Blood & Dust (13 page)

Kala introduced a bloke called Reg - he sported an impressive blond mullet - and a red-eye,
Penny, a sparrow of a woman dressed in jeans and a matching leather vest, her skin the light brown
of weak tea. Reg pocketed a set of wraparound sunglasses, highlighting the raw oval of sunburn
around his green-glowing eyes as he gave Kevin the once-over. Penny's narrow, almond-shaped eyes
measured him from under her black fringe like a crow assessing road kill. A faint butterfly rash
dotted her face; her eyes flashed red. The rash showed on her throat, too, highlighting a set of
four dark dots, pimples or a tattoo maybe, just above her collar.

Reg was round like a grain-fed bull, the kind of body Kevin equated with men who blocked the
doors of back-alley strip clubs and tattoo conventions. Most of the Night Riders had physiques that
brought to mind folk who had grown old in the saddle with skin parched from too much sun. Was Reg
just not as old yet for the vampire inside to have sucked him dry, or was he just better fed? Penny,
on the other hand, looked as if the only thing holding her up was piss and bad manners. She had an
energy about her, a jumpiness, that his mother would probably have politely described as being
highly strung.

'You gonna pass me that Esky or stand there starin' at me tits all night?' she asked.

He slid the Esky down to her.

'That's light, anything in it?' he asked.

Kala laughed. 'You wanna watch what you're throwing around, Kevvie. You're stronger, now.
Stronger, faster - a regular Six Million Dollar Man, eh?'

Penny hoisted the Esky. 'You better learn it quick before you go shakin' hands with anyone.'

Kevin grabbed a crate of camping gear. Nowhere near as heavy as he'd have expected. The extra
muscle could've come in handy around the garage. The thought turned sour and he shoved the crate
down to Kala, followed by another.

'You right with that, sport?' Reg asked. 'I'm gonna wheel the bikes round into one of the pens,
get 'em out of the weather.'

Kevin nodded.

'I'd get a move on. It's smoko time, eh.'

Kevin jumped down from the Rover, grabbed the last crate and followed the women inside.

The gang had made camp along the shearing board, a timber platform butting up to the pens. Kevin
waited inside the door for his eyes to adjust; grey twilight drifted in on the dust through the open
hopper window. Someone had propped the swinging shutter open with a stick, but the room remained
heavy with the smell of lanolin, dirt and ancient shit. He was probably breathing it in; the
powdered leavings of thousands of sheep who'd passed through this place. Webs clustered thick in the
corners and some of the posts were smeared with bird shit. Snakes must love it, he thought.

One road bike was already parked in the nearest enclosure; Reg wheeled the second one in as Kevin
looked for a place to land his cargo.

Hippie, smoke dangling from his lips, took Kevin's load. 'Siddown, mate, before you fall down,'
and Kevin leaned back on a handy rail.

Reg dumped a full-face helmet and long Driza-Bone and eased down onto the floor. 'Got some
serious wolfbite, man. Bloody clouds thinnin' out like that. I'm red all over, I reckon.'

Taipan pointed at Kala. 'That myxo could've taken the Beamer.'

'Nah, it wasn't like I couldn't handle it.'

'No-one rides
the Beamer
, eh,' Penny said.

'Just glad we got here when we did, that's all I'm sayin'. Could use a drink, though.'

Penny slipped away from his reaching hands and busied herself helping Hippie open tinned fish and
beans. Kala boiled a billy of water on a small gas stove. The air became spiced with canned sardines
and tuna, sweet tea, strong instant coffee…

He hates the espresso machine. He hates having to serve at the counter and he
hates having to use the register for anything other than fuel, but most of all he hates that bastard
espresso machine. 'You can fix an 18-wheeler but you can't steam milk' his mother laughs, and his
father adds, 'I'll have a tea,' sharing the joke, time and time again, never growing tired.

Kevin swayed under the power of the memory, had to grab at the rail to steady himself.

'I'd kill for a steak right now,' Penny said, dribbling beans back into the can off her spoon.

'Wouldn't we all,' Taipan said, eyes locked on Kala.

'You say scotch fillet, I say O-negative,' said Reg, and Taipan laughed.

Kala carried a mug over to Kevin. 'How are you travellin'?'

'Just,' he said.

She held out the coffee; their fingers touched as she passed the mug to him. 'Hope you like it
black.'

'I don't mind it,' he answered, and smiled.

She smiled back, coyly, then asked quietly, 'You want something harder?' She tapped two fingers
against her inner elbow. 'You don't look so flash.'

