Vulture's Gate
Kirsty Murray
was born in Melbourne, the middle child in a family of seven kids. She spent years travelling around Australia and the world, trying dozens of jobs and living in different countries, finally returning to become a full-time writer. Kirsty is the author of eight novels. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and a drifting tribe of young people.
OTHER NOVELS BY KIRSTY MURRAY
Zarconi's Magic Flying Fish
Market Blues
Walking Home with Marie-Claire
C
HILDREN OF THE
W
IND
Bridie's Fire
Becoming Billy Dare
A Prayer for Blue Delaney
The Secret Life of Maeve Lee Kwong
First published in 2009
Copyright © Kirsty Murray 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: [email protected]
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Murray, Kirsty.
Vulture's gate / Kirsty Murray.
ISBN: 978 1 74175 710 1 (pbk.)
For secondary school age.
A823.3
Cover and text design by Ruth Grüner
Cover images: James Nelson/Getty Images (crows in field), Jason Walton/
istockphoto.com
(barbed wire), AskinTulayOver/
istockphoto.com
(birds), Paul Tessier/
istockphoto.com
(vulture), sn4ke/
istockphoto.com
(kids)
Set in 11.2 pt Adobe Caslon Pro by Ruth Grüner
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group
10 Â 9 Â 8 Â 7 Â 6 Â 5 Â 4 Â 3 Â 2 Â 1
CONTENTS
For Roxane Walker
Callum felt the rumble of roadtrains, and froze.
Black shadows skittered across the blinds as a convoy pulled up outside. Outstationers. If only he hadn't insisted on staying home alone. Instinctively, he dived for the floor.
The red neon sign at the gates of the compound flashed a warning across the surrounding desert, but Callum knew his fathers were still miles away.
Inside, the Elvis Presley cuckoo man jumped out of his clock and crooned the hour. Fighting down his fear, Callum crawled across the black-and-white tiled floor towards the kitchen, heading for the safety of the security apartment. Beneath him, the ground trembled. Above, the ceiling buckled and Callum covered his ears to block out the sound of Molotov cocktails exploding against the compound roof. One by one, every alarm in the Refuge was triggered, screeching against the invasion.
As he pushed open the swing door to the kitchen, still keeping low to the floor, he heard the first crash. Someone was around the back trying to force the rear entrance. Metal grated against concrete. Any minute and they'd be through the second set of doors.
Callum combat-crawled on his belly across the floor as the rear wall exploded inwards and pieces of debris hurtled through the kitchen. A cloud of dust and napalm-scented smoke billowed into the air. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the grille of a roadtrain slam through the café's outer wall, sending shards of glass and steel across the pink vinyl booths. Callum bit his fist to stop himself from screaming. Then he saw the back doors collapse, and men charged across the wreckage, shouting and hooting amid the wail of alarms. He scrambled to his feet and made a dash for the security apartment entrance. He punched the keypad. Nothing happened. The system had shut down to prevent invasion. He was locked out.
Callum screamed, his throat raw with terror, as two men grabbed his arms and swung him into the air. They slammed his body against a wall and then reached for him again. Any moment now, they would smash his head against the ground and leave his broken body in the wreckage for Ruff and Rusty to find; a bloody signature.
Someone grabbed his ankle and dragged him outside, through the smouldering debris. The last thing Callum saw before he blacked out was the Elvis cuckoo clock falling into the rubble of Ruff & Rusty's Roadside Refuge.
Bo put two fingers between her teeth and gave a long, low
whistle.
The roboraptors were a faint shadow against the horizon, keeping low to the ground as they moved in for the kill.
Bo gave them enough time to finish off their prey and then whistled again to bring the raptor pack loping across the plain. As each one drew close, she touched it lightly on the skull and murmured its name â Chinky, Thumbelina, Cinderella, Silky. They bobbed their heads and ululated happily before scurrying into the underground bunker. Mr Pinkwhistle was the last to return. He dropped a feral cat at her feet â a thin, stringy animal, but at least it was freshly killed. Anything was better than the salted desert rat she had been eating for the last few days.
