The bridge gave way. Wood snapped, concrete crumbled, metal buckled and cracked. We fell. Tobe smiled grimly, tucking himself into a ball within the safety of his seatbelt. I reached for the door to try to brace myself. It was gone, torn off without me even noticing. Without warning, the transport started tumbling, end over end. A distant part of me realised that I was holding onto the old rusty nail that my hat used to hang upon, clutching it tight like it was a rosary or a rabbit foot. The transport kept tumbling. I screamed. Tobe stoically kept his mouth shut, but then we hit a tree that hung over the empty river and he started screaming as well. Something tore into my leg, digging deep.
I screamed again. I blacked out.
Tobe’s stifled cries brought me back. My eyes wouldn’t open, the lids stuck fast. I pulled my glasses off. Somehow, they had made it through the fall. I prised my eyelids open, slipped my glasses back on. Tobe was ramming his shoulder against a piece of wreckage, his left arm hanging useless and wrong. Red and Blue lay at his feet, watching him with worried eyes. I tried to wave, saw that my fingers were wet with blood.
I felt more blood dribble down my neck.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sit up. I craned my neck. Tobe rammed his shoulder a last time; he let loose his agony as his useless arm popped back into place. A gaping trench peeled his forehead apart. His nose was bent at an obscene angle. He took hold of the crooked thing, snapped it back into place with a squelch.
He didn’t cry out. ‘Right, what’s next? Ah …’
He limped my way, Red and Blue at his heels.
‘Bill? You with us?’
I groaned, gave him a pathetic thumbs-up. ‘Thanks for saving my arse, again.’
He looked at me strangely. ‘Don’t thank me, I didn’t do shit. Ruby put in the hard yards.’
I craned my neck again. Ruby was darting through the forest of twisted metal and broken concrete, beating out spot fires with an old blanket.
‘Cheers, Ruby.’
She turned at her name, smiled, turned back, kept working. ‘You owe me one,’ she yelled over her shoulder.
I let my head fall back. My legs were wet, my pants clinging to me. With numb horror, I saw that the gnarled tip of a broken branch was sticking out of my thigh. I stupidly leaned forward, tried to shoo away the flies buzzing around it. Barely aware of what I was doing, I tried to wrench my leg free.
The pain broke its banks and capsized me.
‘Bill?’
Once more, Tobe’s voice brought me back. I opened my eyes; he was squatting next to me, wrapping a makeshift bandage around my wound.
Blue ran up, sniffed at the broken branch.
‘Get out of it!’
Blue bounded off into the bush in search of her kin.
‘Here, bite on this.’ Ruby was standing over me, offering me a piece of wood wrapped in a dirty strip of cloth. ‘It’ll help.’
I relented. She crouched beside me and lay her hands on my shoulders.
‘You ready?’ Tobe asked.
I nodded. Tobe took a firm hold of my leg. Ruby pinned me down.
‘One, two, three.’
Tobe wrenched on my leg. I blacked out again.
‘Mate, this is becoming a bad habit.’
For the third time, Tobe’s voice brought me back. I couldn’t speak. The world was blurred at the edges, like it had been suspended in oil. I looked at the debris filling the riverbed, at the mangled mess of my left leg, at Tobe’s wounds, at the purple glow of dusk’s approach. These things were all hazy before my unfocused eyes. They meant nothing. The pain I had felt earlier was now somewhere far away, as light as a summer cloud.
‘Bill?’
I groaned, any other kind of answer beyond me. I smacked my lips, my throat dry. Tobe held a canteen to my mouth. I swallowed greedily.
‘More,’ I croaked.
Tobe tipped the canteen again. The fuzziness slowly started to pass.
‘You all right?’
‘What do you reckon?’
His smile shrivelled up. ‘I’m serious.’ He was never very good at sincerity.
‘To be honest, I’ve no idea. What did you do to me?’
‘Wasn’t me, mate. Blame her.’
He pointed at Ruby, who was methodically picking through the remains of our irreplaceable possessions.
‘Ruby!’
She turned to look at him.
‘What was it you gave Bill?’
A guarded smile crossed her face. ‘Just some herbs I found nearby. They’ll wear off soon, but I’ve got more if he needs them.’
It was the most I had ever heard her say.
‘You’re welcome,’ she yelled over her shoulder.
‘Ruby was good enough to pack your wound, too,’ Tobe added. ‘That’s another one you owe her.’
I had a close look. The hole had been cleaned and stuffed with thick green leaves that oozed a viscous fluid. I tried to thank her, but she had already dashed away to another blanket of debris.
For a moment, Tobe and I looked at each other without speaking, letting the ridiculousness of our situation sink in. We hadn’t even been on the road a day; from the cosy confines of the pub to a world of wreckage and flame in less than a turn of the earth.
