Draw the Brisbane Line (10 page)

‘That’s
Ms
Jennifer Lucas, if you’re going to refer to my Hollywood persona.’

‘Pardon
moi
, Ms Jennifer Lucas.’

She allowed herself a giggle, and it lasted about as long as it took her to think about the dead couple in the Mercedes, their dog de-brained by a bullet.  Her stomach began to twist but she forced it to be calm, to relax.  She focused on the interior of the LandCruiser, the pervasive odour of dried mud mixed with manure mixed with hay mixed with stale cigarette smoke.  The sound of the diesel engine chugging away became a background constant, moving them along at a brisk pace until they hit traffic.

‘How far to the highway from here?’ Tait said when they came to a standstill.

‘Couple of ks yet, but I don’t think it’s going to get any better.  I think this is the start of the gridlock that’ll run into Brisbane and probably a good way out the other side.’

‘Shit,’ Tait said.  ‘It’ll take us all day to get to Brisbane.’

‘Yep, I reckon so,’ Al said.  ‘And maybe a bit of tomorrow, too.  Of course, if you folks are amenable, I know a few shortcuts further inland which might get us past the worst of the traffic.’

‘Please!’ she said.  ‘Shortcuts, yes, take them!’

‘It’ll be a bit bumpy.  Some of the roads are unpaved, and in places there are no roads.’

‘As long as we’re moving, I don’t care.’

‘Same here,’ Tait said.  ‘I’m for the shortcut.’

‘Shortcut it is then,’ Al said.  ‘Let’s just hope we can get to it before the traffic locks us in for good.’

‘So why exactly aren’t we flying?’ Dave asked Papetti.

‘Because we’re in a Humvee?’ Papetti said. ‘Humvees can’t fly, pumpkin.’

‘But what about military aircraft?  That has its own air traffic control, doesn’t it?  They don’t go on strike.’

‘One, the US Air Force doesn’t have a base in Sydney, and two, even if it did, the US military machine is not a damn taxi company.’

‘And yet here you are,’ Dave said.  ‘Driving me to wherever it is we’re going, picking up my fiancée on the way.’

Papetti separated hydrogen from oxygen molecules in the saliva she ground between her teeth.

Dave mentally slapped himself.  He was forgetting one of Clary White’s central rules for public relations: Don’t be a smart arse with someone you don’t know, and that goes double for Americans.  Dave figured he could probably double it again for armed military personnel.

‘I shouldn’t say any more, Mr Holden,’ she said.

Traffic heading north was heavy, but not as bad as it should have been.  The southbound carriageway, on the other hand, looked like the world’s longest, narrowest car park.  Dave found the radio on the dashboard and tuned it to one of the less commercial stations, and was just in time for the news.  The introductory news music faded, and misery began to leak from the speakers.

Property prices across the country were now down over twenty-eight percent year-on-year.

Striking air traffic controllers had been joined in an utterly unnecessary display of unity by baggage handlers, flight attendants and airport catering crew.

Looting had broken out in the Queensland resort towns of Noosa Heads and Mooloolaba, with reports of home invasions and sporadic assaults.

Central Queensland towns of Mackay, Moranbah and Emerald were reporting outbreaks of fighting and property destruction, while there were six new murder investigations open in Rockhampton.

Traffic was approaching gridlock on the Pacific Highway southbound from the Sunshine Coast as residents and holidaymakers fled south from the growing chaos.

In international news, data from China was suggesting a 12% drop in GDP from the same time last year, marking an unquestionable entry into recession.

In sport, the Australian cricket team were beaten by three wickets in the first test against Bangladesh, dropping them in the world rankings to an all-time low of fifth, behind New Zealand.

In weather, it was going to be hot, hot, hot.

The weather report was the nail in the coffin of Dave’s mood.  The Humvee was really starting to heat up.  His shirt felt like the sticky white skin which floats around in a glass of microwave-heated milk.

‘Those look like air-con controls,’ he said, pointing to a button bearing the universal snowflake symbol.

‘Yep.’

‘Can we turn it on?’

‘Nope.’

‘Doesn’t it work?’

‘It works, but I’m not to operate it unless the internal temperature passes thirty-five degrees Celsius.’

‘And what is it now?’

She glanced at the dash. ‘Thirty-one.’

‘Ooh. Brisk.’

‘If I turn on the air, we’ll go through fuel that little bit faster.’

‘I heard that that’s not actually true.  That air-con makes no difference to fuel usage.’

