Draw the Brisbane Line (19 page)

She pulled away from him, and her visible pain magically transformed into a smile.  It lit her up.  ‘Wonderbra,’ she said as she wiped tears from her face with her hands.  ‘I am in disguise.’

‘Attention to detail is important,’ Dave said.  ‘But a Yankees hat?  That’s your idea of subtle?  Do you know how many Yankees fans we’re likely to encounter?’

‘It’s all I have.’

‘Wait there,’ Dave said. 

He searched the office and soon found what he was looking for: a white cap with a
Cricket Australia
badge sewn to the front, sitting on an old grey filing cabinet next to a tube of sunscreen and a leather dog leash.  The inside hat band was yellowed by sweat stains, but it would do.  Dave wondered what had happened to the dog.

Papetti adjusted the strap and tried it on.  It fit her well.

‘What do you think happened to him?’ Dave said, nodding to the corpse.

‘Overdose, looks like,’ Papetti said.  ‘Maybe heroin.  Can’t see any tracks on his arms, so it might have been accidental.  A rookie mistake.’

‘Maybe intentional though?’ Dave said.

She appeared to think about it, then nodded.

After transferring all the cargo between the vehicles, which consisted of a few black bags and their food, Papetti removed the final item from the civilian tank: a piece of blue machinery the size of a suitcase with long black hoses spiralling out from each side.  It looked like a heart torn from a giant robot’s chest.

‘Water pump,’ Papetti said.  ‘Works a just fine with gas too.’

She fired it up with a ripcord and Dave’s sinuses were suddenly flooded with the searing odour of kerosene, and he was transported back to mowing lawns for five dollars as a child.  She uncoiled the hoses and commenced sucking the life out of the Humvee, transferring it to the big white Toyota.  It only took a few minutes, and when she was done she packed the contraption into the back of the Everest and they were on their way again.

‘This one,’ Banksia said.

The car slowed to a stop before a double-fronted Queenslander whose better days had been forgotten by dead generations.  Banana trees and Cocos palms slouched around the front yard, along the side, and probably around the back.  The wood panelling was so badly flaked that it seemed diseased, and the once-silver corrugated roof was covered by black tarry fruit-bat shit, which made it appear to be only partly there.  Tait stepped out onto the footpath first and walked up to the warped and weed-choked front fence.

‘
This
one?’ he said to Banksia as she joined him.  ‘You want to stay in
this
one?’

‘I want to stay in this one,’ she said, her smile closing her eyes.

Tait gave her a sideways look, eyebrows raised.  ‘You sure it’ll hold us?’

‘Show some taste Tait.  This house has history, it has style.  It has
character
.’

‘You know what real estate agents say when they need to take a shit? They say I need to take a
character
.’

‘It also looks like it’s empty,’ Banksia said in a downbeat tone, like she was disappointed at having to state the obvious.  ‘The town might be quiet, but it’s not abandoned.  Try and act like we’re supposed to be here.’

Jenny carefully stepped out of the Range Rover.  Her legs felt weak, as though her knees might unhinge at any moment and drop her to the ground.  She’d experienced the sensation before, but only after a heavy gym session or a spin class.  What was causing it this time?  Was it pregnancy?  Stress?  Exhaustion?  All of the above?  As she arched her back and rolled her shoulders, her stomach tightened and made a loud, wet rumble. 

Banksia’s head whipped around to stare at her.  ‘Holy crap,’ she said, ‘was that
you
?’

Jenny shrugged.  ‘I’m hungry.  You’ve been neglecting your duty to keep me fed.’

‘My duty now?’

‘Your sisterly duty.  You’re basically my proxy midwife, or lady-in-waiting.  I’m not sure which.’

‘A lady-in-waiting is like a BFF for royalty.  Do you consider yourself royalty, princess?’

‘Midwife then.’

‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that position.’

‘You know which end the baby comes out, I’ve seen you on TV.’

‘Yeah, but you only have
two
legs.  I might get confused.’

