TEN

A motel that’s also a dead petrol station and a minimart sits like a block of lard on the highway, the only buildings of a scabby little town just north of the desert. Three guys stand out the front holding guns. Their once-white T-shirts tagged with ‘Game on’ in black marker. By the looks of them, they’ve eaten every pig they ever killed. Inside the shop, a woman behind a counter clears the gunk from her lashes with a wet wipe.

‘Haven’t seen a campervan since last week.’ She’s got a face mask dangling around her neck and scratched-up sunglasses perched on her head. ‘Hardly any cars through here today at all.’

‘I’m not on holiday.’ I show her the few photos on my phone. One of Lee, me, and brand-new baby Kimberly up at the hospital in the city. Graham had left by then, and Lee was about to. I look half drowned with pride. Lee is sheepish, staring off at something past the camera.

‘You seen this boy?’ Find the photo of an older Kimberly at my house with Wallamina. ‘How about her?’

‘The wallaby?’

‘The girl.’

The woman shakes her head and the mask bobs around on its elastic at her chin. ‘They’ve got to be headed for the city, though. Everyone’s going there. I don’t know why. People getting killed at that service station — just for petrol!’ I start ratting through the shelves. ‘Don’t go looking for a hand drill,’ she calls. ‘I don’t sell them, never will.’

‘What do I want with a hand drill?’ I mutter. The store looks looted. Packets on the lower shelves ripped into, their contents eaten. The taller shelves cleared. The newspapers are only a day old, though. Front page all about the race for a zooflu cure. Seems they gave a whole bunch of mice a flu like ours, but when it came to blitzing it with strong antibiotics, the little buggers kept telling those scientists where it hurt.

‘Personally, I don’t think they’re after a cure at all,’ the woman says. She’s snooped up beside me to poke at the paper. ‘They like everyone in a state of emergency. Easier to manage. That’s why we’re all taking to desperate measures. Have you seen that video?’ I shake my head. She gestures to the piggers outside. ‘Don’t bother. I keep those guys here instead.’ At the back end of the store, a message twists like smoke through the half-empty shelves,

Oh.

Oh oh it’s

all the

babies.

Pictures scurry up my spine. A furry arsehole, a scratched-out burrow, my whole life a nest. The owner grimly ignores it. ‘You should get a guy,’ she tells me. ‘You can’t trust anyone. Especially the army. They pretend they’re all about people’s welfare, but they help pets and livestock and all sorts of mongrels. That’s where our taxes are going — some stupid animal that’s suddenly got a story. Have you talked to them? I mean communicated? Try talking to them about anything important and you’ll soon find out what their brains are made of: grass and dog food.’

On the other side of the window glass, one of the Land Patrol fellas shifts, cocks his gun to where Sue peeks from the van. Before I can get out there to give him what for he throws his head back and laughs, hugging himself. Sue, snout to the window crack:

Can

I have its poo.

I start grabbing anything that’s left in the shop. Nappies, a packet of party poppers, a measuring jug without a handle. My hand closes on a thin packet of preserved fruit that has been missed. The rush of flavour. There’s a fridge along one side of the wall but it’s dark, shelves warm and labelled DAIRY and MEAT with cartons of long-life milk and packaged tofu instead of proper food. Antiseptic and a bandage. The only fresh food is corn and oranges, piles and piles of them. No cheesy chips. No white sauce. No spam. All the wet pet food gone but there’s still dry, beef-flavoured dog biscuits. Grab two packets of them for Sue. The creature hidden in the shelves calls,

Oh.

Oh.

Two women stand close to each other in an aisle labelled CANS. They’re big and young, with strong pink arms in singlets, even though the wind that blows across the desert outside is cold. One holds a tin. The other grabs for it, and they fall into each other until the one with the tin bites the other on the soft exposed flesh of her upper arm. Pushes away, gripping the prize. Back at the register now, the owner of the store says loudly, ‘I don’t think I should sell that to you.’

