Tommy and Billy came up the slope and into the clearing, and Tommy caught a breath of the odor, rank and unwell. Father and Joseph were standing about twenty yards away, weapons lowered, arms limp at their sides. Neither was moving. They both had their heads bowed. Father looked up and saw his sons and his face sagged in sudden grief. They moved closer. Neither boy looking at him now. Their eyes were on the large red gum behind him, alone in the clearing, like a sentry in the scrub.
From its branches, ropes creaking, two bodies hung. Both had been mutilated, both had been burned. Two knotty, dark medallions, dangling. Carrion birds hunched in the branches above their heads and flies crawled over their charred skin. Gently they swung in the wind. Ticking back and forth, back and forth again. Beside them on the trunk a word had been carved: NOONE read the engraving, in letters a foot tall.