Should Have Killed The Kid (21 page)

The lumpy and congealed mess that coated the tarmac left Dave’s brain reeling, trying to comprehend the scale of the slaughter.

How many people died here? How many?
In the long few seconds it took to glide past, Dave asked the question repeatedly but couldn't come up with an answer. The lumps and larger segments were strewn everywhere amongst the treacle mix of blood and minced meat. The whole lot baked and shrivelled to a crust that ran the gamut of colours from black to pink to a revolting yellowish green. The shredded remains had firmed like toffee across the tarmac.

Dave could imagine what it’d be like to walk across it. The pungent odours as his feet cracked through the hardened outer coat and sank into the soft gooeyness beneath.

Picturing it made him want to vomit. Even once the soldier sped up again, leaving the charnel scene behind, he had to shake his head to rid it of the lingering image.

It took a lot longer for the imagined smell to disappear from his nostrils.

In the end he resorted to breaking the oppressive silence to escape it.

‘So…’ Dave quailed at the glare the soldier shot him but persevered. ‘Where’d you’d learn how to do all that stuff? You know. With the car and all…’ By the time he’d finished asking, Dave regretted every single word that had exited his mouth. After what they'd just seen, the question sounded ridiculous to him so he could only imagine how another person would view it.

Sally ignored him, staring out the windshield as she steered one handed.

‘Oh, probably teach you stuff like that in the army, yeah,’ Dave supplied his own answer when it became clear she wasn’t going to.

The soldier shook her head but remained mute and Dave gave up and returned to the window, amazed to find that even after everything they’d been through he felt a slight tinge of red creep into his cheeks.

He swallowed it down while he watched the scenery stream by and pretended that he couldn't hear the kid sobbing in the back seat. The effect was weird as the last dregs of the city gave way to large, hilly paddocks, only broken up by the occasional seemingly untouched house. If it wasn’t for how deserted the roads were – all up they only passed one car and that was concertinaed around a tree – Dave would have struggled to pick a difference from the last time he’d made the trip.

The rain maybe,
he thought, remembering the long drive through the downpour. Remembering the bitterness that had coursed through his body as he’d chain-smoked…

Cigarettes…

Dave felt a little jolt of excitement when he remembered the pack of smokes the soldier had given him was still tucked away in his pocket. He felt a slight twitch of a grin crease his face as he withdrew the battered packet.

It was crumpled and wilted and the bits that lacked plastic had absorbed a little more sweat than he would have liked but at least it seemed relatively intact. Dave felt his smile wilt a little when the flap tore free and he saw the twisted and torn contents inside. Thankfully, a quick rummage told him most of the damage was superficial and he dragged a cigarette from the middle of the pack, jammed it into the corner of his mouth then retrieved his lighter from his pocket.

Before he lit up, he paused to stifle a yawn. Despite the sleep he'd managed at the flat, he still felt exhausted and now that the adrenaline of their escape had fled his body, he'd really started to pay for pushing the car. His entire body ached and all he really wanted was to curl up and sleep. Somehow he doubted that be a wise course of action.

Don’t even want to think about what I’ll see next time I close my eyes.
Dave shielded the lighter from the wind with his hand and lit up. He took a long drag, the sheer pleasure of the smoke hitting his lungs nearly enough for him to pass out.

He cracked the window and blew the smoke out in a thin stream and immediately felt Sally's eyes on the smoke in his hand. For a second Dave panicked, certain she'd tell him to put it out. But then common sense intervened and he realised what was more likely to be behind the stare.

After all, she had given him the smokes in the first place.

‘Want one?’ He waved the lit cigarette in front of her and finally found the thing to get her talking again.

‘Yes,’ she murmured. Then after a second’s pause. ‘Thanks.’

‘Not a problem.’ Dave held the pack out to her. ‘Don’t know if you remember but they were yours to begin with.’

The soldier didn't look like she remembered.

‘You were at the window–‘

‘Could you light it for me? Please?’ she interrupted and nodded at her injured arm. Dave did a double take at the red patches that showed through the sheet. Her exertions getting the car started had obviously had some side effects and Dave felt like a bit of a dick in comparison, moaning over some sore muscles while she calmly bled out next to him.

‘Um... sure,' he stammered even though he wondered whether it was a good idea or not.
Doesn’t smoking thin the blood? Or is that aspirin?

He lit up another anyway and after taking a couple of drags to make sure it had caught, held it out for the soldier. She bobbed her head across and snagged the filter in her teeth then sucked in a few quick mouthfuls.

‘Does that… You know?’ Dave pointed to the soldier’s arm. She looked down at the blotchy cloth for a moment.

‘Like a fucking motherfucker,’ Sally admitted and Dave didn’t know why but he snorted laughter.

Sally barked a laugh herself and then coughed a few times as the smoke lodged in her throat.

A little of the icy tension left the air of the car. Even the kid quieted down, his sobs becoming sniffles that Dave found even easier to ignore.

He puffed away, feeling a little more comfortable and shook his head at how quickly things had escalated. Though less than a day had passed, it seemed a life time ago that he'd sat hunched amongst the office furniture in the stairwell, writing a note for the kid's mother and remembering–

'So how far is this place?' Sally spoke around the cigarette, smoke billowing. 'What'd you call it again?'

'Hent... It's about six or so hours. Maybe...  I can't really remember. A while.'

'Right. Can you grab the smoke a sec?' the soldier asked as ash broke off the end and fell into her lap.

'Okay,' Dave obeyed awkwardly. He reached out and pinched the cigarette between two fingers.

The soldier exhaled her mouthful and licked her lips. She leaned forward, studying the gauges through the spokes of the steering wheel.

