Skyquakers (6 page)

‘What are they like, these people? Are there kids there?
’

‘Some,
’
Jackrabbit said.

‘How did they not get beamed?
’

‘They were swimming.
’

Ned clicked his tongue.
‘
The beams
can
’
t work through water. Maybe that
’
s
why the fish are still around. Sharks would still be here too then, right? Ha!
Could you imagine if they made them twenty times bigger too? Ha!
’
Staring at the twisting, bulging branches of the
boab
tree over their heads, Ned then said,
‘
You were
right.’

‘Huh?
’

‘It was land they wanted. Farming land. For their alien
cattle and alien crops.
’

‘Hmm.
’
Jackrabbit retreated under
his hat again and folded his hands on his chest.

‘So they
’
ve made sheep and
wom
-bears and crocodiles and birds. What are they going to
make out of humans? Are they going to
farm
us too? Do you think they eat
humans?
’

‘Eh?
’

‘Actually, nah, I don
’
t think so.
We wouldn
’
t taste nice. But then what would they do with the
ones they don
’
t want? I mean birds, crocs,
and cattle can all be eaten, but there
’
re heaps of
things they beamed up that are inedible. Can you eat a rhino, or a leopard, or
an echidna?
’

‘Nah.
’

‘See? Then what will they do with them?
’

But Jackrabbit knew nothing. He shrugged and rolled over. Ned
returned to staring at the trees and the stars that sparkled between the
branches. He imagined what the Quakers might do when they wake to find a
wom
-bear’s head chopped off just outside their paddocks.
Would they be mad? Would they sound the alarms?
Good
, Ned thought. Leave
it for them to find. Leave it on a pike with a flag of Earth fluttering beneath
it. He was proud of his achievements tonight.

You are not alone, assholes.

Ned was wary of creeks and rivers these days; a rational
phobia, since he knew what scary new things were lurking around these parts
now. He bathed and brushed his teeth in the shallows of the Ord in the morning,
with a clearly mapped-out escape route to a high tree branch if it was needed.
With his clothes dumped on the bank, he stood waist high in the fresh water,
flanked on all sides by untouched bushland and the spiked red cliffs of the
northern
Kununurra
. There were still fish in the
water, normal fish, so he tried his luck with his hands, but they were too
small and slippery. He tried again with a long, thin stick, attempting to hunt
independently like Jackrabbit could, but that also failed. There was one
particular school of fish that kept swimming around him mockingly, tempting him
to chase and dive after them. It resulted in numerous failures and fruitless
splashing about.

‘Got one yet?
’
Jackrabbit asked.

Ned made a girly scream and quickly hid his nakedness under
the waterline. The man just laughed at him.

‘What do you want?
’

‘You
ain
’
t
never
gon
’ get fish like that.
’

‘Go away!
’

Jackrabbit laughed and went off somewhere else down the
river.

Ned, embarrassed, abandoned the hunt and quickly got out of
the water. He dressed himself and headed back to camp to pack up his
belongings. When he arrived, he found a new friend there. A dog, a border
collie-like breed, had invaded his camp and was gnawing at the discarded bones
from last night’s
wom
-bear
carcass. He was chewing on a
rib when Ned appeared.

‘Oi!
’
he shouted.

The dog, timid and innocent, backed away with his head down
and his big, black eyes glaring up at Ned with adorable guilt.

‘Hey, boy.
’
Ned smiled and leant down to
the dog. He held out his hand for him to sniff, and a green, slimy tongue licked
him. Ned retracted his hand quickly.
‘
You
’
re not from
around here, are you?
’

The dog stared at him moronically. His tongue hung from his
mouth, bright green. He sat with his head cocked to the side, ears pricked up.
They were alien ears, like the long ears of a hare, but with curly ends. His
eyes were bigger and blacker too, all pupil and no colour. The rest of him was
like any other canine: black fur with a white underbelly, four paws, bushy
tail, a long nose and pointy teeth.

Jackrabbit returned from the creek and shouted,
‘
Oi!
Get
outta
here,
ya
rotten
mutt!
’

‘Come on, it
’
s just a dog.
’

‘It
’
s a Walker
’
s
dog! He
’
s probably from the ranch! Shoo! Go on, get!
’

The dog was scared off. Tail between his legs, he slinked
away, looked back, and then ran off into the bush. He must have come from the
warehouses, he agreed: maybe Jackrabbit left a gate open and he escaped into
the wild.

