The Tankermen (8 page)

Finn lay still, his eyes open but the rest of his body totally relaxed. He could feel a crowd of thoughts hovering at the
edge of his brain like Christmas-sale shoppers waiting for the doors to open, but for the moment he refused to let them in. He stared at the leaves moving near the window and listened to the sounds beyond the room, the murmurous traffic, the scratchy sound of a voice on a radio, the footsteps of two people passing on the pavement below. There was the odd shift and thump of someone moving around the flat. Jed?

Finn turned his head on the arm of the sofa and his body woke up, stiff and cranky in every joint. He tested both legs, lifting and twisting the foot of each in turn, and discovered that it was the right one that was injured—it felt as if the whole back of it was sheered off and raw, but when he put his hand to it there was only a narrow strip of bandage around it. Someone had taken his jeans off to get to the wound. He pushed the blanket aside and twisted around trying unsuccessfully to see the damage.

Every skerrick of blood had been sponged away from the back of his leg. He looked at the carpet, but could see no darker blots on the crimson that might be blood. He couldn’t see his jeans anywhere, either. It was as if nothing had happened—except for the pain, of course.

And except for the fact that he was here, back at Jed’s. Thank heaven for Jed, or he’d have had to get that taxi to take him to Strathfield, or, worse, to hospital. He’d be lying there now with cops all around him firing questions, for sure. But he was left in peace—or in as much peace as anyone could expect after seeing the things he’d seen.

There were footsteps outside the door and Finn hurriedly pulled the blanket back over himself. Jed’s head appeared.

‘Oh, you’re back in the land of the living, are you?’ He grinned. ‘How you feeling?’

‘Okay,’ Finn said uncertainly, feeling the doors in his brain open and the shoppers flood in. ‘Seen my pants anywhere?’

‘Yeah, they’re in the dryer. I’ll go get ’em.’

The jeans were spotlessly clean and hot, with a neat tear a couple of centimetres long in the back of the right thigh. ‘What was it?’ said Finn, poking his finger through the hole.

Jed produced a sharp little grey stone from his pocket. ‘This. I kept it for you.’

‘Hey, gee, thanks.’ Finn rolled his eyes and grinned. He fingered the stone and then spoke with an effort. ‘I s’pose you want to know what happened.’

‘I already do. It’s been on the radio since before you got back.’

‘Yeah? What are they saying?’

‘This happened round about Wynyard at eleven this morning, right?’ Finn nodded. ‘A couple of bombs went off, they reckon.’

‘Bull, they did!’

‘Okay, tell us your side of the story, then.’

Firmly stomping on the panic he was beginning to feel, Finn told him about the tanker following the bus and his flight through the park with the tankermen firing at him. He had a sick memory of the people toppling around him. ‘Did anyone get killed?’ he forced himself to ask when he’d finished.

‘Minor injuries all round,’ said Jed. ‘A bruise here, a few stitches there. The bomb squad reckons it was lucky no-one was hurt worse.’

Finn ran his hands over his face. ‘
I
was lucky they had such lousy aim. But how come no-one saw them firing, no-one noticed them? Why do they think it was bombs?’

‘I dunno, mate.’ Jed gazed at the windowful of yellow-green coins of moving sunlight. ‘Maybe they say one thing and think something else. Maybe they don’t want to scare people. I dunno.’ He gave Finn a long look. ‘One thing they
do
want to do is talk to you.’

‘They do?’

‘Slightly-built youth in black jeans and a white T-shirt seen running from the scene. Sound familiar?’

‘What, they think
I
did it?’

‘Mate, they don’t know
what’s
going on—they want all the clues they can get, I’d say.’

‘If that taxi driver hears the news, he’ll
know
it was me. He’ll lead ’em straight here.’

‘Is that so terrible? I mean, wouldn’t it be good to have the professionals in on this game?’

Finn closed his eyes for a moment. His father’s face, battling for control above his white shirt and grey tie, swam before him.

Jed touched his arm. ‘You’re getting hurt, mate. You’re lucky you weren’t blown to bits out there. A lot of people are lucky, come to think of it.’

‘I know,’ said Finn in anguish. ‘But I can’t help thinking, if it’s so dangerous just to have
seen
those guys with the tanker, then to tell more people about them is like daring them to come and get me.’

‘Think so?’

