by TJ Park
***
He sat up before he was fully alert, his chest tight with the anxiety of someone who was late to do something – far too late. He might have deliberated over the dream, tried to figure out what it meant, if Mick hadn’t been there waiting for him, awake and watching.
It was still dark out.
“What time is it? Forget it … stupid bloody question.”
Mick was as good as an alarm clock when it came to rising early.
“Quarter past four,” Mick replied.
“You should have woken me up.”
“I figured a few more minutes sleep wouldn’t hurt you. Everything okay?”
For no good reason Doug became irritated.
“Yeah, fine. I just had a sudden urge to move on.”
Feeling like a mental defective, he had trouble getting the jeep going, and he was too flustered to pin down the details of a trifling dream that was already fading from memory. All he could recall was that he had been trying to warn somebody in it. If it had been the other way round, with a warning being passed along to him, he might have made more of an effort to recall it. But he had the jeep on the road by then, and he concentrated on his driving. All that remained was the urgent feeling that they should return to the house, go back before something really bad happened.
But that was stupid. It already had … hadn’t it?
***
When Mick finally pinpointed their location on the map they were shocked to discover how short a distance they’d travelled by plane – less than two hundred kilometres. After a short gloomy spell, Doug reminded Mick of what he’d said before, how it would work to their advantage. Since they had made a very public escape by air, most would assume they were leagues away by now. Besides, it would be the airports, the commercial and private airfields, that would be watched closely, not the roads.
Then Doug remembered the witness left behind in the cottage and the skin tightened over his skull. All he had worried about at the time was grabbing the jeep and getting away.
Mick never thought to ask what had happened with the woman’s husband. He’d gone quiet since the events back at the cottage. Perhaps he assumed Doug would have left no loose ends before escaping with the vehicle.
When Doug reflected on it more, he relaxed by slow degrees. There was no other means of communication at the cottage except for the CB radio he had disabled. If the only other inhabited place was as far away as Selena claimed, it would mean half a day’s hike, at least, before her husband could get in contact with anyone.
Also, this was a man stricken with grief. Doug knew it. He’d heard it. Twice. Such profound loss would slow him down as well.
Doug also had an idea, one that came out of nowhere, but nevertheless seemed true enough, that the man would not leave the cottage straightaway. He would do something else first. Mourn, Doug supposed. He would be involved in some sort of prayer … homespun religious rites? Doug didn’t know what made him leap to that conclusion. Perhaps the way the house had been set up.
Even when the husband … Mitch … did raise the alarm there was no reason for anyone to link Mirribindi and the cottage at first. It would be two manhunts spread thin. Then he remembered. Yes, they would. Shit! If only Cutter had changed his uniform. At least he had done them a small favour by disguising it with his own blood. It could be another day before the connection was clear. By that time they would be far away.
Doug made an angry noise. Perhaps he and Mick should set off another massacre to confuse things further, just to be on the safe side.
***
With the sun’s appearance they felt more exposed. They stopped briefly for a toilet break and for Mick to remove some black electrical tape wound around one of the gun grips and apply it to the licence plates. He indulged in some obvious changes: 5 into 6, 0 into 8. Then with the aid of his water bottle he mixed up some mud and dabbed it here and there to transform some of the trickier digits into more dissimilar ones: K into L; 5 into 9. They would pass a quick drive-by scrutiny.
By and large they stuck to the longer secondary roads, bypassing small townships if they could. At the same time they stayed away from isolated gully tracks so as not to stick out like a sore thumb.
Eventually, Doug let Mick share the driving.
