Page 103 of The Storm Boys Series Collection

She picked Bruce up. “I retired six months ago, been waitin’ on my replacement for-fucking-ever. Arsehats in Sydney kept tellin’ me there was no one. Guess it was Melbourne who come through for me. Always did like Melbourne, though that Brian’s a bit of a knob.”

I shook my head and held out the keys she’d handed me. “No, no, there’s been some kind of mistake,” I tried.

“Air con’s been dying for five years,” she said. “A good kick in the ribs usually gets it goin’.”

“Doreen, there seems—”

“I’ll leave ya the bat by the door,” she said. “Sometimes the local kids think they need an antenna off the roof. Whatever’s in the fridge is yours. I’m outta here. I’ve been here since Tracy.”

I looked at Tully, bewildered.Who the hell was Tracy?

“Cyclone Tracy,” he murmured.

Oh.

Panic was starting to bubble in my chest. “I just wanted to calibrate—”

Doreen clapped me on the shoulder so hard I fell into Tully. “Congrats on the job,” she said. “Hope you don’t like co-workers or budgets, cause you ain’t got either.”

And with that, she was gone. The door banged as she left, a second later her motorbike rumbled to life and by the time I thought to chase after her, all we got was a wave as she took off out the gate, Bruce sitting up in the sidecar with dog-goggles on.

And I stood there with my mouth hanging open and a set of keys in my hand.

I turned to Tully, dumbfounded. “Wh-what the hell...” I held the keys on the palm of my hand as if they’d just landed from outer space. “What just happened?”

Tully pressed his lips together so he didn’t smile too hard, but his eyes were full of humour. “I think you just got a promotion?”

I shook my head, my mind reeling. “That’s not... I can’t... what the...”

“Yeah, look,” he said with a shrug. “I ain’t mad about it. There’s a saying about gift horses or something.”

“Tully! I live and work in Melbourne!”

He made a face, glanced pointedly at the keys, and clicked his tongue. “Well, I’m thinkin’ that’s not exactly true.” Then he winced. “Anymore.”

A beeping noise began blaring inside. “What the hell is that?”

We raced inside. One of the small warning lights was flashing yellow.

“I dunno,” Tully said. “This gear is your domain.”

“This gear is older than me,” I said. “I don’t know how any of this works.”

“Flip some switches,” he said, flipping the old metal switches that did god-only knows what. “Make the noise stop.”

“You can’t just flip—”

The beeping stopped.

Jesus H Christ.

I looked at the screen. It was a radar, and there was a mass of orange and purple blinking in and out of view. It was old, yes, but I knew what that meant. “Storm front moving in from the north. I think it’s a low-pressure warning system. It’s gonna be decent.”

Tully looked at me, grinning.

“Don’t smile at me,” I said, taking my phone out and calling my boss. I held my phone to my ear and began to check the other equipment. “Come on, answer your damn phone—”

“Overton,” he said, grumpily. “You finally replying to the messages I left for you.”

---