They were travelling on the smell of an oily rag.
‘We can’t get left behind,’ Verlie quavered, and her husband immediately leaned on the horn. As Ross braked again, Alec scanned his surroundings, nervous of what might suddenly materialise. All he could see was the sandy ridge on one side and a stand of shaggy-looking eucalypts on the other.
He didn’t want to get out. He was scared of what might happen. The mute, enduring land was no longer innocent, in his eyes. It had changed. Once he had regarded it as passive but stalwart beneath the punishing sun, its slow energies directed at creeping renewal, its bedrock shaken and scarred by assaults on its secret stores of minerals. Once he had been able to pass over it unhindered, like the wind. He had felt detached from it. Unaffected by it.
Now he glared suspiciously at the waiting trees, the motionless earth, the hard, bright sky. Until recently, he had looked at them without really seeing, not fully conscious of their existence. He hadn’t felt that his presence was creating any noticeable shift in the air – that his own weight was being registered, somewhere, in the rocks beneath him.
Now he did. No doubt he was projecting his own fears onto the landscape, blaming it for a strange and terrible series of events which stemmed from some other (possibly extraterrestrial) source. But the fact was, he could have sworn that he was being watched.
‘They’re stopping,’ Verlie announced, with relief. Sure enough, Del’s car had bumped to a standstill up ahead. After a minute, it began to reverse towards them.
‘Closing the gap,’ Ross muttered.
‘I’m not getting out,’ Georgie shrilled.
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Ambrose. ‘What if our smell attracts them, or something?’ He looked around. ‘The flies, I mean.’
Then Del’s vehicle halted, just a hand’s breadth from the Harwoods’ bumper, and Del emerged from the driver’s side. She did it a with touch of bravado, but also with enough real confidence to impress Alec profoundly. Perhaps her courage was bolstered by the rifle over her arm. Whatever the reason behind her assurance, however, Alec envied it. He decided, then and there, that he would be sticking with Del.
Though she approached Ross, she didn’t look at him. Her gaze moved busily – jumpily – from the road to the ridge to the treetops.
‘What’s up?’ she asked, as Ross wound down his window a fraction.
‘Out of petrol,’ he replied.
‘Oh, bugger.’ Her drifting regard snagged itself on his face. ‘That’s no good.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I dunno. Think about it.’
‘Some will have to stay,’ said Ross, and Georgie exclaimed: ‘Not me! I’m not staying here!’
Everyone ignored her – even Ambrose.
‘We could set up camp,’ Del suggested, doubtfully. ‘Beside the creek.’
‘We’ll have to take a vote, I should think.’ Ross rubbed a hand across the weary contours of his forehead. ‘We might have to draw straws.’
‘Yeah. Right.’ Del frowned, suddenly. ‘But whoever stays here, I’ll stay with ’em. Me and Mongrel.’ She slapped the butt of her gun. ‘And me old mate Lee Enfield.’
It was at this point that Ross pushed his door open. Noel, Alec saw, was doing the same, shading his eyes as he surveyed the immediate vicinity for anything that might pose a threat.
When Ambrose tried to extricate himself from Georgie’s clinging embrace, Alec realised that he had no choice; he had to get out or reveal himself as a lower form of life than Ambrose (who was obviously too dense to be scared).
Reluctantly, he left the safety of the Harwoods’ back seat.
At last only John remained in the sedan with Georgie and Verlie.
‘So what are you saying?’ Ross was asking Del. ‘Are you saying you’d let someone else drive your car?’
‘No. I’m sayin yiz can have all me petrol.’
‘But wouldn’t everyone fit in your car, Del?’ Verlie’s voice had lost a good deal of its strength, but she strained to be heard from inside her car. ‘If we take everything out of the back, maybe . . .?’
‘Nah. Thirteen people? Not a hope.’
‘Are you sure? Because –’
‘Nah.’ Del shook her head. ‘Even if we could, I wouldn’t dump all our supplies. Wouldn’t risk it. Not now. Not after this.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Noel, and Del squinted at him, one eyebrow raised.
Alec was certain that her thoughts were the same as his.
‘We’ve been out here a whole day already,’ he reminded Noel. ‘Who knows how much longer we’re gunna be stranded?’
