Trucksong (8 page)

Next thing I knew it was dawn and I was soaked in sweat, a fever in me head and no idea of whether it was a dream or otherwise. I’d not seen them bones before, nor the sign and I puzzled on it as I moved me aching body onwards under the cover of low clouds sweeping across from the north. It was an /I/ like that /I/ that stared out from my /eye/ but wasn’t /eye/ nor /I/. It was an /I/ reflected in an /eye/, the dead bone eye of the creature, the follower. The Crow. It was also the /I/ for /Isa/ and that’s the sign I took it for as the day moved and I moved through it knowing which direction to go but not where my fate lay. I came to a road and I figured that would be as good a place as any to sit for a time and recover myself. No sign of the follower. It’d taken what it wanted for now, moved me own hand somehow just by freezing me there in the moment.

Clouds burnt off and it got hot but I stayed at the roadside puzzling on me dream or whatever it was. There was a rumbling from the distince and a bright spark of sunflash on metal. Me heart thumped in me ribs, it was an indie for sure, heading east like I was. I pulled Smoov’s linkmaker from the tote where I’d stowed it with the typewriter. I waved a link through the air like I seen Smoov do, me head rushing with the thought this could be me first truckride solo.

The truck must have seen me wave and it ground down the gears as it slowed. It stopped long enough for me to climb up, but it wasn’t an indie at all. It was a dumb slavegrid hauler left from the oldtimes heading on the tracks between the camps and it wouldn’t let me into the cab. It was just gunna keep on going when it saw I didn’t have nothing ready to trade but I swung up on the back anyway. Me first truckride spent in an open air trailer. There wasn’t nothing wild about it, nothing like what I’d expected it would be when I was young and listening to the riders tell their stories round the campfires. Outside the night air rushed past in a cold clear blast and underneath the road clattered by. The slavegrid truck wasn’t on the link freek no more but it let me stay because I was there then and the darkness came down on me though there weren’t no truckdreams just blackness and emptiness of the end. When I woke there was another rider in there with me and I moved back away, wanting no company. A match flare lit the creases in his face and I saw it was Crow, same one as what talked to me that night in the camp, same one what waved to me when it was Smoov’s turn. Same coat, but different from the creature in me dream. He took a toke off of his pipe and offered me some. I shook me head.

‘Fancy seein you here,’ he said.

‘Yeah, fancy. You followin me now?’

‘Sure you don’t wanna toke? It’ll ease yer pain,’ he said.

‘I’m not in any pain, mate.’

‘Oh don’t play the hard man with me, cobber. I know your type. Always in some kinda pain. Always got someone else to blame for what was done with yer own fists. Always lookin for some relief from the knowin of the blood on yer wrists.’

‘You got me all wrong. I done nothin. I don’t feel nothin,’ I said.

‘Ha ha, well be like that if you wanna, but this spike will cure yer ails. One taste and she’ll be apples.’

‘I don’t got no ails, I already told you. I don’t want yer apples.’

‘Try some of this. It’s the juice from a stoned up indie true bred. They’ve always made the best gear, to tempt the riders who’ll give em the best patches.’

He moved closer, I pushed him away but he grinned and pulled his spike.

‘Carn, it’s good shit.’

And in the darkness I just wanted to lose myself from all that’d happened, so I took the spike. The truckdream held onto me through the cold night and the thoughts I had of Isa kept me going. I knew through it all I was getting closer to her on the easting road and with the haze humming in me veins, I felt I was getting closer to putting the pieces of bone together into a whole. I thought of the first time I saw inside of something, I felt the pull of it on me eyes, downwards. I couldn’t look away. It was a roadkilled dog. Freshly dead and glistening it was, flies shiny and black on the bright red. A spray of blood from its mouth where it coughed up its last. Blue and yeller guts spilled out for all to see, the inner secrets of life all spread out in the dust and gravel. Dead eyes empty and wide and white in fear, and I knew: all creatures know death that comes in the dark and takes the light from a life. Everyone’s scared when it’s their turn. Some run towards it and if you don’t know how to live, maybe it’s a way out. Little beating heart pumped all its life out onto the ground.

