Fear Is the Rider (5 page)

There it was. Over to the left. Fifty metres away. It had driven ahead and waited until its own dust cleared. Now each vehicle was clearly visible to the driver of the other. The Land Cruiser, momentarily stationary in the desert, waiting; the Honda wallowing slowly towards the track. Shaw knew what would happen now.

The Land Cruiser seemed to spring into motion like an animal attacking. Immediately the dust spurted up behind it as it bore down on the Honda, a missile of irresistible force.

The Land Cruiser gathered speed as it came diagonally at the Honda: Shaw knew they would collide long before the Honda could reach the track.

Was this death, death in this still half-cool shell of a car out here in the arid, heat-stricken, barren wilderness under the impact of a huge weapon of mobile metal propelled by a maniac? Neither fear nor anger gripped Shaw, just a sense of irritation at the futility of it all, so intense as to be unbearable.

With the instinct of a hunted creature taking the last desperate chance, he withdrew his foot from the accelerator and stamped on the brake. He knew once the car stopped there was little chance of it starting to move through the sand again. It would settle, the wheels would spin and they would sit there at the mercy of the lunatic in the Land Cruiser. But if he kept going the Land Cruiser would hit them in two seconds. The Honda hadn't stopped moving when Shaw shoved the gear into reverse and stamped on the accelerator. The gearbox protested and crashed, but the gears meshed. The little car slid to a halt, but the driving wheels were reversing while the car was still going forward and almost at the instant it stopped it began to move backwards. The wheels had no time to sink in the sand and suddenly the car was going backwards fast, disappearing into its own dust cloud.

The Land Cruiser, now touching sixty or seventy kilometres an hour, rushed past the bonnet of the Honda as it wallowed backwards. The dust of the Land Cruiser rolled over the Honda and again both vehicles were hidden. As he slid backwards into the yellow obscurity Shaw again glimpsed the man at the wheel of the Land Cruiser; just a fleeting impression of something big. Did the great shaggy head turn towards him as the Land Cruiser flashed past?

Shaw drove backwards through the dust into the desert, away from the track. There was nothing for it now but to throw the car into first gear and head straight for the track.

He did it, again fearful that the gearbox would shatter, changing from reverse to forward before the car stopped, but he got away with it. The Honda went forward, Shaw still blinded by the dust, but knowing the track was only a couple of minutes ahead.

He couldn't guess what the driver of the Land Cruiser would do now. There was so much dust floating above the surface of the desert that minutes would have to pass before either driver would be able to see anything. Unless the Land Cruiser drove far enough away and then swung around ahead of its own dust cloud. But then all its driver would see would be the cloud near the track through which Shaw was blindly and doggedly pushing the Honda.

He felt the crunch of stone as the Honda hit the line of gibbers that ran along the edge of the track, then the front wheels bit on the firmer surface of the track itself. At the same moment they broke clear of the dust and Shaw saw the Land Cruiser fifty metres up the track to the east.

The Land Cruiser was on the track to the east, between them and Yogabilla.

‘Jesus Christ!' shouted Shaw.

Then, because there was nothing else to do, he wrenched the steering wheel to the right and sent the Honda racing towards Obiri, six hundred kilometres away.

Forty, fifty kilometres an hour, and the gibber stones were thudding violently on the underside of the car. He held it in first until he felt the motor would fly from its mountings.

The Land Cruiser shot into the Honda's dust cloud as it pulled away. A hail of stones was flung into the air behind the Honda, striking the Land Cruiser, chipping the duco, starring the windscreen.

Shaw pushed into second gear and reached eighty. The Land Cruiser and the Honda raced along the track within five metres of each other; the shower of stones from the Honda began to rattle against the Land Cruiser like machine-gun bullets. The windscreen must be beginning to star so thickly that it would be difficult to see through it although the driver couldn't have realised this, because all there was to see was the convulsing cloud of the Honda's dust. He must be just driving into it, sticking to the track, knowing that if he could go fast enough he would run the Honda down.

