Fear Is the Rider (17 page)

They went on through the night until the moon crossed the sky and left the bush in blackness and then they stopped because they could go no further. They were in a tiny clearing and they simultaneously sank to the ground without speaking. Shaw found it hard to release his fingers from the jerry can and the jack handle.

‘Have something to drink,' he said, and awkwardly held the jerry can while Katie drank. Water splashed over her face. Then Shaw drank. The water was warm and seemed thick, but he drank and drank until his throat began to hurt. He put the can down and screwed the cap on.

‘We'd better rest,' he said superfluously. They were sitting side by side, very close together. To Shaw, the girl beside him was a dark shape, comforting, even lovable because she was human and alive here in the blackness, with him lost and hunted.

They leaned against each other.

‘Are we going to die?' said Katie, softly, wonderingly, hardly even fearfully.

Shaw felt for her hand, found it, held it, and they sat in silence, the unanswered question floating between them.

And soon, impossibly, still sitting up, they fell asleep.

The fire woke them at dawn.

They were both on their feet before they knew what was happening. Smoke filled the sky in a great half-circle around them and they could see the flames in the scrub a few hundred metres away. There were animals running ahead of the flames, kangaroos, goats, rabbits. Terrified by the common enemy they ran past the humans, ignoring them, fleeing in the only possible direction—north, away from the fire.

‘The bush is on fire.' Katie turned her head wildly from side to side. ‘The bush is on fire! He's trying to burn us.'

The flame was moving towards them as fast as a man could walk. The billows of smoke showed that the fire stretched far to the east and west. It was a giant scythe of heat half encircling them, driving them along with the animals rushing towards the edge of the scrub, towards the desert. They had to go that way.

Shaw picked up the jack handle and the jerry can and they began to trot away to the north, barely awake enough to realise the terror that now haunted them. Dimly Shaw realised they had been trapped. The Man had somehow lit the fire. They were being hunted by flames as the Aborigines used to hunt animals. They were being driven to a point where they could be caught and killed. They were being driven into the desert and already the sun had leaped into the sky and turned the blackness into bright and burning blue.

They ran. Behind them the fire gathered strength in the morning breeze, feeding upon the dried grass and the eucalyptus gases in the scrub. The stunted trees sweated sap ahead of the flames then exploded in fire, branches glowing vividly red then turning black and brittle. Leaves evaporating in the million tiny puffs that made up a huge gout of flame.

The bushfire moved faster, as fast as a man could run. It was bearing down on Shaw and Katie. Hundreds of animals were running ahead of it now, mostly rabbits and goats, but a few horses, possums, goannas. Others were dying in the flames, the snakes not fast enough to keep ahead of the fire, the young animals, the fledgling birds in their nests.

Katie was sobbing. Shaw could hear her above the crackle of the flames now so close behind them. The skin of his feet was in shreds, and the weight of the jerry can of water was becoming an impossible burden. He would not let it go. Not yet.

Swarms of kite hawks filled the air above them snatching the insects escaping the flames. A flock of pink galahs went screeching past a little above head height, wheeling in unison as though they were playing some wild game with the fire.

The breeze behind them was strengthening and the smoke was flowing over them like soft, gentle, stifling waves. Ash from the destroyed leaves was floating with the smoke, settling on their hands, their faces and Shaw's bleeding feet and Katie's bare legs. Their clothing was in ruins, Shaw's trousers and shirt torn and stained, and Katie's blouse no more than a remnant of cloth covering her jolting breasts as she ran.

Abruptly the scrub ended. There confronting them was the great red sand hill, the tidal wave of dust rolling on from the scrub, ending it, obliterating it. In an almost sheer wall with the crest curving like a breaking wave, the red surge of dust towered a hundred metres above them. The dust mountain had been inching across the desert for a hundred years and at its base protruded the tops of submerged eucalypt scrub, about to die. So slow was its movement that a thin line of dwarfed trees had taken root and lived and grown from the base to the crest.

Katie and Shaw broke from the scrub into the desert. It was as though they had crossed a line drawn directly across of page of blank paper. In one moment they were in the scrub, half enclosed and driven by fire. They took a step, they were on the sand, above them the towering soft red ridge, a looming, threatening barrier, its height rimmed in bright crimson by the morning sun. They stopped. That could not be climbed. There was fire behind them, they could not go back. They could only stay where they were on the edge of the sand dune where they had both been driven by the creature that had lit the fire.

A goat bolted past them, long flowing black-and-white hair and high curved horns. It did not hesitate but went straight up the face of the sand dune. It hadn't gone fifty metres before its legs sank in the soft dust. It struggled to free itself, and the dust in the soft mountain slid down and covered the beast to its neck. Submerged in the red clogging mire the goat fought again to move. Sand slid down until only the head, eyes and horns were visible against the shifting mist of sand. The goat glared wildly, turning its head as far as it could, its body immured permanently, inextricably in the lethal dune.

Shaw and Katie stared fascinated at the trapped goat. That was the only way they could go and they could not go that way. They could run along the line between the scrub and the sand dunes in either direction but they both knew that this was what they were expected to do. Whichever way they ran the Man would be waiting. Their only way out was over the sand dune and that was impossible even if it worked. On the other side of the dune lay death by sun in the endless, sterile waves of desert sand.

All the other creatures running from the fire were streaming to the right and the left, goats, rabbits, kangaroos, a couple of brumby horses, scuttling possums, one native cat, spotted, teeth gleaming in its grimacing jaws; goannas, frilled-neck lizards, the whole menagerie of the desert scrubland instinctively taking the path to safety along the edge of the scrub, striving to find the borders of the fire, none of them taking the lethal path up the dune and into the desert. But for none of them was a Man waiting with an axe.

