The world turned. We slowly crawled across it.
Growing in the distance was another rope bridge stretching out over another dried-up river. The bush to the north stopped suddenly, branches hanging over another riverbed filled with rubble. The rope bridge cut through a craggy earthen ridge running parallel with the river, and then met the highway, which curved away behind the ridge. I stopped, turned to say something, realised that Tobe wasn’t there. I spun on my heel, almost tripped in the tangle of my legs. Despite my embarrassment, I couldn’t help smile. I looked back. Tobe stood maybe ten metres behind me, staring over my shoulder at something I couldn’t see. He wasn’t smiling.
Well, with the balaclava rolled down over his face, I don’t think he was smiling—the terrifying Tobe that I had only just come to know was back.
‘What’s up?’ I shouted, hurrying back.
My voice was loud, too loud. Tobe swore under his breath. He shook his rifle free, adjusted a dial on its sight. He held it to his shoulder, swept it back and forth, scanning the ridge.
He lowered the gun with a grunt. ‘Wait here,’ he said, ‘and don’t move and don’t say anything and please, for fuck’s sake, don’t come running.’
He dropped his pack, slung his rifle on his shoulder, ran full bore into the paddock to the south with Red and Blue at his heels. As easy as dying of thirst, the three of them clambered down the steep bank of the empty river and disappeared from view. I dropped my own pack, sprawled out on the blacktop, had a long drink of water, rolled some bush tobacco, found my tinderbox, struck a flame.
I smoked in the dark, eyes on the far side of the river.
I waited a long time, ended up digging a tiny grave for the pile of butts that grew beside me. And then something moved at the bottom of the ridge. Tobe, Red, and Blue were hurrying up the cracked earth, almost running. I pulled my barely working binoculars from my pack, had a look. Thanks to my cracked glasses and the age of the binoculars, there was nothing but fuzz.
I turned a rusty lens wheel, begging it to work.
Tobe appeared in sharp relief, planted flat at the top of the ridge, rifle poking over the edge. He swept it back and forth, slithered over the ridge and disappeared again, Red and Blue once again following him.
I gave up, confused, completely out of my depth. I drank some more water, drained a canteen. I tried not to worry about it. When there are still long days ahead, it’s best to trust that the world will provide. Who knows what you’ll find? I tried to believe the words I said and ignore my doubting inner pest.
I lay down on the road, my pack beneath my head. I stared at the moon, at its crumpled face. I tried to get comfy.
My pack made a terrible pillow.
Six
The thunderous crack of a gunshot was so sudden that at first I thought I had imagined it—the empty night does strange things to people. But then another boom echoed through the sky. I jumped to my feet, tucked my rifle into the crook of my shoulder and turned in quick circles, my finger on the trigger. I turned a half-dozen times, abruptly stopped. I was dizzy; it took a while to steady myself. I discovered that I was facing the rope bridge. On the far side stood Tobe. He had his back to me and was bent in half, his pants around its ankles, his arse bared to the world.
I was tempted to let off a shot, to put one where the sun doesn’t shine.
Tobe pulled up his pants and turned to face me. I didn’t need to see his smile to know it was there. He laughed, loud enough that it carried over the rope bridge. I shouldered my gun, told him to do something unmentionable to himself.
‘Come on, Bill. What are you waiting for? Bloody Christmas?’
I stared at him, once again temped to pack it in and head home. Valour eventually got the better of me; I strapped on my pack, picked up Tobe’s, hurried along in my own lumbering way.
I threw Tobe’s pack at his feet. He peeled the balaclava off his face.
‘What kind of thanks is that?’ he asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘For checking that the way was safe. And for getting some dinner.’
‘Huh?’
‘What, are you deaf as well as stupid?’
I ignored him. We walked on, following the highway as it curved away and disappeared behind the ridge. Earthen walls towered above us, hugging the roadside.
‘Get ready,’ Tobe said as the highway straightened out.
I had forgotten about it—I had played it too safe, spent too much time just making sure that my patch hung on.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me …’
The Maloort Plain lay in front of us, a spread of burnt paddocks stretching as far as we could see. To the north, to the south, to the west, nothing but ash and ruin. The highway rocketed through the centre of it, a silver ribbon cutting through the great emptiness. Nothing broke the flat, dead plains; they soaked up the moonlight, gave nothing back.
