Fear Is the Rider (11 page)

But there was nothing to see, only the shifting dust.

‘I can smell him!' screamed Katie and grabbed Shaw's arm. Shaw shook her off roughly. Nobody could smell anything with their nostrils choked with dust. But he was there. Almost within reach. Seeking them. Wanting to kill them. Able to kill them. It was all a matter of who saw whom first. Whether the axe fell or the gun fired.

‘Down the mine,' said Katie.

‘What?'

‘Go down the mine. He can't follow us down there. There'll be no dust down there. If he follows us we'll see him. You'll be able to shoot him.'

Shaw tried to think.

‘But we'd be trapped.'

‘We can wait there for days. I know these mines.

They're like rabbit warrens. It's cool down there. We can stay alive for days, even without water. He won't come down while we've got the gun.'

‘But how long…'

‘The police will come.' Katie was shouting over the wind, or in fear. ‘The police will come looking for us. They'll come tomorrow or the next day. Come down the mine.'

Shaw tried to think with the sand beating into his face and filling his eyes and mouth and nose and ears, tried to think and watch for the rushing mass of the man with the axe who might be there within arm's reach behind the veil of dust.

‘All right,' he said. ‘Go on down! I'll follow.'

‘You go first.'

‘I've got the gun, you fool,' Shaw shouted. ‘If he tries to follow us I can shoot him. Go down, damn you!'

Katie swung herself on the supports of the windlass as her feet found the ladder, then went swiftly down. Shaw turned around once, twice, the gun raised, hoping for a lift in the dust, a shot at the man with the axe. But the dust spun thick and impenetrable and he could barely see the outline of the windlass beside him. The constant sense that the man hunting him was just behind him made him turn spasmodically, but there was never anything but dust. He felt panic as he took hold of the windlass to lower himself on to the ladder. In that moment he had to hold the gun in one hand and such protection as it was was lost. Awkwardly he went down the ladder, grabbing the side with his left hand, holding the gun in his right, pointed upwards towards the circle of light that was the entrance to the mine.

The dust was drifting down the mineshaft but since it wasn't being driven by the wind it was quite easy to see through. It was surprisingly light in the shaft and Shaw could see the luminous, wonderful colours—red and yellow, orange and half green—of the strange underground world that had existed for millions of years to produce opal. Above, the entrance to the mine looked like the setting sun, a red circle hanging in a sky of moving cloud as the storm lifted the face of the desert and spun it in phantasmagoric shapes.

Shaw climbed slowly because of the gun and he kept staring upwards, expecting at any moment to see the shape of the Man following him. He kept the hammers of the gun cocked. With half his mind he hoped the Man would follow. A shotgun blast up the narrow tunnel would cut him in two. With the other half of his mind Shaw saw the huge blasted body falling down the mine on top of him, smashing him off the ladder to the bottom of the shaft below. How far below? Shaw glanced down. There was Katie only about five metres below him.

He looked up and there was the head and shoulders of the Man leaning over. The shaggy head and huge shoulders seemed to half fill the mouth of the shaft, a black figure against the red moving false sun at the top of the shaft.

Shaw thrust the gun above his head and pulled the first trigger. The sound burst in the shaft like a cannon and a great blast of dirt flew from above and dropped like hail on Shaw. Deafened and blinded he pointed the gun vaguely upwards and pulled the second trigger, firing into the debris falling towards him. The second blast was like a physical blow and more earth came tumbling down from above. He clung to the ladder, half expecting the body of the Man to fall on him, half expecting the shaft walls to collapse. He stared upwards.

Smoke and dust filled the shaft and the entrance was only a dim glow far, far above. A large piece of earth struck him on the cheek. He leaned against the ladder and tried to reach into his pocket with his left hand for more cartridges. But he couldn't balance himself without holding on and had to grab the side of the ladder again. He began to climb down once more, still uselessly holding the gun above his head.

Somewhere below Katie was shouting something.

‘Did you hit him? Did you hit him?'

