Skyquakers (12 page)

In short, Michael and Andrew made it to the dam just south
of Ivanhoe and found a big problem: it had been blown apart. A tremendous
amount of water was gushing out through an open fissure in the concrete walls,
flooding the Ivanhoe lowlands below. The boys made it to the bridge spanning
the dam wall, where they saw dozens of Quaker warehouses and farms which may
have spanned over 200,000 hectares. With binoculars, they could see little
specks in silver astronaut suits, working in the fields with ploughing machines
and vehicles which looked like tractors. Their crops were flooded with
foot-high river water and thick irrigation channels ran in parallel lines for
tens of kilometres: the Ord was being drained to grow their mutant produce, and
on a scale they had never witnessed before.

Andrew, whose hunger was beginning to get the better of him,
wanted to get a closer look at the farms, but Michael told him it was time to
head home. They left the bridge, heading back into the dry bushlands and south
along the dying river, but suddenly Andrew was shot in the back and collapsed.
Bleeding out his shoulder, he shouted for Michael to run. In panic, he did. He
scurried to the nearest tree line and fell to his stomach, hiding in the dense
bushland and tall grass, and from there he watched three Suits advance in on
Andrew
’
s cowering body. One was carrying a strange machine
gun, which looked to be made of glass, but the leading guy, a skinny,
dark-haired young man with not a speck of dirt on his fabulous silver suit,
held a long metallic prod with a two-forked end. He peered down at Andrew
through sleek aviator sunglasses and shouted at him for a while. In between, he
jammed his prod into his body. Andrew screamed as his four limbs twitched, like
he was being electrocuted. This happened seven or eight times until Andrew
stopped moving completely and was dead.

Michael watched the whole thing, and with each stab of the
prod he wanted to jump up and pound that arsehole
’
s head in
with a rock until he too was a twitching, bloody mass. But, frozen in horror,
he could do nothing but watch. When he was dead, Michael got up and ran. The
Suit with the glass gun spotted him and sprayed bullets through the trees,
landing one into his thigh. But they didn
’
t chase
after him. The hike home took almost six hours because of the injury.

Elizabeth collapsed into her hands.
‘
My god. My
god, I did this.
’

‘No, Quakers did this,
’
James
hissed.
‘
You really think we don
’
t need
guns, huh?
’

‘Don
’
t you
dare
bring that
up now, you indecent
bastard!
’

‘Andy might still be alive if he had a way to defend
himself. You want this to happen to all your kids, huh? You want to watch them
get tortured and killed, one by one?
’

Finally Elizabeth punched him in the face, the one-eyed
prick. She was not the only one who wanted to, but she was the first to finally
push him to the ground. Standing over him, watching him rub his cheek in the
dirt, she hissed,
‘
Stay there,
’
before marching off into the gallery to check on Michael.

James got up.
‘
Crazy bitch!
’
He marched off in the opposite direction.

Ned sat with Tim, Sarah and a couple of other students along
the banks of the Ord. Not a lot was said that day. No one did any work. Some
students found caves, cliffs, the wedges of tree branches – places where they
could be alone. When they passed by each other, they did so with lowered heads,
small pitiful smiles, but no words. Someone saw James leave Zebra Rock down a
dirt road, but no one asked if he was coming back.

Tim had something small in his hands which he claimed to
have gotten from Munroe. It was the shrapnel from Michael
’
s
leg, washed and dried out. Tim tried to reconstruct it in the palm of his hand.
He eventually declared that the original projectile had probably been spherical
in shape.

‘Like a BB?
’
Ned asked.

‘Yeah. It
’
s got no shell, so some other
force must push the trajectory out, like air. I can
’
t say
anything definitive without seeing the gun itself, but I don
’
t
think this is meant to be a lethal weapon.
’

‘Munroe said Michael
’
s wound
wasn
’
t deep,
’
said Ned.

