by Paul Haines
'The fucken Cartel. How come they got all the good technology? How come the government doesn't invest any of that out here? Just the fucken Cartel. City cunts.'
'The government? Who do ya think keeps the train running? Keeps your phone working? The Cartel is the government, mate.'
'Bullshit.'
'They're in charge now, no bullshit. The Cartel are bringing the rural areas back into the fold, building them up again.'
'Using us, Keats, that's all. Taking what they want, taking over the town.'
'Shepp was fucken dying under the last government! Yer standing on the wrong side of the fence now, Jimbo, and the longer ya stand there, the sooner yer gunna find yaself hung out to dry. Just like the Abos were when we were in charge. Ya gotta move with the times, mate, stick with the winners. If ya don't yer gunna be stagnating just like this fucken river.'
They slogged up that stagnating river for the next twenty minutes in silence. What Keats had said nagged at Jimbo, eating away at his inner core, at who he was. Keats is so fucken sure of himself these days, so fucken confident. And me? What the fuck happened to me? How did this happen? And it nagged at him, because deep down he feared what Keats said was true. The Cartel weren't coming, they were here, and soon the City, and the things he despised about it, would follow.
'We got some action up ahead!' Keats pointed towards the riverbank, but it was now too dark for Jimbo to see anything and his torchlight faded over the water. 'The dogs are up on the bank. Come on, move it!'
They waded towards the riverbank, sloshing out of the cool dank water towards the thick weed that clung above the waterline. The dogs growled menacingly nearby, though Jimbo still couldn't see them. They clambered up the bank, Keats leading the way, pushing through the low scrub as the ground slowly levelled. Torchlight revealed the crossbreeds pacing the base of a crooked gum tree, their backs bristling. Sharp teeth shone with slaver, the red of their eyes reflected back in the light, casting the animals with demonic demeanour.
'Good boys, good boys.' Keats gathered them, reattached the leash and wound part of the lead around his wrist in an attempt to help restrain them.
Jimbo peered upwards into the branches, but couldn't see her. 'How far up?'
'About halfway. Ya gunna have to go up and get her. Be careful but, she falls she could break her neck.'
'Boys!' Jimbo hollered into the darkness behind them. 'We've got her. Gunna need ya steady hands real quick!'
Within minutes the rest of the crew arrived at the base of the tree. Kylie had ignored Jimbo's attempts at talking her down, so Mason, on his first hunt, volunteered to climb up and get her down. Brian took a leash with a metal cuff from his pack and handed it to Mason.
'We've got thirty metres of lead, should be plenty. When you get to her, clip—'
'I know, I know. Clip it to her ankle.'
'Let us know when yer done it, then give her a push, we'll take the weight.'
Mason scrambled up the base of the trunk, pulling himself up through the lower branches.
'And Mason!' yelled Jimbo. 'Be careful. She kicks hard.'
Sledge and Brian fed the leash through their hands, while Rhys opened his pack and removed the first aid kit. Jimbo unsheathed the knife. He didn't want to do this. Up above, the sounds of a struggle, Kylie yelling and Mason grunting, no doubt a foot lashing out at a head. He really didn't want to do this. The adrenalin surged through his body. A rabble of butterflies hatched in his stomach, making him feel sick.
'You ready?' Keats had tied the dogs to a nearby tree, and then taken up the slack on the leash with the others.
Mason yelled, the boys braced themselves, then Kylie screamed and the leash snapped taut. It took almost five minutes to lower her. Whenever she managed to cling to a branch, Mason was there, a foot ready to stamp her free. By the time they got her to the ground, the butterflies had burst into a flock of sharp-beaked magpies, tearing at his insides. He couldn't look at her. She screamed as the boys pinioned her face-down on the ground. The dogs strained at their leash nearby, barking furiously. His heart hammered in his eardrums like the machinery in the cannery and sweat trickled cold from his armpits down his sides.
Keats held her right leg firm, presenting the ankle, its thick cord of tendon stretched tight. Rhys stuffed a thick, tooth-marked leather cord into Kylie's mouth and told her to bite down. She tried to spit it out and he forced it back in.
'Do it!' Keats snarled, not unlike his dogs.
Jimbo knelt down and carefully, almost gently, took her ankle in his hand. He felt the tension there, the bound energy willing itself but unable to kick. Keats held the leg vice tight. Veins rippled across the surface of his scalp with the exertion.
