Prohibited Zone (16 page)

‘What are we going to do with him?' asked Kara, who had come over.

‘Canya tay me ta 'ospita?' mumbled Ritten.

He tried to lick his lips, but there was no moisture on his tongue.

‘Why would you join up with a freak like Janeway, Ritten?'

He shrugged, painfully. ‘Seem like a good ideer adda time.' His voice was dry and raspy, like he was rearranging gravel with a shovel – slowly. ‘We was pssd. Ever'thin' seem lika good ideer whena pssd. We drove aroun' for a few ows up in Pimber, lookin' for some fucken Arabs, never saw a fucken fing. A' sum poin' we medd up wi' Janey and 'is maes 'an we orl jus' keppon drinken. Then when Chook an' me wake up we're in Janey's flat in Adlae. We just come along forer ride. Jussa bidda fun, we fought. We never fought idded gedd so fuck' up.'

‘And smashing my car, jussa bidda fun?'

He shrugged again. ‘Janey sed you was soff on some fucken terriss. I luv Astraya. Its ow fucken cuntry, ma'e. We don' wan no fucken san' niggas here. We gotta bit angry wichya, 'ats orl.'

‘Ritten, you're a useless piece of shit,' I said, standing up.

‘Fukkyu, Wessie.'

I grabbed his good arm and hauled him to his feet. He cried out in pain, but I didn't care; I was in pain myself and hurting him made me feel better. We staggered together up the ramp to the top of the cliff and over to the ute, Kara following behind. Luke had already driven off.

‘Hasn't my ute got skinny?' I said. I hobbled around it. Mostly it was just panel damage, although all the lights had been smashed and the rear right wheel well was so bent it was touching the tyre. I pulled on it and managed to bend it up enough so that it just cleared the tyre. I drew back the tray cover.

‘Get in,' I said to Ritten, who was standing uselessly next to it. ‘And don't bleed on my ute.' Using his good arm and with some rough-and-ready assistance from me he clambered over the gunwale and lay on the tray, trying to arrange his arm into a comfortable position, his face twisted in pain.

‘Yer taken me ta 'ospita, ri?' he mumbled.

I didn't bother to reply. I grabbed a wrench from my toolkit before pulling the cover over him and tying it up. Then I used the wrench to knock the glass out of the fractured windscreen.

‘Are you okay to drive?' asked Kara.

‘I'll manage.'

Back on Main South Road I stopped at a service station and bought a plastic windscreen that lasted about thirty seconds before blowing away, so we had a breezy trip back. The Southern Expressway had reversed and was in our favour again and we made it to Flinders Medical Centre in less than half an hour. I pulled over to the side of the road and undid the tray cover. Ritten was still there, still alive and still in pain. His eye was completely gummed up, a nasty liquid oozing out from under the lid.

‘Get out.'

He clambered out, his gravel rash having stiffened up by now and his arm still useless. It would go on being useless for at least six weeks; the greater Ritten, though, would be useless for the rest of his life. He stood on the pavement, looking around with his good eye and nursing his arm, his shoulders hunched. I had never seen a man look so sorry for himself and felt so unsorry myself.

‘The hospital's across the road,' I said. ‘You might be lucky. Your mate Hose might be there, too. Just look for a nose-less son-of-a-bitch hooked up to a dialysis machine.' He started walking off, but I grabbed him by his good arm and turned him around.

‘Wrong way.'

I directed him to a pedestrian crossing, watched him take a few pathetic steps towards it, and joined Kara in the car.

‘I don't suppose that idiot would have a clue what a dialysis machine is, anyway,' I said.

For most of the trip she had been busy texting but now she looked at me.

‘Do you?'

‘Not really, actually.'

I met her gaze and caught her smiling. Her hair had been wind-blasted away from her face and it was wild and tangled and a little bit scary. Strangely, though, it made her look less hostile. She ran her hands through it, trying to get it to settle down; she soon gave it up as a hopeless task. I pulled back into the traffic. The road was wet from the thunderstorm that had passed through. Cars hissed as they went by and the air smelled good. The city had needed a good purge.

