Blood & Dust (21 page)

'You're kidding.' About four men could fit in the hole, lying side by side.

'It's plenny safe. Bin used lotsa times.'

'Where are you gonna sleep?'

'I got me own place.' He must have sensed Kevin's flaring suspicion because he pointed to the
dirt. 'A safe place. Nowhere near you.' He stood, brushed off his clothes and walked to the door.

'I thought we had to stay close.'

'We got some good miles behind us. A few more feet of earth ain't gonna hurt. 'Less you want me
in there with you.'

'So you can take another slurp? I'll take my chances with Mira's pornos, thanks.'

'Thought so.' He turned back to the door.

Kevin glanced at the slice of lightening sky he could see through the doorway. Dawn's approach
teasing his skin, like ants creeping under the surface. 'You're going outside?'

'Goin' to ground,' he said with a wink, then added, 'Not too far.' A hand pressed against the
medallion under his shirt. 'If I'm not here when you get up, you can have the bike.'

Kevin laughed bitterly. 'Fat lot of good that's gonna do me.' He hopped to the trapdoor.

'Don't worry, fella,' Taipan said. 'A coupla days, you'll be just like new. Won't even hafta
think about it too hard. The body remembers, better'n we do.'

'What do you mean?'

'Ya foot. Unless you wanna pretty it up. Grow a sixth toe or somethin'.'

'Wait. You mean I can control what happens to my body?'

'Sure. Mind over matter.' He tapped his forehead.

'But Bhagwan said you had to use silver-somethin'.'

'I like Bhagwan - I hope the mad bastard made it - but for a bloke who reckons he's some kind of
guru, he can be as thick as a post sometimes. He just uses the silver nitrate to help him focus on
what he wants. But he don't
need
it.'

'So my foot is gonna grow back, whether I think about it or not. Like my chest did when you shot
me. And when you staked me.'

'That'd be about it.'

Kevin rubbed the stump below his knee, gently prodding it to prove to himself it was real. It was
already longer, down almost to the ankle. He tried to keep his mind completely blank; tried not to
think of chicken feet. Just how much concentration would he need to make something happen?

'Rest up, now,' Taipan said. 'Got a bitova drive tomorra before we get to the nest. Mother can
show you some stuff to help keep that head on ya shoulders. Then you can do what you wanna. Me, I
aim to get even.'

'And who is "Mother"?'

Taipan yawned. 'I'm goin' outside for a bit. Tuck yourself in.'

Kevin fumed as he watched Taipan walk out. What was the big deal about this Mother person? He
could just make out Taipan's shape, sitting cross-legged on the bare ground not far from the shed,
an orange glow and pungent odour indicating he was smoking a final cigarette before bunking down. If
he feared the imminent dawn, he gave no sign.

Kevin eyed the hole in the floor, swore, then hobbled over and awkwardly lowered himself. He
fought back a moment's claustrophobia, then pulled the door shut above himself and was trapped in
the cold, dark space. Panic scratched at his insides when he thought of Taipan standing above him,
pouring fuel over the door and setting it alight. Then he felt dawn pressing down outside the walls
of the shelter and grudgingly embraced the oblivion that sleep brought. The dreams, though - the
memories - he could do without them…

Naked, the night air so cool on his flesh, he owns the world as he falls into an
effortless lope. He throws the stake he's made and a gym bag over the fence, then takes a run-up and
jumps, thrilling with his athleticism as he springs to a post, sticks, then uses it to vault without
touching the wire. But the impact is enough to trigger a motion sensor running with the strands of
barbed wire across the top of the mesh. Spotlights beam out.

He hits the ground, hurls the bag out of sight onto a shed roof, then grabs the
wooden stake and - sinks. Earth closes in, warm, welcoming, safe. Footsteps and voices vibrate
through the soil and then fade. He waits, letting his senses range, and only when he's absolutely
sure no-one's around, he surfaces, the dirt falling from him like water from a Driza-Bone. A shake,
heeler-style, a puff of dust, and he claws up to reclaim his bag. Is a little surprised to find it
still there. Dressed, he tucks the stake, as long as his arm, uncomfortably into his belt and begins
his search. He creeps through the dark toward the house where lights show through cracks in
curtains. No dogs - this mob don't like them, and the feeling is mutual, he suspects. Best friend to
man but choosy about the monsters.