‘Why does it matter?
’
Sarah
hissed.
‘
They still have flamethrowers and electric prods
and ships in the clouds. They can still kill us if they wanted to.
’

‘Then why haven
’
t they?
’
Ned
demanded.
‘
We
’
ve been here for months; why
the hell don
’
t they just come and get us, huh?
’
He stood up and shouted at the sky.
‘
I
’
m
here, you arseholes! Come and get me! Come on!
’
He saw
a big, lumpy rock on the side of the river. He picked it up and heaved it into
the water.
‘
Aargh!
’

Tim dragged him back down.
‘
Stop it.
’

Sarah hugged her legs.
‘
They
’
ll
get us all, eventually.
’

‘No they won
’
t,
’
said Tim.
‘
You
can
’
t think like that.
’

Sarah broke down into tears. She hated this place.

Violet stayed with Michael and endured every moment of his
agonising surgery. Afterwards, Munroe warned the boy his recovery would be
indefinitely long and arduous: they had very few medical supplies on hand
besides paracetamol, and the possibility of infection from this alien shrapnel
was quite severe. There were no hospitals within reach, no doctors left on
Earth: Zebra Rock was as prepared for bullet wounds as the 19
^th
Century. Michael was in constant agony, sweating profusely. Violet did all she
could to help by keeping him well hydrated and dampening his brow with a wet
cloth, but she could see by the way he grinded his teeth and held his fists
tight that he could not relax. Anger exacerbated the pain: Andy had been like a
brother to him, and now he was dead. He kept replaying his traumatic torture in
his mind. He could see that young Suit, the guy with the pretentious aviator
shades, taking so much pleasure in his best friend’s pain.

Staring at the roof, he whispered to Violet through his
clenched jaw,
‘
I
’
m going to
kill him. I will
never
forget that Suit
’
s face, and
when I see him again, I
’
m going to drive a knife
through his chest. I
’
ll kill him, I swear it,
Vi
.
’

‘
Shh
,
’
Violet
said.
‘
It’ll be alright.
’

Late in the evening, while the kettle was boiling over the
fire and
Moonboy
was glowing in the moonlight, James
finally reappeared. He had something bulky in his arms, wrapped in a sheet.
Without saying what it was, or where he got it from, he dropped the bundle in
front of the settlers and let his findings clatter to the ground. Beneath the
sheet, the settlers all stared at the sight of long-barrelled rifles, eight of
them, accompanied by little red boxes of bullets to match.

James took a gun for himself and declared to the rest,
‘
Take
one, don
’
t take one, I don
’
t give a
shit. You can argue all you want against guns, but the fact is, we
’
re
at war now. We can all sit here, day in and day out, and live like happy little
fairies in the fucking woods, but those guys have weapons, and they
will
use
them on you.
’

‘James,
’
Elizabeth interjected.

‘Shut up. I don
’
t care. This isn
’
t
school anymore; this is the real world. You kids need to grow the fuck up.
’
Then he marched off with his weapon, claiming he was going to practise
in the fields.

Needless to say, most of the students lunged for a weapon.
Tim took one. Sarah refused. Ned saw one left and, although it looked bigger
and heavier than him, the idea of succumbing to a death like Andrew
’
s
made his insides turn.

‘This is not a good idea,
’
Elizabeth
said.
‘
Aggression will only make things worse.
’

‘They
murdered Andy
,
’
one
student barked.
‘
I
’
m not going
to stand for that.
’

‘And how do you suppose we defeat an enemy that we haven
’
t
even seen yet? They have beams, missiles; they control the whole goddamned
sky
.
This is not a fight we can win.’

‘We
’
ll make an impression,
’
said a hardy girl, who stood firmly by the side of her new comrades in
arms.
‘
I
’
m not going to just take it anymore.
I
’
m not going to let myself be defenceless.
’

‘They need to know this is
our
country.
’

‘We
’
ll get justice for Andy, and
for everyone they murdered in Darwin.
’

Sarah looked at Ned, who she could never imagine firing a
gun. Frankly, neither could he. The long-barrel of the metal piece looked
awkward in his arms. It felt cold and dead against his skin, but he hugged it
like a plush toy.

‘I just don
’
t want to die,
’
he said.
 

