Blood & Dust. Jason Nahrung
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snorts, drags himself to lean over Kevin. 'He's plenny far gone. This ain't gonna be pretty.'
'Just do it.'
And then, from far, far away, there's a tearing pain in Kevin's throat. It sparks a moment of extra clarity, of seeing past the bobbing black hair and cheek of the biker to the ceiling, dusty cream and water-stained in one corner, and his father hovering by the door, naked fear on his face, shotgun clenched in his bloody hands as his tense gaze darts between Kevin and the front of the servo where things are quiet again.
'What in the bloody hell are you doing?' his father asks, voice low and hoarse as he takes a step closer.
'I told you it wasn't gonna be pretty. You should just let him go. Sometimes, death is better, eh.'
'He's only eighteen.'
'More than some.'
'Less than most.' The shotgun barrel motions the biker to continue.
Kevin's consciousness flickers as his body turns icy; he can just make out Taipan's whispered, 'It won't hurt for long - unless you survive.' The biker pushes up the sleeve of his leather jacket, the action clumsy, restricted by the handcuffs. There's a faint, moist ripping noise and Taipan holds his bleeding forearm over Kevin's mouth. Kevin tastes warmth, a salty heat flowing through him like rum. It hits his gut: fish hooks are tearing at his insides, through his lungs and behind his eyes, all the way to his fingernails and toenails. He thinks he hears a didgeridoo moan, deep down under a cockatoo screeching that might be him or might be something else again, a squealing fanbelt, perhaps.
An explosion shakes the floor and the walls. A blast of heat and fumes. Figures - silhouettes against the flames - grapple and grunt. Gunshots crack amid the popping and banging, and something heavy hits the floor. Then the white glare of daylight blinds him, and when Kevin's eyes have recovered, he sees the back door is open and the filing cabinet is on its side, papers spilled everywhere.
Smoke billows, thick and greasy. A shape passes across the doorway, and he thinks that Dave has been dragged out but there's still a body there on the floor, reflections of flames on leather boots. Kevin hauls himself away. He wants to hide in the dark, but there is no dark, just the hungry waves of heat from the fire and the scouring burn of sunlight outside the door. He scrambles toward the lesser of the two deaths. Outside, groaning under the lash of the sun, he finds the cool relief of darkness, folds it around himself like a blanket, sinks into it like a bed made of dough. A cockatoo shrieks, and rumbling explosions and collapsing timber shake the ground, and that didgeridoo moans, moans like a man caught in a nightmare in which his world is coming down around his ears.
Finally, as the darkness takes him, it all fades away, drowned in the slow, desperate thudding of his heart.
THREE
One minute, Reece was covering the mechanic and Taipan, ranting at the dumb bastard for having let the rogue off the hook, for having let him do that to his son. The next, he was on his back and the building was an inferno and it was all he could do to haul Dave's sorry arse out of there. He found some cover amongst the car wrecks, enough to confirm Dave was still alive, but the building was aflame and he needed distance. It took everything he had - courage and muscle power - to heft his mate and get him over the fence and up to the house. It was only when he lowered Dave to the ground that he realised he'd been giving the fireman's lift to a corpse. Somewhere along the line, the Night Riders had fired a parting shot and Dave had taken the hit. Not even a red-eye could come back from a headshot.
A thin, middle-aged woman, face tight with fear and fury, emerged onto the landing and stepped cautiously down the stairs. She clutched a rifle but seemed uncertain whether to point it at Reece or the departing bikers. Together, they watched the gang flee, a roar of bikes flocking around a very smart Monaro, heading north.
The garage went up, the hot flash and detonation making them both cringe, and she lowered the weapon and all her defiance crumbled as she said two names through quivering lips: Thomas and Kevin. 'My boys.'
Reece shook his head and reached for his smokes, and a series of new explosions rolled across the flat and he felt the heat and smelled the noxious smoke, and her eyes reflected the red of flame and black of smoke and showed nothing but despair. He asked if he could use her phone, since his was still in his vehicle, but she'd already called for help; the police were on their way. But not his police, he told her, and she let him go for it.
Message delivered and orders received, he washed his face in the kitchen sink, then returned and sat next to the woman and offered a cigarette. She ignored him as she clutched the rifle, the butt on the step, her forehead resting against the barrel as she watched the roadhouse burn.
'You hit any?' he asked.
'A couple fell down,' she said, not taking her eyes off the pyre. 'They… they got up again, though.'
'Jackets,' he said, indicating his own, and they swapped names before falling into uneasy silence. He wanted to tell Diana Matheson that it was for the best. If Taipan had done what he suspected to her son, then death was a mercy. But he just sat and smoked and wondered what he was going to tell Mira when she arrived.
Reece waited with her while half the town congregated to watch the fire burn itself out. The local copper, a green constable called Smith, came over, his eyes staring and the blood draining from his face at the sight: burning servo, distraught hausfrau, bloodied copper sitting on the front stairs with a dead body covered by a coat at his feet. The constable was keen and not too dumb.
City folk had a habit of thinking their rural cousins were a bit slow, but Reece knew from experience that they could smell bullshit a mile off. Which was, he suspected, the real reason his own outfit didn't like leaving the big smoke. When your whole world was founded on bullshit, you wanted to stay where people respected it.
'I'll call for back-up,' Smith said, and Reece told him not to bother, he'd already called it in. Smith took their statements, his hands shaking, the pen jerking like a needle in a seismograph machine. It was a relief when a woman and her daughter rescued the widow from Smith's questions, and Smith from the widow's rising anger. Who were those people, she wanted to know. What were the cops doing?
Bikies, Reece confirmed for Smith's notebook. Amphetamines. Heroin. The works. He and his partner had been tracking them, and the gang had rumbled them when they'd pulled in for fuel and a cuppa. The hunters hunted, and Smith shared that look that said to lose a partner was a hell of a thing. His sergeant was laid up in Charleville after a traffic accident and he still didn't have a replacement. Probably going to close the station anyway, he reckoned, and Reece thought it was a shame for the cop that they hadn't, because if the young constable got wind of the real story, well, an accident and some sick leave was the absolute best he could hope for.
'Narc, huh?' Smith asked, and Reece said, 'Yeah, kind of,' more interested in getting Dave looked after than playing nice with the plods. Smith, after several attempts to convince Reece to a) see a doctor, and b) stay with him in the station's residence, gave him a lift into town.
In tourism brochures Barlow's Siding could be called quaint or historic, but in more general conversation it'd be called a shithole. Two pubs sat at either end of the main street as though keeping the place from blowing away in the next dust storm. He noted a post office outlet, a half-dozen shops selling nothing you'd want if you had the choice, a takeaway with 1970s plastic strips on the door to keep the flies out. The cop shop was a bungalow at the crossroads where the statue of a Digger stood permanent watch atop the war memorial. The empty shops outnumbered the open ones.
Smith pointed out the all-purpose general store, in case Reece needed painkillers or cough drops, but Reece said he would be all right, a little flash burn on the face, some singeing, smoke inhalation. He'd take a room at the hotel, not that he didn't appreciate the offer of a bed, but his people would want their space when they arrived. Smith dropped him at the hotel with the better rooms to wait for his people from Brissie. It'd be interesting to see how the firm handled it. What smoke and mirrors bullshit would VS pull on this clusterfuck?
The bar was already filled with conversation, and in the time it