The Worm King (8 page)

Winston returned to the van and carefully
opened the passenger door. Peanuts had quietened down. He closed the door then
went in through the rear, feeling around in Leroy’s clothes until finding an
old belt. Returning to the front, he attached the belt to the dog’s collar and
led it back into the servo.

Much later the twins were on the floor in
the middle of the shop. Natasha wrote in the exercise book Azziz had given her,
while her sister scribbled in a magazine she’d taken off the rack by the
counter. A solitary lantern was left on, turned to its lowest setting and Natasha
had the book pressed hard up against it.

Everyone was supposed to have a quick nap
before they drove on to Canberra but Winston lay restless, and unable to sleep.
The others were scattered at various spots around the store, telling themselves
they were dozing, although in reality all were wide awake, staring into the dark.

The twins turned on a torch and got up to hunt
for more snacks from the shelves. Winston heard Astrid speak to them quietly as
they passed, saying she was sorry for shouting at them earlier but they ignored
her.

Chapter Twelve

Flying

J
ean watched the match burn out. Her last one.

She’d waited and waited and waited. Then
waited some more. Waited up here on her hilltop. He said he’d come back, with
an ambulance; promised he would.

She stood, hands outstretched groping
blindly.

‘You’re not going now!’ pleaded Hilda, invisible
in the darkness.

‘I have to. They might still be down there.’

The crowd that had huddled on the road above
the Three Sisters visitor centre mostly returned to their homes when the
tremors stopped. Jean, the elderly couple from number 28 and Mrs Cicutto had
come to Hilda’s house because it had lots of room, and to be honest, Jean just
didn’t want to be alone. Not tonight. Or today, or whatever it was. It’d simply
stayed pitch black. As the dawn hour came and went with no sign of the sun, they’d
become increasingly despondent. Old Mr Jensen who had early-onset Alzheimers
stopped trying to sing songs to cheer them up. He kept forgetting the words
anyway so that was a relief. Then his wife started praying which only became
depressing. If Rufus were here, he’d know what to do.

But her husband wasn’t here. He’d been cruelly
snatched away last year by a tumor so it was all up to her now. Jean adjusted
the back of her hair, pushing up and straightening the small bun with the pad
of her thumb. She swiveled her hips slightly and drew her shoulders back,
stretching.
Yes, I feel strong
. The pose reminded her of Marilyn Monroe
and she smiled to herself. A smile in the dark is still a smile. This made her
think of something Rufus used to say, about a tree falling in the woods and how
you could only hear it if you were . . . but she couldn’t
recall exactly how it went.

‘We can’t sit here forever. I’ll find the
gutter on the road and follow it down. Only take me twenty minutes. Maybe they’ve
gotten their television phones working.’

She said goodbye to Hilda, Mrs Cicutto and
the Jensens, then felt her way outside. After ten minutes on hands and knees
she found the guttering in front of the house. What she really needed were her GnomeBoots,
she thought, grimacing at the frightful pain in her knees. Rufus gave her the
gardening knee-protectors for her sixty-third birthday, the year before he
died. They sure would come in handy now.

They were gone! Jean sat in the Three
Sisters car park with her bleeding knees tucked under her chin, sobbing.

Gone.

Or had they ever been here? A flash of lightning
cut across the sky, the first since the appalling thunderstorm they had several
hours ago. That would’ve been useful when she’d been stumbling blind down the gutter.
However the burst of light showed she was facing completely the wrong way—the
visitor centre should be immediately in front of her, but it wasn’t there at
all! Oh my! She had to calm down, and get a grip. Obviously she’d lost
direction, most likely at the point where the gutter joined up with the car park.
Two or three steps to her left, she’d caught a glimpse of a humpy shadow which
stood out against the flat car park and looked a certainty to trip over if she
kept going that direction . . . she crept forward, fingers
reaching out hesitantly, terrified at what they might touch.

Jean’s hand came to rest on Peter the Cameraman’s
thigh. He was stone cold and she jerked back, before tentatively feeling again.
This time she touched the wet channel six banner where it clung to Peter’s bulging
intestines. She pulled away, rising and lurching backwards desperately sucking
in breath.

Now she ran fast, away from whatever THAT was.
Well, her own geriatric, shambling version of the fast run but it felt good and
quick, at least to Jean it did. The panic subsided a fraction but she couldn’t
stop, had to keep moving and get away. It was like being back in her prime,
with Rufus. He’d know what to do.

He’d say run like the bloody wind, darling!