But the Honda was by far the faster on the track. Shaw had it in third gear now and the speedometer was touching a hundred. It was pulling steadily away from the Land Cruiser.

‘How fast will that thing go?' Shaw shouted to Katie.

‘Not much more than eighty,' she shouted back, ‘there's a governor on it.'

Not much more than eighty. He was pulling away from it at twenty kilometres an hour. Nowhere near enough. He slid the gear stick into top and let the Honda fly along the dusty track. The most it would do in perfect conditions was a hundred and forty. Now he pushed it up to a hundred and twenty. On the rutted, irregular surface it was more in the air than on the ground, but the steering held true and it pulled far ahead of the lumbering Land Cruiser.

He turned the air-conditioning off to gain the last ounce of power from the motor. He should have done that before, he thought. Immediately the temperature of the interior of the car jumped by ten degrees and Katie and Shaw felt the sweat bursting out of them. Shaw wound down the window an inch or so: the hot air rushing in was minimally better than the air in the closed car.

‘We can't just go on along here.' Katie still had to speak loudly, although it was much quieter in the car now with the air-conditioning off and the vehicle running in top gear. ‘The track isn't like this all through it.'

‘There's nothing else I can do,' said Shaw. ‘We were bloody lucky not to bog in the desert that time. If we find a hard patch of something I might try to get past him. Are there any salt pans?'

‘I don't know. I think so.'

‘With any luck, if we can keep far enough ahead of him, he might just give up.'

‘He won't,' she said with a certainty that chilled Shaw.

‘The policeman at Yogabilla said there was a place, a motel or a hotel or something, halfway between here and Obiri.'

‘He told me about that as well,' she said. ‘It's too far.'

Shaw looked at the trip odometer. He had travelled about fifty kilometres from Yogabilla. It was about another two hundred and fifty to the hotel.

‘We'd get there in less than three hours if the track stayed like this.'

‘It doesn't.'

As if to demonstrate the truth of her statement the Honda struck a deep hole in the track, bounced high in the air and veered almost off the track before Shaw brought it under control.

‘Something's going to bloody well break if we keep this up,' he said.

‘You won't be able to keep it up for long anyway,' said Katie, ‘the wheel ruts will get so deep this car won't clear the centre. You'll have to go back.'

‘I can't get past him,' said Shaw angrily. ‘For Christ's sake, you saw what happened then.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

Shaw looked across at her. She'd stopped holding her blouse tight at the neck and he could see her left breast. He was surprised that he noticed.

The gibber stones were thickening on the surface of the desert and in a few minutes it seemed as though the sand was completely covered by the layer of flat stones, countless millions of them, mostly not much bigger than a man's hand. From the speeding car it seemed that the desert had been paved with stones. So close together did they lie that the sand was scarcely visible.

‘Surely to God we could drive on that,' said Shaw.

‘I don't know. You can in the four-wheel-drive—but in this—I just don't know.'

‘If we went out on that and he followed us we might be able to get round him.'

The gibbers were building up on the road. Over the years, other vehicles passing through had formed wheel ruts and the gibbers were piled in long unbroken lines with the sandy wheel ruts in between. The Honda was running in the sand ruts and just clearing the gibbers. If they built up much more then the Honda would run on to them and strand itself.

Shaw looked at the speedometer. It was still touching a hundred and twenty. If he ran on to a higher ridge of the stones at this pace he would probably tear the bottom out of the car.

There was another sand ridge up ahead, perhaps three kilometres away, rolling across the desert like a stationary wave, dotted with a few tufts of vegetation, free of gibbers.

Shaw looked behind. Just dust.

‘We must be a fair way ahead of him,' he said. ‘I'll stop on the top of that ridge and see what he's doing.'

Katie nodded. ‘There might be somebody coming the other way.'

‘Eh?'

‘If we met somebody else in a four-wheel-drive we'd be all right.'

‘Yes. Yes,' he said abstractedly. How often had the police sergeant said people went through the track? ‘Quite a few travellers—you're the fourth this week.'