Oh.

‘Fine, I’ll just take it then.’ The tin clatters on other things in a basket.

‘I’ll call my guys,’ the owner says.

Tell every one

mother

is coming.

The woman laughs. ‘Those dudes couldn’t catch a mouse.’

Oh.

The door chimes her departure and the owner appears around the corner of the aisle.

‘What was in the can?’ I ask while I lay my hand on an open box of air freshener.

‘Fish. It was our last. It’s all gone.’

The woman on the ground scans the empty shelf, then examines the bite. Not deep but it has drawn bright blood.

Oh,

oh. Yes.

‘I’ll get some Band-Aids.’ The owner disappears again.

‘She knows I could sue her for this,’ the woman tells me.

‘Is there still suing?’

‘Yeah. True.’

The bite looks sore. ‘Was it worth it?’

‘If you had a husband moaning at you like mine it was.’

Oh.

Oh.

We edge away from the shelf where the creature has found something. Its messages twitch out at a speed that makes my teeth hurt.

‘My son was vego,’ I tell her by what was the tinned meats shelf. ‘I had to learn all sorts of things. Spinach, that’s alright, we grow that here.’ Look around. There’s no spinach. ‘Chickpeas and lentils for the protein.’

‘You sound like the government. With that nutrition ad. Husband says it’s all a conspiracy anyway. The pollies and the greenies are in it together, he reckons.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, they’ve got you programmed. You think it’s a flu, right? Bullshit. It’s in the water.’ I spy an oval can of spam flush against the back of the shelf. The woman keeps going. ‘Animals can’t even talk, you know that? The water’s making us hallucinate. We think they’re saying things but it’s just us, imagining it. Makes sense when you think about it. It’s not like anyone has died from this flu, except the suicides.’ She glances toward the hidden creature, but the animal has taken its gases to another part of the store. I dart out a hand. Hide the spam behind the dog biscuits.

‘You’re not supposed to be taking pets around with you.’ The woman nods at the biscuits. ‘Government says you’re not supposed to travel with them.’

‘Thought it was all a conspiracy?’

The woman dabs at the bite. ‘I don’t fucking know. I just want to find some meat for the husband so he’ll shut up.’

The owner comes back with a new packet of medicated wipes, antiseptic, and Band-Aids. I offload some of the broken crap I’m carrying and grab corn and oranges instead. Find a jar of coffee, some out-of-date bread that looks weirdly fresh, Vegemite, biscuits, baked beans, lollies, and long-life juice.

‘I’ll take some smokes too.’ Only Sunset Reds behind the counter. The owner names a price five times what they’re worth. A sign reads CASH ONLY. I don’t have enough. Start rejecting things — the lollies, the biscuits.

‘Just the smokes, then. And the dog food. The spam, the antiseptic. And some phone credit.’

The woman nods absently, one eye on the customer and her out-of-it-looking husband, who has now come in through the door. Part of his skull shaved and a bloodied square of plaster stuck to it with medical tape.

‘I’ll stay with you,’ I whisper. ‘You know, until they go.’

The owner snorts. ‘They’d all starve and die now if I closed up shop. Here’ — she pushes a pair of black plastic sunglasses, a face mask, and ear plugs at me — ‘I have to hand these out now. Waste of time.’

I take the stuff. ‘Leave you to it, then. See you,’ I tell the other customer as I go past.

‘That the bitch that bit you?’ I hear the husband slur. Once upon a time I would have taken him on. But Kimberly is out there somewhere with my son. Sue locked in the van with no water. Ange going lulu with the lizards back at the Park. My old mum talking crow. All that keeps me moving.

My whiskey hangover kicks in between the minimart and the campervan, starting with my eyeballs. Almost miss the big fuck-off horse snorting and slathering in the middle of the car park. Two kids astride.

‘What are you lot up to?’ I call. The horse takes me in. ‘Hey.’

