Skyquakers

by Conway, A. J.

  ‘Shh,’ Violet said. ‘It’ll be alright.’

  Late in the evening, while the kettle was boiling over the fire and Moonboy was glowing in the moonlight, James finally reappeared. He had something bulky in his arms, wrapped in a sheet. Without saying what it was, or where he got it from, he dropped the bundle in front of the settlers and let his findings clatter to the ground. Beneath the sheet, the settlers all stared at the sight of long-barrelled rifles, eight of them, accompanied by little red boxes of bullets to match.

  James took a gun for himself and declared to the rest, ‘Take one, don’t take one, I don’t give a shit. You can argue all you want against guns, but the fact is, we’re at war now. We can all sit here, day in and day out, and live like happy little fairies in the fucking woods, but those guys have weapons, and they will use them on you.’

  ‘James,’ Elizabeth interjected.

  ‘Shut up. I don’t care. This isn’t school anymore; this is the real world. You kids need to grow the fuck up.’ Then he marched off with his weapon, claiming he was going to practise in the fields.

  Needless to say, most of the students lunged for a weapon. Tim took one. Sarah refused. Ned saw one left and, although it looked bigger and heavier than him, the idea of succumbing to a death like Andrew’s made his insides turn.

  ‘This is not a good idea,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Aggression will only make things worse.’

  ‘They murdered Andy,’ one student barked. ‘I’m not going to stand for that.’

  ‘And how do you suppose we defeat an enemy that we haven’t even seen yet? They have beams, missiles; they control the whole goddamned sky. This is not a fight we can win.’

  ‘We’ll make an impression,’ said a hardy girl, who stood firmly by the side of her new comrades in arms. ‘I’m not going to just take it anymore. I’m not going to let myself be defenceless.’

  ‘They need to know this is our country.’

  ‘We’ll get justice for Andy, and for everyone they murdered in Darwin.’

  Sarah looked at Ned, who she could never imagine firing a gun. Frankly, neither could he. The long-barrel of the metal piece looked awkward in his arms. It felt cold and dead against his skin, but he hugged it like a plush toy.

  ‘I just don’t want to die,’ he said.

  15

  AMBUSH

  If they were going to attack the Skyquakers, the question was a matter of how, not a matter of why; the settlers of Zebra Rock were faced with an enemy unlike any they had seen before. Every inch of their existence was a mystery to them, from their biological architecture to their affinities and empathies towards them. They all knew what they wanted to achieve – carnage, in a single word – and despite the unpredictability of these beings and their wrathful storms, it was quite possible that the Skyquakers had never known violence before; their invasion of the country had been swift and, despite the secondary damage it must have caused when unmanned jets fell from the sky and trains crashed into one another, it had all been rather benign.

  Until now.

  In the wake of Andrew’s murder – his murder, not his death – moral responsibility was lost and any sane sense of sustainability mutated into this cancer which swiftly infected the entire family with an irrational hunger for revenge and destruction. They truly wanted to lay waste to their farms, to take what material prizes mattered to them as immaterial compensation for their loss.

  A dozen students, two scuba divers and a curator: between them they had not a shred of weapons training or military tactics. James knew how to operate the rifles, only because he was trained in spearfishing. What else did they have? A tertiary-level understanding of Australian flora and the protective knowledge of the use of water against the power of alien beams – these were not tools of war.

  ‘Maybe they can be,’ Tim said from a shadowy corner. He didn’t like the feel of his gun, so he always had it resting on the floor in front of his crossed legs. No one heard him the first time, so he said it again, followed by, ‘We know things they don’t know we know.’

  ‘Huh?’ James hissed.

  It was apparently something James suggested not long ago which stuck with Tim and never left. Tim rarely spoke openly about his thoughts, being the recluse that he was, but he considered the possibility of attacking Skyquakers and destroying their farms almost on a daily basis. He brewed about it. He fantasised about it. Not for the same reckless and passionate reasons that the others professed, but as a mental exercise of strategy. Tim had the ability to detach himself from reality with the slightest gaze into the distance, and one of his many fantasies were of his former board games, games of soldiers and battles, turned-based combat, the multiplicity of chess-like rankings working in unison to take down a common enemy bigger than themselves.

