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It happened when he was a boy. The power had been gone out. The bombs had dropped. He didn’t see the nukes, but he caught airstrikes from inside of Parliament Station as a child. A shelter of lead, disease, rot and rape. After his mother’s death, the child was lucky enough to be taken by chance. Survival in this place was no life for anyone.
The men tailored head to toe in black and ghillie shrouds had been ever so merciful to take the skinny orphan out of the city 38 years ago—5 years before he’d call himself the Unoboss—30 years before he’d only be known as the Octoboss.
A rough chance at luck as an elderly woman yanked him from behind a bin and held the starved child up to a encroaching helicopter. He remembers his feet dangling over the Yarra river as the woman lifted him over Sandridge bridge. A crowd of sorry souls behind them trying to get the hell out of Melbourne too. Scratching, bludgeoning and trampling over each other to get close to the chopper. Some even jumped off the bridge.
“I have a child! Take us!”
The old woman cried. He wasn't her child, he was her opportunity.
The helicopter couldn’t come in any closer so she risked both their lives climbing onto the railing. As soon as the men inside the chopper grabbed him, the old crone had slipped and cracked her head open on the landing skid before falling to her demise.
That moment has always been a blur for the Warlord, now approaching 45. As he gets older he’ll keep it that way. The events that happened nine days prior and leading up to his mother and sister’s death are engraved in his brain forever though.
It had rained extra hard that day. No plane sightings, riots or airstrikes had occurred all week. Taking advantage of the silence, his mother and neighbour had gathered back to the apartment building to collect some things, but also relive a dead memory — a token he could no longer remember — only had nightmares about.
Why did he have nightmares about it?
“There’s nothing here but anguish, love.”
His neighbour lowers her head, letting her abundance of orange curls shield her face. She’s a short thing — shorter than his mother. No older than her either. A rifle is slung over her shoulder, a gift from her husband who now resides as ash inside an empty can of Milo.
His mother watches her fiddle with a few seed packets, leaning against the bonnet of an untouched Ford.
“It’s all shit, Laura,” His mother swallows, running her fingers through his hair as he clings to her waist. His little sister chases a bit of rubbish nearby. “But I do what’s best for my children.”
“Why don’t you leave?”
Laura asks solemnly, peering down at the little boy.
“I got no where to run.”
She wasn’t wrong. There was nothing out there but rot. Gangs owned the highways, fuel and water was scarce, the trains had stopped running, their city was on fire…
“Neither do I.”
After that, he never saw his neighbour again or Footscray. Laura left in that Ford with her gun, her husbands ashes and a bag of seeds. She did however ask his mother to come with her. She never responded to Laura and the walk back to their shelter, Parliament station was longer than usual.
The little boy watches his mothers face as she turns to him. It’s unreadable and for some reason he feels something unsettling when she smiles at him. He’s forgetting something. He knows he is but he can’t figure out what. His little sister squeezes his hand and he squeezes it back as they enter the shelter.
Upon entering, he locks eyes with the leader. Sergeant R.S Shroud and sinks back into his mothers side until they’re in the safety of their tent. His mother begins rummaging through the backpack she had filled with clothes, documents, photos and two toys to keep her children occupied. As he watches her, his chest sinks into his stomach.
His father’s watch.
His mother’s face drops before she tips the bag upside down, emptying its contents onto the floor. Then a wave of guilt washes over him.
He was supposed to grab the watch. He had asked if he could and his mother had trusted him. His mother doesn’t blame him though. She only blames herself as tears begin rolling down her cheek.
“It’s okay. I’ll go back for it,” She smiles through the tears, hugging him and his sister tightly. “Probably still on the kangaroo…”
He hugs her back extra tight as if to chain her to him. He doesn’t want her to go back. He opens his mouth to protest but nothing comes out and his sister begins crying as their mother gets ready to leave. She cries all night and frustration brews in the little boy like fire as he tries consoling her. Night comes by fast and his little sister falls asleep on his side of the bedroll. He lets her, dwelling in the corner of the tent like a bug.
For a moment he believes he can fall asleep like this. He dozes off every five minutes before being woken up by noises within their shelter. Does anyone know they are alone? Does anyone know his mother is outside? It’s been awhile. The little boy contemplates sneaking out to look for her until a wave of dread hits him like a storm. A moment later, there’s a crack in the sky. It’s not lightning. It never is. The ground shakes beneath him and commotion erupts outside. It happens again, but closer and the shelter threatens to collapse for a second.
In the future, the little boy sometimes wishes the shelter did cave in that day. He wouldn’t have lived to see what awaited him the next day.
The next time he sees his mother, she’s unrecognisable. Someone had found her after the air strike and brought her back to the station. Her children couldn’t recognise her though. She was breathing, but her eyes — she had no eyes. Her hair was gone, reduced to painful clumps sticking to a burnt scalp. Her skin was charred, burnt to crisp. She couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t speak but she was breathing. She clung to his father’s watch as she laid on her side, face twisted into a half-grin half- pain. Glad she made it back to her babies, but at the cost of her life.
In the med bay she’d remain for three days before her body began failing. On the fourth day, they’d carry her back to her tent, leaving her children to watch her die.
“Mark…”
His mother whispers in the night as he takes the watch from her deformed hands. She recognises his sobs, his pained babbling as he begs her to come through.
“My babies…”
She’s burned to a crisp from her neck to her ankles. Maggots have been eating her for days. On the 5th day, she stops breathing. His poor mother. A victim of the world that killed his father. His little sister is none the wiser, still picking the maggots off her corpse like it means something now. His child self yanks her little hands away. She screams in denial, hitting him as he drags her out.
The subject of his nightmares now.
“Mitzi!”
In a moment of frustration, Little Mark pushes her over on the concrete. She screams, her small fragile body smacking against the hard ground. He didn’t mean to hurt her. He was just trying to get ahold of her. Tears staining her face would cement into his brain for life as a fever would take her—his baby sister days later. The regret would never leave him.
The Octoboss knows there’s no punishment tortuous enough to replace the agony he felt that day, but there was something twisting in his gut the day Dementus took Gastown. Before, when his Mortifiers were loaded onto the War Rig, dawning War Boy ensembles and trusting him, the Octoboss suddenly remembered his fathers watch…