The Road Read online

  Grace opened her mouth to reply. She never even heard the first shot. Something struck her in the hip with such force that she fell sideways, knocking Nathan over. For an instant she lay stunned, before the noise of the second shot – the unmistakable crack and echo – reached her ears.

  ‘Run!’ she screamed. ‘Nathan, RUN!’

  CHAPTER 3

  Alec woke up with a hard-on. He had been dreaming about Janine, of course: Janine giving him a blow job. A stupid bloody dream. He doubted that Janine had ever given anyone a blow job in her entire life.

  She didn’t look like a blow job sort of person.

  A cold shower soon put him right – though it wouldn’t have been his choice, had he been presented with any alternatives. Clearly, Alec wasn’t the only guest taking a shower. Hot-water pipes shrilled and groaned somewhere in the distance, but after waiting a good three or four minutes, with his hand under the tepid trickle issuing from the shower rose, Alec realised that his timing was wrong. As bloody usual.

  Hot water seemed to be the reward for rising early in this place.

  He couldn’t wait for the demand to taper off, though – not if he was going to catch a lift with Kenny. So he gritted his teeth, spent about a minute scrubbing off yesterday’s sweat, and jumped out of the icy deluge before it could do him any permanent damage.

  It didn’t take him long to dress. Packing was simply a matter of stuffing his comb, toothbrush and toothpaste into a handy pocket. By eight o’clock he was standing out the front of his room, waiting for Kenny. It was going to be a hot day, he thought. Another hot day.

  Kenny was a guy who made friends indiscriminately, with every bloke who showed up looking for a job or a phone number or a new brake pad. He never seemed to stop talking – or smoking. He drove a range of souped-up old Fords and Holdens (all of them bristling with antennae) that he’d personally resurrected in his spare time. Kenny saw himself as a bit of a mentor. He had taken Alec under his wing after Alec’s first Mildura delivery, and had yammered on about mileage rates, speed traps, road rage and metal fatigue while the work piled up in his yard. Everyone seemed to know Kenny. It was agreed that he could teach you a few things about engines, if you were willing to put up with his endless crap. Even Alec’s cousin Pat knew Kenny. ‘Mad as a cut snake,’ was her verdict, but she acknowledged that he was also a good mechanic. And a generous soul. Perhaps a bit too generous – especially with his advice.

  Generous Kenny had insisted on giving Alec a lift back to his truck that morning. He arrived at two minutes past eight, in his yellow supercharged Cortina, puffing away at a Rothmans and nursing a take-away coffee. He asked Alec how he’d slept. Alec (with fleeting thoughts of Janine working away at his dick) said fine – he’d slept fine. The Cortina’s engine roared as Kenny careened out of the parking lot.

  Cracked muffler, Alec decided.

  ‘Not too noisy, last night?’ his companion inquired.

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Midweek, I s’pose.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You had breakfast?’

  ‘I’ll get it later.’

  But Kenny had very strong opinions on the role of breakfast in a man’s day. He insisted that they stop to buy Alec a bacon sandwich, describing to Alec the complicated processes that transform food into energy. Alec, who was used to Kenny, only listened to half of what was said. Being a man of few words, Alec often ended up with people like Kenny. People who liked to talk. It didn’t bother Alec – not much. He just let the torrent of words flow over him. ‘Dozy’ Muller, off in a little world of his own again.

  A world full of Janine.

  Kenny would sometimes ask Alec about his love life, in much the same spirit as he asked about Alec’s job, family and living arrangements. He was looking for a way to set things right. Alec preferred not to be interrogated in this fashion, especially now that Michelle had chucked him. There was so little to say – so little to boast about. Most of the time he could avoid any in-depth analysis of his situation, because his mates tended to be young, feckless and frankly uninterested in discussing emotional problems with people they saw only in pubs or TABs. Kenny, however, had a terrifying habit of suddenly raising complex psychological issues during an ordinary conversation about shift work or tax breaks: the ‘man–woman thing’, for instance. The ‘father–son thing’. Alec was chewing on his bacon sandwich when Kenny turned to him, in the middle of a rambling discourse on the cholesterol content of eggs, and said: ‘You still with your brother?’

  Alec nearly choked. ‘Uh – yeah.’