He's a shadow, he's a mote of dust, he's the breeze. He wafts on to the verandah,
ears sweeping for danger, nose sniffing for that familiar scent. Jasmine Turner, all blood and stale
air and mustiness, and there, his sister, ti-tree and creek water, the earth after rain. His heart
beats faster as he creeps to a door and cracks it open. Kitchen smells drift from the rear of the
house, but he's looking at a dining room lit by candles - no, electric bulbs shaped like candles,
though he does smell wax, wax and violets, cooked beef, wine: too many to count, too many to sift,
these scents that belong to another him, a younger him, back before that world ended and this new,
night-clad one began.

A piano plunks a distracted scale, and the stillness adds an element of threat to
those half-hearted notes, a soundtrack for something not quite right. The notes range higher as he
creeps, almost in time, and he wonders how they can possibly know he's here and, conversely, how
they can let him penetrate this far.

But she's here, just on the other side of that screen: a set of collapsible doors
that divide this dining area from the space beyond. He can smell her. Feel her. Beams of light show
through the vertical slats and he detects slight changes of movement as the pianist shifts on the
stool. He reaches the edge of the divider, left open to form a narrow doorway, and he sees her in
her white dress with its high collar and sleeves to the wrists, skirts to the ankles and the dainty
shoes with bows, another bow in her hair tying back that luxurious midnight mane.

She hits a final, jarring note and turns her face to him, and his heart breaks
open. Time has not healed this wound, merely scabbed it over; seeing her rips it raw again and he
reels, grips that timber slider for support as he sways under the impact of an avalanche of moments,
each one a bleeding ulcer on his soul.

He fights through to her, to the here and now, and her name is an ember on his
tongue.

'Willa?'

'Chris? What the hell are you doing here?'

'Don't call me that,' he begs.

'You prefer "Taipan"? Is that who you are now?'

'It's what they've made me.'

'No, Chris, you've made that all by yourself.'

'Come with me. We can talk about it out there, on the road, where we belong.'

'Why can't you understand, Christopher; I don't belong out there. That's not what
I want.'

'And this is? Bloodsack for that bitch?'

She seems almost amused, sitting there, hands in fingerless lace gloves in her
lap. 'I do hope this isn't a lesbian thing.'

'I don't give a shit about that and you know it. Blood's blood, pure and simple;
I don't care if it comes in a tube or a jar. It's what she's done to you that I can't stomach. Made
you inta a little white doll, just like her, and now she's feedin' off'a you.'

'You don't think that maybe I made myself like this? That I actually care for
her? That we share each other's blood because we like it?' Anger in her voice, for the first time,
real anger, and the situation is slipping out of his control.

'It's her blood in you. She's all but feedin' off herself.'

'Familiarity can just as easily breed security as contempt, Chris. I made my
choice and you made yours. Why can't you just let it be?'

Words won't come. Because, he wants to say. Because. The love wells up, the love
and the loss, and it's as big as the sky and it feels as if his skin will burst with the attempt to
contain it.

'Oh Chris.' Her hand lifts, then falls, the distance between them uncrossed. She
stands, and her voice takes on a quiet, urgent tone. 'Did you bring that for me?'

He fingers the stake, a foot of mulga sharpened to a point.

'Never.'

'Kind of old school.'

'Some places, only the natural stuff can go, eh.'

'We don't have metal detectors here; not yet. May I see it?'

He hesitates.

'They know you're here. They've probably rung Brisbane already.'

'I couldn't believe it when I heard she'd left the coast.' He hands it over. He'd
hardened the tip over a fire, imagining the whole time ramming it into Jasmine's heart. 'I had to
see you.'

'If they catch you-'

'It'll be worth it.'

'Chris-'

A door eases open, a footstep sounds, and he knows, down in that place where his
senses prowl ceaselessly, that they've been out there for a while now, waiting for whatever signal.

'They'll kill you, Chris.'

'They can try.' He turns, putting himself between her and the door.

'They will. Unless I stop them.'

She's quicker than he realised - must be all that old girl's blood in her, he
thinks, but he doesn't dodge, doesn't defend; is too startled, maybe too resigned. Hell, he's too
slow, plain and simple. He didn't really think she'd come away with him, but he didn't think she'd
betray him, either. So he stands, mouth open, surprised, as she rams the crude stake into his back,
all her uncanny strength driving it into his heart. For a moment he stands, and then the heart gives
up, skewered and useless, and the power is cut and he falls, dead but not dead, and he looks up at
her and takes one small glimmer of hope with him - in her eye, quickly wiped as the men rush into
the room, a single crimson tear.

