Fear Is the Rider (15 page)

Katie stamped on the accelerator and the Honda darted backwards out of the stable.

Shaw stared around wildly, but couldn't see the truck.

‘Head for the track!' he shouted.

Katie put the car into first gear and went racing around the western side of the hotel. There was so much dust around now they couldn't see the track but they knew it was only a few metres away from the front of the hotel. As they cleared the side of the building Shaw saw the single headlight of the Land Cruiser, backing away from the hotel.

Katie stayed in first gear and they hit the track in seconds, but by then the single eye had picked them up and was coming after them.

As soon as they struck the gibbers on the track Katie swung to the west, went into second gear, and pushed the Honda up to sixty, eighty, ninety kilometres an hour.

‘The other way,' Shaw's voice was raucous with despair. ‘You're going the wrong way. Go back to Yogabilla. Turn, damn you!'

Uncertainly Katie slowed down, but now the headlight of the truck was lighting the interior of the Honda.

‘I can't turn,' she shouted, ‘he's on us.' She accelerated again, switching on the headlights because there was no point in concealment now, and the speedometer rose to eighty, ninety, a hundred, an impossible hundred and twenty in third gear. The little car raced along the lines of the gibber ridges as much in the air as on the beds of shifting stones.

Through the moon-splashed dust Shaw watched the single headlight of the Land Cruiser fall back, fall behind, fall away, disappear. He and Katie were again alone in the tiny capsule of the Honda speeding through the empty lonely desert.

‘Have we lost him?' said Katie, grinding the words out as though they hurt, her hands gripping the steering wheel as though she was clinging to life, her eyes fixed on the shifting headlight-lit ruts of the track.

‘He's well back. But don't slow down.' Shaw felt the advice was absurd, superfluous. ‘Let me think.'

Think. For Christ's sake, what was there to think about? Ahead was the long impossible run to Obiri. Behind was the creature in the Land Cruiser. A spasm of hatred for Katie shook Shaw. If the stupid bitch had turned left instead of right they'd be heading for Yogabilla. They would have had a chance if they were pointed to Yogabilla. But now. To Obiri. With nothing but the deteriorating track. Christ, what was there to think about?

Suddenly the track ahead was alive with bounding forms. A mob of kangaroos, grey orange-eyed ghosts, floated in phantom panic in the headlights. Three of them stopped. Dead in front of the Honda. Their heads turned in sombre unwondering enquiry at the strange thing that was rushing at them. Katie wrenched the steering wheel and the Honda swerved uncontrollably on the gibbers. Sliding diagonally along the road, the headlights lancing erratically into the desert, the car began drifting into the soft sand off the side of the track. Then, almost of its own accord, in some wayward response to Katie's frantic manipulating of the steering, the rear end of the car swung to the left and the front wheels grabbed the gibber edges of the track ruts. The car leapt forward and the kangaroos, released momentarily from the mesmerising headlights, had floated away to the sides and the track was clear.

Far behind them the Land Cruiser's high beam bore down on a lone kangaroo standing transfixed by the single harsh ray of light. Its paws were stretched out in foolish apparent supplication. It made no attempt to move and the Land Cruiser hit it at full speed. Now the kangaroo had found movement, too late: already dead and shattered it was thrown high into the air and fell on the side of the track, a bleeding and broken irrelevance to await the ants, the hawks and the eagles of the morning.

Higher in the sky now the moon had shrunk and, free from the dust-red horizon, shone down with antiseptic brilliance on the flat plains. The Honda's roof glinted like the shell of some small silver beetle, its headlights probing antennae on the desert floor. Far behind, the Land Cruiser, the larger predatory insect, nosed its way along the track, deliberately, inexorably, almost slowly pursuing the fluttering fugitive.

Ahead to the west the flat lake of the desert split into an ocean of rolling sand. Long, high waves of dust, cresting and glinting in the moonlight, stretched in parallel lines across the horizon. Never breaking but always shifting, inching imperceptibly into the lake of the plain. The dust dunes were like a swell generated by a storm when the desert was young and then petrified by some freak of cosmic artistry.

‘There's something wrong with the motor!' Katie's foot pumped down hard on the accelerator. The Honda's engine missed a beat, started again and stopped slowly, like something dying. The car rolled a few metres along the stones and halted.

‘What? What?' Katie was staring at the wheel in her hand. Shaw looked at the instrument panel. The petrol gauge showed empty. The tank couldn't have been empty. He'd put in twenty litres—there should be plenty.

The silence of the desert was almost a sound in itself filling the gap left by the motor and the flying stones.

‘Petrol,' said Shaw. ‘Let's fill it quick.'

He got out of the car, opened the rear hatch and took out a twenty-litre can and a funnel.

‘Grab the torch. Look under the car. See if it's leaking.' He began to funnel the petrol into the tank, always looking back to the east, dreading the glimmer in the distance that would be the Land Cruiser.

‘It's coming out,' said Katie from underneath the car. ‘It's pouring out. There's a hole in the tank.'

Shaw swore and put down the petrol can. He lay on his stomach and thrust his head under the car. The torch beam showed a hole as big as a finger in the tank. Petrol was pouring out of it.

Shaw stared unbelievably for several seconds at the steady flow that could mean his death. Then he realised something could be done about it. He pulled himself back from under the car and rummaged in the glove box until he found a cloth and a ballpoint pen. He wrapped the cloth around the pen to make a plug, then crawled back under the car and thrust it into the hole. The flow stopped. He pushed the plug in further. The petrol was seeping out, but slowly. If the hole didn't get any bigger they could keep going. They had plenty of petrol even if the Honda ran at twice its usual consumption.

