Unnatural Disasters, Page 2

  “Uh, Tommy?” She swallowed a lump, tried to call for him again, and couldn’t. Fear choked her.

  Tommy hadn’t come up.

  In a panic, she thrust her arms into the water. Her hands searched blindly for him, but came away with nothing. A quick glance told her the approaching tube of sludge and light was halfway across the kitchen. She searched harder. Her foot caught on something, and she fell forward. Her face splashed below the surface. Stinging salt water ran down her throat. She thrashed around, trying to regain her footing.

  “Ang, what’s wrong?”

  Angela stopped her flailing and looked at the voice. Tommy stood before her, away from the counter, on the other side of the room. He held up a twelve-pack of Evian with his right hand, oblivious to the thing coming up behind him.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  “Did I scare you? Sorry. I thought it’d be a good joke to swim around you. You know, surprise you a little. I guess it was a stupid idea.”

  The thing in the water started to encircle him. Tommy never saw it. He simply stared at Angela with a look of concern in his eyes. It wasn’t until the thing’s flashing, ethereal lights floated in front of him that he screamed.

  A cylinder of flashing, brown water rose up and wrapped itself around his chest. One moment he was above water, the next he disappeared. Angela watched with eyes bulging, afraid to move. A swirl of air bubbles appeared where Tommy had stood.

  Angela held her breath. All was quiet but for the sloshing of the water. She inched to the side, along the counter, heading for the door. Her elbow struck an open drawer. She winced but kept on going.

  Tommy’s head exploded from the water. Angela screamed. He lashed out with his arms like a drowning man. Strange veins of a substance that looked like seaweed clung to him, pulling him back under. He fought against it. The flesh on his neck singed. The brown water around him turned red. The veins then worked their way to his head. His eyes bulged, and he offered a gurgling, blood-filled scream before his cheeks caved in. A few more veins pulled off his lower jaw. It sank into the depths.

  Angela dashed out of the kitchen fast as she could. The waist-deep water fought against her with nightmarish force. Tears streamed down her cheeks. In a few moments she was out of the apartment and back in the hallway. Still more clumps of shimmering light approached. She turned away and waded toward the stairs. She could feel their slimy fingers on her heels. The roof access door, still open, was only a few feet away.

  Gasping and dripping water, she scurried up the stairs and never once looked back. When she got to the roof, she slammed the door shut and slid down it until her wet butt smacked the concrete.

  She sat there and cried, with her head in her hands, for hours.

  SEPTEMBER 15th

  It was night. Angela’s stomach cramped. She lay on her back in the middle of the roof, staring up at a star-filled sky. She traced lines from one star to another, making pictures in her mind. Every one came out looking like Tommy.

  Another pang wrenched her gut, and she moaned. She hadn’t eaten in days. The polluted rainwater she drank tore up her insides. Her throat burned with every sip, and when she looked at her reflection in a puddle, she saw her cheeks were pallid and sunken. She looked like a corpse.

  Growing bored and depressed, she rolled over and curled into a ball. She needed sleep, though it seemed sleep was all she did. She closed her eyes and hoped the next time she woke up it wouldn’t be in the middle of a nightmare.

  SEPTEMBER 22nd

  Dry weather arrived, and when it did, the seas stopped rising. The water was only two feet from the top of the apartment building. Every so often, if there was a strong wind, waves would lash over the sides, covering the roof with brown, tainted water.

  Not that Angela cared much. She had no food, no water, no hope. She lingered in the same spot for hours, staring at the cracks in the concrete below her. Her lips were dry and split, her body emaciated and dying.

  Her eyes started playing tricks on her. As dehydration set in, she began to see ships in the distance; giant sea-faring vessels that towed nets filled with the remains of all the people she’d known. These ships always stayed just beyond the horizon, barely visible, never coming any closer. But to her mind’s eye they were big as cities.

  Maybe she should have been frightened, but she wasn’t.

  Another crack caught her attention, and she watched it.

  SEPTEMBER 26th

  “King me.”

  Angela placed one checker on another and grinned. “Good job, Tommy,” she said. “Why can’t I ever beat you?”

