Blood & Dust (40 page)

Kevin nodded, once, a single acknowledgement, a statement of intent.

'Kev, come back with me.' Meg gripped his arm, pushing herself against him. He smelled that mix
of scents that was Meg. He smelled her fear. Her blood, there in that still-healing wound in her
throat where the veins bulged dark blue, and there where it stormclouded around her swollen eye. 'We
can start over - in Brissie, maybe. Plenty of garages there, Kev. A fresh start. Please.'

'Sounds like a good deal, fella,' Taipan said, but he was looking at Kala, whose mouth was set in
a firm line as she stared at her boot. 'Of course, that Von Schiller mob runs the joint. You'd hafta
bend over for 'em eventually. Maybe catch up with that Mira, eh? Get a cosy little threesome goin'
with ya girl there.'

'You are so disgusting,' Meg told him.

'What do I do with Mum?' he asked, and turned to Meg. 'Can you take her? Keep her safe for me,
till I can come back and bury her? Can you do that for me?'

'And what then, Kev? What are you going to do then?'

'I have no fucking idea.'

'Stay with me, baby. Please. We can bury her together. We can-'

'I gotta stop them, Meg. The ones who did all this. So you'll be safe. So no-one will have to go
through this again. Do you understand?'

'You're going with him? With her?'

'I'm going for Mum. For Dad. For me and you.'

She studied him, and he thought for a moment she was going to say something else, a new argument,
maybe simply a 'fuck you'. But she pulled herself straighter and looked at him square and said,
'Sure. What do you want me to do?'

'Kala, do you mind if Meg takes the Monaro?' He didn't want to touch the body again. Didn't want
his mother out here, in front of them all, a piece of luggage, dead meat, to be manhandled into a
storage shed till they found some use for it.

'Sure.' Kala handed him the car keys with all the solemnity of a priest dolling out a wafer.

Taipan cleared his throat. 'Prob'ly for the best that we take the shaggin' wagon anyway. Should
make it by dawn, but still, plenny comfy in the back, there, if we get caught out.'

'I can do the dirt thing,' Kevin said.

Taipan nodded. 'Still, we'll take the wagon, eh? Gravel road most of the way. Don't wanna knock
that Monaro round too much.
It's a classic.
'

And that, Kevin thought, was called sinking the boot in. The three of them all locked inside each
other's blood. No secrets. Where could Meg possibly fit inside their sad, sick triangle? Who better
than these two to go charging off with on a suicide mission?

He climbed in the Monaro and leaned over to his mother, kissed her cold cheek. 'I'll be back,' he
vowed. 'Just got some chores to take care of, okay?' He grabbed the rifle from the back seat.

'Nice gat,' Taipan said.

'It was my father's.' He held it tight.

'I shoulda grabbed somethin' from that fella who gave me his bike, eh. Couldn'ta bin thinkin'
straight. Guess gettin' blowed up'll do that to a fella.'

Meg got in and fired up the Monaro. She looked up at him, her face so wan in the dash light. He
squinted as she switched the headlights to high beam. By the time his eyes had adjusted, she'd
turned around the silo and was headed for the Siding.

'Good woman, that,' Taipan said.

'Yeah,' Kevin said.

Taipan took the keys from Kala and told them to get in. 'It'll be rough road once we leave the
bitumen, but if we're lucky, they won't find Mother before we get there.'

'And when we get there?' Kevin asked.

'Well, that'll be interestin', won't it?'

Kevin shrugged away the unsettling echo with Jasmine's comment, barely an hour old. This was not
the time to tell Taipan that he sounded like his mother.

They pulled into a servo closed for the night and stole fuel and jerry cans. There
was no petrol, no nothing where they were headed. Kala took food and toiletries and a fresh T-shirt
with a crappy tourist logo on it; she tied it off around her waist. She nabbed a shirt for Taipan,
too, but he tossed it, intent on rolling a cigarette. Kevin didn't protest. Next to the things he'd
done, this theft barely rated. He cleaned his teeth with a gargle of Coke. Morning was mere hours
away.

'This is gonna be tight,' Taipan said as they headed east, bouncing along a gravel road toward a
hazy line of hills hunched along the horizon. The moon, only the barest of slivers short of full,
hung low in the west, as though lingering to light their way till the sun rose.

