Fear Is the Rider (16 page)

Katie stood staring at him for seconds then nodded her head several times. ‘Yes…yes,' she said. ‘Of course. I'm sorry.'

Then she screamed. She pointed east, her right arm held out limply, her left hand covering her mouth.

Shaw turned. There was the gleam of a headlight. The single searching eye, high against the sky for a moment and then sliding down into darkness. The Land Cruiser had just come over one of the sand ridges. It was minutes away.

‘Water!' said Shaw.

He grabbed a jerry can from the back of the Honda. What else? He was trying to think. What else could he take? What else would they need? What could they use? A weapon. Any sort of weapon. The clasp knife. The knife he'd given to Katie back at the waterhole when they'd met the Aborigine.

‘The knife,' he said. ‘What did you do with the knife?'

‘I don't know,' said Katie helplessly. ‘I think I dropped it. I don't know.'

The jack handle. That was all there was. The slim crook of metal that was almost useless against a madman with an axe, but better than bare hands. Shaw grabbed it. Dear God. Was there nothing else?

‘There he is,' Katie was pointing again. The yellow headlight on the last stretch of level plain, barely two kilometres away.

‘Come on.'

With the jerry can of water in one hand and the jack in the other Shaw started to sprint off into the scrub, heading north for no other reason than that happened to be the shortest way to the feeble cover of the low sparse bush. His soft naked feet were deeply cut by the gibbers before he'd run a hundred metres. Katie, in her sandals, kept up with him easily and even tried to take the jerry can from him. He shook her away.

They were deep in the scrub and hidden from the track by the time the Land Cruiser arrived at Dell Creek. Fascinated, they stopped and watched as the squat dark shape slowed down, then seemed to creep forward nosing at the Honda like a carnivore inspecting its prey. They saw the shape of the Man getting out of the vehicle, huge against the star night sky. Something in his hand. The axe. The Man went forward to the Honda and looked into it, then turned and looked around into the scrub, at the track ahead. Then he went back to the Land Cruiser. They heard the motor start and the Land Cruiser backed away from the Honda. Then it surged forward and smashed into the Honda at full speed.

Crouched in the long grass, Katie and Shaw watched in silence. Shaw was trying to concentrate but the Honda's destruction obliterated thought. He was a hunted animal. Every muscle in his body screamed at him to run and hide. He noticed that Katie's eyes were blank with fear. She was hugging herself tightly; her fingernails were biting into her arms. Before they had been terrified, but not like this. Inside the reassuring confines of the Honda, they had been frightened, but they had been human. Now they were the naked, helpless prey of something that was destroying their car as it intended to destroy them.

The first grinding impact drove the little car off the track. The front wheels were lifted into the air as the Land Cruiser straddled the gibber edge. The Honda's back half crumpled. Showers of glass glittered with every jarring blow the Land Cruiser delivered. Methodically, the Man drove the Land Cruiser into the Honda, rammed it and then backed up to repeat the attack. Again and again the Land Cruiser was thrown at the Honda until the smaller car was a mash of metal and rubber pushed well off the track into the desert.

A shadow fell over what was left of the Honda's windscreen. Shaw watched the Man as he got out again and peered into the wreckage. The Land Cruiser's single headlight accentuated the black mass as it moved around the broken skeleton. The shadow changed shape as the Man stared around into the bush. To Shaw, it appeared that he was sniffing at the ground like some grotesque hunting dog. It was as though at any moment the Man would pick up their scent and close in for the kill. Shaw touched Katie's arm and they both turned and moved further into the scrub, abandoning themselves to the wilderness, drawing down the darkness to remove the memory of the sight and sound of the Honda being mangled as they would be mangled.

But they seemed safe, deep in the scrub working their way through the gnarled short trunks of the scrubs. The soughing of the slight wind in the casuarinas and the gums was a soft, kind sound that blended with the rustling of their own passing. The moonlight threw strange dark shapes on the patches of bare ground and dried grass and sometimes there was a hint of movement that made Shaw, with his bare and bleeding feet, think of snakes. But they were alone. Now they were a kilometre or more from the road and the Man had no way of knowing which way they had gone.

They were alone, almost lost perhaps, but alone, and for the moment safe. They were like animals content to know that at least they could live to the dawn.

Then the light of the truck hit them.

It had been following slowly, its engine deadened by the wind in the scrub, its light extinguished, and now it was there a hundred metres away, trundling through the bushes, weaving around the larger trees and crushing the smaller. It was like some mechanical Nemesis.

Automatically Shaw turned and made for the thicker scrub ahead where the truck could not follow. It was some seconds before he realised that Katie was not following him. He turned and she was still where she had been, staring into the headlight of the truck, mesmerised like the kangaroos, waiting for it to come and kill her.

Shaw ran back to her.

‘Come,' he hissed, as though he was afraid of being overheard. ‘Come on.'

The truck was weaving from side to side, its yellow light throwing a triangular net into the scrub. The driver hadn't seen them yet.

Katie gave a strange, deep moan and stood where she was. She was breathing very deeply in great shuddering gasps and her eyes were fixed and blank. Shaw had the jack in one hand and the jerry can in the other. He wanted to keep them both. He turned his elbow and jabbed Katie savagely in the side.

‘Come on!'

Obediently, but as though anaesthetised, unaware of what she was doing, she turned and stumbled after him as he plunged through the scrub heading for the darker, thicker area ahead.

