Catherine Jinks TheRoad (64 page)

‘I can’t aim me gun unless the windows are open,’ she said. ‘On Alec’s side, as well as this one.’

‘For God’s sake, Del,’ Alec exclaimed testily, ‘watch what you’re doin with that thing!’ The barrel had clattered against the rim of the window as they hit a particularly nasty bump. ‘Is the safety on?’

‘’Course it is.’

‘Well don’t wave it around, I can’t see where I’m goin!’

He was sweating profusely by the time he made it back onto the track. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, he saw the dark shapes of the bodies sprawled on the road behind them, and Ross craning his neck to watch these shapes recede. Del, however, didn’t turn around.

Nothing ahead of Alec was at all familiar.There was quite a lot of mulga about, and some boxthorn. The road curved, disappearing behind a screen of foliage, and that made him nervous. But they were lucky. When Alec cleared the corner, he was confronted by an empty track, a distant gate, and the gleam of a roof at the top of a rise, half hidden by more boxthorn. The gate was

standing open.

There was no one about.

‘This is it,’ said Alec, his heart in his throat.

‘Keep goin,’ said Del, not taking her eyes off the hedge of scrub to their left. The station wagon crept forward. A crow flapped heavily skyward. Alec licked his dry lips, scanning the immediate vicinity for any other signs of life.

They passed through the gate and were plunged into a rubbish tip.

‘Fuckin hell,’ Alec whispered. It was sniper heaven. Great towering piles of rusty old farm equipment and fencing wire, disintegrating oil drums, punctured inner tubes, splintered window frames and broken furniture lay on both sides of the track. In between were patches of saltbush, some of them quite high and thick. Beyond this obstacle course, Alec could see the corner of a house; its blank windows stared at him through ragged flyscreens.

‘It’s deserted,’ said Ross, in a very low voice.

‘Watch our backs, Ross,’ Del warned.

‘Yes, all right. I know. But we won’t find anything useful here – it can’t have been lived in for a fair while.’

‘Whaddaya mean? There’s nothing wrong with it.’

Something about her offended tone made Alec wonder what
her
house was like.This one,he decided,was worse than his dad’s. Feral country. He noticed, however, that there was a telephone cable attached to it. The cable swooped across the driveway and over a peppercorn tree before clearing the fence and heading west, towards the highway.

It didn’t follow the track.

‘They’ve got a phone,’ he said.

‘Yeah. I can see that.’

‘Look!’ Ross squawked. Having rounded a pile of junk that seemed to consist mostly of bed springs and firewood, they finally had a clear view of the house and the outbuildings beyond it. They were also diagonally opposite the peppercorn tree.

Alec instantly recognised the car that had fetched up against its sturdy trunk.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he gasped, slowing to a halt. But Ross was pointing at something else.

‘There!’ he said. ‘There!’

‘Don’t lose the plot, mate,’ Del remonstrated. She was glancing around, paying particular attention to the house. But Alec was sure that she had spotted the body near the garage. How could she have missed it? He swallowed, and swallowed again.

His hands were trembling.

‘All right, keep goin,’ Del ordered. ‘Do a lap round the house. There’s a track, see?’

‘What about the ...?’

‘First things first. Three more minutes won’t make much difference.’

She was probably right, Alec thought. Whoever it was, there on the ground, he didn’t look too spry. There was a lot of dried blood, and the flies were busy. As they drew close to the spreadeagled body, and then passed it, Alec kept his gaze fixed firmly ahead. He couldn’t have seen much, anyway – he was on the wrong side of the car. Del and Ross did the looking for him.

‘Oh dear,’ said Ross, faintly. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Poor bugger,’ Del murmured.

‘Oh Christ.’ In an effort to steer clear of the Land Rover, Alec hadn’t been able to avoid glancing at it. Through the open front passenger window he had glimpsed the windscreen, which was frosted and cracked, and caked with sprays of thick blood. Crawling along, Alec was treated to a slowly unfolding scene of carnage as they drew level with it.

‘Oh, my God,’ he whispered, tears springing to his eyes. Chris had been shot in the head. His body was slumped over the steering wheel but his brains had been blown across the shattered windscreen. There were fibrous clumps ...trailing gobs . . .

‘Oh Jesus,’ Alec hissed.

‘Keep goin.’ Even Del sounded disturbed; her voice was a croak. ‘Don’t stop, for God’s sake. Ross,
watch the house
.’

‘He’s dead,’ Alec groaned. ‘He – he has to be –’

‘Yeah. There’s not much we can do for
him
.’

They left the peppercorn tree behind. Alec had to rub his tears away with one hand, swallowing his panic. Ross was breathing in little gasps. Del, who had been aiming her gun at the dark and yawning entrance of the garage, now pointed it at a tumbledown shed that could have been a pen, or a coop. Alec didn’t spare it more than one glance, but Del said: ‘Dead dog, here.’ A pause. ‘I think. Dog or pig.’

‘It’s a slaughterhouse,’ Ross whispered.

‘Not too slow, Alec. Not yet.’

Alec obliged. Shock always caused him to slow down, but now he shifted his foot from the brake to the accelerator, and the ride became more bumpy. They turned before hitting the fence, followed a pair of tyre tracks around the back of the garage, and finally passed the house again. From the east, it looked inhabited; there were dog bowls, a peg basket, a pair of child’s thongs . . .

‘Look!’ Ross yelped. ‘Oh my God.’

‘What?’ Alec had been keeping his eye on the route ahead. ‘What is it?’

‘Stop the car,’ Del groaned.

‘Now?’

‘Stop it.’

Alec braked. He didn’t understand. They were easy targets – he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary . . .

‘A child,’ said Ross.

‘Eh?’ Alec looked around. ‘Where?’

‘There must be a kid somewhere,’ Ross explained. ‘Those shoes ...on the backsteps . . .’

‘I’ll send Mongrel out,’ Del announced, with an air of decision. All at once she sounded urgent – alarmed. ‘See if he can smell anything.’

‘You mean we’re stoppin?’ Alec asked. ‘Here?’

‘Good a place as any.’

‘But what about . . .’ Alec waved his hand, unable to form the words ‘Chris’ and ‘Graham’. His gesture, however, spoke volumes.

‘We’ll get to ’em later. There might be a kid.’ Del reached back, straining. She pushed open a rear passenger door on the right hand side. ‘Gorn. Mongrel. Bad man. Bad man,’ she barked. Mongrel uttered a yip in response. There was a rush of furry limbs and a blast of warm dog-breath, and suddenly Mongrel was out of the car.

‘But what if there’s someone around?’ Alec protested.

‘If there is, we’ll see ’im from here,’ Del replied. ‘Look at the scrub out back, there. Wouldn’t hide a mouse. Ross can watch the garage, you can watch the north end, and I’ll watch the house. Easy.’

‘I don’t think this is wise,’ said Ross.

Alec said nothing. He sat with his fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, his eyes smarting, his heart beating like a hammer in his throat and temples. Everything was so real – the stabbing glare of sunlight on chrome, the texture of the unravelling upholstery, the smell of dust and petrol and Del’s BO

– but it had to be a nightmare. It had to be. It couldn’t be happening.

Mongrel strayed across his line of vision, nose to the ground. Then the dog circled back again, still pursuing a scent. He had a lazy kind of droop to his back, an easy shuffle, a floppy tail. He didn’t look too nervous, Alec thought.

Alec was nervous. He was practically peeing himself. Any minute, he expected to hear the crack of a shot. A scream. A bark. But the silence stretched on and on.