(as related by the Last Bloke in Australia)
Protest poster in West End, Meanjin.
Day Two.
3.04am
IT was ol’ Mangled Jizzy that found those kids, the very first ones, y’know.
Young Donk Cowie’d parked his old man’s RAM – bloody ridiculous vehicle for a dentist – down by the flood marker off Crooked Stream Lane. Jizz told us it looked like the silly bugger’d been trying to get into young Shelsta Gabbatt’s knickers when they’d been taken.
By that I mean he found her knickers, soiled, and a half unrolled French Letter, if you catch my meaning.
The ‘paper, well, the ‘paper’s Facey page, The Coffin Creek Investigator, didn’t really get much into the details, barring that the cops were “treating the situation as suspicious”, “appealing to the public for information” that “parking in a flood zone is hazardous” and to “please welcome investigating officer Constable Ray Fistwell to The Creek”.
That sort of D-grader city journo bullshit.
Ol’ Jizzy may have been as mad as three cut snakes in a Whirlpool, but he’d also been a pretty handy snapper in the day.
He had The Eye, didn’t miss a bloody thing, much to our occasional chagrin.
That means it pissed us off, kid.
Anyway, we’d been shouting Jizz a round or ten when he’d spilled his guts on all the spilt guts.
“Looked like a feral pig what done it, lads. Pulled them kids out the cab before poor ole Donk had a poke, let alone a sniff of his fingers. Not right. Blood and shit and hair and all sorts everywhere. No bodies but. What squealer does that? Drags two kids off and… disappears? ”
Well, none of us had had a fucken clue, and the bastard 4G internet was out again, so we – we being town quack Doc Liversedge, me missus Narelle and Jimbo Paddock… yes, the Mayor (don’t get too excited, kid, that was 10% of Coffin Creek’s population there at the bar) – decided to leave the mystery to the no-doubt exemplary deductive abilities of the new town copper, Fistwell.
For now.
7.15am
Wasn’t long before them deductin’ skills were back in demand, neither.
You’re loca – you’ve heard of Snake Marks, right? Nope?
Bloody hell, seriously, you kids – Snake, actual Christian name lost to the vapours of Creek lore, was Mayor ‘round here well before Jimbo’s time (not to mention me and ‘Relle’s).
This was back in the eighties, when state government spooks were scuttling around the valley, rattling gates.
You know, natural gas and all that? It was a dodgy business then and it still is, kid.
Anyway, I read up on Snake before ‘Relle and I decided to shift out here from the Goldie – his steampunk reimagining of Che’s life sealed the deal, t’be honest.
Yep, Snake was a capital ‘c’ Communist, and that drove the East Coast establishment mental. He’d really put it up ‘em when he was elected to state parliament, but Snake was also a capital ‘p’ Pisshead that all ended real quick, with broken limbs and a few less than exemplary headlines to boot. Disgraced anywhere with a population over 500, Snake moved back out to the Creek, bought the pub and spent the next thirty-odd years cranking out revolutionary tracts.
It was a life lived like a deadset bloody legend, a real town luminary, until about a week back, when I found one’ve Comrade Snake’s size-13 cowboy boots on my morning run. The blood on it was black, the other one gone.
Snake’s hip flask was thirty yards up the track, en route to his camper, bone dry.
The 4G was barely 3G that morning, but I got a sketchy line through to Constable Fistwell, who took his sweet bloody time getting there.
Valé Snake and all that.
8.47am
Me? I hate the pigs, kid. Always have. I mean the two-legged variety, of course.
Subhumans, the lot.
And I have to tell ya, that bloke Fistwell had me on edge from the outset.
Queensland coppers usually do, and that fugger was cast directly from the original jack-booted spec: bull-shouldered, beer-gutted, slap-headed, with a brow handed directly down from Boris fucken Karloff, shady porcine eyes set to corrupt.
Had a distinctive, sinister scar and all.
I’ve been punching on with Fascist shitcunts like him since the ‘60s, kid.
Why’re ya looking at me like that?
Not all of us Boomers are hyper-superannuated fuckwits with a not-in-my-backyard sewage pole lodged up our busted clackers.
Some of us still believe in action.
That’s a story for another time, but just so’s you know, when ya hear what’s to come, I want ya to understand that I have some pedigree with the matters I’m bangin’ on about.