'Six hours or so...I think we're going to have a problem then,' the soldier opined and just like that, the small amount of pleasure Dave had derived from his cigarette vanished.

'Oh shit. Is it the petrol. There's no petrol is there. FUCK!' Dave felt something rising in his throat at the thought of the car stalled in the middle of the freeway, exposed and at the mercy of the first shadow that crossed their path and chose to tear them to...

'Relax, we've still got a quarter of a tank. It's just not going to be enough to get us all the way.'

'Oh,' Dave collapsed back against his seat and took a deep shuddery breath.

'Are you okay?' Sally peered sidelong at him with one eyebrow raised.

'Yeah, I'm okay,' he rushed to assure her before attacking his smoke violently.

'Good then. Any chance I can get that smoke back now?'

'Yeah... Yeah sure.' Dave had almost forgotten he still held the other cigarette. He ashed it out the window before slotting it back between the soldier's lips. She took a long inhale then slowed as they eased around a sweeping bend and an abandoned car appeared in the middle of the road, the first vehicle they'd seen since they'd passed the distressing scene at the airport. Judging by the skid marks, the car had been heading the same direction they currently were before something had sent it into a long, screaming one eighty.

Dave nearly choked on his smoke as they were forced onto the shoulder to pass. The car's windows looked like they'd been painted a lumpy brownish-black. A hue that, by now, he knew only too well. Dried blood. It coated the entire interior, blocking any clue of what might have taken place inside. Dave was at least thankful for that.

It wasn't difficult to figure out what was responsible for the damage. As they headed on their way, Dave studied their surrounds, eyeing the passing clumps of trees for shadows. He was grateful that most of the scenery consisted of open paddocks. The further they drew away from the City, the less smoke filled the sky and with the sun blaring down, there were fewer patches of shadows that the
things
could use for camouflage.

'So this Hent–' Sally's interjection abruptly degenerated into a coughing fit as some smoke went down the wrong way. Dave reached across and snared her cigarette before it could spill into her lap and cause her to careen out of control. 'Ah, fuck me,' she wheezed after a second's recovery. 'It's right up on the opposite side of the river, right? Near Wentworth, yeah?' Dave nodded while he reached forward, yanked out the ashtray and butted out Sally's cigarette. 'Okay, and just so I've got it all straight. It's like this...' The soldier paused, collecting her thoughts. After another drag, Dave stubbed out his own smoke, a sick feeling building in his gut that turned the taste of the last mouthful sour.

Here we go,
he thought. He saw a muscle pulse and jump in Sally's cheek and realised that the last few minutes had been deceptive. They hadn't changed anything. The soldier was still as pissed off as ever.

'This old guy, Monty, had a shack up in this place, Hent. A bit run down but otherwise an everyday normal shack. Except down in the basement where there was a, what'd you call it, Dave? A bluestone room?'

Dave nodded curtly and stared at the glove box so he wouldn't have to make eye contact when he felt the soldier's eyes on him.

'And down in this room, this Monty – who, mind you, would later show up as some sort of... astral projection but we'll get to that – down in this room this eighty year old guy would take children he abducted and sacrifice them to a, how did you put it? A swirling whirlpool of black that bulged out of the wall? That was it wasn't it, Dave?

Dave nodded again though his cheeks felt scarlet. The way the soldier told it just made everything sound patently absurd.

'It was in the papers...' he started to protest but his voice barely scraped a murmur and Sally spoke over him.

'Anyhow, you just happened to be there and this Monty took a shine to you. Abducted you when you caught him in the act of nicking another child and took you to this bluestone room but rather than killing you – and I understand he didn't hesitate to knock off others – he instead asked you to kill the kid for him because he was all done killing. So far, so good, yeah?

Dave didn't even bother answering; just let the soldier go as she slowly built into a rant.

'You didn't though, instead you were a hero. Knocked him out, saved the day. Or least that's what you thought until you got back and suddenly all hell broke loose. Suddenly those
things
fucking swarmed the country. And the implication I'm getting is that they came from that bluestone room, that fucking swirling cone thing.'

Here we go then,
Dave thought. He knew the soldier had put it all together.
I know what her next words are going to be: that must mean it's all your fault.

'He said the blood was necessary for the magic. Old debt requires old magic, the oldest there is. Fuelled by blood,' Dave whispered softly. His hand unconsciously travelled up to run along the scar on the side of his head. The tiredness that had been with him the whole car trip tripled in intensity while he faced up to the fact that the enraged soldier was very likely to kill him in the next couple of seconds. Remembering Brendan Toohey from the skyscraper, Dave's stomach turned as he pictured her beating his head in. Not with a gun butt this time but with a rock; just like the one she'd used to smash the car window. All the while screaming:
it was all your fucking fault!

He continued to stare at the glove box while he waited for her to slam on the brakes and snap, 'Get out of the car.' So certain that violence was coming that her next words caught him completely off guard.

'What the fuck were you doing in Hent anyway?' The soldier abruptly changed tack and Dave risked a peek out of the corner of his eye. Her face was unreadable though and the uncertain nervousness continued to fizzle and pop in his stomach.

'I... I though it would be a good gift for my girlfriend. It was an old place... an old building... She always liked.... well, I thought she liked that sort of thing.'

'She didn't, then?'

'What?' Dave was now thrown completely off balance by the soldier's abrupt switch from interrogation to an almost conversational tone.

'She didn't like the place?' the soldier prompted.

'I don't know... she didn't see it... We... kind of had a fight beforehand and...' Dave trailed off, feeling ridiculous talking about such things when the apocalypse surrounded him.

'Oh...' The soldier shot him a look that Dave thought felt a little
too
knowing. He half expected her to wink and say,
so she wised up that you just wanted a pint, did she? Can't say I really blame her...