‘Look on my works, ye mighty …’
It overwhelmed us—it was impossible to know where the earth ended and the sky began. We took slow steps, transfixed. Red and Blue appeared as pale shadows, stalking across the coal-black paddocks. The sprawl of burnt grass fooled me into thinking that the plains were completely flat, completely empty. When I looked again, I saw an occasional something break the illusion—a reef of rock pushing out of the ground, another earthen ridge tracing another empty river, the blackened foundations of a shack that fell to the fire, tree stumps cracked and split. Wrecked vehicles sometimes blocked the road ahead; they were burnt out as well, long ago caught in firestorms they couldn’t outrun, tombs for those who died in futile attempts at escape.
We had been walking a while—I’m not sure how long—when Tobe dropped his pack without warning and veered off into the great empty land to the south. The land consumed him; only seconds later, he had disappeared completely. I stopped walking, grateful for a break—the usual stiff joints and aching muscles of a long hike were already settling in. I looked around. There was nothing different about that particular stretch of land. The highway, the scorched earth, the sky—they had been the same for miles.
‘Tobe!’ I shouted.
No reply. I shouted again. This time, Red and Blue heard me. They ran to me, sniffed at me, their tails wagging. They slobbered, gave me a friendly lick, and then lay down on the blacktop, panting, staring at the land that had swallowed Tobe whole. I dropped my pack, shuffled it behind me, leaned back, and had a long drink. Red looked at me, the saddest expression on her face. I straightened up, pulled my pack toward me. You can’t let a thirsty animal stay that way.
Something wet and sticky met my fingers.
‘What?’
I already knew the answer, the red blood was bright in the moonlight. I jumped to my feet, saw a trail of it leading from the cracked blacktop to the cindered grass. I followed it.
I couldn’t see anything; the land ahead of me was as black as the bottom of a mine.
‘Tobe?’
No answer. I raised my rifle, cocked it, flicked off the safety. ‘Now isn’t the time to mess with me!’
Nothing. Sudden panic. I started sweating, the sour sweat of fear. I felt like a little boy alone in the dark.
‘Last time.’ I turned left, turned right, saw nothing. I fired a shot into the sky. ‘Okay then.’
I stepped forward. Tobe immediately rose up in front of me, pushing himself off his belly and onto his feet in one fluid move. I could see flecks of burnt grass sticking to his shirt from where he had been lying in wait. He reached out faster than I could really see, faster than my surprised panic, pushing down on my rifle until it pointed at the ground.
Another shot rang out. I hadn’t even realised I had squeezed the trigger. Tobe didn’t flinch.
‘Keep your pants on, Bill,’ he said. And then he laughed.
He turned away and reached behind him, picking up a shapeless mass. It was the size of a child on the cusp of becoming an adult. It dripped with blood. It seemed to be forever folding in on itself, as if some
essential part that helped it keep its form had been snatched away.
Tobe rearranged his double-fisted grip, to stop it spilling from his hands. ‘Here, catch.’
He threw it to me, threw it at me. I took a hasty step back, almost tripping on my feet. It hit my chest with a dull, wet thud, almost knocking me down. It fell to the ground. I righted myself, looked at it properly, trying to work out what it was, what it had been.
Excited by the copper-stink of blood, Red and Blue ran over.
‘Get out of it!’ Tobe roared.
They backed off, but didn’t stop staring at the raw-meat thing. Tobe reached into the sodden mess, pulling bits of it one way and then the other, moving on, repeating the process. The thing slowly assumed a shape under Tobe’s nimble fingers. The powerful V of back legs made for jumping rather than running, the tapering whipcord of a muscular tail, forelegs outstretched and grasping.
Tobe finished with a flourish. Something unspeakable flopped onto the thing’s broad chest. Pale eyes glared at me. Below jaws that hung open in a frozen scream, there was only a bloody ruin, most of its neck reduced to a haze of ruined meat.