Next day and I was grimy from the truckride, blood behind me eyes. Blood in me dreams, creatures in me dreams, skeletons and bleached bones of animals that have never been nor never could be, animals made up in someone else’s mind, a slaved truck with a load of scared riders pushing through the night, riders on the way to slaughtering in the maw of the road. And there was nothing at all to it, just the smooth flow of the surface with nothing beneath it neither. It was all just words wrote out of order on this typewriter I found.

I came out of me dream lying roadside where the truck stopped for watering, wasted and bruised from that spike and laid out underneath the water tower in the morning sun. All I had was me tote and typewriter with all of Smoov’s notes in the lid, his linkmaker and a cell of jenny juice saved up to slot the substrate when it fades. Me mouth full of broken and rotted teeth. I knew I had to find a tasty rig to roll with if I stood any chance of catching up with the brumby mob. Their trail was going cold now, and I had to find Isa, it was pulling me along like a thread from the future. So I staggered to me feet. Sun to me face so I knew I must of been on the right road. Clouds from the past at my hind. Me tears didn’t come, me eyes was dry as lies. The old life was dead and gone but sometimes there’s some killing you have to do before you can become something new.

The road a straightedge rule bordered with bodies of cars and bodies of burnt out trucks and bodies of roos. Those roads were tough on vehicles as well as roadkill. Every little bit used up, bones picked clean. Same as with the machines come to scavenge too, looking for parts or even a whole new body to mech with a new truckmind. I saw one in there, an old Kenworth foraging sad in the wreckage almost out of juice. Old trucks turning back to dust, it’s the cycle, isn’t it? But there’s ways to find bits of yourself in new bodies. We are all made from the same stuff, it’s come from the stars in the night sky and that’s where it’s all gunna go in the end and meantimes it’s sure to come back around. Your body knows all this, even if your head don’t, like those feelings you’ve seen something before but you know you ain’t never, or when you meet someone and it’s like you’ve known them your whole life and you just slot right in. Or how some folks can try their hands at something and they pick it up real quick, like how Isa just took to the show and tell, she had done it before she were Isa, I knew it. There’s another world trying to break through into this busted one. If only it could, that would be something to see. Maybe things would be better than they is now. Maybe that’s what Isa was on about, trying to find the bridge between the two worlds.

I walked the lonesome road, waiting for the right ride. That first truckride trailer was a balls up, and I was still sickened from the spike of hazy truckdream, but it was a seed planted. Somewhere on some level I knew I wanted more. Feeling sick and feeling like Isa’s disappearing further and further away with each wasted hour. Pretty soon there was a rumbling and a grumbling and a dust cloud blowed up in the west. I flipped the freeks and found the source, it was an indie for sure and this time I was ready with a patch file from Smoov’s list. The truck tasted the patch I blinked over to it, something that would buzz its truckmind the way the haze buzzed mine. It was coming slower and slower until I saw it, a red and white rig. It grew in me eyes, something to behold, its rocking power and the size of it. Then I felt its heat as it came in for a stop and idled right beside me. It was tricked with patchwork glyphs and sygils patterning messages from mysterious places and I saw a name written in curly writing: /Sinnerman/. I realised then it was the same rig that lost its mate to the Brumby King in the raid that also took Isa. The King had driven off with that other one glyphed Storm and something in me said Sinnerman was on this same road as me for a reason. Something in me made me want to touch it, so I got up close as it hummered there. I smelled the air around, alive with newmint particules and longchain polymers, breathed it all in in a big giddy swallow. Me hand reached out without me doing anything to move it and I watched as I touched smooth metal skin, felt the cool surface and it seemed to move under me touch from the vibrations of the donk. I sighed, and then Sinnerman gunned it, grumbling thunder from deep inside and it moved away, circled around and came back, blowing black smokestack exhaust. A beat started up and the wave rocked with its sounds. I calmed me breathing and reached out with me mind through the link, touching something in the freek, feeling in me head the shape of that light, those sounds.