'I'm okay,' he mumbled, and licked his desert-dry lips. He tasted the coffee, winced - like sour
creek water.

'How's that back? I saw you took a hit.'

'Sore.'

'And the rest of you?'

'Like I might be coming down with something.'

'You sure are.'

'Like a fever. Kind of hallucinating or something, you know?'

'You're in the DTs,' she said, taking his hand, removing the shaking cup, tugging on his arm. 'I
can help you. C'mon, we can go down the wool floor if you don't want that mob to see.'

'Kala!' Taipan pointed to the Esky. Its lid had a cross scrawled on it in red marking pen. 'A
blood bag'll do him.'

'But Tai-'

'Give him his feed than get your skinny arse over here.'

The building was very still, very quiet. Everyone was looking at Kevin. What did they expect him
to do?

'Smoko,' Taipan announced.

'All right!' Reg slapped his leg and yanked Penny to her feet, squashing her against his chest.

'You go easy on that girl,' Taipan told him. 'You bin tappin' her hard by the looks.'

'Fuck, Tai, a man's not a camel.'

'Still, we got a way to go yet.'

'I been shot up good, Tai.'

'If she can handle it. Otherwise, you tap Hippie there.'

'I hate the taste of his weed, man.'

Penny pulled against his grip, but he held firm.

'Reg,' Acacia said.

'C'mon, Penny,' he pleaded. 'Just a dram to keep me going.'

'When do I get mine?' she asked, and there was bitterness there, a hardness that pulled at her
lips and turned her eyes to neon glass.

'Once I got some fresh stuff under my belt,' Reg said. 'When I can spare it.'

She rolled her eyes, mouth set tight, but pushed her sleeve up.

Penny murmured, 'bastard', and then her features went slack, the anger draining away; she slumped
into Reg, moaned, swayed, whimpered. In that moment, she looked tender, soft; vulnerable. Kevin
looked away, his guts churning, telling himself he was revolted.

'Hippie,' Acacia said with a toss of her head. 'I don't mind the taste of your weed. If you can
spare a drop.'

'Always got a drop for you, Acacia.' Hippie walked over to her, complaining good-naturedly that
he hadn't had time for a decent smoke in days. He reefed off his T-shirt and allowed her to drink
from his throat.

'There'll be brew at The Farm,' Taipan said. 'You myxos will just have to put up till then.
C'mon, Kala, get a move on. You know I don't like waitin'.'

Kala came to Kevin with a coffee jar. It was about two thirds full, the sides splashed with a
viscous red stain that made him think of transmission fluid. Groans, the wet smack of lips on skin;
the aroma of fresh blood. The pain in Kevin's back intensified. His eyesight cleared, but dark edges
irised in until all he could see was the jar and the hands that held it. The lid unscrewed and he
had it, like a cat on a mouse, and he gulped it down. He slid to the floor, cradling the empty jar
like a dero nurses a bottle. His back blazed. He gave a little cry, jerked forward. A nail? A
splinter sticking out of the wall? A metallic clunk. Kala knelt and took his hand and dropped
something into his open palm. A mushroom-shaped piece of metal. He'd seen the like before, from
shooting targets. A squished bullet.

'Souvenir,' she said.

'Kala,' Taipan shouted again. 'That fella ain't the only one sufferin' from lead poisoning.'

Kevin watched her walk away, across to Taipan, and he felt the blood boiling in his system, and
he knew, as Penny slumped and Hippie shuddered, that he needed more. Lots more.

Kala stood in front of Taipan and reached up her arm.

Two fingers tapping against her dark brown arm, the veins standing purple under the skin

But Taipan, watching Kevin over her shoulder, tore off her shirt and pulled her singlet and then
her bra down around her waist. She stood there like a soldier at attention, arms pinned by her
clothes, as, eyes locked on Kevin's till the very last, Taipan bit into the side of her neck.
Slowly, ever so slowly, then in a last rush, her hands came up to grasp him to her as her knees
buckled.

Kevin stumbled out of the shed, finding his way through the pens and down the ramp and out into
the falling night, the night of tortured clouds and distant stars and a curlew's girlish call.
Kala's moans followed him like ghosts sitting on his shoulders. He walked out into the paddock until
he couldn't hear anything but the night, and he clenched the bullet tight in his fist, as though he
needed any further proof that this was all too real.

