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Well, he’d found it, hadn’t he? And just when he’d learned to still the screa in his head, find that silence, he’d put hiain

A tool for deer

He had the hood up, his elbows on the top of the Rover’s grill, his fists clenched and held behind his head, his eyes squeezed shut

Go to the place of nothingnessThe Elder’s words spun in his head He couldn’t He just couldn’t He needed to do soht of it strangled him

The tire iron was there He’d seized it up and turned before he’d had a conscious thought of what he was about to do He just needed an object, so to focus on There Bob had a rusted-out junk cistern at the side of his place, one he hadn’t yet hauled away

Dev struck thehis vision as he struck again And again Ies broke loose, each one jolted by the i that vibrated like electric shocks through his hands, up his arms

Men gunned down, rows of theed in One bullet took him in the shoulder, but he’d pulled his knife and hacked and stabbed, screanized, never would have wanted, some kind of feral, rabid animal that should be put down, put out of its miseryBodies everywhere

Valor Bull dust Not valor Savagery Monstrous He’d have drunk their blood if he could, bathed in it, reveled in their deaths

Why did you take them from me? Why? Why? Why? What the bloody hell did I do to you, you bastard, son-of-a-bitch excuse for a fucking God? Every syllable resulted in a violent clang against the h his arms, welcome pain What did they do to you? What did my little boy, my Tina, do to deserve that? Those vampire kids

They died alone, withoutWhy didn’t you take me?

In so the words, the accusation, at a wide, unresponsive sky, echoing back at hi was so hard, a piece of the cistern flew loose, the jagged edge whipping up toward his face

That’s it, cut my throat, you Bastard I’ve dared You to do it a hundred fucking ti for You

When the haze cleared, he realized that he hadn’t had his throat cut by the spinning piece of rusted ripped in two tre hands

ShhhEasy, Dev I’m here

Danny had caught the spinning piece ofit aside, a nasty cut on her hand With her other, she’d pressed him down beneath the arc of the projectile, all so swiftly that in his haze of fury he hadn’t noticed any of it until after the fact

When she touched hi to look at her or anyone Instead of withdrawing, she stroked the sweat-dampened strands froesture that s worse and better at once

“I’d have been better off as an ignorant jackaroo,” he said hoarsely “The blokes used to teaseso educated and all But poetry and literature can destroy a man, as much as it can save him All those words

they all come back to haunt you”

“The day we stop striving to be ht as well tell the world to stop turning and the sun to stop rising” Her arms came around his chest froainst his shoulder and knew she was shedding tears for him, but her arms held him fast, wouldn’t let him look

Danny knew Dev probably didn’t realize it, but she knew about the Kokoda Track, knew about the 39th battalion, the ain Who’d endured battles where eight hundred men went in and as few as thirty would come out It seemed no matter how hard Dev endeavored to die, to end his own misery, Fate wanted him to live She’d heard his words, the futile hopelessness in hi out at the heavens, and it had torn her own heart to pieces She squeezed her eyes shut

I won’t let you go, either, bushman The world wants and needs you, more than you know But she didn’t let him hear that