* * *
Within moments of the shotgun blast, Hayley flicked on the Ute’s headlights and stepped hard on the petrol. She was alone in the cabin, gritting her teeth, preparing for the jolt. Beau the Bum was behind, standing in the tray, watching with greedy eyes as the little play left in the ropes disappeared and the scree of tires on bitumen began to fill the night. Across the way on the road's shoulder where Hayley'd ordered him to stand, Robert folded his hands and murmured a little prayer:
“Take it away, Lord. We do't wa't it here.”
And then, amidst a fanfare of smoke, shouts, screaming tires and distant gunfire, a section of the Folly, three metres by three metres of lapped Australian hardwood lifted away from its moorings and careened off, bumping and tumbling down the street.
The Traps
The Duke, on his journey through the darkened house, had reached the brink of panic and toppled well and truly over. The Duchess was down, possibly with a broken neck or brain damage. The security system had failed, there was a potentially demented dog loose on the premises and persons of unknown intent were at the gates. So quickly had the situation deteriorated that, though he’d long ago denounced all those who ever sought comfort in ‘the corrupt arms of government’, today during his dash through the house he’d pounded out triple oh at least three times on his Made in Malaysia cordless telephone.
“Where are you? Where are you?” he’d screamed into its impenetrable silence. “Emergency! Mayday! Man down! Where are you for God’s sake?”
Along the hallway, down the stairs and into the kitchen, half remembering but refusing to accept that a cordless phone without power is merely a dead weight of plastic.
He’d come almost to the exit without encountering Ava but her barking had made it clear that the back door, through which he must go to reach the circuit board, was where she waited. To his credit, he didn’t falter. The Duchess needed him, he needed to get the power restored and woe betide any one or thing that dared stand in his way.
And so it was that when Ava did finally appear in the light of his headlamp, bleeding messily from the torn stitches on her shoulder, snarling and snapping like a vampiric hound, all he was able to understand was that the door, beyond which salvation lay, was within his reach. It could not be denied him. Had it been otherwise, had he been able to compose himself even a little, he might well have used the shotgun’s second shell to spread Ava across the room like a bag of dog-jelly. It didn’t even occur to him. Instead, with never a pause, ridden hard by desperation, he bowled the cordless telephone at her and hurtled like a small wrinkled javelin, across the room in its wake.
The roar took Ava by surprise. But the phone, coming as it did from behind the Duke’s blinding headlamp, seemed to materialise in the air in virtually the same instant that it smashed and ripped into her eye. Her snarls turned to yowls of astonished agony, she tumbled like a wounded Dervish and the Duke, already winded and short of balance, tripped across her, opening her wound even further and dumping himself headlong into his triple-bolted reinforced door. The impact staggered him, dazed and amazed him, left a galaxy of stars spinning before his eyes. Only by instinct and sheerest determination did he remain upright, fumbling at the deadlocks, twisting the bolts and staggering woozily out into the blessed cool of the yard./
It was the one real triumph he would have in that night of failed dreams and plans. By all that was right and fair, he should have been in his command chair, sedately controlling defences; and he might, in his imagination, yet get back there. Realistically though, his breathing was pained, his heart was beating like a jungle drum and his head . . . from the impact with the door . . . felt like a cracked egg. And there was blood. Lots of blood. And confusion. What had he just come through? What had he survived?
It wasn’t that the circuit board was forgotten. Far from it. Only that the race he had just run seemed suddenly to catch up to him, like the wake of a stalled boat. He was surrounded! Behind was a twice-wounded, half-drugged, ungrateful, ravening mongrel dog, doubtless intent on ripping chunks from his inoffensive carcass. Ahead were unknown trespassers, half-glimpsed in the moment the camera array died. And who knew what sort of chunks they intended to rip out of him?
Despite the fact that he had fought his way out, the night seemed pitiless and defeat was clearly at hand. He imagined the poor, brain damaged Duchess suffering unspeakably foreign ravishments on the floor of the bedroom, while he . . . while he lay beaten and bloodied at the monstrously calloused feet of pagan devil-worshippers. The thought was dizzying. His head was ringing like a cathedral bell and blood was burning his eyes, his lips, his tongue. He wanted to weep! He wanted to fall to his knees and . . . !
But then the sounds, the enormous coming-apart sounds of the neighbourhood finally broke through to him. His immigrant neighbour’s incomprehensible shouts; a bellow of anguish from a voice that could only be Shoomba’s. The scream of tires and the grind of wood on bitumen. And strangely, all of that combined to give him hope. Listen, the chaos was saying to him. Listen! You’re not on your own here! The neighbours have risen up! They’ve rallied! They’ve fought back! And they’ll continue to! All they need is leadership! An uncompromising, unyielding example to follow!
It was then that he re-discovered the shotgun in his hand.
“Not,” he half sobbed, “’til the fat lady has no more shells in her chamber! Not while the author of LOCK and LOAD has a single functioning digit to his name!”
Drawing a deep slow breath, his heart a hair trigger of expectation, he forced himself into a slow turn, scanning with his little headlamp each corner of the yard. All around him the shadows leapt crazily and it took every ounce of his focus just to turn, let alone to interpret what he was seeing.
In the near distance, the steady, careful measured boom of pistol fire.
Neville the Less Page 71