If they were going to attack the
Skyquakers
,
the question was a matter of how, not a matter of why; the settlers of Zebra
Rock were faced with an enemy unlike any they had seen before. Every inch of
their existence was a mystery to them, from their biological architecture to
their affinities and empathies towards them. They all knew what they wanted to
achieve – carnage, in a single word – and despite the unpredictability of these
beings and their wrathful storms, it was quite possible that the
Skyquakers
had never known violence before; their invasion
of the country had been swift and, despite the secondary damage it must have
caused when unmanned jets fell from the sky and trains crashed into one
another, it had all been rather benign.

Until now.

In the wake of Andrew’s murder – his
murder
, not his death – moral responsibility was lost and any sane
sense of sustainability mutated into this cancer which swiftly infected the
entire family with an irrational hunger for revenge and destruction. They truly
wanted to lay waste to their farms, to take what material prizes mattered to
them as immaterial compensation for their loss.

A dozen students, two scuba divers and a curator: between
them they had not a shred of weapons training or military tactics. James knew
how to operate the rifles, only because he was trained in spearfishing. What
else did they have? A tertiary-level understanding of Australian flora and the
protective knowledge of the use of water against the power of alien beams –
these were not tools of war.

‘Maybe they can be,’ Tim said from a shadowy corner. He
didn’t like the feel of his gun, so he always had it resting on the floor in
front of his crossed legs. No one heard him the first time, so he said it
again, followed by, ‘We know things they don’t know we know.’

‘Huh?’ James hissed.

It was apparently something James suggested not long ago
which stuck with Tim and never left. Tim rarely spoke openly about his
thoughts, being the recluse that he was, but he considered the possibility of
attacking
Skyquakers
and destroying their farms almost
on a daily basis. He brewed about it. He fantasised about it. Not for the same
reckless and passionate reasons that the others professed, but as a mental
exercise of strategy. Tim had the ability to detach himself from reality with
the slightest gaze into the distance, and one of his many fantasies were of his
former board games, games of soldiers and battles, turned-based combat, the
multiplicity of chess-like rankings working in unison to take down a common
enemy bigger than themselves.

‘Even a pawn can capture a king,’ he said.

James did not want to say it, knowing it would swiftly and
brutally knock him down a peg in the unwritten familial hierarchy, but
eventually, eyes rolled back, he grumbled low, ‘So, how would
you
do it? If you had all of us, all the
resources we have in our hands, and all of the resources of our immediate
surroundings, how would you do it?’

Tim’s answer was fire, just as James had once said. One did
not have to be a marine biologist to have a very clear understanding of the volatility
of Australian bushland in hot, dry seasons such as now, and the ferocity of
bushfires once in full force. On the right day, in the right heat, with the
right direction of wind, a few small lit campfires had the ability to wipe out
half a million hectares in twenty-four hours, which they had all witnessed
before in their lifetimes. Every cow, crop, and warehouse would be engulfed.
Slow Quakers, or those who had a poor concept of bushfire defence, would perish
rather quickly or be forced to evacuate. Essentially, if they were prepared to
sacrifice all of Ivanhoe, they could cause enough damage to put a very large
dent in the invaders’ agricultural plans and send a bold message to Quakers,
Suits and fellow survivors around the world.

‘And when those massive hurricanes come to drench the place
and put it out?’

‘We hide, as we know how to do,’ Tim said.

It took planning. It took patience. Accelerants were
collected and maps were drawn up. Tim had charts of the daily temperature and
wind speed; he could almost predict the coming days. James still wanted to use
guns and made his students practise loading, cocking, and firing in the fields.
With smoke and widespread confusion, they may get close enough to use them,
they may not. The fire may never build enough strength to reach Ivanhoe, or the
sentient storm may appear too quickly for it to cause any real damage. The wind
may change direction suddenly; it may even turn the flames on Zebra Rock, their
home, and their plan may backfire entirely. But one truth, above all, was
evident:

‘You most definitely can die trying to do this,’ James told
his students, ‘and I expect you to at least take one of those bastards with you
if you do.’

