My third check is making sure Alex is also in place. He snores on. Doesn’t appear to be scheming. Ever since he ran off I expect to turn around and find him gone again. I imagine him running across the racecourse and us having to shoot him in the back. I wonder whether one of us would do it even knowing that the gunshot would give us away as surely as his surrender.
The next part of my routine is to stare at the maps on Tajik’s phone. Try to memorise the terrain ahead of us. Our best bet is following the creek just east of the Ride On Adventures property. It empties into the Hawkesbury River at a bend. What I remember from Ms Meadow’s year eight geography class is that the water should be flowing fastest and deepest on our side and then get slower and shallower towards the other shore. If—when—we get to dry land again we’ll head through farm paddocks before reaching roads that will take us north through riverland and thick bush.
The last part of my five-part cycle is scanning the Revivees.
Ravi and Wayne have been swayed by Damon’s seduction of Tregan and Gary.
We-want-to-come-to-Clearview-Please-come-get-us: Ravi thinks it mantra-like.
Wayne sips a warm beer, can’t wait to get some of that catered cooking.
Anne can barely see for the hangover kicking in. She blindly searches for painkillers. Wonders whether that Damon chap might drop some from his chopper so she can get back to turning wine into water while she reads Revelations. Cory is almost in Penrith now, fantasising he’ll be deputised by Damon, and sent out to avenge Jack’s death. Mainly I focus on Tregan and Gary’s ongoing propaganda tour. They’ve just stepped back onto the roof of Penrith Plaza where their chopper awaits.
‘What do you think?’ Damon asks.
‘It’s all pretty amazing,’ Tregan replies. Should-have-been-with-these-guys-all-along.
Really-hope-someone-kills-Danby-and-Nathan, Gary thinks. ‘We want to help if we can, right, Tregan?’
She nods.
‘Excellent,’ Damon says. ‘Look, what you can do is guide us to whoever wants to join us. Use your minds to tell them to stay where they are and that we’ll send someone to pick them up as soon as possible.’
‘In that?’ Gary asks. He thinks, Whoa-that’s-a-CH-47-Chinook, as he gapes at the massive double-rotored helicopter blasting into the air on the other side of the railway line. Gary’s always had a thing for military hardware and boyish excitement pours out of him.
Damon laughs. ‘No,’ he says. ‘That monster’s for cargo. We’ve got a few smaller choppers like yours that we’ll use to pick up people.’
Yours?-Ours? Tregan thinks with a smile. Our-own-chopper?
The Chinook climbs into the sky. A shipping container sways on heavy chains beneath its metal belly.
‘Damon, you can’t, y’know, hear us?’ Tregan asks. ‘Our minds?’
He shakes his head. ‘I did at first, when the Sync started. Then I blacked out. When Jack woke me up, I was back to normal. I can’t hear anyone’s thoughts—none of us can.’
‘Bullshit,’ I whisper.
Nathan and I exchange a glance. I’m glad Oscar’s not awake to hear this.
‘You can help by being our relays,’ Damon says. ‘Intermediaries, whatever you want to call it.’
Gary and Tregan’s eyes and minds meet. Like it or not they’ve been doing their job since they were picked up. But it’s only now—flattered their powers are needed, tantalised by what power might bring—that they believe what Damon’s telling them one hundred per cent. Revivee minds out there have been watching and listening and they’re being swept along too.
I feel a burning inside. It’s a white heat. It’s not anger. It’s hatred. Right at that second I want Tregan and Gary dead. More than that—I want to kill them both myself. Not for thinking I’m a murderer and not for helping Damon. But for wanting to profit from this situation and for infecting other Revivees with a desire for a piece of the action.
‘Danby,’ Nathan whispers.
‘What?’ I hiss.
‘Ssssh,’ he says. ‘Don’t wake them up.’
I don’t know what he means.
‘You were muttering.’ I raise my eyebrows. He smiles but his eyes are dark with worry. ‘You were swearing your head off.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, tuning my mind back to Tregan as she watches the Chinook chug north.
‘Where’s it going?’ she asks.
