Dichotomy

The red roar was a herald. A crimson glow trumpeted across the skies, a thousand licks of light as banners over screams of madmen and marauders tearing voids in the night.

There was haste I had not known. Maybe twenty or so of us hushed and herded towards the water. Those that remained. Our neighbour Miss O’Day was there, but she had shiny trails down her cheeks, and instead of words there was just a chatter of her teeth and lips as she rocked back and forth. I tried calling her name until my older brother told me to let her be.

Life emerged from the bush. Black, smoking fur, trails of boiling flesh as they tore through the eucalypts and plunged into the lake. Each with a hiss and pop before the water chewed at them wildly, churning black in the darkness.

Sarah was on the water already. Her boat idled towards one, a young roo kicking and flailing madly as she scooped it up, decent thumps echoing off her chest and belly as the thing struggled and gasped. Sarah got a towel around it, the oily water finally relinquishing the little creature, its feet pounding so strongly against her so I could see her buckle with each kick, but she was still able to curl it up with one of the others in her boat. And all around the noise was deafening.

Sarah worked at the ranger station and had already got the tinny running by the time we arrived. Three other boats had been pumped up in preparation days ago, and as feet filled them already they were setting out from shore. I could see Don from the corner store, and his wife Shirley too. She baked bread every day. You could always find flour under her fingernails. Even now there was the very faint hint of sourdough on her, smoke and heat burning away all other scents.

“Come on!” My older brother coughed. His grasp on Miss O’Day’s elbow dragging more than ushering. It was odd to see him directing her for once. In the six months we’d known her my brother had been pupil to her teachings. Too often he had been found playing with her horses without anyone’s knowledge. Dad insisted we call her Miss O’Day, but we knew her as Liz, and she had started feeding my brother’s curiosities with chores and chaff. She, like the rest of us, had stayed thinking everything would be fine. Too much invested. Too much responsibility. By the time it wasn’t there was no way out.

Miss O’Day collapsed in the rubber boat, her eyes on the shoreline for any hint of her horses. My brother had other attentions. A natural leader.

The caravan park was usually pretty full at this time of year. It had been a quiet month though with the drought. The lake was down several feet, and the usual flurry of flippers and blown up swans had not resulted. Nobody was parked there other than a trio of backpackers with a beaten up Toyota and too small of a tent. The three girls were in the boat furthest away.

Dad came racing down the hill, the hourglass of life emptying out behind him. His shirt seemed to melt in the night as he jumped in our boat with a small first aid kit and a satellite phone. He had always been prepared, strong, so fucking strong. A stilled face that never creased with unnecessary emotion. It reserved grins for me, my brother and my sister alone. Even now it didn’t budge. The eyes betrayed him though. He pushed my sister down in the boat and urged me further flat.

The three boats had set out one by one. Clumsy strokes of aluminum oars usually reserved for tourists. We had all been on the water enough to know how to use them, but in the chaos nothing was smooth.

A scream carried to us. An animal of some kind. Maybe one of Miss O’Day’s horses. Something snapped. Wood. Large and loud enough to shock as the cadence of terror grew.

I couldn’t hear anyone anymore. Everyone was looking around. Earlier, the sunset had been browned by distant fire, but something had changed through the night. Something that had very quickly panicked everyone now here with me. The air was dry, even on the water. Every part of me wanted to jump overboard, let my feet find the bottom, be blanketed in the cool of the lake. But Dad had a firm glare upon my eyes when he noticed where they were pointed. A slow shake of his jaw warned of something he dared not speak. It was intimidating enough that I shook the thought away.

A moment passed. Like a glass dropping. The night stood still as something very palpable rippled over it.

It was the wind that terrified. Not a normal wind. This one was made by heat and demons. It rose from nowhere. The black started to glow. A thing I had never seen. Black that is somehow blacker. Flakes of red tore like tracers from my video games, shot from exploding trunks and branches, carried straight at us as if bullets. At first a few, then more and more.

“Embers!” Dad shouted, silenced by the roar.

