The Worm King (24 page)

‘Alright Dad,’ not even sure if she’d been
heard. You don’t forget a storm like that. She’d stretched on tippy-toes to pull
the boot cover back down, slamming it against the rear with a
whump
which nearly caught her fingers. Then she’d pushed her way against the wind to
the passenger door, and before getting in, took one last peek—just a little one—to
check he was alright. Man and sack were poised on the edge and lightening flashed
over black heaving water. A second before he gave it a final shove, it’d
occurred to Āmiria the sack was exactly the same size and shape a person would
be, if their arms and legs were all folded into their tummy and they were stuffed
in a bag.

The Mason tapped his stick on the floor as
he went. ‘From Gunnedah? The Andersons? Anyone know where the Andersons are?’

At frequent intervals Wiremu went out to
check the light. She was allowed out twice, and the rest of the time Geoff or Tamati
or Hemi or Rangi went with him, or Lord Brown occasionally. They returned with
a more sombre expression after each check. By midday, when the sun ought to have
been at its zenith, it remained more-or-less pitch dark. Windy too, and Lord
Brown told everyone there’s probably a heavy cloud cover overhead, as well as
the dense layer of particulates in the upper atmosphere, but no one knew how he
worked that out.

The Mason never found the Andersons. He
brought a new group of three men in, squeezing them into a space not far from
Āmiria’s bedroll.

The three new men
wore blue military uniforms.

WEATHER
BADGE DIARY

We are glad to be in the same room as
Astrid and her friend Francesco, who is a laugh. He is teaching Krystal and me
to play poker. He tore a big piece of wallpaper off and ripped it up into
pieces as money and we are having betting games with it. Krystal nearly always
wins.

Mr Snow said we can’t leave the room
because of the high security and there are looters all around the hotel, which
is why the door has to be locked because they keep trying to sneak in. And also
because of the acid rain.

Acid rain is cloud droplets containing
oxides of sulphur and nitrogen and they are really acidic, Mr Snow said.

It is very
cold and the lights in our room come on and off at funny times. The hotel man
who was delivering our food said it is only 4 degrees outside and he was the
one who got us the cards but today a new man bought our food and he wouldn’t
talk at all.

Natasha

Chapter Thirty

Fort

O
n the
fourth
day of living under the rubbish skip a
rat tore off most of Winston’s left ear. It’d been the size of a cat, and not a
small cat either. The plastic cigarette lighter Melanie gave him had run out,
so he never saw the rodent, and at first actually thought it
was
a cat
when trying to knock it away. Then he’d felt the tail. Cats don’t have tails
like that! The sinewy length of bristly gristle was the thickness of a garden
hose and he’d grabbed hold of it just as the creature went to move. A fraction
of a second later his mind registered, and brain screamed
Let go you fool!
Too
late. The rat twisted and bit him on the ear and clawed feet raked his neck leaving
a deep, painful scratch, then it let fly with a high-pitched, unpleasant squeal
and ran off.

The rubbish skip was perched on a low
platform at the rear of the hotel, near what he assumed to be the kitchen. Every
so often, maybe half a dozen times every twenty-four hours, someone came out
and stacked another bag next to the skip. The skip itself was already full to
overflowing. Winston figured the platform must be so trucks could conveniently
slide it onto their rear. Underneath, just enough room existed for a single
layer of bags, with a double sheet of heavy cardboard on top, then Winston,
then another three layers of cardboard above for insulation. He’d wedged cardboard
around the sides for walls, and cut a small entrance tunnel through the corner
nearest the hotel, with an even smaller bolt-hole on the diagonal corner opposite
the hotel, just in case. You’d almost call it cozy. Salubrious? Perhaps not
until the bidet went in. The dripping tap next to the skip had an empty tin
under it, which he emptied periodically into a larger tin, stored within easy reach
inside the Fort. Sustenance was provided by the many and varied treats in the
bags.

As is usually the case with accommodation of
this nature, it’d started off as a very temporary affair. More a desire to get
out of the rain; rain which somehow gave Winston the worst sunburn he’d had
since passing out on Bondi beach last February after half a bottle of Jim Beam.
This time there’d been no sun, or sand, or bourbon. Just the rats, and the
rain. At least he hadn’t encountered any more snakes. Probably too cold,
because the temperature seemed to have dropped markedly in the last few of
days. He found a tossed-out, stained, chef’s smock which fitted perfectly, once
he’d stuffed it with scrunched-up newspaper. The other encouraging development was
a brief shaft of murky sunlight two days ago, although strangely not the
following day, nor today. Now Winston had doubts it’d even appeared at all. He’d
lost his watch, so estimates of time were pure guesswork, and often on waking
it was hard to tell whether he’d been asleep two minutes, or two hours.