‘It’s taking supplies to Richmond Air Force Base,’ Damon replies. ‘About twenty-five kilometres from here. We think it’s safer than Clearview until we resolve the security situation.’
Resolve the security situation.
Gary and Tregan don’t question the phrase. Neither do the Revivees. It sounds so ‘government official’ and goddamned reasonable. No one cares that it means hunting and killing us. So long as they can go on living.
‘Bastards,’ I say.
‘Judas goats,’ Nathan replies softly.
I look at him. ‘What?’
‘Farmers trained a goat to mingle with other goats and sheep, become the leader of the flock,’ he says. ‘When it was time for the slaughter, the Judas goat would lead them all into the abattoir. That’s Tregan and Gary.’
I feel sick. Jack could easily track the Revivees out there, but this way he gets them to come to him. The fire in me dampens into dread. Eventually they’re all going to be victims of Jack’s ruthlessness. I wonder how long Tregan and Gary can go without having doubts that’ll prove fatal to them.
‘Do you think he’ll kill them all?’ Nathan asks. ‘You know him better.’
‘Anyone who’s not a team player,’ I say.
The tremor starts in our bones. Shakes into the grandstand and the air all around us. Everyone’s awake. Eyes wide. Ears useless against the cyclonic howl. The shipping container dangles into view first. The Chinook’s underbelly comes into view a second later. Lights blinking beneath. Blades blurring above. Riding on a dirt cloud of its own making.
‘Don’t,’ I say, as if my command can stop this monster setting down on the racecourse beneath the grandstand. ‘Don’t.’
The huge chopper flies over the far end of the racecourse and across the road before it hovers outside an air base hangar and gently lowers the container.
‘Time?’ Oscar asks.
‘Four thirty,’ I tell him.
‘What’s been happening?’
‘You’re watching it,’ Nathan says. ‘Gary and Tregan are recruiting for Team Jack and he says this will be everyone’s HQ until—’ ‘We’ve been resolved,’ Oscar says, picking up the rest from the Revivee minds.
Minions unchain the container and unbolt its heavy steel door. The ‘supplies’ are men and women, who march out, carrying rifles. I try to count the new arrivals. Sixty at least. Packed in that metal box and dangled in the air like livestock. Jack’s clearly not big on occupational health and safety. The Chinook lands and more soldiers pour from its lowered back ramp. There’s at least thirty of them, each wheeling a dirt bike that looks showroom brand new. Jack’s army on our doorstep has just tripled in manpower and materials.
My head and heart are all over the place. I feel like we’re done. Like I want to curl up and die. I feel like we’ll get away somehow. Like we’re not meant to die.
The Chinook hovers while the container’s reattached for the next run. All around, riders and pillions climb onto motorbikes and start their engines, while other Minions clamber into the black helicopters.
‘Grab your stuff,’ barks Oscar as he leaps over his row of chairs and lands next to Evan. Nathan and I lift my little brother up so he can pull on the backpack.
‘I don’t want—’ Alex says.
Oscar’s hand goes to the .38 tucked into his jeans. Alex nods, but his eyes blaze with a hatred that’s all too familiar.
‘Okay,’ Oscar says. ‘Fast and quiet. Let’s go.’
TWENTY-FOUR
We stoop and run and hustle down the steps. The Chinook’s airborne and lumbering south as Minion motorbikes s
peed towards the base’s gates. Jack had just been waiting for reinforcements. Now his army spills in all directions, filling the land and air. He’s probably realised I won’t take the bait and let Evan wake up and so he’s throwing everything into search and destroy. Scurrying along the concourse by the stables, even with my heart thumping in my eardrums, I hear the trio of black choppers powering up as they prepare to take to the sky.
We’re just through the hole in the fence, hidden under pine trees, when a helicopter thunders over the grandstand. It hovers, rotating left and right, armed Minions with binoculars in the doorways scouring the racecourse and the avenue of stables where we were just a few moments ago.
We huddle together. My knuckles blanch around the handgrips of my rifle. Nathan stares at Alex, who’s balled up, face buried in his forearms. Tajik blinks at me.