‘Yeah. They’re after me, for sure,’ said Finn. ‘Somehow they know I reported them, and that I gave the sample to my dad. They know I’m on to them, and they want me out of the way. But what’s really scary is, they know where I am. Somehow they found out where I went this morning, ‘cause they didn’t follow me out there—I would have seen them. They just suddenly turned up, coming after the bus—’

Jed stopped him. ‘Right, and face it, what a dumb time to turn up!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you’d already got rid of the sample, hadn’t you? It
was in the lab. Why didn’t they blow up the lab or something? Or why didn’t they come here last night? The sample was sitting right there, on that table, all night—what stopped them coming here and blowing us apart? If you ask me, these fellers are pretty slow off the mark. They may have fancy weapons, but (a) they don’t use them very well and (b) they have a hard time locating their target, wouldn’t you say?’

Finn soaked up every word like a sponge, trying to conjure a feeling of relief. ‘Yeah, they seem a bit clumsy. Shooting that cop instead of me, for instance. They didn’t come looking for me then, and I was just behind a fence.’

‘And what’s more, for people who don’t want to draw attention to themselves they’re pretty dumb to go blazing away in the middle of town in broad daylight, hey.’

‘But maybe they disguise themselves. Maybe other people don’t see them, and maybe their weapon is made so that the marks look like bomb explosions.’

‘Come on, Finn, that’s just ridiculous,’ said Jed.

Finn looked hard at him for reassuring disbelief, but Jed was looking at the floor. Then he glanced at Finn and they both heard how thin his words sounded. ‘Jed, they just don’t act like
any
people I’ve ever heard of.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ Jed looked away again. ‘You watch the TV, any of the heavy news documentaries—there are terrorists, crime bosses. Rubbing out one policeman and a few innocent bystanders’d be nothing to people like that. They don’t operate like us normals. They don’t know
how
to feel guilty. They just go after what they want, and if you’re in the way—splat!’

‘But like you say, they didn’t get me. They react too slow, they’ve got lousy aim. Why would some big, rich company hire such useless people to get rid of its waste?’

‘Because it’d be no loss if they got caught, maybe. I don’t
know. Maybe they don’t even know who they’re working for—they just get a shipment of stuff and orders to dump it.’

‘And a licence to go after anyone who sees them—and eliminate him.’

Finn looked at Jed, hoping again to hear him scoff. But Jed stood up slowly, stroking his beard. ‘Let’s have a nice cup of tea,’ he said.

At four-fifteen Finn came off the phone and joined Jed on the fire-escape steps.

‘Well, what did Pops have to say?’ said Jed in a too-ordinary voice.

‘It’s toxic, it’s illegal and it’s . . . well, it’s alien.’ He widened his eyes at Jed and they both laughed nervously.

‘Alien how?’

‘Well, there are some elements in it that they can’t identify. And Dad says the sample must have got contaminated somehow—there are cells in there that just couldn’t survive in that mix of chemicals, but somehow they’re there, and they’re multiplying. So.’ Finn shrugged. ‘Maybe the jar wasn’t as clean as it looked. They want another sample. One of their tests went wrong or something. But they definitely want to know where we found it.’

‘So did you tell ’em?’ Finn nodded. ‘So what can
they
do?’

‘They can get the police on to it.’

‘Did you tell your Dad how dangerous it was?’

Finn shifted on the step. ‘I told him they were armed, and where we saw them, and the times, and that. I didn’t let on about them following me, or any of that stuff.’

There was a pause while Jed thought. ‘Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So what do we do now?’

‘Beats me. Keep out of sight.’

‘Oh, I get it. This whole thing is an excuse to bludge off
me for a place to stay.’

Finn looked up, horrified. ‘It’s not! I wouldn’t—’

‘Just joking, mate, just joking.’ Jed shook Finn’s shoulder until his jaw rattled. ‘You can stay here as long as you need to.’

‘What about the other guys?’

‘What about ’em? You’re a mate, right? Trev has mates round to stay all the time. Don’t get your knickers in a knot, Finn—no-one minds you being here. Come on, let’s go inside and watch some telly till the aliens come for us.’

The hours they spent safe indoors made the earlier talk of aliens seem a bit peculiar. Now that he was inside a real house, Finn felt that everything around him was wonderfully normal. The comfort of sitting on a cushioned sofa, even one as broken-down and decrepit as Jed’s, and of using a bathroom that was guaranteed weirdo-free, gave his body a lulled, expansive sense of being at home, without any of the worries—the old familiar worries, anyway. And as Jed was a real snacker, forever wandering into the kitchen to raid the fridge, Finn’s stomach soon became fuller than it had been for weeks.

