They passed the turn off to Simpsons Gap, where the ranges were cleft neatly in two by the persistent waters of Roe Creek. It seemed incredible that water had any power at all over this country, considering there was so little of it.
No-one said a word, but tension began to rise fast inside the cabin.
“My guts are killing me, I’ve gotta pull over,” said Pollock.
“We’re almost at the turn-off,” said Warigal.
“Keep going,” Luckman demanded. “It’s only going to get worse. You want me to drive, Curtis?”
“It’s a police car, you’re not driving.”
“This is the place isn’t it Pat?” Warigal inquired.
“Yeah. Turn here,” Pat confirmed.
The dirt road came off the highway at an angle then turned sharply and pointed like an arrow toward a group of five houses, maybe half a kilometre away.
“Someone live here?” asked Pollock.
“A bunch of old bushies,” said Pat. “Friends of ours. Three or four families. They keep to themselves.”
The track dipped as it crossed a creek bed about 100 metres away from the buildings. As they traversed the creek, a dark black cloud descended on the windscreen of the LandCruiser.
“Windows up,” Pat yelled.
But they weren’t quick enough. A swarm of blowflies filled the cabin, forcing Pollock to halt the car as everyone flung doors open to escape the onslaught. The other 4WD pulled up behind them and the uniforms found themselves in a similar predicament. They leapt from the car like their lives depended on it, waving their heads about madly.
“Never seen ’em this bad,” Pat admitted.
“Where have they all come from?” Luckman wondered.
“Must be something dead up there,” said Pollock, pointing at the houses.
There was a terrible pall of decay in the air. The flies were relatively easy to kill, but the slaughter itself was distinctly unpleasant. It took them several minutes to chase the swarm out of the cars and away from themselves. About 50 metres up the track they came across the source of the stench. The decomposing bodies of six adults were scattered around the compound – four men and two women, each crawling with maggots and flies. They had been picked apart by other desert scavengers.
Constable Athol gagged and turned away.
Bell stared at the carnage, shaking his head in dismay. “What the hell happened here?”
“It’s like Jonestown,” said Pollock.
Luckman examined one of the corpses, which was only barely recognisable as a man. “His fingers are broken.”
Bell checked out another one. “This one’s had his head caved in.”
“No-one touch a thing,” Pollock ordered, turning to the constables. “Cordon off the area, and get the scientific unit out here.”
Warigal and Pat were hanging back near the creek bed, examining the dirt track that led up to the compound. “You two – found something?” Pollock inquired.
“No fresh tyre marks apart from ours,” said Pat. “Whoever did this came by air or they came in from the other direction.”
“Or it could be murder-suicide,” suggested Constable Athol.
“That’d cut back on the paper work wouldn’t it?” Mel snarled facetiously.
“What now detective?” Luckman asked Pollock.
“This is as far as I go. I’ve got a major crime scene on my hands.”
“They’re probably just Blanks, poor buggers,” Mel decided.
Luckman nodded in agreement.
“What’s a Blank?” asked Athol.
No-one bothered to answer.
Forty-Five
“I’m going to need your car,” Luckman told Pollock.
“Like hell.”
“Look, you can shoot me or you can give me the damn car. If it makes you feel better, I’ll commandeer the bloody thing under martial law.”
Athol and the other constables looked somewhat alarmed by the implication as Pollock lobbed the keys at Luckman a little harder than necessary. “Warigal stays with me,” Pollock insisted.
“But he’s the one who knows the trail,” Luckman complained.
“You’ll be right,” said Wozza. “Just keep going south.”
“What could possibly go wrong?” said Mel.
The corpses were probably just a group of unfortunates who didn’t get picked up when the town was evacuated. They went Blank and died of exposure and desperation like billions of others the world over. But Luckman’s paranoia wouldn’t allow him to dismiss the idea that they’d been murdered and left here as some sort of medieval-style warning.
Assuming, of course, the hallucinations hadn’t already begun.
“Go on then, get out of here before I think better of it,” Pollock told them. “But for Christ’s sake, drive back and around the houses, not through my crime scene.”
A breakaway trail led them past the compound and onto the main track heading south toward the ranges. Luckman quickly began to feel as if the landscape was about to swallow them whole. Nausea and uneasiness hit each of them in turn, the pain intensifying the further they travelled.
“Probably a good thing we left that fat copper behind,” Bell concluded. “He’d be giving up by now,” he added, just before he stuck his head out the front passenger window to throw up.
Luckman was driving. Mel placed her hand gently on his shoulder from the back seat. “I don’t want to alarm you, but this is starting to feel awfully familiar. No police reinforcements – just the four of us. Again.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he murmured.
It was only about a half kilometre from one side to the other in the first line of ranges, but it took 10 minutes of slow, methodical driving. The trail was littered with rock falls and in several places small garden beds of weed or spinifex had spontaneously sprouted in the middle of the tyre tracks. No-one had used this trail in a long time.
“I feel like I’m coming down with the flu or something,” Mel complained.
“Me too,” Bell admitted.
“Yeah, same,” said Pat. “Mind you, all that back there was enough to make anyone lose their lunch.”
“Your spirit man – what do you call him?” Bell asked suddenly.
“Dog,” Luckman replied.
“Or Perrurle,” Pat added.
Bell pointed to a hill on their right. “That him up there?”
A naked Aboriginal man painted head to toe in white stood like a sentinel on the ridge line above them. “Yeah, that’s him,” Luckman confirmed.
“Just so we’re on the same page, that’s the same fella you were seeing on the Gold Coast?”
“Yep.”
“So you weren’t losing your marbles after all.”
“The jury’s still out on that one,” Luckman admitted.
“We can all see him now,” said Mel.
“What I mean is, after this morning how do any of us know what’s real?” Luckman asked her.
“For one thing, Dog’s not shooting at us this time,” Pat pointed out.
“True,” Luckman admitted.
The car moved through the ranges and onto an open plain. The second line of hills was about a kilometre away, but the road in front of them suddenly vanished. On a whim, Luckman turned the 4WD left to follow a line of trees along flat terrain, figuring their roots would keep the ground stable.
“There he is again,” Bell cried. “Off to the right now. You’re going the wrong way.”
Luckman grimaced and had just begun to slow down when the nose of the car dipped sharply as the front end fell into a ditch and the car bottomed out. Luckman hopped out to see how bad it was. His worst suspicions were immediately confirmed.
“Stupid bastard,” he yelled at himself.
The car was perched on a large rock embedded in the sand, leaving the front wheels spinning in the air. The rear wheels alone wouldn’t shift the car without damaging the drive train.