Anna watched in horror as the Guwin-gan stomped across to the two parts of the youngest tracker. The beast lifted his top half like it was a sack of laundry. The few organs still left in the boy tumbled out, loose clothing from a sack with no bottom spilling onto the ground below. It slid a hand down the kid's back, and then one rip later extracted his spine and skull. It seemed as easy as shucking a coconut to it.
The beast did not care to disguise itself any longer. It was too big a thing. Too dense. When it walked, it seemed as if the ground below it should fall apart at its weight.
There was something wrong about it, that arrested all efforts to move. To flee, to fight back, to do anything but watch in horror as it clambered about the cave mouth dumping body parts into its mesh net as if it was plucking yabbies from the mud. Every now and then it would glance in her direction, its face a featureless flat plane without eyes, nose or mouth to speak of, and Anna's heart would tighten like a fist in her chest.
Anna wanted to fight, but she couldn't. Not just because it wouldn't be smart: she'd watched the being dismantle her captors without flinching, despite multiple gunshots to its torso. She couldn't because something about its proximity overran her ability to move on her own, as if its very presence outranked her will within her own mind.
Using every ounce of concentration, Anna forced herself to move. Not much, but she found the strength to look around. Nearby, next to that baby-dick station toff, lay a shotgun. If I could just get to it, she thought, I'd at least be able to defend myself when it did come.
Behind her the Guwin-gan crackled, an unintelligible series of clicks and growls, and when Anna turned around to look, it leapt off into the trees, blood spewing from its body-part-filled net as it went. Anna lay back and closed her eyes, her body exhausted.
Anna’s body creaked as she rolled off her back and scrambled over to the limp-dick nob lying unconscious a few metres away. At the very least, she thought, I should be armed while he isn't. She grabbed the shotgun up from next to the torpid form, and a shadow cast across her. The fire burning nearby was blocked by a massive form.
The Guwin-gan had only pretended to leave.
Anna's heart dropped. I didn't even kill anyone, she thought. Not in front of this thing, at least. Internally she wept at the injustice. Externally, she sighed, and waited for the spear, or the boomerang, or those giant crocodilian hands to take her spine from her body.
"Guess that thing that's been hunting youse showed up hey?" came a voice from the shadow. Anna reflexively snapped her head around, letting the shotgun clatter to the ground. There, backlit by the fire, stood a South Pacific fella of some sort. A human face, with big eyes, a broad nose, and a wide mouth all pointed in her direction. No spear, no net full of bits. No Guwin-gan. Just the Kanaka the cunt-stables had been hunting.
Anna overcame her paralysis and nodded in reply to the man's question.
"We've gotta get outta here then," Big Joe said.
Anna felt at ease around him. She couldn't tell why. She put the shotgun back down again. The giant South Pacific man bent down and rustled through the pants of the spineless corpse of Frederick. The horror of it didn't seem to faze him at all. He stood back up and shot her a grin as he held the shackle keys aloft, and then he strode over and freed her.
"Where are we gonna go?" the notorious bushranger asked quietly as the islander man unlocked her shackles.
"Anywhere but here," he replied grimly. There was an uncertainty to his voice that ill-suited him. She nodded in reply, and grabbed a ruck from near the fire. It had belonged to the young one. She rummaged through it quickly and withdrew a fistful of dried meat.
Anna crammed it into her mouth, the salty mutton soaking in the saliva in her mouth as she chewed. She turned around to see Big Joe standing over the unconscious body of Jocko. A giant fist furled and unfurled in the light, and Anna could tell what the blakfella had in mind.
"Don't," she said quietly. The rainforest was still, and the cave mouth amplified her speech so that it seemed to come from all around.
"This fuck killed my pops," growled Big Joe in reply. He didn't turn back to her. "Him and his cunt father. They deserve-"
"Deserve nothing," Anna said quickly. "The Guwin-gan is the spirit of vengeance. Not you. It's here. It's real."
"Then why is this grub still alive?" Big Joe snarled, turning to her.
Anna flinched at the look on his face, at the speed of the change. Gone was the friendly visage from before. Big Joe's nostrils flared as he breathed in and out. The fire danced in his eyes, seemed at home in them, and he seemed to shake with a rage he could barely contain. It was as if he wasn't the same person. "Because he's a coward. He's dirt. He's never killed nobody, not so the Guwin-gan could see anyway. Even the rainforest thought he was beneath it," she replied, recalling how it felt to realise that.