Noel looked startled. ‘Oh, but surely – I mean, there must be a station nearby –’
‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ said Del. ‘We can’t be certain, though, can we? Not any more.’
‘That’s right.’ Alec wholly concurred. ‘Who says we’ll ever get out?’ It had occurred to him, in a flash of insight, that there was a certain coherence to the events that had overtaken them. Each one, considered separately, made very little sense. Together, however, they suggested that an invisible, intangible fence was being erected around them.
‘Oh, Alec.’ Noel’s tone was reproachful. ‘We won’t get anywhere with that attitude.’
‘Says who?’ Alec’s temper flared. ‘What makes you so goddamn smart all the time?’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Ross. ‘Let’s not fight, it’s not helpful.’ He ran his hands through his silvery hair. ‘So who’s going and who’s staying?’
‘I’m stayin with Del,’ Alec declared flatly. He had weighed his options, and had decided that he would have a better chance if he stayed put. It seemed unlikely to him that anyone would get anywhere in the near future – and he wanted to remain close to the supplies. The supplies and the gun. ‘We’ve got enough food and stuff to last us a few days. And there’s bound to be water here, if we can find it.’
‘You don’t think it will come to that, do you?’ Ambrose protested. ‘I mean, surely someone will come looking for us . . .?’
‘Maybe,’ said Alec.
‘We’ll light a signal fire,’ said Del. She looked around. ‘Who else is goin?’
‘Me.’ It was Georgie. ‘And Ambrose, too.’
‘Which will rule out your family, Noel,’ Del frowned. ‘Whaddaya think? Is our top priority to get the kids sorted, or what?’
‘Our family can’t split up.’
‘I know.’
‘We can’t all fit in Ross’s car anyway. Not if the Harwoods are both going.’
This undeniable fact was absorbed in silence. Then Ross turned to Verlie, stooping, so that he could address her through the window of their car. ‘What do you think, darling?’ he inquired. ‘Do you want to go, or stay?’
Alec could see her face through the tinted glass. She looked pale and dishevelled – no longer the reassuring figure she had once been.
‘It depends on what you’re doing, Ross,’ she replied.
‘I’ll be driving. It’s our car.’
‘Then I’ll go with you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because if you go, the Fergusons can’t.’
‘Oh . . .’ Verlie’s expression was suddenly so agonised that Noel jumped in to reassure her.
‘It’s all right,’ he said quickly. ‘We’ll be fine, here. We’ll have Del’s car, in case anything . . . I mean, if we need proper shelter. It’s a big car. And there’s still plenty of food and drink. We’ll be fine.’
‘Okay.’ Del scratched her chin. ‘So that’s settled. Ross is goin, and Verlie, and Ambrose, and Georgie . . . who else? Anyone? Col?’
‘Me,’ said John. ‘I’m goin.’ His tone challenged anyone to disagree, but Del wasn’t one to be intimidated.
‘Col’s an older bloke,’ she pointed out. ‘He might be feelin the strain.’
All eyes swivelled in Col’s direction. He certainly looked the worse for wear. His flesh sagged, his che
eks were flushed with broken veins, he blinked nervously. But he offered up an unconvincing smile.
‘I’m fit,’ he said. ‘Really.’
‘Well I’m not,’ John declared, in his rough voice. When everyone gazed at him, he sucked in his cheeks. ‘Hypoglycaemia,’ he explained, after a pause.
‘Hypoglycaemia?’ said Noel.
‘Low blood sugar levels,’ John mumbled.
Studying that strained, bony face, Alec thought: Like hell you’ve got hypoglycaemia. But there was no way of disproving the man’s claim, not really. Although John might have been lying because he was scared shitless, he had them by the balls.
‘All right,’ Del sighed. ‘So it’s five to go and eight to stay. We’d better siphon off me tank.’
‘You’ll want to keep a little, though. Just in case,’ said Ross.
‘Yeah, yeah. We’ll sort it out.’ Del lifted her head and scanned the treetops, eyes narrowed and teeth bared. ‘No signa them flies.’
‘No.’
‘Good job I brought me Mortein along.’
‘Insect repellent?’ asked Noel. ‘You have insect repellent?’
‘’Course.’ Del cracked a reluctant grin. ‘Can’t leave home without it.’