‘How much petrol has the truck got?' he asked.

‘Plenty. Enough to get us to Obiri and back. And you?'

‘What's in the tank and a couple of twenty-litre cans. Enough to get us to Obiri.'

He looked at the petrol indicator. It showed the tank was half full. He would eventually have to stop and siphon petrol out of one of the cans into the tank. But so would the driver of the Land Cruiser.

The Honda rolled up the soft side of the sand hill and Shaw brought it to a halt on the crest. They sat in silence, looking out through the rear window, waiting for the dust to clear. It went in moments and there behind them rising above the shimmer of the heat haze was a great column of dust. The only way they could tell which way it was travelling was because the narrow end of it pointed towards them. The vehicle itself was lost in the heat haze.

‘How far away is that?' said Shaw.

Katie shrugged. ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes.'

Suddenly Shaw became aware that he was thirsty. Thirsty wasn't the word. His whole being suddenly ached for water. He reached into the rear of the Honda and took up a plastic water bottle. His hands were shaking so much he could hardly get the top off and he almost thrust the bottle to his mouth before he remembered Katie.

‘Here,' he said, offering her the bottle.

She hesitated as though about to say he should drink first, then took the bottle quickly and drank, swallowing quickly as though she were about to drain the bottle. But she only took a few mouthfuls before she stopped and lay back against the seat and gasped.

‘Here,' she said, and handed him the bottle.

The water was lukewarm but the first mouthful flowing down his throat brought unbelievable physical solace, and the second and the third. Then he too found he couldn't swallow and didn't want any more for the moment.

He raised the bottle and poured water over his head.

‘Be careful with that,' she said warningly.

‘I've got plenty,' said Shaw, and splashed some on his shirt. It dried within seconds.

He turned the motor on, wound up the window and switched on the air-conditioning. After a few moments a flow of cool air circulated around the car like a blessing.

‘Listen,' said Shaw, ‘if we just run ahead of him we'll break down eventually, or get caught on the stones. Right?'

‘Yes,' she said carefully. ‘I think so.'

‘But if we can get out on that'—he gestured at the plain of stones stretching out below them—‘and if we can go fast enough, we can run rings around him. The track to here's all right, so we're fairly sure of being able to get back to Yogabilla.'

‘It all depends whether the surface under the stones is firm enough.'

‘This car's very light. If we go fast enough we shouldn't sink.'

She shook her head. ‘I don't know. I just don't know.'

He looked back through the rear window. The advancing menace of dust didn't seem much closer.

‘The other thing is, how much petrol was there in your tank, do you remember?'

‘Pretty full…I filled up in Yogabilla.'

‘And what have you got, a reserve tank or spare cans?'

‘Both.'

‘Christ!'

‘But he probably won't be able to find the switch for the reserve tank. I had it installed specially and there's a cock under the seat.'

‘I see. Well, listen. This is what I propose. I'll go out there'—he pointed to the glistening plain that stretched to the north for about three or four kilometres. ‘Then we'll stop, and while we're waiting for him I'll fill our tank so we won't run dry again for a while. Then we'll just sit there and wait for him. He might think we've broken down or anything, but he'll probably come out after us. I can do a hundred and twenty and he can't do much better than eighty. As soon as he's within half a kilometre of us I'll break for the track, we should reach it before him and we can head for Yogabilla. Right?'

She was staring out through the rear window at the distant dust cloud.

‘I don't see what else we can do,' she said softly.

‘We could just keep going and try to reach this motel or whatever it is.'

She sat silent for several moments.

‘I don't think so,' she said at last. ‘I think you'd better try to get around him as you said.'

Shaw nodded. He took another swig of water and offered the bottle to her. She shook her head. He screwed the top back on the bottle and tossed it into the rear of the car. The motor was still running and he switched off the air-conditioning, engaged first gear, drove fast down the side of the sand ridge, switched into second gear and drove fast on to the bed of stones.