The Worm King (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Iron Age

T
he cold, stinking pre-dawn of Tamworth reeked like an infestation in
Lord Brown’s nostril. A great flushing was called for. A vileness of this
magnitude would require a
flushōid magnifiquè
at the very least. Flushoidal
tendencies: they’re in here somewhere, where though? Oh where, please! If he
knew
that,
he could try and wrench them out . . . grab
them by their black, scaly tails and tear them free, casting the filthy
creatures asunder. The beast inside governing this
CRAVING
was back, drifting
at the periphery of his consciousness and mostly fainter than the touch of a
feather but soooo cunning. Brutal. Lord Brown knew all its tricks, and how
ruthless it could be. When you least expect it—wham! He brushed angrily at the
Thing above his left shoulder and jerked his head away from it, grimacing, the room
spinning.

Wiremu Ruarangi gave him a hard stare.

A damp unpleasant waft hung, dangling, like
a long-dead rat on a rope. The dull, intermittent lighting wasn’t doing much to
lift spirits either.
A hundred and thirty-seven?
No, hundred and thirty-eight:
a figure stirred beneath a blanket some forty meters distant crosswise. He
needed to go for a leak. The gymnasium had that feel of a cold, oversized, badly-lit
library without any books. Perhaps books secrete some soothing, yet-to-be
classified elixir because in the majority of libraries, if you
did
toss
out all the books, you
would
be left with just a . . . shithole,
pretty much like this.

‘Last roll!’ called the Hat. The sound of
the coins striking the wooden gym floor seemed unusually loud; an ugly,
rattling
clank
which wouldn’t normally be heard in Two-Up. More often
than not, a hundred shouting drunken yobbos drowned out the delicate symphony
of the pennies. ‘Tail’s ’e wins!’ Geoff drank with gusto.

Lord Brown took the penultimate slurp from
his plastic cup. The game had begun as a minor celebration after Tamati
procured two dozen bottles of beer, then rapidly degenerated into a Two-Up
drinking match. Amazingly, Lord Brown, the Hat, Wiremu, Tamati, Hemi and Geoff
were the only ones who could be induced to play. It was that pervading
gloominess, and sense of despondency that’d settled over everyone in recent
weeks. Or maybe it was because the compulsory chugging glass in the middle was
half beer, and half Windowleen. Gives it that extra kick.

Regardless, he was off the wagon. Off, off
and away! Far-king-off! The reason? Hang on, they’re all lining up now. The
usual suspects are never hard to find: do it to dull the pain, or get over
this, or get over that. Because there’s nothing else to do.

Or nothing to lose. Dull what pain?

Lord Brown stared into the dirty, plastic cup.
One last mouthful. It’d had a queer, metallic taint anyway. Windowleen and
beer, again. You think to yourself, I’ll never touch
that
shit again,
and here he was. Again. His hand had a tiny tremor and wobbly concentric
circles rippled from the liquids rim to the centre where they cascaded into angry
whorls. An awful lot has been paid for the spiraling escape this evil fluid bought.
Initially, it had been a massive problem, then it’d cost him everything, and
with nothing left to lose the problem resolved itself. Your classic,
self-resolving spiral.
Spirallis fixum
. Definitely a paper in that.

The pain you ask? It’s all around, like glue.
Look at these people! Just look at them!

‘You alright?’ asked Wiremu.

‘The pain . . . ’

‘Whereabouts?’

He gulped the last mouthful.
A hundred
and thirty-nine.

The lustre had gone off the game. No, the
game had actually stopped. He blearily realized why: the beer had run out, of
course. Those two dozen departed this earth remarkably quickly. Was it worth
it? By crikey, I’ll say!

‘That was one sweet drop,’ declared the Hat

Well, it was worth it until now. But from
here on, it’ll all be downhill. The hangover tends to begin immediately when
one’s acutely attuned to the cycle. The cycle of Brown.
Brownis Cyclum.
When
the last drop’s imbibed, the happy anticipation factor disappears at that very
instant, and depression and night terrors and leg twitches and those other
horrors slowly poke up their heads and creepy, creepy back.

‘Some celebration,’ said Tamati glumly.