The light of the truck moved to the right, away from them. It must have been pure chance that had led the Man in this direction. He had no idea where they were, he was searching haphazardly.

Shaw led Katie into the heavy scrub. The growth was taller here and little moonlight penetrated the foliage. In the darkness and the closely grown bush there was again the illusion of safety, but behind them they could see the flicker of the headlight as the Land Cruiser roamed through the night, its probing eye seeking them.

Shaw stopped running. While the Land Cruiser was not directly behind them there was little point in moving. There was no way of knowing which way the Land Cruiser would go. Ahead the scrub might become thinner. Perhaps the Land Cruiser would go around the thicker area of safety where they now hid. At the moment the vehicle was still moving away to the right. They might as well stay where they were. Their only hope lay in the Man abandoning the hunt. Their despair lay in the fact that all he had to do was wait by the track until they reappeared, as they must when their water ran out. But the Man, Shaw thought madly, seemed driven by the need to kill and kill now. He might, and it was a wild touch of hope, he might go lunging deeper and deeper into the bush and leave them with the chance of getting back to the track with the daylight and waiting hidden somewhere for another vehicle to pass.

And then the light stopped moving.

It was perhaps two hundred metres away and all they could see was the broken glitter of the light through the scrub.

Shaw only realised he had been hearing the sound of the Land Cruiser's engine when the sound stopped. It was as though the sound had existed momentarily for a few seconds before it had stopped, but he knew it must have been there all the time.

Then the headlight went out.

Shaw knew despair when the light went out. Its extinction had broken the contact between him and the Man. A moment before he had known where the Man was. He had been in the Land Cruiser. Behind the light. Now, suddenly, he was out there, in the blackness, axe in hand wandering through the scrub, perhaps—or perhaps he wasn't. Perhaps he was still in the vehicle. Perhaps he'd decided to sleep. To wait for daylight.

Then Shaw heard the door of the Land Cruiser slam shut.

It was beyond doubt that the Man was after them on foot. He too had seen the denser scrub and decided that that was where they must be. He was now moving in, listening, looking, seeking.

‘He's coming,' said Shaw. ‘We'll have to go further in.' Machine-like, Katie turned and followed him, walking directly behind him as though he were the only link she had with reality. She could do nothing else but follow in his path or wait where she was to die.

Walking on through the night. Deeper into the bush. Just walking. There was no point running. There was something behind them. Perhaps. Perhaps the Man had gone in some other direction. They didn't know. There was nothing to be heard but the susurration of the wind and the occasional crackle of a leaf or a twig under their tread. Shaw's feet were sponges of blood but he didn't feel them. Once he stepped on something which squirmed and he felt horror in his throat and he saw a grotesque square-legged, long-tailed form scuttle through a patch of moonlight. A goanna.

Katie uttered no sound until something crashed towards her, something black and fast and violent. She screamed. The wallaby veered away and its bounding became a series of diminishing crackles in the night. Had the Man heard the scream? Was he there in the blackness just behind them? They didn't know. They blundered on. Walking. Making little attempt now to be silent. Just moving as fast as they could. Away from what they hoped was behind them, but for all they knew might be in front, to the side, within arm's reach, about to leap, about to strike. They walked so for two hours and nothing happened. When they stopped all they could hear were the noises of the night, the wind in the she-oaks, the insects of darkness, the scuttles of the small creatures who inhabit the desert.

They came to a strange, silent place. A collection of boulders and low rocky outcrops lay like the ruins of some ancient temple among the trees. Clearly visible in the bleached moonlight, each rock face was covered with Aboriginal paintings, white and red on the brown stone.

Shaw and Katie walked, their bodies sometimes touching, half leaning against one another, through the gallery of painted rock. There were paintings of men, fish, birds, beasts of every type. Ghostly white and yellow hands, the imprints of the ancient artists, fluttered motionlessly around the animal shapes.

Shaw and Katie walked through the place in silence. There was something not so much of hostility but indifference in the atmosphere. The paintings seemed to declare that they had nothing to do with these people, that the paintings themselves were the inhabitants and these strangers were of no consequence, should not be there, would not be there for long.

There was something alive ahead. A mass of living things. Recumbent, then stirring. Then standing, and in the moonlight a tapestry of curved horns. A herd of goats, feral descendants of long-forgotten flocks, was in front of Katie and Shaw. The bland evil faces of the long-haired beasts turned as one towards the humans, contemplated them without alarm.

Katie and Shaw stopped. They didn't know whether or not the goats were dangerous. They were huge animals and the males had long wicked horns. At some signal from their leader, the goats turned as one and trotted silently away into the night.

Katie and Shaw crossed the empty space where the goats had been. Still they did not speak. There was nothing to say. They paused under the overhang of an enormous solitary boulder. There was a painting. But this one was different. No hands, no kangaroos, no snakes or lizards. Two male figures were confronting each other on the rock face. One was much larger than the other. There were white lines around his head and face that could have been hair and beard. The smaller figure had something in its hands, possibly a stick or a spear. The other held above its head a weapon that was unmistakably an axe.

‘It's him,' whispered Katie incredulously.

‘It's an old painting,' said Shaw with a conviction he did not feel. ‘It's an Aboriginal painting.'

‘It's him,' said Katie again, staring fixedly at the painting. ‘It's him!'

And Shaw looked again at the strange painting and knew that he was looking at a depiction of whatever was following them.

‘It's an old Aboriginal painting,' he said again, savagely.

He pushed Katie with his shoulder. ‘Come on.'