Ragged Man (2 page)

“
Someone’s coming,” Rick said.

“
Who could it be?” She followed his pointed finger with her eyes, saw a slow moving cloud of dust coming toward them.

“
Beats me.”

A few minutes later a vintage Jeep stopped alongside the stricken Land Cruiser. An old Aborigine was driving. Sitting next to him was an even older looking woman, obviously not well. The old man had a weathered, wrinkled face that spoke of great sadness. His silver hair, reflecting the sun’s glow, gave him an angelic appearance.

“
Can we help you?” Rick said.

“
Yes you can.” The aging Aborigine got out of the open top Jeep, taking every step deliberately, stiffly. “My wife is dying.”

“
What can we do?” Rick asked.

“
Bury us.”

“
I’d rather go for help.”

“
I wish you could, but our time has come.”

“
You said your wife was dying?” Ann said.

“
I won’t live long after she goes.”

“
How do you know?” Ann said.

“
I know.”

“
What can we do?” Rick asked again.

“
Help make her comfortable.”

Ann walked over to the passenger side of the Jeep. The door handle was hot to the touch, but it was more than just the heat that gave her a slight start as she grabbed it.

“
Is there anything I can do to help you?” She asked.

The old woman opened her eyes and Ann looked into dark brown pools that spoke of a youth trapped in a decaying body.

“
My time has come, child.” She smiled, saying it with a thick Australian accent.

“
How can you know that?”

“
Take my hand.” She had a firm grasp that turned Ann’s knuckles white, then the old woman’s grip went slack.

“
She’s gone,” Ann said, tears welling up. “I don’t understand.”

“
You can bury us off the road. There is no need to mark the graves.” The old man grasped Rick’s hand, then collapsed. True to his word, he was gone too.

“
What’s happening?” Ann said.

“
I’m not sure, but I feel as if we should do what he asked.”

“
We don’t even know their names,” Ann said.

“
We have to bury them.” Rick kicked up sand as he walked to the rear of the Toyota.

“
We can’t just dig a hole and cover them with dirt.”

“
What else can we do?”

“
Go and tell someone.”

“
That would be wrong.”

“
How do you know?”

“
I just know.” He started unloading the car, pulling out the spare tires, tool chest and the tent before he came to the shovel.

“
We can never tell anybody about this, can we?” she said.

“
No, I don’t think so.” He sighed. “We’re through with the Toyota. Get what you think we’ll need and put it in the Jeep.”

He took twenty paces off the road, far enough that the bodies would be left undisturbed by the rare passing car, and started to dig into the dry, hard ground.

Ann finished unpacking the Toyota, taking out the emergency water, food rations, sleeping bags and their backpacks. She left the tent Rick had unloaded on the ground and put the rest into the back of the Jeep. Then she went over to Rick.

“
Let me take a turn at the digging. I don’t want you to have a heart attack and die, too.” Ann, only a year younger than his forty-eight, was in much better shape. She ate better and did aerobics four or five times a week to keep up her figure.

“
I’m going to get some water.” He gave up the shovel. “Want some?”

“
It’s in the Jeep,” she said, “and bring the tent when you come back.”

“
What for?”

“
We’re going to wrap them in it. We can’t just throw dirt on them. It isn’t right.”

He walked the distance back to the car and Ann saw that he was done in. His heavy breathing told her that two months of swimming twenty laps in the pool every day to get in shape for the race hadn’t made up for twenty years of meat, potatoes and prime time television.

She dug steadily for fifteen minutes, till he spelled her, then she dug again. It took two hours before they had a two foot grave. Another two, before they reached four feet, when they called it quits.

Ann lined the grave with their two man tent and smoothed it out so no dirt would touch the bodies. After she was satisfied everything was in order, she motioned for Rick to go and get the old man. He carried him like a child and with Ann’s help, they lowered him into the ground.

“
I’ll go and get the woman,” he said.

“
No, let me.” Ann got up and went to the Jeep, wondering if she’d be able to do it. She had expected the woman’s skin to have the clammy feel of death that she’d read about in the Ken Douglas thrillers she liked to read, but it didn’t. This old woman seemed to be resting, at peace, not dead.

She slid her arms under the body and carefully lifted her out of the Jeep. She was so light, so old and so comforting. All of Ann’s doubts about whether or not they were doing the right thing vanished as she carried her to her final resting place and laid her beside her husband.

“
They look so peaceful,” she said.

“
They do,” Rick said.

“
Let’s do it.” She knelt and wrapped the tent around them.

“
Yeah.” Rick started to cover them with dirt and sand and gradually their wrapped bodies disappeared from view.

“
I hope we live up to you,” Ann said when he finished and was patting down the top of the grave.

“
Why did you say that?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Let’s go,” he said.

“
What about our car?” she asked. “If they find it, they’ll find them.” She pointed to the fresh mound of dirt.

“
With a little oil it’ll make it back to the race course. We’ll leave it there.”

* * *

Three hours later they were driving about twenty kilometers an hour over dry cracked ground, when Rick saw a pack of dingoes loping off in the distance. Although they were bundled well against the cold that comes with the night in the desert, the sight of the animals gave him a chilly, uneasy feeling.

During the race they had seen several of the wild dogs, but these were different, they seemed somehow menacing. Rick felt an electricity in the air and sensed that Ann felt it as well.

“
Look!” she said. “They’re running along with us.”

He picked up the speed to thirty-five K. The wild dogs followed suit. Forty-five K and the dogs sped up as well, getting closer. He could imagine a point up ahead where they would meet. He turned right, away from the intersecting dogs on their left, and wondered how far off the road they were.

Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the dogs turn to follow, but they didn’t appear to be gaining. He wished he could go faster, but he didn’t want to take the chance of hitting one of the sharp rocks that peppered the dry ground. A flat he didn’t need, but a flat he got.

Slowing, he was surprised to see that the dogs maintained their distance. And when he stopped the car, the dingoes stopped their pursuit, keeping a football field’s distance behind, fading into the shadows of the sunset.

He didn’t relish changing the tire and the biting desert evening would normally be enough for him to set up camp on the spot. He probably would have built a fire, made coffee, eaten and changed the tire in the morning. He was out of the race now. However, with the wild dogs so close in the shadows, it seemed best to get the spare on and get away before dark.

Keeping his eyes on the predators behind, he shut off the ignition, put on the emergency brake, jumped out of the Jeep, grabbed the jack and tire iron and unbolted the spare. His fingers burned with the cold as he loosened the lug nuts, while Ann jacked the car. They replaced the tire with race speed, then they hopped back in the Jeep. Rick cranked the ignition, popped the clutch, hit the lights and they sped off.

Once they started moving, the dogs started moving too. Fuck the rocks, he thought. He wanted to be back on a road before the sun faded altogether.

“
They’re gaining,” Ann said.

“
Don’t worry, honey, they can’t catch us.” He hoped he was right.

He shifted into second, picking up speed, then into third and felt a surge of relief when the lights played over a road ahead. Keeping it in third, he turned a hard right onto the smooth dirt track, shifted into fourth and left the wild dogs in the distance.

Thirty minutes and thirty kilometers later, they were sitting by a campfire, watching flames leap into the night.

“
I wasn’t scared,” Ann said.

“
I know,” he answered, but he thought maybe she was, a little. He certainly had been.

“
Come over here, Flash.” She patted her sleeping bag. She only called him that when she wanted to make love.

“
Now?” he smiled. “In the middle of the desert?”

“
I can make all the noise I want,” she said. “Nobody to hear.”

He rose and put more wood on the fire. “All the better to see you with,” he said as he watched his wife remove her clothes, down overcoat, sweat shirt, tee shirt, bra and Levi’s.

“
Come on over,” she said, clad only in sheer cotton panties.

Eagerly he closed the distance that separated them and embraced her, marveling, as he had many times in the last twenty-five years, at the large breasts pressed against his chest and the firm body he encircled with his arms.

* * *

Ann raised a hand, brushed his hair aside and ran her tongue along the length of the scar behind his left ear. She knew that drove him crazy. It was odd that a scar left by a bullet that could have put him in a body bag, turned out to be one of the most sensual places on his body.

“
Wait!” he said. “I think something’s out there.”

“
I don’t hear anything.”

He held an index finger to his lips and they listened.

“
Whatever it was, I think it’s gone,” he said after about a minute.

“
I’m glad.” She thought about picking up where they’d left off, but the mood had passed. Then she raised the wrinkles on her forehead, the way she always did when about to ask a serious question. “Do you think about what it’s going to be like not having to work anymore?”

“
I try not to, but sometimes I can’t help it. I’m going to miss it.”

“
But it’s what we’ve worked for all these years, so that we could quit when we were still young. It’s why we took all those chances.”

“
I know, but it was exciting. We traveled a lot.”

“
We’ll still travel,” she said, “and we won’t be looking over our shoulders all the time or worrying if the phone is tapped. We’re free now, nobody’s after us anymore.”

“
I know you’re right and I hate myself for wanting to get back into it,” he said. She saw him tense up. “Ann, move over by me!”

“
There is something out there, isn’t there?”

“
Yes.”

“
Is it the dingoes?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Are you sure there’s something there?”

“
I’m sure.”

“
Oh, my gosh!” Ann saw the glowing eyes and dog shapes at the edge of the firelight. “The dingoes found us,” she said.

Rick stood in time to block one of the animals as it raced toward the fire. He placed himself between the wild dog and Ann, taking the animal’s flying charge. The dog closed its powerful jaws on Rick’s arm, dragging him down. He hit the ground hard and was knocked unconscious, blood spilling from his forehead. The animal shook him for a few seconds, before releasing him and returning to its companions in the dark.

Ann sat, still as death, by the fire, staring unblinking at five pairs of dingo eyes, limpid pools of red, reflecting the fire’s glow. She wanted to go to Rick, see if he was okay. She wanted to crawl into her sleeping bag and hide. She could do neither, she was frozen, dead still.

A scream roared out of the dark, tearing into her soul, but still she couldn’t move, other than to wet her pants. Another scream, closer, so close it shook her body as well as the night. Another roar rocked her as something leapt over the dingo dogs, landing in the fire. It spun around, a miniature tornado, shaking flames and embers as a wet dog does water, eventually coming to a stop, standing still in the middle of the flames, front paws resting on a blazing log.

She could feel its breath, smell its hate, see its gaping mouth with canine teeth that were unnaturally long. The animal was huge, big, black, powerful and somehow beautiful. Beautiful and horrible at the same time. It wasn’t at all like the dingoes she was used to. Much bigger and its claws resembled those of a big cat. It looked at home in the fire.

She thought it was going to attack, to kill her, but instead the most horrible looking man she had ever seen walked in out of the night. He had skin like burnt toast and breath like rotten fish. His clothes were shabby and torn, falling off his wasted body. He was short, old and evil. He captured her eyes with his and she was afraid.