The chopper stalks the concourse, barely above the roof-lines, pauses over our pine trees. I think the downdraft will strip the branches and expose us huddled around the trunks. The noise and grit scour us and we bury our faces like Alex. Then the air clears and settles as the chopper lifts away. We watch it patrol the paddocks, buzz over a shed, shift attention to a farm, linger above the Ride On stables, skirt around the chicken factory and follow the bushland border west until it’s out of sight.
But silence doesn’t have time to settle.
In the wake of rotors comes the racket of a motorbike that appears at the far end of the concourse. The rider kills the engine, props the machine on its kickstand, and he and his pillion get off and remove their helmets.
It’s John and Lana.
I swear into my clenched fist. Not that I should be surprised. But seeing them here, carrying assault rifles, part of the hunt for us, makes me feel furious—and so thankful that poor Lachie stopped me from giving myself away to them in Greenglen. I wonder where Lana’s ‘baby’ is. Dead in a ditch? Being nursed in some hellish orphanage of Little Jacks? I’m not sure which is more of a nightmare.
John and Lana head our way. There’s no way we can move without them seeing us. Shooting them will give us away and have the chopper back in seconds. Inches from me, Alex’s eyes bug as Oscar holds an arm around his chest and a hand clamped over his mouth. John and Lana take one side of the stables each. The horses inside whinnied miserably when we passed this morning. Now they’re deathly quiet. I wonder whether they were on their last legs then and have since died from dehydration and starvation.
John cocks his head, listens a moment and throws open a stable door. He goes down in a blur under the rearing front legs of a massive brown stallion. The snorting beast snaps him and aims itself at Lana. She opens fire as it gallops. Bullets rip into horseflesh. They’re not enough to stop the dying animal from smashing her against the stable wall in a crackle of broken bones. Another enraged horse rushes from the doorway. Huge hooves stomp John before it clatters down the avenue, rushing to battle whatever other Minions are out on the racecourse.
John doesn’t move. Lana’s pinned under the screaming horse and can’t see or hear us. This is our only chance. Oscar points to the farm paddocks. Even Alex nods as he smears tears from his eyes. We all just want to be out of sight.
We hurtle through weeds and duck between fences. I imagine Minions pouring down the concourse, them seeing us scuttling away and summoning the black helicopter so it can circle back and swoop in and shoot us to pieces.
Second after second that doesn’t happen.
We pass the shed and farmhouses, run through the hay bales, footfalls in the grass sending mice and rats scurrying. I scan the air. No chopper. No birds either. We scramble along Ride On Adventures’ dirt driveway, skittish horses scattering in the adjoining paddocks.
Lungs and legs burning, I’m the first through the barn doors. I whirl, go down on one knee, bring my rifle up to cover the others. Alex bounds up the driveway like a frightened rabbit, shadowed by Tajik and Nathan, as Oscar brings up the rear with Evan on his back.
They pile inside, chests heaving, leaning against corrals, setting rifles against posts, wriggling out of backpacks. I lift Evan free of Oscar and sit him down against a hay bale. As they pass around the water bottles, I crouch by the barn door and peer out for any sign we were seen.
‘Is there any—?’ Nathan pants, ‘—any—anyone out there?’
I shake my head.
Accepting his bottle of water, I look around our new refuge.
There are a dozen corrals. Each has a nameplate: Cher, Prince, Madonna, Gaga, B-Lo, Hellbanga. Someone, maybe the person bloating under the weeping willow, reckoned their horses were rock stars. Saddles are stacked on one wall. Riding helmets hang by a demountable building used as an office. There’s baled hay stacked in a pyramid, troughs for water, a corner devoted to rusting machinery. The air’s musty with manure.
Tajik stands by a sign near the office.
‘Ride On Rates,’ he reads, studying the schedule of charges below.
Nathan and Oscar join him. I drift over.
The place catered to everyone, from kids to cowboys, offered riding lessons and trail rides, from half an hour to a whole day.
Prices started at eighty dollars a person and topped out at five thousand for the premium family horsemanship package.
‘This is good,’ Tajik says. ‘They will be patient horses.’
Sharp cracks echo outside. We creep to the door. The sounds are coming from the racecourse, barely visible now in the dwindling light.
‘Gunshots?’ Nathan asks.
