Hand in hand, we walked out into the sunshine; we had missed dawn. I squinted, the bright light blinding. Silently, Louise and I approached the transport. Tobe was already in the cabin, tactfully averting his eyes. Louise and I hugged a last time. I didn’t want to let her go; she playfully pushed me away.
‘Go on,’ she said.
Wishing it didn’t have to be like this, I threw open the passenger door and climbed inside. Ruby sat in the middle seat, pressed hard up against Tobe. It was hot in the cabin, the air thick and soupy.
‘Good girl,’ Louise said, leaning through the open window, ruffling Ruby’s hair. There was nothing patronising in her voice, no sarcasm or condescension. Ruby smiled shyly.
I looked at Louise, tried to put on the bravest of faces. ‘Well …’
Tobe looked away as Louise and I kissed a last time. Ruby stared at us, seemingly unembarrassed. Red and Blue barked from over the back. The engine hummed. For a moment, time stopped.
Louise broke away and stepped back. She looked at Tobe. She looked at Ruby. She didn’t look at me.
‘Good luck,’ she said, addressing Tobe.
‘Same to you. Take it easy out there, all right?’
‘You bet.’
‘See you round, then.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Louise said, finally looking at me.
I mouthed the words: ‘Me too.’
Tobe shifted the transport into gear and revved the engine. I started to cry. So did Louise, but that didn’t stop her from walking away.
And then we were off, heading west once again.
The town disappeared behind us, the ramshackle buildings giving way to empty paddocks. No one spoke; for that I was grateful. I blinked, and another piece of home was gone forever. I barely cared—it was nothing compared to what I had just lost.
The empty Loddon River and the ruined bridge appeared before us. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t take it anymore.
The transport swung left, the road quickly growing rough. I felt Ruby grab my knee, figured that she was doing the same to Tobe’s. The shriek of branches scraping at the transport told me that we had left the road and started bush-bashing. I kept my eyes closed. At some point, the shrieking stopped and the transport pitched forward. I braced myself on the dashboard, my eyes flicking open. Ruby was suffering in silence; Tobe was trying to wrestle the transport down into the riverbed.
So much for the ford …
Tobe cursed again and again as we bounced around like bugs in a jar: fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck.
He managed to right the transport; we started climbing the far riverbank, fighting hard to crest the peak, the wheels gripping hard, the engine snarling. The engine suddenly screamed and then we were free, coasting across an empty paddock, going from struggling to strutting in seconds.
Tobe laughed.
Ahead, I could make out an old highway. An insignificant ribbon dwarfed by featureless paddocks of bleached-yellow grass, sad and alone without even a wreck for company. I reached forward, grasping for a possum skin of bush tobacco. Ruby pushed something into my hand. I opened my palm, found a misshapen smoke. When I stuck it between my lips, it threatened to unravel. She passed another to Tobe, then tried to get his lighter working.
‘Cheers,’ I said.
She didn’t answer, still struggling with the lighter. I took it from her, lit up and watched the world pass by, deep in a melancholy funk. One of the dogs started barking, I couldn’t tell which.
‘Shut it, Blue,’ Tobe yelled.
Blue whined pathetically. Ruby smiled sympathetically. Tobe matched her smile and went all in.
‘Go on, then.’
She slithered through the hatch connecting the cabin to the back, crashing to the floor. She didn’t cry out. Tobe let her be. We cruised along a while in silence, before turning onto the old highway.
‘That’s more like it,’ Tobe said, pushing the engine harder.
My loss still sat heavily in my heart. I tried hard to squash it down—I had to stay sharp now that we had left the safety of town behind.
‘So, what’s the plan?’ I asked in a desperate attempt to think about something other than my sadness.
Tobe didn’t even blink. ‘We head south, try for the bay, maybe even for the cape. They still get a bit of rain down there, and there’s plenty of forest, too. We wouldn’t be short for food and cover.’
I was dubious; it was a really long way. But I didn’t argue. In for a penny and all that …
‘No worries.’
Tobe smiled. We kept going. Burnt paddocks hugged the highway, bordered by fences of rusting barbed wire, weathered posts, and crumbling rocks. A cool breeze blew through the cabin, keeping some of the heat at bay. If I hadn’t been so down, I would have thought it a beautiful day for a drive.
