Cargo Cult (26 page)

“Battery life?”

“Yes, battery life. This isn’t good
old Pappathenfranfinghellian technology you know. This is Vinggan
crap.”

The roos stood in thoughtful
silence as lethal projectiles zipped past them at almost supersonic
speeds.

“We got to get out of here,” said
Fats.

-oOo-

The Agent and Barraclough watched
the battle from some way off, safely hidden inside the Agent’s
invisibility bubble. Barraclough was torn between wanting to rush
in and help his mates and wanting to just close his eyes and make
it all go away. He tried doing just that for a moment. He could
still hear the gunfire, of course, even with his eyes closed but he
thought, just for an instant, that it might work and the roos would
not be there when he looked again. And why roos? he asked himself.
Why not wombats, or emus, crocodiles, or goannas? He opened his
eyes. The little gang of armed kangaroos was still there, still
shooting at the thirty or so brave policemen who surrounded
them.

“Come,” said the Agent in its
sonorous voice and carried on walking towards the farmhouse.
Barraclough stumbled along beside it, the force bubble sliding
along with them.

-oOo-

Chief Inspector Sheila Sullivan
stared at the tall, angry man in front of her and wondered about
resigning. She wasn’t a young woman any more. As her husband was
fond of saying, she wasn’t this year’s model, she’d done a good few
miles, and not all of them on tarmacked roads. She knew that after
this fiasco she wouldn’t have much of a career left in the force.
Maybe she should just walk away now before the shit really hit the
fan?

“I’m telling you we need more men
out there!” Senior Sergeant Fury was shouting at her.

“And I’m telling you, Sergeant,
that nobody is being attacked by kangaroos with ray guns.”

“With all due respect, Ma’am,” said
the sergeant, through gritted teeth. “Something is out there
shooting at my lads and I don’t care if it’s kangaroos, or Loosi
Beecham, or the bloody Tooth Fairy. Whatever it is, is standing off
thirty armed police officers and it looks like it could easily
handle thirty more. We need every man we’ve got out there right
now. And we need to get the army in here double quick.”

“And what about the terrorists in
the farmhouse? What about the people who shot three of our men
yesterday and injured six others? Do you want me to leave them
unguarded while we all go off chasing kangaroos?” She took him by
the shoulders. “Rick. Rick. How many years have we known each
other.” The sergeant just scowled. “Don’t go nuts on me now, Rick.
I need level heads out here. I need people I can count on to keep
it all together."

Sergeant Fury stepped back, out of
her grip. “If we don’t do something soon to stop those kangaroos,
there won’t be anybody
left
out here except you and me.”

That’s it, she thought. Enough.
Sheila screamed. It felt good, so she did it again and then again.
It was terrific. She just screamed and screamed. That old fool Fury
shut up, she couldn’t hear the gunfire and, with her eyes closed,
she couldn’t even tell she was out in the middle of nowhere trying
to stop Loosi Beecham from killing Councillor Molly Bleach’s
sodding gardening club. She hardly felt the sergeant slap her
across the face. It was all so odd, really. That was the thing. It
was all so very, very odd. Don’t you think so, Mr.
up-your-bloody-self Deputy Chief Executive (Operations)? She
laughed. Laughed and laughed. It was just as good as screaming.
More fun even. She laughed as tears streamed down her face, not
minding at all when the two police constables took her by the arms
and led her off to the medical tent.

-oOo-

Wayne and Sam sat together in the
kitchen. About a dozen other humans sat or lounged about. The day
was starting to get warm and Sam was wondering about what it would
be like cooped up in here with so many people as the day wore
on.

Drukk was there too. He had led
them into the kitchen mostly to get away from Braxx. He didn’t
really feel like making the humans build a church but he supposed
he’d have to.

“Does anybody know how to build a
church?” he asked.

The faces around him looked blank.
A few people shrugged or shook their heads. Well, that was that,
then. Drukk certainly didn’t know how to build a church. It struck
him that Braxx probably didn’t know either and that was why he’d
given Drukk the job.

“Are you all right, mate?” Wayne
asked, seeing Drukk’s abject posture.