Oscar nods. ‘I think so.’
‘Why are they shooting them?’ Tajik asks.
‘It’s not to put them out of their misery,’ Oscar says. ‘I’d say they’re searching the stables.’
If they’re looking for us there it won’t be long until they’re looking for us here. We need to be long gone before they arrive.
Flashes pulse in the clouds and the air rumbles around us. Rain pops and sizzles and drums against the corrugated iron roof. The downpour is so fast and heavy and the thunderclaps are so close together that I’m not sure we’d hear Jack’s forces if they rolled up in armoured tanks—which he very well may have by now.
Oscar’s eyes are wide and he’s shouting to be heard.
‘What?’ I yell, cupping my ear.
Nathan and I lean in close.
‘Choppers,’ he says, circling his finger, flattening his hand. ‘They can’t. Fly in. This.’
We look at him. Oscar nods with certainty.
Tajik points out at the paddock. Some of the horses are gathering under the weeping willow. But a line of them lopes towards us out of the rain.
‘Get back, everyone,’ he yells.
Tajik digs into a backpack, pulls out a carton of muesli bars. Nathan and I haul Evan up onto the mountain of hay bales, while Oscar and Alex retreat to a long bench outside the office. Seven horses come in with wet tails switching and stand in the centre of the stables. Water spills from their flanks and turns the ground beneath them to mud as they watch Tajik close the barn door with slow and casual moves.
Oscar plays with his beard. Alex bites his nails. I imagine Nathan’s and my expressions are every bit as tense as we lean forward to watch from up high. Seeing John and Lana getting pulverised has me worried. Bright lightning. Earsplitting thunder. Either could mean Tajik dies under a rain of hooves. But he doesn’t show any fear. Nor does he approach the horses.
Gradually the atmosphere inside and outside becomes calmer. The rain eases and Tajik inches towards the horses. Hands held up, speaking softly, nodding. The animals settle and he slips among them, pats snouts and strokes manes. Watching Tajik, my breath starts slowing and a feeling of wellbeing seeps into me. Effortlessly in control, he leads each animal gently into a stall for a muesli bar reward.
With the horses corralled, he climbs up the hay, with Oscar and Alex following.
‘I’ll take your brother,’ Tajik says. ‘He will be safer with me.’
I nod, happy our best rider will ca
re for Evan.
‘Will we really be able to ride them okay?’ Nathan says.
Tajik smiles. ‘We Afghans say, “Better a poor rider on a good horse than a good rider on a poor horse.” These are beautiful horses. Very gentle, strong. We will be all good.’
Nathan seems satisfied. Alex shakes his head but doesn’t speak.
‘I will lead,’ Tajik says. ‘Then Alex, Oscar, Nathan, Danby. Experienced, not-so-experienced, one after the other, okay?’
It makes sense to me. Tajik’s also anticipated Oscar’s need to have Alex right where we can see him.
‘I think this is the best way,’ I say, showing them the creek route on the phone map. ‘We should be out of sight.’
Tajik nods enthusiastically. ‘Getting the horses used to the water is good. When we get to the river they won’t be as likely to freak out.’
‘Freak out?’ Alex says.
‘Don’t worry,’ Tajik says, with a smile. ‘I will be in the front. When the other horses see me and my horse go across they will follow with no problems. Probably.’
‘Probably?’
Tajik nods to Alex and the rest of us. ‘What you must do is float free when you hit the deepest water. Hold onto the reins and swim beside the horse, okay? If you stay in the saddle you will push it under and it might drown.’
Alex gulps. He’s not the only one.
I have to make sure Evan’s rigged up somehow so he doesn’t go under. I cast my eyes around for something that can keep him afloat.
‘In the shallower water,’ Tajik says, ‘you can climb back on.’
Oscar clears his throat. ‘Let’s saddle up and get moving.’
‘But it’s not night yet!’ Alex protests.
He has a point. While it’s grey and drizzly through the door, it won’t be dark for another hour.
Oscar nods. ‘I know but by then they’ll be here. The rain’s at least cutting down visibility and muffling noise.’
We exchange grim nods.
Except Alex. He shakes his head violently.
The Last Shot Page 24