After arriving at the rubbish pile . . . four?—yes,
let’s say it was four days ago—the first order of business had been to quench
his thirst, which took more than an hour laying under the drip. The taps handle
looked to have been sawn off, perhaps to lessen the chance of water leakage, or
theft, but leak it did. Then he’d made for Astrid’s room, creeping around the
outside of the hotel with the intention of tossing a clod of dirt at the window
to get their attention. The room lights were all off and when he got to that
side, it was quite obvious there’d be no way of telling one room from another. Winston
paused, considering his next move, when one of the room lights
did
come
on, some fifty meters distant. Past where he suspected Astrid’s room was, but
it’d illuminated something else: another person lurking under an alcove less
than twenty meters away. When the light hit the man (or women, although it
looked too tall for a women) they’d promptly stepped sideways, back into the
shadow. The height and profile had been disturbingly similar to Harelip. Even a
bandage perhaps, wrapped around his head. Winston crawled away on all fours, very
slowly.

At least four guards appeared to be constantly
circling the hotel grounds and he was 99% certain they would’ve been told to
watch out for someone of his stature. If they managed to nab him, and he got
handed over to Harelip, there’d be no second chance at escape. Despite this, it
kept running through his mind he may be well off the mark, and these people
meant him no real harm. Maybe Harelip just wanted to be friends, and it was all
a huge misunderstanding? At one point in desperation he’d almost decided to go
around to the front gate, and simply talk to them, explain how it was all a big
mistake:

‘Look, I’m truly sorry I gorged your man’s
eye out, but you know, these things happen. I’m sure we’ll all laugh about it
down the track.’ Winston tried saying this out loud, shuddered, and decided to
wait a bit longer before showing himself.

He made another futile attempt to find
Melanie, waiting until the guards were well past, then clambering out to the
fence while doubled over to keep a low profile, and arriving exactly at the
collapsed wombat hole. He scuttled under. It’d been easier than expected, and Winston
felt quietly chuffed. He recalled those old World War II films, when Steve
McQueen and his mates would sneak out of Nazi POW camps like it were a stroll
in the park. Now he realized those movies were actually valuable training, and
clearly that sort of stuff isn’t terribly hard either.

‘Melanie? Melanie?

‘Melanie?’

After two hours of circling in the dark, softly
repeating her name over and over, the chuffiness had long departed. Perhaps it
was three hours, who knew. It began to rain. Using the few hotel lights as
navigation, he made for the wombat hole, thinking to shelter somewhere in the
rubbish pile he’d seen near the tap because he already felt thirsty again. This
time one of the guards was considerably closer to the hole, and after scrambling
under the fence, Winston immediately opted to crawl towards a faintly visible short
tree, to hide while the man passed. It involved a wide dogleg, but seemed the
sensible option. A wheelbarrow lay turned on its side beside the tree, so he dove
behind this. The guard walked past, his pace quickening because of the rain,
and for an instant shone his torch directly on the wheelbarrow; just enough to
illuminate a corpse, slightly to the right of the barrow. A man, dead as a
doornail, less than a meter away! The beam skimmed off.
It couldn’t have
been!
Must’ve been an unusually shaped pile of dirt, spilt from the wheelbarrow . . . Winston
clawed the image back: the striped shirt, jeans, sneakers, dark crusted blood around
the gaping mouth. Face off-white plastic with reddish veiney blotches.
Yes,
you saw it alright.
The guard doubtless couldn’t help checking it each time
he passed. Talk about a depressing job routine. With infinite willpower, he
waited; heart pounding; skin stinging and not uttering a sound until the guard
was well gone. Then he ran.

Following this, he resolved not to venture
far from the rubbish pile without a profoundly good reason. No point going
outside the fence again, because there was no food or water or shelter out
there. A few times he half-heartedly contemplated remounting the search for
Melanie, except for the niggling suspicion the body he’d seen might be that of her
husband, so only gut-wrenching disappointment and grief lay down that road.

The second day was the day of the construction
of the Fort. He found a stack of flattened cardboard boxes piled against the
back of the hotel which had stayed mostly out of the rain. Gathering these materials,
and putting it all together, took many hours, but eventually the outcome was a pleasing
one. The brief appearance of the sun did much to lift his spirits. That evening
he’d dined contentedly in his new home on a piece of moldy bread, two
half-eaten meat-substitute patties, and a chicken drumstick bone which had previously
been well chewed but he cracked it open and licked out several sparrow-sized swallows
of succulent, congealed marrow.

