Lachlan Walter - The Rain Never Came

We breathed in an animal stink—the smell of blood, vomit, piss, and shit.

Absolutely overwhelmed, I couldn’t speak. Ishra turned away. He killed the lights, plunging the room back into darkness. Outside, the light reflecting off the concrete plain was almost enough to burn away the horror I had just seen.

I tottered, the pain in my thigh flaring suddenly. I was glad for the distraction.

‘Are you okay?’

I nodded, gripping my walking stick tighter.

‘Very good. Come along, then, we don’t want to be late.’

I looked at him stupidly. ‘Late for what?’

‘Ah, yes, of course. You must forgive me, age has taken its toll. The train, William, we don’t want to miss the train. After all, it’s the only reason this place is here.’

‘What train?’

‘The train to the camp, of course. There’s only one train nowadays.’

He fell silent and shuffled on. I let him be, let his lonely old-man mind take him where it needed. All I could think about was the camp.

The camp, after all this time. I hoped Tobe had a plan.

Ishra and I kept following the wall of derelict buildings, slowly approaching a grandiose townhouse that seemed in better repair than all the others in the complex. Standing at a right angle to the derelict wall, it marked one end of the semicircular jumble of ruined houses that enclosed the concrete plain.

I whistled low and limped ahead. My thigh ached, my chest burned; when I stopped by the townhouse, I almost collapsed. I rested, drank some water, and caught my breath. I had to stand on tiptoe to look through a window.

That hurt, considering the state of my leg.

The little of the room that I could see twinkled, thanks to candlelit lamps and ornate lanterns. It was also stuffed full of treasure—overstuffed leather couches, statues and sculptures, gilded sideboards, heavy-framed paintings, even a gramophone, its brass horn dull. The bookshelves groaned they were packed so full; glass cabinets held jewellery; the mantelpiece above the wrought-iron fireplace was crowded with knick-knacks. Everything was immaculate.

Precious frivolities from a time I had never known. Treasure really was the only word for it.

‘My home,’ Ishra said, catching up to me.

‘Nice,’ I replied, trying to play it cool.

‘Thank you. It’s been my life’s work.’

I didn’t bother to ask how much blood had been spilled in its name.

‘Now, please, the others will be waiting.’

He turned away, started shuffling down an alley-like gap between his home and a collapsing lean-to that capped off the derelict wall.

‘Tell me, Doc, why are you still here?’

I figured that by letting him ramble on about himself—as old men are wont to do—I might get a straight answer.

‘I’d been here almost twenty years when the flood of people slowed to a trickle,’ he said. ‘But the trickle didn’t stop—Creeps still turn up sometimes, herding the odd holdouts. Others come with the monthly train and cart them away.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Someone has to look after all those ragged stragglers.’

We entered an alley-like gap that quickly stopped dead. Ishra took a step to the left. I limped after him. We stood side by side on a narrow concrete ledge, the collapsing lean-to and a squat brick shed rising up behind us, a sheer drop in front of us. Lying at the bottom, arrow-straight railway tracks. The ledge followed the tracks in both directions; to our left, the backside of the wall cast it in shadow, while another empty concrete plain bordered it to our right.

‘What’s not to love about this place?’ Ishra asked with a laugh.

I shivered—across the tracks lay a debris-strewn wasteland.

Dozens of trenches ran higgledy-piggledy across a stretch of bare earth. Wrecked vehicles formed sturdy barricades; barbed wire formed deadly fences; deep craters revealed the existence of mines, their earthen maws hinting at the deadly potential still lying elsewhere in wait.

‘I can see why you’d want to stay.’

Ishra didn’t laugh. ‘I’m a doctor, William. I help people. I wouldn’t want to hand this place over to some unwilling conscript whose boredom and loneliness would eventually cruel him.’ His face twisted. ‘There’s been enough of that here…’

I didn’t ask, didn’t need to.

We followed the ledge, walking in single file, heading back towards the sickbay. I couldn’t catch my breath, exhausted by fatigue and pain. The backside of the wall continued; far ahead, it gave way to an open space occupied by a pair of blurry figures.

One of them waved. I heard a ‘coo-ee’ on the wind. I picked up my pace as best I could, forcing Ishra to do the same.

‘I think your friends can answer the rest of your questions, don’t you?’

He looked over his shoulder and smiled.

‘Tobias is good to you. He cares. The whole time you were asleep, all those days and nights, he didn’t leave your side. I didn’t understand why. But after a while, when he started to trust me, he told me what happened. It all made sense—such a debt cannot be repaid, all one can do is try.’

Ishra walked on. I swear that the Tobe-shaped figure in the distance threw me a mock-salute.

I muttered under my breath: ‘You bastard.’

Tobe and Ruby sat next to each other on a worn park bench. They were deep in conversation, as thick as thieves, as buddied as bushrangers. Two unfamiliar backpacks sat at their feet. I hobbled along as quickly as I could, the pain in my side getting worse with each step.

‘G’day,’ Tobe said.

‘Yeah, g’day,’ Ruby mimicked.

I faked a smile. I needed a sit down more than I needed to stick it to Tobe straightaway.

‘Hello Tobias, hello Ruby. How are you both?’ Ishra asked.

I collapsed on the bench. For a brief moment, the world blurred. Someone passed me a canteen. I drank deep, slopping some water down my front. The ragged tear of my breath was all I could hear.

‘Bill, are you okay?’ Tobe asked.

Ruby took my hand and took my pulse. ‘He’ll be all right, but he’ll have to take it easy for a while.’

‘Very good, Ruby. Well done.’

Ishra’s voice was full of pride, exactly as Louise’s had been. I smiled a sad smile. Tobe beamed at me. Did he even remember what he had done? Did he remember what he had told Ishra?

I weathered my storm—what I had to say was only for Tobe. The bastard.

He fidgeted in his seat. Ishra seemed happy to amuse himself by looking out at the wasteland. Ruby kept still and quiet. An awkward silence fell.

The silence steadily grew heavier.

‘Right, then,’ Tobe said.

Ishra smiled at him. I looked on, bemused.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Ishra said to him. ‘If you need anything, I’ll be gathering your fellow patient and sorting out your transfer papers.’

Ruby looked at him strangely. I understood why—his last few words were alien; they had no meaning out in that scorched, dying land.

‘I’ll see you all when Old Reliable arrives,’ he said as he shuffled away.

It was only then that I caught on to where we were: an old train platform, kept in good repair despite the ravages of time and the dry, protected from the sun by a heavy roof. A bluestone ticket-office-cum-waiting-room stood behind it, its wrought-iron fixtures and handrails dull.

‘So, here we are again,’ Tobe said.

I didn’t reply. I wondered if he understood why. The awkward silence returned.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said after the silence had stretched out and become uncomfortable.

A soft breath escaped me, a deflated sigh of relief.

‘Look, give me a sec,’ he continued. ‘Ruby?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Would you mind, ah, lending the Doc a hand?’