She stumbled on across the car park and
onwards further, past the grass verge, past where the lookout barriers used to
be, then a few steps more and then . . . and then there was
nothing and she fell, spinning in the air, head over tail into the darkness, her
pitched scream swallowed by the abyss.

‘Ruffffuuuussssss!’

Chapter Thirteen

Mulloolaloo

‘W
hat was that?’ said Winston. A loud bang out of nowhere, on the
roof.

The Hat was talking about a nuke. ‘Yeah,
apparently they do. Saved up all their pennies and got one. Oath, mate.’

‘Someone threw a rock,’ said Dick from the
driver’s seat. They were on the northern outskirts of Bowral, heading south
around midnight.

‘Tonga does not have the bomb,’ stated Winston.

‘They do,’ insisted the Hat.

Dick thought an asteroid must’ve fallen just
off the coast, near Sydney. It was the only thing that explained it being this
dark. ‘The people at Mulloolaloo will be able to tell us. When these things
land, they kick up a whole lot of seawater which gets up there in the atmosphere
and swirls around and blocks out the sun for a while. Could easily have effects
far as Katoomba. Canberra even.’

Winston stared at the inky curtain beyond
the front window of the van. ‘Seawater! You’re fuckin joking right?’ The man
had no idea. ‘May as well have said Santa,’ he muttered.

‘What’d he say?’ asked Āmiria. From the
rear the wind whistling through made it hard to hear, despite Dick’s resonant
voice.

‘Dick thinks Santa did the Katoomba job,’ shouted
Winston.

‘He did not!’ exclaimed one of the twins.

The van swerved without warning, leaning
precariously before righting itself as the wheel straightened. Winston looked
up just in time to see a blurred figure jumping back from the road, arms raised,
white palms facing the van and waving in the headlights for an instant before vanishing.
Dick wasn’t stopping for anyone.

They had to pull over to take bearings. An
honest man would’ve said completely lost. They’d gone through Goulburn, past
Lake George and it should be down a side road hereabouts, or so Dick thought. ‘Only
been here a couple of times before and always in daylight. Never paid much
attention to the name of the damn road either.’ He looked down, frowning whilst
studying the NSW road map Āmiria had unearthed in the glove box.

A sharp, pungent aroma wafted through the interior.
The windows were lowered but without the van moving the smell lingered like a
sticky, putrid blanket.

‘I think our friend done poopies again,’ sniffed
the Hat.

Lord Brown had diarrhoea. They’d had to
clean him up only half an hour ago. Āmiria volunteered for the job, wiping
him down with scrunched up newspaper. Winston wondered if Girl Guides were
legally obliged to do stuff like that, when they join up, although neither of
the twins had seemed in any hurry to take it on.

‘We’ll have a five minute stretch,’
announced Dick. He switched the van off and they piled out, climbing around
Lord Brown who remained hunched up at the foot of Leroy’s mattress.

‘Urghhhhhhh,’ exclaimed Astrid in disgust, lifting
her hand off the old man’s trousers as she jumped down. Winston tried with
mixed success to suppress a laugh. He couldn’t help it: surprise diarrhoea was
just one of those funny things. When it happens to other people anyway. He cleverly
stifled the laugh by turning it into a cough, then gradually a clearing of the
throat, which ended in a furtive chuckle. It proved to be exactly one step too
far.

‘Think that’s funny, do you?’

He knew the right answer must be “No”. Had
to be. Or maybe he should go for a more elaborate lie, and . . . blame
the dog! The pause was fatal.

‘Bastard!’ She clomped off to join those standing
at the front around the lantern. Only Winston, Āmiria and Lord Brown
remained at the rear. Half-way along the van she bent over to wipe her hand on
the grass and he shone his penlight directly on her backside, then guiltily realized
the shadow must proclaim exactly where the beam focused, so quickly swung the torch
away, worried she’d come back and tear him a—

‘
Listen Winston!
’ Dick’s thick, raspy
whisper was right in his ear. He must’ve snuck around quietly from the other
side of the van and would’ve had to bend down nearly double, to get that close.
If Winston expected a stirring motivational talk he was in for a disappointment:
‘You clean that cunt up or we dump him.
’

Charming.

Āmiria led the dog around for a few
minutes until it took a piss then she tied it to the back bumper of the van. The
others were still up front arguing about which way they should go. ‘Why did
Leroy really stay back with that dopey fūlla from the garage?’

‘Dennis?’ Winston sat next to her on the end
of the mattress. Lord Brown had been rolled further inside to make more room.

‘Yeah.’

