The Road by Catherine Jinks
‘Lemmings,’ said one.
‘No . . . Kamikaze kangaroos,’ said the other.
‘A mass suicide protest. “Speed kills”.’
‘You get to the first road sign, and it’s one kangaroo. You get to the second, it’s three. You get to the third, it’s fifty.’
‘Someone’s on a culling spree.’
‘Will you please shut up?’ snapped Alec, though he knew theirs was probably more of a nervous reaction than anything else. Georgie scowled at him.
‘Make me,’ she said.
‘I bloody will, if you don’t watch yourself!’
‘Oh, now don’t!’ Verlie pleaded. ‘Don’t be like this, please! It’s not helpful.’
‘Any more, and you can get out,’ Ross added.
‘Fine.’ Georgie had pushed the door open before Ambrose could stop her. Fortunately, they were only crawling along; Verlie cried out, and Ross braked, and Georgie was standing on the road, suddenly. Slam went her door. She began to walk in a southerly direction.
‘What the hell . . .?’ said Ross.
‘Georgie!’ Ambrose opened the door again, and leaned out. ‘Come back here, you silly girl!’
‘Leave her,’ Alec growled, and Verlie said: ‘Where’s she going? She can’t ride in the caravan.’
‘Oh my God!’
This time, Ambrose didn’t sound facetious. He didn’t sound like Ambrose, either. His squawk was so disturbing that it even made Georgie spin around.
Ambrose himself recoiled, knocking against Alec, who had shuffled over next to him.
‘Oh my God! What’s that?’
‘What?’ said Alec.
‘That. That!’ Ambrose pointed. Verlie squealed. Throwing himself across Ambrose’s knees, Alec scanned the roadside until he saw something that made his heart miss a beat.
There were ribs, and . . . and they were big. Like a ram’s, or a calf ’s – but there was hair, too. Curly, dusty, black hair. Woolly hair?
It had to be a sheep’s fleece. Had to be . . .
Flies were ricocheting around the interior of the car like bomber planes.
‘It’s a person!’ Ambrose squeaked.
‘No.’ There were no visible horns, but where was the skull? Crushed? Flattened? Tumbled into the ditch? It was all bones and leather. Not fresh. ‘No, it’s – it’s a sheep. It’s a sheep.’ A black sheep?
‘Georgie, get in!’ Ambrose cried sharply. The girl seemed to hesitate. ‘Georgie!’
‘I want to ride in the caravan,’ she answered. But there was a lack of force in her tone – a touch of dismay. Alec heard it.
‘Get the fuck in here, you stupid cunt!’ he yelled. ‘Or do you wanna end up as a meat fuckin pattie?’
‘Oh, stop!’ Verlie whimpered. Then Ross gunned the engine.
And all at once Georgie was scrambling onto the back seat like a frightened child.
‘It’s all right,’ said Noel. ‘They’re moving again.’
Peering out the rear window, Peter saw that his father was right; the Harwoods’ sedan was once more creeping along behind Del’s Ford, closing the gap that had opened between them. Because the sedan’s windshield was tinted, Peter couldn’t make out Ross’s expression very well. But he did notice that Verlie was covering her mouth with her hand.
That wasn’t a good sign, surely. Or did Verlie simply find the smell overpowering? Peter didn’t like it much himself, though it was different from what he had expected. More like sewage than anything else. And sporadic. Coming at them in waves.
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Why did Georgie get out of the car?’
‘I don’t know,’ Noel replied, and Louise said: ‘Maybe she wanted to go to the toilet.’
‘I wanna go to the toilet,’ Rosie whined.
‘Soon, sweetie.’ Linda sounded worried. Distracted. ‘We’ll stop soon.’
Del cursed. She had been cursing steadily for the past ten minutes, though her curses weren’t the kind that Linda could take exception to: ‘Sweet Jesus Our Lord’, Del would say, and ‘In the name of Christ Jesus and all His angels’. Peter had never in his life heard anyone swear like that before.
Del was cursing because she was finding it more and more difficult to drive. The old station wagon was actually beginning to slide on the blood slicks. Its wheels would spin on chunks of meat. Its tyres would fight for traction on a slimy surface composed mostly – as far as Peter could work out – of marrow and muscle and small, wet bones. Peter was sure that he could hear the bones crunching beneath them. He was starting to feel sick.
