Blood & Dust (12 page)

He nodded, heard someone say there were cars up at the house, some pursuing, and someone else
asked if the rest had got away, if the bikes had been able to slip through the net. Wind shook the
vehicle and rain pelted down. Kevin could barely see the ground ahead. But he managed to find a
crossing and they nosed across the creek and up the other side and no-one, as far as he could tell,
followed them through the downpour.

Taipan settled into the seat beside him, an assault rifle in his grip.

'Nice job, fella. Don't make us mates, but.'

'Suits me,' Kevin said. 'Is Kala all right?'

Taipan checked behind them. 'Yeah, we're in the clear. Keep drivin', that mob might be comin'
still.'

'Who are they?'

'VS. The enemy.'

'They were trying to kill us!'

'Yeah, they do that a lot.'

Kevin stared at Taipan.

'Still wanna go it alone?'

He had no answer for that.

Taipan pointed past the bonnet. 'Watch the road, eh. We're not outta the woods yet.'

They drove south and east, using secondary roads and avoiding towns, refuelling
from jerry cans when they needed to. Two bikes travelled with them. Once they were clear, Hippie
replaced Kevin behind the wheel. It was a welcome relief. His arms felt heavy, as though he was
carrying spare tyres in each; he could barely keep his eyes open. A result of his injuries, he
wondered, or the daylight, reaching through the clouds to knock him around? Kala's slow kaboom. He
crawled into the dimness of the tray with Taipan and Acacia to sleep away the rest of the daytime.
Water sloshed in the floor though the rain had stopped. Half a dozen khaki crates stamped with
yellow stencils vibrated noisily in the back; the sight made Kevin nervous. There were enough
munitions to start a small war. He tried not to think about what would've happened if a bullet had
hit the wrong spot.

'From a friend of a friend down south,' Taipan told him, and patted a nearby box marked SAM with
all the affection of a man for his favourite dog. 'Even got us a splinter to stick in their eye in
the sky.'

'Lucky that bird wasn't up today,' Acacia said.

'Mighta lost more if it hadda bin,' Taipan said, his tone bitter.

'Probably the storm,' Acacia said. 'Or maybe we weren't important enough.'

'Oh, we're important, all right. Important enough for that bloodhag to risk sunburn. We got
lucky, is all.'

''Bout time we had some of the good variety,' Acacia said. 'Nigel, you figure?'

'I reckon.' He made a face, as though he'd bitten into something rotten. 'Wish I could get me
hands on that surfer-boy.' Taipan bundled his jacket for a pillow and closed his eyes.

'Wish I could get my hands on that chopper,' Acacia said dreamily, her voice already heavy with
sleep.

'You can fly?' Kevin asked her.

'I was a shit-hot stick bitch back in my day. Ha, my actual day, that is. Had to break a few
heads to convince those white bastards that a black sheila could fly as good as they could, but I
got there. Musterin', mostly. They called me "the black cockatoo".'

'Because you could fly,' Kevin said.

'No,' she replied. 'Because I had more balls than most of them rotor jockeys.'

He looked at her blankly.

'They reckoned I had a cock or two, geddit? Anyway, I had to give that up when I got bit. Not
much call for night musterin', eh?'

'How about the black cockatoo and the white galah keep it down, eh?' Taipan growled.

'Needs his beauty sleep,' Acacia whispered. '
Lots
of it.'

'Shuddup if you don't wanna try flyin' again - without them wings.'

'So when was the last time you flew?' Kevin whispered.

Acacia went very quiet, the humour fading to melancholy, maybe; hard to tell what was behind
those eyes when they were glazed with that opaque jade. She gestured to him and he stumbled over
crates and people to sit next to her.

'I was flying Bells on a property in the Centre. Sweet machine. Reliable, great visibility. This
one time, there I am in Alice, taking a break with my girl. We had to play it pretty straight back
then. The boys didn't like it, seeing women off the market. Hardly a target-rich environment, you
know what I'm saying? Good way to get yourself a beating or worse. So, we're in this bar, a bit
quiet, off the main strip, eh, and this bloke comes in just after dark looking like he's walked
barefoot and backward all the way from Darwin. Bad news written all over him. But he wants a pilot.
He wants a pilot to fly him, overnight, to Adelaide. He has a briefcase full of cash. Thousands of
pounds.

