Draw the Brisbane Line (36 page)

Banksia wasn’t fighting solo for long.  The first guy to stand by her side was the militia man.  Dave recognised him from the television, from the interviews, but he couldn’t quite remember his name.  Something starting with an A, like Alfonso.  Dave just started thinking of him as Al.  He stalked up behind a disenfranchised muscular kid dressed in a Versace chenille barocco loopback hoodie, and clubbed him with the edge of his hand at the base of his neck.  He went down with a surprised cry. 

On television, Al always came across as stern and serious, yet calm.  Controlled.  He used political-speak phrases like
there is no instant solution
, and
our message is very clear and very simple
.  Now he kicked the guy in the hoodie somewhere below the ribs with a mad grin chiselled into his face.

Banksia and Al started fighting back-to-back like a couple of comic book superheroes.  They were joined by others, an eclectic blend of residents and itinerants, from the very wealthy to those completely untroubled by wealth.  A blonde surfer boy looked like he was trying to keep the attackers away from Banksia, and he was making a pretty good show of it, relying on inelegant though effective punches and kicks.  What he lacked in technique he made up for with raw enthusiasm.  Dave saw Tino running across to the group from a smaller fray further up the street, a baton gripped in his hand like a sword and his handgun still in its holster.

Dave was surprised to realise that, with the exception of the occasional warning shot fired in the air, he was possibly one of the very few people to have used a firearm during the melee.

Banksia swivelled her hip and swung her leg up and around in a perfectly executed high kick, connecting with the head of an overweight blonde girl in a high-vis shirt wearing a pair of pink diamond drop earrings, somewhere between a carat and a carat-and-a-half each.  One of the prized baubles sailed through the air and skipped along the road amongst the pebbles and blood.

Some of the blood was Banksia’s.  A lot of it, probably.  She was dripping the wet stuff from several places on her head and her hands.  Blood soaked into her once-blonde hair from two or three scalp wounds, and she spat a stream of it onto the road.  Rumour had it she once received a deep gash in her femoral artery while filming a pair of fighting timberwolves in Alaska, completely on her own with a Go-Pro strapped to her head, and nearly bled out before the medivac helicopter arrived.  The injuries she suffered now would be barely noticeable by comparison.

I can’t just stand here
, Dave thought. 
I can barely move, but I can’t just stand here while Banksia fights, while the town residents and the workers and the tourists and the police fight.  I have to join in, I have to do what I can
.

What he could do consisted of taking two laboured steps forward before a charging looter in a pair of tan Hermes loafers shoulder-charged him squarely in the middle of the back, then hurdled his suddenly pain-contorted body.  Mercifully, he wasn’t trampled.  The restraint exhibited by the police, by the militia, it seemed to have extended in a fashion to the looters.  They ran around him, jumped over him, but didn’t treat him like a rug.

He still wanted to get up, to help Banksia and join the fight.  His body seemed to have vetoed that idea though.  All he could do, he found, if he craned his neck as far as it would go and rolled his eyes to a point where they were half in the bag of his eyelids, was watch.

Epoch didn’t worry about a countdown or following any kind of safety procedure.  He just ran like fuck after lighting the fuse, no word of warning, and Biff sprinted after him.  He’d packed the remaining stock of the explosives into the small corner where the heavy gate abutted the unscalable wall, inserted the longest piece of fuse wire he could find — and none of them seemed long enough, not with a charge that size, and he was all out of remote detonators — and lit it.  They ran back up the drive towards the road and darted sideways into the scrub a moment before the charge detonated.  Biff felt the shock-wave hit him in the back, and he reflexively put his hands over his ears.  An empty gesture, his ears were already ringing like a tuning fork after the blast.

When they returned to the gate, they found it tilted and cracked, leaning against the undamaged section of wall like a drunk looking for support just to keep standing.  A great splintered bite had been taken out of the lower right-hand corner.  The wall was damaged, a bit rough down in the corner where the explosives had been packed, but the gate appeared to have taken the brunt of the blast.

What mattered was the now sizable gap in the perimeter.  Epoch stepped through it and Biff followed, and it was all Biff could do to not whisper
shit
at the sight of the palace before them.  Of course, it wasn’t a palace in the traditional sense — but to Biff, a boy who grew up in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, these were the houses of the rich and richer.  A two-storey Queenslander, double staircase leading to a wide veranda which seemed to hug the entire structure, framing it.  It loomed over them.  Must be seven or eight bedrooms large.  You tended not to see many Queenslanders this far south of the border. Biff wondered if she’d had it relocated.

‘Hey,’ Epoch said as he flipped the back of his hand against Biff’s shoulder.  The words came through like heavy machinery noise through a pair of tightly-packed earplugs.  ‘Over there.’