The knife rested on her tendon, like a bow on a violin, and Jimbo readied himself to play a terrible song. When he cut her, the snap of the tendon cracked like a gunshot through the night, the dogs suddenly whining. Blood sprayed hot and stinging into his eyes. And then Kylie's scream, a howling pitch of despair and pain that rose like a white heat in their ears, and as Jimbo wiped her blood from his face, her body fell slack and silent.
'Let her bleed clean.' Keats released her leg, then clapped Jimbo on the shoulder. 'You did well, mate. That was a good cut.'
A match flared, then the aroma of strong tobacco cut through the stink of the river and the acrid smell of fresh blood. Brian passed over the cigar, and as Jimbo savoured the taste of the first puff, Rhys began to dress the wound.
#
A mob of eastern grey kangaroos lounged in the shadows Mount Major cast over the flatlands in the early afternoon sun. Even though winter was drawing to an end, enough heat remained in the day to draw a light sweat to the surface of the skin. The air hung still and resonated with cicadas buzzing in the scrub while kookaburras cackled hidden in the eucalypts that clung to this side of the hill that called itself a mountain. Cockatoos fought noisily in the tree Jimbo and Brian had taken shelter beneath, the boys enjoying both the shade and the noisy cover the birds provided while they scoped out the mob below.
'There's maybe two hundred of them down there.' Brian, his stomach to the ground, peered through the scope of his .308 Winchester. 'Some big bucks, too.'
Jimbo nodded, rubbing his fingers over the smooth wooden handle of his grandfather's .303. That scope looks new. Where the fuck is he getting the cash for his toys?
'We could probably knock off one or two right now.' Brian adjusted his weight, wriggling into a better position. His finger hovered over the trigger. 'What ya reckon?'
'I reckon we wait for Dave and Keats to get back,' said Jimbo, staring into the back of Brian's skull, a damp plastering of black hair. He imagined Belle's fingers running through it, moaning in ecstasy, her belly swollen, almost ready to drop. 'When's she due?'
'Huh?' Brian looked at him quizzically. 'Belle?'
'Yeah.' Jimbo cast his eye out over the mob, avoiding Brian's gaze.
'Couple a weeks.' Brian nuzzled back into his rifle, eye to the scope, making minor adjustments. 'How you an Kylie going? Been trying for a while now.'
'Yeah. Not so good.'
'She still in a chair or she on crutches now?'
'Almost don't need the crutches,' said Jimbo. Below him, Dave and Keats clambered up the hill after returning the horses to town. The ute had been unhitched and parked down in a copse of splintered eucalypts, an attempt to at least provide a cooler environment for the meat the boys would be storing after each kill. Dave appeared to be labouring, his rifle slung over his shoulder, but Keats bounded upwards, effortlessly, a long thin bag strung across his back. He'd promised the boys a surprise this weekend.
'Belle didn't want to do it after the hobbling, maybe for a month or so. Heh. But she got back into it after that with gusto.' Brian swung his barrel across the plains, eyeing up potential targets. 'Lot of joeys down there. Did ya know the jills are always pregnant until they give birth?'
Jimbo didn't know just how much bullshit Brian was spouting these days. Bell
e loving to fuck. Falling pregnant just like that. Saving up enough of his own cash to buy a wife. New scope for the rifle. 'Yeah, Kylie can't get enough, wants it all the time.'
Brian laughed. 'Yeah, they fucken love it. Hey. That one there. See him. Ya can tell by the balls on that buck he's the boss. Maybe ya should get tested. I did.'
'What? Nothing fucken wrong with me.'
'Take it easy, man. I'm just saying. There could be problems, not necessarily with you. Maybe ya missus. Ya never know.'
'You went to see that A-rab?'
'Khalid knows his shit, Jimbo. Jizzed into a jar, no problems there. With the boys swimming around in ma balls I mean, little weird beating off in his room, him and Belle watching and that.'
'She should've been beating ya off.'
'Nah, she couldn't. She was lying on this bench, while this plastic circle thing full of computer chips and lights scanned her body up and down. She was looking at me though, and laughing. Turned out there was nothing wrong with her neither—Khalid brought up all these pictures of her internals and explained it all, but it didn't mean too much to us—and ya know, with both our minds at ease knowing there was no problems, she just fell pregnant easy shortly after that.'