Jenny tried the latch on the front gate.  It gave with some wiggling and twisting, and Jenny’s fingers came away coloured by white paint powder and rust.  She brushed her hands on her shorts and walked up the weed-cracked path towards the front porch.  Although she kept to the centre of the path, long grass stalks brushed at her shins, and she immediately began to itch.  The front lawn would be a jungle to anything smaller than a rabbit.

‘I’ll put the car away in the garage,’ Banksia said.  ‘Better if we don’t advertise our presence.’ 

A hint of a driveway cut a vague path through the grass and weeds to a fibro garage with a deeply rusted tin roof.  The doors stood open to reveal a mostly empty space, which Banksia filled ever so cautiously with the big black Range Rover.  Half a minute after switching the engine off, she emerged from the vehicle via the boot, crawling head-first over the lowered tailgate.

‘Tight squeeze,’ she said.

Tait helped her unload some essentials before they closed the garage doors and joined Jenny in front of the porch.

‘Looks empty inside,’ Jenny said.  ‘Dark.’

‘Hopefully,’ Banksia said.  ‘I think it’s a ghost house.’

‘What, like it’s not really here?’ Tait said.

‘She means it’s empty,’ Jenny said.  ‘Maybe a deceased estate not worth selling, just left here to rot.’

Jenny turned about on the spot to take in the immediate neighbourhood.  The houses either side of the Queenslander were mostly obscured by the thick overgrowth of morning glory strung through the palms, but she could see some light from the one on the left filtering through the vines.  Across the wide street was a row of near-identical brick homes which all looked like they’d been knocked together at the same time, probably by the same builder.  She could see lights coming from inside three of them, and the house directly opposite had its driveway lit up like a landing strip.

‘Looks like someone’s home,’ Jenny said.

‘If they were, they would have come out for a sticky-beak by now.   Probably left their lights running on a timer.  Look at the front lawns. You could lose small children in that growth.’

‘So why don’t we stay in one of those houses?’ Tait said.  ‘They look like they at least have air-con.  This place looks like it’s probably occupied by possums.’

‘Yeah,’ Jenny said.  ‘You’re going to break into a house, bypass the security system, and open the garage door from the inside.’  She turned to Banksia.  ‘This from the guy who tried to steal my car with a wire hanger.’

‘No way!  What kind of car?’

‘Lexus LXA.’

‘Oh, Tait, you didn’t,’ Banksia said.

‘I wasn’t trying to steal it,’ Tait said.  ‘I was just trying to
look like
I was trying to steal it.  They were watching me.’

‘Oh, Tait,’ Banksia said, and spanked him on the bum.  ‘You naughty boy.  You naughty,
naughty
boy.’

‘I wasn’t trying to steal it,’ Tait repeated, sullenly.

‘Come on,’ Banksia said.  ‘Let’s get inside.’

She strode up the short staircase with a bag in each hand and stopped at the front door.

‘What now?’ Tait said. ‘You gunna kick the door in?’

Banksia raised her leg and reared back, preparing to drive her heel into the door.  Then she dropped her foot, lowered the bags, and tried the handle.  The door opened with a rough squeak.  She turned her head and winked at Tait.

‘Wait, do you know who lives here?’ Tait said.

Banksia shook her head.  ‘You see where the dead-bolt is, about half a foot above the handle?  It didn’t line up with the frame.  This door’s so warped I’m surprised it closed at all.’

She carried the cases inside and Jenny and Tait followed behind, Tait straight-arming a couple of bags and Jenny carrying a swelling hunger.

Jenny flicked on the lights inside the front door.  Energy-saving bulbs from a couple of badly-dated brass wall sconces blinked to slow life, casting a dim orange glow over the living room and brightening as fast as constellations cross the night sky.  Above the light switch was a small dial, so Jenny twisted it around and was rewarded with the low electric buzz of a ceiling fan coming to life.  The warm air in the house swirled and carried scents of dust and mildew and something else, a faint floral perfume.

‘What are you doing?’ Tait whispered.

‘Turning on the lights,’ Jenny said.  ‘Why are you whispering?’

‘Because … because … because this isn’t our house.’

