The Road

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘To the scene of the crime? Is that likely?’ Linda protested.

  ‘They might have left something,’ came Verlie’s querulous contribution. ‘Something that might identify them. It’s possible.’ ‘The kid,’ said Del.

  There was a pause – perhaps the faintest murmur. When his mum said, ‘What?’, Peter realised that someone else had been speaking, very quietly.

  It turned out to be Alec.

  ‘I said, there’s no one gunna move those bodies,’ he declared. ‘No way. They’d fall apart. They’re goin off. The whole place smells bad.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Verlie exclaimed, reproachfully.

  ‘Well, there you are, then!’ There was a note of triumph in Linda’s voice. ‘What good are they going to be to the police anyway, if they’re so badly decayed? We might as well move them.’

  Verlie uttered another feeble remonstrance. Alec advised Linda that she could move the corpses, if she was so keen on it; she might think differently when she actually saw them. Noel pointed out that the question of whether or not anyone should take up residence at Thorndale was secondary. The most important consideration for them now was what they ought to do in an attempt to extricate themselves from the unfortunate impasse into which they had apparently strayed.

  ‘Should we keep driving?’ he asked. ‘Should we head north, or south? Should we wait here by the road, in case the police are alerted and come down this way? What’s the consensus on this?’

  A long silence followed. Peter was eager to hear what the others had to say in response to his father’s query, but at that moment Rosie claimed his attention. She wanted him to put a cross in one of the boxes she’d drawn, then began to wail when he did. Not that box, she objected. That was her box!

  ‘But there’s nothing in it,’ Peter contended.

  ‘I wanna use it next! For my circle!’

  ‘Well don’t wet yourself,’ Peter said crossly. ‘I’ll rub it out. There.’ He expunged the offending cross with the sole of his shoe, while Rosie watched, sniffing. When he had finished, she pointed.

  ‘You can put yours there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘It’s not making a line, though. We both have to make lines.’

  ‘But I want you to!’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Peter heaved a great sigh and surrendered. He wasn’t going to argue. He didn’t have the energy. ‘There. Okay? Happy?’

  ‘And there. And there.’

  ‘Rosie, it’s your turn. Not mine.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She started to trace a circle in the dust, while Peter strained to hear the adults. It was difficult, because they had lowered their voices again. He only caught the odd word: ‘help’, ‘road’, ‘position’. The minutes ticked by. The murmur of conversation rose and fell, like the sound of waves on a beach.

  Peter flapped a persistent fly away from his lip and let Rosie win three games of noughts-and-crosses. When he finally glanced at his watch, he saw that it was eleven fifteen; Louise had been in possession of the walkman for half an hour.

  Damn, he thought, knowing that the batteries were bound to go flat soon.

  ‘Peter.’

  Peter jumped. Noel had stuck his head around the corner of the caravan. He apologised for frightening his son, though not for disturbing Rosie – who hadn’t even noticed him, so intent was she on drawing up another grid.

  ‘We’re going to have lunch now. Mum wants you all to wash your hands,’ said Noel.

  ‘Lunch? Now?’

  ‘An early lunch,’ Noel amended. ‘Del’s brought some bread and butter and things, so we’ll be able to have sandwiches.’

  ‘And then what?’ Peter inquired, straightening. He looked his father in the eye. ‘What are we going to do after that?’

  Noel hesitated. After a moment he gently took Peter’s arm and led him back around the corner, out of Rosie’s hearing.

  ‘I know you must be worried,’ Noel began, quietly. ‘It’s a very odd situation.’

  ‘Are we going back to that place? Where the people were shot?’

  Noel raised his eyebrows. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, before turning back to Peter and shaking his head.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Dad, could we be in a temporal loop of some kind? Could it have something to do with UFOs? Or – like – some kind of government research? A secret research facility?’

  Noel blinked. ‘UFOs?’ he repeated. ‘Oh . . . well . . .’ He uttered a breathy little laugh, but he looked hunted. Peter knew that look. It was the same look he always saw on his father’s face when Noel was in a hurry, or when he was trying to avoid plunging into some hugely complicated explanation. ‘I don’t think so, Peter . . .’