‘Grab the map,’ Tobe said. ‘Let’s figure out a way through the hills.’
Happy for the distraction, I rifled through the junk covering the dashboard. I found a stack of maps, held each up in turn, pulled out the right one after much searching.
‘Right, if you take a butcher’s you’ll see that I jotted down some notes.’
The brittle paper threatened to crumble to dust in my lap. Strange symbols had been drawn in, cutting roads in two or blotting out entire towns.
‘What’s this?’
Tobe stole a glance. ‘The doodles that look like trees, they’re trees that are blocking roads. The doodles that look like cars, they’re cars. Those big smears, well … Do I have to go on?’
I couldn’t see anything that looked like a tree or a car. Art was never Tobe’s thing.
We crossed the barren land, the transport easily coping with the rough surface of the old highway. My spirits slowly lifted. Before too long, Tobe and I were lost in the joy of a meandering drive, looking at the world with little-boy eyes. Once or twice, Ruby laughed loudly, happily playing with the dogs. Each time, Tobe and I grinned stupidly.
The hours crawled along. Every now and then, my sadness returned.
We barely spoke as the road wormed through the bush and cut through the bare paddocks. I rolled bush tobacco, passed Tobe water when he asked, occasionally offered to drive. He declined, every single time. I checked the map every now and then, at some point directing us onto an unobstructed back road. Of course, unobstructed didn’t mean smooth or easy; deep cracks zigzagged across the blacktop.
‘There’s nothing this baby can’t handle.’
Tobe patted the steering wheel as we flew over the cracks and kept on, our course a twisting snake. Tobe had done his research; every road that was clear on the map was clear in real life. But to find a way south we had to keep doubling back, taking tracks through dense scrub or dirt roads that seemed to lead nowhere. The transport shook constantly, sometimes so hard that we had to yell at each other. When the bush spat us out and the road once again cut through bare paddocks, the light was so bright that we had to slow down a little to get a grip.
‘Wouldn’t want to get lost out here.’
‘Shit yeah.’
‘Yeah, shit yeah,’ Ruby called from the back.
Soon, the bush swallowed us back up, the sunlight a dappled shimmer through the patchy canopy. At some point, we started passing through towns so small as to barely be there, ruined houses and crumbling memorials to a forgotten war the only signs of civilisation. In some of the towns, the houses still stood proud, the damage purely cosmetic. Some of the ‘Welcome to Wherever’ signs we saw were a little too clean, still easily readable. For a long period of time, there wasn’t a single wreck to be seen.
Something felt wrong. Nerves frayed, we opened up the engine and shot through.
‘I’ve got to take a piss,’ Tobe said once we had put a fair bit of distance between ourselves and the towns.
I was glad he had said so; I had stiffened from sitting so long.
Tobe slowed the transport as the bush around us began thinning out to a clearing. A cracked concrete picnic table sat next to a pile of rubble, all that was left of an ancient public toilet. Nailed to a tree was a faded sign declaring the clearing a mineral spring, in case anyone missed the rusty water pump hidden behind the rubble.
We stopped and jumped out.
The air was dry. Flies swarmed us. Tobe threw open the side door and the dogs ran free.
Ruby hopped down, her eyes wary. She looked left and right, seemed satisfied, then looked up at Tobe. ‘What’s up?’
‘How about you keep an eye out’—he waved at the bush—‘while I do my business?’
‘No worries.’
‘Good girl.’
Just as with Louise, there wasn’t a hint of sarcasm or condescension in his voice. There was only pride. The reminder of Louise saddened me, brought it all back. I looked away, tried to think of anything but the face I would never see again.
I heard Ruby scamper off into the bush, following Red and Blue. I left Tobe to do his thing, wandered around trying to distract myself.
‘Tobe!’ I yelled, drawing up to the water pump.
‘Hang on a sec.’
The pump itself looked as dry as dust. But you never know your luck; the dirt around it was darker than that by the road, the flat tang of mineral water spoiled the air. I took a step forward and Tobe clamped his hand on my shoulder, surprising me, stopping me dead.
‘Hold your horses, Bill. You can’t be too paranoid out here.’