‘Poor bastard,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I guess I’m getting rusty,’ Tobe said. ‘I meant to put one in its eye, not in its neck. I didn’t want it to stagger out here to die—I wanted it to be quick.’
I couldn’t speak.
‘You hungry yet?’ Tobe asked.
My stomach rolled; I tasted bile in the back of my throat. When the time came, I knew that I would eat. Happily, too. But right then? Looking at the roo’s matted fur, at its limp body, looking anywhere but in its dull, accusing eyes, I decided to pass.
The things we had to do sometimes disgusted me.
‘Suit yourself.’
Tobe pulled a knife from his boot. Without hesitation, he gutted and skinned the roo. Its organs and head went onto the blacktop, food for the scavengers, a snack for the dogs. Tobe carried its hide down the highway, came back with a long length of metal that curved inward at both ends. The wrenched-off bumper of a wreck, I guessed. Tobe dropped the bumper next to the roo, pulled a bail of twine from his pocket, and started threading it around the bumper and roo’s back legs. I would have offered to help, but he looked like he knew what he was doing. Besides, I was feeling a little sick, the smell of dead animal steadily growing stronger.
I rolled some bush tobacco to help cover the smell, rolled some for Tobe as well, struck a tiny fire, lit them both, and passed one over.
‘Cheers.’
He took it with a hand covered in gore, and kept threading the twine. The bush tobacco hung from the corner of his mouth, smoke drifting into his eyes. I wondered how he could see anything.
He started coughing, tears running down his cheeks. He wiped them away, leaving streaks of blood behind. He ground out his bush tobacco, tucking the butt in his pocket. I didn’t really see the point, considering where we were. But old dogs and all that.
Tobe stood up, bracing one foot on the road, the other on the bumper. He grabbed hold of the roo’s forelegs and pulled hard. The bumper shifted slightly, the twine held. Satisfied, he turned to me and smiled.
‘Shall we?’
My stomach rolled again.
I slung my pack on my back, deciding to get it over and done with. I shouldered my rifle, ground out my bush tobacco, flicked it away, and didn’t care in the slightest. Tobe frowned at me as he retrieved his rifle and his pack. He squatted down at one end of the bumper. On the count of three, we lifted it high, settling the ends on our shoulders. The skinned roo hung between us, swaying lazily on the end of the twine. A torrent of blood erupted from its neck, slowly trailing off to a trickle.
‘You okay?’ Tobe asked.
The weight of the bumper and the roo settled. It didn’t seem too much to bear.
‘No worries.’
We moved awkwardly at first—I took it easy, Tobe strained at the bit. The need to walk faster—to be done with the road—was evident in his tight smile. We finally settled on a step that suited us both; I picked up my pace, Tobe slowed a little. The highway unrolled beneath us and the plains stayed the same, the burnt-out black of them featureless and flat. Occasionally, another burnt-out wreck appeared ahead. Something about the first one we approached caught my eye; as we drew closer, I saw the dead roo’s hide stretched across the bonnet. The wreck’s bumper was missing, and I looked at what I was carrying and couldn’t help but smile. We skirted around the wreck, once again choosing not to look inside.
Like all the others, it shrank into a shadowy nothing as our wandering resumed.
The highway showed us where we needed to go, all we had to do was put one foot in front of the other. The weight we carried, our ever-present thirst, the stink of raw meat, none of it mattered. The thud of our feet beat an unending tattoo. It went this way for hours.
That world of monotony and shadow seemed to smooth Tobe’s hard edge—a number of times I caught him smiling to himself, staring into the distance, lost somewhere far away.
Easy conversation began; reminiscences and shared memories, every other sentence starting with ‘Do you remember?’ or ‘Were you there when?’ or some such, most of the meaning unspoken, an old-mate code. After a time, we moved into speculation about what we might find when we were done, our cries of ‘I reckon …’ and ‘Bet your arse’ echoing through the night. We walked on and on, nothing seemed to change. It was a good walk—we were bedraggled brothers-in-arms, a beautifully familiar thing. It comforted me, dulling my nagging questions about Tobe’s latest weirdness.