But by seven o’clock Jed and Finn were sick of staring at the TV, and itched to get outside. Finn had the feeling he’d sometimes had in his box, that he was running out of oxygen and would soon have to start panting for breath.

‘I reckon we’re sitting ducks here,’ he said to Jed. ‘I know those guys are slow, but we’re giving them plenty of time to home in on us.’

‘You’re right,’ said Jed. ‘Besides, we need some fresh air. Let’s take the bike out for a run. That way we can make a quick escape if we need to.’

‘Good idea.’ Finn was cheered at the thought of freedom and movement.

Jed had heard of a party that was going on in Kirribilli, so they rode across the Bridge and hid themselves in the crowd for a while. ‘Not that crowds put those guys off,’ said Jed, ‘but it feels safer somehow.’ Jed got talking to some biker mates, and Finn wandered around feeling very young and wide-eyed, just watching people talking and dancing. There was a lot of smoke in the air and a lot of loud music and shouted conversation, and the same reek that spilled out of open pub doors, of hot beery breath. Finn was a bit intimidated by it all, the closeness of all those bodies after the weeks alone on the streets. Like Jed’s flat, it felt safe but suffocating.

‘Let’s get away from all this racket.’ Jed had obviously begun to feel the same way. They put on their helmets and started out on a long, aimless ride around the streets.

Finn liked the city at night. Sunlight was hard on cities, showing up the dirt and the tackiness, but at night you could ignore it and just look at the flashing lights and the shiny reflections off passing cars and the mystery of people reduced to silhouettes. Through the visor of Jed’s spare helmet, which was slightly blurry with scratches, things looked even more cryptic and distorted. Finn was glad the tankermen’s vehicle was so bulky and visible, and wondered uneasily whether they ever went about without it, or discarded their heavy suits and masks to pursue people more easily.

Jed was making it pretty difficult for anyone to follow them, snaking through dense masses of traffic on the main roads or finding tortuous ways through great complexes of lanes. Finn’s main fear was that they’d find their way blocked by the tanker in one of those narrow back streets, and he kept peering anxiously around Jed’s shoulder.

Occasionally he recognised where they were and realised that Jed was taking them gradually closer to the Cross. ‘What’re you up to?’ he yelled over the mutter of the engine
as they waited at the next set of lights.

Jed’s helmet turned and he nudged his visor up. ‘Thought we might have a look—’ Finn saw his lips say before the lights changed and the visor snapped down again.

Finn clung to the little handle behind his seat, the adrenalin of the ride warring with little clutches of terror. He didn’t feel strong. He was nagged by low-level pain in his head, his thigh and a few places on his chest, and he didn’t know how much blood he’d lost that morning. I should be at home in bed, getting better, he thought. Jed turned into Manning Street.

A beige station wagon blocked the lane, and a police car was parked askew out in Manning Street, its blue lights turning. Both cars were empty.

Jed drew to an uncertain halt just before the laneway. Finn dismounted slowly, staring at the station wagon. Taking off his helmet, he thought he heard a man cry out. He went to the corner and squatted down, peeping out from the car’s shadow into the lane.

The tanker was parked as usual, and one of the tankermen was just unhooking the hose. But another was at work, too, lifting an unconscious man into a large metal cylinder that lay on the ground, and snapping the lid closed. Finn pulled back behind the wall and gave Jed a look of blank terror. Jed took his turn peering around the corner.

Finn recovered and tugged at Jed’s jacket. ‘What’s he doing with that box?’

‘Kind of sliding it under the truck. There’s a row of drawer-things, like . . .’

‘Like what?’ Finn asked, pressing his cheek against the rough brick of the stable wall.

‘Like those drawers you see in a morgue.’ Jed sat back beside him and drew a breath in through his teeth. ‘I guess
they’ve got a dead copper or two in there.’

‘Jed,’ said Finn, pointing at the station wagon, ‘this car belongs to my dad.’

There was a very nasty pause. The pump chugged.

‘We’d better go after them, then,’ said Jed. Finn could have hugged him for the calm, commonsense tone he used, but fear stopped him.