The image that it left seared on Alec’s retina was that of a man’s head and shoulders, just in front to his right, below Noel’s window: a craggy profile, a bent arm, an upthrust rifle, its barrel aimed at Noel’s head. Alec was still processing this picture as his own hand shot out. He was still thinking: That bastard must have crawled up to us on his belly, like a snake, as he drove his door open, towards the now unseen figure, a split second before the gun went off.
He felt the impact of the man’s body along his arm, then saw the quick, hot blaze and heard the retort. There was a shriek, and a sparkling shower of glass. It rained down on the shooter, who was struggling to regain his balance; Alec could see this because his eyes had recovered from the blinding effect of the lightning flash. He could just distinguish the shooter’s dense silhouette from the gloom beyond. He spied the swaying gun barrel.
Leaping from the car, he swung his hatchet.
The blade struck home. A terrible howl assaulted his ears, as if the parted flesh itself had cried out. Jarring against bone, the weapon was knocked aside with the movement of a whirling back and shoulder. Alec went for the gun. He could feel himself toppling, thrust off his feet by the force of his opponent’s lunge, and launched himself at the rifle. He grabbed it. He pulled it. Something smashed into his chin but he didn’t let go. He hit the ground, rolling.
There was a deafening explosion.
For an instant, time seemed to stand still. The blast had blown every thought clear out of Alec’s brain; it took a moment for him to gather them up again. His opponent too had frozen in shock.
The gun. It had fired.
Fired its sixth bullet.
Alec’s hands recognised its sleek shape and gleaming attachment even as it was yanked, convulsively, from his grip.
He saw the muzzle whip towards him, heard the ratchet of the trigger, smelled kerosene. It was a sensory avalanche, swamping him; his hands jerked up to fend off the swinging barrel. Crump! The pain shot from his wrist, radiating outward. But the noise that he heard was someone else screaming. He rolled again, away from the man with the gun, who was lurching up, who was hurling the weapon at – whom?
Noel?
It had to be Noel. Alec caught the gleam of his glasses. Thrown into dark relief against a glowing, reddish backdrop, Noel ducked to avoid the rifle, which traced a jagged arc through the air before striking the ground, bouncing, coming to rest. Noel threw something else in response – an empty bottle – but it never hit the fleeing shooter, ricocheting off a tree instead.
Noel. Alive after all. The first shot must have missed him.
By this time Alec was on his feet again, groaning from the pain in his wrist and his knee. He saw the man swerve around the back of the station wagon, his lanky outline blocking the firelight. John Carr. He was unmistakable, though one arm hung limp.
‘You fucker!’ Alec screeched, emboldened by a sudden and utterly transforming access of rage. He darted forward.
But Linda reached the man first. She came around the other side of the car and surprised him.
It seemed to Alec that everything slowed to a crawl – that the very gush of fluid itself lost so much momentum that every drop floated through the air like a bubble. An eternity seemed to pass before the kerosene collided with John Carr’s swivelling head and shoulders. Alec knew it was kerosene because he’d had ample time (or that was his impression, anyway) to pick out the glint of steel in Linda’s hand; to recognise the shape of the tin; to smell the clutching, chemical smell. And any doubts that he may have had were laid to rest when John Carr, propelled sideways by this surprise attack, tripped and fell into the fire.
It consumed him.
In a great billow of blue and white and orange flame, it enveloped him like water. Alec could have sworn that, for an instant, he was swallowed up entirely. Then black arms appeared, thrashing, and a blazing body staggered out of the conflagration, dragging it with him, stumbling, falling. Linda screamed. Alec screamed. Noel was shouting something – Alec didn’t know what – and the flames licked over the rolling body, jumping off onto dry tufts of grass where it writhed over them. Noel ran towards it, a blanket in his hands. (The dog’s blanket?) As he cast this woollen shroud over the croaking, shuddering shape at his feet, something happened that told Alec all he needed to know.
A blast of wind, gale-force and focused like a laser, tweaked the frayed blanket out of Noel’s hand and cast it, with an abrupt and furious roar, into the topmost branches of a nearby tree.
Alec didn’t even feel a breeze on his face.
Noel fell back. He was forced to, at that point, because the channelled wind was blowing flames in his direction. It fanned them, so that they leapt up exultantly, throwing sparks like fireworks into the sky – and it continued to do so until the jerking, cawing, burning thing on the ground became still.
Still and silent.
The smell hit Noel first, because he was the closest. He staggered backwards, coughing. Then Linda, who was crying, her hands over her mouth, began to cough too. When Alec caught a whiff, he thought he was going to puke; the stench was appalling, worse than anything he’d ever smelled, worse than the stench of all the road kill that he’d seen on the highway. Gagging, he retreated.
‘Come on!’ he choked. ‘Come on!’ There was smoke everywhere. Linda and Noel were clutching each other, their bodies shaken by spasmodic tremors. Someone in the car was wailing.