Mongrel was whining, steadily and eerily. His ears were flat against his skull. Flies were thick in the air, like black snowflakes blown by a powerful wind.
‘Don’t look,’ Linda instructed. ‘Peter? Don’t look at it.’
‘This is unbelievable.’ Noel’s voice was hushed. ‘It just goes on and on . . .’
‘It’s the Devil’s work,’ Del declared flatly. ‘Or the work of the Seven Angels.’
‘Eh?’ said Noel.
‘Y’know. In the Book of Revelations. “The first angel sounded and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood.” It looks like it’s been rainin guts.’
‘Except that it’s only on the road,’ Peter pointed out. ‘If it had been raining guts, they would have been all over everything else, as well.’
‘Shh. Peter.’ His mother laid a finger on her lips, as the car became bogged once more in a patch of entrails. Its wheels spun fruitlessly. A fine spray of reddish fluid hit Linda’s window so that she recoiled with a cry. Del growled to herself, yanking at the gearstick and reversing a fraction before the car jounced forward suddenly.
‘We gotta get off this road,’ she said. ‘We can’t stay on this road.’
‘You’re right.’ Linda was hoarse. ‘This is . . . it’s unhealthy. It’s unhealthy.’
‘It’s more than that. It’s bloody impassable.’ Del stamped on the brake, and leaned on her horn. PAAP! PAAP-PAAP-PAAP! Then she began to drag her steering wheel to the left, hand over hand.
‘Where are you going?’ Noel demanded.
‘Where does it look like?’
‘We can’t stay on this road, Noel,’ Linda said sharply, and Peter checked over his shoulder. The Harwoods’ car had stopped again. Glancing at Louise, he caught her eye, and she grimaced. She had wrapped her arms around herself, as if she was cold.
‘That dirt road was clear,’ Del continued. ‘I know that road. Should take us over the creek, then up to that station – Balaclava, I think it is. Or Hillston, whatever. We’ll take that road.’
‘But what about . . .?’
‘We’ll tell the others,’ Del assured Noel, interrupting him, and the car bounced like a rubber ball as she accomplished a U-turn over rough terrain. Rosie squealed, and Peter yelped. Linda hit her head on the ceiling.
‘Sorry,’ said Del.
She braked once they had left the road, but kept the engine running. Peter now had a clear view of the Harwoods’ sedan, which was abreast of them, facing in the opposite direction and sitting stationary on a wad of bloody, matted hair. Noel wound down his window.
Everyone gasped and groaned.
‘Where are you goin?’ Alec called from the other car, coughing a little, his lips curled back in an expression of pained revulsion. Verlie was still holding a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t opened her own window.
‘We’re goin back to the dirt road!’ Del replied loudly, leaning across Noel. ‘Can’t stay on this one!’
‘You reckon?’
‘We could go around the mess,’ Noel proposed, but Del pulled a face.
‘For how long?’ she objected. ‘You said yourself, it’s bloody endless.’
‘Well, no – I didn’t say that, exactly –’
‘This old bomb isn’t a Land Rover, darl. It’s not built for a long haul cross country.’
Baap! Baap-baap-baap! Peter jumped at the sound of Ross’s horn, which was high and threatening. He realised a
Turning around, scrambling to his knees, Peter peered in a northerly direction. Col’s white ute had turned off the highway, and was slowly jolting its way towards them across uneven ground.
‘They’re coming,’ he announced. ‘Col’s coming back.’
‘Ross wants to know where we’re goin!’ Alec yelled, his voice snubbed and reedy. (He was holding his nose.) ‘It’s the Hillston turn-off, isn’t it? The track back there?’
‘I think so,’ Del replied. ‘Or the road to Balaclava.’
Alec turned his head, apparently reporting this to the other occupants of the sedan. Peter could hear the roar of Col’s engine as it struggled over a hump. Del addressed Noel.
‘That isn’t road kill,’ she explained, sounding uncharacteristically tense. ‘It’s a Sign.’
‘But could the gunman – I mean, if he’s mad –’
‘Are you kiddin? Yiz don’t see that much meat at a bloody ram sale!’
‘But if he shot them at a stock crossing –’
‘Mate, that wasn’t stock. Y’saw it yourself. And there’s milesa the stuff – most of it fresh.’ Del’s tone was becoming more and more frantic. ‘The stations round here wouldn’t support that much stock! Christ in all his glory, there can’t be that many roos in the whole of New South Wales!’
