Fear Is the Rider (8 page)

‘When he comes down I'm going to race just ahead of him to the far turnoff,' said Shaw, ‘then try to swing round there and go back to Yogabilla.'

But the Land Cruiser didn't come down the turnoff. It went on down the track to the east.

‘What the hell is he doing?' said Shaw.

The Land Cruiser was hidden by its own dust, but in a moment it became obvious that the dust was not moving.

‘He's stopped,' said Katie. ‘Get going, for God's sake! That Aborigine said there was a house half an hour ahead.'

‘Yes…but…Look! He's out of the truck!'

In the haze of dust settling around the Land Cruiser they could dimly see a moving figure, which seemed to be carrying something large and square.

‘He's out of petrol,' said Katie. ‘Don't you see? He's out of petrol and he's gone down that side of the track to block it. See? He's got the truck sideways across the track.'

‘Could we get past it, do you think?'

‘No,' Katie was almost shouting. ‘Go up the track. Find that house!'

Half reluctantly Shaw let in the clutch and took off. He, more than Katie, knew what a battering the Honda was taking and how little chance it had of keeping going if the track deteriorated. But, if the house was there, half an hour away…

It was Katie who saw the shotgun. It was lying just to the left of the track, its barrel glistening in the sunlight.

‘Stop!'

Shaw obeyed, then wondered why he had, then understood as Katie slipped out of the car, picked up the shotgun and came back.

‘Is it loaded?' Shaw asked as he took off again.

‘I don't know. How do you tell?'

‘I don't know. Leave it. Wait till we stop again. Don't touch the trigger. My God—if it's loaded we've got the bastard.'

He longed to examine the gun. It was a huge, old-fashioned weapon reaching very nearly from the floor to the roof of the Honda. It had two hammers, and they seemed to be uncocked, but neither Katie nor Shaw knew anything about guns.

They could see the soak, glittering just ahead with something dark in the middle of it.

‘That's his motorbike,' said Katie.

‘That's him too,' said Shaw after a moment. ‘Oh, Christ.' He slowed down. The wheel marks of the Land Cruiser were still apparent in the mud.

‘We'll sink in that, if we don't go over it fast.'

‘Is he really dead?'

‘His head's under the mud.'

Shaw stopped the Honda. ‘How far behind, do you think?' he said.

‘Far enough for the moment. There might…there might be bullets on…in…there might be bullets.'

‘Yes,' said Shaw. ‘Wait here. Get in the driving seat and keep the motor running.'

He got out of the car, into the sun and looked back along the track, where it dwindled into the heat haze. No dust. The Land Cruiser wasn't moving yet.

He walked quickly to the soak. His shoes sank and for a panicky moment he thought he was in quicksand. But ankle deep, it was firm enough. He stepped quickly across to the wreckage of the man and the machine. There were red streaks on the mud where blood had spurted from the bursting body. Shaw could see what he thought was the back of the Aborigine's head. The torn shirt and raw flesh seemed to be the shoulders. Tentatively he bent down and tugged at one shoulder.

The body was firmly in the mud. Shaw hesitated, then with a sudden surge of ruthlessness grasped the shoulder with both hands and hauled the body clear. It came free of the mud with a sucking sound. The Aborigine's face was shattered. Shaw thought for a moment he was going to faint, then realised he only thought he ought to faint. He wanted those cartridges. He felt around the muddy, bloody chest. There was something in the right-hand breast pocket of the shirt. He thrust in his hand. Several cartridges. And something sharp. Christ, it was bone. It had pricked his finger. He felt in the other breast pocket. Nothing. He hauled the body farther clear of the mud and felt in the trouser pockets. Nothing, except in one again the raw, clean feel of freshly broken bone.

Shaw stood and walked back to the car, wiping the mud and blood off his hands on his own trousers. He felt desperately nauseated, but wasn't sure whether it was from horror or the sun.

There was a dust cloud arising from the heat haze to the east now. He couldn't tell how far away it was. But it was too close.

He got into the passenger seat, then wished he hadn't. But the girl was a good driver, and he wanted to examine the gun.

