Blood & Dust. Jason Nahrung
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he realised he wasn't actually alive at all.
It replays as though he's on a carousel ride:
His mother picking up the rifle and working the bolt - clack, clack, like bony jaws slamming shut - and running to the front door. Meg, there, right there, where only an eye blink ago Mira was crouching, licking his face. Meg, cradling his face and staring into his eyes; asking him if he's all right and what has happened. Her eyes are so very wide and glistening with tears, and the concern he sees there is acid in his heart. He pulls her to him and he bites into her shoulder, that point where her neck joins, and the skin is soft and steaming and opens like freshly baked bread and the rush of blood is simply the most intense - he comes explosively and she groans, her fist beating moth-like against his chest…
Screaming. Stereo, surround sound. It vibrates through him, into his chest, into his blood; his heart races, trying to match that tune. He's screaming, too, down deep where the red flood doesn't reach…
Meg, torn away. Her flesh tears under his teeth. Her shirt rips as he claws to hold her. She sprawls on her arse and screams as she sees her blood for the first time. The scarlet leaches through her ragged T-shirt…
A girl, young, his age maybe, skin the colour of strong coffee, an unnerving glimmer of red in her eyes exactly the same as he saw in Hunter's, reefing him to his feet… He's drunk on his feet and his muscles are dough…
His mother, shouting, crying his name, over and over again, and his arm around the stranger, his feet dragging, and he realises, distantly through the crimson haze, that the girl's a lot stronger than she appears…
From the back door, looking over his shoulder and seeing Meg, horrified and staring as she holds her bloodied hands in front of her, and he's mumbling her name and thinking she won't want to stay with him now. His mother shrieks at him, 'Kevin', a long wailing siren that turns into an animal's anguished howl…
Stumbling across the yard and over the fence and across a paddock that feels as wide as the Simpson fucking desert, and it's hot underfoot, the earth still radiating daytime heat though the sun's well down…
A rubber bat dangling from the rear-vision mirror, and Deep Purple's Black Night blasting the cabin, the girl winking at him, her eyes the colour of red-gold honey in the dashboard glow and he thinks she doesn't look that dangerous…
The girl, asking, 'How are we?' and it takes a moment to realise she isn't talking to him, but a walkie-talkie. 'Lucky,' she says, and Kevin wants to scream 'bullshit', and she says, 'Thanks Hippie, see you back at the ranch', and then tells Kevin it looks as if they've made a clean getaway, but he doesn't feel clean, not at all…
Him asking, pushing the word out through the fog, 'Who…?' She says her name is Kala and tells him that everything is going to be all right and he laughs, a bitter choking sound, and closes his eyes as they speed away into the night because it's easier to swallow lies with your eyes shut…
The ride goes round, and round, and round.
SEVEN
The grain elevator sat like a rusting rocket ship next to the train tracks, the towering silos spotted black with missing panels, a skeletal gantry tacked to one side, broken windows staring out from the long cabin capping the tubes. There was nothing but dirt and mallee trees for miles; the lights of Barlow's Siding made a faint corona on the horizon. The site had been abandoned back before Kevin had left school, relegated to being a place to sink booze and get laid and drag race. The council had erected a mesh fence, as if none of the country kids could use wire cutters, and the sheds and silos were covered in graffiti and littered with the remains of camp fires, beer bottles and used condoms. It was a Thursday night, school had just started for the year, and he hoped to Christ that no-one was out here half cut and with their pants down. No-one other than him, anyway.
Kala circled the building and parked where they couldn't be seen from the road. She killed the motor and the headlights and the night came down, still and quiet under the cloudy highway of the Milky Way, the half moon riding high. She sat, hands on the wheel, as though catching her breath. She wore frayed jeans and a checked shirt open over an Iron Maiden singlet. At least she had good taste in music. A silver crucifix dangled from her ear where her spiky short-back-and-sides failed to reach. Her eyes were dark brown except at times when they caught the light in a funny way; they got a sheen over them, a kind of icy red glaze that made Kevin think of an eagle or a leopard maybe. That made him think of Hunter.
'Did you see anyone other than those women at your house; some suits, maybe?' she asked. 'Cops?'
He couldn't swallow. His heart shuddered; his lungs ached, airless. All he could see was Mira on top of him. God, it was as if he was right back there again, pushing against her weight, hearing her voice slicing into him like a harpoon:
You want to survive this, then you keep your mouth shut.
'No, nobody; just my family.'
'Lucky,' she said. 'Lucky your friends were there or you might have had a real unpleasant visit. You'd be dead now, probably. Your mum too, maybe. They don't like loose ends.'
'I'm a loose end?'
'Don't worry. Your mum will be okay as long as she plays the game. It's you they would've wanted.'
'What game? Who's they?'
'We should go. Taipan will wanna tell you what's what.'
She took the key. A glint of silver; a Mexican key ring, one half sun, the other moon. It disappeared into her palm, then into her jeans, her groin thrusting up toward the wheel as she manoeuvred to slide the keys away. She gave a slight moan, the kind that comes from sitting in one place too long, of muscles strained and joints locked.
That tiny sound electrified him from ear to crotch.
'Nice wheels,' he mumbled, for the sake of saying something, anything; afraid of the loaded silence; afraid of the unintended sexuality of her action, of the constriction in his chest, of the sudden and unexpected surge of lust stiffening his cock; ashamed that he could even notice something like the tight cut of her jeans at a time like this, let alone get a hard-on because of it.
'It might not be the most sensible car to drive out here, but I just love it,' she said, patting the vintage coupe's steering wheel with an affection that made him instantly jealous.
'Yours?'
'Black girl can't own a Monaro?' There was an edge to her voice.
'It's a classic,' he said. 'They don't make 'em like this any more.'
'No, no they don't.' Then, more gently, 'How are you doing?'
He cleared his throat. 'How do you think?' He rubbed his eyes and his face, crouched forward with the weight of the confusion filling his skull.
'Take your time,' Kala said. 'You're safe here.' The light came on as she opened her door. 'I'll go find Tai.'
Kevin could smell the abandonment; it drifted around him like smoke, filled the cabin, pressing him down into the seat. Kevin sat for a moment trying to make sense of it all as the last of the adrenalin drained from his muscles, leaving him exhausted. He fumbled for the door handle, then lurched out onto the ground and retched. When he was empty, his stomach a tight, collapsed hollow, he wiped the drool on his sleeve and pulled himself to his feet.
A whistle pierced the still, cold air. He pulled himself back to the now, to the fact he was alone with people he didn't know but who apparently knew something about what had happened to him and his family. He might, he knew with a rousing hit of realisation, die here.
'Whitefella,' a male voice called. 'Up here.'
Two figures perched like crows on a beam high above. Kala, and the biker who had… The biker from yesterday. Today. Only this morning. Taipan.
A rickety iron staircase led to a shattered remnant of landing near the couple. He made his way up slowly, aware of the tremble in the structure, the blotches of graffiti. He'd come here from time to time, to drink beer