He pointed to the double-staircase where Yvette Winterson was trying to drag herself step-by-step to the front door, barefoot and stained and weeping.

Sammo blinked his eyes open as the down-draft from the departing helicopter kicked dust into his face, ruffled his shirt.  He wanted to shield his eyes with his hand, but his arm wouldn’t respond to his brain’s request.

But he knew.

He knew he had no right to be making such requests.  No right at all.  There’d been an explosion, a grenade.  He remembered that.  It hadn’t missed him.  He knew that.  Something was wrong with his body, his arm.  He didn’t feel cold any more, he could remember feeling cold.  That was gone.  But he wasn’t hot either, nor anything in between.   He was just … there.

He knew that he might be dying.

After the helicopter was gone, he was able to roll the dry balls in his eye sockets up and down, left and right.  There were a lot of bodies around him.  Somewhere not far away, someone was grunting.  Groaning.  Swearing. 
Fuckshitshitshitfuckahfuck
.  Sammo thought it sounded like Nero, but he’d never heard him sounding so panicked, so desperate.  He rolled his eyes just far enough in the direction of the grunts and the groans and the shitfucks to see Nero twisting around on the grass.  Did he still have arms?  He did, they were tied behind his back.

Cops, Sammo thought.  Must be cops.  But where were they?  They wouldn’t just cuff Nero and then piss off, would they?

A flash of hope passed through him.  Cuffs.  Maybe the cops had cuffed him too, and that’s why he couldn’t feel his arm.

No, they hadn’t.

‘Oi!’ Nero said, straining his head in Sammo’s direction.  ‘Sammo!  You got a knife or something?’

Sammo tried to shake his head.  He thought it might have wobbled.  No, he didn’t have a knife.

‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!’ Nero screamed at the trees.

‘Settle down,’ someone else said.  Sammo couldn’t see who it was.  ‘Take a pill.’

‘Take a pill?’ Nero said.  ‘Do you have any idea of the depth of the shit we’re in?’

‘I’ll let the lawyers worry about that,’ the man said.

‘Lawyers?’ Nero said.  ‘Oh you poor ignorant bastard.  You think we’re gunna get nicked?  You dumb prick.’

Sammo couldn’t keep his head held in place any longer, the muscles in his neck were drained of all strength.  He let it roll back up to face the open sky.  Nero continued to grunt and curse, but the noise dimmed, and Sammo found it easier and easier to ignore.  Eventually the noise faded completely, and Sammo wasn’t sure whether that was down to his own conscious effort of ignorance, or whether he himself was fading.

Yes
. 
That
.

He focused on the sky.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just laid on his back in the grass and stared at the sky, counting clouds.  Not since he was a small boy, escaping his father’s fist to a small vacant lot two blocks from his house, heading further up the hill, away from the pub, where he thought he might be safe.   He used to watch the fat clouds drifting overhead then, dark grey and pure white and the shades in between all blended together in a monochromatic ice cream explosion.   Other kids his age used to talk about the shapes they saw in the clouds, animals and cars and monsters, but Sammo never saw any of that.  All he saw in the clouds was smoke, and he wondered where the fire was.

There weren’t too many clouds in the sky now, just the odd long white wisp, like something scraped off the belly of a plane.  The lack of clouds puzzled Sammo, because he knew there were plenty of fires, everywhere.  That’s what people did when they weren’t happy: they burned things.

Something glinted in the sky, so high up that he couldn’t clearly make out its shape.  Maybe a small plane.  He stared at it, and two new clouds, string-thin and barely visible, began to stretch out from the small object.  He blinked slowly, the action taking a lifetime longer than it used to, and when he opened his eyes again those two streaming clouds seemed much longer, much closer.  They almost seemed to be reaching out to him.

He closed his eyes and didn’t open them again.  Not even when the missiles hit.

Dave felt the explosion before he heard it.  It was like an earthquake.  The sound that rolled over the town like a stampede of heavy gods, and the windows rattled in their frames.  Defenders and looters alike turned their heads to the origin of the big boom.  And that’s when they saw the fireball lifting into the sky from the hills up behind the coast, a spreading mushroom cloud that stirred panic in the guts of any one of them who could recall the threat of nuclear apocalypse.  Flames roiled in a black greasy ball, upward and out.

A cricket bat dropped to road just a few feet from Dave’s head.  He turned his head and saw the waiter from the pizza restaurant staring up at the distant blast.  He began walking away from the fight.  The run became a skip, and soon became a jog.

‘It’s the Indos!’ someone shouted.

‘Don’t be a fucking idiot,’ Dave said, his brother’s thoughts spilling out of his mouth.