  ‘Even a pawn can capture a king,’ he said.

  James did not want to say it, knowing it would swiftly and brutally knock him down a peg in the unwritten familial hierarchy, but eventually, eyes rolled back, he grumbled low, ‘So, how would you do it? If you had all of us, all the resources we have in our hands, and all of the resources of our immediate surroundings, how would you do it?’

  Tim’s answer was fire, just as James had once said. One did not have to be a marine biologist to have a very clear understanding of the volatility of Australian bushland in hot, dry seasons such as now, and the ferocity of bushfires once in full force. On the right day, in the right heat, with the right direction of wind, a few small lit campfires had the ability to wipe out half a million hectares in twenty-four hours, which they had all witnessed before in their lifetimes. Every cow, crop, and warehouse would be engulfed. Slow Quakers, or those who had a poor concept of bushfire defence, would perish rather quickly or be forced to evacuate. Essentially, if they were prepared to sacrifice all of Ivanhoe, they could cause enough damage to put a very large dent in the invaders’ agricultural plans and send a bold message to Quakers, Suits and fellow survivors around the world.

  ‘And when those massive hurricanes come to drench the place and put it out?’

  ‘We hide, as we know how to do,’ Tim said.

  It took planning. It took patience. Accelerants were collected and maps were drawn up. Tim had charts of the daily temperature and wind speed; he could almost predict the coming days. James still wanted to use guns and made his students practise loading, cocking, and firing in the fields. With smoke and widespread confusion, they may get close enough to use them, they may not. The fire may never build enough strength to reach Ivanhoe, or the sentient storm may appear too quickly for it to cause any real damage. The wind may change direction suddenly; it may even turn the flames on Zebra Rock, their home, and their plan may backfire entirely. But one truth, above all, was evident:

  ‘You most definitely can die trying to do this,’ James told his students, ‘and I expect you to at least take one of those bastards with you if you do.’

  The day the fires emanated was the day they all woke to find a hot westerly wind battering across the Kununurra and over the Ord. The effect was almost like a sandstorm, with red and orange sand from the adjacent desert tossing their hair sideways and causing their plastic deck chairs to tumble from the campsite. The morning was hot, meaning the afternoon would only be hotter, and with no rain for over a week, the surrounding bushland was dry and brittle. Tim felt the wind and sand on his face and agreed that today was the day.

  The fiery ambush took place initially some four or five kilometres west of the Ivanhoe farms, in a slither of dry bushland where the Kununurra ended and the Ord region began. A two-pronged attack was swiftly put in place: at two-hundred-metre intervals along the western side of the Ord, amongst dense shrubbery and trees, pairs of workers built fires. They gathered the kindling from the ground, the shredded bark, wayward branches and dry shrubbery, and allowed tiny sparks to grow at the bases of dead trees and in densely overgrown bush. Simultaneously, eight fires were lit. The wind took hold of them quickly, allowing them to grow and rise with black smok
e into the air. The students left the area once they saw they were no longer needed, and moved quickly to the eastern side of the river with their accelerants. A mere one kilometre from the farms, within view of their enemies’ silver warehouses and cattle ranges, gallons of patrol, toxic chemicals and harsh accelerants were poured in lines perpendicular to the line of fire, as veins along which the fire could rapidly accelerate towards the farms in a sudden, unpredictable motion. Once the flames hopped the river – a feat they would not have been able to do if the river had not been depleted of so much water – it would strike these lines of chemicals and intensify ten-fold, targeting the entire valley of Quaker farms, reducing it all to ash.