Ned watched him go.
‘
I miss
dogs,
’
he said.
‘
I miss
animals. Normal animals.
’

‘We
’
re leaving. Now.
’

They crossed the Ord south once again, away from the
floodplains, back into the desert. They walked the
Kununurra
for seven hours, without shade or rest. Across the flat, desolate world, a
powerful sandstorm picked up. Ned wrapped his singlet around his mouth and
nose, and Jackrabbit did the same with a black bandana. The two lonely
travellers pushed through the sharp-cutting wind, head down, unable to see more
than a few metres in front of them. It was long, arduous and disorientating. Ned
conclusively knew he would be dead out here without a guide, without direction,
without knowing what to eat and what to avoid. Jackrabbit continued to
demonstrate his knowledge of local fauna and flora by pointing out several
fruits and nuts that the desert shrubs offered them. He found bush cashews and
saved them in his pocket to roast later, and limes were native to the area too:
delicious, sour, with a strange pink flesh on the inside of a green bulb. It
gave them a source of sugar, enough to push on.

Ned collapsed in the storm. Jackrabbit picked him back up.
He dragged the boy to the side of a butte-like rock formation where the wind
was cut off, allowing them to breathe a little better. Along the hill’s base
they found a
boab
tree. It was called the Tree of
Life for a good reason, Jackrabbit said, as he rested Ned’s frail body against
it: the tree’s fat, bulbous trunk stored water enough for it to survive in the
desert, and enough to aid a dying man. He showed Ned how to drain the tree: he
peeled off the bark and slit the trunk with deep, long criss-crosses using Ned
’
s
knife. Slowly, water began to drain into the slits, which Ned could collect
with his t-shirt and then suck from. Ned sucked sweet tree water from his
singlet and although it felt like nothing but measly drops, it was keeping him
alive. He would never have thought of these things if he had been out here
alone.

They decided to wait until the storm died down a little
before moving on. Sheltering against the trunk of the
boab
,
Jackrabbit sat and admired the boy beside him.

'So now you got it,
mai
?
Dun’t
need me no more. You can teach them Zebra Rockers a
few tricks too.
’

‘Why didn’t you stay with them?
’
Ned asked,
covered in sand, head to toe.
‘
You know where people are, and
yet you went off on your own instead. Why is that?
’

The man shrugged and adjusted his hat.
‘
Meh.
People and me
dun’t
get along too well.
’
He looked down and noticed Ned
’
s silent attentiveness.
Jackrabbit gave a moan.
‘
Look,
mai
,
before all this shit, well, I
’
d been in and out of jail a
few times. You know, for stupid things,
beatin
’
up dickheads and stuff. People and me just
dun’t
go together. And now that they
’
re all gone, I got no one who
’
s
gon
’ get in my face, right? I can just do me own
shit. So yeah, I go the other way when I see people. They
dun’t
want me, and I
dun’t
want them.
’

Ned looked down.
‘
Really? So you
’
re
happy to spend the rest of your life alone?
’

‘Meh.
’

Jackrabbit announced that the other end of the Ord River was
up ahead, meaning this was the end of the
Kununurra
.
The relief made Ned want to collapse; two days of desert-crossing and at last,
he was on the other side. He joined Jackrabbit on a rocky edge and was shown
the town of Ivanhoe beyond the Ord: flat, green, with thousands of hectares of
beautiful farmland, luscious lakes, and a town built with asphalt roads, homes
with beds to sleep in, canned foods to eat, and motorcycles to ride. But what Ned
didn’t see, to great dismay, were people. The town looked dead and abandoned.
The cars in the street had not moved. A fluttering Australian flag was left
ratty and wind-torn part-way up the post. Doors were left swinging open on
their rusty hinges and all the inhabitants looked to have vanished in the same
fashion as they had gone from Wyndham.

‘I told you,’ Jackrabbit said, ‘
nothin
’.’

Ned supposed it was worth a try. He did not know why he
believed Ivanhoe would be more immune to the same disaster which struck his
town and the rest of the country; it was simply a place on the map he thought
may have been isolated enough to have made it through the storm. It had been
naïve hope.

He said softly to Jackrabbit, ‘Just take me to people.’

The wanderer nodded and turned south, but before he could
take another step, a dog barked.