Then Alec, who had been staring dully at the rough, tufted surface of the slope across the track, noticed something peculiar. There were ants pouring from a crack in the earth – pouring like liquid. They were shiny red ants, thousands moving as one. He saw them seeping from one crack, then another, then another.
‘Come on,’ he said abruptly. ‘Christ, let’s do this!’
CHAPTER 16
It was past two when Ross and Verlie finally headed south in their dusty sedan. With them were John, Georgie and Ambrose. Verlie had been entrusted with a plastic bag containing a bottle of lemon squash, a flask of water, a packet of biscuits, a tin of condensed milk, and most of a chocolate bar. The boot of the Nissan had been emptied of all but the Harwoods’ suitcases, and its tank topped up with petrol.
Ross wouldn’t run the air conditioner, because it ‘ate up so much power’, but he did allow Verlie to try the radio. As ever, it emitted only static. So they bumped along in silence, because no one in the car was keen to talk.
Verlie was absorbed in her own reflections. She felt absolutely dreadful: stiff, dazed, washed out, headachy, and above all, scared. Perhaps if she had been in a healthier, clear-headed state, she would have been even more scared, for she was aware that something unearthly had taken place. That figure of flies – it had been a waking nightmare, an unnatural occurrence. A warning of some sort. But she was so tired and fuddled that the edge had worn off her fear. Her state of mind alternated between acute anxiety and flaccid peevishness. As the minutes passed, and nothing alarming overtook them (no swarms of flies, no malevolent road kill, no creeping tide of ants, such as that which Del had stopped with an extended squirt of insect spray) her taut nerves began to relax, a little. She subsided into the rhythmic jolt of the car’s progress, head lolling, eyelids drooping, knees swaying.
Outside, the trees had receded as they left the creek behind. Instead of being pinched between creek and ridge, the track was now ploughing its way through thick scrub: acacia, mulga, dead finish. Most of the bushes were quite closely spaced, and higher than the car, so that they formed a kind of hedge on each side of it. Verlie stared at the tightly packed spiny branches without really seeing them. Her thoughts, when not cloudy with fatigue, were with the Fergusons, back at Pine Creek. She didn’t like leaving the children. She felt guilty about it. If it hadn’t been for her, they would have been in the car, with Ross. They would have been safe from that thing – that swarm. Instead, they were now exposed on dry soil, huddled together with their picnic rugs and cooking pots and muesli bars, easy prey for whatever strange phenomenon might overtake them . . .
She reached for her handkerchief (a wisp of embroidered muslin) and dabbed at her eyes.
‘What is it?’ asked Ross.
‘Nothing.’
‘Have you taken your pills?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not far now.’
The scrub crowded in on them, becoming thicker and thicker until they were forced to wind up the windows. It scraped the paintwork, clawed at the wing mirrors, rapped sharply against the windscreen. Verlie began to wonder how long it had been since the last vehicle had passed this way. Surely the brush shouldn’t have been so intrusive, if the track was well travelled?
‘Bloody hell,’ said Ross.
‘What is this?’ asked Ambrose. ‘Have we taken a wrong turn?’
‘We couldn’t have.’ Ross was sweating. ‘There wasn’t any other road.’
‘Check the map,’ John suggested, gruffly. The map was draped across Verlie’s knees, but she found herself unable to concentrate on its hair-thin lines and minute printing. She had to pass it over her shoulder.
‘You look,’ she said faintly. ‘I can’t . . .’
Thump! Something hit the roof, and Georgie squeaked. Ross declared firmly that a thick branch must have snapped, and bounced off the nearest unyielding surface. Ahead, the space between the tyre tracks was sprouting large clumps of acacia, which made dreadful rasping noises against the underside of the car as it passed over them. Greyish foliage encroached on both sides, all of it heavily armoured with spiny leaves and jagged twigs. The scritch-scratch-scritch of thorns on metal was as irritating as the screech of fingernails on a blackboard. Verlie tried to shut it out by filling her mind with pleasant images: the climbing rose in her beautiful Sydney garden; the face of her granddaughter Lily; home-made butterfly cakes on Wedgewood Queen’s ware.
‘This isn’t the bloody road,’ John suddenly snapped. ‘It’s disappearin!’
‘Well you’ve got the map,’ Ross snarled in return. ‘You tell me where we are.’
‘How should I know?’
