Origin

by Greg McLean

  Mick glances at Rose. Blood cakes her mouth. A puddle of shit and piss is trampled between her feet.

  ‘This is what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it, Rosey?’ Roberts asks.

  She bares her teeth. ‘You’re both . . . pathetic,’ she says with difficulty. ‘Thisth ith the only way . . . you can deal with a woman.’

  Roberts frowns. ‘Shut up.’ He jams the gun in the back of Mick’s neck. ‘Do it.’

  Mick pricks the knife against her stomach, has to look directly into her hate-filled eyes.

  ‘Ya know,’ Roberts says, recovering his power. ‘Rose’s family near built this town. Owned most of the land, ran the sheep and cattle exports. Then they pissed it all away. Rosey here tried to escape for a while, as we all do. But for some reason she came back. Thought she could get the farm up and running again. I used to think she must have a stash’a money somewhere, but then why would she be whoring? Dunno what she’s trying to prove. A woman can’t run a farm. But them’s the little stories that amuse me. Ants scurrying around tryin’a make sense of their lives. Then I snuff ’em out.’ He chuckles. ‘Just cockroaches ’neath me feet. Like you.’

  Rose stares back at Mick. He tries to make himself push the knife, wanting to save her from worse, part of him having always wanted this. But he can’t do it.

  Then Rose looks past him. Fixes Roberts with her stare. ‘You’re th’ cockroach,’ she says. ‘None of you beat me.’

  And she lets her bodyweight fall forward onto the knife. She parts easily.

  Mick’s surprised gasp matches her own exhalation. Their faces so close they’re almost kissing.

  Tears fill her eyes as she stares at him. ‘Fuck you, Mick. Damn you,’ she says, and leans against his trembling shoulder. Raises her head with the last of her strength and whispers into his ear.

  Roberts steps forward. ‘What’s that? Oi, what’s she saying?’

  Still, he keeps a respectful distance, not letting Mick draw him in close enough to jump him and flanks around them trying to hear. He can’t and points the gun at Mick’s temple in fury.

  ‘What the fuck you just say?’ the cop roars at Rose.

  She doesn’t seem to register him. Looks Mick in the eyes. ‘Don’t take him . . . to the lake,’ she whispers again. They stand there staring at each other, his knife in her, blood dripping over his hand.

  ‘What’s at the fucken lake? You mean the dam? Wait!’

  Mick supports Rose as she slumps against him. Her breathing grows ragged. The knife still joins them. He can’t see through his confused tears and he forces his legs to straighten so he can take out the knife.

  ‘Wait! Stop.’ Roberts frowns. ‘This is another trick.’

  Mick holds Rose’s shoulder gently and eases out the knife. She groans and her eyes roll back. Her lips bubble blood and he wants to kiss them.

  ‘What’s at the dam?’ Roberts demands. Mick stares at him, his vision darkening with anger, and sees something cross the cop’s face. ‘You are holding out on me, ya pricks,’ the policeman says. He points the gun at Rose. ‘Ya gonna show me where ya’ve got it, bitch.’ Her blood’s oozing and dripping to the floor, eyelids fluttering, but she’s still breathing.

  ‘Fuck’s sake. Ya can’t see —’ Mick starts to say.

  ‘I knew she had a stash,’ Roberts cuts him off. ‘Didn’t want anyone to know. Musta made a mint as a whore in the city, gonna use it to restore the farm. She’s telling you where it is, retard.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing —’ He notices Rose’s eyes flicker open and they fix on his.

  ‘Think I fucken believe you? Ya think I like working on my shit wage? I only do this job for the cover of the badge. Don’t get much from the lowlifes I take out, so you got some, you fucken show me.’

  Mick’s rooted to the spot, eyes locked with Rose. ‘I . . . I don’t know. She never told me.’ What’s she trying to tell him?

  Roberts fumes. The .243 looks tiny in his grasp. ‘Dammit,’ he says eventually. ‘Let her down. If this is a trick —’

  Then Mick gets it. ‘So why don’t I know about it?’ he says to Roberts, and as Rose finally catches the flicker of understanding in his eyes she lets herself slump again.

  ‘You’re a born liar, boy. Don’t believe a word you say. We’re gonna go for a walk. See what’s what. And if she’s lying, I’m gonna make you torture the last of her life out of her. And not some dainty shit you do to each other, neither. Now let her down.’