Neither of them trusted Warlock behind the wheel and Warlock was happy not to be considered. Sometimes they looked in back to make sure he was still there. He spent most of his time out to the world, rather more than what seemed normal. Doug guessed he had slipped himself something from his bumbag. He was tempted to chuck its contents into the slipstream, but decided he preferred a stoned nuisance to a whining cold turkey. Once Fatboy’s responsibility, Warlock had since become theirs, but it was not a sense of obligation that kept Doug from pitching the punk out into the middle of nowhere. He was being practical. The kid hadn’t got in the way yet. He did as he was told, mostly. And he would be satisfied with whatever share they gave him. Though Mick could hold his own when pushed to the wall, he was getting on in years. They might need a younger man’s assistance before it was all over, no matter how piss-poor that assistance might be.
Also, it was safer to take him with them, because when he got caught – and it would be a matter of “when” not “if” – he would spill his guts at the first hard question. Never at any time did Doug contemplate a secret, unmarked grave for a drug pusher who would not be missed.
Maybe they’d cut him loose once they reached the rendezvous point, or later, somewhere deep in the Asia-Pacific. Plenty of fleshpot spots to be found there, where he’d probably thrive. For the time being Warlock could stay. Although Doug had the unpleasant feeling that the longer he hung around, the more they would get used to him; like a stray dog that wouldn’t leave and was tolerated, occasionally kicked, occasionally fed. It was happening already.
Warlock was fast asleep, rocking against the door, his mouth slack and cavernous. It would be a simple matter to unlatch the door and pitch him out. His head kept rapping the window with every bump, until Mick got sick of it and hauled him over the other way so he’d lie along the back seat. Warlock slept on, oblivious to the rough handling. After a while he began to snore. Or something like it. It was a horrible clogged sawing noise.
Mick swore and threw a jacket over the punk’s head. Warlock’s steady muffled snore halted for a moment … then it resumed, at twice the volume. Doug and Mick shared a curse, then a laugh. It was the start of things getting better between them.
***
Warlock didn’t stir again until mid-morning. Quickly bored, he began rummaging through the grocery bags in back. In a bag set apart from the other sundry supplies he found more exotic fare: a French loaf, King Island Brie, pastrami, macaroons, sun-dried tomatoes, a bottle of good-priced Sauvignon blanc. It appeared that someone had had thoughts of a romantic dinner for two. As most of it was quickly perishable fare, Mick shared the delicacies around in place of a late breakfast.
Surprisingly, Mick and Doug hadn’t thought much about eating before now, their stomachs too tense from the previous day’s excitements and their current anxiety of getting caught. Somehow, the food being fancy reawakened their appetites. They were too weary and ravenous to reflect on the tucker’s original purpose, or perhaps they wanted to dispose of the reminder. Warlock was having too much fun figuring out how everything went together.
There was no corkscrew handy. Yet the bottle of wine, even if it had a forced cork floating in it, still went down well.
The journey was uneventful, the only dramas caused by Warlock sticking his knees into the backs of their seats trying to get comfortable. Every so often they’d hear him rustling through the bags in back, and then his hand would poke through the gap between the front seats, offering food or drink he’d helped himself to first. Sometimes Doug and Mick accepted. That was when Doug could be lulled into thinking they were just three ordinary blokes on a road trip north, going bush, drinking, shooting things.
***
Perhaps they’d bee
n too overzealous in bypassing the townships and roadhouses. Driving at night in the empty countryside was no more fun on the second night than on the first. Before long the lack of distinctive markers was deadening to the soul. The ghost shrubs sweeping past may as well have been on a continuous loop. Nothing varied; even the stars were fixed.
Sitting in the front, Doug got desperate for a change in the scenery, any change. The only change he did not want was for the dirt road to melt away into impassable bush, but it was a scenario that had befallen them twice already during the daylight hours, despite having the map, and they had barely coped. They had been on edge until they retraced their steps and found a better route, also noting the valuable time wasted. To have such a thing happen to them at night was too bleak to consider.
Then, what Doug wished for happened. Something new. A jot of light off to the right of the horizon. It travelled with them, winking in and out of the trees.
