Draw the Brisbane Line (16 page)

Papetti froze.  Dave froze.  The stocky brunette who’d been slowly inching towards them since realised she was in touching distance of Dave Holden, she froze.

Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.

‘You’ll fucking what?’ Papetti said.

‘I’ll take Holden.  I’ve heard there’s some interest in getting some of Mr Holden’s time.  From my people.  I
know
there’s a high level of interest in his fiancée.’

Dave felt like someone had just injected anaesthetic into his spinal column, and the pressure change in his head caused his ears to pop.  Did he just casually drop Jenny into the disagreement?

‘What are you talking about?’ someone said, and it took Dave a few seconds to realise it had been him.

Papetti put her hand on his shoulder.  ‘Dave, go and get in the Humvee.’

‘Nah, Dave,’ Curly said.  ‘Stick around, yeah?’

Dave would have liked to go and get in the car, he’d have liked that very much, but he couldn’t move.  All he could think about was Jenny, and that somehow this curly-headed red-neck might know where she was.

‘What do you know about Jenny?’ he said.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘she pissed off one of our guys outside of Noosa, but we’re keeping tabs on her movements. Figure she might be good for some PR.  Same reason GI Jane’s got a leash on you, I expect.’

‘The fuck are you talking about?’ Dave whispered, and turned to look at Papetti.  ‘What’s he talking about?’

‘Get in the car Dave,’ she said, and then seemed to engage in a tight internal battle before adding: ‘Please.’

‘Nah,’ Curly said as he started walking over to his crippled Pajero.  ‘Dave wants to stay with me, don’t ya Dave?’

Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.

‘What are you, QTA?’ Papetti said.

‘You’re a sharp one, you are,’ he drawled as he dropped the tailgate.  ‘You gunna get this petrol or not?’

‘What’s QTA?’ Dave asked Papetti, feeling more and more like he’d slipped through the looking glass.

‘Queens Tickling Assholes,’ Papetti said.

Curly laughed.  ‘Ha!  Haven’t heard that one before.’

He rummaged around the cluttered cargo area, digging shoulder deep into bags and boxes.  Yellow stains spread out from beneath his armpits, and fresh sweat soaked his back.  Dave could make out the indistinct shadow of a tattoo on his right shoulder.  He started to slide something out, something long and dark and sleek.

Dave glanced at Papetti and saw that she already had her pistol in her hand.  She took up a shooter’s stance.

Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.

‘Move away from the vehicle.’

‘
Move away from the vee-hicle
,’ Curly said.  ‘Or what, you’ll shoot?  You’re not a cop, you’re not even local military.  You have no authority here.’

‘I have a Glock nine-millimetre aimed at your head, and if you don’t put some distance between you and your car I
will
shoot.  You hear?’

‘Oh, calm down missy.  Why don’t you put that away before someone uploads you to YouTube.’

Papetti didn’t take her eyes off Curly, but Dave turned to confirm that yes, there were still dozens of camera phones aimed their way.  One enterprising young boy had climbed up on the roof of the family car to gain a better vantage, and Dave couldn’t quite see through the reflection off the windshield whether his parents were yelling at him to get down or applauding him.  Did they realise there were guns in play?

‘I don’t understand,’ he said to Papetti, to Curly, to whoever was listening.  He really didn’t understand.  How did Jenny come into the conversation?

‘Stop fucking right there, Curly,’ Papetti said.  ‘Now!’

‘Don’t try to order
me
, Missy,’ Curly shouted, his face flashing to deep red.  ‘This is
my
country!’

Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.  Ch-chick.

‘You’re not going to get a second chance buddy,’ she said.  Her voice and her gun were rock-steady, whereas Dave doubted he could have controlled his shaking hands long enough to unzip his fly to take the piss he suddenly longed for.

‘Why are you interested in Jenny?’ Dave said.  ‘What does she have to do with any of this?’

