Catherine Jinks TheRoad (89 page)

The fact was, he took a fierce delight in proving that he was better than Georgie, more selfless than Georgie – a superior form of life, in other words. His dislike of this whining dead weight, and her hysterical demands, and her inadequate costume, and her lack of compassion, had suddenly become quite profound. He had realised that, while antisocial behaviour might be amusing and intriguing when the world was functioning as it should (which is to say, in an orderly manner) such conduct was dangerous and unlovely when one was a castaway, dependent on cooperation and intuitive thinking for one’s very survival.

Georgie didn’t understand that. Though she expected Ambrose to look after
her
, she refused to consider the needs of other people. On reflection, it had always been like this. How on earth had he ever put up with it?

What a joy it now was to punish her for that unabashed narcissism he had once found so fascinating.

‘I’m going,’ he declared. ‘Wait here.’

‘You can’t!’ she screeched. ‘You can’t go! You can’t leave me!’

‘Why not?’

‘You bastard!’ She was crying. ‘You prick! You’ll get killed! It’ll kill you! That thing’ll kill you!’

The possibility had crossed Ambrose’s mind more than once; it was why he had waited so long to follow John. If he hadn’t become so revolted by Georgie, and everything she stood for, his fear of what awaited him back at the bog might have prevented him from doing his duty. As it was, however, he was compelled by his anger and dislike to do the exact opposite of what Georgie wanted.

Apart from anything else, he was desperate to get away from her. And he knew that, if he walked off down the track towards Pine Creek, she would try to hobble after him, grizzling and whimpering. Whereas, if he retraced his steps, she would unquestionably stay put. Nothing on earth would persuade her to follow him back to the bog.

‘If it was going to kill us, it would have killed us already,’ Ambrose informed her, with a fine touch of insouciance that he didn’t really feel. ‘It had plenty of time.’

‘Don’t leave me,
please
!’

‘You can always come too.’

‘Fuck
that
! Are you
crazy
? I don’t wanna die!’

Ambrose shrugged, and smiled a taunting little smile. Then he left her. He retreated down one of the tyre tracks, listening to her scream and curse behind him. Although they were profoundly irritating – like the skull-piercing sounds of a dentist’s drill – Georgie’s sobbing imprecations were also deeply gratifying. They kept Ambrose marching steadily, chin up, for as long as they were audible.

Only after they had faded into the susurrus of the wind did his pace begin to slow. That was when he found himself glancing nervously from side to side, straining to hear, casting quick looks over his shoulder. As his fear grew, it overwhelmed his anger. He began to wonder why he had allowed this anger to drive him in such a stupid direction. That bloody woman was
still
in charge. She was
still
dictating his actions, though in an indirect way. The problem was, he couldn’t exactly turn tail now. Not if he wanted to retain any dignity. No; if he went scurrying back to Georgie she might laugh or sneer at him, and if
that
happened he would . . . well, he didn’t know what he would do. Something childish and shameful, perhaps. Maybe even something extreme. Since the incident at the bog, Georgie’s voice had set his teeth on edge. Her scornful laugh might drive him to violence – especially in view of the fact that his nerves were on edge.

He didn’t know what to do. Around him, the thick scrub rustled beneath the light caress of a passing breeze. Its long shadow rippled across the track in front of him. Then everything became still again, so still that Ambrose thought he could hear Georgie’s sobs. He stopped, and listened. No. Yes. No, it was a bird. No, there was something else.

Footsteps.

They were brisk – even hurried – and it was fortunate that John appeared within seconds of his footsteps’ rhythmic
crunch-crunch-crunch
reaching Ambrose’s ears, or Ambrose might have run away. As it was, he still got a fright. The first flash of movement had sent his heart fluttering wildly around inside his ribcage (or that, at least, was how it had felt).

When John waved, Ambrose leaned forward, his hands on his knees. The relief, following hard on the shock, had weakened him.

‘Bloody hell,’ he gasped.

‘Hey! Mate!’

‘
Fuck
, you gave me a fright!’

‘What’s up? Where’s the girl?’