The floating light stayed constant, never varying. After a while, it made Doug uneasy. His imagination began to play up. He expected to come round a bend and find it to be a spotlight raised out of a cluster of flashing red-and-blues, seeking to pin them down in a hot spot and a cordon of guns. But, given long enough, the light became another dreary fixture in the night, never differing in size or shape, always remaining ahead and to the right, pacing them … or stalking, if you wanted to think of it that way.
“Maybe it’s the min-min light,” Warlock said behind him.
His voice startled Doug. He had thought Warlock was asleep. What the punk said was basically what he’d been thinking. Mick snorted.
“I bet you anything it’s an automated station. One of those they use to measure the weather or temperature.”
That only made Doug feel more daunted, thinking how far-flung and alone they were, travelling in the wilderness, the darkness. Suddenly, the light was snuffed out. Doug was waiting for it to return when Mick clutched his knee in a death grip, the old man shouting a warning, but Doug saw it first, his eyes pulled back to the road in front.
The gaping potholes of the road became deep pools of shadow in the headlights. Now one of them seemed to come alive, forming into the bulk and light-reflecting eyes of a large kangaroo.
Doug recognised the type instantly: a big red, bled white in the glare of the high beam. The animal was enthralled by their light, leaping in great bounds toward it, eyes as precise as gleaming coins. Doug pulled the wheel hard over.
His reflexes were good and he should have avoided it cleanly. But the giant roo veered to miss them as well, and consequently it cut straight back into their path.
For Doug, time slowed. He knew that meant it was going to be bad.
The roo closed the last few metres in one last tremendous leap, perhaps intending to evade them completely by sailing right over them. The animal’s hide flared into an onrushing, humped-back sun, the high-beam it reflected filling the jeep’s cabin with faint, elfin light.
Then, collision.
The ugly noises seemed to be lumped in together: breaking glass, crumpling metal, the thrum of the struck bullbar, the tyres screeching uselessly over loose dirt.
The roo struck the front of the jeep and flipped over the hood. If it went through the windscreen the impact would kill whoever it hit first. But, instead, the roo got its head caught in the bullbar and was stopped short. The torso swung round on a broken neck and struck a sledgehammer blow on the hood, buckling it deep. The big tail smacked the windscreen, cracking the glass. Then the roo was snapped back like a rubber band, falling away, its head yanked free. It was at that point the animal nearly managed to kill them, again, the jeep almost going off the road when the wheels hit it.
Mick had his forearms rapped by the dashboard. Doug received a smart tap to the forehead from the top of the steering wheel. Both their seats shuddered as Warlock – not wearing a seatbelt – flew into the back of them. Not one crown was spared a smack into the canvas roof when the jeep thumped over the rolling body of the roo.
To cap it off, a legitimate pothole further along the road almost tore the locked wheels out from under them.
The jeep rocked to a halt.
“Shit, fuck, bugger,” Mick muttered, rubbing his bruised forearms.
He had the situation summed up perfectly.
The men exited the jeep with rough-seas limbs, and had a look at the front of the vehicle. One headlight had been taken out. From what Doug could ascertain by the light of the remaining one, the roo had shot like an arrow through one of the gaps in the bullbar, its head punching into the grille. A thin whistle was winding down inside a large hole there and he could hear a quick-drip patter coming from the undercarriage. He walked to the rear of the jeep with a black urge to see how the roo had fared.
He searched for its shadowy heap on the road, but couldn’t find it.
“Here it is,” Warlock said, guessing what Doug was looking for. He pointed to where the roo was lodged under the towbar, rolled up like a thick, ratty blanket. It didn’t look as enormous as it had when it filled the windscreen, but it was still a big bastard to be jammed into so small a space.
Doug bent down for a closer look. He stood up again fast. He decided against tugging it out with his bare hands. It stank. Even the tail looked swollen and greasy.
Mick was peering under the front of the jeep, the only way he could look at the engine. The hood couldn’t be opened. Under there, he saw silhouetted drops rapidly escaping the black undercarriage. He started rising to his feet, but ducked down again. A slower, more languid drip further back had caught his eye.
