The Worm King (7 page)

Further up the road other torch beams darted
around. More people had emerged, drawn out to discover what this new sound
tolled for. In five minutes it ended as abruptly as it’d begun.

‘What I reckon,’ said Dick ‘is that we
shouldn’t wait till dawn. We should take off right now.’ This time Leroy didn’t
argue.

Winston had changed his mind too. ‘Can we
tag along after all?’

‘Alright.’ Dick looked at Lord Brown with
extreme distaste.

Winston lifted the blanket from the floor, gave
it a shake then wrapped it around Āmiria’s shoulders. He had to stand on
tiptoes because the Girl Guide was taller.

As dawn approached, they fled the city.

.
NIGHT

Chapter Eleven

Servo

WEATHER
BADGE DIARY

Mr Snow says
an isobar is a place where the air is heavier than the bit next door to it. He
said there are shit-loads of them piled up right now, just above us. Krystal
went outside but couldn’t see any. Winston who is part-dwarf said they are
green with horns and a long tail but we think he only said this to make Mr Snow
angry. We are worried about our parents. It was exceptionally dark all day today
except for the lightning. Astrid the bossy-britches got mad when we went out to
look at it. Our temperature gauge says 34 degrees centigrade.

Natasha

T
he twins had wanted a picnic, so a picnic they were a-having but it
was hard to get enthused because today there’d been no sunrise.

Winston wondered if he might be the first
person to ever see a day utterly without sunrise. He’d seen seriously dark,
overcast days before; Queensland days, when swirling bushfires met thick, black
tropical storms to completely blot out the sky. Days when you’d imagine someone
had teleported Niagara Falls to pour directly onto the Fires of Hell. But this
was a different kind of darkness: soupy, without the faintest hint of light. It
felt like you could taste it.

He shook his head and slapped himself
lightly across the cheek. What was he thinking? Eskimos do this every winter!

‘Fucking Eskimos,’ he muttered.

Astrid gave him a puzzled look. ‘I don’t
think you’re in a position to criticize minorities.’

They were holed up in a BP service station
on the Hume highway south of Sydney. Not very far south either, it’d taken six
hours on back roads via Warragamba to get this far. You’d probably still call
it Sydney fringe. They didn’t belong here. Fringe dwellers in a gloomy, broken
shadowland. No one belonged, but they had to hole up because ten people and a
dog in a 1978 combie van get way too close after six hours. Especially when the
journey is crammed with an action-packed lecture from Dick Snow on weather hydrology.
And someone had been dropping guts that could’ve peeled paint. He’d blamed
Astrid.

Winston had watched enough gangster and
cowboy films to know this was definitely a time to “hole-up.” And he’d always
wanted to give holing-up a go anyway, so when they passed the servo he said,
‘let’s hole-up here a spell.’

‘You can be a bit of a dork sometimes, can’t
you?’ said Astrid.

But Dick agreed: ‘We need a break and a feed
too. It’s still a fair way to Mulloolaloo.’

The twins had thought this rather funny. The
little shits.

Thunder ripped through the sky above the
servo. A long, grinding crack ending in an explosive bang that seemed to originate
right on the roof. Winston scratched the back of Peanut’s neck. The dog trembled.

‘Doesn’t like this much,’ said Leroy,
tossing a glob of corned beef that hit the rug and mutely splattered stuck. The
dog sniffed the food then ignored it, continuing to stare at the roof and flinching
each time the heavens roared. ‘Got him from the pound half an hour before they were
gunna put him down.’

‘Lucky dog,’ said Winston.

Dick licked corned beef fat from his
fingers. ‘Exceptional. That was a truly exceptional meal.’ He and the twins had
pilfered widely from the shelves, gathering cans of the mushy beef, stale bread
rolls and bottles of fizzy-pop for the picnic. Four tartan travel rugs were
spread on the floor. Three kerosene lamps, also courtesy of BP, cast an eerie
glow around the shop. The lamps stank but another smell drifted in the air too,
even more off-putting . . . what was it? Sulphur? Winston couldn’t
quite place it, but it sure wasn’t cheeseburger.

The sky fizzled with lightning.

‘Someone’s there,’ said Azziz quietly, pointing
at the front window.

When Winston looked he saw only black glass.
A second later a flash of lightning illuminated a man’s face with his nose
practically touching the pane on the outside. Blackness again. Winston glanced
around—everyone else had seen it too—then another fork of lightning but the
face had gone.