  “I’m just good,” he replied.

  She looked in his eyes. They were so kind and loving. She could gaze into them forever.

  “So, what’re you lovebirds doing?” asked another voice. Angela turned around. It was Rachid Freeman. He sat in a beach chair, bouncing his little daughter in his lap. He smiled, and his white teeth reflected the sunlight. Roberta approached, handed him a glass of iced tea, and squeezed his hand.

  “It’s so beautiful out today,” she said.

  “Sure is. Sun’s shining, sand’s not too hot, water’s cool…could be the best day ever.”

  Angela grinned. She ran her hand through the sand. They were right. It was cool. She giggled, thinking herself silly for not noticing before.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Tommy.

  “Oh, nothing,” she replied. “I can just be ridiculous, you know?”

  They reclined on a towel that hadn’t been there a second ago and let the sun warm their flesh. “Can I ask you a question?” asked Tommy.

  “Shoot.”

  “What do you want to do with your life?”

  Angela cocked her head. “Do with my life? What kind of question is that?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t know, really. Haven’t thought about it much. I guess I’d like to have a good job and…” She bit her lip. “No, that’s not right. I think, more than anything, I just want to be happy. I want to be in the moment and live. I’ve seen too many folks live like they’re scared of life, and I don’t want that to be me.”

  “So, how’ll you pull that off?”

  Angela flashed Tommy a mischievous grin. “Right now, by beating you into the water.”

  She stood up without hesitation and took off. Tommy was right behind her. She dashed across the beach as fast as her legs could carry her and then leapt from the rocks. Tucking her knees to her chest, she plunged beneath the water. As it washed over her she felt soothed by its coolness, especially on a day bright as this one. She wanted to bathe in that feeling forever.

  She never came back up.

  THE MEEK

  * * *

  SCOTT NICHOLSON

  The ram hit Lucas low, twisting its head so that its curled horns knocked him off his feet. The varmint was good at this. It had killed before. But the dead eyes showed no joy of the hunt, only the black gleam of a hunger that ran wider than the Gibson.

  Lucas winced as he sprawled on the ground, tasting desert dust and blood, his hunger forgotten. As the Merino tossed its head, the horns caught the strange sunlight and flashed like knives. Lucas had only a moment to react. He rolled to his left, reaching for his revolver.

  The ram lunged forward, its lips parted and slobbering. The mouth closed around the ankle of Lucas’s left boot. He kicked, and the spur raked across the ram’s nose. Gray pus leaked from the torn nostrils, but the animal didn’t even slow down in its feeding frenzy.

  The massive head dipped again, going higher, looking for Lucas’s flank. But Lucas wasn’t ready to kark, not out here in the open with nothing but stone and scrub acacia to keep him company. Lucas filled his hand, ready to blow the ram back to Hell or wherever else it was these four-legged devils came from.

  But he was slow, tired from four days in the saddle and weak from hunger. The tip of one horn knocked the gun from his hand, and he watched it spin silver in the s
ky before dropping to the sand ten feet away. Eagles circled overhead, waiting to clean what little bit of meat the animal would leave on his bones. He fell back, hoping his leather chaps would stop the teeth from gnawing into his leg.

  Just when he was ready to shut his eyes against the coming horror, sharp thunder ripped the sky open. At first he thought it was Gabriel’s trumpet, harking and heralding and all that. Then Lucas was covered in the explosion of brain, bits of skull, and goo as the ram’s head disappeared. The animal’s back legs folded, and then it collapsed slowly upon itself. It fell on its side and twitched once, then lay still, thick fluid dribbling from the stump of its neck.

  Gun smoke filled the air, and the next breath was the sweetest Lucas had ever taken. He sat up and brushed the corrupted mutton from his face, then checked to make sure the animal’s teeth hadn’t broken his skin. The chaps were intact, with a few new scrapes in the leather.

  “’bout got you,” came a raspy voice. Lucas cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted as a shadow fell over him. The man was bow-legged, his rifle angled with the stock against his hip, the white avalanche beard descending from a Grampian mountain range of a face.