The news yesterday that the sun maybe making
a comeback should’ve been cause for celebration, but it wasn’t being
interpreted like that. The brief emergence was merely a dose of harsh reality:
there wouldn’t be any magical return to normal, just a desperate, touch-and-go
clawing back that won’t even vaguely return anyone anywhere near close to “normal”,
it’d only dump them at some forlorn spot well south of whatever normal used to
be. They all knew it too: that’s why they’re so quiet. A saturating depression was
seepy, seepy through the roof and dripsky down on every man, women and kiddie
present.

Lord Brown leant across, getting close
enough to Wiremu’s face to make out the individual pores on his wide, flat snoz.
‘You’ve got to take your girl away from here. This is a very bad place.’ Tamati
and Hemi both heard too, and glanced around, on alert.

Wiremu’s expression didn’t change. ‘Why?’

‘It’s dripping through.’ He pointed a finger
at the roof.

Wiremu looked up at both ends of the gym,
then shook his head. ‘Outside.’ The tone suggested he’d made the most banal of
statements in the world, but the eye contact made it very clear this was an
order, no a mere suggestion.

Lord Brown struggled upright, knocking over
his empty plastic cup in the process. ‘I need to go for a leak.’

‘Me too.’ Wiremu rose in a single fluid movement
which took him from cross-legged to fully erect in the blink of an eye. Tamati
and Hemi began to stand too, but he patted the air once with a flat hand and suddenly
they weren’t getting up after all, only adjusting the stuffed burlap sacks they
sat on.

The old man weaved his way through the crowd.
Most people didn’t even look up. Some stared, like stunned mullets with glazed
expressions, and one or two unhealthy faces were more questioning, actually eyeballing
him.
Where’re you going? Why have you got somewhere to go? Yes, you! Mutter,
mutter.

On the other side of the gym the main door swung
open and four . . . no, five new figures entered.
One
hundred and forty-four.
Hard to tell from this distance, what with having
to step around people all the time, but the one on the left looked like Tim, so
that was probably Sgt Kevin alongside him. The Mason descended from his
platform. Lord Brown would’ve been keen to see who the other arrivals were, but
Wiremu had already made the exit. Why wasn’t anyone interested? No wonder they
never got the Two-Up off the ground!

Outside, Wiremu let the door close and
switched on his torch. The beam spiked down the path, immediately finding the
row of three yellow port-a-loos. He clicked the light off. ‘Better save these
batteries. Here, give us yer hand.’ The gym had a row of small windows inset
high on the wall, just below the eves. They weren’t enough to see by, but
enough to navigate if you were desperate. Presumably that was why they put the
loos on this side.

Now, he found himself being led onwards
through the dark. Your classic hangover deterioration, and Lord Brown was fully
prepared for it. One minute you’re sitting around, guzzling liquor, having a
tremendous old time: next thing you’re out in the dark being led to an unsavory
toilet by a disturbingly muscular Māori. ‘
Sequenso predictûm
,’ he
muttered.

‘What’d you say?’

Before he could answer came a hollow knock
as Wiremu rapped on the side of the port-a-loo. The vibration of it tingled delicately
up through Lord Brown’s held hand. He expected the torch to come back on, so they
could enter and mount their respective thrones, but instead he was dragged on, continuing
past the port-a-loos and further away from the gym.

‘Hate using them things,’ complained Wiremu.
‘They stink like buggery. Anyway, after a man’s had a couple of beers, he’s got
a right to take a slash in the open. Only natural. Bloody constitutional. Orta
be anyway.’ At last they came to a halt and the torch flashed back on. ‘This’ll
do.’ It must’ve been lawn once, but was now just mud with occasional flecks of
grey, dead grass and bits of stick trampled through. The light went off and
Lord Brown’s hand released. He heard the plasticy rasp of a zip, followed by a
grunt, then urine splattering unevenly onto the mushy turf.

Wiremu spoke quietly: ‘We all leav’in come
sun-up. Next time there is any sun, that is. Us and the boys. Maybe before, if
it suits. I know this place is dodgy, you don’t have to tell me: they’re just
using us for doin’ the clearin’ up work they don’t wanna do themselves and
givin’ us all their scraps for tucker. Jerry and Ken said they’d take us
south.’ His flow of urine petered for a second, then resumed. ‘Thing is, I’ve
already had a quiet word with Sergeant Kevin, who seems alright, but he doesn’t
reckon they’ll just let us go for nothing. Want the food they’ve been giving us
back or something. Being wankers, if you ask me. They don’t wanna lose us to do
all the crap work. So we gunna get some grief, but Kev thought we’d swing it
alright.’ Wiremu’s flow finally spluttered to a close.