‘That'll do,' he said. ‘Get back in. I'll drive.' He poured the rest of the petrol down the funnel, checked under the car once more to ensure that the hole was well plugged, then took over the driver's seat and they were away again, but slowly now because Shaw was afraid of what the violent sharp stones were doing to the petrol tank.

Katie grabbed Shaw's shoulder.

‘Look. He's coming. He's coming!' She was screaming in his ear.

Shaw looked back. Through the thin dust there was the glow of a headlight—how far away—three kilometres… four…five?

‘Has it got to be him?' he asked, knowing it was stupid.

‘There'd be no one else on the track at night. It's just the one light. My God, of course it's him. Go faster!'

Unwillingly Shaw pressed down on the accelerator. They shot forward, the speedometer steadily rising, the car riding almost easily on the gibber ridges; but the deadly drumming of the stones underneath grew deafening even as the light behind them fell back, grew faint and disappeared.

Their faces were strained, every fibre of their being intent upon the track. They no longer looked back because, although they didn't say it to themselves, they knew that if they did, the Man might be there. Any break in this terrible concentration might make the car stop. They both felt they were keeping the car on the track, the petrol in the tank, by the sheer force of their wanting it that way. It was as though their combined wills could keep the Honda moving, propel it a little further from their fear.

Every few moments Shaw glanced at the petrol gauge. It did not seem to be changing. The plug was holding. The speedometer was showing one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. But only the track appeared to be moving. It was as though it were sliding under them at some impossible speed. The surrounding plain seemed to be still. Shaw felt as though he was on some giant lunatic treadmill, a path on which he must keep forever moving and never arrive anywhere.

He became aware of a strange insistent knocking tap. Christ, was something else wrong with the car? He strained to listen to the engine. It was shrill and protesting, but that was normal. The tap was something else. It was something inside the car itself. Then he saw it. Katie was leaning forward, her face almost at the windscreen, her hands drumming on the dashboard, a hard continuous knocking, both hands hitting rhythmically as though she felt that somehow she was pushing the car forward, faster.

At the same time Shaw realised that his whole face was a sponge of pain. His jaws were clenched so tight that the ache stretched from his teeth to his ears. He tried to let loose but it wasn't possible. His being was concentrated in that tension as Katie's was in the drumming on the dashboard.

Shaw was watching the petrol gauge when it dropped again. One moment it was showing more than three-quarters full. In the next moment it fell. It was like a pole leaning to one side, suddenly becoming erect, then tiredly and quickly lying down. Five seconds later the car engine sputtered, then died and the Honda rolled on silently and stopped.

‘The plug's out,' said Shaw, hoping to God that that was what it was. He was under the car in moments, the torch probing at the petrol tank. The plug was still there, but he could see that the hole had widened. Even though the tank was empty, petrol was slopping down the plug. It could be fixed. But another twenty litres of petrol had gone. But that wasn't possible. It couldn't have dropped like that. The plug was leaking, but not that fast. He let the torch play around the rest of the tank. There was another hole. The same size as the first one. He ran his fingers over the metal. The whole of the surface was pitted and dented. The stones were pulverising it. It was mere minutes before it disintegrated. If they kept up the speed, the stones would destroy the tank. If they didn't keep up the speed, the creature in the Land Cruiser would catch them. Shaw lay under the car, a faint dribble of petrol falling into his face and into his mouth so that he had to spit. He just wanted to lie there and cry and wait for it all to go away. But there was still petrol in the jerry cans in the car. This second hole could be plugged. They could go on. They had to go on.

He hauled himself from under the car, found more rag and another pen. He jammed them into the hole. The plug wasn't tight enough and he fumbled in his pockets until he found a box of matches and shoved three or four in alongside the rag. It was tight. It would last, for a while. But the tank was a paper-thin carton of metal battered by the harsh stones. The plug might last, but the tank wouldn't. But what else was there? They couldn't stay here. They couldn't go off into the desert on foot. The Man was behind them, coming towards them, after them, intent for God knew what maniacal reason on their destruction.

Shaw poured half another jerry can of petrol into the tank. He reasoned that if the tank was going to hole again it was better to lose as little petrol as possible at a time.

‘What is it?' said Katie as he climbed back into the car and started the engine and moved off along the track.

‘The tank,' he said briefly, ‘it's falling apart.'

She didn't answer. There was nothing to say.

The petrol tank disintegrated completely ten kilometres further along the track.

They had just reached a waterway. There was a sign, pockmarked with bullet holes like all signs in outback Australia, and faded by the sun: ‘Dell Creek. DANGER. SHIFTING SAND DUNES.'

The waterway had been dry for twenty-five years but still sparse scrub spread along its length, three hundred metres wide and running on forever from Queensland down to the Darling River, a grey-green refuge for most of the creatures that lived in the desert region. The great red sand dunes were rolling down to the edges of the scrub slowly engulfing it, waiting for the next rain in a week, in a month, in twenty years to push them back to their rightful borders.

Shaw was out of the car almost before it stopped. The hole in the petrol tank was huge. As big as a man's head. There was no way it could be plugged. The Honda was finished. Katie was beside him and they looked at each other in the moonlight.

‘That's it,' said Shaw.

‘Then what…?'

‘The scrub. We'll have to run into the scrub. He won't know where we are.'

‘But the track. If we run along the track—somebody might come.'

Her face was gaunt and tears were starting from her eyes.

Shaw took her by the shoulders.

‘Don't be a bloody fool.' He shook her almost savagely. ‘There's no one on the track at night. He'd run us down. And even if he didn't—the sun…tomorrow. For Christ's sake, don't you understand? All we can do is take some water and hide in the scrub.'