  “Thank you, mate,” Lucas said, wiping his mouth. “And thank the Lord for His mercy.”

  The old man kicked at the carcass, and it didn’t move. He spat a generous rope of tobacco juice onto the oozing neck wound. Flies had already gathered on the corpse. Lucas hoped that flies didn’t turn into flesh-eating critters, too. Having dead-and-back-again sheep coming after you was plenty bad enough.

  “A stray. Third one today,” the old man said, working the Remington’s action so that the spent shell kicked free. He stooped to read the brand on the ram’s hip. “Come from Kulgera. They never could keep ’em rounded up down those parts.”

  Lucas struggled to his feet, sore from the sheep-wrestling. He found his hat and secured it on his head, then returned his revolver to its holster. “If you hadn’t come along when you did—”

  The man cut in, his eyes bright with held laughter. “Hell, son, I been watching you for five minutes. Wasn’t sure which of you was going to walk away. I’d have put two-to-one on the Merino, but nobody much left around to take the bet.”

  Lucas thought about punching the stranger in the face, but Lucas was afraid his hand would shatter against that stone-slick surface. The man must have seen the anger in Lucas’s eyes, because the laugh busted free of the thin lips, rolling across the plateau like the scream of a dying wombat.

  “Never you mind,” the man said, slapping the barrel of his Remington. “I’d sooner sleep with a brown snake than watch a man get ate up.”

  He held his hand out. It was wrapped in a glove the color of a chalky mesa, stained a rusty red. Lucas took it and shook quickly, feeling a strength in the grip that didn’t match the man’s stringy muscles.

  “Name’s Camp,” he said.

  “Lucas,” Lucas said. “Is ‘Camp’ short for something?”

  “Not that I know of. Just Camp, is all.”

  “You’re not Aussie.”

  “Hell, no. Come from Texas, U.S. of A. Had to leave ’cause the damned place was pert near run over by Mexicans and Injuns. You know how it is, when the furriners come in and take over, don’t you?”

  Lucas nodded and said, “Things are crook in Musclebrook, no doubt.” He walked toward his horse twenty yards away, to where it had fallen in a shallow gulley. Camp followed, solemn now. Nobody laughed at the loss of a good horse.

  The horse whinnied softly, froth bubbling from its nose. A hank of flesh had been ripped from its side. The saddle strap had broken, tossing Lucas’s canteen and lasso into a patch of saltbrush. The horse’s tail whisked at the air, swatting invisible flies.

  “Never thought I’d see the day a sheep could outrun a horse,” Camp said.

  “Never thought I’d see a lot of things,” Lucas answered.

  Camp spat again, and a strand of the brown juice clung to his beard. He was the first person Lucas had ever met who chewed tobacco. “Want to borrow my Remington?” he asked, holding out the rifle.

  “Mate’s got to do it his own way.”

  “Reckon so,” Camp said, then turned so as not to see the tears in Lucas’s eyes.

  Lucas drew the revolver and put two bullets in the horse’s head. Vickie, he’d called her. Had her for six years, had roped and broken her himself. Now she was nothing but eagle food. But at least she wouldn’t rise up tonight, bucking and kicking and hungry for a long mouthful of the hand that had once fed her.

  “Where you headed?” Camp asked when they’d reached the top of the gulley.

  Lucas scanned the expanse of plateau ahead of them. Finally he shrugged. “I was mostly headed away from something, not toward something.”

  “Sheep’s everywhere now, is the word. Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, all your big transport cities. They roam the streets scrounging for ever scrap of human cud they can find.”

  “Even back Queensland?”

  “Queensland got it bad. ’course, them damned banana benders deserve everything they get, and then some.” Camp took a plug of tobacco from his shirt pocket that looked like a dry dingo turd. He bit into it with his four best teeth, then worked it until he could spit again. He held out the plug to Lucas.

  “No. You’re a gent, though.” Lucas was thirsty. He took a swig from his canteen, thought about offering a drink to Camp, then shuddered at the thought of the man’s backwash polluting the water.

  “I’m headed for Wadanetta Pass. Hear word there’s a bunch holed up there.”

