‘Bugger me,’ Tobe said.
He was on his hands and knees, staring out at the world through a gap in the mismatched boards covering the windows. He seemed unaware that dust was blowing into his face.
‘What is it?’ I asked stupidly.
‘Come take a look. You too, Ruby.’
I started crawling in his direction. Ruby walked over, as surefooted as can be. She crouched beside Tobe and whistled low.
‘Wow…’
It was an awed ‘wow’, not a joyous one. I made it to a window, stared through a gap and was instantly blinded. I jerked away, fell back and then lay flat-out again. I rubbed my eyes. The red wash slowly faded. Once more staring at the ceiling, I understood what was different: the shadows had stopped dancing, bright light casting them away.
‘Come on, Bill.’
Ruby held out her hand. I took it, hoisted myself up, looked again, saw a blank stretch of land, a featureless white nothing.
‘What is this?’
I turned to Tobe, expecting to see a smile and a wink that let me know I had been fooled again. But this was no joke; he didn’t look away, didn’t stop staring out at the brilliant emptiness.
I looked back. I still didn’t get it.
‘It’s the Mallee, dickhead. Or the Wimmera. Take your pick, they’re one and the same nowadays.’
I froze. Now I couldn’t look away.
It was a desiccated void, thousands of acres of desolate pasture, all that remained of a land where cattle and sheep used to roam, where corn and wheat had grown tall and strong, where nature had run rampant and wild, where life had once thrived. All of that was now gone; all that was left was a barren dustbowl. What hadn’t shrivelled and baked had been uprooted and snatched away by the incessant wind, or buried by the sand that trailed in its wake. Not a tree or fence or outstation had survived—the land was completely flat, all the way to the horizon.
The sun shone bright off the seared earth. The whole world shimmered with heat-haze. It truly was a great white nothing, vast and borderless.
‘What’s the Mallee?’ Ruby asked in a worried voice.
This time, Tobe and I didn’t laugh at her blissful ignorance. We didn’t answer her question, either. We didn’t need to. Even though she didn’t know the land by name, just by sight she knew to fear it.
Cruel and kiln-dry, it mocked us. A more deathly place couldn’t be found.
‘End of the line,’ I muttered.
Ruby’s face crinkled. It was such a youthful expression that I almost smiled.
‘Don’t worry about it, she’ll be ‘right,’ Tobe said.
Ruby snorted in contempt at his obvious lie. She looked back at the Mallee, choosing to lose herself in a ferociously magnificent sight rather than bow to something that should have frightened her stupid.
Once more, I envied her.
‘Fuck me…’ Tobe said, interrupting us.
‘What?’
‘Come look.’
I backed away from my gap, scooted next to Tobe, shoved him over, took his place. Nothing. I squinted, caught sight of it. Faint in the distance, a tiny dark line cut across the blighted plains, dwarfed by the colossal emptiness.
The line seemed to be moving.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
‘Stupid boys,’ Ruby said. ‘Don’t you know anything? It’s a First Country caravan, probably heading to the coast to ride out the summer.’
My jaw fell open. How could they be there?’
‘Well, there’s a first time for everything…’
Tobe’s voice was flat. He still hadn’t looked away from the great white nothing, his eyes wide and bugging.
‘So, how do you like the view?’
I fell backwards in surprise. I looked around; the Creep captain stood on the far side of the carriage, her hands on her hips. Tobe slowly pulled himself away from his gap. Ruby didn’t.
‘I love this moment, when you fucks realise what’s going on,’ the captain said, laughing.
Her laughter was all the more wrong for how much happiness there was in it.
‘Oh, and by the way, our injured friend has been talking in his sleep. He’s been saying some pretty strange things… Tobias, I thought you might like to know that.’
She let the words hang. Tobe didn’t react.
‘Enjoy the ride.’ She laughed again, leaned back and tucked her hands in her pockets. She didn’t take her eyes off us. Saying nothing, we turned away and kept looking out at the land.
The wind roared on. The Mallee looked back at us, empty and eternal.
The first signs that the Mallee’s seemingly endless bleakness hadn’t actually conquered all were the occasional dead trees and some shards of broken wood. The train was moving so fast that at first they seemed mere tricks of the light. As we kept on, they gradually grew in number and size. We slowed a little as they became a constant fixture. Soon, all we could see were rows of crippled timber-framed things hemmed in by neat lines of more dead trees. Butted up close together, they were like the weathered skeletons of giant animals huddled together in death.
They moaned low as the hot wind blew on.
Shots rang out at one point, presumably from one of the Creeps in the gun nest. The train slowed. The captain disappeared, replaced by the same nuggetty Creep who had guarded us when we boarded.
And then the train stopped completely.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked the Creep, turning away from my gap.
He didn’t answer. I got to my feet. I stretched, worked the kinks out of my battered body, and snatched some water from the canteen in my pack. The Creep stayed silent. After an interminable wait, more gunfire split the air. Shouting followed; the train started moving again. I crouched, looked back outside. The timber-framed things had revealed their true nature; this far past the Mallee’s edge, the wind hadn’t snatched absolutely everything away—the skeletons were surrounded by the rubble of roofs and walls, of windows and furniture, of doors and floorboards. They grew increasingly less derelict the further on we pushed, eventually becoming weary suburban houses that had forgotten their better days.
‘Right, you lot,’ the captain yelled.
I hadn’t even heard her re-enter the carriage. I reluctantly tore myself away from the broken-down homes. Tobe and Ruby did the same.
Tobe almost shook he was so tense. Ruby’s dark eyes revealed nothing.
‘Come on, off your arses.’
The captain stood beside the nuggetty Creep, one hand resting on her pistol in a rather obvious way. Tobe and Ruby slowly got to their feet; I used all my effort to heave myself up, leaning heavily on my stick.
‘Now, make sure you behave yourselves when we get to the camp.’
None of us answered.
‘Because I would hate for things to get ugly.’ She winked at Ruby, smiling brightly. ‘And I don’t believe in sparing the rod.’
The train came to a halt.
‘Here we go.’ There was something horribly final in the captain’s voice.
She threw the carriage door open. After catching my stick in a broken floorboard, I took the lead and limped outside while Tobe scooped up our packs. He and Ruby moved warily, almost as one, their expressions unreadable.
We stepped onto another platform at another train station.
This time there was no ticket office or waiting room, nothing but a long cyclone fence that ran parallel to the tracks, beyond which lay a wide apron of concrete and gravel. To our right, the fence disappeared into the distance. Far to our left, back the way the train had come, it stopped at a ruined building and bent at a ninety-degree angle and then ran on, until it too was lost from sight.
Encircled by the fences was a sprawling junkyard city.
The air stank of resignation and despair. Words couldn’t really describe it, and so I did the best I could.