,’ but they were confused, as if they were part of a dream, a glowing purple nightmare.

  ‘Carl,’ he said again.

  Still no reply.

  He wondered if he dare risk a light. They would be looking for that. If someone was looking for him then they would be looking for light. Unless they were using torches themselves. In which case they wouldn’t be able to see.

  Strapped at his waist were the knife and the little steel torch Carl had made him wear. Andy laughing at their preparations.

  ‘Quite the little terrorists.’

  Andy.

  It’s a trap.

  Kelvin had thought Carl was talking about their trap, the one they had set. At the time that was the only way he could make sense of it. He had thought he was running away from the loggers. If he had thought about it he would have wondered why they were not moving according to plan.

  He unclipped the torch. Cupping it in his hand he risked a small light, pointed in the opposite direction from which they had come. There was nothing. Empty air. Even downwards there was only darkness, the top of some eucalypts.

  He had to move, but without Carl he was unable. He put out the light and then turned it on again immediately, panicked by the complete darkness. He made himself breathe slowly then turned it off again and sat, waiting for his eyes to adjust, until he could see the stars again, see the absence and presence of forest along the cliff edge, see the outline of hills, far distant, indistinct, lit by some source he could not see. Then, reluctantly, he began to make his way along the cliff edge, searching with his hands and feet for a way down.

  He moved slowly. To his left was the empty space which had taken Carl. To his right and behind him were police and loggers. Only the possibility that Carl was alive kept him moving.

  The cliff edge became a steep curve downwards. Small hardened trees clung to the bare rock. He passed from the trunk of one to another, finding the next before letting go of the last, descending in a series of terrible lurches, never sure there would be another, needing to trust but lacking the will. After a time the vegetation became thicker, the air damp and cold. Once again trees were above him on all sides.

  Beside the creek there were moss-covered rocks and rotting branches, slippery underfoot. He could see in a very minimal kind of way. The light from the stars where it penetrated the trees seemed to be gathered by the presence of the water, creating an image of the path described by the creek. He wondered if this was an illusion. Crouching on his knees he drank deeply from a pool, then began a fumbling journey upstream.

  He was brought up by the sound of voices. Powerful electric light shone out above him. He curled down into himself, making a little ball, another rock in the creek. Beams of light played in the tops of the trees. The men were only a hundred metres above him. Two of them. They spoke into a radio, he could hear the crackled noise when it replied. He heard their voices but few words, none intelligib
le.

  Then they were gone. He stayed huddled for another ten, maybe fifteen minutes. He had always wondered at the capacity of animals to stay still, now he understood. He determined to risk his light. He shone it along the creek. Nothing happened. No gunfire, no answering light. No sound. He picked his way upstream until he came to a waterfall. At another time it would have been a pretty place, delicate ferns where the small rivulet spread itself over rocks, a larger tree fern leaning precariously over the dark pool. There was a broad-leafed tree on the other side. On a low branch which jutted out above the water four or five leaves were shuddering. The falling water made the air very cold.

  He turned back.

  Between the base of the cliff and the creek was a steeply sloping fall of mossy boulders. A few large trees grew out of it, bracken fern around their trunks. At the base of one, perhaps the one he had looked down on from above, Carl was lying. He must have run straight off the cliff, in much the same way as Kelvin had at the platform earlier. Except there had been nothing to catch him. He lay with his head below his body, but in an unusual relationship to his shoulders. One leg in completely the wrong position. Even by the light of his torch he could see that the black clothes were bloody. He played the beam over the whole of the body, lingering on the face. Then he vomited. A visceral, unexpected reaction. He crouched over in the bracken fern and brought up whatever was in his stomach. He had always hated to vomit. As soon as the bile rose in his throat he became like he had been as a child, vomiting and crying, the two inseparable, except that this time he did not cry, could not let himself.Whether it was from fear or exhaustion, or the climb down the cliff, he did not know, but his legs, his whole body was utterly weak, loose, hopeless. He collapsed back against a rock, his head in his hands.

  It was then Carl spoke.

  Just one word. Something unintelligible. Kelvin, startled out of his misery, involuntarily shrank back. He found the torch and played the light over him again. His eyes were open. Had they been open before? They were looking at him.

  ‘Carl,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’

  There was no response. He was close enough to touch Carl’s body but he couldn’t quite make himself. The sensation that had produced the automatic vomiting was still working in his mind as a kind of disgust, a horror of this bloody body in the darkness of the forest. He said his name again. Eventually he approached, leaned over with his ear next to Carl’s lips. He was breathing. There was a short, shallow, uneven, moist movement through his mouth.

  Kelvin sat back. Everything had become a bit remote, happening right there but at the same time at a remove, not to him, to someone else, and by that he didn’t mean to Carl, of course Carl was someone else, Carl was the one who was injured, but the watching, that was happening to someone else too. He was relieved that Carl was alive. He had thought Carl was dead but now he was alive and this released him from something. At the same time it was no better than him being dead. It was worse for him to be like this, upside down, broken across the rocks.

  He thought that he should move him, and then that he should not. Wasn’t there some rule about waiting for the professionals? Except there would be none, nobody was coming to where they were. Or perhaps they were, but not to help, not doctors and nurses anyway. The implications of what had occurred began to insert itself into his mind in little pieces. Andy had got the better of them. The plan had gone wrong. Now Andy was out there, searching for him. When he found Kelvin, he would kill him. Kelvin had known it was wrong to try to get him killed. It didn’t matter that it would have been a demonstration of some sort of natural justice. It had been wrong for purely practical reasons. When he’d lived in the Cross Spic had told him never to pick up a knife in a fight unless you knew how to use it. The other person would take it from you and use it against you.