'I dunno. There's nothing fucken wrong with me.'
Brian rested the barrel on his forearm and stared at Jimbo, his eyes squinting, searching for something. 'I never fucken said there was. What's wrong with you, man? Ever since ya dad died and ya got hitched, you've been acting like an uptight cunt. Maybe she's been fucken you up the arse, is that the problem? Ya missus's dick bigger than yours?'
'Fuck you.' Jimbo's fist clenched the stock of his rifle. 'Ya think ya got it all, don't ya, ya cunt? Money, pretty missus, baby, job. Fuck you!'
Cockatoos screeched in the tree above, and several took to wing, a fluttering of circling squawking white feathers.
Brian's face reddened and for a second Jimbo thought it was going to be on, but Brian closed his eyes, and exhaled, his breath hissing out between clenched teeth. 'Jesus fucken Christ, Jimbo. I never said it was you. Yer me mate.' He opened his eyes, stared into Jimbo's, the anger dissipated from his face, gone in the space of a breath. Jimbo wished he could do that, drop the anger in an instant, but he couldn't and it bristled still. 'I was just saying maybe ya should get checked out. Both of yers. The whole a Shepp knows she gets the fits, mate, it's no secret.'
'You sold me a dud, ya cunt. Fucken ripped me off.'
'What? Me? I didn't sell ya nothing.' Brian got to his knees, placing his rifle on the ground. 'I helped ya out. Gave ya a number. Got ya a wife.'
'Yer getting commissions, ain't ya, Brian? You've cut some sort a deal, that's how ya bought Belle, the new horses, got yerself that new scope there. I know how it works. Every bride they sell up here in Shepp, ya get a cut, don't ya?'
'Put the gun down,' said Brian, slowly rising to his feet.
'Ya not denying it?'
'Of course I'm fucken denying it! Just put that gun down.'
'Will you two keep it quiet.' Keats pulled the bag off, lowering it gently onto the dirt. 'You'll scare off that mob. They'll be another k away before we've fired a shot.'
Jimbo glared at Brian, dropped back to his knees, cradling his gun. For all his wired-up ways, Keats hadn't noticed the heat between them. Dave still clambered up, maybe fifty metres away.
Keats, with a widening grin, crouched next to his bag, his thick fingers on the zip. 'Wait'll you boys see what I've got here. Should we wait for Dave? All that black pussy been sucking the white man's life out of him. How fucken unfit is he, these days?'
Jimbo tried to laugh, to shake some of the anger steaming inside his skin. Rage and guns never mixed well, he knew that, but right now he wanted to kill something. And those roos were looking a little too far away.
'Fuck him. Open it up, Keats,' said Brian. 'Show us what ya got.'
Keats removed a slick black automatic assault rifle from the bag. He tossed it lightly in one hand, his grin wider than a slut's fanny.
'Where'd ya get that?'
'The Cartel, boys. They got everything you'll ever need. Got it on loan for the weekend.' Keats tossed the rifle towards Jimbo, who caught it easily and swung the barrel around in an arc, ending up with the muzzle pointed squarely at Brian.
'It's plastic,' said Jimbo.
'Easy to carry,' said Keats. 'Chinese, too. Best quality you can get. Hey, here he is!'
Dave wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow, his chest heaving. He took a drag from his water bottle. 'Where'd you get that?'
Jimbo handed him the rifle. 'Keats 'loaned' it from The Cartel.'
'Fair dinkum,' said Keats. 'On one condition though. The Cartel gets half the meat.'
'Get fucked!'
Keats laughed, taking the rifle from Dave. 'This thing will mow that mob to pieces. We'll do all right out of the cull. So, are we ready, boys?'
They descended in single file, Dave leading the way, followed by Keats, then Brian. Jimbo watched them, the flies smothering their backs in the slow heat, their legs moving carefully, shuffling slowly down towards the mob below. He hefted the rifle, quickly lining up the barrel and the crosshairs on the back of Brian's head. Fuck you, Bri. Bang! Yer dead. Then he headed after them.
On a low ridge, all except Keats took their positions, lining up prospective bucks lounging in the mob about sixty metres away. Keats crept down to the grasslands below, edging closer to gain maximum impact.
'Don't fucken shoot me,' he'd said, as he left.
They all laughed. Jimbo stared at Brian as they did so, but Brian busied himself with his scope. Accidents happen all the time out here, mate.