She took the cat away from the burrow entrance and squatted in the dirt to gut and skin it. The hot, fresh smell of its flesh made her mouth water. She threw the skin into the branches of a hakea tree to dry, then scraped a hole in the ground and buried the inedible parts of the cat.
By the time she crawled back down into the burrow, the roboraptors were in sleep mode, standing in a neat row against the rear wall of their den. Bo knelt in front of Mr Pinkwhistle and rested her hand on his blunt snout. Before switching him off, she stroked his spine until he began to emit a low, purring sound. The other roboraptors whined faintly in response, acknowledging Mr Pinkwhistle as the favoured hunter. Satisfied, she reached under the jaw of each one in turn and switched them off. The afternoon sun would have charged them fully and she wanted to make sure they stored the energy for tomorrow's dawn hunt.
Bo laid Poppy's recipe book on the kitchen table. Her grandfather's handwriting sloped across the paper like a horde of insects scurrying to the edge of the page. She smoothed the folio with one hand and twirled her meat cleaver in the other.
Bo's Cat Stew
One cat, skinned and gutted. Remove hind legs and rub with oil
or fat â feral pig lard is best. Put in tin.
Add bush onions and pigweed. Scrape bitter seeds from handful
of bush tomatoes and discard. Add bush tomato skins. Chuck in
lump of rock salt. Seal tin tightly, push up through flue hole so sun
beats down on solar lid, and boil. You know it's cooking at the right
temperature when you can hear a rolling, bubbling sound against
the metal base.
Poppy had filled the margins of the book with little drawings and tips on where to find the best ingredients, how to thresh wild grasses, how to pickle desert fruits and salt meat to store for the lean times. Bo wished she had his voice stored as well as his words. With the roboraptors at rest and the stew cooking quietly in the solar flue, all she could hear was the thumping of her own heart.
When the meat was tender, Bo took a plate and sat in the entrance of the burrow, gazing out at the bleached desert. The stew tasted sweet, salty and bitter all in the same mouthful. The sun sank lower towards the horizon. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine she was sitting next to Poppy and he was telling her what a good girl she was, what a fine cook, what a strong woman she would be one day. The westering sunlight felt hot against her face and she pushed her hands against her eyes to stop them stinging. It was only when the sun dipped below the horizon and the cool desert night began to fall that she wedged a rock into the mouth of the burrow and went back underground.
Callum felt sore all over.
Even his tongue hurt. The metal torque around his neck chafed endlessly and his ears were raw and bloodied where the Outstationers had cut out his microchips. But more unbearable than the physical pain was the emptiness he felt inside. After the violence of the kidnapping, he had expected worse to follow, but instead he had been left alone in the dark for days on end, only a sliver of light seeping into the back of the roadtrain as it rumbled across the desert.
There were two buckets in the truck, one for him to do his business in and one full of brackish drinking water. Once a day, someone poked a crust of bread or a piece of salted meat through a slit in the door. No one spoke to him, no one checked on him.
All he could do was sit and wait and hope that the Outâstationers were holding him ransom. Ruff and Rusty would pay to have him released. But deep inside, Callum suspected that the Outstationers had no interest in selling him back to his fathers. For months they had been conspiring to drive Ruff and Rusty away from the area, to rid the western desert of a last vital link to the Colony government. Without Ruff and Rusty's Refuge, there would be no safe house for Colony men trying to trade with the remnants of civilisation in the west. Callum pressed his fists against his temples. He had to get back to his fathers.
The door was wrenched open and hot sunlight washed over him.
âTrading time, boy,' said the Outstationer, unshackling Callum's chain from the wall and dragging him onto the road. Callum stumbled along in the man's wake, the soles of his bare feet scorched by the burning ground.
A man in a shiny leather vest and dusty black leather trousers stood waiting. Flanking him was a ragtag group of desert wanderers whose clothes were stained with red dust. The leather-clad man stared at Callum from beneath bushy eyebrows.
âHe's a good 'un, Floss. You won't be sorry,' said the Outâstationer, pushing Callum forward. âBeen raised by a pair of proper fathers. He's a real boy. Speaks nice. Keeps his nose clean. Guaranteed. This sort are worth training. You know I wouldn't sell you a dud. Pig-boys only last until they're fifteen but you'll get years out of this one.'