  Mick eases her from the chains – the chains he put her in – and into his arms. She cries as her bloodless arms drop.

  ‘She’s going inta shock,’ Mick says.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Roberts makes him kick the knife over and then stands back as Mick picks Rose up like a cradled child. She’s too light, as if her life’s already left her. Too cold. Only her rasping breath tells him she’s still alive, and the warmth of her blood soaking him. He tries to press a hand on the wound.

  Roberts motions him to move and follows them outside, hanging back. With one arm holding up the rifle, finger on the trigger, he grabs a shovel from against the side of the house with his free hand. Motions Mick past the building and towards the fields.

  Mick stumbles over the uneven ground, Rose held tight against him. She rests her head against his shoulder as the wound he’d given her seeps. His arms are sticky and hot. She shivers into him. And yet still she’s able to look up beyond him and he knows she’s taking in the spread of stars above. He holds her tighter. Tries not to trip and crush her. Lets her have these last moments with the sky.

  At the crest overlooking the dam Roberts stops and addresses Rose. ‘Where is it? You got it buried somewhere. Speak or I make him cut your tits off.’

  Mick stands holding her, glowering at the huge silhouette of the man.

  Rose blinks, tries to focus. Then looks again at Mick. ‘Near th’shrubs,’ she whispers, pointing a wavering hand a quarter of the way around the dam to a sprinkling of bushes clinging to life on the mounded sand. Mick nods and starts to walk towards it and Roberts growls.

  ‘Slowly, boy.’

  He inches ahead, gun trained on them the whole time. Mick looks down at Rose. She’s staring beyond him again with glazed eyes. As they get close to the bushes, Roberts prods the dirt, cautiously scuffs with his shoe. ‘You’ll dig. Put her down.’

  Mick lays Rose down. She touches her stomach. Mick reluctantly takes the shovel and heads over to the shrubs. ‘Here?’ he asks, turning back to Rose.

  She shakes her head. ‘To . . . the leffft.’

  Roberts watches, hungry, eyes shining, as Mick digs. ‘So, looks like you were some use to somebody after all, boy. Least you can take that with you.’

  ‘Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.’

  Mick glances across at Rose. She’s watching him now.

  The shovel hits hard, sends up sparks and jars his arms. He flicks a look at Rose again. So there is something here? She brought them here to buy their way out of this? Doesn’t she know there’s no hope of that?

  ‘Drop the shovel.’ Roberts is hovering, itching to see what’s in the hole. Mick waits for him to step closer in his eagerness. ‘Think I’m stupid? Throw it to the water. And step back.’

  Mick does what he’s told and lets the cop take his place. Roberts crouches at the hole and burrows his fingers in and around a steel case the size of a shoebox. Mick glances at Rose and she lets her eyes drift down the slope then back at him.

  ‘Bloody piece of shit.’ Roberts shifts the gun in his grasp, and tries to get a better hold of the box.

  Mick takes a step, tries to crane to see. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Stay where you are. Nice little stash, by the looks of it. A whore’s takings.’ He’s working at the box, trying to prise it free with one hand. Mick takes another step and Roberts brings the gun up. ‘That’s enough, sunshine.’

  Mick watches as the cop wrests the box free and stands, shifting the gun to the crook of his arm t
o free a hand to try to get the lid open.

  ‘Bastard’s locked tight.’ He bends, bashes the side against a rock, and Mick looks back to Rose. Her eyes are blazing. She sweeps them down the slope, tilting her head, motioning, her arms no longer working.

  Mick steps in, weaponless, and Roberts senses his looming presence. He drops the steel box and swings the gun up tightly in both hands to shoot.

  Mick’s doesn’t waste time trying to grab it. Instead he comes in low, and shoves him. Just as he had his sister.

  He hardly gets any force into it, but they’re at the top of the embankment and when Roberts takes a step back to steady himself there’s nothing there and his great body overbalances as if falling off a ship. The gun swings up and booms into the sky with a flash. The shot’s so close it deafens Mick and he stumbles and nearly follows Roberts over.

  Roberts cracks the back of his neck as he somersaults overhead. His legs whip over and he skids, broken, down the rest of the way until stopping half in the water. He tries to scream his pain but can’t. His spine’s twisted, legs useless and broken. Something rattles in his chest as he looks up to Mick standing over him.