‘He wasn’t feeling well. Well, actually, he
died,’ admitted Winston. The yarn the Hat had spun to keep the twins from
finding out seemed redundant on the Māori kid; she was tough as nails, and
besides, might even know something.

‘S’what I thought. Soon as you come back inside
with the dog.’

‘Azziz thought it might be an overdose but
we couldn’t find a needle or anything. Maybe he tossed it out the window after
using it . . . seems unlikely though. You didn’t see him with
anything like that did you?’

Āmiria shook her head.

Yesterday he’d given her a rundown on
syphilis; now he’s asking her to be a drug snitch. It occurred to Winston that as
a role model, he was pretty crap. Āmiria’s feet were considerably closer
to the ground than his, which dangled in mid-air. His beam came to rest on a raw
scratch that extended half-way up her shin. It looked deep and must’ve hurt
like hell but he couldn’t recall her mentioning it. On a sudden whim of
gratitude, he thanked her for looking after the old man.

‘Gotta look after ya Kaumātua.’

‘You Girl Guides—it’s twenty-four seven
isn’t it?’

‘Ranger, you knob!’

A shaft of light appeared and scrunching
gravel warned the others were filing back. ‘Let’s go,’ ordered Dick.

Mulloolaloo Observatory was down the end of a
long, straight road which in the dark looked exactly like any other long,
straight road.

Āmiria first spotted the sign despite
being crammed right near the back with Winston. She’d been kneeling, holding
the side straps and rolling with the motion of the van; watching out the front
window and over everyone’s heads. It turned out they’d all been looking on the
wrong side of the road.

Dick pulled up in front of the largest
building. At least half a dozen lights were visible which made it the first
substantial illumination Winston had seen since Katoomba hospital, apart from
the occasional car and a number of houses that’d been burning.

‘Is power back on?’ one of the twins asked. No
one replied.

The door marked “Reception” opened and a
guard emerged. He carried a torch almost as long as Winston was tall. Dick
stepped out as the guard came over and Winston immediately lost sight of them
both.

‘Hello there. Dick Snow. Channel Six. I’m
after Li Sheng?’ His booming, confident voice would’ve been audible half-way to
Sydney. The guard reappeared, shining his torch at Azziz in the passenger seat
then into the back and finally onto Azziz again. The light dazzled Winston and
for several seconds all he could see were sparkly bursting kaleidoscopes.

‘Could you wait here for a minute, thanks
mate.’

‘Where’s he gone?’ Āmiria said. The reception
door gradually shimmied back into focus and Winston saw the guard leaning through
it, shouting something garbled with one hand cupped around the side of his
mouth.

He walked back over then disappeared down
the side of the van. ‘If you wait here, Li Sheng will be along in a minute.’

Dick spoke a few quiet words and the guard
answered, ‘No, you
all
have to wait here. Won’t be long. What? I don’t
know mate, right out.’

Āmiria immediately opened the rear door
and stepped out. Winston jumped to the ground too and in less than ten seconds,
Astrid, the Hat and twins had also spilled from the van. Lord Brown remained
inside. Only when Azziz emerged did the guard have any issue. ‘Hey! Wait there
will ya?’

‘Certainly,’ replied Azziz nonchalantly,
leaning against the front passenger door, lighting a cigarette.

‘Dick!’ The tall Asian woman coming through
the reception door smiled like a cat who’d just won the milk raffle. She wore a
lab coat, white shirt and short pea-green skirt. Way short. Sensational set of norks
too, and the top three buttons of her shirt were undone exposing the lip of a fine
red lace bra. Straight off the cover of ScienceHo Monthly.

‘Sweet,’ murmured the Hat.

Dick raced over and swept her up. They hugged,
and you could certainly tell they’d met before. Instead of coming back to the
van, Dick kept his arms around her and appeared to whisper in her ear. She
spoke quietly in return, gazing up at him.

An eddy of fine dust blew across the parking
area. The lights from the windows seemed painfully bright and Winston wiped his
brow. It was unpleasantly hot. Inland New South Wales usually felt warmer than
Sydney but this was beyond the joke. Windy too, which made it impossible to
hear what Dick and Li Sheng were saying. Sixty meters or so away, two men were
working on a 4WD with its hood raised. A lantern was hooked onto the brace holding
up the hood. Winston suspected they must’ve turned it off when the van arrived,
or he would’ve seen them.

Dick walked back looking smug, with Li Sheng
trailing him closely. ‘It was a bolide, just as I thought,’ he told Astrid. Winston
couldn’t recall him ever mentioning the word and from the interior of the van
came the bubbly, squelching sound of Lord Brown relieving himself again.