'I say yes. Cassie's against it. The bloke smells wrong, smells like trouble; but the money,
that's different. I tell her, I'll be straight back, and with that kind of cash behind us, we can
get out of the Centre, go anywhere we want. Somewhere we can hold hands in public without gettin'
bashed. It doesn't sound like too much to ask, does it?

'So we skedaddle, right there and then. We hire a chopper from a contractor I know and fly to
Adelaide. No sooner are we on the ground than the bastard jumps me. I've landed well out of town,
there's no-one around for miles - I'm toast, right? But he gets a case of the guilts and brings me
back. You know what he says to me? Last thing I hear before he bolts and leaves me to it, sun comin'
up and that? He says sorry. Hunters got him not long after, so I found out later. Pity. I would've
liked to have caught up with him myself to find out just how sorry he was.

'Anyway, by some miracle, I don't get sprung, and that night I fly back to the Alice and get my
girl. Not as easy as it sounds when you don't know what the fuck's just happened to you and you've
got a serious case of the tremors, eh, and we shoot through. We make a bit of a mess of it till
Mother tracks us down and gives us some how-to.' She fixed her eyes on him, owl-like, staring into
him, blinking like a camera shutter, her eyes flicking between brown and that luminous green. 'And
we've stayed with her since, helpin' others like you to get their shit together. Not all of them
stay. That's their choice. But we tell them what's what and how to go about things, give them their
chance to stay ahead of the Hunters.'

'The Hunters. That's who just shot the shit out of us, right? Gespensten-something or another.
Nigel mentioned them back at the house.'

'Same thing, different clothes.'

She told him to get some sleep, then, and he dozed, his body flushing fire and ice. The throbbing
bullet wound in his back kept jerking him awake. Memories of the shootout teased him.

'Shit!'

'What now, fella?' Taipan grumbled.

'The bastards got Kala's Monaro.'

'One thing you whitefellas gotta learn,' Taipan said, 'takin' somethin' and keepin' it are two
different things.'

Reece looked past his reflection in the window to peer inside the Monaro's cabin.
'You find any keys for this?' he asked Felicity, standing behind him.

She shook her head. It was still raining; like pebbles being thrown on the garage's unsealed tin
roof. At least the thunder had moved on.

'Impound this. And see if the judas knows who used to drive it.'

'Didn't figure you for a car man, Reece.'

'I have hidden depths.'

'Yeah, real deep. Middle-aged crisis, much?' She pulled up the hood on her anorak and squelched
back to the house. She still limped, having taken a bullet during the charge on the farmhouse. He'd
told her to hang back, to let the troopers go in first, but she hadn't listened. Maybe if she'd seen
Dave lying on the stretcher with a fistful of face missing, she'd have been a little more cautious.

Reece had stuck close to Mira; hadn't shot anyone nor been shot by them. Should've been more
enthusiastic, he supposed, his career being in the balance, as it were, but he couldn't shake that
expression on Diana Matheson's face: the fear, the loathing. You'd think a copper would be used to
being despised, but there you go. And just for once, he'd earned the enmity. He ran his hand over
the car's roof - nice, real nice, though the bullbar kind of ruined the shape - and paused on the
way out to check the Sandman once more. He'd seen it before, too; yesterday morning, blocking the
road and then chasing him and Dave. He stepped out into the soaking rain, relishing the cold hit on
his face and neck, washing away the urge to take the surfie and drown him in a pothole. The arsehole
had been one of those who'd hounded them into the roadhouse, who'd killed Dave and, inadvertently,
left a woman a widow and her son doomed.

'They're heading east,' Mira shouted from the veranda.

He splashed across to join her.

'He tell you that?' Reece asked, indicating the surfie. He was handcuffed to a veranda post and
Felicity had him up against the rail so his back was getting saturated. The judas looked miserable.
Perhaps he was starting to realise just what a bed of nails he'd made for himself.

'The blood,' Mira said, lifting her left hand to show her bracelets of scars. 'Vague but good
enough till I decide to pay the grease monkey a dream visit. Young Nigel hasn't told us anything we
didn't already know. Wish I'd brought a toothbrush; traitors always leave an unpleasant taste in the
mouth.'

Reece checked the surfie again and noticed the russet dribble crusted on the man's neck. She
hadn't healed the wound, just left it to close up naturally. He was a red-eye; it wouldn't take
long.

'We've turned this place inside out. Call it a day?'

