End Times III: Blood and Salt

by Shane Carrow

  It was while we were loading them up that Mundrabilla’s boat arrived, pulling up and tying onto the ladders, disgorging their crew. We nodded greetings to them as they came up the ladder – there were at least some native Mundrabillans among them, and Len Waters and Steve O’Malley were in our own group, so some of them knew each other from before. But the last few coming up the ladder had familiar tattoos on their hands, crudely scratched numbers in black ink. No faces I recognised. Not until the last of them – a tall, bearded hulk of a man wearing a Driza-Bone coat.

  The tattoo on his hand read 37.

  It was Angus. The leader of the resistance camp near Kalgoorlie. The one Matt and I had fled from in the dead of night, before he led everybody off on a suicide mission.

  He recognised me straight away, and was startled for a moment. Then he crossed the space between us with surprising speed, picked me up by the throat and shoved me against a container. “You little fucking thief!” he hissed.

  Alan and Len were on him a second later, pulling him away from me as I dropped to the deck choking for breath, already pulling out my Glock. Pam was quicker, grabbing my wrist and forcing it down, pointing the gun at the deck. “Don’t!” she hissed.

  Angus was shouting, shrugging Len and Alan off, while all around us the others on both sides were reaching for their own guns. “He’s just a kid, back off!” Len yelled. “What’s your fucking problem, mate?”

  Angus stepped back, levelled a finger at me, the scribbled number 37 stained black on his skin. “He fucking deserted us! Back in Kal! Him in his brother nicked off, stole a ute, and kidnapped three of our people! A brother and sister and their little baby! Just fucking took off with them!”

  “We didn’t kidnap them!” I said hoarsely, rubbing my throat. “They wanted to go!”

  “Where are they?” he demanded. “Brian, Cara, the baby, where are they? They in Eucla?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Mate…” Alan said.

  “You little shit,” Angus roared, lunging at me again, held back by the other Mundrabillans. “You fucking little shit, you got them killed, didn’t you, you fucking little shit!”

  “What did you do, in Kal?” I yelled back. “What happened to everyone else? You get them all killed too?”

  Angus broke free of the Mundrabillans and came towards me, but Len and Alan stepped in his way, along with one of the Mundrabillans – Steve Wesley, Jackson’s brother. “All right, all right, hey, mate, calm down!” he said. “Calm down! That was before, all right? Nothing to do with here, it doesn’t matter…”

  “Of course it fucking matters!” Angus snarled. “It’s the only fucking thing that matters!”

  He wasn’t calming down. I didn’t exactly feel very calm myself, with a seven-foot tall man I’d thought was dead screaming in my face and twenty other people with their fingers on triggers ready to open fire on each other. In the end the others thought the best thing was to separate us – for Angus to stay aboard and for me to go back on the tinny to Eucla with the supplies. That rankled me, leaving Angus on what I thought of as my ship, but I wasn’t about to argue. It was a bipartisan decision. Whether they were from Eucla or Mundrabilla, nobody wanted to see him crush my skull into the deck.

  Alan came along with us, looking at me carefully as we pulled away from the Maersk, gripping the edge of the hull as the tinny skipped across the waves and showered us with regular bursts of salt water. “You all right?” he said.

  “I think so. I mean…” I was still feeling bewildered. “Fuck, Alan, I thought he was dead. I really didn’t think about him…”

  “Save it,” Alan said. “Varley will want to hear this, too.”

  So an hour later I was sitting in the cluttered mess of the police station’s main office, with Alan and Varley, along with Matt and Ellie and Geoff. An untouched cup of instant coffee was cooling in front of me.

  Once more I ran them through what had happened in Kalgoorlie: Angus’ group attacking the guards, rescuing those of us who hadn’t been caught in the crossfire, and then our own escape from the camp. “I never thought we’d see him again,” I said. “We just wanted to get here, that was all we were thinking. I never thought we’d see any of them again.”

  “Me neither,” Matt said. “You recognise anyone else who came onto the Maersk?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I don’t remember much of them.”

  “No,” Matt agreed. “Just… him.”

  I hadn’t disliked him, at the time. I remembered him as a big, bear-like, charismatic figure, striding about the camp by the muddy lake, always checking up on people, always time for anybody. A reassuring presence in a hostile world.