‘Mate,’ he said as he turned away from the back of the Pajero with a rifle in his right hand.  He brought his left hand up to steady the barrel as it swung about to face them.  ‘Jenny Lucas is —’

Curly found himself lost for words when Papetti pulled the trigger, and the pistol’s crack rolled up the northbound side of the highway.  Curly twitched, and for a moment Dave thought she’d fired a warning shot, but then he saw the red spray against the white of his car and the dark spot on his forehead, just right of centre.  His hands held fast to the rifle as he crumpled where he stood.  He looked like one of those inflatable arm-waving figures after the air-blower had been switched off.

‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!’  Papetti grabbed a handful of Dave’s shirt as she quick-stepped back to the Humvee.  ‘Come on, we’re getting the fuck out of here.’

‘What about the petrol?’ he said, his brain several steps behind the swiftly deteriorating situation.

‘Fuck the petrol.’

And very soon they were gone.  He thought someone might have said something, maybe tried to stop them, but even the normally ever-present chatter of birds had fallen silent as they departed the tragic scene.

He distantly wondered how much the southbound travellers had picked up, or how much the two sobbing women had picked up.  How did they see it?

He there was only one point-of-view which mattered: that of the hundreds of camera-phones capturing their every movement.

Nine News Sydney
@9NewsSydney

Fatal shooting on the Pacific Highway outside of Newcastle, one dead.  Tennis legend Dave Holden reported to be at the scene. //bit.ly.xs34 #ninenews

Epoch Jones retweeted

Billy Billy Moore
@b_billybilly6

Check out this video!  Aussie gunman shot by US soldier near Newcastle! Dave Holden in the middle of it!  WTF??? //goo.gl.44tc #daveholden #shooting

‘The log!’ Jenny screamed.  ‘The log!’ 

She didn’t have time to elaborate, like:
watch out, there’s a log in the road and it appears we’re going to hit it — evasive action is advisable
.  Time didn’t allow for much more than
the log, the log!

‘Nah,’ Banksia said. ‘Just a big branch.  Best hold on tight though.’

They were moving too fast.  There was no chance they would be able to stop in time.  Perhaps that’s why Banksia accelerated.  Jenny braced one hand against the ceiling and gripped the door handle with the other, and when the front wheels hit the
big branch
, she was just able to prevent her head from attempting to forcibly install a sunroof.

‘Fuck!’ Tait said from the back.

‘Woo-hoo!’ Banksia howled.

It was as though some pissed off Dreamtime bush giant had grabbed hold of the vehicle and shaken it to see if there was any loose change inside.  Jenny imagined her clattering teeth as a pocketful of coins jangling in a jogger’s shorts.  The view through the windscreen was a blur of blue and brown and blue, but it gradually began to sharpen as the big car took control of the terrain.

‘Stop the car,’ Jenny said.

‘Why?’ Banksia said.  ‘It’s not like we can back up to the highway from here.  We’ll link up with a smaller road further up the track.’

‘Stop the car,’ Jenny said, ‘unless you want vomit all over the dash.’

‘Oh,’ Banksia said.  ‘Oh.  Oh
fuck
!’

Banksia’s expletive outburst had nothing to do with Jenny’s vomit-warning.  A kangaroo burst out from the scrub to their right and bounded across the trail ahead, and it wasn’t travelling alone.  Banksia braked as hard as she could without sending the car off the trail as brown blurs zipped across their path, zig-zagging through the trees and leaping logs and shrubs.  Jenny counted nine of them before the effort of trying to focus on the fast flying marsupials began to tell on her unsteady stomach.  Jenny braced again, trying to ignore the nauseous turmoil in her guts.  A huge kangaroo came flying towards them just as the Range Rover came to a stop, and it bounded right off the bonnet and kept on going.

‘Jesus, Skip!’ Banksia said.  ‘That’ll leave a mark.’

The car was suddenly rocked by a heavy thump.

‘Ah, crap,’ Banksia said.  ‘Try and keep your head down, one of those crazy fuckers might jump straight at a window.’