  By the time Ned was pouring diesel, the air was so thick with smoke that he could hardly see or breathe. A cloth covered his nose and mouth, but his eyes were watering, and it all stank like chemicals and ash. A cloud of soot soon blanketed the sky above the farms, swiftly moving east with the powerful, hot wind. Surely the Quakers would have noticed the blaze by now, but it would not be until the flames struck the chemical spills that they would know it was manmade and aimed directly at them. If their loyal Suits were with them, they would perhaps be warning them of the impending danger; it was now a matter of whether the Quakers valued their crops and cattle more than their lives and chose to either run or stay and fight. It was difficult to predict their psychology, but foreign invaders in foreign lands have repeatedly fallen victim to ignorance by failing to consider the environment and the weather as threats to their dominance. Ned had witnessed bushfires and knew they were capable of killing hundreds in one fell swoop; if these Quakers were not trained, or were left gawking at the tower of smoke and flames for too long, then they would perish, and it would be their own damn fault for not being prepared.

  His diesel can was almost empty, but under the shrouding smoke, it was becoming difficult to finish. The flames were beginning to roar, and the sound of trees snapping and birds escaping in large flocks filled the air with a cacophony of panic. He heard someone shout out to him, and he looked up to see one of the students abandon her can and make a run for it; she could not handle the heat anymore. Ned turned back to the tree line and saw flames moving up behind him, growing into a wall of blazing heat. This thing was moving fast, faster than Tim had predicted. Racing towards him, Ned dropped his things and ran south, back towards the safety of Zebra Rock, towards the den beneath the tarp of water where they all knew they were safe. He lost sight of everyone within minutes of running through the bush. The air was now a thick grey and the temperature had soared through the forties. If he was not clear of the chemical spills by the time the flames touched, he could find himself trapped in an ecological oven. He ran, leaping over logs and bushes. Somewhere behind him, there was a shout of one of his people, followed by two echoing gunshots. Ned stopped.

  Gunshots.

  What the settlers had not probably planned for was the Quakers to fight fire with fire, to come after them directly wielding weapons of their own. Ned knew Tim had been working not fifty meters behind him – it may have been his gun that went off. He had to wait for him. He could not let another of his family be lost. He stopped running, crouched low to avoid the smoke and heat, and searched desperately through the grey haze for the sight of feet.

  ‘Tim!’ he cried through the roar of the fire. ‘Where are you?’

  Thunder rumbled in the sky overhead, deep thunder, and Ned stared up to see the sky gradually changing colour with the twisting, rolling arms of an impending storm. It had arrived, called upon to douse the flames and protect the precious farms. Ned saw a gaping hole, an eye in the storm, beginning to widen and form into a vortex, and he knew that was the warning sign of a beam coming to disintegrate him and suck him up as confetti. This was no time to be standing out in the open; only the gallery basement, or a hardy fridge, could protect him.

  More gunshots, rapidly now. The distant voice shouting sounded like James’. Ned was not going to wait for James, of all people, and turned to continue running before that storm gained enough strength to beam him up. Not two steps more, he was halted. A Skyquaker stood there. It was twenty metres away, mostly veiled by the smoke. Ned was frozen in terror. A lone being blocked his path, dressed in a silver astronaut suit, standing two or more metres tall, wielding a wide-barrelled thing which looked more like a fire extinguisher than a weapon. Ned could not move or speak or do anything. The smoke was filling his lungs and this whole place was about to be engulfed in deadly flames but he just stood there, flat-footed, watching the tall, otherworldly thing meandering towards him through the ghostly smoke. It surely could see him through the black visor of its gas mask, but the Quaker was not in a threatening stance; perhaps it was looking upon him with the same vacant curiosity that Ned continued to express.

  Jesus Christ, what is it?

  Somewhere behind him, there was a rush of hot, almost burning air, and the whoosh of deadly flames marked the birth of a thirty-foot tidal wave of fire. The chemicals: the flames were coming at him now, moving with incredible speed and ferocity. Ned spun back to the Skyquaker, knowing it was blocking his path to safety. The Quaker looked to its wide-barrelled hose, and looked to be struggling to find a way to operate it under intense heat and stress.