Lord Brown remembered why they were standing
there, and began to fumble with his trouser zip. His withered penis eventually emerged,
and he let go, making considerably less splash than Wiremu’s healthy gush. The
muscles around his groin and hips quivered loosely and he hoped he didn’t shit
himself. ‘Holy mother, that’s a relief! What about the other hundred and
thirty-three? And you know the sergeant’s in there now? He arrived with some others
just as we walked out.’

‘Yeah, I saw them arrive. They’ll keep. The hundred
and . . . you mean the rest of them in there?’

‘That’s correct.’ A small dollop of faeces
trickled uncomfortably down his inner thigh.

‘When I’ve told the Mason we’re off, I’ll
put the word out and anyone else who wants can come. Jerry said we’d squeeze fifty
in his bus at a pinch, but I don’t think anything like that will wanna go. The
useless buggers seem happy to just sit here.’

Wiremu flicked on his torch. ‘Over here.’ He
illuminated a wooden seat with a metal rubbish bin alongside. They sat. His
beam probed out in a semi-circle, not reaching far and only picking up soggy
ground and one dead tree so he switched it off. ‘A joker who used to work at
the school took me for a walk around, a few days ago. There’s a big row of
jacarandas straight ahead, just outta range, with a footy field on either side.’

A lengthy pause followed. ‘What a fucking shambles.’
He didn’t say it with desperation, or anger: more a banal statement of fact. Lord
Brown could see where Āmiria inherited her quaint turn of phrase.

The seat buckled as Wiremu shifted position.
The boards hadn’t seemed wet when they sat, but the dampness now leached up, soaking
into his strides.

‘The girl said you’ve been kind to her, so
I’m much obliged.’ His tone was thankful, yet still somehow managed to carry a
threatening edge.

Another shorter pause. ‘You know Geoff, that
big fūlla in there who works with me?

‘Yes.’

‘I took him on about six months ago, when me
and the girl were last back home. He’d just done five years in Paremoremo and
needed a break, so I gave him one. Got nicked for pinching undersized pauas. Well,
that and aggravated armed robbery. Anyway, he came around to Monty’s place straight
after he got out, and I watched him drink a dozen pretty quick that morning,
but it was nothing on how fast you just slotted those beers in there. And all
that bloody Windowleen!’ He stared at Lord Brown. ‘You aren’t gunna to be
holding us back are you?’

‘No!’ he replied with as much assurance as a
man with wet poo down his leg could muster. ‘I’m absolutely chipper.’ A change of
topic seemed appropriate. ‘When we were travelling up here, Āmiria told us
you used to drive monster trucks, out west?’

Wiremu laughed. ‘No, that’s what she called
them. I run a gang of chippies now, but for about seven years before that, used
to work in the Pilbarra at an iron mine on the western edge of the Simpson. Drove
an excavator. A Liebherr 9800. She could shift 42 cubic meters in one bite and had
a shovel that at full stretch was the size of a three-story house. Tyres the height
of a bus. Air con, tinted glass, kick-arse stereo. Was a beaut machine to
drive, that’s for sure. Been in Aussie nearly fifteen years now. Came over just
after the girl was born. Making plenty a wedge, but who knows if it’s bin worth
it? We usually go home at least three or four times a year, visit the whanau, get
out in the bush, but she’s growing up more Aussie than Māori.’

‘What do you do in the bush?’

‘Hunting.’ Wiremu sniffed the air noisily, snorted,
then slid further away down the seat.

Lord Brown realized this must be standard, run-of-the-mill,
tribal edification. This is why the girl is like she is. He didn’t know the exact,
finer intricacies of Māori culture, so couldn’t be certain, but he didn’t
need to know because it was obvious where all this was heading anyway, under
sequenso predictûm
rules. At the current rate of accelerating deterioration,
it was only a matter of time before Wiremu sets him loose in the dark, with no
food or torch, and gets his daughter to hunt him for sport.