‘We should have brought along someone familiar with the area,’ Ambrose opined, in slightly accusatory tones. They were now pushing through a screen of branches, which slapped against the bonnet and dragged along the side of the car. The track was hugely overgrown. The scrub was as dense as brushwood fencing.
‘Perhaps we should turn around,’ said Verlie.
‘We couldn’t if we tried,’ her husband responded, and Georgie remarked, in a voice teetering on the edge of hysterical laughter: ‘We’re really not supposed to get out of here, are we?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Ross spoke so sharply that his wife glanced at him, knowing he was afraid. ‘It’s just a thicket! Look, it’s thinning already.’
‘There’s nothing marked on the map,’ John complained.
‘I told you, it’s all right,’ said Ross, and Verlie saw what he meant. The scrub was pulling back, like a curtain. Up ahead it stopped abruptly where the earth fell away a little, as if cut by a knife. There was a shallow depression, quite wide, and then more claypans, scattered between low and manageable clumps of saltbush. The car began to build up speed as it broke free of the clutching foliage. ‘We’re getting somewhere – that’s the important thing,’ Ross continued. ‘There are changes in the terrain. I’d be worried if there weren’t any –’
‘Aaah!’
Verlie’s scream was involuntary – she couldn’t help it, though she knew that Ross would be annoyed. The car had dropped, smoothly and suddenly, as if Ross had driven straight off a cliff. There was a bump (not a bad one) and then a strange sensation which Verlie couldn’t quite place. Ross, who had control of the vehicle, identified the problem almost instantly.
‘Oh, Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s a bloody bog!’
Verlie stared at him. ‘What?’
‘It can’t be.’ Ambrose began to wind down his window. Verlie did the same, and realised that Ross was correct. They had driven straight down into a muddy creek bed, which smelled appalling.
‘Oh! Oh dear!’ Verlie gasped, frantically winding her window up again – and just in time too. Because at that instant Ross revve
d the engine, and red mud splattered against the glass beside Verlie’s shoulder.
‘Oh!’ she cried.
‘Shh!’ Ross scowled at her. ‘Calm down, will you?’
As the wheels spun impotently, casting up sprays of mud, Verlie scanned the immediate area. She wondered: Is this Pine Creek? It didn’t look like Pine Creek – not like the Pine Creek they had crossed back near the ridge. It was narrower, with very few eucalypts clinging to its bank. It was also less clearly defined, with only intermittent growth and shallow slopes lining its edges. And most noticeably, it wasn’t dry.
On the contrary, though it wasn’t running, the creek was very damp indeed, its bed covered in an oozing mess of thick, red-and-yellow muck. Verlie couldn’t believe it. All around, the earth was as dry as chalk, but here there was moisture to spare. Why? Why here, and not back where they had originally crossed Pine Creek? Because back there the creek bed had been sandy, and here it was clay?
‘We’ve got to get out,’ said Ambrose. ‘We’re sinking.’
‘Hang on.’ Ross floored the accelerator again.
‘Stop it, ya moron!’ John shouted. ‘You’re makin it worse!’
The fact that Ross didn’t take exception to his passenger’s abuse, but instead dropped his forehead onto the steering wheel, made Verlie catch her breath in dismay. Before she could say anything, however, her husband had straightened and pushed open his door. A foul miasma immediately filled the car’s interior.
Georgie moaned.
‘Get outta the car,’ John said roughly, his own door now standing ajar, and gingerly placed one foot on the mud. When he shifted his weight, the foot sank quickly.
He pulled it out of the slop with a curse.
‘The longer we sit here, the worse it’s going to get,’ Ross declared. His choice of words was commanding – reassuring – but his voice was slightly tremulous. ‘Come on,’ he ordered. ‘Everybody shake a leg.’
‘I told you,’ Georgie whimpered. ‘I told you we’re not supposed to get out of here!’
‘Oh, shut up!’ her boyfriend hissed.
Gingerly, Verlie climbed out of her seat, and nearly fell as her feet slipped from under her. She managed to grab the door handle and right herself, horrified to discover the force of the bog’s suction. It was quite an effort to move each foot; the mud was like glue. What’s more, it was deep. She couldn’t brace herself on any kind of hard surface, although the morass grew denser as it went deeper, allowing her something of a foothold before it slowly began to yield.
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