No-one heard Dave’s croaked put-down though.  They heard the stupid panic-merchant, and apparently they thought he was onto something, because they all started legging it away from the fight like school-children scrambling to avoid being caught at a schoolyard scrap by an approaching teacher.  Looters ran back for their haphazardly-parked bikes, and residents ran to their cars, their businesses, their homes.  Dave wanted to shout at them that they were being fools, that the explosion must have had some other cause.  It wasn’t the Indonesians invading, couldn’t be.  He knew he’d never raise his voice to the required levels to be heard though, not in his condition. 

And even if he could, the arrival of another big black helicopter above the street right overhead would have done little to back him up.

The buffeting winds from the descending helicopter scattered looters like leaves. The explosion had stunned them, reset their motivations, their anger and their spite. It forced them to re-evaluate their priorities, which might have been asking a bit much from most of them, given the circumstances. The Blackhawk strobing the sun with its blades did that job for them, touching down in the middle of the street and practically bellowing at everyone there,
go, now, before it’s too late
.

A man and a woman, wearing what appeared to be fluorescent gym gear matched with black ski masks, stepped shakily away from Banksia.  The man had stringy brown hair which curled out from beneath the disguise in sweat-soaked tongues.  They’d been getting the upper hand.  Banksia was down on one knee and breathing hard, blood covering her face, some of it hers, some of it not. 

Dave recalled a "human wildlife" series she’d done in the Middle East.  Rumour had it she’d trained for six months to add Krav Maga to her fighting repertoire, and he wondered if she’d remembered any of it — the groaning scraping bodies littering the ground around her suggested that perhaps she had.

Banksia didn’t move except to get to her feet.  She lifted her head to meet the new arrivals and her hair whipped back from her head like a blonde-and-red torch.  It was the last image Dave held of Banksia before the occupants of the craft stepped out onto the road.  From that moment on, his attention was held captive by only one person.  He tried to shout her name, but all that came out was a weak croak.

‘Jenny.’

Epoch slipped the phone out of his pocket as he stood over Yvette Winterson.  The scuffed and bloodied newsreader tried to drag herself towards the house, but she appeared to be off with the fairies.  Blood trickled from a small cut on her forehead, and that cut was on the summit of a growing lump.

Biff wanted to give her a hankie, but he didn’t have one.  Not even an old tissue

Epoch held down the power button and waited for about five seconds.  ‘Ah, fuck,’ he muttered, and pocketed the device.  He pulled his Android Eyes from one of his many pockets, slipped them on and squeezed the frame.  ‘Open Twitter.  New tweet: At Winteryve is planning to flee Oz with her euros.  Hashtag classcrash.  Post.  Re-tweet as at qguard.’  He scratched at the back of his head and looked up at the blue sky for a moment, deciding, and added, ‘String the bitch up.  Hashtag brisbaneline.  Hashtag queenslander.’

‘Please,’ Yvette muttered.  ‘No.’

Epoch reached around in his backpack, and Biff held his breath.  He really didn’t want to see the thing he dreaded might come out of that bag, the thing and all its ugly implication.  But that’s what came out, and Biff’s hope recoiled from it.

‘Here,’ Epoch said, holding out the handgun to Biff.  ‘You need to do this.  This is what it’s all about, right here.’

‘No,’ Biff said, but he held out his hand anyway.  Just a reflex, like a dog trained by smacks and kicks.  Epoch rested the grip in his palm, and Biff’s fingers closed around it.  It felt hard and cold; but also natural, like it was made to snuggle into the swell of his thumb.

Well of course it was
, he thought. 
Of course it was
.

‘You need to pull your weight Brendan,’ Epoch said.  ‘If you want a share of this, you need to get your hands dirty.  I can’t be the only one.’

‘But I don’t want to kill her,’ Biff said.  ‘Do we have to kill her?’

‘No,’ Yvette whimpered on the ground, dragged into full consciousness by this chat about her impending murder.  ‘Please.’

‘Well, I suppose you could just shoot her,’ Epoch said.  He stepped over Yvette and gripped Biff by the shoulders.  He pulled him, shook him a little.  ‘Come on man,’ he wheezed, still struggling to get his breathing under control.  ‘Just tag her in the shoulder, or the leg.  Make a good go of it.’

‘But why?  Why do we need to do anything to her?’

‘Why?  Brendan, come on.  You know this. 
Branding
.  This is going to be a big one, bearer bonds and maybe some gold.  Very, very liquid.  We chased her all the way here from town, Brendan.  We need to make it look like it’s about
her
.  It needs the right brand.’

It made sense, Biff knew that.  Maybe.  He knew that they stood a much better chance of blending into the chaos if they themselves behaved chaotically.  He knew it wasn’t fair to expect Epoch to do all the dirty work.  He knew that if Epoch said there was a bounty of liquid wealth in the house, then that’s exactly what would be in there, because Epoch had thought a lot about this.  He had the plans.

He had everything planned out.  Everything.  Planned.