‘Back up a bit and hit that patch as fast as you can,' he said. ‘You'll get through it.'

Katie backed the car up thirty or so metres, then went into first gear and drove fast at the soak. The mud rose in a spray in front of them, falling in a thick layer on the windscreen. They couldn't see anything.

‘Keep going,' said Shaw. ‘Keep your foot down. Keep going!'

They felt the offside front wheel hit something. The Aborigine? The wheels were sliding in the mud, the motor screaming and the car going too slowly as it floundered.

Then the front wheels came through the soak and bit on the firmer dust of the track and the car raced away. Shaw worked the windscreen pump and wipers and enough mud cleared away to enable them to see. The gibber ridges were getting higher now. The Honda was barely clearing them. The underside of the car was scraping on the higher mounds and nothing Katie could do would make the speedometer go above a hundred. If the gibbers became much worse before they reached the hotel, the Honda simply would not go over them.

Shaw had the shotgun in his hands trying to work out the mechanism. Obviously the hammers came down on the cartridges, but how did you get the cartridges into the barrel, and were there any in there anyway? He eased one of the hammers back. It clicked into position and stayed back. Shaw realised he had cocked the gun. There were two triggers. Which one worked which barrel? There seemed to be a cartridge in the barrel with the cocked hammer. How effective was a shotgun? At what range? Surely to God he could kill a man with a blast from this. But would the pellets penetrate the metal of the Land Cruiser, or even the windows?

He found a catch under the underside of the gun just where the barrel met the stock. He pushed it and found the gun broke open revealing two cartridges in the barrels.

‘Got it!' he cried.

‘Can you work it?' Katie asked.

‘Yes. Yes. I think so.'

‘Then let's stop and kill him,' she said fiercely.

Sometime, Shaw knew, he would remember with surprise that a strange young woman driving under the red, killing sun in the deep desert had said, ‘Let's stop and kill him,' but now it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

‘Not here, he'd just run us down with the Land Cruiser. We've got to get behind something.'

Ahead, the desert stretched empty to the horizon. There was nothing to get behind.

‘There'll be something,' said Shaw. ‘We'll find some more trees, or something.' If the Honda kept going, but he didn't say that.

Now that the hammers of the shotgun were clear of the cartridges he experimented with the triggers. He squeezed one. Nothing happened. That must work the uncocked hammer. He squeezed the other trigger. It didn't move either. Perhaps the gun was broken. Perhaps it only worked if the barrels were closed. With only a handful of cartridges he couldn't afford to try firing it. He found he could pull the cartridges out of the barrels with his fingers. He put them in his breast pocket with the other two, closed the shotgun, pushed the catch across to lock it, cocked the second hammer and pulled both triggers. Again nothing happened.

‘Christ damn it, the thing doesn't work!'

‘But you said…'

‘Wait. Wait a minute. Keep going.'

He found another catch on the right-hand side of the gun just above the trigger guard. There was a vague notion in his mind, derived from film or his reading, that weapons had such things as safety catches. He pulled at the catch, but it was immovable. He tried pushing it and it went forward with a loud click. Now he pulled both triggers and the hammers clicked home strongly.

‘That's it,' said Shaw.

He opened the gun and put two cartridges in the barrels, then locked the weapon again and pushed the catch home. He left the safety catch off, reasoning that it wasn't necessary with the hammers uncocked.

‘An hour from where we met him, that…that man said…the house, the hotel,' said Katie.

‘An hour if you go fast,' Shaw said. He looked at the speedometer. Barely ninety. ‘We're not going fast.'

Then they stopped going at all.

The motor cut out, started again momentarily, then died.

‘Petrol,' said Shaw. He was out of the car before it halted, rested the gun against the side, grabbed a petrol can and rummaged around until he found a funnel. He was pouring petrol into the tank before the dust cleared. To the east, well back, but like the inevitable presence of a carrion bird, was the dust cloud of the Land Cruiser.