The sweet hand

is here.

‘Is it?’

It’s

here.

I creep forward with my phone stuck out, trying to get a few snaps. The beast’s otherwise glossy coat is nicked with scars. The minimart owner follows me out and stares up at the kids like they’re the riders of the apocalypse.

‘I told you not to come back here.’

Here.

Here.

The horse’s song is measured as a metronome through its soft, hairy nose.

And

it was grass.

‘We thought you were closing,’ one kid calls over the horse.

‘Yeah, we thought you wanted to clear out,’ says the other.

‘Don’t need to. Got security. Hey. Hey.’ The Land Patrol guys over near the camper ignore her — they’ve taken up with another animal: sandy bum and greedy snout. One of the men pushes a treat for Sue through the window gap. The horse keeps muttering.

The lawn

wins

tonight. So does

the

heartbeat.

The air itself becomes a rubbery muscle, stretched. My own body pulled to snapping. The shop owner’s face contorts. Then, we’re released, snap.

‘If I see you around here again,’ the owner shouts, backs away, but her heart isn’t in it. She clutches the doorframe, turns her attention back to the Land Patrol.

‘You going to protect me here or what?’

One of them points at Sue. ‘You should talk to the dingo.’

‘Not bloody likely.’ The woman’s back in that air-conditioned box before the animals can say anything more. My eyes are caught on the messages sluicing off the horse’s body. Every limb calls in a different direction, but all four agree on a clear run, some space to see forever. Those kids have got her on a short rein.

Listen

to the pinching

fingers.

‘She’s frightened,’ I call out.

The angry

world comes

closer.

‘Nah, horses are like that,’ says the kid riding near the horse’s neck. His voice wobbles. That he could still go through puberty in all this. ‘They got good memories but. Never forgets a face. We call her Elephant now. She used to be called Slayer.’

The angry,

says the horse,

world.

I edge close again. ‘Why don’t you tell her it’s okay? It’s okay.’

A truck screams past like hell on wheels, and for a moment the whole world is angry. The kids are mouthing off, their words taken in the rush.

‘What?’

‘I said, where have you been, woman?’

‘Yeah, and how’d you get out here? You’re not from here. My dad says no one has petrol. Except army and the piggers, of course.’ The boy shoots a longing glance at the pig hunters, their ute, their guns, their meaty arms. ‘He says to bring petrol back if I find it, and he’ll give me more food.’

‘Your dad sounds like a real catch.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m looking for my son, his little girl.’ The horse watches me with her moon eyes. The fine whiskers on her chin whisper,

It is a perfume

place

here.

The boy reins her in, sharp on the mouth. Her skin shivers with meaning.

What a smelly

little foal.

The hard bridge of her face. She rears back at my touch.

Subject!

Then her skin flickers, settles. My body fills with rain and I shiver too. She sniffs me.

It has

sugar hooves.

Kimberly. My girl stretches a hand — apple in her palm. Sweet. Takes me a moment to find words. ‘You saw her?’

Its face is

hungry.

‘You either got to yell at her or talk to her real gentle,’ the boy at the back advises. ‘She’ll spend her whole time going on about feelings and shit otherwise. Don’t come near her with a boot neither. Dad gave her a beating with one, like, one thousand years ago. She never lets go of anything. Ever.’ He pulls a pre-rolled cigarette from a red-and-tan packet and lights it, reclining on the horse’s rump. Smoking to the sun. The other kid is half asleep, draped over Elephant’s strong neck. I smile, try to make my face nice. Reflected in her glassy brown eye is a psycho clown.

‘Help me, Elephant? Seen my girl?’

This

place is

homely.

I look around at the grease-stained concrete. The empty road edged with clumps of dirt. ‘It sure is.’

The horse brings her silken nose closer.

A paddock

for a soft

hand.

I open my palm and she inhales it.