We sometimes fell into silence, awed by the enormous, featureless land that surrounded us—it called out to us, daring us to stride into its maw.
At some point, I saw that the sky was growing brighter, the first trace of dawn rolling in. I knew it was only a tease, that the real thing was still a while away, that the moon hadn’t yet thrown in the towel. We kept on. The light steadily grew brighter, a glowing mix of pale oranges and pinks. The rising sun at our backs cast our shadows ahead of us. Sweat started to drip off me. The dead roo grew riper, attracting the first flies of the day. I waved them away as best I could. Tobe did the same.
It was a futile exercise.
Without missing a beat or dropping his end of the bumper, Tobe somehow rolled some bush tobacco, pulled out his Zippo, and lit up. He perched it in the crook of the roo’s leg and let it smoulder, grey smoke shrouding the carcass, sending some of the flies away.
I decided that I had had enough, and called a break.
We stopped, dropping the bumper and the roo on the blacktop. I didn’t care that we were in the middle of the highway, that there wasn’t any shade, that there wasn’t even a nearby wreck to cast a shadow for us to rest in. I needed a sit down and a smoke. Tobe turned to me, a look both sympathetic and scornful on his face. I didn’t care. The sun still hadn’t shown itself, but that hadn’t stopped the heat from building. I guzzled the last of a canteen. I lay down, shuffled my pack under my head. Tobe just watched me, saying nothing. After a moment, he loudly and deliberately stomped away to take a piss.
I lay there, the empty sky watching and mocking me. The sunlight grew brighter still, forcing me to close my eyes.
Seven
I’m drowning in sadness, sorrow and fear. It’s the air that I breathe, the building blocks of the world.
I realise where I am and start screaming.
Tobe and I, bare moments from the loss of innocence, stand outside the barn, bathed in moonlight. I hold a lantern aloft. I usher him in. We walk through the heavy wooden doors and are struck dumb, horrified. Somehow, we get it together and gather the tools we need. I watch myself from afar, unable to look away, grotesquely transfixed by the knowledge of what’s to come.
We start to cut them down.
I’m crying. So is Tobe. And then a voice screams. It’s her voice, wailing, unhinged. It disappears suddenly. Tobe follows it into the night. I chase after them. I catch up to Tobe, ta
ckle him to the ground. He beats me down, keeps running. He cries out, calling her name. I can’t catch up. I fall behind, staggering around, lost in the dark.
And then a light broke the night, a light that wasn’t there back when it all happened. It grew rapidly, washing out memories best forgotten. I struggled, kicked against my terror. The brilliant glow burnt brighter, burnt everything away.
I reached out blindly, and came to a dead stop as something pushed against my throat.
‘Bill, mate, take it easy, all right?’ Tobe said, his voice soft.
I opened my eyes. Whatever was at my throat increased its pressure.
‘If I were you, I’d stay right there.’
He was a black silhouette, the sun casting him in a halo of golden light. I looked to my left. A young girl squatted next to me—filthy, wretched, hair dreadlocked with dirt, skin burnt dark-brown and grey with ash, dressed in literal rags. It was impossible to tell how old she was. Young, I guessed, considering her small frame, considering the coltish curve of her arms and legs.
‘What did I miss?’ I asked.
The pressure at my throat increased again as the girl twisted a broken branch she held in front of her. I couldn’t help notice that a flat stone about eight inches long was bound to one end of the branch and was poking through my beard, scraping against my skin.
‘Tobe!’ I called in a voice that shook.
The girl dragged the stone harder against my throat. I felt blood dribble down my chest, though I hadn’t felt the cut. The stone must have been sharp enough to shave baby fuzz.
‘Now, why would you want to do something like that?’
I kept as still as I could, didn’t even move when a couple of flies started crawling on my face. Tobe shifted slightly, revealing himself. He had his rifle against his shoulder, the end of the barrel disappearing into the girl’s filthy hair. I wondered how long I had been asleep, how long the two of them had been locked in their standoff. Red and Blue lay behind Tobe, whining pitifully. The girl’s eyes flicked to them, flicked back to me. Apart from that she hadn’t moved yet, she might as well have been carved from stone.
The Rain Never Came Page 6