‘Come on!’ Alec screeched.
His wrist was sending flashes of intense pain up his arm, like molten metal through the veins. He realised this only as he limped towards the car; he had been heading for the driver’s seat before it occurred to him that he wasn’t in any condition to drive. So he screamed at Noel again.
‘Come on, you thick bastard!’
He wanted to get out. Out and away. He was so afraid that John Carr would climb to his feet, charred flesh dropping from seared bones. He was afraid that the fire might chase them, like glowing magma, or that the smoke might suffocate them, or the terrible smell disable them.
‘Wait! Alec!’ Noel’s cry was broken up by hacking coughs. ‘What about Del? We have to find Del and Col!’
‘We can’t!’
‘Alec –’
‘We can’t!’ Jesus! Alec couldn’t believe his ears. ‘We haven’t got a torch!’
‘But –’
‘How we gunna find her in the fuckin dark, with no torch?’
Finally, Alec’s fumbling fingers (the ones on his right hand, which didn’t feel as if they belonged to someone else) managed to release the catch on the Ford’s front passenger door. Alec flung himself inside. He felt safer inside, although the vehicle’s interior was filled with the sound of snivelling children. Glancing back at them, Alec said: ‘It’s all right. It’s gunna be all right.’
Tap, tap! Noel was now drumming one knuckle against Alec’s window. Backlit by the fire, he presented a grisly spectacle; Alec could just make out blood gleaming in his hair and on his right cheek – which seemed to be peppered with oozing sores.
Not shotgun pellets, thought Alec. Bits of glass. The glass got him.
‘What?’ Alec wound down his window, so frightened and furious that there were tears in his eyes. ‘Get in the car!’
‘We’ve got to find them, Alec.’
‘We can’t! I told you!’
‘We can. If we get a big branch, put the tip in the fire, it’ll act as a torch –’
‘And set the whole place alight!’
‘Noel.’ It was Linda who spoke. She had climbed into the back seat, to be with her children. ‘Noel, you’re not going out there. Not alone.’
‘Alec can come with me.’
‘And leave us here?’
There was a long, long silence, broken only by muffled sobbing. The terrible smell of rot, slurry, burnt flesh – whatever it was – had begun to penetrate the car. The children were coughing, now. Red smoke encircled them like fog, veiling the trees, the bushes, the night sky.
Noel straightened. He looked back over his shoulder, hesitating. Alec could see beyond him, in the firelight, the smouldering corpse on the ground, from which most of the smoke that encompassed them seemed to be issuing. John Carr’s body had been reduced to a blackened skeleton by an intense – perhaps unnatural – heat.
Alec turned his eyes away.
‘Please. Noel,’ Linda pleaded. ‘Let’s get out of here. We can’t stay here. Not with . . . with . . .’
‘With that,’ Alec finished.
‘But the fire . . .?’
‘It’ll burn out! It’s nowhere near anything!’
Still Noel hesitated, even as the smoke began to drift between them and the ghastly cadaver, blocking their view of it. Alec opened his mouth again. He was about to point out that if they didn’t leave soon, they wouldn’t be able to see a bloody thing, flaming torch or no flaming torch.
But he didn’t have to.
Instead, he was forestalled by the haunting, melancholy, drawn-out cry of a crow. Suddenly, in the night, a crow cawed in some unseen tree, and was joined by another, and another. A chorus of crows, moaning and squawking. Their harsh voices drifted down through the smoke – plaintive, piercing, inhuman.
For a moment everybody listened with bated breath. Then Noel scurried around to the driver’s seat and hopped in.
When his foot hit the accelerator and the headlights flared, the clamour of crows was superseded by a curious rushing noise, like the wind, or the sea, or the beating of ten thousand wings. It died away quickly.
And the smoke parted before Del’s sputtering Ford, which crawled clumsily towards the Oakdale track, leaving fire and blood behind it.
When Peter woke up, he knew where he was instantly. He was in the car – Del’s car – and he was stuck in the bush, on a track, exactly where they had ended up the night before when the petrol ran out. It was morning now, though. It was light. He could see through the window, though it was caked with dust and ash. Out there was a stretch of stony ground, topped by a fringe of yellow grass, and a swaying mulga, and a cloudy sky, and – what was that?
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the blast of static, and the chatter of an electronically processed voice.
A grim-faced man in a police uniform was leaning towards the driver’s window, knocking at the glass with one end of a big, black torch.
EPILOGUE
Ngurunderi built a fire and placed the body of the Evil One on top of it. As the body was consumed, many insects and birds were released.
Only then did he feel free.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catherine Jinks was born in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1963. She grew up in Papua New Guinea and later spent four years studying medieval history at the University of Sydney. She now lives in Leura, New South Wales, with her husband and daughter.
She is the author of many highly acclaimed and award-winning novels including The Gentleman’s Garden and Spinning Around.
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