Big Joe seemed to calm a little, but the rage sat there in him, just below the surface.
It was then that Jocko made his move. The button-cock had been just pretending to be unconscious, and his hand had found the shotgun. Anna watched as Jocko lifted the shotgun up with one hand and aimed it at Big Joe. She winced at the movement.
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Big Joe turned on the spot and flicked the shotgun away with a forceful backhand. Jocko pulled the trigger, but the shot went wild into the trees. Big Joe dropped onto Jocko and clamped one hand over the white cunt's face, covering the whole thing with ease. His other hand grabbed a giant hunk of meat at the front of Jocko's neck. The fingers clamped tight, biting through the flesh and muscle until they met in the middle. The craven slaver's arms flailed impotently at his slave's torso, but Big Joe didn't stop gripping tight.
The massive blackbirded man wrenched his hand up, ripping Jocko's throat out in a massive arc of arterial red as he did.
Big Joe let the blood spray across his face, snorting hard through his nose as it did. In the background, Anna screamed a futile protest. Big Joe lifted his hand from Jocko's face, and he could see the agony stricken across the piece of shit's mug, frozen in place now.
The South Sea Islander turned back to look at Anna. She didn't look horrified, just bewildered by his actions. Above her, through the trees, dawn was breaking. The sun was punching its way across the world again, bathing it in all-encompassing light. It was in that light that Big Joe saw the air shimmer and dance. A second later chrome metal struck out from the treetops towards him at an incredible speed, like a harpoon fired from a three-mast whaler.
Big Joe threw himself across to one side, but even he wasn't fast enough to dodge the thing. The chrome metal spear gouged a channel out of his shoulder before it lodged into the rock behind him.
"Run!" Anna screamed at him. Big Joe didn't need to be told twice.
Big Joe looked at the cave, where he'd hidden, looked at the smouldering fire spewing smoke towards its mouth, and decided against returning to it. He belted through the trees as fast as he could. There was no time to look out for his surroundings, to watch for any pitfalls or animals. He could hear crashing in the trees behind him, but he didn't dare look behind. Big Joe wasn't sure what he would see anyway. He weaved between the trees to keep any line of sight obscured, so that he wouldn't get a spear through the back.
Anna seethed. Raged at the indignity of being flatly ignored by the Guwin-gan. The rational part of her mind retreated as pure umbrage took hold. Am I just like Jocko? she thought. A coward? A speck of so little consequence that I don't even get to die?
It was a stupid thought, and the bushranger knew it. A petty thing to be offended by, and yet the offence commanded all of her attention. Because it was the story of her whole life.
Not blak enough for the blakfellas. Not white enough for the whites. Not man enough to have my own gang. Not as violent as Mary, Anna thought. But I am a killer. If this thing kills killers, why not me?
It hadn't seen her kill. Anna and her sister had had to do despicable things to earn the reputation they'd had. It had taken twice as long for men to recognise their capacity for violence, just because they had a snatch and some tits. Maybe the Guwin-gan was the same.
Anna grabbed the shotgun up from the ground next to Jocko, and she had an idea. A terrible idea, an idiotic one, but an idea all the same. She fired the gun into the air, snapped forward the barrels forward and slotted two new shells into the weapon.
If the Guwin-gan needed to see her brutality, she could show it.
It returned quickly. The shimmer clattered through the trees, and now that she had the measure of the monster she could see it even when it used its magic to blend in with the rainforest. When it arrived there was no flash of metal, no unannounced spear. It stood in the treetops and stared.
Anna, for her part, had lifted Jocko up into a seated position. She had the loaded shotgun resting on his shoulder. Blood covered his front, but it no longer pulsed from his torn throat. It seemed unlikely that the Guwin-gan could know that. And surely corpse desecration would be worth something to it.
The beast leapt back into the clearing at the front of the cave, its formless front watching with unseen eyes. Anna felt the paralysis take hold again as it came close. Felt her mind give up command of her faculties again. She had stared down and outdrawn coppers, she'd gutted women and children, she'd castrated men while her sister had watched and laughed. She wasn't afraid of nothing. And yet her own body betrayed her when the spirit of the rainforest came about.