He started poking his rifle into the discoloured earth. Everything seemed normal. He increased the pressure and the ground simply gave way. Tobe grabbed my arm before I could follow it down; he knew how clumsy I was.
‘Come on, let’s go.’
I nodded, trying to forget the sight of the sharpened stakes and broken glass that covered the bottom of the pit.
‘Ruby! Blue! Red! Come on, stop fucking about!’ Tobe called, already back at the transport.
The dogs burst out of the bush, sprawled on the road, hot and happy. Ruby smiled blissfully, a beautiful thing to see.
‘Get in! Now!’
Ruby and the dogs caught on. Tobe and I rushed back to the cabin and jumped in. We sped away, the engine roaring. I urged Tobe to put on more speed nonetheless.
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘A Punji trap.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Basically, a horrible way to die.’
‘Mate, there was nothing about it on the map.’
‘Yeah, sorry—I haven’t been out this way in ages.’
‘Creeps, you reckon?’
‘Something like that’s too clumsy. Anyway, why would they bother?’
‘First Country, then?’
‘It’s not their style. You know what they’re like—if we don’t fuck with them, they won’t fuck with us.’
‘Fair enough. But it has to be someone …’
‘Yeah, probably an old farmer or some shit. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were holed up in one of those towns we passed.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Who’d live out here?’
And then I looked around at the parched land that dwarfed us. It was pretty much the same as home.
We fell silent and drove on. Eventually, I realised that we had steadily been climbing higher; behind us, through the breaks in the bush, I could see to the horizon—a parched land of dying trees, bleached grass, dead towns.
A world of thirst and ruin that sprawled as far as we could see.
We climbed higher still.
The bush slowly became thicker and lusher, fed by underground springs. Trees once again scraped at the transport. The shimmering light never changed as we crawled over the peak and started our descent. Tobe gripped the wheel with both hands, trying not to miss a bend, trying not to send us into a ravine.
And then we shot out into open land.
Tobe floored the accelerator; we rocketed across another bare paddock. I had no idea where we were. I looked down at the map. Whichever forgotten shire we were passing through had faded to nothing, lost in a fold.
‘Shit.’
I saw Tobe’s eyes flick away from the road. I scooped up his rusty binoculars. The way ahead looked clear, the land on both sides empty. Far in the distance, a line of bush cut across the horizon.
‘Ruby!’
As quick as a striking snake, she slithered back through the hatch.
‘Give Bill a hand, will you? Two heads are better than one.’
She looked at him strangely.
‘What he means is …’
She rolled her eyes at me.
I passed her the binoculars. She took them, scanning the way ahead without saying a word. I kept my eyes on the land in case something broke its monotony. An unforgiving place, it made our trek seem futile, ridiculous, insignificant.
When Ruby cried out, I was grateful to have something else to think about.
Wrecked vehicles loomed ahead, cutting across the highway. Tobe kept our speed up until we were close enough to see them properly. There were too many to count, blocking the road completely, a solid wedge of rusting steel.
‘Bugger this.’
Tobe revved the engine, nudging the transport against an abandoned ute. He revved harder; the transport’s bull-bar crumpled the ute’s passenger side. We dug in, slowly shoved it aside. Tobe steered the transport through the gap, barrelled aside more wrecks, and drove straight over the top of others. Ruby and I kept watching the road ahead.
After much pushing and shoving, we cleared the wrecks.
‘About bloody time.’
Far in the distance, the highway curved, disappearing into the steadily thickening bush. The road until then was dead straight; Tobe opened up the transport. I occasionally leaned out the window, double-checking something that had caught my eye, hoping to spot a rusty, bullet-ridden sign welcoming us to wherever.
‘Don’t bother,’ Tobe said. ‘I think we’re in a national park.’
‘As if there’s a difference.’
He laughed, slowly at first and then harder and harder. It was contagious, soon we were howling together.
‘What’s so funny?’ Ruby asked.
We laughed some more. Tobe wiped tears from his eyes. Somehow, he kept the transport under control. But our mirth faded as the highway curved and the thick bush swallowed us up into its shadowy world. Tobe cut our speed as the road started twisting through the towering trees. We crawled for a long time before the road straightened back out.
‘Shit.’
Ruby drew the word out, leaning forward with the binoculars hard against her eyes. Tobe looked at me, raising his eyebrows. I didn’t know what he wanted.