What hoary

sugar. That little

foal in

the sand.

‘She probably means the desert.’ The smoking boy sits up again.

Big salt. It’s

a dead whale

search.

‘Dead whales is what they call petrol. You’ve got to know how to speak animalese.’

The boy draped over the horse’s neck opens his eyes. ‘I know who she’s talking about. This morning at that other petrol station —’

His brother punches him in his leg. ‘That wasn’t this morning.’

‘Fuck off it wasn’t.’

‘It was two days ago, idiot. And it was right here.’

‘It was whenever that hippie guy gave me all these smokes.’ He fishes out the Brumbies packet from his shorts pocket and crushes it. Lee’s brand. ‘Oh yeah. Days back.’

‘Was there a girl with him?’ I say it too loud. The whites of the horse’s eyes shine, a man’s raised arm. The boy gives her a little stroke and her pupils return to liquid brown.

Sweetie.

‘Little kid, yeah. Gave Elephant some old apples — best day of her life. The girl totally sooked out when she had to leave, but. Some old person gave her an ice-cream.’

Was it strawberry? Did it make her feel better? Is she okay? Is she okay?

Salt,

says the horse.

It

stabs.

The boy flicks his cigarette — a tiny firework in the hot air — then digs his heels into the horse’s ribs. Body to match her thoughts. Hooves on the bitumen.

Go.

I need a rinse under the tap and a lie-down, but the piggers are still gathered around my camper, deep in conversation with Sue. One wipes an eye.

‘Yeah, mate. Haven’t seen them in … shit. Where’s Rabies now?’

‘With the rest,’ says another. ‘In the pound.’

Sue throws pictures of meat from her snout. Memories of every cage. The stench of fear creeps over the concrete, crawls up shorts and jeans legs until one of the piggers clutches his head, shakes it, pokes a beefy finger through the window gap so Sue can lick it.

Is it a

friend. (Follow.)

‘We could be back for breakfast,’ the pigger tells the others. Turns to me. ‘Nice dog …’ I shoot the fella my best smile, but that just sets off a ripple of nausea that builds in strength toward my guts. Sugar hooves. Is that its friend.

‘Um, lady. You alright? She’s having a heart attack.’ I’m too queasy to give the little bugger the slap he deserves. ‘Motel’s good.’ He nods to the building attached to the shop. When I turn back, he’s at his ute with the other men, storing his gun in the tray.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ The minimart owner has returned, yelling over the car park.

‘Find our dogs.’

‘I don’t want dogs here.’ Scuffs slowly after the screaming tracks they leave on the concrete. ‘I told them I don’t want dogs here.’ She looks around for someone who cares. Stands on her tiptoes as I open the campervan.

‘Here we go,’ I warn Sue, but the wild notes of territory leaping from the dingo’s flesh have the woman slumping back to her shop. Sue, meanwhile, gets stuck into her patrol.

The burrow is

clear. (Watch out.)

Tail muttering,

I need more

details.

I fold my arms, watch her circle the van. ‘Those piggers could have shot you.’

Guard

dog.

‘Yeah, right.’

Wild

cat.

‘If that’s what makes you feel —’

Sit and

stay.

She’s seen me gazing at the motel vacancy sign. Her body stinks of pictures. Shadows made by moonlight. Paw-footed through the sand.

I’ll call the

others. (Help me.)

Let

them —

‘No.’ I grab her by the scruff. ‘No howling. I’m your pack, remember? And tomorrow we can go hunting or do whatever. Not tonight. Please, Sue. I need to sleep it off a few hours before I drive us both into a tree. No good to anyone dead, right?’

What.

‘You have to stay.’

Where.

‘Here.’

The best

plan —

I slam the door.

The woman at the counter is a hulking, older version of the one at the servo. Sisters, or mother and daughter. Her body swaddled in clothing, bits of material, a tea towel around her face.

‘Any animals?’