Shaw didn't know.

He looked up again. The smoke and the dust were clearing and the entrance to the shaft was a bright circle. There was no sign of the Man. He could, please God, be lying dead or wounded on the mullock pile above.

Shaw tried again to reach his pocket for cartridges and slipped and fell off the ladder.

He dropped the shotgun and tried to grab the rungs as they slid past him. But he didn't have time before his feet struck earth. He had only been a couple of steps from the bottom. He almost fell over and banged his head against the side of the shaft. Katie was there. She grabbed him by the shoulders and steadied him.

‘Did you hit him?'

‘I don't know,' he said, ‘I don't know.'

A large rock, as big as a man's head, thudded to the ground beside him. He didn't know whether it had been dislodged by the gunshot or dropped by the Man.

‘Come further in!' Katie took him by the arm and half dragged him away from the bottom of the shaft. The sounds of the gunshots were still vibrating in his head and he experienced again the sensation of standing off watching himself.

They were in a large chamber hollowed out in the earth long before by men searching for opal. An eerie twilight spreading from the glow of the shaft lit the walls and the high roof. At the far end a tunnel led off from the chamber and at the end of the tunnel was a glow of light. There must be another shaft there.

‘Come through,' said Katie.

Not knowing why, he followed her. Two more rocks thudded to the bottom of the shaft behind them.

‘Wait,' said Shaw, ‘stop.' They were in the middle of the tunnel between the two shafts.

Katie stopped.

‘We might as well stay here. If he's alive, if he comes down we'll see him coming whichever way he comes. We've got the gun. He can't get at us.'

‘Is the gun loaded?'

By way of answer Shaw broke the gun and took out the two spent cartridges. He felt in his pockets. There were three cartridges left. It was dark in this part of the tunnel but he could see well enough to load the gun. He left the hammers uncocked. There would be time enough to cock them. If the Man came down one of the shafts they would see his shadow. Unless he came down some other shaft that connected with this tunnel.

A mass of rubble fell into the shaft they'd come down.

They both stared at it and the dust rising in the dim light. Then another mass came down, and another, and another. It was too regular. It couldn't be the result of the gun blast.

‘He's filling in the shaft,' Katie whispered.

‘He can't fill them all in,' said Shaw, not believing it. It depended on how many shafts connected with the tunnels.

‘It doesn't matter. We can stay here until the police come and dig us out.'

Why should the police ever come and dig out an abandoned opal mine?

As though she'd heard his unspoken question, Katie said, ‘They'll see tracks. They'll see the car. They'll realise we're down here.'

There'd be no tracks after the dust storm and the Man could easily get both cars away, simply by towing the Honda. Shaw said nothing.

Earth and stone were pouring down the shaft in an almost continuous stream, as though the Man above had devised some way of pushing the mullock directly to the mouth of the hole. It would be only minutes before the bottom of the hole was closed. And there would be no light. Then he would start on the shaft at the other end of the tunnel they were in and there would be no light there either. They would be in total darkness, in a tomb.

‘Come further through. See where this tunnel goes,' said Shaw. He felt in his pockets as he led the way. He had a box of matches.

‘Have you got any matches?' he asked.

‘No.'

For the first time Shaw noticed how cool it was underground, then forgot it.

The next shaft led down to another large chamber and two tunnels led off from it. At the end of each, perhaps thirty metres away, they could see pools of light.

‘Come on,' said Shaw. He led Katie down the tunnel leading to the left. Timber shoring, square frames of thick beams, were built into this tunnel. Here and there breaks in the roof of the tunnel and piles of rubble they had to clamber over indicated why the shoring was there. There were thousands of tonnes of earth above them.

The tunnel led to another chamber with a shaft and ladder and yet another tunnel leading off to another pool of light.

‘It's just a great rabbit warren,' said Shaw. ‘All these tunnels lead into each other. All the shafts are connected. He can't fill them all up. It'd take him days.'

‘Then why is he doing it?'