We started laughing. What else could we do?
‘What’s so funny?’ Ruby called out.
She seemed unfazed by everything. I suppose if that was the only world you had ever known, then nothing was really that strange. Once again, I felt suddenly old.
‘It’s been a long day, that’s all.’
She didn’t understand that, either. We laughed a little longer. I decided to try to move.
‘You sure?’ Tobe asked.
I nodded, reached up, took his hand. ‘She’ll be ‘right.’
She wasn’t ‘right: Tobe heaved and I buckled.
‘You blokes are useless,’ Ruby yelled, striding over, carrying a long forked branch.
I finally made it up, wobbling on my good leg. Ruby passed me the branch. The fork was snug in my armpit; I had to stoop.
‘Aren’t we a sad bunch of bastards?’
Tobe’s question didn’t need an answer.
I couldn’t help staring at the gash in his forehead. When he caught me doing so, he rolled his balaclava down to cover it, wincing in pain. I could feel Ruby’s eyes on the back of my head. I tore a strip off my shirt to wrap the wound. She turned away, keen to get back to her hunt. Tobe followed her. I stumbled after them.
Ruby had done well—she had found plenty of stuff that wasn’t completely ruined, including a working rifle. But most of it wasn’t worth the effort. Crates of ammunition and a lot of tools—shovels, picks, axes, saws, crowbars—they were all too heavy to carry. A few jerrycans of petrol had survived, useless now that the transport was dead. Its water tank had been punctured; its precious cargo slowly leaking out. Luckily, Ruby had also found an intact crate of canteens. What she hadn’t found were any backpacks.
Once more, she saved us.
She snatched up a tattered hessian bag that had survived the fall. Without regard for sentiment, she started emptying it, dumping spare clothes at her feet. She dove into the pile, tearing some things apart, unpicking others, tying sleeves and hems together, occasionally reaching back into the bag to find something new to work with.
She eventually pulled out a long white dress wrapped in crumbling plastic.
‘That’s enough!’ Tobe yelled.
He snatched the dress from Ruby. You couldn’t read anything in her Mona Lisa smile. Tobe broke her gaze. She got back to work.
‘Want a smoke before we set off?’ I suggested, trying to distract him.
He was staring into the distance, crushing the dress in his hands. ‘Yeah,’ he said softly.
He squatted. I stayed standing, knowing too well that if I sat back down I would be done for. Tobe surprised me by pulling a crumpled joint from his pocket. It wasn’t really the best way to stay sharp, when you’re lost and injured and far from home. But I didn’t say anything—it had been a long day.
He lit up, took a few drags. ‘You want?’ he asked.
I gave in. We got a little stoned, slowly making peace with our predicament. In silence, we watched Ruby do her thing. If she minded our indulgence, she didn’t let on.
‘Ta-da!’ she shouted when she was done, bouncing to her feet. She held up three patchwork sacks, sleeves and pant-legs tied together as straps.
‘Good one.’
‘Where would you fellas be without me?’
Tobe and I avoided her loaded question. Fucked is where we would have been.
‘Come on, no use smoking the rest of the day away.’
We did as she said. Broken and hobbled, I was relegated to holding the sacks open. Food and water were the priorities; soon, the first sack was bulging with what Ruby had scavenged. Into the others went some spare clothes, some spare ammunition, and the precious wedding dress.
When Ruby helped me hoist a sack over my shoulder, I collapsed under it.
‘Dickhead,’ Tobe said, helping me back to my feet.
I gingerly looked over my mangled leg. It was okay, I hadn’t done any further damage.
‘Let’s try that again,’ he said with a laugh.
‘Piss off.’
Ruby quickly put a stop to our familiar ways. ‘Get your bloody act together! Tobe, give me your rifle.’
Embarrassed, he passed it over.
‘Now, take both sacks.’
He started to argue but she cut him off.
‘What, aren’t you man enough?’
The perfect insult for someone like him—he puffed out his chest, threw one sack over his shoulder, picked up another, started strutting and taking the piss, staggering back and forth, pretending to buckle at the knee.
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’
He kept going. Ruby started laughing, started staggering with him, the two of them stumbling around like puppets with cut strings.
I gave in and laughed with them.
The angry barking of Red and Blue brought us back to reality. Frenzied and growing more ferocious by the second, it cut through the quiet bush.
A high-pitched yelp provided the crescendo.
‘Red! Blue!’
Tobe’s call went unanswered.
‘Red! Blue!’
Nothing.
‘Come on, stop fucking around!’
Red burst out of the bush bordering the riverbed. He ran to Tobe, whining, and then looked back. Blue was emerging from the bush, limping, leaving a red wet trail behind. She half-fell down the riverbank. She collapsed at Tobe’s feet, whimpering.