‘Just me. And I don’t piss on beds.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Where’s your mask?’ she slurs.

I grin at her. ‘Been on the sauce, love?’

‘No.’ She straightens herself. ‘It’s just medicine.’ She reaches into her nylon pants pocket and produces a bottle of purple cough syrup, unscrewing the gummy white lid and slipping the bottle under her tea towel to take a nip. ‘You’re supposed to wear a mask. Not supposed to talk with the animals.’ She takes a dainty sip. ‘New government flyers say that. And on the internet. Keep to your kind. You stay in your territory, they stay in theirs. Let dogs be dogs and cats be cats and birds be birds. You want some?’ She points the purple at me. I shrug, take a sip — tastes like childhood. Ask her where I can get a feed and a proper drink. She points to a notice, ‘Closed indefinitely’, written on hotel stationery and stuck to the restaurant door next to another ‘NO ANIMALS’ sign. A chip machine hums in the stark hall. Not a bug in sight. I push coins in and take the packets out to the van. Dip the chips into the spam while Sue goes for some dog biscuits on the van floor. When I lock her back in for the night, she comes to the window and pants at me — her breath leaves a heart on the glass.

Too

much moon. (Howl for

them.)

‘Quiet, okay?’

But

it’s too much

moon.

Can’t see a moon for the cloud cover. Her messages of too much follow me across the car park and into the hotel room, where I can close the door on Sue, put my phone on charge, and keep one ear cocked for mice or whatevers talking in the walls. Unlike the minimart, this place is true to its signage — clean of creatures. The shower water scorches my face and scalp. Soap bubbles turn brown and circle the drain. Sitting on the floral double bed in my towel, I take nips of the nursing-home sherry. The liquid courage is too slow when it comes to dabbing antiseptic on my infected hand. Skin bloated around the cut. Test it with a finger and cry out. Someone on the other side of the window responds.

‘Hello?’

Not even the swish tide of another car on the highway. Another squawk. Out the window, the old woman is sneaking her way across the car park toward the van. By the time I haul my filthy clothes back on and get out there, she’s charging back.

‘That … that …’ A dense spray of spit from her mouth. ‘That’s your dog?’

‘She’s okay.’

‘No, he’s bloody not. He’s —’

‘Is she hurt?’

The woman grabs my arm. ‘You can stay with me, love. Don’t you worry about it.’

‘What’s happened to Sue?’

‘He’s …’ The woman looks searchingly at me. ‘He’s an animal.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Says he wants to eat me from the inside out. That crummy dog is going to kill you.’ She shouts this. I’m already at the van. Sue’s dark growls:

All the

same

meat to me.

The clouds have parted, leaving the lit-up ghost of a dingo, a pale and vengeful ancestor on the passenger seat beside me. I bet they can still hear Sue ranting from the other side of the car park.

That meat is

haunted.

(All the

entrails —)

I pull up again. ‘Hey. Hey Sue? You wouldn’t … you’re alright with me, aren’t you, girl?’ Her hair shifts. Body ripples with messages that join like drops of water in the sea.

Milk shine. (Leave it for

the pack.) Its

door

is barking.

I touch her gingerly. ‘You wouldn’t bite me again, would you, Sue?’

Its anus

is

my north.

‘Jesus. I’m just asking you this one thing.’

Mother

can bite its

pink.

A picture of me sinking my teeth into Sue’s scruff and shaking. The dingo limp in my mouth. Enjoying it, almost. ‘I’ll hold off the biting, thanks.’

It

can.

‘Thanks.’

Shake some dog biscuits into my hand and let Sue snuffle them out of my palm.

Now

Yesterday.

Eat the bitter

bones.

I put the last one in my mouth and suck it, then spit it out. Sue is right at it.

‘You like that cardboard chicken shit?’

I want the

fresh warm

heart.

