Roadman Page 4

  “Abseiling,” she said. She shivered in the cooling air and hugged herself.

  He glanced up at her. “At the gorge?”

  She nodded, biting her lip at some sudden pain shooting up from her foot. Max faced Jade. “That’s a hell’uva long way in the state she’s in,” he said. “You must’ve been walking for hours.”

  Jade nodded. “Since this morning.”

  Even in the diminishing light, Max could see the look of exhaustion on the young man’s face. “Why didn’t you just go back to the dam? Plenty of cars come by there, even this time of the year.”

  Jade was about to answer, but Sal jumped in first. “Why do you think we didn’t…?”

  She didn’t finish, but Max knew exactly what was just waiting to come out of her filthy fuck’n mouth: Why do you think we didn’t, stupid?

  “Sal. You don’t have to…” said Jade.

  “Because you don’t want to pay the fine or risk a criminal record for trespassing on government land,” Max said, as calmly as he could. He could feel the tension in her body through her foot, and he smothered the urge to give it a mighty twist and watch her shoot to the emerging stars in an explosion of pain like some human firecracker. “Or you don’t want your daddy to know what you’ve been up to or where you’ve been… or who with…,” and he casually glanced up at Jade, then back at her. “Either way, don’t matter to me. Just seems the responsible thing would be to get help as quickly as possible and face the music for your actions later. Last thing you want is to get lost in the bush out here. Especially at night. Never know who you’ll run into.” He winked at her. “Lucky for you, you found me.”

  The tension in Sal’s foot and leg remained as it had. Max figured she didn’t feel so fuck’n lucky.

  “We thought we’d find a road and hitch a ride with someone, but…” Jade said.

  Sal shot him a glare, once more cutting him short. “But you were wrong, again.”

  Max gritted his teeth, hoping the tightness in his hand didn’t transfer to Sal’s foot through her boot and give his emotions away. “You almost did,” he said. The fire crackled behind him as he remained on one knee in front of her. He could feel its heat worming through his camo jacket onto his hips and spine. “There’s a dirt road past the old farmhouse just around this crop of gum trees. You probably would’ve heard a car driv’n past or you’dve stumbled on it eventually.”

  Jade raised his eyebrow to Sal, a satisfied look on his face. Sal was having none of it. “You two should form a gentleman’s club,” she said. “Then you can sit around the campfire and kiss each other’s dicks while you talk about the good ol’ times in the bush.”

  Jade burst out laughing. It was a pathetic giggle Max associated with henpecked husbands that hadn’t had a blow job for thirty years, if ever. He looked up at Jade, seeing nothing funny in what she’d said at all. Jade suddenly cut short his outburst, hanging his head.

  “Needs sett’n,” Max said, releasing Sal’s foot and standing. “A splint or someth’n. But this is not the time or place. You need to get to a hospital. I’ll drive you to your car. Where is it?”

  “In the car park near the dam,” Jade said. “But it’s no use.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Sal said, trying to stand, “shit-for-brains here lost the keys, didn’t he?”

  Jade giggled nervously again and shrugged his shoulders. “Lost ‘em when Sal broke her foot,” he said to Max. “Somewhere in the gorge. We’ll never find them now.”

  He said something about the spare set being at home in Adelaide, but Max was lost in a fog of rage. The light from the campfire was now providing the majority of illumination around the campsite, setting everything within a radius of ten metres in blood red. The night rushed in like a tidal wave this time of year, and everything else outside the ring of red was starting to merge in a murky blur of darkness. And between the two, between the flickering blood red light and blurring darkness, was a transition zone, a defining edge that was neither dark nor light but somehow both at the same time. Like his own personal twilight zone, he reckoned, someth’n you couldn’t explain, someth’n neither dead nor alive but nevertheless existed right there in front of your fuck’n eyes. Even the Cherokee was getting sucked into the twilight zone and blurring into weird non-existence, and the only reason he could see the black outlines of the gum trees was because of the pinpricks of light coming from Venus and her party friends causing large, silent shadows in the night that for some reason made him think he was under the watchful scrutiny of the Grim Reaper and his mates.

  He faced Jade, and said, “You let her talk to you like that?”