I froze. Something in me had snapped; my ability to adjust and adapt had overloaded.
‘Blue!’
Tobe was cradling her, his fingers tracing paths over her body, his hands dripping with blood. He cried without seeming to notice. Blue shuddered, flinched away when Tobe touched her belly.
‘I need some help!’
Ruby was already comforting Red. She was crying as well, but unlike Tobe she had given in to it. I was dimly aware that one of us should be keeping an eye out for whatever had hurt Blue, but the thought was drowned out by my own numbness, by Tobe’s desperation and distress.
‘Mate, come on!’
I felt nothing: no sorrow, no sadness, no pity, just a blank detachment that separated me from the world. But still I moved, holding Blue like Tobe asked.
He cracked a canteen, washed her belly clean. ‘Fuck, no.’
Blue whimpered again, breathing fast. I stroked her head, scratched her behind her ears. Her breathing slowed dramatically. Her eyes rolled back.
‘Tobe!’
He was already beside me, taking over. ‘Come on, girl, you’ll be ‘right.’
We both knew that he was lying.
‘Come on, good girl, good dog.’
His tears and her blood pooled at his feet. He held her tight, arms wrapped around her in a familial embrace. Her eyes rolled open and she looked at him with pure love. She licked his face. He couldn’t help but smile.
She closed her eyes, shook a last time, and died in his arms.
Tobe collapsed over her body. Red howled. I cried, letting it all out. Ruby said nothing. Tobe stayed slumped over Blue’s motionless body. After a long time, he got to his feet.
Ghoulish fascination made me take a last look at Blue. Bullet holes peppered her belly.
‘Ruby? My gun.’
Ruby let go of Red. She got to her feet and unshouldered the rifle. Red ran to Blue, licked her face, nudged her with his snout.
‘Don’t move!’ an unexpected and unknown voice shouted.
Surprised, Ruby dropped the rifle. A metallic clicking cut through the quiet, the sound of a dozen or more guns being cocked. Tobe slowly raised his hands; Red quickly scuttled behind him. I raised my own hands, scared through and through. Ruby held her clenched fists at her side.
Shadowy figures started melting from the bush, their black body armour a perfect disguise, the dreaded letters CRP running down their chests. Moving as one, they silently strode down the riverbank.
‘What’s going on here?’ the lead Creep demanded.
Tobe tugged his balaclava lower onto his forehead, wincing once again. I looked at Ruby, tried to smile bravely.
‘I asked you bastards a question!’ the Creep spat.
‘Piss off,’ Tobe muttered.
‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that?’
‘I said “piss off”. What, are you deaf as well as stupid?’
And then he stood aside. Red went for the Creep’s throat, knocking him to the ground. His screams echoed through the trees. The other Creeps didn’t know what to do; they pointed their guns but couldn’t fire for fear of hitting their own. Some part of me was horrified, some part of me was glad.
Tobe smiled coldly.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ someone yelled.
Another Creep took charge, a bull-roo of a man. He holstered his gun. Without hesitation, he leapt on Red, grabbing him in a bear-hug, dragging him away from the ragged mess of the stricken Creep. Tobe took an involuntary step forward. Guns were thrust in his face, lots of them. He couldn’t do anything but watch as the bull-roo Creep picked Red up and threw him across the riverbed.
Before Red could scrabble to his feet, the Creep drew his gun and shot him dead. The tiny pop of the silenced pistol seemed too small a sound for what it had done.
‘Bastards …’
The Creep smiled. He raised his hand. ‘Hold your fire!’ he yelled, laughing and holstering his gun. ‘Come on, boy, show me what you’ve got.’
Tobe threw himself at the killer of his dog. He swung wildly, furious and unthinking. The Creep toyed with him, taunted him. Tobe managed to get a few punches in, more by luck than skill. The Creep, well fed and well trained, easily shrugged them off.
After a while, he tired of his game. He took a metal baton from his belt and hit Tobe hard enough to make him stay down.
Ruby and I were forced to watch.
‘Is that all you’ve got?’ Tobe asked through broken teeth.
He passed out. The Creep crouched down and pulled Tobe’s balaclava off. He clicked his fingers in the air. Another Creep threw him a canteen. He cracked it open, washed Tobe’s face, grabbed his scruff of hair, and lifted his head.
‘Fucking hell! Tobias Cousins, you cheeky bastard. I always wondered what happened to you.’
The Creep let Tobe’s head fall back. He stood up. He took a long drink of water. Without taking his eyes off me, he spat the water onto Red’s body.
‘Do you want a go?’ he asked.
My simmering rage began to bubble over. I took a step forward.
‘Well, what are you waiting for? Bloody Christmas?’
He had Tobe down pat. I didn’t stop to wonder why, and started a fight I knew I couldn’t win.