The third day, which was only yesterday but
seemed aeons ago, had been a low to end all lows.
Hey Stumpy, how low can
you go?
He woke with the screaming shits and savage stomach cramps. While
out relieving himself, Melanie’s lighter finally gave up the ghost and he
sustained a nasty cut trying to crawl back into the Fort in the dark. Then he attempted
to change the angle of the entrance slightly so the hotel lights cast a better
glow deeper into the pile. This took four hours, and midway through the side
walls collapsed, completely burying him so he had to start all over. By late
afternoon the sun hadn’t reappeared and Winston was morassed in an ugly mixture
of exhaustion, confusion and depression.

He tried to regroup, concentrating and
focusing; delving deep into his psyche for hope, some way out of this appalling
shambles. He’d been through tough times before—life when you’re only four foot
two is guaranteed its share of misery—so what would he normally fall back on,
if he felt like this and was still in his scungy Sydney house, and the comet had
never happened? Have a tension-breaking wank, that’s what he’d do!

So Winston lay on his side, eyes squeezed
tightly shut, jerking frantically on his todger in the midst of the bleak, dark,
stinking rubbish pile with only the sound of scurrying rats to set the beat. Focus
was a definite problem. Eventually the image of Astrid came: naked, bent over,
lace panties down around her ankles so he could spy bulging vaginal lips and a moist
pink crack winking right at him. He climaxed untidily, feeling a warm glob splat
under his chin.

Seconds later—and this time his body clock
was spot on, it was merely seconds—waves of guilt flooded over and he ratcheted
down to a fresh low: the all-timer, a gruesome, slopping lake of evil, filthy depression
from which there seemed no conceivable way of climbing out. When all energy was
utterly spent he cried himself to sleep for the first time since he was ten.

What was that? Something woke him.
Bang!
Was that a gunshot?
Bang! Bang!
Yes.

Winston’s neck and ear remained sore from
the mornings giant rat attack, but confidence much improved after a few hours
sleep. He was determined to regain the initiative, and take action, and this
decision felt invigorating. It was either that, or lay here in the rubbish
until the day he died, and if the rat had its way, that won’t be far off. Firstly,
he had to find something to drive Ronny the Rodent off should it revisit. Given
it scored a free mouthful of ear last time, it’s a dead cert to be back. He
needed a weapon: preferably light and sharp rather than heavy and blunt. There
wasn’t room in the Fort to swing anything big. Where could he get one? Then he
needed to find Astrid and Francesco; see if they were even still here. If they
weren’t, the grim reality was there’d be no reason to stay. Already, dry
newspaper was becoming harder to find amongst the rubbish, and eventually he’d
pick up some kind of nastier disease. He would have to strike out for the
centre of Canberra and hopefully find food and shelter there, although this
option filled him with dread.

Bang!
It came
from around the front of the hotel. That made at least ten shots in the last five
minutes. He lay in the bolt-hole entrance, looking out towards the fence. Since
the shooting began there’d been no sign of the guards walking past, although it
was entirely possible he’d missed them, especially if they didn’t have torches
on. He needed to discover why they’re shooting, and with the guards absent, the
time to do that was now. While around the front checking that, he’d have the
opportunity to see if Francesco’s truck was still there. If the truck
is
there, chances are they would be too.

Winston tried not to think of other
permutations which arrived at the same conclusion. Maybe the truck
will
be there, but only because they’d been taken out another entrance, dealt to,
and the truck simply forgotten? He could probably find a whole bunch of maybes
to fit pretty much any scenario . . . no, best cover off
the most likely options first, see what drops out the mix and take things from
there. A modicum of chuffiness reappeared, and he made ready to exit the Fort.

The truck
was
still there! Clear as
day, parked exactly where Francesco left it, not far from the entrance. A
spotlight had been mounted next to the gate illuminating the first fifty meters
of road, making it impossible for any unwanted strangers to sneak up. It also
meant they surely knew the truck was there, so to his mind raised the chances
Astrid and Francesco remained safe inside. From the corner of the building
where Winston hid, he counted seven men standing behind the spotlight, all
except two holding rifles. They faced away, and he couldn’t distinguish
individual faces, but guessed by their profiles they were the guards. It
wouldn’t surprise him if they’re simply shooting at anyone approaching who they
didn’t like the look of.

The front lawn was different, somehow. When Winston
first came around four days ago, there’d been at least six tents scattered over
it, but now they’d all gone bar one. Twenty meters from the side of the hotel
he could make out the outline of four poles sticking in the air, spaced a few meters
apart with scattered debris between them. He slithered out to take a gander. As
soon as he touched the debris he knew what’d happened: the tents had disintegrated.
He focused on the one remaining tent. It stood a quarter of the way towards the
front gate and had chinks of light twinkling from its corners. Beside it lay an
uneven mound, which from its shape, could perhaps be an old rock garden. The
guards were probably using that tent, which was obviously made of some non-dissolvable
canvas. There must be someone inside, given the light, and if he could get to
the rock garden he might be able to hear what they’re saying.