‘Del,’ Linda warned. She was stroking Rosie’s hair.
‘It’s a sign,’ Del repeated. ‘Maybe I was right. Maybe we shoulda gone back. We never shoulda left that kid – I said so, didn’t I? Maybe it’s a punishment.’
Mongrel began to bark.
‘Shuddup, Mongrel!’
‘I feel si-i-ick!’ Rosie wailed.
Del cut the engine and fumbled with her seatbelt. Suddenly she was out of the car. Craning his neck, Peter watched her march towards the approaching ute, dry twigs and gravel crunching beneath her feet. The ute stopped.
Huge, droning flies began to zoom through the driver’s door, which Del had left open.
‘Mum!’ Rosie shrilled. ‘I’m gunna be sick!’
‘Oh shit.’ Linda hustled her daughter out onto the red earth, where Rosie fell to her knees and threw up. Peter held his breath. He closed his eyes. Mongrel was still barking, and the sewage stench now had an ominous edge to it, musky almost, but with something else. A fly hit Peter’s cheek, startling him so much that his eyes sprang open.
‘Oh my God!’ Linda cried. She was coughing, choking, flapping wildly at the hundreds of flies that whirled around her. And she was also trying to support Rosie, who was crying and wiping her mouth. ‘Noel! Noel! We’ve got to get out of here!’
‘I know. Hang on. Just wait . . .’
Louise began to whimper. Noel got out of the car. He went to help his wife, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, while Del conversed with Col some distance away. She was snatching at the flies, tossing her head like a horse, her features screwed up into a gigantic wince.
Col’s ute looked gruesome. There was blood all over the roo bar – blood and other matter. Gluey stuff in the grille. Through a windscreen speckled with dead flies, Col’s passenger stared, pale-faced.
Mongrel’s head jerked convulsively with every piercing yap.
‘Shut up!’ Peter yelled. ‘You stupid dog!’ And Louise burst into tears.
Oh God, thought Peter. He bowed his head, shielding his eyes, his nose, his vulnerable mouth. It was all too much. The noise. The flies. The stink.
The gore.
Hunks of flesh had skidded away from beneath the Ford’s churning wheels. Hillocks of flesh like speed-humps, sheathed in blood-smeared, powdery fur, had slowed their passage. Speed humps. Obstacles. An obstacle course.
Peter lifted his head again, struck by a sudden realisation. He could see the road. The air above it seethed with insect life. Blood had trickled off its bitumen surface, which was uneven with gobbets of tissue – with reaching bones. Yet around it, on either side, stretched red earth and dry grass, saltbush and acacia, all of it as clean as the wind. Through a countryside innocent of any dark stain rolled a thread of putrefaction.
Why?
‘We have to turn back,’ Peter whispered. ‘We’re meant to turn back.’ At the very least, they weren’t meant to be taking the Silver City Highway.
That road was closed to them.
Del had finished with Col Wallace. Her next stop was the sedan, but the buzz of flies and the rumble of idling engines prevented Peter from hearing her very clearly. He caught the words ‘follow’ and ‘caravan’ (this last spat out with a fly) but not much else. She and Ross seemed to be arguing. At last Ross got out of his car, looking grumpy, while Del turned to address Noel. She waved her arms about.
‘. . . leave the caravan . . .’ she said, half her words lost on a westerly breeze. ‘. . . help . . .’
‘I bet they can’t take the caravan on a bumpy dirt road,’ Louise observed, sniffing. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘I bet they’re going to leave it here.’
‘Mr Harwood won’t be too pleased about that,’ Peter replied.
‘This is awful, isn’t it?’
Peter had to agree. It was awful. Not only that – it was spooky. Weird.
Frightening.
‘Are we ever going to get home?’ his sister asked unsteadily, tears filling her eyes again.
‘ ’Course we will.’ Peter sounded more certain than he felt. He wouldn’t admit to himself that a dark fear was lurking in the corner of his mind. ‘Let’s shut the doors, eh? Keep the flies out.’
So they shut the doors and waited. They waited while Ross and Noel and Del uncoupled the caravan; while Linda took Rose behind a bush; while Verlie and Alec unloaded armfuls of food from the caravan’s kitchen cupboards, depositing tins of Irish stew in the back of the station wagon, packets of instant noodles in the boot of the Harwoods’ sedan. Col finally turned off his engine and wandered over to help, hitching up his pants.