Biff started to think about those glasses on his head, the ones taking the vocal Twitter commands.  Had he paid them much attention until that point?  Maybe not.  Because Epoch rarely seemed to use them, wanting to preserve the battery.  Now, however, he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

Biff took a step back.  ‘Are you recording me?’

‘What?  Of course not.’  He scratched the back of his head.

Heat climbed Biff’s neck and set his head to boil.  Epoch was lying.

When he reached out and grabbed Biff by the shoulders, was he recording that too?  Was it supposed to look like a struggle?

Was Biff just his backup plan?  His Patsy?

He wanted to drop the gun and walk away from them — and he would have, was about to, but Epoch smiled at him and said, ‘Come on Biff, just fucking do it, yeah?’

His head boiled, and the pressure in his skull was almost too much to cope with.  He had to do something to let the pressure out.

Epoch smiled. Biff lashed out with the handgun and struck him in the mouth.

He stumbled back, tripped on Miss Winterson and fell to the ground.  ‘The fuck?’ he spat out in blood and tooth chips.  ‘The fucking fuck?’

‘You were going to screw me over,’ Biff said.  Hearing himself say the words, he knew them to be true.

‘You’re a dumb fuck Biff,’ he said.  Blood covered the bottom half of his mouth and dripped onto his jacket.  He looked like a vampire.

‘Yeah,’ Biff said.  ‘Maybe.’

Biff looked down at the dazed and wounded queen of morning television.  She still looked pretty, even with her hair all messed up and the growing lump on her head and her mascara all smeared and running down her face, like a fresh painting left in the rain.  He forced himself to smile at her.  He wanted her to feel better.

‘You’ll be OK,’ he said.

‘Guh,’ she sobbed.  ‘Guh, huh, huh.’

‘You’ll be OK.’

‘Oi!’ Epoch shouted.  ‘Genius.’

Biff looked up to see Epoch on his feet.  How long had he been staring at Miss Winterson?  Epoch’s bag was open at his feet.  In his right hand, he held his short-handled bolt cutters.  In his left hand was a small slim rectangle of metal.

‘Forgetting something?’

He held it up to the morning light, turned it one way and then the other.  It was the handgun’s magazine.

Biff shrugged.  ‘Didn’t wanna use it anyway?’

‘Yeah?  Then toss it over to me.’

Biff thought about it.  ‘Yeah, nah.  I don’t think so.’

‘Brendan, give me the gun.  If you don’t give it to me, I’m going to come over there and take it.’  He hefted the bolt cutters to underline the threat.

‘Why give me the gun if there were no bullets?’

Epoch shrugged, smiled. ‘It was a test.  You failed.’

‘Or maybe you didn’t trust me enough to give me the magazine, but still left one in the pipe?  Enough to do the deed?  That sounds like you.  What do you call it?  Hedging your bets?’

‘I’m starting to think you’re not a good bet, Brendan.’

‘Yeah?  I’m not a fucken horse either.’

Biff waited to see what Epoch would do.  Epoch apparently had the same plan, and kept his eyes locked on Biff’s.  Both men stood like that for long seconds, the woman between them weeping as silently as she dared.  They might have stayed that way for many minutes had the end of the world not interrupted them.

They saw the flash, like a daylight burst of lightning, before the noise reached them.  When it did, it was like the concentrated thunder of a hundred storms broken loose from their containing jar.  A distant fireball stretched out above the tree-line to the west, and it was enough to drag Biff’s eyes away from Epoch.

He felt him moving before he saw him.  He looked back in time to see Epoch coming at him with the bolt cutters.  Reflexes took the place of caution, and Biff raised the unloaded handgun at Epoch and pulled the trigger.  The gun kicked and went bang — sounding like a popgun in the aftermath of the almighty boom still echoing around them — and a non-existent bullet hit Epoch just below the chest.  He twitched in mid stride, and then kind of weakly sat down on the ground.  The bolt cutters and the magazine both clattered free of his grasp.

Biff walked around Epoch and reached down as he passed him. He left the magazine where it was, and the bolt cutters, but he lifted the Android Eyes from Epoch’s face.  He folded the arms flat and slipped it over his shirt.

‘Hnnnnh,’ Epoch wheezed.  ‘Hnnnnh.’

Biff stepped up to Yvette Winterson and tried once more to smile at her.

‘Are you OK?’

Yvette Winterson nodded, barely more than a shiver.

‘I’m not going to hurt you.  But I am going to have to get into your safe.  Do you understand?’

Another shiver-nod.

‘OK.  Good.  I’m going to help you up now.’

Biff helped Yvette Winterson to her feet, and supported her as she limped and lurched towards her house.

‘I’m a big fan,’ Biff confided.  ‘I watch you almost every morning.’

‘Hnnnnh,’ Epoch wheezed from behind them.  ‘Hnnnnnnnnh.’