The day the fires emanated was the day they all woke to find
a hot westerly wind battering across the
Kununurra
and over the Ord. The effect was almost like a sandstorm, with red and orange
sand from the adjacent desert tossing their hair sideways and causing their
plastic deck chairs to tumble from the campsite. The morning was hot, meaning
the afternoon would only be hotter, and with no rain for over a week, the
surrounding bushland was dry and brittle. Tim felt the wind and sand on his
face and agreed that today was the day.

The fiery ambush took place initially some four or five
kilometres west of the Ivanhoe farms, in a slither of dry bushland where the
Kununurra
ended and the Ord region began. A two-pronged
attack was swiftly put in place: at two-hundred-metre intervals along the
western side of the Ord, amongst dense shrubbery and trees, pairs of workers
built fires. They gathered the kindling from the ground, the shredded bark,
wayward branches and dry shrubbery, and allowed tiny sparks to grow at the
bases of dead trees and in densely overgrown bush. Simultaneously, eight fires
were lit. The wind took hold of them quickly, allowing them to grow and rise
with black smoke into the air. The students left the area once they saw they
were no longer needed, and moved quickly to the eastern side of the river with
their accelerants. A mere one kilometre from the farms, within view of their
enemies’ silver warehouses and cattle ranges, gallons of patrol, toxic
chemicals and harsh accelerants were poured in lines perpendicular to the line
of fire, as veins along which the fire could rapidly accelerate towards the
farms in a sudden, unpredictable motion. Once the flames hopped the river – a
feat they would not have been able to do if the river had not been depleted of
so much water – it would strike these lines of chemicals and intensify
ten-fold, targeting the entire valley of Quaker farms, reducing it all to ash.

By the time Ned was pouring diesel, the air was so thick
with smoke that he could hardly see or breathe. A cloth covered his nose and
mouth, but his eyes were watering, and it all stank like chemicals and ash. A
cloud of soot soon blanketed the sky above the farms, swiftly moving east with
the powerful, hot wind. Surely the Quakers would have noticed the blaze by now,
but it would not be until the flames struck the chemical spills that they would
know it was manmade and aimed directly at them. If their loyal Suits were with
them, they would perhaps be warning them of the impending danger; it was now a
matter of whether the Quakers valued their crops and cattle more than their
lives and chose to either run or stay and fight. It was difficult to predict
their psychology, but foreign invaders in foreign lands have repeatedly fallen
victim to ignorance by failing to consider the environment and the weather as
threats to their dominance. Ned had witnessed bushfires and knew they were
capable of killing hundreds in one fell swoop; if these Quakers were not
trained, or were left gawking at the tower of smoke and flames for too long,
then they would perish, and it would be their own damn fault for not being
prepared.

His diesel can was almost empty, but under the shrouding smoke,
it was becoming difficult to finish. The flames were beginning to roar, and the
sound of trees snapping and birds escaping in large flocks filled the air with
a cacophony of panic. He heard someone shout out to him, and he looked up to
see one of the students abandon her can and make a run for it; she could not
handle the heat anymore. Ned turned back to the tree line and saw flames moving
up behind him, growing into a wall of blazing heat. This thing was moving
fast
, faster than Tim had predicted. Racing
towards him, Ned dropped his things and ran south, back towards the safety of
Zebra Rock, towards the den beneath the tarp of water where they all knew they
were safe. He lost sight of everyone within minutes of running through the
bush. The air was now a thick grey and the temperature had soared through the
forties. If he was not clear of the chemical spills by the time the flames
touched, he could find himself trapped in an ecological oven. He ran, leaping
over logs and bushes. Somewhere behind him, there was a shout of one of his
people, followed by two echoing gunshots. Ned stopped.

Gunshots
.

What the settlers had not probably planned for was the
Quakers to fight fire with fire, to come after them directly wielding weapons
of their own. Ned knew Tim had been working not fifty meters behind him – it
may have been his gun that went off. He had to wait for him. He could not let
another of his family be lost. He stopped running, crouched low to avoid the
smoke and heat, and searched desperately through the grey haze for the sight of
feet.