The Guwin-gan crackled at Anna, goading her to do something. Anything. Rage filled her again, taking charge where her senses had fled. Her nostril flared, a small win, and the rest of her followed. She could move once more.
Anna pulled the trigger on the shotgun. The barrel jumped off the pin-dick city slicker's shoulder as his head exploded into fragments. The jillaroo caught the barrel in midair and swung it about to face the Guwin-gan. The monster was farther away than she would have liked.
It didn't move. It stood, towering over the camp site, its reptilian claw clasped around its spear low at its waist, like a gunfighter waiting to draw. The magnitude of her idiocy came crashing into Anna. She couldn't kill this thing. It knew it as well as she did.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Anna looked at the headless corpse of Jocko, and she let the shotgun swing to the ground. Some people were fighters, and some people were predators. Among the mass of meat and blood of the battleground Anna knew where she stood.
Fighters fight, no matter what. Big red roos square off to the death, grappling and clawing and biting and kicking until one roo couldn't get back up no more.
Predators hunted prey they thought they could beat. They didn't want a fair fight: they didn't want a fight at all, if they could help it. Jocko had been a predator. Anna was one too. She'd hoped maybe she could force some fight into herself, like a snake backed into a corner, but the Guwin-gan had seen right through her. And so she had finally seen the truth about herself.
When she looked up, the Guwin-gan was already gone. She swung the shotgun back up from the ground and sat it up under her chin. Here's one trophy that thing won't have.
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Deep in the rear distance Big Joe heard a gunshot. Was that the third? The crashing in the trees had subsided at the first, and he'd kept running. With the sun beginning to climb in the sky, he had a vague idea of where he was going, retracing the path he had taken before. He avoided the Gympie Gympie patch and blitzed past the area where the old white fella had fallen.
Big Joe burst through seven-foot high grass and onto the sand. He wasn't sure what he had been thinking. The beast, the Gwingan or Tamangori, had a strong advantage in the trees, so initially he had thought to lure it to the ground on this riverbank. But in the growing light of day, the plan seemed poor. In the trees or on the ground the being had the upper hand, but at least Big Joe had visual cover in the forest.
Instead, Big Joe sprinted for the river. Across the other side on the shore lay the giant lizards that usually inhabited the rushing water, still dozing off the night. The current was quick: maybe he could use it to get some distance from the thing chasing him.
Two steps into the river saw Big Joe sink to his waist, the ground beneath him collapsing under his weight. Jocko's blood washed off him in an explosion of red as his face hit the water, and his shoulder stung as brown river muck gushed into his wound. It dawned on him what had happened: the reason the crocs slept on the other shore was because this side captured and collected loose-formed wet dirt. He wasn't on a riverbank, but a mudbank. And now he was trapped in it. It hadn't been a problem when he'd come here last, as he'd seen his people off down near the trees, where the roots held the ground firm.
Here, away from the trees, mudbanks reigned.
Worse, Big Joe could see a log across the river, its green-brown mass floating atop the water. It was 20 feet long, and it was moving perpendicular to the current. Heading straight for him.
Panic gripped him for a fraction of a second before he caught hold of it. Big Joe shook it away with a deep breath. The trick to escaping a mudbank was to float out of it. Big Joe filled his diaphragm and lay back into the suspended silt. His shoulder screamed at him as he stretched his arms wide. The ginormous islander walked his way up the mud, the wet dirt oozing its way into the spaces left by his feet as he did. It was difficult work, as the sludge tried to trap his feet with each motion, but eventually he walked his way out. Then he rolled onto his belly and, grabbing fistfuls of mud as he went, scrambled his way back to the water's edge.
Big Joe paused for a moment to get his wits back. He was so, so tired. He had been on the run for days, fighting to stay one step ahead of the monsters that were chasing him and his people. I might never get to stop running, the blackbirded man thought briefly before burying the poisonous thought to a deep recess in his mind.
The giant South Sea Islander flipped onto his back and looked across the top of the water, and saw the log was still headed his way. Before he could get to his feet and run, a pair of heavy feet landed directly next to him, sinking six inches into the shallow mud.
Big Joe looked up at a human-like being that dwarfed even him. He had never seen any other adult at all bigger than him. Had long since forgotten what it was like to be smaller than someone. It made him feel like a child again, looking up at his father with an unexplainable, innate awe. Big Joe didn't believe in the myths—not his people's myths about the Tamangori, not the white man's myths about an omnipresent god—but he believed in something greater than him now. He was staring at it.