‘He mightn't know the shafts are connected by the tunnels.'

They could hear the earth still falling in the shaft behind them, a slow rushing sound and a series of thuds, then the rushing sound and the series of thuds, the flow of earth and stone.

‘Then he can't touch us?'

‘I don't see how. He's got to come down a shaft and along a tunnel to get at us. But I don't think he intends to. I think he's just trying to bury us. He thinks that one shaft is the only way out. He's just going to fill that and go away.'

They both stood in silence in the dim chamber.

‘You think he'll take the Honda?' asked Katie after a while.

‘Either that, or destroy it. If he can find it. We couldn't, remember?'

‘Then, if we just wait here…we're all right?'

‘I think so. We just wait until the police come looking for us. It'll only be a day or two. It's cool here. We can last without water, if he takes the Honda. Except…'

‘Except?'

Shaw didn't want to say it, but Katie was there too, with him. They had to face all the possibilities.

‘Except that it'll be dark soon.'

‘Yes?'

‘It'll be dead black down here.'

‘You think…'

‘Well,' Shaw spoke diffidently. ‘If he came down one of the shafts in the dark…we wouldn't be able to see him.'

‘But he wouldn't be able to see us.'

‘No. But…well, it probably won't come to that.' What Shaw didn't want to say was that a maniac with an axe, determined to kill, feeling his way through the darkness, groping blindly through the tunnels, would eventually blunder into them. A swinging axe would be much more destructive than a shotgun when neither man could see.

‘But we'd hear him anyway,' said Katie; then, plaintively, ‘wouldn't we?'

‘The whole thing doesn't make sense,' said Shaw with a rising sense of absurd irritation. ‘What's he filling in that hole for if he intends to come down?' but he knew the answer. If only a few holes were filled in and the Man came down, the chances were he'd drive his quarry into a blocked tunnel. Like a ferret hunting rabbits in a partially stopped burrow.

He thought of the night in black darkness, continually waiting for the sound that meant that the Man was there in striking distance. And then the days. How long would the police take to come?

The sounds of falling earth had stopped some moments before. They waited silently for what might happen next. The light was growing dimmer.

The sound started again, a rush and a thump, a rush and a thump, steady and rhythmic, strangely and terrifyingly casual.

But it was coming from a different direction.

‘He's filling in another hole,' said Katie.

Shaw said nothing.

‘Why is he filling in another hole?' Katie's voice was high-pitched. ‘Why is he doing it? He must know he can't fill them all.'

He was doing it because if he stopped up a few exits his chance of catching his prey below ground would be that much greater. Shaw knew it, but he wasn't going to say it.

He looked at the ladder leading up the shaft from the chamber they were in. It wasn't more than ten metres high. He could get up it in seconds. As far as he could make out the sounds of a shaft being filled were coming from the left. It couldn't be far away, thirty, fifty metres at the most. If he could get up the shaft, the Man would be intent on his work.

‘I'm going to take a shot at him,' Shaw said suddenly.

Katie stared at him.

‘He'll be working at the top of a shaft just over there to the left. The storm's still going'—he gestured at the whirling, dimming pool of light at the top of the shaft—‘he won't see me. I'll get a clear shot at him with any luck.'

‘But why not stay here? He won't touch us down here.' She didn't believe that any more than he did.

‘I'm going up,' he repeated. ‘It'll only take a few seconds. I can get down again. He can't do anything to me. And I might get him.'

Katie said nothing. In this sudden, desperate, impossible world ordinary communication was suspended. They understood each other in some manner independent of words.

Shaw knelt and stripped off his shoes and socks. There was less chance of slipping that way.

He hung the gun over his shoulder with the strap at his back so that he could raise it and fire it quickly if the Man appeared at the top of the shaft before he got there. Reluctantly he cocked both hammers. If that shape appeared at the head of the shaft he'd need to fire immediately. He could have held the gun in his right hand but that would have slowed him down getting up the shaft. He wanted to get up as fast as he could, and down again if necessary.