Fear Is the Rider (12 page)

He literally ran up the ladder, leaning back so that the barrel of the gun cleared the rungs. The wind was howling past the top of the shaft making a sound like someone blowing across the top of a bottle. The dust was thicker than ever before and the light of the sun dimmer. Shaw was grateful for it. He would need some seconds to orientate himself at the top of the shaft and the less visible he was the better.

He paused as his head reached the top of the shaft, then realised there was no point in pausing and grabbed the supports of the windlass and hauled himself into the centre of the mullock heap. He unslung the gun from his shoulder and crouched below the level of the mullock, straining to hear some sound of the Man working. He could. To his left, in the murk of dust, was the sound of earth being scraped, faint above the whistle and rush of the sand-laden wind.

Shaw laid the gun on the top of the mullock heap and knelt pointing the sights towards the sounds. Eventually the dust would lift and he would see the Man.

He realised then that if he'd brought Katie with him they could both have slipped off into the dust storm leaving the Man filling the holes and possibly going down to search for them while they were making their way in the darkness to the hotel. He thought of calling down to Katie, but the Man would hear. He thought of going down and getting her, but there was no way of telling how long the Man would spend on the shaft he was working on. Katie might come up into the sweep of the axe. Best wait and try for a kill.

As soon as he'd come out from the cool earth he had started to sweat but he didn't notice until he found he was wiping mud from his dust-filled eyes.

The dust faded and for an instant he saw the Man working at the top of a shaft twenty metres away. He seemed to be scraping at the mullock heap with the axe, using it as a hoe to pull the rubble into the shaft. The dust closed in before Shaw had a chance of a shot but in that instant he realised he wouldn't have taken the shot even if he had had time. The Man had his back to him. Even though he knew him to be a murderous maniac Shaw knew he couldn't kill the Man unless he was actually being attacked.

What then? Challenge him. Make him attack or surrender. And if he surrendered? He could be held at gunpoint until they found the Land Cruiser; or tied up—at least they could take his axe away. There was no need to kill unless the Man attacked. But the Man had forfeited all right to human consideration. His death meant total release for Shaw and Katie. Kill him. Or shoot him. Wound him, that would be the safest way.

Shaw was still arguing with himself when the dust lifted again and he saw the Man still scraping earth into the shaft with the axe. Just a shape in the dust cloud, but a clean target.

Shaw levelled the gun, curled his finger around the first trigger and tried to pull it. But he couldn't. It was impossible for him to shoot without warning. The dust seemed to be clearing further. Soon it would close in again. He had to either fire now or…

It was almost as though the decision was made by somebody else.

Shaw shouted, ‘Stay exactly where you are or I'll shoot you!'

The Man reacted like a startled dingo.

One moment he had been bent over the mullock heap scraping at the earth and at the precise moment that Shaw uttered his first word the Man had flung himself across the mullock heap and down the other side. A flying bulk in the dust with the axe still visible in his hand.

Shaw fired. The shot hit the top of the mullock heap as the Man's legs disappeared down the other side. The pellets could have caught him in the legs and at that range they should have been riddled.

Finger on the second trigger, Shaw peered into the gloomy dust. The wind swirled around him and the visibility dropped to a couple of metres. The Man could be lying wounded on the other side of the mullock heap or he could be circling around the other heaps through the dust towards Shaw from any direction. Shaw knew in his heart that he hadn't hit him.

He paused briefly, then slung the gun over his shoulder with the strap to the back as before and climbed quickly down the shaft.

‘Did you hit him?' said Katie.

‘No. I don't think so,' said Shaw.

They moved into the chamber.

A great cluster of heavy stones came crashing down the shaft.

‘Now he's filling in this shaft,' said Katie.

‘He can't fill them all in,' said Shaw, foolishly, for want of something else to say.

He edged forward and tried to look up the shaft, wondering whether he could get a shot at the Man as he scraped the earth down on them. But all he could see was the falling debris and dust and the now much darker circle of light at the entrance to the shaft. A small stone hit him on the forehead and he drew back.