‘So how do you think they found us?' she asked. ‘I thought we shook the tail before.'

‘Apparently not.'

She shuddered. ‘What a bunch of creeps. Janeway in particular. What is wrong with that guy?'

‘What's right with him?' We were talking loudly so we could hear ourselves above the noise of the wind.

‘Sorry about your car,' she said. ‘Can you claim insurance?'

‘I don't know. I'll have to look at the policy and see if it covers vicious assault by timber-wielding thugs.'

‘Maybe I can buy you a drink. I probably owe you one. I'm meeting some friends at the Arkaba later. I was wondering if you wanted to come along.'

‘What sort of friends?'

‘Mostly the crowd that was up in Woomera with me. Simon Rice will be there.'

‘Baz Rice?' I looked at her in surprise. ‘I didn't know he was a friend. You didn't seem to know him at Spuds.'

‘He's our inside man. I'm not going to let the morons at Spuds know that, am I?'

‘I guess not.'

‘Anyway, you're welcome to come if you want.'

It was the friendliest conversation we'd had since we met.

‘Nice to meet you,' I said.

‘What do you mean?'

I shrugged. ‘You seem friendly all of a sudden, that's all. It's nice to make some human contact.' I should have known better.

‘Why do you do that?'

‘What?'

‘That. Why do you turn a nice moment into some sort of point-scoring competition? Anyway, Steve West talking about human contact – ha! Don't make me laugh. You haven't got a clue what it means to make human contact. You know as much about human contact as a garden slug.'

After that we drove to Luke's house in silence. He hadn't got back and there was no sign of Rolley, but the house wasn't locked anyway; in fact the front door was still wide open. Someone had done some tidying. It could have been Rolley but more likely it had been his girlfriend. Kara took a shower and came out looking well scrubbed, her hair wet and back under control. She sat at the kitchen table putting Dettol on her gravel rash while I also took a shower. When I emerged she gestured to me. I hobbled over and, without saying a word, she spent half an hour treating my feet. She had steady, competent hands and an attention to detail, teasing small bits of gravel from the cuts with a pair of tweezers and a needle she had sterilised with a match. She bathed both my feet in a mixture of warm water and Dettol, let them air-dry, applied some gauze pads and wrapped them in bandages from ankle to toe.

‘That might make it a bit easier to walk,' she said, finally.

‘Thanks. You're not a bad nurse.'

She glanced at me quickly; I watched the rise and fall of her hackles.

‘I suppose you're not a bad patient.'

She poured the remains of the Dettol down the kitchen sink and disposed of the empty packages and soiled cotton wool. Then she sat next to me again and fixed me with her green eyes.

‘I do appreciate what you've done for me, for us,' she said. ‘I might not show it, but I am grateful.'

‘No worries. It's a joy to help out.'

Luke returned soon after that, without Bozo and without a smile.

‘Vet put him down,' he said. ‘Wanted to know what happened. Told him he got hit by a car.' He opened a beer and went outside.

14

L
UKE WALKED TO THE LOCAL PUB
, telling us he was off to get pissed. I couldn't drive the ute at night because it didn't have any lights so I borrowed Luke's Corolla and drove Kara to the Arkaba Hotel on the south side of the city.

The Ark Tavern, one of the hotel's several bars, was dark, dingy and horseshoe shaped. Pseudo-leather lounge chairs were arranged in bays on the outer perimeter of the room. Behind them on the walls were large, garish neon depictions of what were meant to be seams of opal in a rock face. The light had an orange tinge, in keeping with the theme of a dank cave illuminated by the dying world beyond. The room was crowded. Women sat in the lounges and men stood closer to the bar, leaning on hexagonal poseurs, clutching their drinks and chatting among themselves while eyeing the women. There was a jukebox, but it had been decommissioned for the evening and an intense woman in a white blouse and black skirt and stockings was trying unsuccessfully to turn a Beatles song into jazz using a baby grand piano as a blunt instrument. Above her, a television screen was showing one in an interminable series of keno games. The game finished as I watched and the words ‘gamble responsibly' flashed up. Then a new game began.

