His mates were Alejandro, from Peru, who wore a polo shirt with the collar popped and looked sort of like Benecio del Toro did in The Usual Suspects, only healthier, and Stu, skinny, with a bleached-blonde curly mullet, barely out of his teens. They shook hands and Alejandro offered them a beer from a cooler. They said thanks and watched sheets of rain run off the roof, listened to it rattle on the metal roofs.

  Molly sipped the beer that Alejandro was gracious enough to offer her with the cap still on, so she knew it could be trusted, and looked out at the jungle that rose above the houses, the smell of the trees, the earth, nature… It was kind of nice when you managed to forget about the stress of it all. And when some seemingly genuinely nice people offered you a beer.

  “It’s supposed to clear up tomorrow,” said Dale, “and we’ll have a dry day or two, relatively speaking. But after that it’s not looking good.”

  “Not looking good?” said Erin. Molly could see she was really trying to shake herself out of the fug she had been in, where all she’d really done was wrap herself up in her sleeping bag, watch whatever films were on Cammy’s hard drive and say how shit they were, and slept. And cried. The other side of the world for a year was a long way to go for your first time away from home.

  They had been talking about doing it for well over a year, Molly meaning to do so since she was fifteen, but for a whole range of reasons had never gotten around to it. The pull of work and money being too powerful, even when neither held much promise, but once you’re on that treadmill it is almost impossible to get off, especially when you see everyone else on it somehow doing it faster, better, and for more money. Erin, though, young, loud, up for a laugh, meant it when she said she was coming. Unlike Molly, who felt satisfied at simply having had a good idea, Erin actually saw it through, whether that was plans for a night out, or a fancy dress costume, or playing pranks on their coworkers. That time she wrapped the entire staff room in cling film, including the doorways, still made her giggle. Or how, on Molly’s thirtieth birthday, she had decorated the entire shop floor with Molly’s baby photos.

  When she turned around Erin was in a proper conversation with Alejandro. She could feel herself finally start to unwind. She took a drink and was surprised to find the bottle empty.

  “Another?” asked Dale, holding up a bottle that he made a show of unscrewing for her, then opening one for himself. Cammy’s had also run dry but Dale hadn’t noticed and Cammy didn’t want to make him feel bad for not asking so just pretended to drink from it.

  “So what brings you out here?” said Cammy. “I mean, obviously the banana picking but I thought you guys kind of left that kind of work to people like us?”

  “Na?ve backpackers, you mean?”

  “Exactly,” Cammy laughed.

  Dale shrugged. “Can’t let you guys have all the fun.”

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  Stu, spotting the box of wine they’d been drinking from, said, “Oh man, don’t tell me you guys are on the goon!” Goon being the nickname for bag-in-box wine. “I’ve had so many terrible night and even worse mornings on that stuff. First time I lost my licence, this stuff was to blame. Think it was dessert wine too.”

  He fished in the cooler for premixed cans of whiskey and coke.

  “That was the stuff that did it for me,” said Dale, pointing at the black can. “The cop who pulled me over leaned in my window and lifted it straight out of the cup holder before he booked me. Didn’t say a word.”

  Cammy whispered to Molly: “Literally every single person I’ve met over here has been done for drink-driving.”

  Nevertheless, when Molly offered to share the wine, they all happily took a cup, and they finished off the beers in the cooler before calling it a night. Their uneaten spaghetti and pesto cooled and congealed in the pot and when, suddenly starving and feeling a little nauseous, Cammy had gone to eat it after everyone else had gone to bed, found it swarming with flies and vomited over the side of the balcony.

  *

  The rain had stopped by the time they woke and, when they met up out front, the sun had baked the streets mostly dry, only a trickle still left in the gutters. They met beside the giant gum boot: Molly, eager to burn off some energy, hands around the straps of her backpack; Erin, make-up applied, bikini top for a top; Cammy, possibly the most hungover-looking person in existence; Dale, Stu and Alejandro, looking more or less exactly as they had done the night before, Stu already sipping from a can of pre-mix; and Angie and Chinatsu, smiling and giggling.

  “How far is this creek?” asked Cammy.

  “Just a mile or so,” said Dale. “Basically up to the river at the foot of Mount Sully, and we follow the road out of town. Thirty minutes, give or take.”

  It was over an hour, give or take, and Molly had finished most of her water before they’d even got there, her shirt sticking to her with sweat from a combination of humidity and the sudden onset of a hangover. Erin seemed to be fuelled by moaning, while Cammy was uncharacteristically quiet, following on behind, breathing through his teeth.

  But it was worth it when they got there. The creek, sheltered by trees from the beating sun, warm, still, crystal clear, a small waterfall a short swim away. Dale, Stu and Alejandro tossed an Aussie rules football to one another in the water while Cammy floated on his back and reconsidered his previous desire to die. Somehow Stu had found the time to cook up some sausages that morning, which they ate with tomato sauce and a slice of white bread wrapped around it. The beers they had brought with them were still warm, the creek water not cold enough to properly chill them, but nobody complained, least of all Molly, Erin or Cammy who had so far contributed nothing to this friendship. Not even the mild panic that had occurred when Cammy got bitten by a leech, a tiny thing about the size of a baby slug, which was calmly scraped off his shin by Alejandro’s pen knife, could ruin the day. Even Erin, who had squealed and said it was the most bogging thing she had ever seen, was laughing about it before it had even been unattached.

  “Aw mate, that’s nothing. Up in the rainforest you’d be covered in them and there’s nothing you can do until you get back. You just leave them there and scrape them all off at the end, otherwise you’d be there all day.”

  On the way back to town, wet feet squelching in their flip-flops, there was a buzzing overhead and they looked up to see a helicopter.

  “Tourists?” said Alejandro.

  “Possibly,” said Dale, “though I don’t know what they’d be looking at out here. Weather report maybe?”

  “How bad do you think this storm’s going to be?” said Cammy.

  “They’re saying it’s the worst one in a hundred years.”

  “Do you reckon it’ll reach us?”

  Dale shrugged. The helicopter dipped behind Mount Sully and grew silent.

  “I heard whatshisname has got a facility near here. That billionaire fella. Enoch somebody.”

  “Enoch Powell?” offered Cammy, not knowing who Stu was referring to but saying the only famous Enoch he knew.

  “The fascist?”

  “Well, he kind of is,” said Dale. “They all are. Enoch Bofunger.”

  “Isn’t he the one who injects himself with his son’s blood?” said Alejandro.

  “That’s him. Straight into his misters,” added Dale. “Allegedly.”

  “That is wrong in so many ways,” said Molly.

  “And painful,” said Cammy. “Imagine having a boner filled with your own child’s blood.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Dale. “I’d never even considered that.”

  “I doubt even he has,” said Molly.

  “They’re all a bunch of freaks,” said Erin.

  “Wonder what the facility is for?” said Stu. “Probably nothing exciting. It never is. Guys like him will end the world through sheer tedium.”