Don and Shirley weren’t holding the oars. They quickly started to soak towels in water and lay them on the side of the inflatable boat. I saw someone doing the same on the third boat too as the embers impaled and threatened to melt the rubber walls. Dad was rowing madly, tightened skin squeezing sweat from him in buckets. The water was heaving with animals crazed in their escape, unsuited to the depths, being pulled down by something unseen. So many animals I had never known. It was only an odd few kangaroos that hung around the village.

No one wanted to be on the water. That much was obvious. Sarah had stopped salvaging life from the surface, instead her boat had motored towards ours and was barricading us from the assault of burning matter. Something caught in her hair and burned away a large patch below her hat brim before she could swing at it.

My sister screamed. I think I did too.

I glanced left. The boat with the backpackers was going down. Air was rushing out of a hole or holes. I couldn’t tell. There was panic. I saw Sarah reach to twist the accelerator, but there was hesitation, something coming over her too quick to understand. Something instinctual. She looked at us, back at the sinking inflatable too. Bodies were in the water, and still the embers came, more and more.

Then, I saw it. A wall like I could only dream. Spikes of golden fury, spears and swords slashing at trees, at buildings, our home, vehicles, anything in its way. It raced down the hill without effort, faces within its kaleidoscopic mass. I watched as ground was consumed in great gulps, as dysmorphic eyes and teeth ripped at anything they could. My face hurt to look. The intense heat sapped moisture away from me. Even my eyelids did no good. I could only lay lower. The others in the boat did the same thing. Dad was on top of us all, barely below the edge of the rubber.

There was warmth all around us. The bottom of the boat grew hotter too, as if over a burner. Dad was shouting now. His arms were soaking the towels again and pulling them back over the edge of the boat. I looked up to see his skin blackening as smoke and haze settled lower and lower upon us. The sky was gone. In its place this mass fueled by light from within.

I had to draw a heavy breath. It was hard. My whole body was trembling as Miss O’Day screamed centimetres away.

There was loud bang. A burst of heat above us and more shouts. Only my older brother stayed silent.

The heat must have been pushing us, because as I glanced up the glow was not as strong. Dad was peeking over the edge, his whole head now dark. I could hear coughs from everyone.

Dad’s mouth hung low. His jaw agape and those same spears of gold sparkling upon him.

We looked up too. Slowly. One by one.

The water had smoke over it, swirling and slithering. The mass of it still hung low upon us. Only a few feet of air between it and the water. But it was the shore that captivated us. The whole shore, as far as you could see, all of it ablaze, a wall a hundred feet high streaming to the heavens as if trying to reach them too, beasts clawing and gnashing in their hunger. They dipped their toes in the lake. Some diving face first. The water repelled, but elsewhere it seemed to welcome. It were as though the lake was being corrupted.

Sarah’s tinny was a little way off. But we couldn’t see her. The sides were buckled, the engine gone. A crater remained in that little boat and with it was the void of Sarah and the others with her.

We looked around for the remaining two boats. One was surely under, but we couldn’t see anyone on the surface. Nobody was swimming, nobody coming up for air. The second boat was gone too. Perhaps it was out in the smoke somewhere though. Somewhere we couldn’t see.

My brother was shouting names. Names of anyone on the other boats. There was a calm to it that centred the rest of us so very much. Dad was still staring at Sarah’s boat, at where the fuel line had no doubt been struck. His arms had grown limp. He was a statue unlike I had ever seen him before.

The water below was all I could think to look at. The orange shore was gone. Scorched earth. Claimed back by what claimed all. Fire met water and there it danced in battle.

In the water though, there were shadows. There was life, breathing, living, just below that inch of smoky glaze. Something about it made me reach forth. I extended my fingers slowly, watching the swirls of smoke swing around and slowly trace up my skin. It had tendrils, thin and fragile, edging upwards towards my palm. There was just the impression of a weight to it.

“Dad?” I called.

Something was wrong with him. That or he didn’t hear me.

The smoke swirled higher. It played gently over my skin as I stirred it, and then I felt it grip.

“Dad.”

Something was tugging at me. The smoke was finding shape and mass, more violence upon it.

“Dad!” It heaved, and at my legs as my body lifted I felt my brother’s grasp upon my flesh. It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t dragging. But it wasn’t strong enough.

The water was hot. There were eyes within it. Life that did not live.