Constable Ray Fistwell rocked up to the crime scene looking like absolute dog shit, all yellow ‘n sweating balls ‘n shit.
Was this bloke really that put upon by some raged up porker?
Or was there somethin’ else goin’ on?
Mark this: that copper made me extremely bloody suss.
9.20am
It happened again, and this one was the worst.
The Harveys were a fam of harmless Nimbin ferals passing through the Creek, en route to some bush doof or other, a rainbow crystal festival or something of that nature.
Not my cuppa, but each to their own.
The poor bastards – dad, mum, big sis, little sis and the four-month-old bub – had parked their bashed up old Combi out near Hitter Lawrence’s back paddock, overnighting. Hitter’d been out at sparrow’s fart, checking the traps with Ginger, his tame dingo bitch.
As in girl-dog – don’t get ya knickers in a twist, kid.
Ginger’d caught the scent of somethin’ – Hitter told us he reckoned it mighta been a bastard feral meow-meow – and lost her bloody rag, jettin’ off into the scrub.
Ol’ Hitter’d been out on the land since well before Snake’d been a short squirt of piss, meanin’ he didn’t take no chances. He’d hauled his .308 off the rack, a real boom stick, did the necessaries and took off after Ginger as quick as his buggered hips let him.
Poor old Hitter found Ginger in the creek (dry as a nun’s nasty since well before Wuhan), ears down, tail between her legs, whining real bad.
Her muzzle was pink, he’d told us later, yellowy eyes waterin’ up.
There was no feral cat, no trap, no half-a-possum with its guts hangin’ out thanks to a goanna or whatever.
Ginger’d found a bloody, tangled mess of baby’s clothes at the end of a deep, thrashed out furrow. The scar in the sand wound further into the bush, snagged bits of cloth and fine blonde hair marking a path inland.
Hitter wasn’t up for tanglin’ with a feral porker at his age – he’d wear the kick of the .308 at a distance, but in the dense pre-dawn scrub he’d have fuck all chance with his blade – so he’d calmed poor old Ginge and legged it back to his shack.
First off, he’d called the MacGregor Brothers.
Second up, he’d called up Fistwell.
“Tell youse what, that cop was an absolute frothing mess. Real outta sorts. Sweatin’, pink, barely strung a sentence together… seemed real agitated around all that blood,” Hitter’d told us later. “He was either real hungover, which ain’t a good look for a blow-in, or he couldn’t handle the scene. And what good’s that?”
This copper was about as useless as tits on a bull, The Doc, Jimbo, ‘Relle and I agreed.
It was well past time we got on the internet and looked the fugger up.
9.45am
First things first, but. Hitter’d called up the MacGregors, being Clayton, Ronnie and Denzo. The brothers were the Valley’s wild piggin’ experts, coming from a long line of such.
The boys were the real deal – no red mist through a scope from five hundy yards for them – the MacGregors trucked in up-close-and-personal, bladed porker apocalypse, traditional like.
Which is to say, the lads were all about protectin’ the valley from the bastard ferals and ensurin’ every bit of a felled beast was put to proper use.
Beginnin’ with the removal and subsequent ingestion of the swine’s still pumpin’ heart.
Not for the limp of pecker, kid.
That’s all a roundabout ways of saying: when we learned what we did about Constable Fistwell and the issue of Coffin Creek’s feral pig situation, the MacGregor boys were rarin’ to go.
10.11am
Concerning Ray Fistwell.
We had The Doc and Jimbo around for a slab the night of Hitter’s revelations. We were quiet during the feed, antsy to get cracking on the investigation. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night, but, and that a full belly’d keep us going when the piss kicked in.
Now, ‘Relle and myself are members of various private forums – real covert stuff, well off the info superhighway as you may know it – concerned with our particular shade of activism, if you catch my red drift.
Fed, watered and having taken a quick detour via the back patio for a choof of The Doc’s bush bud – we perched on garden chairs ‘round the PC, with ‘Relle in the driver’s seat.
I’d sent a few queries out to various spook mates from around the traps vis-a-vis Constable Fistwell, but ‘Relle and I’s shared OzEmail was a wasteland of spam when we logged on.
Ray-bloody-Fistwell.
What was his fuggen deal?
