‘I didn’t know quite what that place was,’ Kane says. ‘I thought it was a prison at first, but then I realised it was a cemetery. They sent us there to rot. We should have burned that place to the ground.”
He stands and addresses the men around him. ‘But now we’re here safe in the scrub.’ He smiles. ‘While Australia burns.’
And the men around him smile and nod their heads and Greta Maze wonders exactly what kind of place they have walked into.
‘What do you mean “Australia burns”?’ Greta asks.
‘Haven’t you heard?’
‘Heard what?’ Molly asks.
‘We’re done for,’ Kane says.
‘Who’s done for?’ Greta asks.
‘Australia,’ he says. ‘It’s done. It’s no more. All those selfish, proud men in red coats that turned into black suits. The ones who came here from across the sea. They thought they could turn this place into a new England. They chased everyone who didn’t look like them out of the cities. And now the Japs have burned all them city princes and princesses to dust.’
He drops his voice to a whisper. ‘They hit Brisbane with twice the force they hit Darwin,’ he says. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’
Stalking around the campsite now, charged by the electricity of his own visions. ‘Then they moved on to Sydney and all those fat men in all those tall buildings didn’t see the fire coming. They could only stare at it through their office windows. And they watched the heat blister their skin. They watched the fire distort their faces.’
Seated on the log, Greta slips a hand around Molly’s arm, squeezes it, discreetly shakes her head.
The girl knows her now. She knows her looks, she trusts them, and this one says this can’t be true, he’s not a good one, Molly.
‘And in the reflections of their office windows,’ Kane says. ‘The last thing they ever saw was the monsters they had become.’
Then Greta sees George Kane whispering to a younger, thinner man with lesions across his bald head. Kane has his back turned to Greta and Molly, and Greta can’t figure out what he’s saying to the bald man, only that he’s saying something he doesn’t want her to hear.
Greta whispers to Molly. ‘Give me the bag,’ she says.
Molly unslings the duffel bag and slides it to Greta with her foot.
Kane turns back around and resumes what Greta notes is rapidly becoming a sermon. ‘And now the meek shall inherit the earth,’ he proclaims. And the men around him nod because they are as easily impressed as they are led.
Kane finds his seat again on the log in front of Greta and Molly. ‘All of us exiles and outcasts,’ he says. ‘We’ll start all over again. And we’ll be happy and a century from now the people of this land will celebrate the day the bombs of the Imperial Japanese Navy blew greed and avarice into the wind.’
He takes another sip of tea then throws what’s left into the fire. He turns to speak to Greta, who now has her hands inside the duffel bag. No welcome and no warmth in his voice anymore. Only suspicion. ‘What’s in the bag?’ he asks.
‘Just a few tins of food,’ Greta says. ‘Water. Stuff from home.’
Kane looks deep into her two eyes with his one eye. A long, painful silence.
‘There’s no one waiting for you back by that plateau, is there?’ Kane asks.
Greta is silent. Then she smiles and says, ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’ She taps Molly’s shoulder. Gets up. ‘We’ll leave you fellers to it.’
Molly stands, gripping Bert the shovel. ‘Thanks for the tea,’ she says.
George Kane nods at Molly, remaining seated. He nonchalantly waves a finger at the men behind him. They immediately close in around the actress and the gravedigger girl.
Greta turns to face the men and swiftly pulls the Japanese handgun from the duffel bag. She points it confidently, sweeping her arm across the men.
‘Get back,’ she snaps. ‘Back!’
And George Kane laughs. ‘The gun has no bullets,’ he says. He gets up from the log, struggling to haul his large limbs into motion, then he points to the red-haired boy. ‘Shane over there was quite taken by you girls back by the creek.’
Shane gives two short snorts that constitute his laughter. Another large man in a hunting jacket turns to Shane and makes fun of his snorting by snorting loudly three times and this makes all the men laugh and they’re laughing now like deranged clowns and their bodies close in on the girls and Greta steps back from them.
‘Get back!’ she says, feebly.
But the bodies come closer and the deranged laughter makes Molly Hook think of her Uncle Aubrey and she finds the eyes of the bald man with lesions across his face and his scalp and his mouth is wide and his laughter sounds like a car horn and his hands are reaching for her and all she has in this strange world is her best friend after the sky, Bert the shovel, and she swings him hard at the bald man’s nose and blood rushes from his nostrils as he falls to his knees.
Greta steps back further from the men, who rush at her now, and she falls into the arms of George Kane, who bear hugs her with all his strength, the crusty welts and scabs across his arms rubbing against her shoulders. The actress stomps her feet on his boots, kicks her heels against his shins.
Molly turns her head in time to find the red-haired boy charging wildly at her. But the gravedigger girl is wilder and she swings her gravedigger shovel and the