Startled, they both spun and met the same
border
collie again, the green-tongued alien canine with its long, curly ears and big,
black eyes. The dog was sitting there not two steps away, panting in the heat.
It left Ned and Jackrabbit completely stumped; nothing had been following them,
not for eight hours across a desert, not this close on their heel. In the
lifeless savannah and sands of the
Kununurra
, they
would have certainly noticed a little black speck following their trail from a
good distance. The origin of this curious, dopey-looking dog quickly became a
riddle, and now the two looked upon the hybrid animal with guarded suspicion.

‘What the bloody hell?
’
Jackrabbit
sneered.
‘
That the same mutt?
’

‘I think so. Here, boy!’

‘No!
’
he snapped.
‘
Ain
’
t
no Walker mongrel
ghost-dog getting anywhere near us!
’

‘Oh, come on. He
’
s just a lost dog.
’
Ned met the innocent alien creature. He was friendly. Ned patted him on
the head and he enjoyed the stroke of his hand. He tried to give basic
commands:
‘
Sit. Shake.
’
The dog
simply kept panting.
‘
Maybe he only knows alien
commands.
’

Jackrabbit did not like it.
‘
How the
fuck
d’he
get here?’

‘Who cares? Come on, boy. Let
’
s go.
’
Ned tried to get the dog to follow them, but each time he took a step
towards Ivanhoe, he barked again. He began to whimper and trot in anxious
circles.
‘
Come on, boy. No time for playing. We need to get
out of this heat.
’

He turned to walk again. Again the dog barked, louder,
whimpering, crying almost.

‘It
dun
’
t
wanna
come. Good,
’
said Jackrabbit.

‘Come here, boy! Come on!
’
Ned cooed.
He eventually got the dog to come with him. He walked by him and Ned patted his
furry black head. Those round alien eyes looked up at him
so
lovingly as he whimpered some more.
‘
I
’
m not that
smelly, am I? Let
’
s go, come on!
’

Jackrabbit followed cautiously, keeping a few paces back
from Ned and the dog. The two ran and frolicked together as they joyfully
skipped towards the river. They could see the farms, the surrounding green
fields of former wineries and crops, all divided into elegant rectangular
segments and neat rows. It was all so green, so inviting, and yet it was void
of all life, intelligent or otherwise, like all the other places in the world.

They crossed a wooden bridge over the river and by this time
it was getting late. They found a large farmhouse, a two-storey home
overlooking crops from every window, mostly wheat fields, with an adjacent shed
where the wheat was ground up by machines and stored in vats. Jackrabbit told Ned
to stay at a safe distance while he inspected the place. He went inside,
checked every room, checked the sheds, even assessed the soil around the house,
and eventually returned saying there was no one here, nor had anyone been here
in many weeks. The occupants had been beamed, and there were no signs of
unwanted intruders either. Satisfied that it was safe, Ned and the dog raced
inside. Ned collapsed on a floral-patterned couch and kicked off his sandy
shoes, revealing the orange-brown state of his sweat-drenched socks. He laid
back and just stared at the roof, breathing slowly, letting his aching muscles
sink into the soft cushions of the couch. At his side, the hybrid dog licked
his hand. Ned giggled at the wet touch.

‘That tickles, boy!’

The gas stoves still worked, seeing that the house had its
own manually-operated tanks, but there was no running water or electricity. The
food in the fridge had gone off, but with water from the river, they boiled
some dried pasta and rice, and mixed it with a can of baked beans and some spam
found in the cupboards to make a sloppy mixture of fairly satisfying food. A
good meal, Jackrabbit declared. Afterwards they ate Anzac biscuits from a tin
and lounged in the living room on the couches, feet elevated up on cushions,
candles lit all around them as outside the sun began to set. Ned played Lonely
Lily on the radio in the corner, letting her music fill the air. For much of
the evening, they just sat there. All the electrical items were dead: the fan
on the roof and the television sat idle around them, and without the noise of
cattle or birds or tractors outside, the farm was incredibly silent.

Ned, who had not seen another human being besides Jackrabbit
for nearly a month, tried to imagine who had lived in this house before him,
based on the pictures hanging on the wall. But when he passed by them, he swore
he saw, from the corner of his eye, demonic reptilian heads in place of the
human faces in every photo and portrait. He had to look at them all twice, each
time seeing the head of some fictional hybrid creature quickly switch back to
the porcelain stares of expressionless people. The way the animals were
changing, mutating; Ned felt as though it was happening to them too, and in the
photographs he could see the history of mankind slowly being rewritten by the
manipulation of a force which had taken them all hostage.