Digging in, ‘Relle on keyboard duties, steadily sinking cans as the hours ground by, punctuated by nothing but disappointment and increasingly regular trips to the throne.
It was grinding, demoralising work.
This bloke Fistwell was a ghost.
Where was he from? Where’d he been? Why was he here in the Creek achieving sweet fuck and all?
It was just past midnight – we were down to the final sixer of the slab.
‘Relle had turned in (she had Muay Thai first thing), meaning Jimbo was bashing away at another dead-end rabbit hole when the email finally, mercifully dinged:
RE: YOUR PIG
Jimbo opened it up – it was a message from one of my sources at a particularly bolshie Aussie independent media site. This site, which specialised in reporting all the shit the MSM – bloody hell, kid, that means “Main Stream Media” – bury on behalf of their bastard mates in the s0-called establishment.
You can hear that too, can’t ya? Approaching? Like dogs on heat?
Might be time to cut a long story shorter.
Turns out my citizen journo mate had been prepping a piece on dodgy goings on with the Border Farce goose-steppers and animal quarantine procedures at Brissy airport. The lawyers had hit him with a cease and desist just as he was ablout to hit publish. The draft was copy/pasted under his email, and the jist was:
Corrupt Border Farce Officer Ray Fistwell had mates in very high places.
Fistwell had been implicated in an international truffle pig smuggling operation last December, busted in the act at the Brissy airport transfer facility.
Scored quite the nip from a squealer, too.
Now, instead of having his arse handed to him, Fistwell’s uncle, Chock, a higher-up in the Fash bureaucracy, quietly had his nephew’s charges purged and redeployed the filthy bastard out here, where they thought no-one would notice six-foot-five of packed ham on the lam.
What dirt did “Constable” Fistwell have on ol’ Unk Chock?
Ya gotta wonder, not that it matters much now.
They’re definitely getting closer, kid.
That was the job lot from our source, more than enough to confirm we weren’t paranoid hillbillies or anything.
The truth about the trotter situation became apparent the next morning, on the other side of a pretty decent set of hangovers.
We can’t sink ‘em like we did when we were your age, kid.
10.37am
Old Doc Liversedge had pulled a few strings with a boffin mate of his down at the CSIRO.
Unbeknownst to ‘Relle, Jimbo and I (and Fistwell, a’course) The Doc had sneaked a sample of the mess on Snake’s boot off to the lab the day Comrade Snake disappeared.
The Doc dropped a meeting request into our highly secure WhatsApp group around 9am, marshalling the troops for a greasy hangover feed.
The lab results were in.
Jimbo, Relle, The Doc and I took up our usual perches at the back of the caff, and The Doc got straight down to brass beeswax.
“Pigs are a mixing vessel,” he said.
“Pig-pigs or, um, the two-legged variety?” ‘Relle asked, reasonably..
“We’ll get to subhumans, let’s stick with the four-legs variety, as Mr Orwell would have had it,” The Doc advised.
“Pigs are a mixing vessel. This means they can be infected by both human and avian influenza. Based on the blood works from Snake’s boot, my friend over at the spook science bureau has made a few distressing discoveries. Dire ones, actually.”
Jimbo was inhaling a brick-sized cut of choc-caramel slice.
“Spare us the suspense, Doc – the people of Coffin Creek are bloody well disappearing!”
The Doc pressed on.
“Indeed. The first thing you need to know is that the DNA extracted from the, um, sample on Snake’s boot is a 97% match for our dear Constable Fistwell –”
I was up on me feet immediately, ready to cave some copper skull in.
The Doc urged me to park my arse.
“I’m not finished, yet. It’s much worse than you think.”
I sat, lacing my fingers between ‘Relle’s, knuckles white.
“The sample also contained swine DNA, and indications that the subject is in the acute neurologic stages of the mokola lyssavirus. The rabid phase, if you will.”
“So there’s an actual feral pig out there, and –” Jimbo spluttered.
“We’ll get to that, Jim,” The Doc said. “My friend rushed this report through as a favour, so I must warn you that some of what I am about to impart is educated speculation.”
He wet his whistle with a slug of iced tea, looking apprehensive.