‘And you think a normal speaking voice will what?  Trigger the booby traps?  I’m going to see what there is to eat in this place.’

Banksia and Tait went in search of bedrooms to set up sleeping arrangements while Jenny went straight to the rear of the house to the kitchen.  It was compact but clean, with a gas stove and oven and a considerably large fridge-freezer.  She turned on the overhead fluorescents and went straight to the fridge with her fingers crossed.  She cracked the seal and cold air drifted over her skin.  She scanned the contents of the surprisingly well-stocked fridge, waiting for something to catch her fancy.  Yoghurt?  No, too milky, and probably solid by now.  Eggs?  Blerk.  Ham?  She picked up the small knob of meat and peeled back the plastic.  She sniffed it and judged it OK.

‘That should be fine,’ said an unfamiliar voice from the back door.  ‘It’s less than a week old.’

Jenny shouted in surprise.  She spun around and clutched the piece of ham like a weapon.  She immediately felt stupid.

‘Don’t shoot,’ the elderly lady said from the open back door.  She smiled broadly at Jenny and raised her hands in mock surrender, a plastic shopping bag looped around one elbow.

Footsteps pounded through the house and Banksia and Tait burst into the kitchen, both of them coming to a skidding halt when they saw the cause of Jenny’s alarm.

‘Jesus Christ!’ the woman said, still smiling and beginning to laugh.  ‘I’ve only been gone half an hour or so.  I wasn’t expecting squatters so
soon
.’

Nero didn’t need another bump of cocaine to keep him awake, not once they hit the highway.  Speed wasn’t an indulgence but a necessity as the road ahead and behind was choked closed by steel cholesterol.  Impatience with the unmoving southbound lanes was pushing more and more drivers to try their luck on the other side, and as twilight gave way to darkness, the dip in light and the rise in bravado led to more scrapes and crashes and flaming wrecks.  Like Nero and Sammo in their streaking white missile, many other drivers realised their window of free movement on the wrong-side highway was closing fast, and so they pushed their vehicles in the hope that they could outrun the building congestion.  This approach did not always gel with the slow-moving vehicles creeping across the divider and trying to merge into a lane which was never designed for compromise.

The Lexus neither stopped nor slowed for any of the mad motorists.  The speedometer slipped past two hundred kilometres-per-hour, and the handling seemed almost instinctive to Sammo as he drifted between wildly veering cars and fresh accidents.  Flames burst into life on both carriageways with an alarming regularity, and when a tow-truck about a hundred or so metres ahead of them ploughed through the side of a 5-series BMW in a wallop of rent steel and breached fuel tanks, Sammo showed no signs of slowing. He sped up and pulled the car across to the right, tracking the sideways movement of the rolling, flaming BMW and sliding past it before it chest-bumped the barriers on the other side.  Nero looked closely at the young man, noted his unblinking focus and steady nerves.

‘Got some balls, ya do,’ he said to Sammo.  ‘Handy road skills too.’

Sammo shrugged.  ‘I like cars,’ he said.

‘How did you come by this one, if you don’t mind me asking.’

‘Found it.’

Nero eyed him closely.  He didn’t flinch when he lied, or give away any other signs of being dishonest.  He was either an excellent liar or corrupt enough to genuinely believe it — either way, Nero thought he might be a useful asset in the coming days.  He had so very few allies left, and he’d need some new ones if he was to take down the old ones, as he intended.

‘You know who I am, boy?’ Nero said.

‘Your name’s Nero, like you said.’

‘Yeah, but do you know
who
I am?’

There, a hard swallow.  That was a tell — the boy was nervous.

‘I’m not sure,’ Sammo said, ‘but I think you might be Nero Ames.’

Nero settled back in the car seat and smiled to himself, satisfied.  ‘You think right.  Sammo, I’d like to ask you a favour.  I need some help.’

They came to a stop in Adelaide Street deep into the night, still with a quarter of a tank of petrol remaining.  Nero thought they’d have made it there hours ago, but then the traffic really began to bite on both sides.