‘We'd better get into another part of the tunnel,' he said. ‘Wait a moment.' He broke the gun, took out the spent cartridge and inserted another. It was the last cartridge. He had only two shots left. He uncocked the gun and led Katie down into the darkness of the tunnel.

They came to another shaft and the light was so dim now they could hardly see each other.

‘I think what we'd better do,' said Shaw, ‘is wait in the middle of one of these tunnels. If he comes down after us we'll see him or hear him before he reaches us. We've still got two cartridges left.'

‘But you said he couldn't come down,' said Katie.

Shaw didn't remember saying that.

‘He might.'

‘Isn't it, mightn't it be worth going up again and trying to shoot him? I'll try if you like.'

‘It's too late now,' said Shaw. ‘He'll be ready for that. And it's getting dark.' He cursed himself for his weakness in not killing the Man when he had the chance. ‘I think our best bet's to wait here. At least until daylight.'

‘But if he comes down…?'

‘If he comes down we can handle him,' said Shaw with considerably more authority than he felt. ‘Let's have a look at this tunnel.' He took out his matches. From the now very faint glow from the shafts at either end they could see the tunnel was about twenty metres long and about a metre wide. There had been several falls of earth but the squares of timber shoring it up every metre or so seemed sound enough. Shaw could almost stand upright.

The match went out.

‘If we wait in the middle of this,' said Shaw, ‘he can't get at us in a hurry. What I want you to do is take the matches and when I call out “Match”, or we hear a sound, I want you to strike one and throw it towards whichever way he's coming. That'll give me a shot at him. I'll be sitting here with the gun cocked. He can't get near us.'

‘All night?'

‘The only alternative is to go up one of the shafts, hope to Christ he doesn't see us then run off into the bloody dust storm.'

‘I'd sooner do that,' said Katie.

Shaw hesitated.

‘Look, if I thought there was a chance of our finding the car so would I…but spending the night in that storm…without water, and then the sun tomorrow…no. I think it's better here. He can't get us and there's every chance the police will come out tomorrow. I told them I was only going out for the afternoon.'

‘
If I don't hear from you in a couple of days I'll come out and get you
,' the policeman had said.

Katie, now only a very slight shadow in the tunnel, was silent for a moment contemplating the horror of spending the night in the darkness waiting, staring into the blackness. She remembered the stench of the Man and started thinking she was smelling him, then she realised she was only remembering.

‘Did you smell him?' she said involuntarily.

‘No, I didn't,' said Shaw, annoyed at the irrelevance of the question, but then he realised that Katie was near breaking point, even nearer than he was himself. But what did you do if you did break?

‘You sit against that wall,' he said, gently pressing her shoulder. ‘I'll sit opposite. Here, take the matches. If you hear anything just strike a match and throw it towards the sound. I've got room to move the gun either way. Hold a match ready in your hand all the time.'

She took the matches and sank to the tunnel floor. Shaw sat opposite her and experimented with swinging the gun either way. There was plenty of room provided he held the barrel upwards as he swung. He stretched out his legs and felt his foot touch Katie's leg. His foot was bare. He'd forgotten about his shoes. He moved his foot away.

‘Leave it there,' she said urgently. He moved the foot back against her leg and both of them were grateful for the contact as the light from the shafts quickly faded and disappeared and the tunnel was totally black.

They could still hear the sound of earth falling further back along the network of tunnels but it was strangely comforting because it meant that the Man was still above ground.

The falling earth and the soughing of the wind were the only sounds and both were so distant that any other sound, some sound close in the tunnel, would have been easy to hear.

They'd been there perhaps half an hour before the sound of falling earth stopped. Both waited for some minutes expecting it to start up somewhere else. But there was nothing, only the wind now.

‘He's stopped,' whispered Katie.

‘Shh.' The less sound they made the less chance there was of the Man discovering which tunnel they were in, except by accident.