“Go on then, Doc,” ‘Relle nudged. “As you know, the Constable was embroiled in a truffle pig smuggling operation. You may or may not know that a truffle is a kind of fungus. My friend initially supposed that the, um, unique condition we’ve uncovered may have been engineered in a laboratory, but, upon further consideration, it is far more likely that the DNA of the hog in question, already infected with the lyssavirus, somehow reacted with the reproductive spores –”
“Bloody hell, man, you may as well be speakin’ Farsi,” I’d groaned.
“Fair enough. What I’m saying is that somehow the molecular conditions were perfect, one in a billion: the interaction of the truffle spore’s reproductive properties, the rabid hog’s condition and Constable Fistwell’s specific DNA sequence has spawned some sort of networked rabies virus. We’re calling it The Truffle Hog Theory.”
“Good lord,” Jimbo gulped.
“My friend performed a few initial tests on lab rats to be sure. The results were conclusive enough for our purposes.”
“That pig is actually feral,” I’d muttered.
“Correct. And those missing people aren’t actually dead. Fistwell infected them. They will live out their natural life cycles, but I am afraid they would already have devolved to a feral state, mere biological engines designed to spread the spore and ravage the environment uncontested. Mother Nature’s in a very bad mood, and I’m afraid it may already be too late.”
“Let’s get those MacGregor boys on the blower,” ‘Relle said, teeth gritted.
“Reckon so,” said Jimbo.
So we did.
11.19am
The MaGregor boys were rarin’ to go.
I told you that already, right?
The piggin’ posse formed up in the town square later that arvo. It was quieter than usual for late night shopping, and I got to thinking the copper had been busier than we’d thought.
The MacGregors had backed their Hilux up to the ANZAC cenotaph; the gun locker in the tray was open, a pig annihilation’ arsenal on show. The MacGregors had been busy on the Makita – half a dozen sawed-off double-barrelled shotties were lined up like front rowers at the back of the tray.
Jimbo, The Doc, ‘Relle and I each grabbed one and slung on the bandoliers hung on the ute’s frame, each good for 56 shots.
Twenty eight if you double-triggered it.
The lads wore their hunting knives slung low.
“Reckon we know where the feral and his sounder,” Clayton drawled.
A sounder is a collective of pigs, kid.
Thought you’d be wonderin’.
“Reckon so, do yeh?” Jimbo drawled, suddenly gone country.
“Reckon,” muttered Ronnie.
“Follow us,” squinted Denzo from the ute’s cab.
We clambered into The Doc’s LandCruiser – Liversedge at the wheel, ‘Relle in shotgun, Jimbo and I in back – and got to tail-gatin’ the MacGregors out of town.
It was going dusk as we hit the outskirts towards the back track, one’ve them sunsets that looked like a someone’d set a match to the horizon.
“They’re takin’ us out to the creek,” Jimbo reckoned.
“Makes sense,” The Doc mused, swinging the ‘Cruiser off onto an unsealed road just past the cemetery’s outer limits. “Been plenty of wet lately. Good, remote spot to wallow during the day. Noone to bother ‘em since Snake fenced it off and declared it re-gen back in the day.”
The sun dropped pretty quick after that, a new moon black-as-a-dog’s-guts situation. The MacGregors’ rack of hunting spotties burned through the blue-black ahead of us, The Doc keeping a car length’s distance. The only sound out there was the rumble of the two bush-bashing 4WDs cutting a cautious path through thickening scrub.
“Almost there,” whispered Jimbo, and it’s safe to say he was bricking it like the rest of us. “Coffin Creek.”
The MacGregors’ spotties cut across a stand of eucalyptus and fuck me, there were eyes, so many bloody eyes refracting a sick yellow green out of nowhere.
“The fuck!” Jimbo wailed as The Doc braked hard, kissing the tail of the MacGregors’ ute, the ‘Cruiser fishtailing in silt. The Hilux was nudged forward, cutting detail into the nightmares we’d foolishly thought we’d cull.
There they were – Donk Cowie, Shelsta Gabbatt, Snake Marks, the Harveys my god those little girls, the baby and then that fugger Fistwell himself, all slick with mud and shit and blood and barking, frothing and guttural, a poisoned feral clot of wasted –
The MacGregors killed the spotties, plunging the clearing into pitch , leaving the ‘Cruiser’s headlights jagging south, dimly illuminating
“The pigs,” ‘Relle moaned.