The boy had done a good job, speeding up when he could and shooting the gaps between cars, determined to stay ahead of the inevitable logjam which would soon infect the northbound side.  And they did stay ahead of it, surfing the crest of the sweeping wave of congestion. Otherwise they’d still be locked in traffic somewhere up near Caboolture.

At this hour, the streets in Brisbane’s CBD would normally be the domain of occasional taxis and police cars.  But not that night — cars poured through the streets in numbers Nero hadn’t seen in peak hours, flooding up and down cross streets and cutting across the city as they headed for the highway.

Nero pulled himself out of the car and stretched.  His ribs felt as though they were being pulled apart, the rotator cuff in his right shoulder hurled abuse at him for rolling it, and his head was a sample-bag of pain and warning signs.  But still, it felt good to be on his feet.  He reached down into the car and pulled out his carry-all, slung it over his shoulder.  He peered across at Sammo.  ‘You coming?’ he said.

Sammo grinned and unbuckled his seatbelt.

There weren’t any bikes in sight, but Nero had no intention of going in unprepared.  He unzipped the carry-all and slipped out the shotgun as he led Sammo into the lobby of the apartment building.

‘Here,’ he said, and held out the Sig to Sammo.

Sammo stared at it blankly for a moment, as though his brain had just gone off-line in order to re-boot.  Then he took the gun in his hand, and Nero could see goosebumps spring up on his arms.

‘Just follow my lead,’ Nero said.  ‘If I shoot at someone, you shoot at them too.  Got it?  Here, the safety’s still on, you take it off like this.  OK?  You OK?’

Sammo just nodded.  He pocketed the car keys and gripped the pistol in both hands.

Nero punched in an access code at the entrance and led them through the mostly deserted lobby of the Soleil apartment building, heading for the lifts.  As they climbed to the seventy-second floor, Nero leaned against the mirrored interior and suddenly felt as though he could go to sleep right there, standing up.

‘You OK?’ Sammo said.  He still held the Sig tightly in both hands, but at least he had it aimed down.

Nero closed his eyes.  It felt glorious, just letting his eyes rest and blocking out part of the world, just for a few seconds.  He wasn’t going to get much further with coke as fuel.  He needed sleep.  ‘No, not really.’

‘I know it’s probably none of my business, but … why
are
we here?’

‘My wife.  My wife lives here.’

The lift passed thirty and kept climbing.  Nero tried to tighten his grip on the shotgun, but the muscles in his hand were already fully contracted, the flesh of his fingers almost completely filling every crack and crevice of the grip and the slide.

‘You ever kill anyone?’ Nero said.

Sammo dropped his head.  ‘Yeah, kind of.’

‘Kind of?  How do you kind of kill someone?  Was it a zombie?’

‘It was kind of an accident.  There was a knife and he …’

‘It’s OK,’ Nero said softly.  ‘I understand.  These things happen, and they’re going to be happening a lot more than normal over the next week or two, for as long as this madness drags on.  But you’ve never killed anyone with forethought?’

Sammo shook his head.

‘Well, Sammo, I tell you: if you stay with me, you might well have to.  So I’ll give you this chance now.  When I get out of this lift, you can go straight back down to the lobby, get back in the car and drive out of here.  If you want to.’

Sammo chewed his lip.  ‘And if I don’t wanna do that?’

Nero let go of the shotgun grip and rested his hand on Sammo’s shoulder.  It felt like knots of wood bound tightly in skin.  ‘Then you watch my back and I watch yours.  I can pass on some of my experience, and in return, I just need to know that I can trust you.  Can I trust you Sammo?’  He grabbed his gaze and held onto it.  Sammo didn’t blink, didn’t flicker.

‘Yes.’

Nero nodded and returned his hand to the weapon’s grip.  The lift was almost at their floor.  ‘Good lad.  Be ready now.’

The doors slid open with a chime and they stepped into the hallway with guns raised.  Nero tried to keep himself at full alert, anticipating an attack even though he knew there wouldn’t be one coming.  He was just trying to distract himself from the knowledge that whatever he was going to find in the apartment wouldn’t be good.