'She might have left already.'

'She said she'd wait. Might even hang 'round till tomorra, knowin' her.'

'Well, they might not find her straight away,' Kevin said. 'She might see them coming and find a
place to hide.'

Taipan concentrated on the road through his cigarette fog. 'Not from the likes of us, she won't.'

'Better than bloodhounds, huh? God, I don't understand how someone with your sense of smell can
stand that stink.'

'What stink?'

There was no radio reception out here and Kevin had already thrown out the few CDs he'd found in
the Sandman, as though they were contaminated rather than just plain shit. Nigel's taste was in his
arse. Should've nicked some new discs from the servo; too late, now. Wished he had his mp3 player,
but he hadn't found it with his gear at Jasmine's; it had either gone up in smoke or been impounded
with the Commodore.

'I don't think she'd hold it against you,' Kala offered.

'Who? Mum?'

'Mother, I was thinking. Danica. If you'd stayed behind with your girl. Not your fight and all
that.'

'But it is. It became my fight the moment Hunter pulled up in the driveway.'

'I'm glad you stayed,' she said.

'I never even seen where me dad's buried,' he said softly.

Kala squeezed his shoulder. 'We can go later, with your mum, yeah?'

'Later,' he said.

'Later,' Taipan snorted, and coaxed more speed from the shuddering vehicle.

Mira had lost the plot. What had started out as a simple police action aimed at
apprehending a bunch of Rogues had turned into some kind of vendetta - may, in fact, always have
been a vendetta masquerading as some kind of justice. She'd played him, had played him from the
first day they'd met and she'd asked him if he thought he, as a detective, could find her mother,
and he'd said yes because he'd known that to say no was to die there in that West End flat.

'Can't this bucket go any faster?' Mira asked. The four-wheel-drive shuddered across the
corrugation of the gravel road.

'We aren't exactly doing the school run here,' Reece said. 'But we're not far away.'

His satellite phone shrilled and he twisted in his seat so Mira could pluck it from his belt.

'It's Felicity,' she told him as she listened intently, her expression growing angrier by the
minute. Finally she lowered the phone, gripping it so tightly he thought she was going to crush it.

'Someone is playing clever and it isn't us,' she said.

'What's up?'

'Felicity says she was out with her policeman friend and the tow truck, getting the grease
monkey's car. What does she see drive past other than the Monaro - the one that up until tonight has
been sitting in Jasmine's shed. So she rings the homestead to check who's driving it because she
knows no-one is meant to be.'

Bloody oath, they weren't. He'd locked the keys away himself.

'And there's no answer. So she drives back to the homestead and everyone's gone. There's no sign
of Jasmine or Heather and the Jag's gone. She's about to leave and she sees a movement, over in the
shed where the farm vehicles are parked, and she finds the judas there, all bled out. And he tells
her, without any persuasion at all, that the grease monkey came back to fetch his mother. Came back,
bundled his dead mother into the Monaro and left.

'But before he left, he had a pleasant chat with Turner and Co., and Nigel thinks, he
thinks
because he was bleeding out on the floor at the time, but he
thinks
he heard
them talking about the gorge. Saying that Taipan isn't dead. That that sonofabitch is on his way
here.

'Now, what do you make of all that, Reece?'

'I think we pull over and wait for reinforcements. If Taipan or young Matheson are on their way -
Jasmine, too, for that matter - this is the most likely way they'll come. We could take them out
here on the road before any of them get within coo-ee of the gorge, leaving Danica, if she's even
there, stranded. Dawn is only a couple of hours away. We can call back our men. I can lead them in
during the day. Jasmine, Taipan, Matheson - none of them will be able to interfere as long as the
sun is up.'

Mira rubbed her forehead, as though weary and a little disappointed. She held up a finger,
indicating a eureka moment. 'Or, I can ring your new partner and tell
her
to call back those
men of ours and have them all meet us at the gorge, but you and I can make sure we get there first.
So that when Taipan, Kevin, Jasmine Turner or fucking Saint Nicklaus arrives, all they find is us
with Mother on ice and a firing squad coming up behind. How does that grab you?'

Reece digested the information. New partner, hey; well done,
Hunter
Felicity. Out with the
old, in with the new. 'With all due respect, Strigoi, I like my plan better.'