  ‘Then what is it, do you think? What’s happening?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ The caravan lurched – signalling that someone (probably Verlie) had climbed into it – and Noel pulled away from its swaying wall. ‘What we’ve decided to do is find a road that leads off the highway, and see if it takes us to another property,’ he said. ‘Not Thorndale, obviously, but some place where we might find a working phone. Since we can’t seem to get to Broken Hill, or Mildura –’

  ‘You mean all of us? All of us will do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Noel ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s awkward, because we don’t have our car. We’ll have to see what everyone else decides. What the petrol situation is. That kind of thing.’

  ‘But what if there is no other property? What if we can’t even find another road? And suppose the police come down here, looking for us, like you said?’ Peter could think of a million objections to this latest plan. ‘Shouldn’t somebody stay here, just in case? What direction will we be going in, anyway? I don’t remember seeing anything after Thorndale, do you? No roads or mailboxes or anything. And we can’t seem to get any farther than this –’

  ‘Please, Peter.’ Noel raised his hands. ‘It isn’t all settled yet.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Let’s just go and have lunch, hmm? You must be hungry. We’ll talk about it over lunch.’

  They did talk about it, too. They talked about it long and hard, all of them, as they ate salted peanuts, Devon-and-tomato sandwiches, tinned asparagus, water biscuits, apples and muesli bars. They argued vehemently about whether someone should wait by the road, and if so, who; whether the petrol should be distributed fairly between two cars, or preserved for Del’s Ford, so that it could travel longer distances; whether fuel should be wasted taking the kids back to Thorndale; whether, if someone did go back to Thorndale, it was really advisable to interfere with the crime scene; and who might have committed the crime, and why. What they didn’t talk about, Peter noticed, was the reason behind their unhappy state. They didn’t seem to want to dwell on the cause of their problem – just its possible solution.

  The trouble is, Peter thought, there might not be a solution if we don’t work out what’s happening first.

  He was about to suggest this when Mongrel twitched his ears and raised his head. Alec stiffened. The discussion died away as, one by one, every member of the group heard the whine of an approaching car.

  ‘From the south,’ said Ross. ‘Is it coming from the south?’

  ‘It might be those two,’ said Noel. ‘You know – those two we saw earlier.’

  ‘Georgie and Ambrose,’ Linda supplied. ‘God, I hope not.’

  ‘They could have turned back.’ Noel rose, in a distracted fashion, dusting off the seat of his shorts. ‘They might have worked out that something was wrong.’

  ‘There,’ said Alec.

  They had been sitting around on eskies and camp stools, some on old towels, Ross behind the glove box of his own sedan. The sound of the oncoming vehicle brought them all to their feet; they sidled around the sedan and planted themselves at the roadside, waving. Linda yanked Rosie back again. ‘Peter! Louise!’ she cried. ‘Stay right away from the edge,
please, or you’ll get run over!’

  ‘That’s not Ambrose,’ said Noel, and Peter understood what he meant. The car in the distance wasn’t black, or dark blue. It was white. It was slowing, too – that was a good sign.

  ‘Hoi! Stop!’

  ‘Stop!’

  ‘It’s stopping. Look.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ someone muttered, as the vehicle pulled up behind Del’s Ford. Everyone rushed towards it. Peter saw now that it was a ute, a Holden, with a bullbar and mag wheels. Peter knew about mag wheels. Henry’s brother Simon talked about them a lot.

  ‘What’s up?’ An old guy wearing a baseball cap leaned out of the driver’s window. Under the cap, his hair was grey and wispy. ‘You had an accident?’

  ‘No,’ said Noel, but Del interrupted him. She pushed forward, hiking up her track pants. ‘Where’d you just come from – Mildura?’

  ‘That’s right. Mildura. At least, I did.’ The old man jerked his chin at the two people sitting next to him. Peering through the windscreen, Peter recognised one of them. It was that nasty woman with the nose stud. She sat with her knees up under her chin, trying to avoid the gearstick and handbrake.

  Georgie.