‘Oh really?  Well I heard different, and I don’t want to risk it.  We might struggle for gas at some point. If this rioting really kicks off, panic will spread.  There could be a run on fuel.  Roads are already looking pretty solid.  I’m going to pull off at this station up ahead.’

‘Are we low?’

‘No, and I don’t want to be.’

She took the exit without slowing and pulled in behind a brown Mitsubishi wagon in the station forecourt beneath a looming green and yellow BP awning.  The tyres grabbed hold of the cement and Dave lurched forward into the tight embrace of his seat belt.  ‘You want to get out and stretch your legs, maybe take a leak and get some snacks?’

‘I probably should,’ Dave said, carefully checking his ribs. ‘You want anything?’

‘Grab me a Coke?’

‘Sure.’

He stepped out of the truck and was greeted by a light breeze.  It wasn’t particularly cool, but it was a welcome change to the steamy interior of the Humvee.  He peeled the shirt from his back where the sweat had stuck it to his skin and it came with a sucking smack.

The station was busy, which didn’t surprise Dave when he looked back out at the thick stream of steel across the far side of the concrete divider, moving south in short and occasional jerks. Three of four customers held jerry cans, queued up behind the cars at the pumps like starved refugees at a food-drop site.  He watched a rake-thin man in shorts and an ugly polo shirt leave the station with a full can, then cross the highway in a staggered sprint, pausing every now and then to allow one of the northbound cars to pass. Horns rebuked him with Doppler screams. When he reached the divider he ran alongside it, staying as close as he could and balancing the heavy canister in his left hand. Then he swung his legs over and ran to what was presumably his car. Another man started to run the same gauntlet while Dave was watching, darting like a rat on railroad tracks.

Before he went into the shop, he walked around to the men’s bathroom at the back.  As his brain caught up to his bladder it became a race to get himself clear of the awkward bloody button-fly of his jeans.  Jenny bought them for him. She seemed to buy most of his clothes these days.  He had to admit, they fit him just as well as anything Clary’s style consultants had procured for him in the past, but he hadn’t had enough time with them to loosen the damn button holes.

He grabbed a basket near the store entrance and began filling it with food and drink. Coke for Papetti, water for both of them, a bunch of bananas and some apples, some packaged ham and tuna sandwiches, several bags of chips and nuts, about a dozen muesli bars, and the obligatory packet of Minties.  He joined the queue to pay and looked across the forecourt to the Humvee. Papetti had apparently finished filling up.

The man in front of him turned his shiny head.  The guy was big, not quite as round as he was tall but certainly testing the limits of girth. He was bald on top but the hair he had left, around the sides and back, he kept long, and it sprang upwards in a tangle of curls which defied gravity and good taste with equal disdain. Has anyone ever told him to shave the whole lot? They must have. Not a good listener then.  He made Dave think of the pointy-haired manager from the Dilbert comics.  ‘You’re Dave Holden, aren’t you?’ he said.

Dave nodded and smiled. 
Here it comes.  Keep smiling.
‘Yep.’

‘Big fan,’ Pointy said, and held out his hand. Dave shook it.  Of course he shook it.

Pointy nodded to the Humvee. ‘You been drafted then?’

Dave looked out to see Papetti back in the driver’s seat, head down and rummaging around for something at her feet, and realised then that they hadn’t established any kind of cover story, or even if he needed one. Could he tell the truth, or should he make something up?  A Masters tennis match to entertain the soldiers?  Appearing in a commercial for Australia’s war contribution to the Middle East?  Or should he just try and avoid giving a direct answer, take a leaf out of Tom’s book?

He opted for obtuse and evasive. ‘Wish I knew. Lot of madness at the moment.’

‘Yeah, tell me about it,’ he said. ‘I’m taking the family up to Gosford to stay with my brother’s family. Lost my job in a downsize and the bank took my house.  Just managed to hang onto the car.’

Oh God, a sharer.  Why did he always attract the awkward sharers?

Clary White says, try to sound genuine when offering sympathy
.
  ‘Sorry,’ Dave said.  ‘I’m really sorry.’  Puppy dog eyes, puppy dog eyes.

‘Yeah,’ Pointy said.  ‘Lots of people are sorry now. My manager was sorry, my bank was sorry.  This is it now, this is the big crash we had to have, and everyone’s going to be sorry.’

‘Bullshit,’ a guy at the counter paying for his petrol can barked.  ‘We’ll have a fucken crash if everyone keeps talking about it.  This is just a correction.’

‘Really?’ Pointy said?  ‘A correction?  When everything corrects in a sharply downward direction and stays there, I’d call that a crash.’