And inexplicably, it couldn't see him. The monster can't see past the wet of the river, Big Joe realised. He carefully withdrew his head into the water, the mud caking his face washing away as he did.
In the sun, the thing looked half-dragon, half-man, its skin a greenish grey, mottled all over with spots too large to be called freckles. Its hands were giant, puffy things with razor sharp talons at the end of each finger. It was covered in war wounds, where bright green blood still dribbled out. The missing claw of the Huochi bird jutted from its side. Two bullet holes—one in its back, the other its front—oozed with bright green blood. A large patch of dark green that Big Joe thought resembled the shape of the Gympie Gympie leaf spread out across its back. And low on its thick reptilian ankle were two holes where the green blood was thick and slow and duller than elsewhere.
The Tamangori stood hunched, its flat, featureless face staring out at the river. Maybe he imagined it, but Big Joe thought he heard the thing sigh, a frustrated rattling sound. And then, still ignorant of the man laying next to it, the beast strode out into the river. It sunk, as Big Joe had, but it ripped its powerful legs up out of the mud without slowing.
When the lizard-man was 15 feet out, the log that had been approaching Big Joe launched at it. A massive saltwater crocodile, its jaws opened wide enough to swallow half of Big Joe in one gulp.
The croc's jaws clamped down onto the Tamangori like a foothold trap, snapping shut and locking in around the monster's arm, just around the shoulder area. The Tamangori let out a bellow, the same roar it had made a handful of times the last day or so, and then the crocodile dragged it under the water. Big Joe scrambled up onto the shore and watched, dumbfounded.
The water started to churn and bubble, as if a hot spring vent had opened up beneath it. Reptilian limbs flung in every direction as the water roiled, but Big Joe could barely make out what he was seeing. The water was white and frothed as the two monsters fought in it. It turned a bright green as the crocodile's death roll continued, the lizard using its powerful tail to spin itself on the spot, wrenching the other monster along with it, attempting to rip the thing to bits.
After what seemed like minutes the tossing and turning and agitation in the water stopped. The river, still flowing, dragged the bright green away with it as the crocodile let the surface go still once more.
Then the water bubbled up a deep dark red overwhelming the green.
The Tamangori burst up out of the water. It was holding the top half of the crocodile's jaw before it, the bottom half hanging limp below. It strode out of the river, one of its arms hanging slack by its side, the other dragging the 20-foot terrible lizard. The monster stumbled in the mud as it walked out, the effort of its battle taken a massive toll. Bright green blood rushed from giant tear wounds around its shoulder and upper torso, where the crocodile had ripped it open.
The giant lizard-man stomped out of the water and fell to its knees on the beach barely 15 feet away from where Big Joe lay. It retrieved a sort of pack from its shoulder, a thing Big Joe hadn't noticed until it grabbed at it with its one good hand. A small backpack, the thing opened with a hiss. The beast retrieved a chrome device from the pack, a set of clamps that it affixed atop the biggest of the gushing wounds on its other shoulders. The clamps bit down and closed shut, stopping the bleeding. The monster let out a pained grunt, but it was quiet now, barely audible to even Big Joe.
Meanwhile, the sun had baked the mud on Big Joe's skin into large brown flakes. The wet had gone, and sooner or later the Tamangori would see him again. The beast surely can't pursue me in this state, he thought. If I can make it to a clearing, it won't have the trees to give chase. It won't follow me into the outback.
Big Joe sprang to his feet and sprinted over the sand for the grass. He heard clicking behind him, and he knew the monster had seen him. Big Joe sprinted even harder then, and he heard a whistle in the air behind him. He chanced a glance behind him, and he saw a gleam of chrome silver flashing towards him. It was low, at knee height.
Big Joe waited for it to close the distance, still sprinting, and just before it was about to hit him he leapt up. The soft sand beneath his feet pushed away as he did, and his jump wasn't as high as he planned: the chrome steel boomerang shaved through the back of his right heel as it passed by. It didn't even slow down as it sliced through his Achilles tendon and cut his foot in half from the back.
When Big Joe landed on his now one-and-a-half feet, he passed out from the pain.