  ‘I can’t speak for these two,’ the old man finished. ‘I picked ’em up on the way. The other one too – bloke bringing up the rear, there. They all ran out of petrol.’

  Almost on cue, Ambrose popped his head over the top of the vehicle’s roof, and Peter realised that he must have been riding in the space out back – whatever it was called. The space with the tailgate, where you were supposed to load up furniture and things (not people). He wondered if it was against the law, to ride in the back of a ute like that.

  ‘Hello,’ said Ambrose, smiling feebly, whereupon Mongrel began to bark.

  At first, it crossed Peter’s mind that the dog might have been startled by Ambrose’s sudden appearance. Peter himself had been surprised by it, as he would have been surprised by a jack-in-the-box. So he ignored Mongrel, focusing instead on the old man, who was speaking again, more loudly this time, straining to be heard through Mongrel’s furious, full-throated barks.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve run out of petrol too,’ he said.

  ‘We have,’ Noel replied. ‘We all have.’

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ Del added. ‘Mongrel! Shuddup! No one can get through to where they’re goin. Where are yiz headed, anyway – Broken Hill?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the old man responded.

  ‘Well good luck, but yiz’ll need it to get there, on this road.’

  ‘What do you mean? It’s the Silver City Highway. It goes to the Silver City.’

  ‘Most of the time, yeah. Just lately, it hasn’t wanted to.’

  The old man frowned. Mongrel continued to bark. Del screamed at him again, in a power-tool voice that made everybody grimace and Peter’s teeth vibrate.

  ‘Mongrel, dammit, shut the hell UP!’

  The dog subsided – at least for a moment. The old man said, ‘I’m not sure I get your drift.’

  Noel sighed. ‘It’s hard to explain. It’s even harder to believe,’ he said. ‘This gentleman here – ’ he gestured at Ambrose ‘ – he didn’t believe me either, when he passed us this morning. I warned him that he probably wouldn’t reach Coombah, and he didn’t, you see.’

  ‘Because he ran out of petrol,’ the old man offered.

  ‘After driving for how long?’ Noel inquired, and several pairs of eyes turned towards Ambrose, who smiled again, apologetically.

  ‘I’m – I’m not sure,’ he stammered. ‘About three hours . . .’

  ‘Eh?’ The old man struggled to turn in his seat, and addressed Georgie. ‘Three hours? I thought you said you came from Broken Hill.’

  ‘We did,’ Georgie replied.

  ‘You can’t have been going very fast then.’ The old man adjusted his baseball cap, as Noel pressed Ambrose for more details. If he and Georgie had been driving for three hours, then they must have driven for at least two hours after first encountering Noel and the others. So how long ago had they been they picked up? Fifteen minutes, at the most? In that case, couldn’t they see that something was wrong?

  ‘You drive for two hours,’ Noel said earnestly, ‘and then it takes this gentleman here –’

  ‘Col,’ the old man supplied. ‘Col Wallace.’

  ‘It takes Mr Wallace just fifteen minutes to get back to this spot. What does that tell you?’

  ‘I – I –’ Ambrose seemed lost for words. He didn’t look at all like the supercilious yuppie who had scooted off in his zippy little car a couple of hours before. The ride in the back of the ute had blown him about, leaving his hair on end and his face reddened. His linen jacket was creased and dusty, his mirror sunglasses were sitting crookedly on his nose.

  Georgie, on the other hand, looked pretty much the same. Her expression was a little sulkier than it had been, but she still seemed to be suffering from a headache, if her closed eyes and sagging posture were anything to go by.

  She was squashed between Col and another man, whose appearance suggested that he might have been stranded for a greater length of time than Ambrose and Georgie. He had a thin, grimy face, greasy dark hair and a scrubby jaw. His nose was crooked. Peter wondered who he was, but missed Col’s introduction because Mongrel distracted him. The dog was beginning to growl. He stood shifting uneasily from paw to paw, the growl rumbling in his throat as if he had a little outboard motor sitting in there. Peter couldn’t tell what he was looking at, exactly, because there were people in the way.