Sam bristled. “This is not your
mate, Wayne. This is your captor. An alien slave-master who wants
to work us to death in its forced labour camps.”

Wayne shook his head. “No, Sam.
This is Drukk.”

“I wear the orange clothing,” Drukk
explained.

“Drukk and I are getting on really
well. Aren’t we, mate?”

“You are Wayne. You wear the
clothes with distinctive glyphs.”

“Er, yeah, right. See? Drukk
wouldn’t, like, hurt us. He’s, like, an ambassador from a great
civilisation. Aren’t you, mate?”

“I am not an ambassador,” Drukk
said flatly. He turned to Sam. “You are Sam, sister of Wayne. You
wear the beige clothing with a splash of green.”

“Yes!” said Sam, excited at last.
Maybe her idiot brother was right after all. Dear God, if they
could only make a friend among these creatures, maybe there was a
chance they could escape.

“So, Sam, sister of Wayne,” Drukk
said. “You spoke earlier of working you to death in ‘forced labour
camps’. Tell me, how does that work exactly...?”

-oOo-

With Chief Inspector Sullivan under
sedation in the medical tent, Senior Sergeant Fury moved quickly to
reinforce his men on the kangaroo front. He sympathised with the
Chief Inspector’s point of view. Obviously, his men were not
fighting real kangaroos. But terrorists—or crazy cultists—in
kangaroo suits were firing on the Queensland Police and, however
unbelievable that was, they were not going to get away with it. Not
on Rick Fury’s watch!

He ordered every available officer
to the scene of the incident, leaving only a handful to keep watch
on the perimeter of the farm.

It was because of this sudden
movement of personnel that the Agent and Barraclough were surprised
by six police officers who almost ran right into them.

The Agent had dropped the force
bubble as soon as they were out of sight of the kangaroo battle and
they had moved forward slowly and quietly towards the farm. The
sudden appearance of the police officers had seemed to surprise the
Agent as much as it surprised Barraclough, judging by the way it
reared back and snarled as they burst from the bushes.

The unfortunate policemen were a
little taken aback too. Mostly, they shouted things like “Waaagh!”
and “Jesus effing Christ!” and flailed their arms about as they
skidded to a halt and tried to back up over the similarly
astonished officers behind them. It didn’t help that the
two-and-a-half metre black monster they'd happened upon threw up
its arms and snarled. Only one among them, an experienced police
officer who had spent most of his career with the Victorian police
force, knew what to do. He drew his side-arm and started blasting
away at the Agent for all he was worth.

No doubt thinking, “Oh what a good
idea. I wish I’d thought of that,” his fellow officers also drew
their weapons and started firing.

The Agent’s wonderful shield was
automatically triggered and Barraclough saw dozens of bullets come
screaming to a halt in front of them. Barraclough watched the swarm
of little grey missiles hanging in the air, mesmerised by them,
before it dawned on him that several strays had been heading his
way when the shield had stopped them. He jumped behind the Agent
with a little squeak of panic and peered round it at his colleagues
still furiously blasting away at them. He shouted at them to stop
but his voice was lost in the deafening roar of the guns. So he
shut up and kept himself squarely behind the Agent’s massive
body.

Eventually, the shooting stopped
as, one by one, the police officers ran out of ammunition. The six
men stood or knelt just a few metres from the Agent, all wide-eyed
and gasping with shock and amazement. The bullets, at a gesture
from the Agent, fell like a shower of bees to form a small, curved
line at its feet. The astonished eyes of the policemen followed
them down. Then Detective Sergeant Barraclough stepped out from
behind the Agent and said, “G’day.” Although not in itself scary,
perhaps, the sight of the Detective Sergeant seemed to trigger a
general panic and the frozen officers, with incoherent yells, ran
back the way they had come, scrambling and tripping as if they just
couldn’t get their legs to move as fast as their bodies wanted to
go.

With almost perfect timing, as the
first group disappeared into the bushes, another group appeared.
This group, having heard the recent firing, already had their
weapons drawn and ready and, after a moment of skidding to a halt,
shouting inarticulately and gaping at the gigantic black monster
before them, started up their own frenzied fusillade.

