* * *
In the Duchy, the Duke and the Duchess already knew all they needed to know. There’d been animal screams. Arguments and the revving of motors on the normally quiet street in front of their house. A possibly intoxicated Shoomba was provocatively patrolling the neighbourhood. And now what? A gunshot? An explosion?
“Should we call the police?” the Duchess asked nervously from her assigned listening post at the high bathroom window.
“No! No way!”
A thousand times no! Otherwise, how justify the myriad times he’d actually and virtually marched them through their roles, in preparation for just this night? And why begin now to doubt his long held and fervent belief that the police were merely front line lackeys for the international cartels that were trading his country into oblivion?
“We stick to the drill, Enid! We hold our nerve! We are a bastion of the League of Australian Defenders and we are by God ready for anything!”
Call the police? Hah! Might as well pull down the flag and roll up the constitution!
He was speaking to her from his seat at the computer where he’d just posted the final emergency statement for his monthly ‘LOCK and LOAD’ blog. (The blog title had been the Duchess’s contribution: a tidier, more subtle title-cum-mission statement than which, he could not have devised himself.)
There were only thirteen actual known ‘LOCK and LOAD’ subscribers - but it pleased the Duke to believe there were hundreds or more likely thousands of others who remained incognito, united only by their ineluctable desire to follow in his patriotically zealous footsteps. A hidden army, ready at a moment’s notice to raise the barricades against the tidal wave of foreign interlopers. He’d never actually met a single one of his followers of course, they being presumably and quite rightly scattered far and wide across the nation. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that they were his soldiers and it was his bounden duty to ensure that each of them - every single one of those anonymous vigilantes - had all the pre-warning he could provide.
“ATTACK IMMINENT!” his emergency statement read. “DEFENSIVE STRATEGIES ENGAGED. GOOD LUCK TO ALL. GOD BLESS AUSTRALIA.”
With a great sense of historical moment, he pressed the ‘Send’ button, knowing that the ether itself must be aghast at the message it carried. And secretly, of course, delighting in the fact that the wait was over. D-night had come at last, as he always knew it would! All the scoffers and smart-arse liberal doormats - they’d be smiling out the other side of their faces come tomorrow!
Sending out the Alert Blog was the first item on the lowest response level of the LOAD Procedural Schedule. Second was the ticking off of the app’s that had turned his computer desk into Command Central. This one to ensure that all the locks on all the doors and windows were engaged; this one to remotely control the storm blinds outside the windows on both the lower and upper floors; that one to remotely adjust the strategically placed cameras that covered every angle of approach to the house and yard. This button here to throw power to globes that would light up the neighbourhood like a planetary beacon. And that little Beauty - the only one that’s never been properly tested - to activate a loud-speaker that, God willing, might just jolt the fillings out of every tooth this side of the Holy Ghost!
Item three was to engage. He clapped his hands, cracked his knuckles and spun once on his chair.
“Ready?”
“Yes dear.”
“Kettle on?”
“Coffee’s made. Just by your . . . .”
“A-hah! Perfect timing! Have a look at this!”
On the monitor, in high definition colour (as much as could be drawn out of the darkness) one of the cameras had captured the little crowd that’d gathered in front of his house. The Duke knew them all: those out-of-control Bogart kids, the odd little Hughes boys. And there, racing inevitably into the picture, the refo’s - the riff raff - the Mohammedan Rahimi’s. Showing at last the true depth of their cunning depravity! The recruiting and mind-washing of innocent Aussie kids!
He zoomed in on them, just by chance centring on the littlest member of the assembly at the moment he was raising his arm to point. The little face filled the screen and mouthed a short sentence.
“What?” croaked the Duke. “What’s this kid saying?”
He stabbed at re-play buttons until, as the Duchess peered over his shoulder, they were able to slow and accentuate Robert’s lips.
“It looks like,” the Duchess said, “ ‘She’s got the gun!’ Oh my God! It was a gunshot then! Who? Who’s got the gun? And who are they shooting at?”
“Steady on, love.” The Duke was not one to go off half-cocked. The kid was pointing, he’d noticed, not at their house but, somewhere off at the sky over Rahimis! Like they weren’t even thinking about the Duchy! “It looks like . . . I think they might be turning on each other!”
And a self-congratulatory buzz zipped through his arteries, because that very possibility had been the subject of one of his recent blogs.
‘People from these foreign countries have no in-built, innate, genetically verifiable understanding of, let alone respect for each other, let alone for authority’, he had boldly written. ‘Lawlessness, even within their own ranks, is their creed and comfort. And it’s no coincidence that Anarchist is only three short letters away from being Antichrist!’
Not that he had any particular religious affiliations himself. But, still, the line had a stirring ring about it.
On the active screen, the Rahimis were racing back into their yard, disappearing behind the Folly while the Bogart boy had begun pawing ropes from behind the Ute’s seat. No, whatever it was they were up to definitely didn’t seem to involve the Duchy. Which was good because letting them reduce their own numbers would simply make the clean-up that much easier. But it was also bad because a man doesn’t study and teach and build and prepare only to be finally left out of the equation.
He hooked a finger under the toggle for the loudspeaker and drew a deep cleansing breath. This was going to be good.