  ‘How’s that going?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Kenny flashed Alec a piercing look. After a moment, he said, ‘How long are you planning to stay?’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘You don’t want to stay too long, son. It’s not good for you, and it’s not good for them.’

  ‘I know,’ Alec mumbled. He hated being called ‘son’, even by his own father.

  ‘For a start, you can’t exactly bring your girlfriends home, can ya?’ Kenny pulled into his yard, and parked. ‘You can’t run your own life in someone else’s place. And they can’t do what they want to do, either. Not with you hanging around.’

  Alec nodded, his face hot. When he finally managed to tear himself away, it was only after Kenny had mapped out his immediate future for him. First, Alec had to get his own place. A flat, preferably, or at the very least a share-house. Next, he had to sit down and think about what he really wanted in a woman – if he wanted a woman at all. When he’d worked that out, he should come back to Kenny. Kenny would point him in the right direction.

  ‘Once you know what you want, then you’ll know where to look,’ Kenny instructed. ‘You’re not gunna find saltwater fish in the Darling, know what I mean? You’ve got to pick your target.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Stick with me, son.’ Kenny slapped Alec on the back. ‘I’ll see you right.’

  From Kenny’s place, Alec took Diesel Dog down to the Blue Circle depot, where he backloaded cement powder for the Pasminco mine. The usual procedure. He could have done it in his sleep. He left the rail line at about eight-thirty, crossed the river, hit the highway and headed for the border of New South Wales, all the while thinking about what Kenny had said. It made sense, in a way. If you drifted around helplessly, hoping to stumble over some obliging woman, you weren’t necessarily going to find your perfect match. If, on the other hand, you planned your moves like a holiday itinerary – well, that had to be more efficient.

  Trouble was, Alec couldn’t organise a holiday itinerary to save his life. That was part of his problem. That was one reason why Michelle had left him. As for working out what he wanted, he knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted Janine.

  And how could he have known that, before meeting her?

  He tried to imagine that he hadn’t met Janine. He tried to imagine what he would be looking for if she wasn’t around. Once or twice, he remembered, the subject of hot babes had sprung up during long drinking sessions with Kev and Barry and Jozza. That had happened some time before he’d even met Michelle, let alone Janine. There had been talk about long hair, he recalled; a general preference for long hair. And shaven legs. And moderate drinkers. But when Alec had allowed his mind to rove, briefly, towards a mental image of his ideal woman, had he conjured up a perfect little housewife with a collection of china squirrels and hardly any tits to speak of?

  No, he had not.

  Alec hit Coombah at about ten o’clock. He stopped at the roadhouse because he had to go to the toilet, and he bought himself a coffee because you couldn’t use the toilet at the roadhouse unless you made a purchase. (Something to do with the water shortage.) He was on the road again by ten fifteen, still preoccupied by the eternal mystery of romance.

  Before meeting Janine, Alec hadn’t been looking for anyone remotely like her. The same went for Michelle. Michelle had been as large as Janine was small: a big-boned, broad-shouldered girl with lots of bouncy
chestnut hair and enormous brown eyes. She would throw back her head and laugh a huge, booming laugh, showing all her teeth. She would stride around leggily, her heavy tits jiggling under sheer satin or filmy gauze. She’d attracted a lot of short-term interest, but was too strong-willed for a lot of guys. They had called her a ball-breaker. They had said that Alec was pussy-whipped.

  Maybe he had been, though he hadn’t much minded at the time. Still and all, it couldn’t be denied: he hadn’t been out looking for a lushly proportioned six-foot ball-breaker any more than he had been looking for a brittle-boned, flat-chested little blonde like Janine. They had simply happened to him.

  Perhaps because he hadn’t established what he was really looking for?

  Alec wondered if it was actually possible to sit down and organise your love life. To pinpoint exactly what you required, and reject all substitutes. Perhaps some people could do it, but could he? He didn’t think so. For one thing, he liked the way most women looked – he couldn’t specify this or that. For another thing, even if his list of requirements remained fairly vague and general (loyalty, perhaps, or good hygiene), what if he met someone who measured up but wouldn’t have a bar of him? That was more than likely. It occurred to Alec that he didn’t have a ‘type’ because he couldn’t afford one. He had to take what he could get. Because what did he have to offer, really? He wasn’t like Darryl. He wasn’t even like Kenny. At least Kenny had the gift of the gab.