‘Back there.’ Ambrose straightened, cocking his thumb. ‘You were so long, I started to get worried. What happened? Where are the other two?’

John advanced, closing the gap between them. If Ambrose hadn’t been in such a fragile state, he might have laughed at the other man’s appearance, which was becoming more and more bedraggled. Portions of his hair stood up stiffly, while the rest was plastered down, held in place by dried mud. His clothes were filthy, with fresh stains overlaying the old; he shed clouds of dust and grit with each step. It occurred to Ambrose that John now bore more than a passing resemblance to Pig Pen, the dirty little boy in the Charlie Brown cartoons, who was accompanied by a kind of small tornado of grime wherever he went.

Ambrose didn’t really pay close attention to the fresh stains on John’s clothes. He noted, without genuinely processing the fact, that the new mud looked redder than the old. But he was too preoccupied to draw any conclusions.

‘Is Verlie all right?’ he asked. ‘Is she coming?’

‘I dunno.’

‘You don’t
know
?’

John stopped in front of Ambrose. ‘I couldn’t find ’em,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘They weren’t there.’ John rubbed his forehead with one dirt-encrusted fist. ‘Neither was the car. I don’t know whether they just drove off, or –’

‘Drove off?’
Ambrose couldn’t believe his ears. ‘How could they do that? We were
bogged
, for Chrissake.’

John shrugged.

‘Are you sure they weren’t hiding? Were there any tracks?’

‘Nup.’

‘Did you call out?’

‘What do you think?’

‘So...so...’ Ambrose felt as if he’d had the breath knocked out of him. He couldn’t believe . . . my God, it was impossible. ‘Are you sure? I mean – do you think – you don’t think they were
dragged into the bog
?’ said Ambrose.

Again John shrugged. He seemed singularly unconcerned. As Ambrose stood rooted to the spot with horror and disbelief, John brushed past him, obviously unwilling to waste any more time on Ross and Verlie.

Ambrose hesitated. He stared down the receding track, knowing that if he turned away again, it would be for good – that he would be abandoning the Harwoods to their fate. It occurred to him that something looked strange, down there. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it might be. The perspective, perhaps? The shadows?

Then something flashed past his eyes. An arm – John’s arm. Ambrose was jerked backwards, choking and gasping for air, clawing at the limb that was clamped around his neck. Then he saw a flash of brilliant metal, chopping down.

The pain was astonishing.

There wasn’t time for his outrage to become fear. There wasn’t time for anything.

At four o’clock, Del started to make preparations. She put Linda and Noel in charge of dinner. She gave Alec and Col the job of collecting wood. She drew up a watch bill, leaving herself the nastiest watch, between twelve and four. ‘I know I can trust
me
not to fall asleep,’ she said. ‘I dunno about anyone else.’

Alec was given the evening watch, and Col the morning one. Noel was excused because he couldn’t fire a gun, and Linda because the children would need her. Del even designated one scrubby area (some distance from the camp) as the official latrine, and insisted that anyone using it should be accompanied by an armed guard. Mongrel, she said, would take care of the camp while the gun was required for latrine duty.

‘It’s all in the details,’ she declared. ‘If we’re careful, we should be right.’

Peter put his hand up. He couldn’t help it. Standing around like this, being told what to do, he felt as if he were at school again. (It wasn’t a bad feeling, in the circumstances. Quite comforting really.)

‘Yeah?’ said Del.

Peter hesitated. He surveyed the circle of waiting faces, wondering if he should reveal his thoughts.

‘What if – ?’ he began, and paused.

Noel laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘What’s up, Pete?’ he asked gently, and Peter took a deep breath.

‘Well – I mean – what if the gun doesn’t work?’ he blurted out, blinking back tears. ‘What happens then?’

‘Oh, it works.’ Del spoke with confidence. ‘Believe me, I used it the other day. It works.’

‘No, I mean . . .’ Peter tried to find the words. How should he put it? Fortunately, Alec did the job for him.

‘He means, what if
bullets
won’t work?’ Alec said. He glanced at Peter, his green eyes sombre in his dusty face. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it? What if bullets won’t work against . . . well, against whatever comes along?’