  A gunshot. It struck the Skyquaker in the back and it fell to the ground. Ned almost screamed in shock. The shot had come from Elizabeth, who was standing there behind the alien with the rifle at her nose. She yelled at Ned, ‘Let’s go!’ and he obeyed her. As they ran off together, Ned looked over his shoulder and saw, as flames and smoke began to engulf his view, the Quaker rolling around on his back, limbs flailing, trying to grasp at something: the gas tanks. Elizabeth’s bullet had pierced one of the two pressurised gas tanks it carried over its shoulders, with a hose connecting it to its face mask. Ned could see it suffering, clawing at its neck, trying to tear its own mask off. It did not occur to him until much later that the Quaker had been suffocating, but since it made no effort to get up and escape, it mostly likely died from the firestorm that swiftly followed.

  Rain began to soak the Ord – lots of rain. The storm furiously began to chase after the bushfire in an attempt to protect the farms from complete obliteration. Ned felt he and Elizabeth were the last two to abandon their posts, and ran through the bushland towards Zebra Rock knowing that thing in the sky had its swirling eye locked on them. Somewhere off to the right, a tremendous purple light struck the Earth, hitting the ground with the force of an earthquake. It was searching for the feral creatures responsible for this mess, but through the smoke and flames, the scattered settlers were nothing but specks on their radars. Another beam. Another. The storm was making wild guesses, taking blind stabs. The beams were simply too slow and the bushland was too dense. One beam hit the ground where Ned’s running feet were a second ago, and he feared he would lose an ankle to the dissolving power of the pink and purple light. The beam forced Elisabeth and Ned to part separate ways, and they quickly lost sight of each other in the madness. Ned was unsure whether he was running in the right direction anymore, but he could see the glistening roof of Zebra Rock through the last line of trees, so he ran for it. He looked up and saw a gap in the clouds pry open directly overhead, and at that point he knew he would not make it back to the basement; it was too far, and there was at least six-hundred metres without cover before he made it inside. He changed direction, sprinted directly towards the Ord River and dove in, head first.

  The beam struck. The intense, pink light filtered through the water, washing over Ned’s body, but some unknown force protected him from being disintegrated. He floated, fully submerged, arms and legs limp by his side. He gazed around him to see he was encased in a pool of colour. The surface glistened like diamonds and the murky waters were vibrantly illuminated with a strange, iridescent glow. Ned felt as though he was floating in pink jelly, neither rising nor sinking, but he could feel the beam still trying to touch him, trying to zap the little hairs on his arms and legs, trying
to gobble him up into specks of light. Eventually, having failed to catch him, the beam switched off and Ned felt free and unrestrained again. He emerged with a gasp.

  No one knew exactly how extensive the damage to the farms had been in the end, or whether the flames even made it all the way to Ivanhoe. The storm clouds, moving unnaturally in the sky like a sentient force, drenched the rivers and valleys for three hours. The colossal grey mass rolled in, bringing thunder and a downpour like the ones they witnessed in the wet season. The floodplains filled up, forming their circular pools. The fire was sizzled out, leaving the Quakers to assess the damage.

  No settler was lost in the ambush. James’ gun was the only one which was fired. He claimed he was shooting at a Quaker he thought he saw coming towards him through the smoke, but in the end he must have been shooting at ghosts because he never actually saw a solid figure. Ned and Elizabeth kept their experience to themselves; Elizabeth did not want to admit to James that her gun may have had a beneficial use. Ned only confided in one other: Sarah. He told her later that night about the terrifying ordeal. He said he did not know how to feel about it. The Quaker’s death did not leave him with any greater sense of empowerment, nor did it appear to have fully compensated for Andrew. On one hand, it felt good to know at least one of theirs was dead, perhaps one for every thousand of his own kind who had died, and yet there was something about its death which left him with this heavy feeling of pity and disgust.

  Sarah asked, ‘Did it suffer?’

  ‘Yeah. It looked like it really did.’ Ned looked up. ‘Maybe I should tell Michael about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make him feel better about how Andy suffered.’