Something tugs at his insides.

He isn't Taipan anymore.

He's Kevin, and he's lying still, pinned down. Bruise-purple daylight pushes
through cracks in the wall. Dirt. He's in the dirt. Petrol. Petrol and dirt. The servo? He remembers
being buried, but not scared. And now he's buried again, but he's scared. Scared of-

'Hey.' Mira sits astride him, her skirt up around her thighs, her scarlet nails
tapping on his naked chest. 'What are you doing down there, Grease Monkey?'

He pushes against her presence, not just on his body, but in his mind, too. This
isn't right. This isn't how he remembers - how he knows - it happened.

'Where are you?' she asks. 'It looks nice.'

But he doesn't rightly know and he clamps down on the road signs, on the vague
idea he's got. Instead, he thinks of home. Mira seems distant, as though she's leaning through a
gauzy curtain, and it's tightening, thickening, as he becomes more aware of her, aware of the fact
that this is not a memory. This is not real. He imagines the curtain wrapping around her, tighter
and tighter, as tight as a cocoon, as tight as a mummy's bandages.

'Now Kevvie, is that anyway to treat an old flame? I thought you'd be happy to
see me, me and your little friend here.'

The body in the curtain is Kala, the material tight around her naked body, and
blood seeps out, expanding stains from her eyes and throat, arms, groin.

The curtain tears away and Mira, in a blood-red body suit, steps out like some
kind of glossy butterfly leaving a cocoon. Kala stands behind her, strapped to a vertical X.

'She's quite upset that you left without saying goodbye. She's not the only thing
you left behind, is she?'

Mira dangles a foot, the ankle a torn and bloody stub, like a lost sock.

'Don't worry, Kevin, we'll look after your little friend for you.' She runs a
claw down Kala's chest, making the girl squirm. 'Yes, we'll look after her.'

'Don't you hurt her,' he cries.

She laughs. 'Hurt her? Of course I'm going to hurt her. But that's all right. You
run off home now, see if your family, if your girlfriend, will take you back.'

He's naked in a chair in his kitchen and Meg's sitting in his lap, straddling
him. He pushes her skirt up and she's naked and huge and he slides into her, his cock as hard as a
crowbar, and she frowns.

'Kevin,' she says, and then the consternation turns to horror as his cock
expands, a real fucking Pinocchio's nose, and he shouts, 'Lie to me, lie to me, bitch!' And his cock
is a sharpened stake hardened with flame and hate and he rams it into her, a timber missile looking
for her heart. A purple-black light the colour of grape skin bursts from her eyes.

Taipan looms over him, biting, bleeding, and he screams then…

He bursts awake with his chest heaving, his mind roiling, and he thinks, just
before he smacks into the trap door above him, that he hears Mira scream, too. It's some
consolation.

Reece sat on the penthouse's balcony, the remains of a greasy breakfast pushed to
the far side of the table so he could spread out the morning paper and enjoy his second cigarette of
the day. Morning heat was already wrapping its clammy hands around him, dragging sweat from his
armpits and down his back, the air barely disturbed by the gentlest of breezes drifting in off the
sluggish brown river. Traffic hummed, a constant flow across the city's two bridges; life going on,
unaware of the secret battles being fought to maintain its blissfully ignorant security.

He smiled at the sight of the keys to the Monaro on the table, then turned his attention to the
paper. He raised it to block out the glare and that uninspiring vista of tin roofs and thirsty gum
trees on the other side of the river, that singular, aerial-studded hump of drought-brown mountain
in the distance.

Yesterday's attack on The Farm had been more exciting than any drug raid from his policing days.
The chopper had taken out a few soft targets - Mira had been certain that her bloodwalk had given
her enough information to pinpoint Kevin and Taipan well enough to make an entrance without
endangering them. His plan would've been to drop the jackals first and let them go in under cover of
daylight, use the chopper for fire support, but Mira did like her toys. Only after it had strafed
the fuck out of the Farm had it deployed the troops, and then they'd had to work fast before law
enforcement and media arrived. Mira was getting lazy, perhaps even careless, in her old age; her
pursuit of Taipan was verging on reckless.