The pocked footings of the old pipeline stood along the route of the track, damaged some, and split, thundered by the defence guns of the train.

Rust bled about the bleak white concrete from the reinforcing steel.

The rain thudded. Made a cave for Branner’s mind.

The dream he’d had, night after night now, played across the inside of Branner’s vision. Sat like a sheet of picture glass he had to peer through at the world.

The doctor’s words thumped against it over and over.

The dawn intensified, a brightness in the heavy rain.

I do not want there to be time, to think of you in pain.

He’d arrived last night, from the city, for the first light shift.

‘Go,’ she’d said. ‘I understand.’

Branner saw the red dot flash on the grid scanner in his hand; at the same time heard his earpiece hiss. It brought him round.

‘I’ve seen it,’ Branner said into his mic.

The sergeant’s voice came through the earpiece, through the snap of rain on Branner’s hood. The red dot shifting on the scanner. A slight condensation come to the edges of the screen.

‘Can you get there?’ the sergeant asked.

‘I can get there,’ Branner answered. He was pushed in against the willow fifty metres from the track. Whatever had set the scanner off was close.

‘Let the train guns take it,’ said the sergeant.

‘No. I’ll go,’ said Branner. He felt the old scar catch against the nap inside his hood.

‘I made it look like a train track,’ his wife would joke. Appropriate, now, somehow.

It will be an animal, Branner thought.

The rain drummed. Drummed against the doctor’s words, the dream. Gathered and fell heavy from the long leaves of willow.

Why let the automatic train guns fire pointlessly?

Branner checked his rifle and walked towards the track.

~

‘Are you sure about this, John?’ the superintendent had asked. ‘You know you can take leave.’

‘I’d rather work,’ Branner assured him.

‘Yesterday, on the rooftop . . .’ Concerns about Branner had been raised. The way he had shown doubt.

‘I’m fine, sir,’ Branner said.

The superintendent had to make a judgement.

‘Do you know? Have they?’ the superintendent faltered.

‘No, sir. They can’t be sure how long.’

Branner had sensed the superintendent wanted to ask, ‘Would it not be more difficult to be so far from her? Would staying in the city not be better?’ But the superintendent did not ask this.

‘You were on the line as a young lad in the army, is that right? When it was the pipe,’ is what he’d asked. ‘Before you joined the police. The youngest ever to be decorated.’

Branner simply nodded.

Perhaps that was why he wanted to be out here. To go back to the beginning, so he did not see the end.

~

Steam still came from the damp earth.