  Driving on cruise control, Alec let the country fly past him, unnoticed. It was the kind of landscape that you could easily ignore: stony red dirt, scattered tufts of grass, ‘Floodway’ signs, long stretches of fencing wire held up by iron posts. To his right, on the horizon, Pine Creek was marked by a fitful green smudge; to his left, electricity pylons drew closer and closer to the highway. Then, about seventy kilometres out of Broken Hill, things began to happen. Pine Creek headed towards the road and finally crossed it, bringing with it a narrow band of huge old river gums. The pylons also crossed the road a little further on, moving in the opposite direction. The landscape changed slightly. There was more vegetation, a few ridges, the odd letterbox. Pine Creek, now on the left, stuck reasonably close to the highway, its mantle of trees clearly visible from the cabin.

  Alec ignored it all. After thinking hard, he came to the conclusion that Kenny’s advice about women wouldn’t do him any good. The thing about Alec was, he had only one advantage over most guys. He might not have much money, or a house, or a nimble tongue, but he was easily satisfied. He would happily take up with the sort of women – like Michelle – who scared off a lot of men, because he didn’t have many expectations. So what was the point of narrowing his options with a list of requirements? He’d be shooting himself in the foot.

  On the other hand, Kenny’s advice about his living arrangements was spot on. Alec had to get out. He had to do the right thing, or he was going to fuck up everything for everybody. Okay, so Janine added lustre to his life. Well, that was too bad. She was married, she was his sister-in-law, and she was the ultimate dead end.

  The sooner he got away from her, the easier it would be to repair his broken heart.

  Seeing the bloated stomach of a dead kangaroo in the left-hand lane, Alec made a split-second decision to run right over it. Awakened from his trance, he checked the time. Nearly eleven.

  He would soon be home.

  Cyrene was patrolling his fence when he heard the shot. He had already established that his phone line had been cut, near where it joined the roof of his house. The roof was quite low, so it wouldn’t have taken much to do the job: just a stool perhaps, or a box, or a milk crate. Or maybe even a long-bladed machete. No, on second thoughts, not a machete. A machete would have damaged the fascia – maybe even the gutter, as well. It would have made a noise. Whoever had cut the line had done it quietly, carefully, with a pair of secateurs or wire-cutters.

  Cyrene was as astonished as he was angry. He found it hard to understand why a grown man would devote so much time and effort to cutting his phone line. Sneaking around in the middle of the night, with a milk crate and a pair of shears – and a torch, presumably – what kind of nutter would do such a thing? It occurred to Cyrene that this bloke, whoever he was, couldn’t have risked driving his vehicle too close to the house, in case he woke somebody. He would have had to walk for maybe half a kilometre, in the dark, through all that thorny saltbush and heavily armoured dead finish, past God knows how many snakes and spiders, before he even reached the fence. He would have had to camp out somewhere, on the Ricketts’ property, perhaps; he couldn’t even have risked lighting a fire, in case someone saw or smelled it. And the dogs. If he had poisoned the dogs – as he might have, if he was planning to approach Cyrene’s house without raising the alarm – if he had poisoned the dogs, then he must have been hanging around for a couple of days, at least. Trying to keep out of the way. Skulking like a fox in the scrub, snatching cold meals, keeping a wary eye out for the clouds of dust that might mark a moving flock of sheep or an approaching vehicle. And where would he have hidden his own car, for God’s sake? Out on the highway? It was an empty part of the world, but not that empty. You couldn’t be sure that someone mending fences or moving stock wouldn’t notice a car sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

  After giving the matter some consideration, Cyrene concluded that it had been an insane kind of effort to make, for such a slight result. Because what had he achieved, this lunatic stalker? Apart from scaring poor Grace out of her wits, he had done nothing but bring the full weight of the law down on top of his head. He certainly wouldn’t be doing any more damage to Cyrene’s property – not if Cyrene had any say in the matter. The house was safe, as long as Cyrene had his gun. Of course, if the evil bastard had actually broken into the house during the night, and tried to murder them all in their beds – well, that would have made more sense. It would have been a result worth the effort. But this? The mutilated dog? The cut phone line? What was this all about?