The wet sounds of the MacGregors’ knife-work my god those little girls, the baby was drowned out by the squealing stampede of boars rounding us on our flank, a wall of tusk and cloven hoof in a rotted meat miasma.
Jimbo was out of the ‘Cruiser, on his arse with the kick of his first pull.
Something quick dragged him into the scrub, shrieking. Jimbo was unzipped with a sound like a sucked wound, and then just… stopped. Behind us, we heard Denzo yell “Ronnie! No!” as a heavy body hit the ground; then it was Clayton screaming for Denzo, and then the brothers were mute.
The Doc was desperately trying to bring the ‘Cruiser ‘round when the two Harvey girls, no more ‘n seven or eight, crawled out of the scrub, faces masked in Jimbo’s offal. They clicked and groaned and muttered spore-songs as they advanced, and then it was The Doc who was shrieking, because trailing them was mum and oh my god the baby brother, suckling on rabies.
‘Relle and I checked each other as they closed in, the cacophony of the porkers gettin’ unbearable, like a roofin’ nail to the eardrum:
“We gotta split up, love,” she directed. “Meet you at the Base Station.”
I knew she was right, but it was still a fucked proposition.
“Take Mad Monk’s Pass,” I reckoned. “I’ll head ‘round back through the Cold Str-”
The Doc’s shrieking went up a few octaves, all inhuman, harmonising with the ferals.
Jimbo was back – a hacking, mud-shrouded wraith. It hauled The Doc’s door open, then yanked him out of the cab, the pop of Liversedge’s arm dislocating like a cork. It-Jimbo pinned The Doc with its beer-gutted heft, beckoning mum and god those little girls, the baby with its spore-mind, offering The Doc up as an acolyte of the mutant lyssavirus.
‘Relle and I had our own shorthand goin’, otherwise known as forty years of married nirvana, leg-overs three nights a week like clockwork. We flicked each other a look, initiated the countdown, and, while the vanguard of ferals were occupied with Jimbo, flung the ‘Cruiser’s back doors wide and bolted, sawn-offs ablaze as we tracked our separate paths away
It’s all confusion from there, kid. Absolute bedlam.
Once I’d cleared the boars – mainly better luck than judgment – I ran into a scattered band of ferals en route to the rendezvous point. These were new ones, locals you’d see at the servo, down the Tin, or maybe having a shot of pool between rounds at Trivia Night down the Ourro.
I avoided them, mainly, but a couple, like dear old Mrs Ellis from the Salvos op shop, well, I had to do what was right, futile as it was in the scheme of things. That pig Fistwell had well and truly fucked us all.
noon.
Then I found you hidin’ here in the Base Station, right kid?
What, thirty-six hours ago?
From what The Doc reckoned, the bastard virus will have overrun the entire country by now, if not the world. Coffin Creek to Broken Axe to Utnadulla, where the airport is, in six hours, spreading like the 2023 Coot-Tha fires, no hazard burn. Did they shut it all down when they figured out what was going on?
Don’t make me laugh, kid.
We’ve got a week’s worth of food in here,
‘Relle and I’d been planning to do another lap next spring (yes I am very fucking certain she’s out there giving ‘em what for), so we’ve got diesel coming out’ve our proverbials.
We’ll just hold tight here for another day or two until the missus gets here.
Bloody funny to think it wasn’t “the AI” that got us, as hard as that bloke Epstos tried to shove his brain chips ‘n consumer priced robot guard dogs down our throats, eh?
None of that Kurzweil bullshit, no Arks to the infinite, no grand dystopian future shock for the human race, it turns out.
I’m going to hazard a guess that industrialised society’s pretty much done for, don’t you reckon?
The planet’s a barking cesspit of devolved genus fuckwittus tapped into the collective consciousness of a truffle pig, consuming to consume, razing the joint with the conscience of a toddler. They’ll starve ‘emselves out eventually, get down to eating one another, and then good old Gaia will reboot, no rush, planetary slate wiped clean.
Pretty dark sense of humour, the old girl, but it’s probably for the best.
So yeah, we’ll wait for ‘Relle to get here, then we’ll hatch a plan.
Hang on for as long as we can.
Maybe even write it all down, just in case.
What’s my name, kid?
Call me Rennie.
What’s yours?