Mick reached in and was standing up again as Doug returned. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in front of the one working headlight and sniffed them.
“Oil,” he said. “The water’s leaking out, too. It’s pissing down under there.”
“Can we patch it?”
“Without a torch? Not likely.”
They both looked at each other, then looked off in the same general direction, seeking out that elusive light again.
“If we take it slow,” Mick said, “we might make it.”
***
The tension inside the jeep was palpable, pinching their mouths shut. It was better they were quiet. They were asking for a lot.
Five protracted minutes passed before Warlock started yelling excitedly, pulling his upper half into the gap between Doug and Mick’s seats, pointing at the re-emergence of his min-min light through the trees.
Mick shoved Warlock back, doing some yelling himself. Doug wanted to knock some quiet into both of them, so he could concentrate on the weak, flickering thing. Once, when it suffered a long bout of sputtering, he held his breath, fearful it would be snuffed out for good.
It seemed no closer. If anything, it drifted further to the right, beginning to be left behind, yet his torment over the thought of losing it was something Doug almost savoured. It distracted him from a nasty truth he’d discovered about the big red’s carcass. He had not mentioned it to the others, of course. He did not see the point. It would only have ended in argument and more foul moods.
He clearly remembered looking at the animal’s head exposed under the bumper, hanging from a twisted dishrag of neck. At first, in the poor illumination from the rear lights, he believed that its eyes had been removed in the collision, then he had jolted back in fright, convinced that the eyes had been driven back in its the head and were pushing out into position again. It was neither of those things. Deep inside the sockets, the whites of its eyes twitched and swayed.
Maggots. It had maggots in place of its eyes. The roo gave off a stink that beggared foul. It smelled as if it had been dead for days.
He relaxed when a simple explanation came to mind. The animal had a festering disease, or had infected wounds inflicted by some predator. The blowflies had gotten in, laying their eggs. The dirt track was the only clear path the blinded roo could take that didn’t have it stymied by brush after one or two bounds. The approaching noise
of the jeep had merely panicked it into fleeing the wrong way. They’d done it a service, saving it from a slower, miserable death.
At the same time, Doug couldn’t help but wish a worse fate upon it. He still couldn’t believe how it had gone for them so unerringly. If he was a more imaginative type, he might’ve thought the roo, maddened by the flies’ young eating into its brain, deliberately aimed for the jeep.
He couldn’t shake off thoughts of the accident. The lopsided high beam of the suffering jeep sparked reflections off the chips of mica in the rocky gravel. Every time two pieces of rock were highlighted like a pair of eyes, Doug would be brought back to the collision with the roo.
Except, he realised with a start, his memory of it was wrong.
He replayed the accident in his head, over and over, and each time he saw the roo leap up and fly straight at them, and the same details stood out: its tail straight like a tree branch; the dark clutch of stubby claws on hind legs; its two eyes returning the high beam in perfect silver circles. Except, of course … the roo had no eyes.
All he had to do was turn and ask Mick. He knew the old man could confirm what he had seen or hadn’t seen just before the collision. But he didn’t ask. What he must have seen were the glistening pockets of maggots ignited in the high beams. Recollections of near-misses with other animals on dark roads sketched in the rest.
But that excuse didn’t wash. What terrified him in that snapshot moment before impact was not the imminent collision itself, but those flawless, round gleaming eyes bearing down on him. Those pitiless eyes, bright eyeshine throwing back the lights in full. That was what he had been trying to avoid when he yanked the wheel over. Eyes. They had been there. He knew it.
Again, he went over those last few moments before the jeep ran down the roo, but he could not coax his memory to see it any differently. In fact, the inconsistencies became worse, because the more he attempted not to see the animal’s flashing lenses, the more he saw them … except they were not set in the animal’s head any more, but were perched somewhere behind it, appearing as if from over the animal’s shoulder.