This time the Agent was ready for
them. With a sweep of its mighty arm, it seemed to generate a
powerful and sudden lethargy in the attacking police officers.
Every one of them staggered and sank to the ground, one or two
letting off final, wild shots. In a moment, they were lying in a
heap, completely unconscious. Barraclough, peering round at them
from behind the Agent, asked; “Are they all right?”

“No,” the Agent said. “They are
unconscious.”

“I mean, they’re not dead or
anything?”

“They are not dead.”

Barraclough breathed a sigh of
relief. “Maybe you should put up your bubble thing again. They’ll
probably radio for help.”

The bubble thing appeared around
them.

“Why is it a human’s first reaction
to try to kill me?” The Agent seemed more curious than angry.

Barraclough had to admit, it did
rather look that way. “It’s just...” he began. “You’re just...” He
looked up at the sinister face, the black, scaly hide and the big,
clawed hands. “Jeez, mate, you’re the bloody Bogey Man, that’s why.
You’re the story that parents scare their kids with. You’re the
Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein’s monster and a demon
from the pits of Hell all rolled into one.”

The Agent looked down at him with
its flat, grey eyes. “Bogey Man?” it asked.

“Look. Just try not to jump out at
people, eh? You take a bit of getting used to. That’s all.”

Whatever it thought about this, the
Agent kept to itself and they walked on in silence. Before long the
farmhouse appeared and they stopped to examine it.

The farmhouse seemed deserted. A
few tired-looking chickens scratched about in front of it but this
just added to the air of abandonment. The windows at the front were
smashed and the timber walls were pock-marked with bullet holes.
The broken-down utes and a decaying tractor were in keeping with
the decrepit air of the place but there was also a smart saloon
car, a large bus with its front and back blown off and about a
dozen white police cars with their doors open, several having
suffered severe damage.

“My God.” Barraclough gazed at the
smashed and burnt police cars in horror. “What on Earth happened
here?”

The Agent, who had been examining
an instrument on its wrist looked up. “Most of this damage was
caused by Vinggan blasters. They seem to have exchanged fire with a
group of humans.”

Barraclough was a little dazed.
“Vinggans? Those are the guys you’re after. The ones that look like
Loosi Beecham. Yeah?”

“That is correct.”

“Then who were the kangaroos back
there? Were they Vinggans too?”

“It would seem likely. They too
were using Vinggan weapons.”

“So the Vinggans look like Loosi
Beecham and they also look like kangaroos, yeah?”

“No. The Vinggans look like
Tullakian mud grubs. They’re quite distinctive.”

“Right,” said Barraclough deciding
he couldn’t face even trying to understand. A surge of anger went
through him then and he turned to the Agent. “Who the hell do they
think they are, coming here and shooting people and taking hostages
and robbing shops and wrecking buses and... and... whatever the
hell else they’re up to? What kind of galaxy is this? Can anybody
get away with doing anything? Why doesn’t somebody stop them? Isn’t
there some kind of law out there?”

The Agent looked down at him from
its great height. “Out here beyond the remotest fringes of
civilisation, I am the law.”

Barraclough didn’t know whether he
thought that was reassuring or not but he wanted something done and
done quickly. “Come on then,” he said. “Let’s go get ’em.”

“What’s all the fuss out there?”
Sam wanted to know. There had been a terrible stamping on the
veranda and a fair bit of shouting. Now Sam could hear the awful
sound of the Vinggan’s little stick-things being fired. “It must be
the police. They’re making a rescue attempt.”

Without even thinking about whether
it was a good idea or not, she got up and ran out into the hallway.
The backs of several Vinggans in the doorway blocked her view of
whatever might be going on outside. Then, suddenly, the firing
stopped and one of the aliens, the one with the tiny bikini, turned
and ran past her, heading for the room where Braxx was holding
court. Slowly, Sam moved forward until she was in the doorway and
could peer over the shoulders of the Vinggans.

“Oh my sainted aunt!” she gasped,
seeing the gigantic black creature standing just a few metres
away.

The Agent turned its inhuman, grey
eyes to look at her and she flinched back behind the door jamb. The
Vinggans started firing at it again but, she saw, their energy
beams seemed to slither around and past the enormous
whatever-it-was.