Automatically, involuntarily, Shaw and Katie walked to the base of the dune, their feet sinking in the soft sand that flowed to the edge of the scrub. Exhausted, they turned and looked back at the burning bush behind them. The fire had consumed everything and was gently dying. Through the mists of smoke they saw the vast figure of the Man trudging relentlessly towards them grasping in his right hand the thing they knew would eat into their very flesh.

‘Oh Christ! Oh Christ! Oh Christ!' whispered Shaw. He dropped the jerry can and grasped the jack handle in both hands. He would kill if he could. But he knew that the vast bulk of the Man and the weapon in his hand made mockery of his own puny illusion of defiance.

A goat sprang from the scrub. Not inured to the desert like the native animals, it too made for the sand dune. It did not know that it could run around the edge of the fire. It sought escape where it seemed obvious, ahead over the dunes. It was a doe. Young and heavy with kid, it lumbered towards the dune and took the only possible path to the top—along the slender thread of shrub that was sucking life from the shifting sands. The roots of the shrubs had formed a haphazard interlocking path that held the surface of the sand steady and the goat went up it with ease, even exuberance.

Shaw watched it run, then turned again and saw the Man striding through the ashes of the now dead fire. Still a dark and frightful shape but human nonetheless. Coming to kill him and Katie. He couldn't fight him. He knew it. To confront the Man with the jack handle would mean immediate death to himself and the girl. They could run either way, to the right or the left. They were exhausted, enervated—running would only postpone death for moments.

Shaw didn't know why he turned up the slope along the path that the goat had taken. With his mind, he knew that death lay up there in the dry heat, and that the Man could follow. But in some deep inner chord of his being he knew that this way might lie some chance of battle; not necessarily a victory but at least a battle and not the slaughter which faced him now.

He grabbed Katie's hand. ‘Up there!' he shouted, dragging her after him. Already they could feel the sun's rays beating back from the surface of the sand. Tiny whirlwinds danced along in front of them, whipped into being by the burgeoning heat. Floating ash, black and fragile, spun in the air and littered the red dust.

‘We can't!' Katie yelled, stumbling behind him. ‘We'll die out there.'

‘We'll die here.' Shaw hated Katie at that moment. ‘Come on, you stupid bitch!'

Somewhere to fight from, thought Shaw frantically, somewhere to fight from. They went up the dune sinking to their knees in the flowing sand. Grabbing the stems of the shrubs, hauling themselves up by main force. Shaw still held the jack handle. It was no weapon but it was all that he had. To the left the trapped goat, only its head and horns above the engulfing sand, impassively watched their stumbling flight.

Halfway up the dune, Shaw turned and looked back. Clouds of smoke and ash were flowing out of the scrub to the base of the dunes and there shrouded, half hidden, was the Man, beginning to climb. Shaw was still holding Katie's hand, hauling her up. He became aware that she was barely conscious, no more than a dragging encumbrance on his own escape. For a moment he had a dreadful temptation to let her go, abandon her to the Man, give himself more time. If he'd never met the bitch, he wouldn't be in this mess. He pushed back the despicable impulse and struggled on, dragging Katie along.

Somehow they made the top of the ridge. Knee deep in the dust-soft sand they looked out on an endless horizon of deep dune after deep dune, rolling away endlessly like a time-frozen sea. The sun beat across the tops of the dunes, touching them with fire and throwing deep shadows in the gullies. It was a lifeless land. Nothing lived out there. Nothing could live out there. Shaw looked back. Halfway up the dune, still enshrouded with dust and smoke and ash, the inexorable figure was coming after them. That meant only the need to climb the next one, go down the other side, climb the next, climb, go down, climb, go down and go on into the infinity of the hot horizon and death.

They stood on the crest of the sand dune. They could stay where they were, they could run along the top of the dune in either direction. Anything was better than going down but they soon would have to stand to fight, to probably die.

Shaw started staggering west along the top of the ridge. The crest of the sand wave was crumbling and they had to keep to the centre to avoid falling with the breaking crests. It was useless. They were wading through the soft sand, struggling hopelessly knee deep, exhausting themselves beyond the deadly point of exhaustion they'd already reached.

It could only be seconds now before the Man was upon them, the axe smashing into their flesh, their bones.

This then, Shaw realised, was the utter, complete unavoidable end. And with that realisation a frantic clarity seized his mind. The goat, the goat was the answer. He could see in his mind the goat's head, its body imprisoned helplessly in the sand. He didn't form his intention even in his own mind. Something in himself had taken over from his conscious being and was acting out the last desperate bid for survival. He turned, stopped, grabbed Katie by the shoulder.

‘Go down there,' he said, pointing towards the still smouldering scrub.

Katie, eyes wide and red and mad, gave a half-articulate scream. ‘What?'

Shaw had no time to talk. ‘Get down there,' he said and pushed her over the edge of the crest. She stumbled five or ten metres down the slope and stopped waist deep in the sand.

Shaw left her there and struggled across to the other side of the crest, out of sight of Katie, out of sight of the Man. He could hear Katie's helpless moaning. He lay down, desperately trying to work out his timing. The Man would not, he hoped, he believed, he prayed, come to the top of the crest, walk along it and go down to Katie. He would cross from the line of scrub to where Katie lay buried like the goat. Shaw lay on the sand, his hand clenched around the jack handle, forcing himself to wait, to count, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty seconds. Two minutes. It would have to take the Man two minutes to get across from the scrub to Katie. One minute passed. Shaw sprang to his feet and ploughed across the crest hoping to dear Christ that he would see what he planned for when he reached the edge. His rush threw into the air a fine cloud of red dust.