Shaw didn't know whether to drive himself or stay in the passenger seat with the gun. He felt he could handle the Honda better than Katie, although she was good, but somebody should be ready to use the gun and he didn't want to take the time to stop and show her how. He decided they were far enough ahead of the Land Cruiser for him to change over if he got some sort of chance to fire the gun from the car.

‘I'll drive,' he said. ‘Hold this between your knees.' Katie crossed to the passenger seat and sat with the shotgun between her knees, the stock on the floor and the barrels in both hands.

Shaw started the car and the gun went off.

The blast was mind shattering in the closed car and the charge of shot tore a fist-sized hole in the roof. A shaft of sunlight drove through the hole like a bullet and stayed fixed in the white, stifling smoke of the exploded cartridge.

‘Christ, damn it!' shouted Shaw, who didn't know for a moment whether he, or Katie, or both were injured. He had wrenched the wheel to the right with the shock of the explosion and as his head cleared he realised that the motor was racing but the car wasn't moving.

‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' Katie was saying numbly.

‘Are you hurt?'

‘No. No.' She sounded as though she wasn't sure. She was still gripping the gun by the barrel.

‘We're stuck,' he said, turning off the motor. ‘Give me that.' He took the gun from her and opening the door with his right hand got out of the car holding the gun in his left, pointing the barrel away from himself and Katie. He couldn't tell why it had gone off. Probably one of the hammers had caught on something.

‘He's coming! The car's stuck!' said Katie.

The dust cloud was there to the east, but a fair way off.

Shaw broke open the gun, took out the cartridge and put it in his breast pocket. He lay the gun across the front seats of the car where he could reach it easily.

The front wheels of the car were in the air.

When the gun went off, Shaw had wrenched the steering wheel to the right and the driving wheels had turned and mounted the line of gibbers. The car hadn't been going fast enough to carry itself over the stones and as soon as the front wheels had cleared them, the chassis had dropped on the stones and the car was stranded.

Shaw leaned against the rear of the car and shoved. The metal burned his hands.

‘Help!' he said.

Together they pushed and strained and the Honda rocked on the bed of stones but didn't move.

‘Try pulling the stones out from underneath it.'

They knelt on either side of the car scrabbling at the gibbers with their hands. The stones came away easily enough but there were too many of them. The front wheels were high off the ground and more than a tonne of stones would have to be raked out from under the car. There wasn't time.

‘Push it from this side,' said Shaw. ‘Try and swing it around so that one of the wheels is on the stone.'

She came round to his side and together they pushed against the right-hand wheel. Slowly the car swung to the left until the left front wheel was touching the stones.

‘Get in and start the motor,' said Shaw. ‘Pull the wheel hard over to the left, then straighten out if it starts to move.'

Several stones flew past Shaw's head as the wheel spun, but the car started to move. He got behind and shoved and the car went slowly along the track, hauled by the front left wheel, the right spinning in the air. Ahead, Shaw could see that the ridges were getting higher. If the car went down into the wheel ruts it would soon strand itself again.

‘Slowly!' he yelled to Katie. She didn't hear him at first and he ran round alongside her, keeping pace with the struggling car.

‘The stones are too deep,' he said. ‘We're going to have to try driving on top of the ridges. Do you understand me? You go ahead and I'll push from this side. As soon as you're moving a bit more, swing over until the front wheels are straddling the ridges. We'll drive along the top.'

‘Why not wait behind the car with the gun?'

‘Because he'll just come through and smash us off the face of the earth—for God's sake don't argue with me. Drive the bloody thing onto the ridges. Straddle them. I'll keep shoving and get in while it's still moving. For Christ's sake don't stop. Go!'

Katie revved the motor and the car pulled ahead. Shaw shoved all his weight against the bonnet.

‘Left. Left!' he yelled. The car went to the left poised for a moment with its whole length suspended on the stones, then went over so that the front wheels were in a wheel rut.

‘Up on the stones!' yelled Shaw.

Katie kept the steering wheel to the left until the front left wheel was on the next ridge, then straightened the car out so that it straddled the stones. It picked up speed suddenly and Shaw sprinted around to the passenger side and clambered in. The following Land Cruiser was visible at the base of its dust.