Kevin stood, amazed at how well he could see, how well he could hear, how he could
almost measure the millimetres his feet were sinking into the saturated ground. How he could sift
the scents of the earth and the trees; the lanolin and sweat and shit soaked into the shed's
timbers. He thrust the misshapen bullet into his pocket and pulled his hand back as something jabbed
him. His house keys. He pulled them out, ran his thumb across the teeth of the front door key,
pushing it down hard against a sky-big yearning to just run. The key to a home he wasn't even sure
he could go back to without being arrested. Without having to face questions he couldn't answer. He
wished with a strength that made his heart ache that he could ring his mother, just to know for sure
she and Meg were okay. To say sorry.

'Always nice after rain,' Acacia said, scaring the hell out of him. She hadn't made a sound.

'Just a quick bite, then?' he asked, and she winced. Damn it, but he'd thought she was different
to the rest. To Taipan. He pushed the keys back into his pocket.

'Those myxos are runnin' low; I only took what I needed to stay sharp. But I'm concerned about
how you're goin'. That baggy wouldn't have gone far, not with a bullet in your back. Not when you're
still in the change.'

'Like you said, those myxos are runnin' low.'

'Don't go cuttin' off your nose to spite your face, Kev. They give and we take, and then we give
back. They're the ones who are here coz they want to be.'

'They want to be?'

She stayed quiet, letting him process, letting him try to work it through.

'She wants to be,' he mumbled.

'Not what you expected?' Acacia asked.

'None of it. I didn't expect none of it. Didn't know about it, didn't want to know about it.
Don't want it.'

'Some of us don't get the choice. That's life, isn't it? It serves it up and you just deal, best
you can.' Acacia touched his shoulder. 'The rules are different for us. It's not all bad, you know.'

'No?'

She looked around, as though cataloguing: moon, trees, earth. 'It's nice after the rain, isn't
it?' she said again.

'Yeah, it is,' he conceded, and then the frustration boiled out again. 'I still can't believe all
this shit. A couple of days ago I was looking at nothing more than working the servo, hoping that
Meg and I had some kind of future out here. Now I'm wondering how I'm gonna find enough blood to
drink and keep from getting shot.'

'It's a rough ride, I know, and Taipan isn't the most caring father, is he? If it's any
consolation, he's not exactly over the moon about havin' a whitefella in his blood.'

'That bastard is
not
my father.'

Taipan's rough voice interrupted them. 'Talkin' 'bout me?'

'Yeah,' Acacia said. 'I was tellin' the lad here what an arsehole you are, but guess what? He'd
already figured it out for himself.'

'You said he was a quick learner, eh. I need to talk to the fella.'

'Sure. Play nice, now.'

Acacia melted into the night with the silent grace of a deer, leaving Kevin and Taipan alone.
Kevin wished she'd come back.

'I got somethin' I gotta give you,' Taipan said. 'Not the best, me bein' hurt, but I gotta do it
now before you get too far along.'

'What's that?'

'The change. You got one foot in, one foot out. Bit like us blackfellas, not belongin' nowhere
proper. I gotta give you some more, finish it off.'

'I feel better,' Kevin said. 'After that - drink.'

'Not as good as you will. Trust me. It's a real buzz, fella.'

'What if I say no?'

'Then you stay what you are now: piss-weak man, piss-weak vampire.'

'Fine. What do I have to do?'

Taipan held out an arm. 'Just drink.'

'You got a cup?'

'I am the cup.' Taipan raised his other hand, knife glinting in the wan light. 'You need to get
yourself one a these. Cleaner, eh.'

Kevin stared, his body running cold.

Taipan slowly drew the blade across his wrist. The blood glistened darkly in the moonlight as it
welled, then dripped to the ground. The scent invaded the air.

Kevin hesitated.

Taipan thrust his arm forward.

Kevin tasted, just a lick.

'Better than that bottled shit, eh? Fresh is best, fella: remember that.'

Kevin moaned as the world submerged under a red tide. He dived in. Taipan surged into him with
every desperate swallow.

Kevin lost himself.

He was no longer Kevin.

He was Taipan.

The ache is intense. A constant, corrosive emptiness that not all the blood and
brawling in the world can fill. There is a house, a two-storey homestead, distinctively Queensland
with its corrugated iron roof and white weatherboards and curved iron awnings. A separate building
at the back houses seasonal workers. Massive sheds cover harvesters and tractors. A railway line
cuts through the surrounding cane fields, used only during harvesting season when the diesel locos
pull long trains of steel cages heaped with freshly cut stalks off to the mill.