‘Yeah, and I want a beachside unit and a man called Jack Daniels. Where are they?’ Scan the unhappy highway. Want my little darling by my side, five hairless fingers on the scrapbook, drawing a new cat.

We eat some more of those chips and Sue settles on the passenger seat, her tummy groaning from the weird food. I close my eyes but all I can see is the road, Lee’s and Kimberly’s faces bouncing along it and Sue running just behind, snapping at their ears with her wolf teeth.

A Greyhound bus lights the camper with sweeping gestures, sighing to a stop near the minimart. The few shaky-legged passengers make their way down the stairs and pat their shirt pockets and handbags for cigarettes. One has a lighter and shares the flame around. The driver comes off last and takes off his bus-driver top, worn grey singlet underneath. He busies himself with the underneath of the bus, hauling container after container of petrol to refuel. Once he’s finished, he wipes his hands on the shirt and lights a cigarette too. My ranger shirt is grey as one of the cleaning rags I used to wipe over the tourist bathrooms and the gift-shop floors. I rub my teeth with the hem, run fingers through my damp hair ends. Shut the door quietly and make my way over. Whispers from under the overflowing skip outside the supermarket. The rodents are doing their night shift in there.

Only you be careful

with the

light,

light. Back up and follow

up.

Follow the

tracks.

I make a wide circle around their meaning. Aim for the bus where the passengers are clumped together outside the door. A woman and a man a bit younger than me. Family of four kids and a haggard dad. Two young women with pickled-looking faces. They’re all in the same black plastic sunglasses as the ones I got from the service station. Bright foam plugs trumpet from their noses and ears. Shift their masks to their foreheads and necks. They’ve got smokes. Hunched over their phones watching some video. Bodies secret and dull. Only the obvious gestures get through — a folded arm, a crooked finger, a toothy smile.

‘Seen a blue Holden sedan? Classic job?’ I ask them. ‘Young man and a girl?’ Remember my manners. ‘Please?’

The driver takes his cigarette from his mouth. ‘Lots of young men on the move. You got a better description?’

‘Dark. Black eyes. Good. Girl’s got a head of hair, name’s Kim. She’s good. Good —’ So many tired hours with Sue I can’t get the words to flip off my tongue. The man eyes me.

‘You alright?’ Smoke billows around his words. He leans into the circle of other passengers and they follow suit, muttering. Turns back. ‘You into talking to the animals? You got a dog in there?’

I check back to see Sue’s fool face peering through the driver’s window. Try to will her down with my mind, but we’re not at telepathy yet.

‘A pet. It’s normal.’

‘There’s a new normal now.’ The driver sucks on the smoke again, nods at my head. ‘And around here, not wearing a mask means you’ve gone animal. I’d put on my protective gear if I was you. Put that mutt in a cage. Cops are pretty serious.’ The driver throws down his cigarette, grinds it out with his foot, and then stoops to pinch it tenderly between his fingertips, bound for a little box he keeps in his shorts pocket. Fussy and filthy. Reminds me of Lee. ‘It’s people like you spread this thing around.’

My fists buckle. ‘What?’

He doesn’t repeat himself. I stomp back over the concrete toward the camper. Sue springs out like always, but this time she heads for the bus. Her name catches in my throat as she starts doing her show, all prance and friendly, but with added bonus communication.

I

like

to play.

She throws messages at them like a wind-up doll. The people trip over themselves to back away, then draw forward at her body talk. Sue sweeps tail and nail — showing them the emu dying on a road kilometres away and into the yesterdays, the weeks, the years.

The old poke

(in the

puppy

place).

My sneakers don’t make a sound when I cross back over to the bus. Someone yells at Sue, ‘Can you tell me about my brother? Is my brother out there?’ just as I click open the undercarriage. Grimy white containers I can lug two at a time. Sue doing her routine.

‘Good girl,’ I mutter — like she’s a lap dog, and I’m carrying treats for the both of us.