‘
Tim!’
he cried
through the roar of the fire. ‘
Where are
you?’

Thunder rumbled in the sky overhead, deep thunder, and Ned
stared up to see the sky gradually changing colour with the twisting, rolling
arms of an impending storm. It had arrived, called upon to douse the flames and
protect the precious farms. Ned saw a gaping hole, an eye in the storm,
beginning to widen and form into a vortex, and he knew that was the warning
sign of a beam coming to disintegrate him and suck him up as confetti. This was
no time to be standing out in the open; only the gallery basement, or a hardy
fridge, could protect him.

More gunshots, rapidly now. The distant voice shouting
sounded like James’. Ned was not going to wait for James, of all people, and
turned to continue running before that storm gained enough strength to beam him
up. Not two steps more, he was halted. A
Skyquaker
stood there. It was twenty metres away, mostly veiled by the smoke. Ned was
frozen in terror. A lone being blocked his path, dressed in a silver astronaut
suit, standing two or more metres tall, wielding a wide-barrelled thing which
looked more like a fire extinguisher than a weapon. Ned could not move or speak
or do anything. The smoke was filling his lungs and this whole place was about
to be engulfed in deadly flames but he just stood there, flat-footed, watching
the tall, otherworldly thing meandering towards him through the ghostly smoke.
It surely could see him through the black visor of its gas mask, but the Quaker
was not in a threatening stance; perhaps it was looking upon him with the same
vacant curiosity that Ned continued to express.

Jesus Christ, what is
it?

Somewhere behind him, there was a rush of hot, almost
burning air, and the
whoosh
of deadly
flames marked the birth of a thirty-foot tidal wave of fire.
The chemicals
: the flames were coming at
him now, moving with incredible speed and ferocity. Ned spun back to the
Skyquaker
, knowing it was blocking his path to safety. The
Quaker looked to its wide-barrelled hose, and looked to be struggling to find a
way to operate it under intense heat and stress.

A gunshot. It struck the
Skyquaker
in the back and it fell to the ground. Ned almost screamed in shock. The shot
had come from Elizabeth, who was standing there behind the alien with the rifle
at her nose. She yelled at Ned, ‘
Let’s
go!’
and he obeyed her. As they ran off together, Ned looked over his
shoulder and saw, as flames and smoke began to engulf his view, the Quaker
rolling around on his back, limbs flailing, trying to grasp at something: the
gas tanks. Elizabeth’s bullet had pierced one of the two pressurised gas tanks
it carried over its shoulders, with a hose connecting it to its face mask. Ned
could see it suffering, clawing at its neck, trying to tear its own mask off.
It did not occur to him until much later that the Quaker had been suffocating,
but since it made no effort to get up and escape, it mostly likely died from
the firestorm that swiftly followed.

Rain began to soak the Ord – lots of rain. The storm
furiously began to chase after the bushfire in an attempt to protect the farms
from complete obliteration. Ned felt he and Elizabeth were the last two to
abandon their posts, and ran through the bushland towards Zebra Rock knowing
that thing in the sky had its swirling eye locked on them. Somewhere off to the
right, a tremendous purple light struck the Earth, hitting the ground with the
force of an earthquake. It was searching for the feral creatures responsible
for this mess, but through the smoke and flames, the scattered settlers were
nothing but specks on their radars. Another beam. Another. The storm was making
wild guesses, taking blind stabs. The beams were simply too slow and the
bushland was too dense. One beam hit the ground where Ned’s running feet were a
second ago, and he feared he would lose an ankle to the dissolving power of the
pink and purple light. The beam forced Elisabeth and Ned to part separate ways,
and they quickly lost sight of each other in the madness. Ned was unsure
whether he was running in the right direction anymore, but he could see the
glistening roof of Zebra Rock through the last line of trees, so he ran for it.
He looked up and saw a gap in the clouds pry open directly overhead, and at
that point he knew he would not make it back to the basement; it was too far,
and there was at least six-hundred metres without cover before he made it
inside. He changed direction, sprinted directly towards the Ord River and dove
in, head first.