  Louise said to Peter, ‘What’s wrong with Mongrel?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t like that Georgie person.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Mongrel began to bark again, triggering a sudden, violent response from Del. She broke off her conversation with Col Wallace, strode towards her dog, and seized his collar. Then she began to drag him towards her car, as he yapped and whined and struggled.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Peter wanted to know, trailing along behind.

  ‘God knows,’ Del retorted. ‘Does this sometimes. Going senile, probably – he’s a pretty old dog.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t like that white car,’ Peter observed hesitantly.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe it hit a fox back there, and this one can smell it.’ With a grunt and a heave, Del forced Mongrel into the rear of her station wagon, slamming the door shut before the dog could come bounding out again. From behind the thick screen of glass, Mongrel’s bark was a good deal less piercing. ‘He’ll quieten down soon enough,’ Del declared. ‘Too lazy to keep goin like that for very long, the old bugger.’

  When they returned to the ute, Col was in the middle of a long speech about how he knew this road like the back of his hand, would be able to tell if anything was wrong, and intended to keep going.

  ‘What you’ve been telling me doesn’t make much sense,’ he went on, in a slow, slightly ponderous fashion, his voice creaky with age, ‘but I’ll take your word for it if I don’t hit Broken Hill in half an hour. Tell you what – I’ll believe you if I don’t hit the back road to Pine Creek in a few minutes.’

  ‘Back road?’ Ross said sharply. ‘Which back road?’

  ‘Isn’t there one goes back past Ascot Vale station, comes out down near the bridge?’ Col asked, cocking his thumb. ‘Dirt road. Through a few gates.’

  ‘Is there?’ said Noel.

  ‘Brother-in-law told me about it. Years ago. Never been down there myself,’ Col continued, whereupon Georgie suddenly remarked: ‘I have.’

  If she had ripped off her top, no one would have been more surprised. The fact that she had actually spoken was startling enough; the fact that she had contributed something useful was even more astonishing.

  ‘I’ve been down there lots of times,’ she said, her eyes still closed. She sounded bored. ‘When I was a kid.’

  ‘You from Broken Hill, love?’ Col inquired.

 
; ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Col shrugged, apparently unabashed by Georgie’s uncooperative tone. ‘I think you look like you come from Mars. No offence, but I’m a bit out of touch, someone my age.’

  To Peter’s surprise, Georgie smiled. At least, he thought she was smiling; it was hard to tell, with all the light reflecting off the windshield. But she certainly moved, opening her eyes and turning her head. Because she was crammed into such a restricted space, this was no small feat.

  ‘I am from Mars,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you noticed all the red dirt? This is Mars, and I’m a Martian.’

  ‘You’re right, there,’ Alec muttered, reminding everyone of his existence. Noel turned to him.

  ‘You’re a local, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Do you know about this back road up ahead?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Alec replied, almost sullenly.

  ‘Do you think we should try it?’

  ‘If we get there? Sure.’ Alec sounded flat, tired, discouraged. ‘But I’ve been keepin an eye out for a road since yesterday morning. Haven’t hit anything yet. Don’t expect to, either.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Noel. Col pointed out that the track couldn’t be more than ten minutes away, if that, and Alec snorted. Mongrel continued to bark inside the station wagon, the sound of it as regular and irritating as the dripping of a tap, the trill of a telephone, the parp-parp-parp of a car alarm. Ambrose was getting down from the back of the ute, slapping clouds of dust from his jacket. Noel and Del and Linda and Ross were clustered around Col (whose elbow was hanging out of the driver’s window) discussing the possibility of sharing out petrol, redistributing passengers, leaving the caravan behind. Alec stood a little apart, chasing the flies from his face. Verlie was talking to Louise. And Rosie . . .

  ‘Rosie!’ Peter exclaimed. ‘What are you doing?’

  She was digging in the dirt with a stick, and she was filthy. Her hands and forearms, her nose and knees, were smeared with some kind of reddish substance which looked like blood. Hearing Peter’s cry, Linda glanced over at her, and screamed.

  ‘Rose!’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Verlie gasped.

  Rose, who had been squatting, straightened up as her mother darted towards her. ‘What?’ she said, in a tone that was both bewildered and defensive.