  It occurred to Cyrene that the mischief must have been done after one a.m. He had been out in the yard himself at that time, easy prey for any lurking intruder; he had been putting Harry’s corpse in the dog-shed. What if there had been someone nearby? What if Cyrene’s sudden appearance had thrown this person off balance – stopped him from entering the house?

  But no, that didn’t work. There was the dog. Whoever the mysterious lunatic was, he had brought with him not only a torch, a milk crate and a pair of wire cutters, but a dead dog as well. A dead dog. And Bit hadn’t been a small dog, either. Bloody maniac must have had a wheelbarrow, or something.

  Cyrene’s eyes weren’t too bad, considering, but they weren’t good enough to pick out tracks in the dirt. He had tried and failed; maybe the police would have better luck. If his dogs had been alive, he would have used them to sniff out any foreign scent around the place, and follow it. As it was, however, he could only patrol his boundaries, keeping his ears open for any suspicious noises and his finger near the trigger guard of his .22.

  He had just stopped to straighten a leaning fence post when he heard the shot. He knew instantly what it was, of course; it frightened him so much that he nearly dropped his rifle. Then there was another shot. He thought he heard a scream too – a faint, distant sound – but he couldn’t be sure, because by that time he’d started to run. The second shot had given him a fix on his destination. It had come from down the road. He cursed his bad knee, the way it buckled under pressure applied suddenly from a certain angle. It slowed him up; it distracted him. And his heart was no good either, jerking around in his chest as if it wanted to jump out of his ribcage, pounding in his ears until he couldn’t hear anything else. He was panting by the time he reached the gate. It was a bugger, trying to release the catch without dropping his gun. Christ, oh Christ! Another shot.

  Cyrene hauled the gate open and staggered through it. Bullets clinked in his pocket – they sounded like loose change. He couldn’t believe the bastard had a gun. Not a shotgun
– not by the sound of it – but even if it was spring loaded, Cyrene was stuffed. His only advantage would be surprise.

  He didn’t know what the bugger was shooting at. Surely not Grace? Grace had driven off long ago. She ought to have been on the highway, at least. But the scream had been human . . . he didn’t know what to think . . .

  He was heading down the road when he heard Nathan’s voice, high-pitched and desperate. The kid was calling his name. ‘Nathan?’ he yelled. Ahead of him, the road looped around, forming a lazy S-bend before dropping into a shallow depression that rolled away down to the creek. Cyrene’s eyes weren’t too good at the best of times; what with the dip, and the low screens of saltbush and boxthorn, it was impossible to see Nathan until the kid was almost on top of him, stumbling around the corner with his mouth wide open and his chest heaving. There was blood on Nathan’s knee. His face was wet, and his eyes were wild.

  ‘Nathan?’ Cyrene croaked.

  ‘Mum!’ The poor kid could hardly speak. Puffing and blowing, tears spilling from his eyes, he flung himself at Cyrene. ‘He got Mum!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mum’s there!’ Nathan shrilled, pounding on Cyrene’s chest. He was practically incoherent – half-formed words gushed from a distorted mouth – but Cyrene got the message. Gracie was back there, and someone was shooting at her.

  ‘Okay, you go,’ Cyrene ordered. ‘Go on.’ The bloodshot eyes stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘Go and hide!’ he continued sharply, pointing at the house. ‘Keep goin! When it’s safe, I’ll tell ya, right? Quick, now!’

  Nathan blinked. ‘Mum . . .’ he gurgled.

  ‘Gorn!’

  That got rid of Nathan. He released Cyrene’s shirt and ran off unsteadily, tripping once or twice, gulping down air and whining like a frightened dog.

  Cyrene didn’t watch him go. Lifting his gun to shoulder height, he continued to advance, trying not to make too much noise. He would have one clear shot before the need to reload put him at a disadvantage. And he didn’t even have a telescopic sight to help him – just this bloody old Lithgow, heavy as lead, which had been lying around for years in his wardrobe and would probably jam at the crucial moment because he hadn’t fired it since Bill Ricketts took over the family farm next door. Cyrene didn’t trust Bill Ricketts. Bill was the sort of fella who’d report you for keeping an unregistered firearm. Bill’s dad had understood that if you lived out the back of beyond you had to keep an old rifle squirrelled away somewhere for safety’s sake, whether or not you were a primary producer. It was the way things had always been. But Bill was different.