Mira shook her head. There was a reddish sheen on her forehead and cheeks, a flush on the throat
where her hood didn't quite cover it. 'Not till I know there's no clue to the location of the
Riders' nest.'

'Nothing at all from the surfie?'

'Useless. I get the idea that Taipan never trusted him.'

'And you do?'

'Don't be stupid. But the blood doesn't lie. Not to me.'

'A girl drives the Monaro,' Felicity reported, standing away from Nigel as though treachery was
contagious. 'Half-breed called Kala. Got a soft spot for the mechanic, apparently.'

'Taipan's moll,' Nigel added, as eager as a puppy to please. 'Real stuck-up little slut. Opened a
vein for the pup as quick as you please.'

'Jealousy's a curse, isn't it?' Mira said to Reece.

'Speak when you're spoken to,' Felicity told Nigel, emphasising the point with a slap on the
head.

'So's avarice,' Reece said to Mira, then asked Felicity, 'Got a final count?'

'Four cold even, all red-eyes; no prisoners.'

'Eight dead, no vampires. Not exactly a runaway success.'

'Taipan's proving as slippery as his namesake,' Mira said. 'Damn it.'

He thought she was going to take another shot at him for having let Taipan escape in the first
place, but a four-wheel-drive pulled up. Felicity excused herself to talk to the driver. 'They've
found something down in the gully,' she reported.

'I didn't do it,' Nigel said, and Reece felt like slapping him, too. Had Mira promised him
immunity for his crimes? Justice sometimes really was blind.

'It's the family who own this place,' Felicity relayed. 'They're all dead.' She hesitated.

'Yes?' Mira demanded.

'They bled the two children. Decant, by the looks, but they did bleed them.'

Mira snarled. 'I want that bastard, Reece. I want him on ice.'

'Why him, Strigoi?'

'We are a self-policing society, Reece. It's how we keep the herd off our back. We take care of
our own business.'

'But if you weren't chasing the Night Riders, they wouldn't be running. They wouldn't need to do
the things you don't want them to.'

'I'm starting not to like you.'

'I was a cop for twenty years. It's all about motive.'

'Motive and opportunity,
detective
. Am I right?'

He nodded.

'Well, right now, I have the opportunity. The motive is none of your business. Be satisfied that
I'm trying to take a pack of killers off the streets, and know that the rewards for those who help
me will be substantial.'

Felicity joined them on the veranda. Maybe the word 'rewards' had carried. Red-eyes' hearing was
exceptional, especially when the subject interested them.

'What will we do with the judas?' she asked.

'We had a deal. We'll honour it. In our own time. Take him back to Jasmine's and see if he can't
make himself useful. I want you to keep an eye on things there.'

Reece said, 'Turner won't like that. She'll see it as interference.'

'Whitby Downs, her own side project notwithstanding, presents a sizeable investment on our part.
She's stepping up as a serious part of our bovine food chain. She'll fall into line, or just fall.
Her choice.'

'I'll tread lightly,' Felicity said. Her tone soured, though, as she asked, 'May I ask where you
and Hunter Reece will be, Strigoi?'

'Back in 'Bane. Hunter Reece will be kicking aircraft mechanics in the balls until they fix my
helicopter. And I will be paying a visit to another mechanic. With what I've got in mind, a kick in
the balls will be mild by comparison. Now, let's get the hell out of this daylight before we all
lose another layer of skin.'

Commotion woke Kevin, but by the time he'd clawed his way to alertness, he was
alone in the back of the Rover. He felt like shit, that was a fact. Cold and very thirsty, he pulled
himself upright on one of the crates and scanned his whereabouts. Flat plain dotted with Mitchell
grass like a mangy dog's coat, distant trees blending into the darkening sky. The remnants of storm
clouds stretched like threadbare rags, dyed pink and purple by the last rays of sunset.

'We're here, sleepyhead.' Kala peeked in over the tailgate. The tattered canvas looked like a
tent flap. 'Give us a hand to unload, eh?'

He pulled himself to his feet, feeling groggy. 'Where's "here"?'

'The Shed.'

He folded the canvas back and they dropped the tailgate. The Rover had been parked close to one
wall of a long, tin building. There were gaps where sheets of corrugated iron had come loose. The
yards, not a straight post or rail to be seen, were being reclaimed by scrubby trees, and a fig was
prying at the far wall with its tentacle roots.