The Road

by Catherine Jinks

  Graham pointed out that it was a long way to the truck – maybe an hour’s walk.

  ‘Someone ought to stay at the scene anyway,’ he opined. ‘Just to protect it.’

  ‘With what?’ Alec snapped. ‘A sharpened stick?’

  ‘You could borrow our jack or our hacksaw. Or what about this screwdriver?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Alec. He got out and slammed the door. Then he began to trudge westward, towards the highway.

  He didn’t look back to watch the Land Rover drive off in the opposite direction.

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘Okay,’ said Linda. ‘The next person who shows up, we hitch a ride with them. Even if we have to tie ourselves to their roof rack.’

  It was four forty-five, and they were all getting scared – genuinely scared. If help didn’t arrive soon, they would be spending a night in their car, on the open road.

  No one in the family wanted to do that.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Rose whined.

  ‘There’s nothing left.’ Louise nudged her sister. ‘Mum told you already.’

  ‘There’s Kool-mints,’ said Linda, ‘but you don’t like Kool-mints.’ She sighed, gazing out the window at Noel, who was stationed in front of the car. He stood shading his eyes, one hand on his hip. He was the lookout. ‘I’m sorry, Rosie-posie,’ Linda continued, ‘I know it’s nearly your dinner time. But we’ll be back at Auntie Glenys’s house soon, I promise.’

  Nobody reminded her that she had been making the same promise regularly for the last two hours. Rose wasn’t even listening. Louise knew better than to say something provocative at such a time. And Peter was reading The Stones of Amrach, which had helped him to keep his mind off their difficulties ever since his father had killed the engine.

  He was a fast reader, though, and he was getting close to the end. Just thirty-six more pages and he would be stuck without anything to do. Please, he thought – please God, don’t make me stay here all night with nothing to read.

  ‘I’m going to have a word with Dad,’ Linda declared, and got out of the car. The children stayed where they were, having already explored their immediate surroundings. There was a wire fence, a red ditch, some grass and a shredded fragment of tyre. There were a few low shrubs and various coloured pebbles. Rose had played with the pebbles for a while, but Louise and Peter had found nothing to amuse them outside the car.

  ‘This is so bad,’ Louise remarked fretfully. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ Peter replied, without lifting his gaze from his book. ‘If you were really starving, you wouldn’t be able to sit up and complain.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘I’m hot,’ said Rosie.

  ‘It’ll cool down, soon.’ Peter tried to be comforting. ‘As it gets darker, it’ll cool down.’

  ‘Oh, great,’ said Louise. ‘So we will be sleeping in the car.’

  ‘I doubt it. Somebody will come along.’

  ‘What happened to that man and that lady? Why haven’t they sent us help?’

  ‘It’s probably on its way.’

  Peter was attempting to reassure himself as much as Louise. He couldn’t understand why no one had turned up to rescue them. The more he pondered it, the crosser he became; the whole family could easily have fitted into that caravan. Who would have known? There weren’t any police cars along this highway.

  If there had been, they would have been back in Broken Hill by now – because police cars, he knew, were equipped with things like two-way radios.

  ‘Look!’ cried Louise. ‘What’s Daddy doing?’ She pointed at Noel, who was waving at something on the road behind them. They all turned, and peered over the top of the back seat. A car was approaching from the south.

  ‘Yay!’ cried Rose.

  ‘I hope it stops,’ said Louise.

  Peter remained silent. He watched the vehicle draw nearer, trying to work out what it was. Not a four-wheel drive – it was too low. His father was waving both arms; his mother too. They crossed his line of vision. Then he saw that the car was slowing . . . slowing . . . veering off the highway. It was an old-fashioned-looking vehicle, extremely beat up. One headlight was cracked, and mended with silver duct tape. There were dents all over its boot and bumper bar. It was also coated with dust and dried mud, but despite all this dirt, Peter could see that the car was multicoloured. Its roof was white, its bottom part was black, and the middle bit was pink.

  Weird, he thought, before he suddenly realised that the car was a station wagon. A station wagon! With only one person inside!

  Silver letters just above the wagon’s front grille spelled out ‘FORD’ over a four-pointed star.

  ‘Look,’ said Rose. ‘A dog. Can I pat it?’