  Mick slips the rifle from the policeman’s twitching grip and appraises it in the moonlight, noting its fine dark length. The memories it arouses. He places it to one side, ignoring Roberts’ attempts to spit the last of his fury at him. His threat has long passed.

  Instead, Mick turns back up to Rose on the top of the crest, watching him with the last of her sight. Their eyes meet and then she slumps back. But there’s something he has to do first.

  He retrieves the knife she’d given him from the back of Roberts’ belt, then grabs the cop by the collar and hauls him out of the water. The man screams like a child as something grates down his back, bones scraping together like kindling.

  Then Mick squats and in the gaze of the moonlight cuts the clothes from him, to reveal his hide beneath.

  He dresses her in Roberts’ power. But it doesn’t work for her either.

  She dies holding his hand, staring up at the stars.

  With one last squeeze she lets him go, leaving him empty, cold and alone.

  He walks down to the water, stands blood-drenched and exhausted as it laps at his feet, and stares up at the sky. And it’s like emerging from the house in the desert again. Feeling stripped bare, laid raw to the air like an exposed nerve, drained finally of all emotion.

  This time there’s no thirst for revenge guiding him, no overwhelming anger. This time he’s set loose upon the world directionless and without constraint.

  For the first time, his life is now his own.

  He opens his eyes and looks dispassionately at the bodies near him. Just shapes now, problems to solve. Logistics to clean up.

  Out across the lake he sees only the angles of refraction of light, the diamond-like sparkling, its potential to hide evidence. No, he’ll have to be smarter than that. There’s a better way to do all this.

  He starts with Rose.

  Ya know, it’s no harder than cuttin’ up a sheep, Micky.

  The moonlight beats down on him like the ever-present heat of the sun and he finds himself whistling. Loses himself in the familiar pleasure of the work.

  EPILOGUE

  Mick’s returning from dumping the last of his takings at the mine site, one arm out the window in the bite of the sun, the wind through his hair, when the police car races up behind.

  He stares at it in his rear-view. There’s nothing in his ute, and he’d never outrace them anyway. He slows and pulls over.

  The cop car pulls up and parks behind and Kravic jumps out, gun drawn. Yells something. Mick doesn’t move.

  ‘I said, get out! Slow!’

  Mick has to press a shoulder against the old door to open it. Steps out into the light.

  ‘What’s up, cuntstable?’

  ‘Don’t you fucken speak to me. Hands behind yer head. On yer knees.’

  ‘Alex —’ the young red-headed cop with Kravic says, his gun drawn also but not so confidently.

  ‘Shut up, Don. I know this bastard had something to do with it.’

  ‘With what?’ Mick asks, but the two cops say nothing as they close in, pat him down and handcuff him. Ham-fisted. Probably the first time they’ve ever had to do it. ‘What about me ute?’

  Kravic just hauls him up and marches him back to the police car.

  ‘Wanna tell me what this is about?’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  Mick sits in the back as Kravic burns rubber taking off. He looks back and forth between the two policemen, a look of surprise plastered on his face.

  ‘Alex,’ the other copper says, ‘let’s just get back to the station and —’

  ‘I said, shut up.’

  ‘What’s this psycho on about, Bluey?’ Mick asks the flame-haired cop, but Kravic answers instead.

  ‘You must’ve planted it. The stuff in his walls.’

  ‘What stuff?’ Could he mean the rat film? Rose’s bloody knife? Jerry’s fucktoy and other incriminating tidbits from the mine? The steel glory box Rose had tricked Roberts into digging up thinking it contained money, only to find letters and photos and hopes of a dreaming girl? That stuff?

  ‘They’re already tying him to shit in Darwin and —’ Red says, but Kravic cuts him off.

  ‘Think I believe that? Roberts is a cop. One of us.’

  ‘They’ll hear his side when they find him. Look, Alex, we got your boy. We should call it in.’

  ‘No!’ Kravic’s eyes are fixed on Mick in the rear-view. ‘You’re gonna tell me what you done, “Mick” – whatever your real name is. What you done with Roberts. And Rose.’

  ‘Rose?’ Mick sits forward. ‘What’s happened to her?’

