* * *
Under the philodendron, Hughesy had borrowed Shoomba’s night vision goggles and was examining the ground around the brick. He’d come back resignedly, reconciled to the fact that it was his Christian duty to try to save even this despicable and snivellingly inebriated man. Or at least to offer him the comfort of company before he died which, considering the quivering of Shoomba’s plump legs, was only a matter of time.
“Oh Jesus, Mary and Porpoise!” Shoomba was sobbing. “I never done nothin’ to deserve this, Hughesy!”
“I know, mate. I know. Look. All I can think is . . . I’m going to go up to the house. I’m going to ask him to come disarm this. It’s all I can think of.”
“Oh, Christ in a pickle jar! D’ye think he will? Maybe he’ll jus’ set it off an’ kill us both for bein’ here!”
“Why would he Dennis? I mean . . . he’s one of us! Why would he?”
“I dunno! I dunno! Ahhh, Hughesy, for God’s sake, I don’ wanna die like this! Awright, awright! Listen! If I confess, I’m right, right? For Upstairs? Me last willin’ testa-mutt? Jesus God, lemme swear to ye! I never seen very much Hughesy! Honest! Once or twice maybe! You know . . . takin’ her brassi-air off is all. I’m sorry! I never meant to look! You tell God that, Hughesy, okay? He’ll listen to you, mate. Tell him . . . tell him I was sleep-walkin’ an’ I . . . I wouldna . . . I never meant no harm. It’s hormones! What’s a man to do? Whose fault I got all these hormones?”
Hughesy, both saddened and disgusted, nodded, raised his head. The green glow of the night vision goggles illuminated only a ten, maybe fifteen metre circumference, but entering that circumference from the direction of the bottlebrush trees was a figure. A small figure. He put a warning hand on Shoomba’s arm and a tiny, barely audible message in Shoomba’s ear.
“Someone’s coming!”
That someone, it quickly became apparent, was Afsoon Rahimi. And Hughesy’s mood, having already moved in fairly short order through astonishment and disgust, settled into its gloomiest state yet - one verging on despair.
For starters, what in the name of all that was holy was a child doing, wandering alone in this chaos of darkness (both literal and metaphorical)? Was no one else in the neighbourhood capable of a skerrick of responsibility? A child of that age? In a yard booby-trapped by a madman? Where demented, self-appointed vigilantes secreted themselves amongst the palms? What possible chance could a child have of emerging unscathed from such . . . ? And abruptly, his mood leapt out of disgusted despair and dove straight into a cold, deep pool of outrage. The child was armed! With a pistol!
So incensed did he immediately become that the basic constructs of language - verbs, nouns, prepositions, gerunds and all manner of other grammatical essentials - fled from his mind, leaving only a scattering of angry adjectives: ignorant, irresponsible, negligent, selfish, atheistical . . . communistical! The few startled nouns that dared creep back did little to appease him: weapons, outside, children, maniacs! Nor did the phrases: explosives in the gardens, traps around the houses, flying in the face. God help us all, was the first complete thought, followed by ones as complex as: How many peepers, liars, flaunters and sinners can one neighbourhood generate? How much madness? By God, I will not tolerate it! They were the closest thing to clear thoughts he would have for a very long time.
Afsoon was only three metres from the philodendron - nearly past when the guttural roar burst out of him and he surged up, smashing aside the great leaves. His fury, of course, wasn’t actually directed against her or even, really, against the loony disintegration of his neighbourhood. It was fury with the never-coming-ness of the intervention that he and Missus Hughes so avidly and consistently prayed for. It was with the having-to-do-it-himself-ness. The why-is-it-so-difficult-ness!
For Afsoon, on the other hand, all her years of suppressed fear and anxiety came into focus when those leaves slammed upwards and the roar washed over her. All the superstitions, all the vague, intermingled half true, half concocted, half overheard memories of piracy, homelessness, disparagement, hate and uncertainty - they coalesced right there, in the triple red eyes of the Thing that had, at long last, revealed itself in the Home Country of Neville the Less. She cried out, a short, desperate, heart-rending refusal. Hands up, to shield herself. She barely heard let alone felt the explosion from the pistol.
In the enormous flash of light that followed hard on though, she glimpsed the pair of grotesque, man-like creatures, spinning away from her in a shower of dark, ragged shapes. And then she ran like she’d never run before.