Lachlan Walter - The Rain Never Came

I dithered a minute, unsure what to do. The gaps called out; I stood firm. But I was like a kid in a chocolate shop, as the old farts used to say, my resolve crumbling to dust.

‘G’day, Bill,’ an unexpected voice said from somewhere behind me.

I spun around. Tobe stood there, squinting, his rifle slung over one shoulder, a dead rabbit slung over the other. Blood dripped from a bullet hole in its head.

‘How’s it going?’ Tobe asked.

For whatever reason, I was stupidly and inexplicably happy. I felt like a conqueror from a bygone time, both seeking counsel and hoping to offer it, caught up in the joy of discovery.

I smiled at Tobe, excited, wanting to let it all out. But something in his face told me not to bother.

‘Dinner’s ready,’ he said.

‘But…’

He waved my demand away. ‘Save it. Now, shift your arse.’

Out of the blue, the sickly sweet smell of cooking meat drifted by on the wind. My stomach rumbled; I started to salivate. Food! I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten properly.

‘No worries,’ I said, happy to give in.

Tobe led us back to camp. We skirted the wall a while; it occurred to me that I had forgotten to ask him something.

‘Seen the girl?’

‘Nope. You?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Huh.’

Her presence out on the plain already seemed so much more ordinary.

We walked on in silence. More flies buzzed around, attracted by the scent of burning flesh. I bitched about them, pathetically trying to wave them away. We tramped on. My mouth wouldn’t stop watering.

‘Ta-da,’ Tobe said as we drew up to camp.

He had managed to drag enough wood from the guts of the wall to start a good-sized fire, its coals already glowing red.

‘Nice one.’

‘Cheers. Roo’s pretty much done, by the way.’

It was sickly pink in some places, scorched black in others. Tobe had found a metal pole somewhere and run it straight through the roo, so that it dangled over the fire, with both ends propped on piles of rocks. Red and Blue were tied up by the wall, straining at the frayed twine of their leads. They looked at me, their eyes wet, pleading. I somehow resisted, walked over to the roo, picked up a rag lying next to it, wrapped my hand and started to turn the pole. Tobe had even managed to shape gullies in the rock, hemmed in by capstones, so the roo could be rolled.

‘You’ve been busy.’

‘And you’ve been lazy,’ he said, hanging the dead rabbit from a shard of wood jutting from the wall. ‘Now, come on, eat up. We’re burning the light.’

‘All right, all right.’

I squatted, drawing my knife. A lighter patch in the scorched flesh told me that Tobe had already eaten his fill. I got to work, carving off strips of the gamey meat. It dripped with a clear fluid that sizzled when it hit the hot coals. I ate with my hands, sitting in the dirt, the clothes on my back all that separated me from the animals of the land.

‘Did you say something?’ Tobe asked.

I caught myself groaning. I was in heaven. Food… I was almost delirious.

Meat juices dripped from my hands and stained my beard. I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, licked my fingers, and just kept eating. Swallowing my last mouthful, I burped loudly and smiled wide.

I was full, actually full. I felt like screaming it to the heavens.

‘Are you done?’ Tobe asked, denying me the opportunity.

‘Just give me a minute.’

I beamed for a moment, drank some water. I pulled out my pouch, rolled some bush tobacco, lit it off the fire. A magnificent lethargy settled over me. Tobe squatted by the cooked roo, drew his knife, cut away a dozen strips. He carried them over to Red and Blue, dropping them in the dirt.

‘Sit!’

They reluctantly sat. Tobe untied them.

‘Wait.’

They waited. He gave them a scratch.

‘Good dogs.’

They wolfed the meat down. They didn’t even stop to breathe. Tobe turned, looked at me darkly, started to pace back and forth.

‘Okay, I get it,’ I said, flicking my butt into the fire.

‘About time…’

I stood up, started to pull on my pack.

‘Leave it. But bring your empties, it’s a fair bet we’ll find some water in the Borough.’

I clipped a full canteen to my belt, clipped two empties next to it. ‘Lead on, MacDuff.’

‘It’s lay on, dickhead, lay on. How many times can you get it wrong?’

We headed north, which surprised me. For some reason, I had figured that we would head back the way we came, to either look for the girl or check out what I had found. But as always, Tobe was one step ahead. More than one, really more like thousands.

We followed the wall, staying in its shadow, glad to be out of the sun. Red and Blue trotted behind us, taking their time now that their bellies were full. In this new direction, the section of wall we had made camp next to soon gave way to a section made of these things I didn’t recognise. Squat and metallic, four or five feet wide but only a foot or so high—they were stacked tall, one on top of the other. Behind rust and dirt lay the remnants of paint—blue, red, black, yellow, white, green, grey. Each pile was jammed hard against the next, this new section of wall stretching on, the ground littered with broken glass.

‘Not much further now.’

We kept walking. At some point, I saw a metallic badge hanging from one of the piles by a rusted thread. I stopped, stared at it. Three lines met in the middle of the badge, splitting it cleanly.

I kept staring as an old memory thawed.

‘Tobe? Are these…’

‘Yep,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘They must have got a crusher working. I wish I’d thought of it.’

I pushed against one of the piles as hard as I could. I might as well have been pushing against a reef of rock or the earth itself.

‘Come on, mate, stop piss-farting around.’

Tobe was ahead of me, walking fast, almost running. Red and Blue started after him, leaving me behind.

‘Hang on!’

They caught up to Tobe. He bent down, gave them a good scratch. They gave him a slobbery lick in return and then bounded into the wall.

‘Come on, Bill.’

I reluctantly started running. Tobe was smiling wide, bouncing on the soles of his feet.

‘Shift your arse, mate.’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming.’ I hurried on, breathing hard. ‘Shit.’ I stopped before a gap in the piles, a long corridor wide enough to drive a truck into. It was maybe fifty feet long, blocked at the far end by a tangled mess of yellow steel. Sunlight drenched an open floor blanketed in dust, flakes of rust, broken glass. Red and Blue were already sniffing at the mangled wreck, tails wagging, barking occasionally, and presumably caught up by the scent of some wild animal.

Tobe waved me forward. ‘After you.’He was boisterous, filled with an edgy joy. It wasn’t a good sign. I took up my rifle, flicked the safety off. Tobe did the same. We stepped into the gap, the refuse under our feet cracking like dead leaves. The piles on either side were maybe ten feet long, the bottom layer of each sinking into the dirt. Beyond them, on the left, was a gap barely wide enough to squeeze through, sealed in by a new pile of jagged wood, scrap metal, lumps of concrete. To the right, a tottering pile of broken bricks and rocks butted hard against the immense pile of crushed cars. Past that, another gap barely wide enough to squeeze through opened up.

‘Bugger me. It’s not a wall, it’s a…’

‘Yeah, it’s a maze. I figured that out ages ago.’

We headed ten feet down the corridor, then fifteen, then twenty. We took it easy, slowly growing closer to the wreck of yellow steel. Red and Blue ignored us completely, still snuffling at it. The piles on either side were enormous. Only the occasional gap led deeper into the guts of the wall. I took off my glasses and cleaned them on my shirt, more as an excuse to look away.