The Worm King Page 4

  ‘He said most of our rellies have been on Crimewatch, so I should give it a crack.’

  ‘What do you think so far?’

  ‘Fucken shithouse.’

  ‘We have to go into Katoomba,’ repeated Astrid, frowning.

  Chapter Seven

  Photo Shoot

  The rain pelted down relentlessly. Eventually Astrid decided not to go into Katoomba after all, and thought she ort to stay back with Malisovich and the girls. So Winston and Dick went alone.

  At the brow of the hill where the road up from the visitor centre joined Echo Point Road, they saw lights. ‘Look, over there. See?’ said Dick. Each carried a plastic folder from the truck, held flat over their torches as protection from the rain because one of the other penlights had already conked out from water penetration.

  A car appeared in their path. It sat at an odd angle as though it’d been travelling uphill then rolled back across the curb and partly up onto the footpath. They shone their torches inside but it was empty.

  Further up the hill a cluster of lights twinkled through the downpour. One of the beams brightened for a second as it pointed directly at them, then flashed away. Another beam slightly further apart from the others picked them up and waggled back and forth, up and down, obviously trying to attract their attention.

  As they approached the waggly torch-bearer gradually drifted into focus. At first it looked like some creature with a huge, round, black head and glowing, triangle-shaped body. Then Winston could make out a yellow poncho raincoat, topped with an afro over brilliant white teeth and eyes. The rest of the man’s jet black face blended perfectly into the night. Two women were on either side of him, both elderly and stooped. At least twenty others sat in the middle of the street behind the trio. Several of the huddled figures were small; Winston figured they must be children.

  Thirty meters behind them stood a bristly pyramid which a few hours earlier must’ve been someone’s house. The pile of rubble cast an eerie silhouette with perhaps ten or a dozen torch beams working over it like fat, luminous worms trying to burrow in.

  ‘Quiet, quiet!’ one of the worms shouted. Must be trying to hear survivors. The rain continued to slap down defiantly, refusing to give them a break.

  The Aborigine smiled. ‘Glad to see you fellas.’

  ‘Howdy,’ replied Winston quietly.

  ‘Good evening,’ proffered Dick loudly, like he was ordering a steak in a crowded restaurant.

  ‘I just arrived ten minutes ago. Jean here says they lookin for people in this guest house, but most other houses all right. Except some building over the road but ’parently no one in that. And another one, she fall down up the street. Jean reckons they got enough blokes lookin in here now.’ He paused. ‘Only the two of you?’

  ‘There’s four others at the Three Sisters Centre down the road. We just walked up from there,’ replied Winston. ‘What’s left of it anyway.’

  ‘Leroy.’ He held out his hand.

  ‘Dick Snow.’ Leroy shook Dick’s hand, then Winston. His palm felt unusually padded and warm. A dog barked nearby, ending in a hollow, drawn-out wail.

  ‘That’s Peanuts. He’s in me van.’

  ‘Is it working?’ asked Dick.

  ‘No. He sit around the house all day, scratching his arse.’

  ‘The van I mean.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah mate. Couple other cars stop I saw. I tried to help a fella with me jumper cables and couldn’t get his going but. We saw an old lorry drive past though, just a while ago. It was—’

  A deep rumble rose from below then a moment later the earth jolted violently. Rock grated angrily against rock in a series of short, vicious jerks. Winston bent his knees, crouching and trying to hold balance. The crowd gasped in unison, many began moaning and a child screamed. After five or six seconds, the tremors stopped.

  ‘Quiet, quiet!’ The shout came again from the ex-guesthouse. Winston thought he may have heard a muffled call back but it might’ve just been the earth settling and the rain seemed heavier making it hard to tell.

  Dick was the first to regain composure. ‘Is anyone’s phone working?’ he asked without any effort whatsoever to lower his voice.

  Leroy looked confused. ‘Phone?’

  Jean stared quizzically at Dick as though she recognized him. ‘Are you on a cooking program?’