‘You think he wants to come in? asked Leroy
nervously.

Dick got to his feet and went to the window.
‘I hope not. Did you lock the van?’ Leroy had parked just off the road at the
entrance to the servo because three abandoned cars blocked the sheltered
section of the forecourt directly outside shop.

‘The locks don’t work.’

‘If anyone pinches it, we’re going to be
shafted right up the k’ganga.’

‘I’ll take Peanuts out for a wiz. We’ll wait
in me van for a while.’ Leroy stood, then immediately bent over, placing his
hands on his knees. He straightened slowly and rubbed his stomach. At his feet lay
three empty cans of corned beef. He’d also skulled a 2 liter bottle of warm caramel
milk and woofed an entire jumbo bag of pineapple lumps. He walked to the door
and opened it, letting a gust of hot wind blast in which knocked over a
postcard stand. He paused momentarily, about to step back and re-stand it but
the wind was howling in so he slid the door closed and disappeared.

Simple electrical storm!! Sydney always got
its fair share of thunder and lightning, Winston knew that, but surely this was
more than a simple . . . what the fuck was he going on
about now? Dick had been explaining opposing air pressure systems and isobars
to the Girl Guides. The noise rolled overhead in a continuous roar although it
didn’t sound as loud as earlier, suggesting it may be coming from further away.

John the Hat sat cross-legged on the floor
next to Winston who lay flat out on his back, staring up at the roof. The Hat
bent low, getting right down near Winston’s ear. ‘The door, see the one going
out the back?’ He nodded towards the rear of the shop. ‘It just moved.’

Winston came up on one elbow. The dim light
made it hard to focus but gradually he began to make out a set of fingers on
the door, wrapped around the edge just below the handle. Then the dark crescent
edge of a head protruded slowly, growing and stretching into a shadowed face.

‘Hey!’ yelled Dick. The door slammed open and
a heavyset man jumped into the room.

‘Whatayadoinyanotsposetabeere,’ the stranger
hollered, wildly waving a thick, silver wand in the air. Dick jumped to his
feet; Astrid and the twins screeched.

‘Whoa!’ shouted the Hat.

Winston rolled away, trying to squirm beyond
reach but the intruder loomed directly over him in a flash. He held a spanner,
not a wand, and was a big bloke too. Most people looked big to Winston but when
they’re towering over you, angrily waving a 30 ounce forged-steel Viking-class clubbing
spanner, they look especially big. He curled into a ball, clutching his arms
around his oversized head and pulling his knees up tightly in preparation for the
rain of blows. Instead the yelling petered, fading, until the only shouting
came from Āmiria, then silence. Winston risked a peek.

Dennis the service station assistant manager
stared at the twins. He’d stopped shouting several seconds ago and finally
closed his pudgy mouth. The raised arm came down and the spanner smacked his
fat thigh with a slap. Anyone breaking into his place didn’t seem likely to
have two identical blonde teenagers in brown uniforms as part of their gang. He
paused, confused, and scratched his itchy hip where the belt beneath the dirty
green overalls dug into his skin. ‘Mr Lee said I gotta keep it locked up till
he gets back.’ Dennis spoke slowly and his face was thickset and pale with large
round eyes and Neanderthal brow ridges.

Winston uncurled. He suspected there might
be some kind of mild Down’s syndrome going on with Dennis, and Mr Lee must be
the owner: the mastermind who’d dished out the dungarees emblazoned
Dennis–Assistant
Station Manager
. A second badge lower down read: “
TrainEE”
.

‘I live over the road. Saw the lights.’ Lightning
lit the forecourt and wind belted the glass giving it a distinct wobble. Dennis
looked out nervously. ‘Guess you should be alright to wait a while if you want.’
He didn’t seem that keen to go back outside himself. Winston could hear a dog
barking, coming in muffled snatches between gusts.

Denis stared at Dick. ‘My name’s Dennis. You’re
on telly! I like telly.’

Dick grinned. ‘That’s right. Good to meet
another Channel Six fan.’

They shook hands like old friends. Winston
would’ve been surprised if Dennis usually watched anything more complicated
than
The Wiggles
.

‘Can you hear that dog barking?’ asked
Astrid.

Āmiria cocked her head. ‘I can.’