They waited. In the darkness. In the silence underlying the wail of the wind. Each aware of the rapid beat of their own hearts.

There was a sound. A slithering sound. The sound of something moving in the tunnel.

‘Match!' Shaw's voice was shrill.

Katie struck a match. It didn't light. She struck again and as the head sputtered she flung the small flame towards the sound to her right. Shaw swung the gun to the right, finger on the trigger. In the brief flare of the match they both saw the long black shape on the floor of the tunnel.

‘It's a snake!' Katie was whispering.

‘Strike another match. Don't throw it.'

Katie struck the match and held it high. The snake was only a couple of metres away but it wasn't moving. Shaw threw a lump of earth at it and it turned and wriggled towards the other end of the tunnel.

‘It's only a python. It won't hurt us,' said Katie.

‘What the hell's it doing down here?'

‘They fall down the shafts and can't get out.'

‘Shh.'

If the Man were down the mine the flare of the two matches might well have shown him where Katie and Shaw were.

‘Keep another match in your hand,' whispered Shaw. ‘Keep some in your mouth too so you can get them easily.'

Katie put four or five matches between her lips and held one in her hand.

They waited, ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, an hour. In the total blackness. Waiting for the noise that might be the Man, might be the snake, perhaps not a harmless python, perhaps a deadly brown or black.

Katie screamed.

‘I can smell him! I can smell him!' She struck a match and flung it to her left. Shaw glimpsed the great black figure looming in the tunnel as the match went out. For the first time Shaw too smelt the Man, a stench of corruption; of dead and unwashed flesh; a blast of feral carrion. He swung the gun to the left and fired. The blast of sound filled the tunnel.

In the flash from the barrel he saw the shape again, still surging towards them. Katie flung another match. Shaw fired again. One of the supporting beams shoring up the roof split with a crack as loud as the gunshots and tons of earth fell into the tunnel.

Katie struck another match. The tunnel was blocked. The Man was either under that pile of rubble or on the other side of it.

Katie was striking match after match. Both of them were standing, staring at the pile of rubble.

‘I must have hit him. I must have hit him,' said Shaw. But he wasn't certain. The shot that had cracked the beam and brought the roof of the tunnel down must have been high…but the spread of the shot…and the first shot.

‘I must have hit him.'

They stood there in the smoke of the gunshot and the dust of the fall staring confusedly at the barrier of earth in the tunnel.

‘There's no more bullets, are there?' said Katie at last.

‘No,' said Shaw.

‘So if he's not dead, and he comes after us again…'

‘He's either dead or hurt so badly we needn't worry about him,' said Shaw. It had to be so. He couldn't have fired two shotgun charges up a tunnel at that range without hitting the Man. Anyway he was probably under that fall of earth.

‘So let's get out of here,' said Katie.

‘You mean up top?' said Shaw foolishly.

‘Of course I mean up top. What's the point in staying down here now? Quickly. Let's get out ahead of him and get to that hotel. We can walk there.'

‘All right,' said Shaw. There was no point in saying again that he was sure the Man was dead, or hurt, or buried.

Katie kept striking matches as they blundered along the tunnel to the shaft. Shaw slung the useless gun over his shoulder and went up the ladder first. In the instant before he started up he considered which was the more dangerous: to go up first with the possibility of the Man being there at the top, or go up second with the Man clawing up behind them. There was no real difference. He went up first.

The wind had dropped but the dust was still heavy in the air. A vast red ball hung low in the sky; a huge, perfectly round shape hanging in the dust almost near enough to touch.

Katie stood beside him on the top of the mullock heap.

‘But the sun's gone down,' said Shaw vacantly.

‘That's the moon,' said Katie. ‘That's the north-east. Then that's south. That's where the track is. For Christ's sake run.'

They ran and Shaw felt the sharp gibbers biting at his naked feet.

The wind had almost stopped and the moon loomed brighter through the lessening dust.