  Carl made another sound, a kind of half-cough. A thin line of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. Lying in that position, with his head below his body, the blood in his throat or his lungs would drown him. Kelvin knew that much. The least he could do was to turn him around. Perhaps if he turned him around he could leave him for someone to find him. Was that cowardice? Would it help to stay? He was sorely confused. It seemed he could feel the consciousness which searched for him and it was not kind. It was relentless and cruel. He stood up, shining the light down on Carl’s body, trying to work out how he could go about it, then sat back down again in the dark. He tried to bring his mind to the problem of where he was, of Carl and the night and the forest, but it kept skittering away. After a time he could hear the water where it fell over the rocks.

  ‘Right,’ he said, and came up the slope and tried to get into a position to lift Carl’s body. He put his arms under his shoulders, stretching himself across the man’s chest, balancing on the rocks. But when he lifted Carl’s body his head flopped back. The muscles of the neck seemed to be no longer working. He put his other hand behind Carl’s head, as if he was cradling a child, except for the weight of him, the stubble of his short hair. He tried to lift. But could only move him a couple of inches, there was some obstacle. He put him back down and took the torch from his pocket again, shone it around. He had his knee on Carl’s arm. He’d thought it was a mossy log. Carl had not seemed to notice. This fact alone was in danger of pulling Kelvin back out of wherever it was he had gone. He changed position and made another attempt. He draped Carl’s arm over his shoulder and slid his own arm under the man’s back, holding his head again with the other hand. He was right up against him then, against the maleness of him, the smell of him, the sheer size of him. He held him against his chest with an awful intimacy. He managed to raise him, but the process was clumsy, awkward. As he lifted him Carl began talking, saying words that barely registered in Kelvin’s mind, names, he was saying someone’s name, not Kelvin’s. Then he stopped speaking again, his breath coming in strange rasping bursts. Some awful burbling in the chest. None of his body seemed to be connected to itself anymore.

  He had, Carl thought, been wrong about a number of things. Not just Andy.

  There was Cody, for example. During that five days he and Barbara had spent walking across the high country into Canada, there had been moments when he had thought that life would never be more perfect.That was the thing about the meeting with Cody. Carl should not have been hurt when he said that stuff, because what Cody had or had not felt towards him was of no consequence. Cody was the one who had made it happen. Something had been given to Carl in the mountains that he had never considered applied to him, had never even looked for: the possibility of happiness; not just the possibility, the actuality of happiness had been delivered wholesale, complete in all its mystery. The rules changed. Not just for those days but for always.As if the rarity of the atmosphere was also a rarity of spirit which allowed for new interpretations of law, both man-made and natural, as if, had they taken the notion, he and Barbara could have stepped off their mountain trail into thin air and kept walking, across glaciers, over fields of wildflowers, past evergreen trees and rivers, separated from the hard-edged rock, outside of time.

  That had been the important thing, not the other stuff. Such a difficult lesson to learn, that one; that sometimes you have to be happy with people for what they are to you, not what you are to them.

  Kelvin propped Carl against a rock. He searched for something with which to wipe the stream of blood that had run from the corner of Carl’s mouth but found nothing. He settled on Carl’s T—shirt, pulling it up from his belly to reach his chin, exposing the white skin of his stomach, the dark curling hair, an awful purple contusion. He wiped the blood carefully, talking into the silence, Kelvin doing the talking now, telling Carl what he was doing, keeping up this strange, stupid running commentary for which there was no audience, none at all.

  thirty-three

  McMahon pushed down through the scrub into the clearing, the loudhailer in one hand, service revolver in the other, ignoring Masters and what some part of his mind was registering as casual
ties, going straight to the tight little knot that Bragg, Leuwin and Boyd had rounded up within the van’s headlights. The civilians had their hands on their heads. Various lumps of wood and metal were scattered around.

  ‘Detective Senior Constable Boyd,’ he said, ‘search these men, then collect those weapons. When you’re done do me the favour of turning off the motor.’

  ‘Permission to speak, sir,’ Masters said from behind.

  ‘A moment,’ he said, holding up his hand. The flare was dwindling.

  ‘Boyd,’ he said.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Leave the headlights on.Yes, Masters.’

  ‘As near as I can tell, sir, I have one man dead and another injured, possibly critical.’

  McMahon drew breath, engaged in a kind of operational triage, attempting to find, within his rage, the most efficient next move.

  ‘Leuwin, Bragg, keep those men under guard. Cover Boyd. Barnes will join you in a moment. If any of them so much as speaks, shoot him. Show me, Masters.’

  As they walked over, his assistant kept one pace behind him.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m responsible for one, sir,’ he said.

  ‘So that was you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I don’t recall giving the order to shoot.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He looked down at the bodies. One was Cermic. He was dead, or if not exactly, would be soon. The skull on one side had collapsed under the force of a blow, probably from a mattock handle. Perhaps it was just the torchlight but McMahon felt the instinctive disgust which head injuries always inspire, a too graphic display of our animal nature. He turned his attention to the other man, who was lying curled around his stomach. A pool of blood was forming behind him on the dirt, dark and shining and viscous against the slick slabs of stirred-up clay. He was blond, tousle-haired. What he could see of his face was deathly white. McMahon had never seen him before. In his hurry to hold his belly the man had apparently been unable to release the mattock handle which now, curiously, was sticking up in the air, swaying like a demented metronome. At least it showed the man was still alive.