The keen Māori had already made it halfway
to the door when Astrid called her back sharply. ‘No! Wait here, I’ll go.’ She walked
to the front window, shining her torch out for a few seconds but seeing nothing,
then turned to Dennis. ‘You got a dog Dennis?’

‘Nup.’ A long pause. ‘Mr Lee does but.’

‘Does it sound like that?’

‘No.’ Dennis frowned, concentrating. ‘He
took it with him.’

It must be Peanuts.

Astrid couldn’t get her penlight beam any
further than the cars immediately out front and the van was parked at least seventy
meters away, on the other side of the forecourt. She pulled the sliding door
back and stepped through the gap. The wind raced in lifting the edge of the
floor rug and re-scattering the postcards Leroy left.

Winston made a snap decision to follow and reached
the door just as Astrid slid it closed in his face. He dragged it open and went
through, noticing Azziz and the Hat close behind. As soon as they were outside
he flicked on his torch but could hardly see past his feet because the batteries
were nearly shot and the servo had been cleaned out of new ones prior to their
arrival. Neither the Hat nor Azziz had a torch so he waited while Azziz fumbled
with a lighter, using his bulky frame as a windbreak to get a cigarette
started.

‘Holy mother of God, I needed that!’ Azziz
sucked the smoke in greedily with his eyes closed and head tilted back.

Something hooked onto Winston’s shoe and he pointed
the torch down to see a white plastic supermarket bag wrapped around his ankle.
He bent awkwardly to unhook it; when you’re that much closer to the ground, getting
tangled up in rubbish seems to happen more often. The Hat and Azziz waited. On
the other side of the pumps an empty can tumbled and clattered across the
forecourt. The dog barked again. They could see Astrid already at the van,
working her way towards the front when her beam began waving erratically.

‘Help! Oh please, quick! Quickly!’ Her voice
rang high and frantic. He lost sight of her as she moved behind the pumps then
the beam reappeared, probing shakily along the side of the van. He finally
kicked the plastic bag free and began waddling across the forecourt at top
speed, already trailing Azziz and the Hat by a good ten meters.

By the time he reached the van Azziz had
taken the torch off Astrid and held it focused on Leroy’s bloodless face,
pressed flat against the driver’s side window. Froth bunched at the corner of the
Aborigine’s mouth and his right eye was stretched wide open, staring grotesquely
through the glass at them. Winston gasped in shock and Astrid whimpered. Azziz
thrust the torch at the Hat then opened the van door, holding up his left hand
to prevent Leroy spilling out. The moment he reached in, Peanuts snapped viciously,
growling with barred fangs forcing him to withdraw. Azziz immediately pushed
the door closed, but gently, so it didn’t click shut. ‘Go round the other
side,’ he ordered.

Winston scuttled around then opened the door
slowly, patting the passenger seat lightly, trying to induce the dog over. ‘Here
boy, come on.’ Eventually Peanuts slunk across, head held low and wary. Provided
the dog remained between himself and Leroy it might not attack.

‘Come on.’ He gradually coaxed the dog over,
and very carefully, slid a hand up onto its collar. ‘I’ve got’im!’

Azziz caught Leroy as he rolled out then
lowered him to the ground. The Hat closed the driver’s door. Peanuts barked twice
and Winston let go of the collar. As soon as he closed the passenger door the
dog began howling, a far more disturbing sound than the barking.

They stood around the body. ‘Heart attack?’
asked the Hat. ‘Does a stroke look like that?’ Lightning forked overhead, drops
of rain began to fall and the dog wailed.

Azziz opened Leroy’s shirt, checking his
chest. ‘Wouldn’t think so. Seizure or overdose of some kind? I really couldn’t—’

‘Hey! You fūlla’s over there?’ Āmiria
and the twins appeared from around the side of the pumps in the middle of the
forecourt, making a beeline straight for the van.

Astrid grabbed the torch from Azziz and
raced towards them. ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay inside?’ she shouted, waving her
arms to herd them back indoors before they could see the body.

Azziz and the Hat lifted Leroy by the hands
and feet, carrying him into the mechanics garage attached to the shop. Winston
walked along behind. Leroy was a tall man so his afro skimmed the wet ground. Tools
had been left scattered on the floor and the Hat tripped over, so they left the
body where it fell because it didn’t seem likely anyone else would have a
reason to enter. Azziz ferreted around until coming across an oil-stained tarp
which he used to cover the body.