  ‘Wait,’ Peter warned. The dog was in the Ford’s front passenger seat. Noel approached the vehicle from the other side, stooping to address the driver, who could have been a man or a woman – it was hard to tell. Linda hovered a few steps behind Noel.

  There was a murmur of conversation, a few expansive hand movements. The dog barked, and was given a mighty shove by its owner. Then Noel turned his head and addressed Linda, who joined him at the driver’s window. She began to smile and nod.

  ‘Mum looks happy,’ said Louise.

  ‘I think we’re in,’ said Peter.

  Sure enough, when Linda finally broke away and trotted towards them, her expression was encouraging. ‘Kids!’ she exclaimed. ‘Kids, we’re getting a lift! This lady is giving us a lift, isn’t that nice?’

  ‘To where?’ asked Peter, scrambling out of his seat. ‘To the house up the road?’

  ‘To Broken Hill.’ Linda wrenched open Noel’s door and yanked at the lever just inside it. The boot popped open. ‘Get whatever you want to take with you – we’ll be able to fit one suitcase.’

  ‘All of us and one suitcase?’ Peter was amazed. ‘Is there that much room?’

  ‘It’s a station wagon,’ Linda replied, adding: ‘Rose will have to sit on my lap. Go on, hurry. Don’t keep the lady waiting.’

  Warily, Peter approached the Ford. Noel was smiling and beckoning. When Peter reached him, Noel put an arm around his shoulder.

  ‘This is my son Peter,’ Noel said. ‘Pete, this is Del.’

  ‘Del Deegan. How ya goin?’

  She was quite old, Peter thought, and she looked a bit like a man. Her coarse grey hair was cut short under a sweat-stained Akubra. Her elbow was resting on the window sill – a fleshy, freckled, sun-spotted elbow poking out of a rolled-up shirt sleeve. Over the shirt she wore a black T-shirt, and over that a sleeveless knitted vest, which was unravelling at the seams. One of her front teeth was missing.

  Her voice was like a cockatoo’s.

  ‘You just hop in the back seat, darlin. Don’t mind Mongrel, he won’t hurt ya. Hello, what’s your name?’

  ‘Rose.’

  ‘Rose. That’s a pretty name. Pretty name for a pretty girl. Just chuck all that stuff in the back there, darl – Mongrel! Gidoudavit!’

  The seats inside the Ford were made of black leather, and they were coming apart. Stuffing protruded from their seams. The locks were little buttons like golf tees, sitting up high on the window sills. Peter said: ‘This is a really old car.’

  ‘Sure is,’ Del agreed. ‘It’s more’n forty years old.’

  Louise, who was sliding in beside Peter, opened her eyes very wide.

  ‘Wow,’ she murmured. ‘That’s really old.’

  ‘Not as old as I am!’ Del squawked, with a laugh. Peter, who had been throwing newspapers and cans of dog food and nuts and bolts and clutch cables over the back of the seat, saw that the space behind them was filled with blankets, boxes, plastic bags, more newspaper, and a fraying wickerwork dog basket. He asked if Mongrel slept in the car.

  ‘Yup,’ Del replied. ‘He’s my guard dog.’

  ‘But you’re not supposed to lock dogs in cars,’ Louise objected.

  ‘I don’t. I leave the windows open.’

  ‘But wh
at if someone gets in?’

  Del gave a snort. Mongrel, who was a big, brown dog with silky ears, panted at the children over the top of the front seat. Peter had never before seen a front seat that stretched across the entire width of the car. It meant – as he soon discovered – that you could cram more than two people in the front.

  ‘I can stick Mongrel right up the back, if ya want,’ said Del, when Noel had loaded the family’s smallest suitcase into the back of Del’s car, and wriggled in next to her dog. ‘Then yiz can put the little girl in here beside me.’

  ‘No, no. It’s all right,’ Linda replied quickly. ‘I’ve got her on my lap.’

  ‘Sure? Mongrel won’t mind. Well – he will mind, he’s spoiled rotten, but he’s too old to kick up a stink.’

  ‘It’s all right, thanks,’ Linda assured her. ‘Rose can use my seatbelt. It’s safer, I think.’

  ‘I don’t even have a seatbelt,’ Louise remarked, in a low voice, and Peter saw that it was true. His own seatbelt fastened across his lap, even though he was sitting next to the window.

  It was all very odd.