  Dick stood up the front beside Jean and Leroy and told the group they’d had a decent little earthquake. His boofy, wet hair was slicked back in a way that reminded Winston of those old Nazi war documentaries. Dick reckoned, from feel of it, they’d been unlucky enough to be smack on the epicenter. More than likely it was confined to this particular area of the Blue Mountains. Seven point five, maybe eight on the Richter. Ambo’s won’t be far off even if they have to come from Sydney. If there’ve been no more tremors in the next couple of hours, everyone should be right to go back to their houses and get out of this damp. He paused and smiled reassuringly.

  ‘We’re taking Asha here, then we have to collect some others who need help down at the visitor centre and we’re going to the hospital. We’ll let the hospital know you’re all here and they’ll be along in a jiffy.’

  Asha lay on the road with her left leg twisted around ninety degrees, the knee grossly swollen and purple. She couldn’t stand on it and her face was contorted into a painful grimace. ‘We really have to get her to a doctor,’ pleaded Jean. ‘Another fellow has a hurt back and can’t feel his feet, so I’m not sure if we should even move him . . . but laying out in the rain can’t be good either, can it?’

  ‘I’ll have a look at him,’ offered Dick. ‘Where’s your van?’ he asked Leroy, who pointed his torch up the hill. The square outline of the vehicle shimmied through the rain, barely visible and parked dead centre of the road. Dick swung his penlight into Asha’s distressed face. ‘Think you two can get her loaded up?’

  Winston and Leroy splashed uphill to the van. The barking started again and when Leroy pulled open the creaky rear door, the dog immediately jumped down.

  ‘Rooof! Rrrrrooof!’ Before Winston could step back he found two hairy paws on his chest and a furry face stretched up to check him out. He pushed the dog away but not before giving it a quick scratch behind the ears.

  The back seats of the Volkswagen had been removed to make way for a double mattress which rested on a home-made raised platform. The bed completely filled the interior behind the front seats. A small gas stove was bolted to one wall, clothes heaped untidily everywhere and the side windows blacked out with paint.

  Leroy began unstrapping a surfboard from the roof. ‘We can use this to carry her over.’

  Getting her loaded up wasn’t as easy as anticipated. With Leroy at the front and Winston at the back, the board tilted sharply. Asha gripped the sides while Winston raised his arms and Leroy lowered his but there was still no way to stop her sliding. For Winston, it was either Asha’s legs akimbo around his face, or take her foot in his head. He took the foot well, forehead thrust out like Ronaldo driving a fifty meter header into the net with thirty seconds to go in a cup final and scores tied. Winston most certainly didn’t want a face full of Asha’s legs akimbo.

  They hoisted her into the van. Leroy reached back and grabbed Winston’s end then pushed. The board slid in as far as the fins then she managed to shuffle off onto the bed. Cushioned against Leroy’s dirty clothes she looked comfortable enough, but stretched out diagonally like that took up most of the room too.

  ‘Peanuts’ll keep you company.’ Leroy patted the mattress and the dog obediently leapt in then sat on it’s haunches, long tongue hanging out, staring at Asha. ‘We won’t be long.’ He gently closed the door, clicking it into place.

  A flash of light caught Winston’s eye. Then another. He gazed skyward hoping the streetlights were sparking up but it’d came from over where they’d left Jean and the others.

  One of the rescuers had to leave the ruined guest house because his torch was failing. He wore only shorts and a cotton sing
let and kept shivering. They’d found a hand poking out from under a concrete block which they weren’t able to shift. He said all the fingernails were broken right back so the person must’ve been alive for a while and they’re going to keep looking.

  The hand wasn’t moving anymore and the man in the singlet couldn’t stop trembling.

  ‘Say Cheese,’ called Dick. Pop! For an instant everyone was illuminated. Dirty, wet faces staring up at him, eyes wide and mouths open in disbelief. They had no communication with the outside world and the very earth was shaking under them; whimpering and flogged relentlessly by the rain.

  ‘And again.’ Pop! ‘One more.’ Pop! Pop!

  Pop!

  Pop!

  Winston squeezed in the front of the van between Dick and Leroy for the short drive back down to the visitor centre.

  ‘Do you think the ambulances will be even running?’

  ‘Fucked if I know,’ grunted Dick.