  But I also remember talking to him and thinking that he was skating on the edge, like so many others I’d seen. One more death or mishap away from snapping like a chicken bone.

  “He wasn’t a bad person,” I said. “He was keeping a lot of people alive. But he was… well, I dunno.”

  “A little crazy,” Matt said.

  “We’re all a bit crazy,” Geoff said.

  “Not like that, though.”

  “When they attacked the Kalgoorlie blokes,” Alan said, “that was where Tom died, wasn’t it? He was out there working with you. And he died in the crossfire.”

  Matt and I glanced at each other. Strictly speaking, Tom died when we were grappling in the dust with one of the Kalgoorlie supervisors, fumbling for control of a gun, and poor Tom had copped a stray bullet to the heart. We’d always just said he’d been killed in the chaos, which wasn’t technically untrue. I don’t really think Alan would hold it against us; but neither he nor Anne is going to feel any better from knowing the exact circumstances.

  “A lot of captives died in the crossfire,” Matt said. “Angus and all them, they didn’t seem too cut up about it. That was one of the first things that put me off about them.”

  “And you took a car from him?” Varley said.

  “A ute,” I said. “The Triton. It’s still here, it’s out the back of the roadhouse. But I don’t think it’s about that. He was more upset about Brian and Cara.”

  “They were, uh…” Varley looked up from his notebook. “You came in with them, right?”

  “Yeah. Brother and sister. He had the leg brace, and he was a bit autistic or something. She had a baby.”

  “I remember them,” Varley said. “They died the night the zombies came.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well,” Alan said. “Not exactly your fault.”

  “They did want to come?” Varley pressed. “The night you left the camp?”

  “Yes!” Matt said. “We went to the cars, and Brian was already trying to get another one working so they could take off. Then when we let them come, he tried to take off without us. Then his sister begged us to not abandon them out there. They were headed out of there one way or another. ‘Kidnapping,’ what a load of shit!”

  “What does it matter?” I said. “We didn’t break any laws. There are no laws out there! We didn’t ask to join up with them, neither did Brian and Cara, and if he wants to fucking…”

  “No, no, no, calm down,” Varley said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. We just need to get our stories straight if they’re going to make a song and dance about it, that’s all.”

  “There’s no stories,” I said. “That’s what happened.”

  “Our line of defence, then,” Varley said. “When we talk to them about this. To make him see reason.”

  Judging from our encounter on the Maersk I didn’t think reason was going to play a big part in anything Angus did these days. There was no way to make Varley see that, though.

  “How many people were there?” Geoff asked Varley. “When you went the other day. How many originally, and how many now from Kalgoorlie?”

  “Ballpark, well…” Varley said. “Mundrabilla had maybe thirty or forty a month ago. Didn’t get a good look when I was there, but I’d say they’ve doubled that now, with the peopl
e from Kal.”

  “So more than us, in other words,” Ellie said.

  Varley flipped his notebook shut, rubbed his eyes. “Look, we’re not going to war over this, okay? Some dickhead with an axe to grind? Big deal. Everybody’s got a past. I’ve got one, you’ve got one, Matt and Aaron have one. This guy has one. Nobody cares. Steve and Jackson are fucking derros but they’re not going to give a rat’s ass about whatever happened before, and they’re not going to let this bloke indulge in this kind of shit. Maybe you two should just stay in Eucla for a bit.”

  “Fuck that,” I said immediately. “That’s not his ship.”

  Varley looked at me. “What, and it’s yours? If it means we can turn down the heat a bit, you stay put, Aaron. You and Matt both. You can do some wall building.”

  “Oh, fuck the wall,” I said.

  “Aaron, seriously, I’ve got a lot on my plate and this is the last thing I need,” Varley said. “Stay in Eucla, stay away from the Mundrabillans, don’t stir the pot. All right? Anyway, I’ll talk to the Wesleys about it. Tell them to keep him on a tight leash. If they’ll fucking listen. Not much we can do otherwise.”

  And that was it. I didn’t exactly feel better about the whole thing.