‘Have a look, dickhead.’
Ruby wordlessly held the binoculars up.
‘It’s all right, Tobe. It’s just an old bridge and a few more wrecks,’ I said, doing as he said.
We slowed, stopped at the bridge, jumped out. Trees grew thickly around us, hugging both sides of the road. We must have been on an aquifer; they formed a solid wall, casting us in deep shadow. The pounding sun was far away, hidden by the canopy, robbed of its ferocity.
There was no birdsong. The world sighed as the wind blew.
‘Right, then.’
Ruby and I stood to one side as Tobe rolled an enormous rock onto the road. I crouched next to him, helped him lift it. Tobe nodded at the bridge. A wrecked firetruck and a rusted-out bus sat in the middle, cutting it in two. Sunlight drenched us, the empty river below cutting a bright scar through the dark land.
‘One, two, three.’
We threw the rock as hard as we could. It landed with a thump, rolled a little, came to rest beside the firetruck. The bridge barely shook. Tobe picked up another rock, threw it at the bus. The crash of shattering glass echoed through the trees.
‘Let’s go. Ruby, stay behind me.’
But she had already darted onto the bridge. Red and Blue dashed past her, running their guts out in pure dog joy, disappearing from view. The wrecks threw Ruby in shadow; we soon lost sight of her as well.
‘Shit.’
We jumped back into the cabin. Tobe started the transport, edged the front wheels onto the bridge. It sagged a little but held. I released a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. I kept an eye out for Ruby. Tobe inched us forward, so slowly that you would swear we weren’t moving. The bridge moaned as old wood strained.
‘Come on, what are you waiting for? Bloody Christmas?’ Ruby had Tobe’s drawl down pat.
She had climbed on top of the bus and was doing a handstand. I whistled low, couldn’t help feeling old. To see it all as simply the way it is, instead of as it was, instead of as the wreckage of a forgotten world, what bliss that would be.
I sighed deeply. Tobe muttered under his breath.
Ruby smiled wide, finishing her routine by somersaulting to the ground. She bowed low and then darted further along the bridge.
‘Better get a wriggle on, I guess.’
I felt the same weary regret that filled Tobe’s voice. I tried to ignore it. We pulled up to the firetruck, wedged our bull-bar against it. Once again, we dug in and pushed hard. It started to move, leaving rubber behind. After much grinding effort we pulled free, only to snag the bus on our rear bumper. The engine whined, the transport weighed down by our newfound load.
‘Come on.’
Tobe floored the accelerator, forcing us forward. The engine screamed and then stalled. I leaned out the window to look at the damage; we were hauling a load of twisted metal that exuded the acrid taint of petrol. Somehow, the bus’s fuel tank had been punctured; a thin trail was dribbling down its side, pooling on the road. I turned back. Ruby was watching us from the far end of the bridge. She raised a hand. Tobe started the engine and pushed us forward before I could stop him. A fireworks show of sparks appeared in the rear-view mirror as the bus—still snagged on our rear bumper—collapsed on its wheel hubs and started scraping along the road. Tobe revved the engine harder. We shot free. The transport stalled again.
‘Look out!’ Ruby yelled.
In the rear-view mirror, tongues of flame were leaping off the bus. Cold sweat drenched me. Tobe was cursing to himself, trying hard to get the transport started. Horrified, unable to stop myself, I looked back at the wrecks. Tobe screamed Ruby’s name, telling her to run. Flames reached the bus. It exploded with a thunder that drove everything else away.
It happened too quickly. It happened too slowly.
Through the dust and smoke, I saw that the explosion had blown a hole in the bridge, a hole big enough to cast both wrecks into the empty river. A deep tearing sound came from below us, as if the world itself was cracking open. The transport lurched, its rear end dropping, throwing us back into our seats. Cracks were racing across the surface of the bridge, splitting it apart, raining more rubble onto the dry riverbed.
‘Come on, you bastard.’
The engine didn’t catch. I knew it wouldn’t. A crack in the surface of the bridge caught up to us, raced underneath us. I said nothing. I didn’t have to; Tobe was watching it as well.
‘You’d better buckle up, mate.’
I got back into my seat and did as he said. The transport lurched again.