  ‘Mr Snow!’ exclaimed one of the twins when they pulled up. ‘You’re back! Yaaay! We knew you’d save us.’

  ‘I sure will honey.’

  Twenty minutes later they were on the road. Winston looked at his watch: quarter past midnight. At last, heading back to Sydney, that was good. But packed like a sardine in this dodgy old heap—not so good. And they’ll be travelling on wet, dangerous roads which will’ve been buggered up by that earthquake. He’d never liked driving in the rain full stop.

  He didn’t like sitting next to Mr Snow much either.

  Chapter Eight

  Park

  She felt scared stiff just speaking to him. Shaking, but it seemed her last chance. There came a momentary pause in the rain, a crackle of thunder well off in the distance then the faintest hint of recognition from the old man so it was now or never for the girl.

  ‘Please sir, do you know where a phone is? I need to call my mother.’

  Lord Brown had been dozing. Quite drunk as usual, but this evening he awoke to find company: his backyard filling with people. Fifty-seven and counting. Spread around the park everywhere. Swarming. Even the rats were out looting. The busiest he’d seen it in years. Most were gathering at the far end past the fountain where there were fewer trees and a larger open space. Four more from the south-east: sixty-one.

  Lord Brown had always been a firm believer in trends, and this girl looked familiar. Why was she here again? She shouldn’t stick around. If something started out bad it would likely end a great deal worse and today wasn’t starting well. Only two and a half minutes past midnight, according to his luminous Mickey Mouse watch, and he could see a plump, black street rat creeping out a doorway over the road, dragging a sizable hunk of bread. A man stood in the doorway with his arms around a woman, holding a torch against her back. The torch moved slightly so the beam twisted away from the hungry rodent who disappeared past their feet.

  ‘Mr Rat, you’re so fat.’

  The girl looked surprised at this, but less frightened. ‘I only looked away for a second then couldn’t find her. Mummy might need me.’

  ‘We need a cat.’

  ‘I’ve already got a cat. Tinkles. She’s really good at chasing balls of wool.’

  He struggled to focus on her wet face in the dim light. It never ceased to amaze him that a tiny oval of soft flesh could emit such physical radiance. A living, breathing luminosity. Lord Brown smiled. ‘Does Tinkles wear a bell?’

  She giggled. ‘No silly. It was the first thing she did on the carpet when we got her home.’

  ‘Do you count?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Yes. I gave you a whole dollar yesterday morning. Mummy said you’re probably a cereal killer and I said I didn’t like breakfast either so maybe I’m one too, but she said most likely not.’

  Someone began shouting at the other end of the park near the Edmund Barton statue: sixty-seven.

  ‘You smiled when I gave you the money, so I knew you didn’t really have mad cows disease. Your sign was fibbing!’

  Lord Brown held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘I’m cured. It’s true! I used your money to buy cow medicine.’ The girl looked doubtful.

  ‘Where did you lose her?’

  ‘By the fountain. Our house is down that road,’ she pointed vaguely to the eastern end of the park where the more palatial homes tended to be. Lord Brown wondered if he’d ever urinated or slept in her garden and suspected he might’ve.

  ‘Our chimney fell down and the lights wouldn’t work so mummy said we had to come to the park. We couldn’t see walking here and kept falling over on things in the road. I bumped into people twice, I’m sure I did, it was really scary.’

  ‘It’s a scary night,’ he replied, wondering why their chimney might’ve fallen. Over her shoulder he saw eight people by the fountain, one sitting on the edge and another six standing with the faint outline of perhaps two more on the far side of the structure out of his vision. He allowed for one of these in the total: sixty-nine.

  His hand groped the seat to his right until he found the bottle, which had an unpleasantly empty feel to it. He raised it to his lips, letting a scanty thimbleful of warm, malty goodness trickle down. Soothing and caressing, then gone. Almost at the point where numbers didn’t matter and now the magic elixir was all gone. Forever. Seventy-one . . . click, click . . . you could feel the numbers physically ticking over. Counting was like a creamy ratchet being drawn across minute nerve endings fizzling on the underside of his skull. They’d fizzle and fizzle until the malty wave completely soaked the embers.

