PREVIOUSLY
From the beginning, Part 1: Alberto Drops In To Save The World.
Previous installment Part 12: Alberto Drops In To Save The World.
The thylacine video takes off, Zach thinks he’s found his neighbour’s son, and Marus Burdic comes up with a viable photo of a thylacine paw print.
Part 13
If the previous material on The nipaluna Newsmonger about the thylacine had gone boom, this one made a supernova look like a wet penny bunger.
IT LIVES! Expert Confirms Thylacine Tracks
Marus Burdic would probably not consider himself an expert in Dasyuromorphidae. Nor for that matter had he confirmed anything; he had simply compared his pawprint photo with a historical one, and approved their publication together.
Still, Bridgewater Gerry knew this was a winner. And that news headlines are not exactly holy writ. The article itself pieced together what was known of the story so far, and headed it with the Burdic’s tale of encountering the pawprint. Although she knew the location, Gerry decided to exclude it.
This was vindicated when she had a call from one of the Premier’s team of media minders during the morning. Gerry knew who he was.
“Hi, Brandon Blande here,” said a beige voice laced with wish-wash.
“Yeah. Premier’s got coronavirus? Gimme the scoop,” replied Gerry.
Not the average response to calls made by the Department of Premier and Cabinet.
“Well. COVID-19 is not a laughing matter.”
“I see you’re fudging.”
“I wanted to talk to your about your thylacine story, actually.”
“Stories, plural. Leading on this, as usual. PNN in our wake. DPAC can troll in theirs if you want.”
“Not really that. We don’t do that kind of story.”
“You don’t do governing that well either but, hey, everyone gets points for effort.”
Gerry was not the easiest person to talk to.
“You can write what you want, but as far as the location goes…-”
“Who wants it a secret?” she cut him off. “I left it out of today’s story but now you’re making me curious. Who wants it kept secret?”
Blande winced.
“Let’s just say that we are currently in a state of emergency and those in charge feel that the location would encourage certain people, maybe even large numbers of people, out of their homes. To search for the animal.”
She was about to ask him if he was confirming that the government believed that a live thylacine existed when Blande spoke again.
“Whatever animal it may be. Your stories have created great interest. It would be a coup for someone to find, let’s say, a unique animal. Lots are out of work. There are people desperate. You know that.”
“GOVERNMENT OUTLAWS TIGER HUNTING,” yelled Gerry, previewing her next story headline for Blande. “By the way I’ve recorded this conversation for ‘coaching and training’ purposes, I’m sure you’ll agree. Thanks bye say g’day to the Prem.”
Gerry hung up, before Blande could say no. Or even demand that it all be treated as off the record. She knew he wouldn’t call back.
They are serious. This. Is. Serious.
She limped to the kitchen to make some herbal tea. Gerry was excited already about was her next story, but she was also experienced enough to know that she had time to get this right.
The other news outlets will be howling for something from the government on this. Whereas I already have something, and I’m going to take a deep breath before I work out how to best use it.
* * * * *
Inspector Don Sell sat at his desk, looking out over the car park. If he was on the othe side of the building, he’d have a bright view down the hill toward the river. As it was, he had need-a-wash divvy vans rather than sea eagles to help still the mind.
The statement he had drafted had gone out, and in some places it had been dutifully noted and reported.
But now with another Newsmonger story tearing up the streets, metaphorically, the landscape had changed.
What is it with this year? he mused. It’s like time itself decided to play stupid games. The future was invisible, the present was quicksand, while the past disappeared on a rocket-sled to Unrealesville.
The sentence ‘This is not a police matter’ was already set for the long drop.
Sell had had a tap on the shoulder from the Commissioner this morning. It is a police matter. We don’t want people out on this goose chase. We have a pandemic sweeping through us like a dose of salts and police duties are ramping up: quarantine spot checks, enforcement of other restrictions enacted as part of the coronavirus response, reporting, coordination with other agencies. We don’t need a bunch of idiots out looking for an extinct animal.
So.
If it hadn’t been right from the start, now it was official. Inspector Don Sell was the make-this-thylacine-thing-disappear man.
He scratched the side of his neck, then remembered he wasn’t supposed to be touching his face. Sell settled for thumping his fist into the desk instead. A framed photograph of his daughter on her university graduation day edged off the desk and bounced onto the floor with a tinkling of glass.
I f*cking hate thylacines, he muttered.
* * * * *
Turning knobs manically, the time traveller glanced over his shoulder as he made his last adjustments. ‘Always time, always time,’ he muttered, before throwing the master switch. The machinery around him slowly ground to life with a hiss, and he stepped gingerly back into the steel pod, letting the door close. 3,2,1…a twisted thunder of sound and then, silence. A moment later the door opened, and he stepped out. Had it worked? He glanced at the clock. ‘By the beard of Mandos,’ he murmured wonderingly. ‘It worked!’ He dashed from the room, but moments later came back, a despairing look in his eye. ‘This can’t be right! It’s the wrong one! But I’ll find her, I swear to god!’ He went back to the controls. Oh wait. The capacitance regulator was fubared. Not so impossible to fix.