  Jade giggled once more, that pathetic henpecked giggle that caused Max to doubt whether Jade had a cock in his pants at all. “You get used to it,” Jade said.

  Sal shot Jade a dirty look, somehow trying to balance on one foot like a flamingo. “He not good enough for you, that it?” Max now said to her, his hands clenching involuntarily. “You got to talk down to him like that?”

  Jade hurried forward to help her balance. “It’s all right, man,” he said, taking her waist. “Don’t worry about her. She’s not feeling herself. Why don’t we just get in your car and get going?”

  Max wasn’t listening to him. She needed to be taught a fuck’n lesson. No bitch had the right to speak to her man like that. “Proper woman’s got respect,” he said, almost growling. “But you wouldn’t know noth’n ’bout that.”

  Jade was now propping Sal with one hand around her hip, the other holding the wrist of the arm that was stretched across his shoulder. “I said it’s all right.” Firelight flickered in his fearful eyes. “Look, if you don’t want to help us…”

  Max stood his ground. “See what he’s doin’?” he said to Sal. “He’s standing up for you. That mean anything to you?”

  Sal set her jaw. She hadn’t for one second ceased staring daggers at him. “You don’t know us,” she said. “And you don’t know me.”

  Max continued to stand his ground. His senses were now aflame. Even if she was putting on a brave face, he could smell her fear as thick as the smoke from the campfire. The flames themselves had now heated the whole of his back, all the way down from the top of his head to his calves, but the crisp night air was doing the opposite to his front half, dowsing his face, chest, stomach, and thighs in a freezing chill. Hot and cold. That’s how he felt right now, hot and cold, a forging iron shoved into a vat of water. Hot and cold. Left and right. Up and down. Black and white. That’s how he felt. That’s who he was, always on the edge of extremes, teetering between the two, neither here nor there on the edge of illumination between the blood-red light of the campfire and the ever-darkening night in his own private fuck’n twilight zone. Wasn’t it amazing how it all depended on where you were looking, on what side of the zone you were concentrating? Looking out, you saw black. Looking in, you saw red. No change in position, just a turn of the head. And right now he was seeing fuck’n red.

  “I’ve seen enough,” he said, and picked up his rifle. This was gonna be over quick as fuck’n lightning. “Let me get my keys.”

  Jade and Sal shared a glance of relief. “Thanks, man,” he said, visibly relaxing.

  “Shut it!” Max said, and headed to the humpy. While he pretended to search for the keys, he overheard Sal and Jade whispering, having an argument. “Let it go,” Jade was saying. “We’ll be out of here soon.”

  Sooner than you fuck’n think, Max smirked, reaching for the shovel on the wall next to the axe and tree saw. Then movement from beyond the roo skins on the drying rack caused his hand to freeze on the shaft of the shovel. He glanced over his shoulder to where he thought he’d seen something—or somebody—small rushing past the humpy. But there was nothing but the silhouettes of the gum trees and wattle bushes beyond the ring of light. Could’ve been anything, he reckoned, maybe a hungry animal drawn to the roo carcass he’d dumped earlier. A stray dog. Feral cat. Even a possum. Or maybe he was just seeing
things that weren’t there.

  When he returned to the campfire, the good-for-noth’n brats were talking so intently they were completely oblivious to his presence. Sal was now managing to stand almost unaided with one hand on Jade’s shoulder. Max gripped his rifle and threw the shovel onto the ground, where it clanged next to Jade’s sneakers. Startled, they looked at the shovel, then at Max, then at the gun pointed directly at Jade’s chest.

  “Pick it up,” Max said.

  “What?” said Jade.

  “Pick it up dickhead and start digg’n.” He was in no mood for any fuck’n nonsense. He flicked his head to the ground beyond the mantrap with the eucalypt branch sticking in the air like a radio antenna. Everything at that distance was right on the edge of the red ring of illumination, just fading into the darkness. “Over there.”

  Sal reached for her mobile and pressed a speed-dial number, presumably her rich fuck’n daddy. “Won’t do ya no good,” Max said, smirking. “The valleys and hills make sure nothing works out here, not even the radio. Could say you found yourself in a li’l black spot, huh?”

  Sal looked back at him in disgust, looked at her mobile one last time to confirm it had no coverage, then pocketed it again. “What’s going on, man?” Jade said. His voice had an adolescent-on-a-first-date high pitch.