  “I didn’t know some were trying to fight,” Lucas said. “I figured it was every bloke for himself.”

  He hadn’t seen another person for three days, at least not one that was alive. He’d passed a lump of slimy dress this morning, a bonnet on the ground beside it. Might have been one of them pub girls, or some schoolmarm fallen from a wagon. The sight had about made him launch a liquid laugh.

  “You hungry?” Camp asked.

  “Nobody not? What the blooming hell is there to eat out here except weeds and poisoned meat? It was a fair go I’d have ended up eating my horse, and I liked my horse.”

  “Wadanetta is thataway,” Camp said, pointing into the shimmering layers of heat that hung in the west. “Might reach it before night.”

  “Damn well better. I don’t want to be out here in the dark with that bunch playing sillybuggers.”

  “Amen to that.” Camp led the way, moving as if he had a gun trained on his back. It was all Lucas could do to keep up.

  They walked in silence for about half an hour. Lucas’s feet were burning in his boots. He was about convinced that Hell lay only a few feet beneath the plains and that the devil was working up to the biggest jimbuck roundup of all time. First killer sheep, then a sun that glowed like a bloody eye.

  “Suppose it’s like this all about?” Lucas asked.

  “You mean, out Kimberly and all that?”

  “New Zealand. Guinea.”

  “Don’t see why not. Sheep are sheep all over the world.”

  “Even over in England?”

  “Bloody hope so.”

  “Beaut,” said Lucas. “That bugger, God, ought to be half sporting, you’d think.”

  “Hell, them Merino probably would stoop to eating Aborigines. I heared of a country run all by darkies, hardly a white man there. These darkies, they worship cows. I mean, treat them like Jesus Christ come again.”

  Lucas almost smiled at that one. “Cows likely went over with the sheep. Bet the darkies changed their tune a little by now.”

  “Them what’s left,” Camp said, punctuating the sentence with tobacco spit.

  They walked on as the sun sank lower and the landscape became a little rougher. A few hills rolled in the distance, dotted with scrub. They came to a creek, and Lucas pointed out the hoofprints in the muddy banks.

  They stopped for a drink and to rest a few minutes, then continued. The day was an hour from dark
when they reached the base of a steep mesa. The cliffs were eroded from centuries of wind and weather. A small group of wooden humpies huddled in the shadow of the mesa.

  “Wadanetta, dead ahead,” Camp said. They broke into a jog. When they were a hundred yards away from the town, they shouted. Their voices echoed off the stone slopes. Nobody came from the gray buildings to greet them.

  “Anybody here?” Lucas yelled as they reached a two-story building that looked like a knock shop. Camp pushed open the door. The parlor was empty, a table knocked over, playing cards spread across the floor. A piano sat in one corner, with a cracked mug on top.

  They went inside, and Lucas yelled again. The only answer was the creaking of wood as a sunset wind arose. “Thought you said blokes was here,” Lucas said.

  “Said I heared it. Hearing and knowing is different things.”

  Camp walked around the bar and knocked on one of the wooden kegs that lined the shelf. “They left some grog.”

  He grabbed a mug and drew it full. In the fading light, the lager looked like piss, flat and cloudy. Camp wrinkled his nose and took a drink without bothering to remove his chaw. He swished the ale around and swallowed.

  “Any good?” Lucas asked, eyeing the stairs, expecting some grazed-over jackaroo to come stumbling down with his pants around his ankles.

  “Nope,” said Camp, but he quickly drained the rest of his glass and refilled it.

  Lucas pulled a stool out from the bar and sat down. He thought about trying the ale, but decided against it. Night was nearly here, and he didn’t want to be slowed down by drunkenness. “What do we do for a bite?”

  “Well, we can’t eat no mutton, that’s for damned sure.”

  “I’ve been eating kangaroo. Hasn’t karked me yet, but I used up the last of it a couple of days ago. Thought about killing a rabbit, but it’s hard to bang one with a pistol.”

  “How do you know rabbits don’t got it, same as the sheep?”

  “Rabbits haven’t been eating people.”

  “Least as far as you know.”