Alberto was wondering what came next when Zach suddenly appeared.
“I made these low-GI, poppyseed-and-einkorn muhallibeh,” he said brightly as he proferred a plate of what looked to Alberto like a plate of small bowls filled with wan pond mud.
“Reading bad sci-fi has done for my appetite, seriously,” he said.
Zach tried not very successfully to hide his crestfallen look.
“More books? I can…” his voiced trailed off when he realised that apart from not really understanding what thylacines liked to read, or why they turned up their boxy snouts at fine Middle Eastern desserts, all the op shops that had cheap books were shut.
They went out for a walk, spinning around a few blocks. They passed through a park where all the children’s play equipment was now roped off with stripey CAUTION tape, presided over by signs with COVID-19 warnings on them.
Zach and Alberto were just about to cross a street on the way home when a car appeared at of nowhere, bearing straight down at them.
“Slow down ya drongo!” yelled Alberto instinctively as Zach yanked the leash back, both of them falling backwards.
Zach’s head smacked into the iron-wrapped electricity pole and he yelped in pain then settled into a steady groan.
Alberto let out a long howl as he saw blood running down the side of Zach’s.
Across the road a neatly-painted pink door opened and a light came on.
“What’s going on out there?” came a woman’s voice. “Is everything okay?”
Zach and Alberto exchanged glances. Zach was in no position for vigorous headshaking but his eyes said no as firmly as eyes could say it.
Alberto understood, but he had his own way of doing things.
“Go now,” hissed Zach. “She’ll be over in minute. You know the way home from here.”
The thylacine let out a low gnarl then cranked it up to a full-blown howl, as loud and long as he could. The surreal yell that no living human had ever heard surged across the rooftops of nipaluna, filling the ears of the night with its anguish.
Zach unclipped the leash and Alberto tore off into the night, disappearing around the corner with his stiff tail bobbing behind him.
Seconds later a pale woman arrived. She was dressed in comfortable home clothes, plus a headscarf that looked like it had been hastily thrown on.
“What…what happened?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
Zach was unable to answer, as if his tongue was lost somewhere in a maze and struggling to get out by feeling its way along the side-walls of his mouth.
He heard her calling for an ambulance, and then talking soothingly to him while they waited. Another few people appeared. He felt something being put on him, like a blanket, or maybe a coat.
He heard the woman continuing to talk to him as she held his hand. Zach couldn’t really process the words, but he liked her being there.
Salamah Salamova didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. She told the man on the ground about her boring days, and working from home, and the cabbages that she might have planted too early judging by the way they were coming on, and the thylacine scribbled on the post on which he had hit his head. Yeah, she’d seen it while out walking. Must be inspired by that animal that everyone is talking about. Or maybe someone who’d seen it had decided to leave a marking, the way indigenous people had done thousands of years earlier. And that as a designer she loved art, and looked at art endlessly, and had always loved the thylacine rock sketches like at Burrup and she knew about them even before she came to Australia, and hoped to go see them one day, but now with coronavirus any thoughts of travel were just weird and so it was kind of nice to be at home working in jumped-up pyjamas, heh, and even when business was slow she’d been able to catch up on a few things like adding the pink touches to the house, which looked a bit weird considering the neighbourhood she lived in but looked great to her anyway, and besides if people can draw thylacines on power poles then surely I can paint my house any darn colour I want, so…
He felt her squeeze his hand as he was being loaded into an ambulance, and that he would miss her.
* * * * *
Alberto’s heart was still pounding furiously minutes after he got home. He paced slowly along the floor of the shed to see if he could slow himself down.
How was Zach? Even if he was okay, how long would he be gone for? And what if he wasn’t? How could he find out?
He looked at the bowls of pudding Zach had brought over and felt a bit sad about having refused to try one. He thought he might as well try now. It was better than he’d expected, although he expected a snooty pademelon might have demanded a bit more vanilla pod.
The thought struck him as a bit embarrassing, as if missing both a human and an animal of another species he might once have considered prey was too much.
He went outside for a pee, and felt that his regular patch was getting a bit on the smelly side. Across the far side of the yard, past a bell-shaped pear tree that had not been pruned in at least a decade, was a bit of the garden he’d never been in before. He’d always worried that it was visible down the side of the house from the street, but as he nosed over he found that it was actually well hidden by a tank of some sort on the side of the Marks’ house.
He was still peering at that, trying to work out what exactly it was, when his foot slipped through a rotten plank that was hidden under the grass. He scrambled to get purchase with his other feet, but one by one they too went through the timber.
Alberto tumbled down an earthy slope into a large pit.
“Well haven’t we all got the frigging dropsies today!” he muttered. “And, scuse the French, where the faaark am I?”
The secret’s out, and Alberto is on the run! Join Alberto and Zach’s coronavirus adventure in Part 14 of Alberto Drops In To Save The World next weekend.