  Maybe it’s stupid, but I keep thinking about Angus back in that camp. How much sway he held over everybody, even me and Matt. How in charge he seemed, how effortlessly in control. One of those people. And how he also seemed – when you really looked him deep in the eye – to be very close to snapping.

  My fear is that maybe he’s finally snapped.

  But we’re not in Kalgoorlie anymore. It’s not just me and Matt, cold and hungry and terrified. It’s not a choice between deferring to people like Angus, or taking our chances out in the darkness beyond the campfires. We’re in Eucla. We’re strong. And we shouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.

  May 22

  7.30am

  Pale gum trees whispering in the alpine wind. A perfect sweep of snow across the valley. A deep frost, each footstep a satisfyingly crunchy oval.

  The sun low and dim, in a clear blue winter sky. Breath misting. Eyes watering in the cold.

  I forced myself to look down. I knew where I was now, I knew it was another capital-d Dream, and I wanted to pick up as much as I could. A bright-red snow jacket? Or some blue and white mix of military winter camouflage? Or was I naked, completely naked, arms wrapped around my torso and penis and testicles shrivelling in the cold, precious degrees of warmth sucked out of me with every second?

  It was all of those things and none of those things, from one second to another.

  I couldn’t tell if I was alone either. One moment it seemed like maybe Matt was there, to my left or maybe my right, or was he behind me…? Another it seemed like not only Matt, but other survivors too. A third, and it was me and Matt and a platoon of heavily-armed soldiers, marching towards the ridge. Marching towards our future. We knew what to find on the other side, and we were totally fucking pumped for it.

  Whatever my circumstances, whatever my comrades, I marched on. And like the last dream, I crested the ridge again, panting and struggling in the snow. And I saw it.

  A huge scar of broken trees where it had crashed down the slope of the valley, tearing through the forest. A great mound of snow, built up against one side, windswept and banking – because it had arrived before the winter, the snow had come later. And poking out from the snow, that clear shape: long and narrow, with fins and curves, a strange, glistening metallic blue…

  Aaron, I heard.

  Then I woke up, jerked back to the reality of the Amber Hotel’s peeling wallpaper and cracked ceiling and my own long-unwashed bed linen. There was a faint grey light outside the window. I pulled myself out of the tangled sheet and doona, pulled on my jeans and my jumper and my boots, and went downstairs.

  It was just past six o’clock; nothing stirring in Eucla yet, apart from the sentries out on the highway at the end of their shift. I rummaged through the pub’s pantry until I found some coffee – the container crews had found a bonanza of instant coffee, and nobody had minded much that the labels were in German or Dutch or something, Jacobs Kronung. I brewed up a cup and sat in one of the far booths, the only one left with an unbroken window, looking out at the silent grey town and thinking.

  A moment later Matt came down and started looking through the pantry himself. “It’s on the top right shelf,” I said, and he started. “But I left some by the kettle.”

  He looked annoyed, but made his own cup anyway, and came over and sat next to me. “I don’t understand how people drink this shit,” he said.

  “You started drinking coffee all the time last year,” I said. “Every morning.”

  “Yeah, from Dad’s machine. Not this instant crap.”

  “Well la-di-dah,” I said. “Check out Mister bloody, uh, Single Malt Cafe Italia Latte Sipper over here.”

  “Single malt is a whiskey thing,” Matt said, pouring what seemed like half the sugar dispenser into his cup. “You dickhead.”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t know about that. I never acquired your rich tastes.”

  “This is a stupid joke,” Matt said, “considering we’re from the same family, and we’re as well-off as each other, and also everything has fucking fallen apart and money doesn’t mean anything anymore and we’re sitting in this fucking shitty town in the middle of nowhere waiting to fucking die.”

  Well. He wasn’t in the mood for banter, I could see that. Out with it then. “So,” I said. “Seen any interesting dreams lately?”

  Matt was staring out the window at the gravel road and the ugly pre-fab houses and the dismal, flaccid gum trees. Eucla: our whole universe, it seemed now, a tiny perch of civilisation at the edge of the continent.

  “What do you want to do, Aaron?” he said, still staring out the window. “What do you actually want to do?”

  I sipped my coffee. “I’d like to hear you acknowledge it, for a start. Say what we saw. Just say it, Matt - it won’t hurt.”