Jimbo lay flat on his stomach, positioned the .303, sighting the buck he'd chosen, targeting its head. He wasn't the biggest of the mob, but the tail was huge and should make good cooking. The Abos hadn't been wrong about that.
The day fell silent, the parrots in the trees hushed, like an expectant audience as the curtain rises. It seemed, for a second, that even the flies had ceased their incessant buzzing.
'What's the bet?' said Jimbo.
'Twenty dollars each from the losers to the winner, plus an additional dollar for every roo the winner has over whoever comes second,' said Brian.
'Yer on.'
'On the count of three,' whispered Dave. 'One ... two ... three.'
The shots fired almost simultaneously. The mob leapt in unison, a chaotic mess of marsupials leaping left and right. Jimbo watched his buck leap, blood spraying from the back of its skull and hit the dirt dead.
'Fuck.' Brian quickly followed his first shot with another, but his roo was gone, leaping through the confusion as the mob tried to gather cohesion.
And then a long burst of machine-gun fire as Keats opened up, spraying bullets through flesh, fur and bone. Between sprays, Keats's laughter echoed up off the side of the mountain, a hysterical cackle of mania, before another harsh burst of gunfire tore the mob apart again. Jacks, jills and joeys tumbled broken and bleeding, until Keats stood alone amongst the corpses holding the gun aloft and howling, while the mob bounded off to regroup in the distance.
Dave stood up, eyes wide, removing the cartridge from his rifle. 'This changes things a bit. He just nailed over a dozen of the bastards. At this rate we'll have the ute full before sundown.'
'Whaddya think?' Keats yelled up at them.
The cockatoos roared their applause.
'Takes the sport out of it, I reckon,' said Brian, studying the end of his scope, as if something there was amiss, spoiling his aim.
'Dunno about you boys,' said Jimbo, 'but I need the meat and the money.' He shouldered his rifle and headed down towards Keats. 'And anything killed with that gun doesn't count towards the bet.'
Later, as Jimbo worked his knife through the roo's belly, opening it up and spilling the steaming guts onto the parched earth, Keats approached.
He kicked his leg at the swarm of flies buzzing over the intestines. The flies parted and refor
med, as if Keats had never been.
'What's going on, Jimbo?'
'Nothing.' Jimbo didn't look up, his hand working inside the carcass to remove any further offal.
'Really? I'm scared to let ya have a go of this gun, mow down some roos. Looked like ya was gunna murder Brian up there on the ridge. Scared yer try and mow us down instead.'
Jimbo thrust the knife into the side of the roo and wiped his hands on the fur before standing up to face Keats. 'I'm okay, man.' For a second he thought he would cry, but it passed, and he held himself together.
'No ya not. If there's one thing I'm good at, Jimbo, it's reading people. Part of me job. And what I'm reading right now is definitely not okay.'
'Nothing's wrong. I said I'm okay.'
'Is it work, mate? I can always hook you up with something—'
'I don't want anything to do with the fucken Cartel, Keats, you know that.'
Keats gave him a glance, nodding his head, then turned away. 'Suit yerself. Stay happy in that bucket a misery yer wallowing in, keep rooting that white-eyed, frothy-mouth bitch of yours.'
'You fucken cunt!' Jimbo launched himself at Keats's back, but Keats turned easily on his heels, deflecting the swinging fist and chopping at Jimbo's throat in the same fluid movement.
Jimbo fell amongst the guts, now crawling with flies. It was hot and wet against his forearms, the flies a furry, tickling blanket of legs against his skin. He scrambled out of the blood and muck, unable to breathe properly, his chest heaving. Keats stood above him, unmoving. In Jimbo's peripheral, he saw Dave pulling at Brian's arm, them moving away. Keeping distant.
'Fuck ... Keats ... ya ...' Jimbo managed to gasp, trying to stand, to suck in the hot air, to swallow the thick spit in his mouth.
Keats pulled him to his feet with one hand, the other held back in a fist, ready to pummel Jimbo's face.
'Ya lucky yer ma mate,' said Keats. 'Otherwise I'd beat the fucken shit outta ya right now, knock all ya fucken teeth out and smash ya kneecaps off.' He brought the fist within an inch of Jimbo's nose. Jimbo didn't flinch. 'I'm ya fucken mate, Jimbo, we all are. We wanna help.'
