with fear and fury, emerged onto the landing and stepped cautiously down the stairs. She clutched a rifle but seemed uncertain whether to point it at Reece or the departing bikers. Together, they watched the gang flee, a roar of bikes flocking around a very smart Monaro, heading north.
The garage went up, the hot flash and detonation making them both cringe, and she lowered the weapon and all her defiance crumbled as she said two names through quivering lips: Thomas and Kevin. 'My boys.'
Reece shook his head and reached for his smokes, and a series of new explosions rolled across the flat and he felt the heat and smelled the noxious smoke, and her eyes reflected the red of flame and black of smoke and showed nothing but despair. He asked if he could use her phone, since his was still in his vehicle, but she'd already called for help; the police were on their way. But not his police, he told her, and she let him go for it.
Message delivered and orders received, he washed his face in the kitchen sink, then returned and sat next to the woman and offered a cigarette. She ignored him as she clutched the rifle, the butt on the step, her forehead resting against the barrel as she watched the roadhouse burn.
'You hit any?' he asked.
'A couple fell down,' she said, not taking her eyes off the pyre. 'They… they got up again, though.'
'Jackets,' he said, indicating his own, and they swapped names before falling into uneasy silence. He wanted to tell Diana Matheson that it was for the best. If Taipan had done what he suspected to her son, then death was a mercy. But he just sat and smoked and wondered what he was going to tell Mira when she arrived.
Reece waited with her while half the town congregated to watch the fire burn itself out. The local copper, a green constable called Smith, came over, his eyes staring and the blood draining from his face at the sight: burning servo, distraught hausfrau, bloodied copper sitting on the front stairs with a dead body covered by a coat at his feet. The constable was keen and not too dumb.
City folk had a habit of thinking their rural cousins were a bit slow, but Reece knew from experience that they could smell bullshit a mile off. Which was, he suspected, the real reason his own outfit didn't like leaving the big smoke. When your whole world was founded on bullshit, you wanted to stay where people respected it.
'I'll call for back-up,' Smith said, and Reece told him not to bother, he'd already called it in. Smith took their statements, his hands shaking, the pen jerking like a needle in a seismograph machine. It was a relief when a woman and her daughter rescued the widow from Smith's questions, and Smith from the widow's rising anger. Who were those people, she wanted to know. What were the cops doing?
Bikies, Reece confirmed for Smith's notebook. Amphetamines. Heroin. The works. He and his partner had been tracking them, and the gang had rumbled them when they'd pulled in for fuel and a cuppa. The hunters hunted, and Smith shared that look that said to lose a partner was a hell of a thing. His sergeant was laid up in Charleville after a traffic accident and he still didn't have a replacement. Probably going to close the station anyway, he reckoned, and Reece thought it was a shame for the cop that they hadn't, because if the young constable got wind of the real story, well, an accident and some sick leave was the absolute best he could hope for.
'Narc, huh?' Smith asked, and Reece said, 'Yeah, kind of,' more interested in getting Dave looked after than playing nice with the plods. Smith, after several attempts to convince Reece to a) see a doctor, and b) stay with him in the station's residence, gave him a lift into town.
In tourism brochures Barlow's Siding could be called quaint or historic, but in more general conversation it'd be called a shithole. Two pubs sat at either end of the main street as though keeping the place from blowing away in the next dust storm. He noted a post office outlet, a half-dozen shops selling nothing you'd want if you had the choice, a takeaway with 1970s plastic strips on the door to keep the flies out. The cop shop was a bungalow at the crossroads where the statue of a Digger stood permanent watch atop the war memorial. The empty shops outnumbered the open ones.
Smith pointed out the all-purpose general store, in case Reece needed painkillers or cough drops, but Reece said he would be all right, a little flash burn on the face, some singeing, smoke inhalation. He'd take a room at the hotel, not that he didn't appreciate the offer of a bed, but his people would want their space when they arrived. Smith dropped him at the hotel with the better rooms to wait for his people from Brissie. It'd be interesting to see how the firm handled it. What smoke and mirrors bullshit would VS pull on this clusterfuck?
The bar was already filled with conversation, and in the time it took for them to realise who he was and go quiet so they could listen, he'd heard enough.
How was Diana Matheson going to cope? Where were they going to buy their fuel now? It was an hour to the nearest garage at 'Nancy' and the fella there was a half-arsed mechanic, not like Tommy Matheson; even his son was pretty bloody handy by comparison, and not even twenty. It was a bastard shame, so few young folk staying around as it was.
They tried to ask him, the copper from the big smoke, but he pleaded exhaustion and retreated to his room for a drink, a room-service steak and a good lie down. Might as well make the most of it. And with Mira coming out this far west of the ranges, it could mean only that things were going to get worse.
At least the newborn had gone up in smoke. That was some consolation. Kevin Matheson was one loose end they didn't need to tie up.
FOUR
Kevin awoke to darkness and to silence. The world stank of diesel, ash, dirt. He was starving and aching, his mouth dry and his eyes itching. A suffocating weight pinned him down. He felt the grit under him, on top of him; dug into it with his panicked fingers. Gasped it in as he realised he'd been buried alive!
Choking, he flailed upward. Soil cascaded from him, leaving his skin - his entire body - feeling as if he'd been sand-blasted. Blazing heat and brightness scorched his naked body as he dragged himself like a newborn calf into the nearest shade: the rusted shell of the Ford truck. All around, the grass was burnt and littered with wreckage. The service station was a tumbled ruin, blackened timbers thrusting toward the sky amid sheets of buckled iron and tangles of wire. A listless line of yellow plastic tape hanging from short iron pegs bordered the devastation.
Across the singed fence, he saw his home, sagging wearily on its posts. Meg's little Suzuki soft top was parked out the front near his father's work ute. His Commodore and his mother's sedan were vague shapes hidden by the slats that walled in the ground floor.
He clambered over the fence. Fire had sneaked through the palings and scored the lawn; a few scorched patches showed where embers had landed but failed to spread. He crawled more than walked, sheltering in the shade of the sparse, threadbare fruit trees and two towering gums, their bark hanging shredded and curled as though from torture. Sheets hung limp on the Hill's Hoist. He barely noticed the ash spotting them before he yanked one down and wrapped it around himself, grateful for any defence against the sunshine that baked his skin.
The dogs didn't come out to greet him; there was no sign of either of them.
He grabbed the rail of the rear stairs like an old man clutching a walking frame and hauled himself up, one painful, lead-heavy step at a time, until he reached the shade of the verandah. He went to open the back door but his legs gave out and he lurched into it; the door fell open under his weight and he sprawled on the lino near the dining table.
Voices came from the living room; footsteps; gasps. Hands rolled him over, and tears soaked his mother's cheeks as she looked down on him in shock and wonder.
'My God, Kevin, they said… The police