Kara spotted her friends in an area offset from the horseshoe furnished with purple stools and wooden tables. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down so that my ear was close to her mouth.

‘These people are my mates, so I look out for them. They don't need to know what's going on with Saira – what they don't know can't hurt them, right? So keep your big mouth shut.'

‘I don't have a big mouth.'

‘No? You and the River Murray are about on par, I'd say.'

I could have told her that the Murray mouth was blocked by barrages, sandbars and eastern Australian garbage these days, but I didn't. We approached her friends, she walking, me hobbling. As soon as they saw her they burst into applause.

‘Cut it out,' she said, grinning. ‘This is Steve West. He's been helping me. Be nice to him.'

‘Jeez, that's a big ask,' said a young, good-looking man with his hair spiked upward and a soul patch under his lower lip. He raised his beer at me.

‘I'll be nice to him,' said a plump young woman with assorted bangles on her wrists and wearing what looked like a hessian bag.

‘You're nice to everyone,' said the young man, and a few of the others laughed.

I spotted Baz leaning against the wall with a glass in his hand, looking like an off-duty movie star. He was chatting with two young women with his half-smile in place; they seemed to be admiring every word he said and every hair on his head. He seemed to be admiring their cleavages. Eventually I caught his eye and he excused himself and made his way over.

‘What are you drinking, Westie? Since I've got to be nice to you.'

Kara touched his arm. ‘Wait your turn, Baz,' she said. ‘I'm buying first.'

Baz looked at me and raised his eyebrows. ‘What have you done to deserve that?' he asked. ‘She's never bought
me
a drink.'

‘Liar,' she said.

‘I stand corrected. You bought me a milkshake once. Three years ago, wasn't it? I'll have a scotch, straight up.'

‘Alright, if it'll keep you quiet. West, you're a beer man, right?'

‘A beer's fine.'

She pulled a small purse out of her satchel, which seemed to go everywhere with her, and walked off to the bar.

‘She's in a good mood,' said Baz. ‘For her. You haven't slipped her one have you, Westie, you dark horse?'

‘Nah, I haven't. She seems to think I'm one of the lower life forms, so I don't like my chances.'

Baz laughed. ‘Don't feel too bad about it, mate. Many have tried, not too many have succeeded.'

‘So you've known her three years?'

He scratched his chin. ‘Yeah, I reckon it's about three years. We met at Villawood, at the detention centre there. I moved over to Woomera last year and a few months later she rocked up there, too.'

‘What do you think of her?'

He was wearing sunglasses pushed up into his hair. Absently he ran his fingers through his hair and discovered them. He removed and folded them and put them in his shirt pocket.

‘She's a good woman, except I could never get her in the sack.'

I wasn't sure I believed him. ‘How long you down for, anyway? Weren't you all on double shifts up there?'

‘Yeah, worked all night on Friday night,' he said. ‘Plenty to do, I can tell you. But then reinforcements arrived from Baxter and some of us got time off for good behaviour. I headed down here this afternoon.' He nodded in the direction of Kara's friends. ‘I wanted to say goodbye to this mob before they racked off.' There were about twenty of them, ranging in age from at or just below the legal drinking age to fully matured and pickled. One middle-aged man seemed to command an audience; he had long ginger hair tied in a ponytail and a grey goatee beard and he wore a black t-shirt with a sketch of Che Guevara on it.

‘So who are they?' I asked.

‘A bizarre collection of rogues and radicals,' he said. ‘Mostly alright, I think. See the guy with the ginger ponytail? That's Phil. Professional protester. He started at the Franklin Dam and has been a fixture at just about every demonstration since. Sponsored by the Australian government via the dole.'