‘A Holden sedan, you said? Blue?’ the driver calls. I’m legs-on-the-dash in the front seat, resting my arms a moment with Tammy Wynette, trying not to smoke through my rations. Sue worn through from the theatrics. The driver shouts about how he’s got a two-way, can ask the trucks if they’ve seen Kim and Lee. Doesn’t notice his bus is a bit lighter as he climbs aboard. I turn Tammy off to hear the crackle of the driver’s two-way casting out over the cold flat land, sometimes hitting a moving truck, or a family on a farm, a cop car. Up above, the stars scatter across the sky. The animals in the bin return. I climb out to see the gas from their bodies. Gas like from the mice at the Park, but these guys are lean, brown, wild. Their messages affectionate.

Look at it

approximately. The

world

is up and down.

That’s your property.

Watch

when I use it.

Seeing them talk makes me feel like a nice alien has landed on my heart.

Only me and you and all

of us with music on

the

tracks, the

tracks, the tracks.

Makes me think about Sue and her ideas about me as her pack. Some old shiny thing from yesterday. Ancient monarch in tatty robes. A rock comes pelting through the dark and hits the side of the skip. The animals shriek and scatter. The young woman aims another that clangs its target, and the messages slip into crevices. A muscle in my knee starts to spasm and doesn’t stop. The driver picks his way back over the car park, lugging a couple of small jerry cans of fuel, packet of smokes in his mouth. He doesn’t know I’ve got a liquid goldmine tucked in the side of the camper. The driver sets the cans down and presses the smokes into my hands with his gloved one. ‘They help dull the old senses.’

I jam one in my face, light it and suck back. When I’ve got a lungful, we both give coughing laughs. ‘Been a while,’ I tell him, my tongue loose again.

The driver lifts his sunnies to his head. Eyes like a fresh coat of pink paint.

Is that

its

friend.

‘Yeah.’

‘You talk to that dog, then?’

‘She won’t shut up.’

‘Bloody hell. Who’d have thought a few talking mutts would throw the whole country out? Got to lock down, I guess. Don’t want this thing spreading to places where they’ve got tigers and tarantulas and God knows what. You talked to a snake yet?’ I shake my head. Think about Blondie up there in her cage. The things she’d say. ‘Me neither. You see them dead all over the roads — people swerve to kill them. The cops and those army boys, they’ve all got the zooflu, even if they pretend they don’t, and they go a lot easier on you if you smoke.’

We smoke for a bit. I don’t want to ask in case they’re squashed flat on a road like snakes, but I have to know.

‘And how about Lee? My son and my granddaughter?’

‘One of the guys did see someone of that description pull up here a day ago.’

‘The horse was right, then.’

‘What’s that?’ I shake my head. ‘Heading south,’ he goes on. ‘Whole convoy of a hundred or so, with animals. They’re on track for the ocean and it’s a long two-day drive from here. He said this young guy was sitting on the roof of a vintage car with a little kid and a guitar. No, a ukulele, singing a tune. That sound like your boy?’

The bed stinks only a bit of dingo wee. I sleep. Sue comes to lick my face in the night.

Territory.

When I slide the side door open for her patrol, she melts into the night. Doesn’t reappear. The worry keeps me up, but at some point I conk out. Start awake again on dawn, thinking I can hear her howling for friends. Instead she comes to put her dry nose in my armpit.

It wants

something

‘What?’

Mother’s

want. I’ll get

it. (Don’t.)

I struggle to my elbows. Heart to heart with a hairy dingo. ‘Want to find my kin.’

Here.

I’m here.

I flop down again. ‘Not you. The real ones.’ Her body goes so quiet. It’s just a tan ghost that slinks off to sit up shotgun. The campervan clicks and shifts in the sudden still.

‘You alright up there, Sue? Need some water?’ She’s disappeared into her own body. The Greyhound bus gone, the minimart shut and empty. Magpies in the rubbish outside, their bodies silent as Sue’s.