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It was midday when the Tamangori finally came for Big Joe. He'd woken up after his brief unconsciousness and quickly tied off his foot above the ankle. It hadn't stopped the bleeding entirely, but it had slowed it some. He was weak from blood loss, but Big Joe knew he needed to get away. He'd crawled in the sand and made it to the grass, but when he looked back he could see he had barely made it 100 feet from where the monster's weapon had dropped him. Big Joe couldn't stand without a crutch of some kind, but the traitorous riverbank had nothing to offer.
And when he'd finally made it to a tree, where there might be a branch or something, the damn monster decided to come finish the job.
The Tamangori walked slowly as it made its way over to him. It had clearly spent time patching itself up, but its attempts hadn't been perfect. It had lost a lot of blood, much of it still sticky green down its front, and the monster's left arm still dangled limply at its side, made useless to the point of amputation. Did monsters get limbs amputated? Big Joe thought deliriously. Would I have to get my leg amputated?
The lizard-man thing stomped its way over slowly, and it stopped when it reached his feet. Big Joe pulled himself up into a seated position beneath the tree. He had nothing left in him. He'd been running for days now. He'd lost his pops, his people were gone, he was tired and hurt and he just wanted it to end. Just do it already, he wanted to scream. Just kill me. But the thing wouldn't understand.
The Tamangori flexed its fingers, and its massive claws extended and retracted from the tips. Maybe he was imagining things in his delirium, but the monster let out a low growl then that Big Joe read as derision. Contempt. At the very least disappointment. Big Joe sat against the tree and rolled his eyes at the sound. He didn't care any more.
The lizard-man cocked its hand back to strike, its claws fully extended. It paused. Big Joe raged at the delay. The monster's hand flinched, and shot across to slap something on the side of its neck. The monster's hand dropped down. Big Joe looked close, but there was nothing to be seen.
The Tamangori collapsed on top of Big Joe.
It wasn't breathing, but Big Joe didn't know if Tamangoris breathed. It was heavy, an easy 400 pounds, and its dead weight crushed Big Joe's leg into the ground. It pinned the rest of him in place. There were two tiny puncture marks on the beast's neck.
What had happened dawned on Big Joe mere moments before it was confirmed. A spider, smaller than his fingernail, crawled around from behind the Tamangori's head and onto his neck. A tiny thing, it was a deep black with a bright red stripe down its bulbous back.
Big Joe tried, but he couldn't move an inch as the arachnid crept its way down towards his face. It was slow, agonisingly slow, and all Big Joe could do was watch as the black and red menace inched its way off the Tamangori and onto his face. It tickled as it walked, each of its eight legs moving independently and with purpose as it made its way from just above his lip to his cheek.
As the spider made its way to just below his eye, it all but filled Big Joe's vision. Its fangs were too big for its face, like little legs of their own, and its two front legs dug into his skin as it walked. They didn't tickle anymore. They irritated. Big Joe sneezed, and before he could open his eyes again he felt the dual pin-prick sting of the spider's fangs.
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It was the dead of night when they came, four more Tamangoris. What was left of the moon was covered in clouds. Big Joe thought he was imagining them at first, hallucinating the monsters amidst his fevered sweat and absent blood. The spider bite hadn't killed him, having pumped the bulk of its venom into the monster, but his eye had swollen shut and it throbbed with pain enough to keep him awake.
The new Tamangoris lifted the corpse of the other monster up off Big Joe, growling and clicking as they did. They left him a small stone bowl of water, but Big Joe couldn't muster the energy to grab it. The sudden absence of the Tamangori's weight should have made him feel strong again, but instead he felt dizzy and weak. His shoulder, where the spear had gouged a channel, felt an intense amount of pain before going numb, and when he looked at it he saw blood gushing from the wound he couldn't feel. The knee above his shorn foot throbbed, an agonising pulse that strangely didn't carry down to the foot itself. He felt nothing below the knee.
The Tamangori walked off into the night, carrying their fallen sibling with them. Big Joe thought of his father. Who he had left to die. Who he hadn't avenged. The spirit of vengeance had fallen here, in this hateful land, far from the ocean. If I could just summon the energy to get up, Big Joe thought, I'd be free to go kill that shitpig Arnold Van Den Houter. His face thumped in time with his heart, in time with his throbbing knee, with his numbed shoulder, but none of those sensations seemed to matter in the face of the overwhelming sense of exhaustion he felt.
I'll go kill Arnold, he thought. But first, I'll just close my eyes for a minute.