The other guy didn’t leave the ute. For about twenty minutes he sat with his eyes shut, looking sick. Peter would glance at him occasionally, wondering what his problem might be, while Mongrel barked and barked.
‘Let’s feed him,’ Louise finally suggested.
‘What?’
‘Let’s feed the dog. Maybe he’s hungry.’
‘I dunno.’ Peter was doubtful. He didn’t think that dogs were necessarily like babies, making a lot of noise until they were fed. But by the time his parents had returned to their seats in the car he’d found a can of dog food, located a tin opener, and dumped a serving into Mongrel’s smelly plastic dish.
‘Oh, Peter,’ Linda groaned, as she settled Rosie onto her lap. ‘What’s that awful smell?’
‘Dog food. We thought Mongrel might be hungry.’ The dog was certainly tackling his meal with enthusiasm; his bowl clanked and scraped against the floor, his tail thumped against the window, his breathing was loud and irregular. ‘We thought it would stop him barking.’
‘Couldn’t you have fed him outside?’
‘The flies would have got it.’
‘But it’s such a horrible smell.’
‘It’s better than the smell of mashed kangaroo,’ Peter muttered. His mother, however, didn’t hear him. She was too busy questioning Del, who had finally returned to the car and climbed behind the wheel. ‘Peter just fed the dog,’ she informed Del. ‘Is that all right?’
‘What? Oh – yeah. No problem.’ Del’s thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. She slammed her door, turned the key in the ignition, and grappled with the gearstick. She checked her rear-view mirror. Watching her, Peter noticed that her lips were moving, but what with the rattle of the engine, the hum of the trapped flies (which were congregating on the dog food) and Mongrel’s own slurping and snorting, it was hard to work out what she was trying to say.
Only later, as they banged and lurched in a southerly direction, towards the dirt
He wondered if he should join in. Normally he didn’t believe in God, but now he was beginning to have second thoughts. Something was happening here that didn’t seem to make sense in the context of everyday life. Something almost supernatural.
Something that argued the presence of a higher force.
Col was worried about his fuel load.
The petrol in his tank would have got him to Broken Hill with a few litres to spare, but mucking around on back roads was going to start eating into his reserves. He was still unsure that he had done the right thing. Now that he thought about it – now that the horror of smeared blood and meat was behind him – he had begun to revise his opinions. Initially, the shock of getting bogged down in piles of stinking animal guts had caused him to support Del’s plan. He had agreed to follow her to Balaclava station, where they would phone the police. He had agreed to stay with the group, because he was shaken, and sickened, and didn’t want to strike out on his own – especially if there was some gun-wielding lunatic about.
By the time they reached the dirt track, however, he was no longer so confused or disturbed. He was beginning to doubt that the slaughter on the Silver City Highway could possibly stretch all the way to Broken Hill. And even if it did – even if there had been some freakish natural phenomenon (he didn’t know what could possibly have caused such carnage, and he didn’t especially want to find out, because dwelling on that mess couldn’t be healthy) – then why couldn’t he drive along beside the road? Del’s vehicle might have been unequal to such a challenge, but his own probably wasn’t. It was only twenty years old, and there was nothing much wrong with it except slightly dodgy distributor points. Nothing really serious though. A good shaking up, he thought, shouldn’t bust any springs, or loosen any connections.
Maybe he was doing the wrong thing here.
Col glanced at the man beside him, who sat staring out the window as if he was too exhausted to speak. The silent type. John hadn’t uttered a word since they’d picked up the two young ones. Not a single, solitary word. Col didn’t really blame him, in some ways, because what was there to say? Except ‘help!’ The situation was becoming more and more bizarre. A whole raft of people, stranded on the Silver City Highway? What were the chances of that? How many people could run out of petrol, on a single stretch of road? No doubt one of those mathematical fellows could calculate the odds, but they had to be pretty steep. Unless you took into account what you were dealing with here. John was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, Del was frankly peculiar, and the others were from Sydney and Melbourne (all except for Georgie, who was from Mars). Big-city people, in other words. Big-city people had no idea. They were always getting stuck out in the desert. It was a well-known fact. They were always dying in the outback because they were never well enough supplied with water or petrol.