‘Yeah, you would.  Just because you fucked up your own situation, doesn’t mean we’re in a recession.’

‘No, the three consecutive quarters of negative growth means we’re in a recession.’

Back and forth they went, an argument which had been played to death on television, on radio, in online chat-rooms, in every pub and party in the country. In the red corner, the bubble-theorists, claiming Australia has been in a bubble in almost every dark alcove of the economy, from property to wages to currency. And in the blue corner, the deniers, who believed that everything was fine, thank you very much, and the largesse of the Australian economy was down to nothing more than fair and reasonable market forces, and the only way to go for it all was up.

Dave had heard it all so much he could almost predict point and counter-point.  His brother Tom was well encamped in the red corner, and while Dave tended to agree with a lot of what he said, he would often take up the blue corner argument just to piss off Tom.  He didn’t enjoy being disagreed with.

After a couple of minutes of heated debate, Pointy raised his hands in a
let it go
gesture. The queue moved on as the guy with the petrol can returned to the highway to chase down his southbound car.

‘Never argue with a crazy man,’ Pointy muttered.

Dave looked out to the Humvee again. Papetti was working at a small square panel in the windscreen, opening it, a window within a window. She poked something thin and dark a few inches through the opening and brought her head down level with it.

His eyes resolved the image as his brain made the cold connection. It was a rifle. Papetti was taking aim.

The air-conditioning wasn’t running in the station shop, but it suddenly felt a lot colder. Jesus, who was she aiming at, why? Surely not him, that wouldn’t make sense. Or would it? Had he really thought this whole road-trip through, the motivations and likely consequences? Granted, he hadn’t been given much of an opportunity. Too late to worry about that now.

He looked around the shop at the other customers. He didn’t see any dangerous or suspicious types. He looked back out at Papetti and saw light glint off the telescopic sight.  He widened his eyes in what he hoped was a
what-the-fuck
expression.  Papetti raised her left hand and waggled her fingers at him, then made an OK sign.

If everything was OK, why the fuck was she aiming a rifle in his direction?

‘Are you headed the other side of the line then?’ said someone behind him.

He turned to see a deeply weather-aged face with a half-smile and a glittering pair of blue eyes.  It was a look Dave liked to think of as
elderly serenity
.  He did a lot of charity and social work in his playing days — still did, post-retirement, but not with the same programmed regularity that he used to — a lot of it with sick children and the terminally ill.  He saw a lot of faces like this man’s, people who had lived a good life and were content with whatever fate was to befall them.  Blue eyes looked healthy enough, but he must have been in his mid-eighties, easily.  He knew at his age that anything could happen, and it probably would.  And that was just fine.

‘What line?’ Dave said.

‘The Brisbane Line,’ he said.

‘I think I’m headed past Brisbane if that’s what you mean.  To be honest, I don’t really know.  I’m not being told much.’

‘You haven’t heard of the Brisbane Line?’

‘Can’t say I have.  Is that something the media’s come up with?  I haven’t been following the news all that closely the past few days.’

‘It’s what the Yanks tried to set up in World War Two, a defensive boundary against the Japanese.’

He paused, waiting for recognition to spark in Dave’s eyes.  When none came he sighed, disappointed.

‘OK, so basically, they wanted to abandon everything north of, and including, Brisbane.  Protect the more valuable ports of Sydney and Melbourne.  It never went ahead, didn’t need to after Hiroshima.’

Just nod and smile Dave.  Wait for the old guy to move on.

He checked the Humvee.  Papetti was still in place, sighting down the rifle.  She made a get-on-with-it gesture with her hand.  The queue advanced.

‘It’s going to get ugly,’ the old man said with a couldn’t-care-less smile.  ‘No-one likes an occupying force.’

‘You’re worried about the Indos?’ Dave said.  He’d forgotten about the nutters in the polka-dot corner who thought Indonesia would eventually tire of their little archipelago and make a grab for the comparatively empty rock just to their south.  Or maybe North Korea, or even China.  Maybe all three in a terrifying tag-team trio of terror.

‘Not talking about the Indos,’ he said cryptically, and split off to a cashier at the far side of the counter, shuffling in his worn old thongs.

Dave made sure Old’n’Crazy was far enough away before he moved forward to pay for the snacks and the petrol, the total coming in a shade over a hundred dollars.  He walked quickly back to the Humvee in a looping trajectory, not wanting to approach straight down Papetti’s line of fire.  He briefly considered zigging and zagging, but that wouldn’t gel with his low-profile image.