  ‘I hope our car will be all right,’ Noel sighed as they drove past the Nissan, which was sitting forlornly on the side of the road. ‘I don’t like leaving it, but we don’t seem to have much choice. Not if we want to get anywhere before dark.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be fine,’ said Del. ‘Y’won’t get people strippin it down for a day or so, and by that time yiz’ll be back here with petrol or a tow truck, no worries.’

  ‘Stripping it down?’ Noel echoed, staring at her in amazement. ‘You get people stripping cars that fast, way out here?’

  ‘My oath. Usually takes about six days. Two weeks at the most.’

  ‘Good Lord.’

  ‘Mum,’ Rose suddenly piped up. ‘What’s that thing on the back of the seat?’ She pointed.

  ‘That? That’s an ashtray.’

  ‘What’s it doing there?’ Peter inquired, and his mother shrugged.

  ‘People used to smoke a lot,’ she said.

  ‘That’s where I keep Mongrel’s little treats,’ Del warned, ‘so don’t open it up, or he’ll be all over ya.’

  Peter wondered about that. Mongrel looked very old. He had bleary eyes, and grey on his muzzle. He didn’t look like a dog with much energy.

  ‘Okay,’ said Del. ‘Off to the Big Smoke, eh? Broken Hill. Dja live there, Noel, or what?’

  The landscape flew past as the sun dropped slowly towards the horizon.

  The house looked deserted.

  Chris had pulled up just in front of the open gate, beyond which lay a yard full of junk. Between stretches of dry, beaten earth lay outcrops of twisted metal, cracked and weathered plastic, splintered grey wood. Except for a brand new aluminium garage, the structures inside the yard bore a strong resemblance to the piles of junk scattered around them. The sheds – even the house – appeared to have been tacked together out of scraps and offcuts.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ asked Chris.

  ‘Keep going,’ Graham replied. ‘Once around the house, just in case.’

  They inched forward, following the course of a roughly delineated driveway. It threaded through a jumble of collapsed coops and pens, broken furniture, rusty machinery. It skirted a pile of rocks, from which a saltbush sprouted. It widened right in front of the house, where three wooden steps led up to a battered screen door, standing slightly ajar. The front door, too, was open.

  ‘Should we go in?’ Graham asked doubtfully.

  Chris shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he murmured.

  They kept moving. Ahead was a peppercorn tree, not far from the garage. The Land Rover passed between these two landmarks, loose stones crunching under its tyres; by this time a foul smell had begun to penetrate the vehicle’s air vents, and Graham wrinkled his nose.

  ‘There,’ he said suddenly. ‘Look.’

  ‘What is it? Not –’

  ‘No.’ Graham pressed his face against the glass as they crawled past a bloated, blackish shape lying on the ground. It was the focus of a great deal of insect activity. ‘I think . . . It looks like it might be a dog.’

  ‘But it’s obviously been dead a while.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They swung around another small, dilapidated shed and began to head back in the opposite direction, keeping to the perimeter of the yard, plotting a course that took them behind the garage. Everything was very still. The back of the house cast a long shadow, which engulfed a water tank, a Hills hoist, a stretch of concrete. It didn’t reach as far as the abandoned car.

  ‘Look,’ Graham breathed. Beside a couple of fly-blown dog bowls lay a pair of tiny rubber thongs.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Chris. ‘Shit, Gray!’

  ‘Keep going.’

  They circled the house, narrowly avoiding a corner of the caravan that was attached to it. A crow flapped into the air, frightened by the noise and movement of the Land Rover, but nothing else stirred. The wire fence seemed almost to be straining under the pressure of the saltbush and acacia plants that were crowding against it, but inside the fence there was very little vegetation. Some yellow grass, a handful of shrubs, and the peppercorn tree.

  When they reached the front door again, Chris eased to a halt.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are we going in, or aren’t we?’

  Graham didn’t respond for a while. He surveyed the tortured shapes in the piles of rubbish, the piece of frayed tyre dangling from the peppercorn tree, the gleaming garage which screened the dog’s rotting corpse. At last he said: ‘I don’t know. It’s a bit creepy, isn’t it?’

  ‘The dead dog is creepy,’ Chris replied, and shrugged. ‘The rest is just . . . well, you know. Your standard fringe-dwelling junk heap. I’m surprised there aren’t more car bodies.’