  “You gotta teach ‘em who’s boss, mate,” Max said, still training the Remington straight at his heart. “Now pick up the fuck’n shovel.”

  Jade still didn’t move, too dumbstruck, or just too fuck’n dumb. Abseiling in the gorge on government land was plain bloody dumb. Taking a bitch with little or no experience of rock climbing and letting her snap her ankle was also pretty dumb. Losing your only set of fuck’n car keys was even dumber. All in all, if Max were to rate Jade’s performance today, he would have to say it was pretty fuck’n dumb of him to get out of bed this morning. Should’ve woken up and rolled onto his side and gone back to sleep. That way he wouldn’t have made the string of dumb fuck’n errors that had him ended up in the middle of fuck’n nowhere with a high-powered rifle pointed at his chest. More to the point, he wouldn’t have put himself in the position where he could make the dumbest fuck’n mistake of his pathetic life. Which he did right now.

  Max had been about to tell him to pick up the shovel one last time when Jade reached down for it on bended knee. That wasn’t dumb. That was exactly what he should’ve done, then dug the hole just past the drying rack on the other side of the humpy with his bitch helping out with her bare hands, getting those perfect fuck’n fingernails all chipped and choked with dirt. Then, just when they thought they were both gonna get a bullet between their perfect fuck’n eyebrows, just when they would get on their knees and beg for their pathetic fuck’n lives, he would wait until he could sniff the acrid scent of urine trickling down their legs before bundling them into the back of the Cherokee and driving them back to their car at the dam, where they could huddle together all night in the cold waiting for the first tourist to arrive at sunrise to take snapshots across the still waters of the lake. Then they would go to a private fuck’n hospital to get her leg in plaster, go home and watch a couple of DVDs, maybe even go out later with their mates drinking fancy-pants lagers and expensive fuck’n glasses of chardonnay in trendy inner city bars, and forget about ever coming back here. That’s what dumb Mr. Shit-for-brains should’ve done.

  But what should have be done and what was done has always been the problem of humanity, hasn’t it? Instead of doing the right thing—the thing that would’ve meant he lived long enough to marry his bitch and maybe have a family of little bitches—instead of doing that, dumb Mr. Shit-for-brains came up swinging the shovel like a fuck’n knight in shining armour wielding his fuck’n sword. Dumb, just plain fuck’n dumb. Max was at least two seconds ahead of him. He’d read the dumb fuck’s intention the instant he’d gripped the shovel high on the shaft and glanced nervously up at his slut. Had read his moves like they were printed in big white letters across the back of his fuck’n skull: I’M GONNA DO SOMETH’N PRETTY FUCK’N STOOPID RIGHT NOW! The bullet smashed into his heart before he even had time to lift the shovel fully above his head.

  Surprisingly, Max didn’t hear a sound. He didn’t hear the crack of gunfire next to his ear. He didn’t hear the thwack! of lead bludgeoning into flesh and bone, nor the surprised ooph! that rushed out of Jade’s mouth just seconds before the gurgle of blood that choked him to death.

  Rather, he saw Jade hit the ground and the shovel dropping from his grasp before pirouetting on its tip and toppling into the fire. Sparks flew from the coals in slow, upward spirals before drifting to the ground in the distance or extinguishing in the cold night air. Three or four even settled on Jade, a couple on his bloodstained T-shirt and a couple on his face, which was now a mask of shock and horror, mouth gaping, eyes bulging, hair perfect.

  Better get the shovel out of the flames before it burns the shaft, he thought, somewhat dreamily. Haven’t got a spare here with me. Might have to buy a new one at the hardware store.

  What brought him back to his senses was her wailing. Sal had thrown herself on top of her useless fuck’n boyfriend and was screaming his name incessantly, “JADE! JADE! JADE!” as if that would bring him back to fuck’n life. “JADE! JADE! JADE!” She had his head in her arms and was rocking him back and forth. “JADE! JADE! JADE!” Then it happened for the second time today.

