Excerpt
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Pete nudged the dead thing with his shoe. Joe had already nudged it and was satisfied the thing was dead. A third man in green khaki overalls stood well back, smoking furiously. He didn’t need to nudge it. He already knew it was dead.
He had killed it.
Cursing, he turned to face the men and scolded into the air, angry with himself that he had taken its life, even though it was an accident. He knew how much more valuable this thing would have been to the officers had it still been alive. His sad old face was a grim and crooked perpetual scowl, with one side hanging down limp, twitching now and then; the eye, not quite in its socket. On the scorched brown wasteland of his brow, where no hair grew, flies sunbaked. One fly waded across the broad expanse of his oversized moustache, buzzing occasionally. The old man didn’t seem to notice the fly. He was watching the two black suited men with such intensity that, had there been a hundred flies on his moustache, he would not have noticed.
The men in black suits looked at the old man with an aspect of frustration showing on their faces. There were no flies on their faces. They had come prepared, and had coated themselves in Ban Guard beforehand.
“Is this it, Bernie?” Joe asked.
Bernie nodded and took the cigarette from his mouth, spitting out a soft black fly in the process. He crunched the cigarette under red gravel with his shoe. “That’s it. That’s the alien.” He cursed once more, knowing how much more valuable it would have been alive.
“There’s nothing else?” Pete said sarcastically. “Like a spaceship or a laser gun?”
Bernie did not read it as sarcasm. He simply gave a slow nod. “That’s all I got, boys.”
Pete went back to the carcass and gave it another jab with his shoe.
It was still dead. “You shot it with your rifle?”
“Yes,” Bernie said, regretfully. “I thought it was a bear.”
Pete and Joe laughed uneasily. They were starting to seriously wonder about Bernie. Pete said to Bernie:
“You thought this thing was a bear? Like a Koala bear?”
Taking offence, Bernie spat onto the ground. “You think I am stupid or something?”
“Come on Bernie,” Joe said, “just look at what we’ve got here.”
“I know Koala’s aren’t bears. They’re marsupials. But I’m telling you, at nine o’clock the other night, I heard this god almighty growling noise, and when I went outside I saw this thing chasing me cattle around the paddock. I thought it was a bear in that kind of light. Even me dogs wouldn’t go near it. So I got me gun and got in the Ute and chased it all the way up here. I tell you something, it could move!”