Peter nodded. He felt his father’s grip tighten on his shoulder. Del cleared her throat.

‘Well,’ she conceded, ‘that
is
a possibility –’

‘Oh, surely not!’ Linda exclaimed.

‘– but there’s other things we can do.’ Del went on as if Linda hadn’t spoken. ‘There’s the fire. We’re gunna build a big fire, just in case someone spots the smoke. I mean, they’re bound to, out here, we’re on someone’s property. Fire on the property? They’ll be comin from every direction. And even if they don’t, we’ll still have fire. Hell, fire’ll drive off
everything
. And there’s Mongrel, too. You should see Mongrel get ’is teeth into a bloody rat, I’m tellin ya. He’s a bloody machine.’

Everyone looked at Mongrel, who yawned. There were flies crawling around his eyes; though his eyebrows twitched, he obviously couldn’t be bothered to chase them off with a more energetic movement.

Peter’s heart sank. He wasn’t too confident about Mongrel’s strength or agility.

‘Look,’ said Alec, and there was an intensity in his tone that made Peter squint up at him. Alec didn’t often volunteer anything, and when he did, it was usually for a good reason. Over the past twenty-four hours, Peter had come to regard Alec’s instincts as infallible.

‘Look,’ Alec repeated – and for once, everyone was listening to him. ‘I dunno if you’ve noticed, but ...well... for the past couple of hours there’s been nothing. Nothing
bad
I mean.’ A brief silence, as his gaze swept the assembled company. ‘We’re still stuck, but the flies ...I mean, they’re actin normal. Ants are the same. No dead animals anywhere. You know?’

Peter knew. Suddenly, he knew what Alec was talking about.

‘Since the car left!’ he cried.

Alec fixed him with a sharp, slightly surprised look. Noel said: ‘Since the car left?’ He sounded puzzled.

‘With the others, Dad!’ Peter tried to explain. ‘Since they left, everything’s been normal!’

‘Oh, but surely –’

‘And the swarm of flies!’ Peter was excited now; he began to jiggle up and down. ‘It attacked
them
, not us! It attacked
their
car!’

Noel blinked. Linda was frowning. Alec said: ‘Yeah, but hang on. Think. Was it always that car? What about Col’s ute, and the bird on the windscreen?’

‘Oh. Yeah,’ Peter grunted. He tried to concentrate. Was there a pattern he had failed to see? Del was thinking too. One hand was pressed to her forehead, as the other clutched her Lee Enfield.

‘Yiz gotta look at the big picture,’ she suddenly observed. ‘When did all this start? This weird stuff? Not the petrol business. Not the shooting. I mean the nasty stuff.’

‘It started this morning,’ Louise interjected. ‘On the highway. With that goo in the dirt.’

‘Right,’ said Del. ‘When Col came along.’

All eyes swivelled in Col’s direction. His face contorted.

‘What?’ he yelped. ‘What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with me! I was visiting me sister! Minding me own business!’

‘No one’s blaming you, Col,’ Noel hastened to assure him.

‘Yes they are!
She
is!’ Col pointed. ‘Like I’ve got the faintest bloody idea what’s going on, here! I got me bloody ute trashed, in case you didn’t notice!’

‘Yeah.’ This time Alec’s voice was so clear and hard and urgent that even Rosie looked up from her leaf-and-twig butterflies. ‘Yeah, that’s right, and who else was in there with you?’

It was what people called a rhetorical question, Peter thought. Everyone knew who had been in the ute with Col. Everyone also knew that the same person had been in the same ute when it had encountered the road kill.
And
in the Harwoods’ car when the swarm had attacked it.

For a while, nobody spoke. At last Linda said: ‘So what does that mean? Exactly?’

‘It means we’re probably safe as long as John’s not around,’ Alec declared.

Peter took a deep breath. Spoken aloud, it
did
seem like a strange thing to say. Noel frowned.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked slowly. ‘Are you saying that John
caused
all that road kill? Is that what you’re saying? That he
caused
the swarm of flies?’