  Red shifts uncomfortably. ‘We’ll clear it up at the sta—’

  ‘Fuck the station!’ Kravic has drawn his revolver.

  Red stares at it. Kravic holds it over his shoulder at Mick. ‘We’re gonna find us a spot. And we’re gonna get to the truth.’

  He yanks the wheel and the car jumps off the highway, leaping through scrub and soft ground as they head out bush. The passing spinifex flashes like whirring blades.

  ‘Alex, what the hell?’

  Kravic points the .44 at his young partner. The man shuts up. The speedo’s sitting on sixty, creeps up to seventy miles an hour on the uneven ground. The car bucks like a bitch. Kravic steers it one-handed. ‘Always something wrong with you,’ he says to Mick. ‘Lying sack of shit. I knew it. Roberts knew it too, so you pinned all this on him.’

  ‘You’re insane,’ Mick says, a boiling fear now beginning to roil up inside him. He feels trapped in the backseat, trussed like a heifer. He fights the cuffs.

  ‘This is illegal,’ Red says, trying to calm his partner. ‘We got no reason to —’

  ‘I know he had something to do with it! Look at him. Can’t you see it?’

  Mick glares at him, his panic welling, mask slipping. He can’t hold it much longer. The cuffs like hands holding him down. He nearly dislocates his shoulders. ‘Get me the fuck outta —’

  The gun at his face again. The black barrel like looking into death. The end of everything.

  ‘We’re gonna find us a spot,’ Kravic says, too calm, eyes wild. ‘And you’re gonna confess. Or dig your own grave.’

  ‘Jesus, Alex!’ Red says. His hand creeps to his gun and Kravic sweeps the .44 back at his partner.

  ‘Get in my way, Don, I shoot you too.’

  Mick leans back and horse-kicks him. His size-13 boot cracks against Kravic’s temple and whips him around. The wheel bucks his hands and the car noses into the ground and flips.

  In the back, Mick slams against his seatbelt, tries to crumple against Red’s seat to protect himself as the world upends. The air snaps out of him. A great diagonal fire slashes his chest. Unprepared, Kravic launches forward and his head bounces off the windscreen. The steering wheel crumples around his chest. The other policeman caves against the
glovebox in a slap of meat, and he whips back, arms flailing. The car rolls onto its bonnet then over again, skids in the dirt on its side. Metal shrieks, then stills.

  The sound of a tyre spinning endlessly. Hissing steam and leaking petrol.

  The silence of the desert around.

  The world bleeds white. Black spots on the edge of vision threaten to sweep in and swallow everything.

  Then air rushes in sudden and sweet. Mick gasps, winded, as his lungs shudder with life. He drinks in oxygen hungrily. Lies blinking, shoulder-down against the shattered glass of the side window. The ground beneath him still hot with the sun. Its light shafts in from above.

  Kravic groans in the front and coughs blood. Red hangs dead and limp-armed. One hand trails across Kravic’s face.

  It takes an eternity for Mick to push himself up, slipping the handcuffs underneath his rump so his hands are in front and he can reach the keys on Kravic’s belt. The copper groans again, croaks for help.

  Mick unlocks himself and props against the side of the seat to stare into Kravic’s face. The man’s eyes flutter with pain. Mick pushes his shattered, crackling chest and the flickering gets worse. The pain’s so bad Kravic can’t focus on him and he looks somewhere over Mick’s shoulder. Watching his life replay perhaps. Mick compresses the fucker’s broken ribcage flat and helps him to it.

  ‘Don’t think I’ll be needing that grave just yet,’ Mick says, close, and pats him on the cheek.

  He hauls himself out of the upended window above, and sits for a moment, perched on the teetering car. Then he rolls down onto the red dirt. His hands burn against the ground but he can’t bring himself to rise just yet. Every muscle screams. The sun at his back, relentless.

  Eventually, he stands. There’s no sign he’d been involved in the car accident, nothing to tie him to the scene.

  He turns and walks back to his car. Head down against the beating sun.

  Alive as ever.

  As the hunt for Roberts rages, Mick stays six weeks, blending in with the rest of the community. He sits in the pub listening with the others to the rumours flying around, and keeps as interested as anyone in the news stories. He speculates whether the killer cop had a hand in the accident that took Alex Kravic and Don Mooney too. And he shakes his head and shows concern and disbelief, and talks of retribution when they find him.