Perfect timing, perfect play of the link, you have to get it just right as the indie is coming up the road. Too soon and they’ll bolt, too long and, well, it’s a matter sometimes also of just letting them get used to you. Use to yeour sweatstink, your human ways. I talked in a soft whisper, low in me throat, soothing. It just came natural. Dunno how you’re meant to soothe a machine, they’ve got programs of their own, but if they can see your no threat at least you can get started. That’s how it was with Sinnerman. I just put me bag down and sat in the dust and shuffled patches through the link, shifting through different cycles. Though it was flighty and wanted to be roading after its mate, it was also curious to see what I was up to, see what patches I’d come up with. It wanted a rider for this road and maybe it sensed I was roading after the Brumby King for the same griefstruck reasons. I found a nice combo between two different patch sets, tweaking its inner runnings the way haze or cactusflower grog tweaks a human brain, and soon it settled down. I blinked a new patch and tried to tempt it, but it thrummed away again, spewing smoke from the stack. I calmed myself and thought of how Smoov would of done it in his chats with indie trucks, but thoughts of Smoov didn’t really help with calm. Just a wave of fear and guilt but I put it to one side and tried again.

Another patch, called Skull Deth. It seemed to speak from the list, something about it, so I tried that one on and the indie pricked up its whole body and started to shake and shimmer. I stood there as that massive machine came right up to me, growling engine vibrating into the ground and through me body. It glowed with power. I put out me hand to touch its cold steel flank again and it moved even closer to get more of a whiff of that Skull Deth in its link. Smell of nothing, scent of always moving freeways and blue sky dreams. Shifting in those sands. Me heart fast and loud in me ears to be so close to my first true indie truckride, and it was a fucken bewdy, too. Red and white steel glimmering in the daylight. No load nor trailer, wild and free. Like I wished I could be. Well I blinked the Skull Deth through the link and Sinnerman settled right down. It opened up the hatch for me to climb in. I put me foot on the first chrome rung and climbed up to the rider’s cab.

Inside was a little womb. Warm and cozy, with a stink of mixed human and machine. Padded couch made for one or maybe two riders. Viewscreen that showed you the world all around, plus whatever the truck wanted to show you. And then near the left hand side, down low, there’s the IV rig where you can slot your spike, you can jack right in and feel the flow of the haze as the truck cranks the feedline from its alkaloid synthfac and you’re one with the machine as it’s gaining speed. I patted the dash and said: ‘Me and you, we’re on the same road now, we got the same program. We’re gunna chase down the Brumby King and I’ll help you get back your mate and we can find Isa together as well and then it’ll all be sweet.’

Sinnerman gunned its engine and we started rolling, and Sinner seemed like it was happy to have a rider. Maybe it seen Isa be taken, like I’d seen Sinner’s mate Storm herded off, and we were on the same wavelength to chase down the brumby mob. While maybe I needed a ride more than Sinnerman needed a rider, there were times a handy dose over the link from a rider could help a truck along on its mission. I slotted the spike.

It came on dirty at first, nothing so clean, but soon I was grinning and smiling, me jaw tight and clenched though I was loose. I shook another dose of Skull Deth from the link, and Sinnerman floored it, I felt the feedback through the line, a different note in my own high as the tyres bit down on black road. I could feel the vibes in me whole body, up through me arse and into me chest, me mind was raging with the high of wrangling a wild indie and the high of jacking some haze straight from the source. It was me and the road and Sinnerman, I was trying to get used to how the link worked, trying to bend me will to the truck’s innerface but not having much luck. We were rolling and I wasn’t scared of no follower, I just wanted some clear air behind and maybe some mountains out of the desert in front, and on the road to where I could find Isa.

Through the little hatch into the rider’s cab, it was a warm dark place and soft with light coming from a strip at the front. It was safe and it smelled close with body heat of riders past and roadsmell, solvents and oil and exhaust and woodsmoke and something else, something what come off the glimmering tech those trucks made themselves, polymers and particules and the smell of raw haze. High tech and still fallen, remains of a system that didn’t work the way it should any more, so it’d taken off on its own pathway. I roaded with Sinnerman, out to the end of the line. The highway unwound ahead, white line a call sign dragging me along through the swirling dust and the surly memories. Up high in the rider’s cab, high as a flapple’s eye in Sinnerman’s insides. I cranked haze and slotted home the rusty IV jagged like a nail, dead like lead but alive with signs and meanings and the wind was singing outside. It was all black in the dark of night but in the cab I was at peace not pieces. I was at one with the road being eaten up underneath the wheels.