The kangaroos were pouring past the car from Banksia’s side. So, still keeping her head down, Jenny opened the passenger door and vomited onto the dirt track.  She spat a few times to clean her mouth before pulling the door shut.  The noise of the stampeding roos was unlike anything Jenny had ever heard, a meaty hail storm.

‘Jesus,’ Jenny said, her throat raw.  ‘How many of them are there?’

‘Dozens,’ Banksia said.  She looked out of her window at the unfortunate kangaroo’s body near her door.  ‘Poor bugger.’

‘What would make them shift like this?’ Jenny said.  ‘Is this normal?’

‘Take a look up,’ Banksia said, opening the sunroof.  ‘They’re not the only ones.’

Jenny craned her head up to look through the small gap, and saw a sky specked with fast moving shapes.  Birds, more kinds than she could count, were heading the same way as the stampeding roos.

‘Fire?’ Tait said.

‘That’d be my guess,’ Banksia said.  ‘And as soon as we get off this track we’ll be going the same way.

‘If the road is clear,’ Tait said.

‘Yeah,’ Banksia said. ‘If the road is clear.’

The bush ran out of kangaroos to hurl at them, and the three people in the car stared as the last of the animals disappeared into the dry bush.

When they finally found a main road, it had traffic, but at least it was moving.  They’d spent about an hour creeping along that rough track, which occasionally drifted off into little more than a vague gap in the dense bush.  Jenny had started to experience a clenching claustrophobia as she considered that the track might close in around them and hold them there until the fire arrived, a fire she could now smell when she opened her window, carried on the strong dry breeze.  She felt better now that the car had stopped bouncing like a toddler on a trampoline.

Banksia said they were going to go around the back of Cooloolabin Dam, try to get into Brisbane from the west side of the Glasshouse Mountains.  The roads would be much smaller, she said, but if they got jammed up the terrain would be easier to navigate off-road.

‘Are they likely to get jammed up?’ Jenny asked.

‘Eventually they will, yeah,’ Banksia said. ‘All the roads will.  Traffic is like a highly contagious virus, it spreads where it can.  Always seems worse in this country.  No-one has any bloody patience.  If I operated a petrol station, you know what I’d be thinking?  I’d be thinking, this is bound to get ugly, I’m out of here.’

‘Yeah, nah … people will be hoarding petrol,’ Tait said.  ‘I saw it happening back in Noosa?  One guy at a BP was standing at a pump filling every container he could get his hands on, even funnelling it into wine bottles?  Couple of guys in the queue behind him, big guys, made him put the nozzle back before they beat the shit out of him and took all the containers he’d filled.’

Banksia was nodding.  ‘I’ve seen the same thing happening.  We’re heading into Mad Max territory now.’

‘Who’s Mad Max?’ Tait said.  ‘He a bikie in these parts?’

‘No,’ Banksia said. ‘I meant Mad Max, the Road Warrior?  Beyond Thunderdome?  Any of this ringing a bell?’

Jenny looked back at Tait’s confused face.  He shook his head.

‘Mel Gibson movies,’ Jenny said.  ‘From the eighties.’

‘Who’s Mel Gibson?’ Tait said.

Banksia screamed and said, ‘No, I am
not
that old.  Tell me I’m not that old.’

‘You’re not that old,’ Jenny said.

‘No, not
that
old,’ Tait said.

‘What about these QTA guys?’ Jenny said.  ‘Do you think they’ll try and impose any order?  Para-martial law?’

Banksia sighed.  ‘It’d be nice if they did.  Some of them will, or they’ll try.  Guys like Al.  But for every one of him there’ll be another four or five who want to run around with their guns and try to chase imaginary invaders off their land.’

‘So why don’t they just join the regular army?’ Jenny said.  ‘Then they can go over to the Middle East and fire guns to their little hearts’ content.  Or patrol the coastline, keep out any real invaders.’

Banksia scratched the back of her neck as though the topic had given her a rash.  ‘Well, that’s where it gets a little sticky.  There are invaders, you see … and then there’s Invaders, with a capital I.’

‘And who are the capital I invaders?’ Jenny asked, though she had a feeling she knew what the answer was going to be.