  She stopped screaming and turned to face him, raging with tears and hate. Max gaped. The sign—she had given him the sign. Looking straight into his eyes, the bitch had asked to be next. No doubt about it. No sir-ee. The tingling in his pants was instant and overpowering, as though someone had plugged his cock into a power socket and flicked on the switch.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, YOU USELESS FUCKING ARSEHOLE?” she screamed.

  But he was too overwhelmed by what he’d just witnessed. He pumped another bullet into the Remington’s chamber before the moment was gone and trained the sight between her perfect fuck’n eyebrows.

  “Knew a woman like you once,” he said, and squeezed the trigger.

  CHAPTER 3

  He had to stop this head fuck. Man, he was thirty-five. He didn’t need this fuck’n shit.

  He had to think straight, clear his mind, but this raging headache wasn’t helping matters at fuck’n all. He rubbed both temples, massaging the tightness and the pain. OK, he thought after a minute or so. First the bodies and the abandoned car at the dam. Probably the car first. The bodies he could cover up here for the time being. The car, though, was going to arouse suspicion. He needed to do something about it, but what could he realistically do? One thing was for fuck’n sure, he’d have to go to the dam straight away, tonight, and try and hide it somehow. He could smash the window to get inside, then shove the gearbox into neutral and move it out of the way. But tying a rope around the Cherokee’s towbar and towing it by himself was out of the question. With nobody behind the steering wheel, he’d most likely end up rolling the fuck’n thing into the bushes at the side of the first fuck’n corner. That and risk the Cherokee flipping over with it.

  Nah, he’d have to push it somewhere. But where? Into the lake? Not such a bad idea, but how long would it be before the alarm was raised? Two kids gone missing, not very long at all. Someone would eventually remember seeing the abandoned car at the lake: the park ranger, a camera-happy tourist, an SA Water employee, even a local from Serena or Myponga. Someone was bound to call the cops sooner or later, and it wouldn’t be long before the whole fuck’n police force was swarming all over the joint searching for the fuck’n brats. Fuck’n pigs would spare no effort.

  Funny that, huh? If they were chinks or wogs or Abos, they would hardly lift a finger, but because they were white brats with a private school education, no stone would be left unturned, like they were fuck’n royalty or someth’n. They’d have choppers looking all over the valley and the surrounding area as well. Not to mention the fuck’n television choppers too. Reporters’d be all over this s
tory like a fuck’n rash. Be like fuck’n Iraq up there, so he’d have to make bloody sure the humpy and everything around the campsite was completely camouflaged from the air.

  But first things first: the car. Come to think about it, he didn’t even know what kind of wheels these brats drove. Probably some fuck’n BMW or Mercedes four-wheel drive, of course. Could picture it now: squeaky-clean wheels that had never splashed through a puddle; spotless windshield that had never had the arse of some mosquito splattered across it; immaculate paintwork (black or silver, naturally) that had never been shat on by a seagull or pigeon. Or maybe they hadn’t borrowed the family-fun-time at all. Maybe it was daddy’s favourite Audi TT, his little fuck’n penis substitute that only came out of the garage on weekends when the weather was warm enough to take down the roof and make his way up to some trendy, out-of-the-way café in the hills where he could sip fuck’n espressos all afternoon and peruse the pages of the Financial fuck’n Review.

  “Keep ya head together, Max,” he mumbled, staring at the bodies slumped at his boots. He rubbed his temples again. “Gotta think proper. Gotta hide the evidence.”

  Jade was on his back, his bulging eyes staring vacantly up at Venus and the party gals, blood congealing like cupcake icing on his lips and chin. Whilst kneeling and cradling his dead body, Sal had collapsed directly across his bloodstained chest when the bullet had ripped through her skull, like she was praying west toward Mecca. Together they reminded him of some obscure sexual position he’d never seen, not even in all the pornos he’d devoured over the years.

  That at least made him smile. He had a throb that demanded immediate attention. It ached as much as his fuck’n temples at the moment; was so hard he reckoned the skin’d start splitting if he didn’t do anything about it. Her body was still warm. He had the sudden idea to pull down her pants and bang her from behind while she was still bent across her useless fuck’n boyfriend, but he pushed the thought aside. He wasn’t a sick bastard, but the bitch had been asking for it, hadn’t she? Practically begged him for it. He had proof. She’d given him the sign. Once she’d done that, she was his slave to do as he fuck’n well wanted.