  Suddenly a movement caught his eye. He squinted, frowning. Graham gasped.

  ‘Oh shit!’ Graham squealed. ‘Chris!’

  Someone was crawling out of the garage. One of its doors was standing open, revealing a dim interior, and a body was sliding out of the shadows on its stomach, using its elbows to propel it forward.

  Graham reached for his door handle.

  ‘Wait,’ Chris barked. He took his foot off the brake, allowing the four-wheel drive to roll forward a few metres before he applied pressure again. The moment he did, Graham leapt out.

  ‘Gray!’ said Chris. ‘Wait!’

  What happened next, happened very quickly. Chris’s thoughts were on the house – on the possibility that someone was watching them from the house, perhaps even aiming a gun at them. He reached behind him for the axe. At almost the same instant, the body on the ground reared up until it was kneeling. Chris had time to absorb the fact that he was looking at a man – only that – before the man produced from somewhere behind or beside him a heavy-looking rifle, heaving the thing against his shoulder in one laboured movement. He dropped his chin slightly. Graham spun around.

  ‘Gray!’ Chris screamed.

  The explosion jarred Chris to the very bone. In the second or so that it took him to recover from the shock, Graham fell flat on the ground, blood spurting from somewhere – Chris wasn’t sure where, because he had seen that the man was reloading, yanking at the rifle bolt, raising the sight to his eye again as he stepped forward.

  The gun was aimed straight at Chris.

  He had the presence of mind to reverse at top speed. But he wasn’t fast enough. The windscreen erupted onto his face, his shoulders – he had to close his eyes. Safety glass, and not much of it, but it still hurt. The jagged hole in front of him lay slightly to the left of his head, because the bullet had missed. It had missed! He registered this important fact at the precise moment that he backed into a screeching tangle of rusted oil drums and clawing steel springs. The Land Rover lurched and roared; Chris banged his head on the roof; the man strode towards him, reloading again.

  Without giving the matter a single conscious thought, Chris changed gears. He put his foot down an
d the Land Rover sprang forward – slowed – sprang forward. Something was caught underneath it, some rusty impediment. Chris had no notion that he was pleading aloud for help. Beyond the advancing gunman he could see his brother, all bloody, struggling desperately to raise himself. The rifle was aimed for the third time.

  Then the power of the straining engine was unleashed. The coiled wire or stabbing shard or knotted cord – whatever it was – suddenly broke. Ducking, Chris drove his vehicle straight towards the gunman, who leapt aside at the last second, his gun discharging harmlessly into the air. Chris glimpsed his brother straight ahead of him, an irregular shape broken up by the crazed and frosted windscreen. He spun the wheel and stamped on the brake, but there was too much momentum. Though he missed his brother, he hit the peppercorn tree.

  Whump!

  The air bag was deployed with a strange, tearing sound, almost suffocating him. Because he was wearing his seatbelt, he didn’t tumble out onto the crumpled bonnet. But he was winded and bruised by the seatbelt’s wrenching pressure; the pain in his neck made him retch, and temporarily blinded him. He struggled feebly, groping for the catch on his belt, pushing away the billows of inflated plastic . . .

  Then he heard a ‘click’ from somewhere near his right shoulder.

  Alec was listening hard for peculiar noises. It was so quiet that the crunch-crunch-crunch of his feet on dust and pebbles seemed as loud as a ‘Coo-ee!’. Trudging doggedly up the road, squinting into the sun, he strained to hear anything that might suggest an approaching vehicle or pedestrian. But the only sounds were the rasp of his breathing, the shuffle of his boots, the slop of mineral water inside his plastic bottle. Sometimes, far away, a crow would give voice to a mournful, dying wail. Sometimes the breeze would pick up and sigh past his ears. After nearly half an hour of walking, however, he had heard nothing to suggest that anyone was creeping after him, either on foot or in a car.

  It crossed his mind that he might be walking into an ambush. Though unlikely, an ambush was certainly possible – and he had kept a wary eye cocked while he crossed the creek, which was so well supplied with screens of mulga and river gum. Fortunately, though, he was now drawing away from that bushy stretch. He was heading towards the salt pan stretch, which was almost barren, and where a lurking sniper would be unlikely to find brush enough to conceal himself from a sharp-eyed target. Alec, too, would be exposed in such a landscape, but at least he would be able to spot any danger that might be heading his way.