'That's what I like about you, Reece - you aren't afraid to speak your mind. And you know who's
boss.' She thumbed Felicity's number and, for the first time, he noticed a fifth blood band around
her left wrist. Mira's dance card was getting mighty full. 'Now drive. This time, there will be no
escape.'

They pulled the Sandman up only minutes from the gorge, taking advantage of a low
crest to survey the road ahead. Stars filled the cloudless sky; the moon hung bright and round and
low in the west like a mighty fluorescent bulb, bathing the landscape in washed-out grey. It
reminded Kevin of nights spent spotlighting pigs and roos, back when they'd been pests, before the
drought had culled them out. Tonight wasn't so different, he supposed - hunting vermin in the bush.

'You were right about the bloodhag comin' this way.' Taipan jumped down from the roof of the van
and handed Kevin the rifle. 'Good scope, that.'

'What've we got?' Kevin asked.

'That old bitch's Jag and what, I'm guessin', is a VS-issue Toorak tractor.'

'Guards?'

'Nope. That mob's playin' this one close to their chest. Or maybe Mira's sent a goon squad up to
the northern road there, tryin' to beat the bushes to flush Mother to her.' He snorted in amusement.
'Them bastards'll get a shock if they find the Rover.'

'How's that?'

'Mother's got them bloodhounds of hers mindin' the fort. Give them Gespenstenfucks a run for
their money.'

'I don't get it.'

'Byely and Cherny are bloodhounds,' Kala explained. 'Hellhounds-'

'Doggy myxos,' Taipan said.

'Fed on Mother's blood,' Kala continued.

'Better than that tinned shit,' Taipan said. 'How else you think them mutts put up with the likes
of us, eh? Rather tear ya head off otherwise.'

'Mother's milk,' Kevin joked. He hadn't thought anything of the dogs cleaning out the cups at the
powwow. Dogs being dogs. Just when he thought he was getting a handle on things. 'So we drive up and
then what?'

Taipan dug out his tobacco, swore, rolled a final cigarette and tucked it away behind his ear
before scrunching up the packet and dropping it.

'Don't litter,' Kala said.

'Piss off.'

She picked up the packet and threw it in the Sandman. 'It's country. Have some respect.'

He seemed to be actually chastened. 'Fair 'nuff.'

'Well?' Kevin asked.

'Mother's got no chance against Mira and Jasmine together, even if they ain't got none of them
jackals with 'em. We'll split up: you two head for the caves, and I'll work across the top and see
if I can't track them bitches.'

'Is that a good idea, splitting us up?' Kala asked.

'You wanna come with me, Kala? Do some rock hoppin'?'

'I'll go with Kevvie.'

'Thought so.'

'Whatever,' Kevin said. 'Let's just do it before we all get roasted.'

He drove up, expecting an ambush, but nothing happened when they reached the two vehicles parked
unattended near the lip of the gorge. There was an information board that might as well have said
Abandon Hope
, because it was a list of hopelessness - no roads, no power, no phones, no phone
coverage, no water. The smelly septic toilet was the last chance to take a dump inside four walls.

'Take that path there,' Taipan said, pointing to a depression in the cliff edge where the slope
arced away toward the floor, hundreds of metres below. The gorge was narrow here, a long rifle shot
across, but it widened to the north, the cliffs glowing like bone in the moonlight.

'I'll work me way 'round to the north and meet you on the other side. With a bit'a luck, one'a us
will find Mother.' There was a pause, the sense that someone should say something other than good
luck, which seemed insufficient. 'Keep the rifle,' Taipan said. 'It'll only slow me down.' He ran
off into the dark.

Kevin and Kala watched him go. The gorge was thick with trees along its floor and lower slopes,
cliffs rising from overgrown scree. In the natural light, it looked tangled and foreboding.

'This is pointless,' Kevin said. 'It's too big. Danica could be anywhere.'

'We'll start with the caves,' Kala said. 'On the other side, near the waterholes. If nothing
else, they'll be good places to hole up if we don't get back in time.'

'In time?'

'Before dawn.'

'Gimme a minute.' And when she looked at him quizzically, he explained, 'Just in case.' He
wrenched the aerials from the four-wheel-drive and threw them into the gorge. The vehicle's alarm
splintered the silence; its flashing lights strobed the scene in amber, wrecking his night vision.