  Speckled light flashed on the edge of his vision for all the world like a grinning, evil face suddenly appearing and disappearing rapidly over and over. He brushed a hand at his shoulder, trying to get the thing away. Drinking dulled the face. So did clenching his eyes tightly, hunching up and rocking back and forth; oh yes. Back again—oh God!—

  ‘Are you alright? Is the mad cows coming back?’

  Lord Brown’s eyes opened and head flinched with enough force to flick small droplets as far as his knees. ‘Good as gold. I’ll take you over there, have a look around. Don’t worry, we’ll track her down.’ He slid the suitcase out from under the park bench, unzipped it and withdrew his notebook which he slipped into a breast pocket. The suitcase was rezipped and pushed back under the seat.

  Another lot had drifted in from the road, joining those at the fountain in the centre of the park. Solar lights spaced along the walkway cast a dull glow through the rain but the surrounding buildings and houses remained oddly dark. Seventy-nine.

  He remembered now when the power went off. All the nearby houses and shops over the road had suddenly gone dark, and at virtually the same time a bus broke down directly out in front of him. The reason it stuck in his mind was the bus had just pulled out from the kerb and travelled exactly one meter before its engine cut out. One meter! Cripes, he’d laughed. Then he’d noticed several other cars stopped too. Eventually, the people got off the bus.

  Lord Brown had been working his way through the penultimate bottle. He recalled watching the dismal, wet crowd as they disembarked. How could they do that to themselves? Climb into that metal monster and be ferreted away to some red-brick hell-hole. What’s civilization come to? He’d given the people a cheery wave but it hadn’t seemed to perk them up at all. The chap who’d been last to get off was also by far the angriest. When he’d stepped back onto the pavement the jolt was sufficient to unclick his briefcase which opened to spill a sheaf of papers onto the footpath. By the time he’d recovered the drenched pages his pinstripe suit and pigtail were well and truly soaked. Before walking away, Pinstripe shook a clenched fist at the side of the bus.

  Lord Brown hadn’t been able to contain himself. ‘That’ll teach it!’ he’d yelled. After all, you had to see the funny side of it. Man versus bus. Talk about laugh! ‘One nil!’ he’d cried gleefully.

  Pinstripe threw a glance at Lord Brown that’d been far from friendly. In fact it’d been enough to convince him to change seats, moving thirty
meters up the path to another park bench in case the man came back. He’d tried to stay awake but by then was onto the final bottle, and as this glugged to an end, found himself slipping into a mumbling, fitful sleep.

  No sign of Pinstripe now. He reached down and took the girl’s hand just in case. ‘We’ll do a loop around the fountain then head down the other end.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Her wet hand gripped his tightly.

  The people near the eucalyptus trees on the western side kept moving and jostling and he wished they’d stop because it was confusing. Eighty-one.

  As they approached the fountain a woman screamed.

  ‘Mummy!’ The girl released his hand and ran towards her.

  ‘What were you doing with her, you bastard?’ the women yelled, clasping her arms around the girl. ‘I told you someone had taken her!’ A policeman stood beside her. His blue uniform had a jagged rip across the front and a white t-shirt glowed through the hole. The shirt was unbelievably white. Lord Brown bent forward, staring intently at the officer’s midriff.

  The policeman took a step backwards.

  ‘He has mad cow disease,’ the girl informed them. He suspected that wouldn’t help his case much.

  The policeman looked hesitant. ‘Okaaaay. Your daughter alright love?’

  ‘I don’t know?’ she wailed, drawing back from the girl and scanning her up and down while still holding her arms tightly. ‘He could’ve done anything! Are you alright darling?’

  The girl nodded uncertainly. ‘I only asked him where I could find a phone,’ her timid voice barely audible over the rain. Two men who’d been sitting on the edge of the fountain got up and moved behind Lord Brown, enclosing him.

  The policeman shone a torch in his face. ‘I’ve seen ’im here before,’ he said to no one in particular.

  ‘He’s always here,’ confirmed a woman in a dressing gown and holding an umbrella. ‘Think he’s harmless.’

  ‘Where’s that doctor?’ implored the girl’s mother, looking back over her shoulder. ‘Where the hell is that doctor!’