‘The good old US of A, naturally,’ Banksia said.  ‘Look, it’s like this. Christians believe Christ will come again, children believe in Santa Claus, and the QTA believes that America wants to make Australia its fifty-first state.’

‘Really?’ Jenny said, unable to keep the smile off her face.  ‘I’d like to see the US Postal Service cope with that one.’

‘Amazon will struggle to keep to their next day delivery,’ Tait said.

‘Oh, ha,’ Banksia said.  ‘Look, Tait learnt how to make a joke.  Good for you Tait.’

‘How is it that you know so much about these QTA characters?’ Jenny said.  ‘Or is just that I know so little?’

‘I don’t think it’s just you,’ Tait said.

She didn’t respond, not right away.  She kept her eyes locked onto a spot about ten metres ahead of the car, her fingers occasionally tapping on the steering wheel.  Jenny wasn’t sure if it was a nervous tic or if she was counting something off: possible ways to answer that question; how many kilometres Jenny and Tait would have to walk if she kicked them out of the car right there; how many minutes of silence until they just let it drop.  Eventually though, the tapping ceased and she gripped the wheel with purpose.

‘To have a business like mine,’ she said, ‘a wildlife park in this part of the country, the QTA are pretty tough to avoid.  And it’s not like they haven’t tried to sign me up before.  They don’t have much of a public image to speak of, and they know how a widely-recognised face could lend them the credibility they lack.’

‘Well, Tom Cruise did it for Scientology,’ Jenny said.  ‘Kind of.’

‘Yeah, and I have no intention of being Tom Cruise for the QTA.  That said, they’re not all conspiracy theorist militia nuts.  Some of them just want to help.  They want to do the right thing.’

‘Like Al,’ Jenny said.

‘Yeah, like Al.  Not enough like him.’

‘And way too many like Jim, I’m guessing,’ Tait said.

‘
Far
too many like Jim,’ Banksia said.

Traffic started to slow on the road.  Jenny caught a glimpse of the snaking steel beast when they hit a straight stretch, but there was no sign of the head.

‘We’re going to have to get some petrol soon,’ Banksia said as she checked the fuel indicator.  ‘We don’t want to run dry out here.’

They made progress by inches, almost coming to a standstill, until the collective mind of the traffic seemed to make the decision as one to move into the northbound lane.  It was a safer proposition than the highway, but Jenny kept herself half-braced for impact or a reckless evasive manoeuvre into a bordering field or front-yard.  They passed scores of vehicles broken down in left-hand lane, their drivers often standing before the upraised bonnet and peering aimlessly into the exposed innards of the car.  One man very hopefully had one hand out to flag oncoming traffic, the other hand pointing at the open fuel flap of his Mitsubishi ute.

No car showed any sign of stopping for him.

The light white cloud which had snuck across the open sky began to colour with a rose tangerine blush, as the sun dipped below the low mountains to the west.

‘Say what you will about this place,’ Banksia said, ‘it knows how to put on a light show.’

‘Yes it does,’ Jenny said as she peered up through the windscreen.  ‘Yes. It. Does.’

‘We’d better get off the road soon and find some shelter,’ Banksia said.  ‘Before it gets dark.’

‘Why?’ Tait said.  ‘Afraid of vampires?’

‘Tait,’ Banksia said, ‘I know you’re trying to be a clever-dick, but you’re closer to the truth than you think.’

‘Really?’ Tait said.  ‘Vampires?  Zombies?  Werewolves?’

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ Banksia said.  ‘Maybe no spooks, but in a time like this, a lot of people will turn ghoul when the lights go out.  It always amazes me that in the absence of light, arseholes will get braver while decent folk just want to get some sleep.  I guarantee that if we just park the car by the side of the road for a snooze, we’ll wake up at the very least with no petrol.’  Her fingers danced around the car’s sat-nav display until a detailed map of the area appeared.  ‘Beerwah’s about a kilometre ahead, we should be able to find somewhere there to bed down for the night.’