  He looked at me. “You say it, then.”

  I looked down at my cup. “A spaceship. You know what you saw. It’s a spaceship.”

  In the quiet morning environment of an empty pub – pool table, TVs mounted in wall brackets, middy glasses upended over the taps, the faucet dripping over the sink - it sounded like an utterly ridiculous thing say. And Matt knew it.

  “A dream,” he said. “A dream about a spaceship.” (I took some encouragement from the fact that he didn’t say ‘your dream.’) “Again, Aaron: what do you want to do about it?”

  I looked him in the eye again. “We should go there.”

  “And then what?” he said contemptuously. “What happens next?”

  Some small thing inside me snapped. “I don’t know!” I cried. “I just know we can’t go on here! Fuck Mundrabilla, fuck the highway, fuck the convoys, fuck the zombies! One way or another we’ll get fucked over! Something bad will happen and we’ll all die! And even if that doesn’t happen – what then? What then, Matt? We sit here eating tinned beans off the Maersk for the rest of our lives? What’s the point in that? What’s the fucking point?”

  A couple of people coming down the stairs looked at us awkwardly, before heading outside; it was nearly seven, almost time for the sentries on night shift to be relieved, and soon the pub would be filling up for breakfast.

  “The point is that we survive,” Matt said quietly. “What’s your end goal here? We’re talking about…” He looked around; a few more people had just come downstairs, heading into the pantry. “We’re talking about the Snowy Mountains,” Matt whispered, leaning forward slightly. “It’s not exactly a Sunday fucking stroll. It’s thousands of kilometres away.”

  “We have the Maersk.”

  “No, Eucla has the Maersk. And it’s low on fuel. And anyway – what then? There’s no fucking harbourside in the Snowy Mountains, dickhead. Where do you want to go? Melbourne? Sydney? Some beach somewhere? You’ve still got a thousand f
ucking kays of dangerous country to cross. It’s a fantasy, Aaron. Forget it.”

  I looked back at him. “How can I forget it? If we dream about it all the time? If we’re just sitting here eating and shitting and playing cards and sitting on sentry duty? How can I forget it? How can I not want to go and fucking, you know… God, Matt, this could be the answer to everything!”

  Matt looked sad, and frustrated, and I could see him searching for an answer. “Don’t say it’s just a dream,” I said. “You know it’s not. I swear to God, Matt, you say it’s just a dream and I’ll punch you out.”

  “Fine,” Matt said angrily. “It’s not just a dream. But I can’t make it any more simple for you, Aaron: what the fuck do you want to do about it? Get your head out of your arse. We might as well be dreaming about fucking Mars.”

  He drained his coffee and left. I sat there a little longer. The pub was starting to fill up, people coming from upstairs and fossicking through the pantry to find coffee and food – usually dry cereals or trail mix these days, since we have no bread or milk. I listened to the conversation for a while, the talk of rosters, of sentries and wall-building and Maersk-combing.

  How long can we go on like this? Well, forever, really, even if we split the Maersk with Mundrabilla. Or years and years, which is about as close to forever as anyone can imagine these days, when we’ve all had about ten near-death experiences too many.

  But how long can we go on mentally? What are we surviving for, if there’s nothing greater to live for?

  I think I might go over to the Maersk today. Fuck Varley and fuck Angus.

  12.30pm

  I went upstairs to fetch my coat, then down to the beach with the first work team heading over to the Maersk. Pam was among them. She’d been there yesterday, at the confrontation with Angus, and she gave me an odd look. “Stirring the pot?”

  “It’s our ship,” I said.

  She frowned at that, but said nothing more, and the six of us took off in the tinny; cutting across the waves, a strong swell today, and a frigid Antarctic wind singing up from the Southern Ocean. We have a pretty solid scheme of back-and-forth now, which means there’s generally one boat at the Maersk and one at the beach. Of course that doesn’t always work, it’s a bit like that old logic puzzle, get the lettuce and the rabbit and the fox across the river with one boat. Or whatever it was. It also means we have about ten or fifteen people aboard the Maersk at any one time, with a boat that can only hold six. But shit, it’s not the Titanic. All things considered, it’s safer than Eucla.