Color of Blood(98)

“Looks right,” Jimmy said, standing up, “but I think ya mates are comin’.”

Dennis turned around and looked down the fence line toward the main track. He could see nothing.

“You sure?” he asked Jimmy.

“Mind if I climb up?” Jimmy asked.

“Go right ahead.”

Jimmy climbed up onto the hood and balanced himself on the roof, looking back toward the main track. Snippy stood up and looked quizzically at his master; then his ears twitched, and he turned to look back toward the track.

Jimmy stared for a while and then said simply, “Four-wheelers.”

“What?” Dennis said.

“Four-wheelers: two of ’em. Comin’ this way pretty bloody fast.”

“Shit,” Dennis said. “Jimmy, is there another way out of here back to Newton?”

Scampering down, Jimmy grabbed his stick and pointed north across the gently undulating moonscape in the opposite direction of the approaching vehicles. “There’s a track up there. Go straight, and you’ll find it. Take it west to Newton.”

Dennis stood next to the open driver’s side door, his right hand resting on the inside door handle while he looked at Jimmy, who stood in front of the Cruiser.

The sound of a pebble hitting the open car door startled Dennis; that sound was followed almost immediately by an audible ‘pop’ from far away. Confused, Dennis looked at the open door and saw a hole the diameter of a pencil eraser on the inside of the Cruiser’s vinyl upholstery.

Curious, he bent closer to the hole and was startled to feel an impact next to his right foot that sprayed red sand onto his pants.

“Bloody oath!” Jimmy yelled. “Them buggers are shootin’.”

Dennis could make out two men sitting on ATVs two hundred yards away on a small rise pointing something at him. He felt a whoosh, like an angry bee, rush past his face.

“Shit!” Dennis said, ducking into the car. “Jimmy, get in; you’ll never outrun them.”

Jimmy hesitated, then ran around and grabbed the passenger door handle and jumped in, Snippy settling nervously on his lap.

Dennis heard another round hit the back of the Cruiser.

“Go!” Jimmy yelled.





Chapter 35


Dennis took off with a roar, bounding directly over humps of small spinifex and dodging others.

Inexplicably, Jimmy started fiddling with the temperature controls.

“Need to turn on the heat,” he said.

“The heat?”

“We jus’ got water, no radiator fluid. Water don’t work. The heater pulls heat outa the engine. Otherwise might boil.”

“You’re f*cking kidding me,” Dennis shouted, looking out the back window at the dust trail behind them.

“No, mate.” Sure enough, as if the heat, the flies, and the dust were not bad enough, they drove off-road through the desert with the car heater on full blast.

Jimmy kept facing backward as Dennis navigated the desert.

After ten minutes of driving slalom through the spinifex mounds, Jimmy said, “Denny, don’t think we can outrun them.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re goin’ to catch us before we get to the track.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Dennis was driving down the side of a pebbly, dried stream bed. He slammed on the brakes. Snippy fell off Jimmy’s lap and slid awkwardly down onto his feet, yelping.

“Jimmy,” Dennis yelled, “after I get out, you drive another five minutes toward the track, then turn around and come back to get me. You got that?”

“Shouldn’t get out, mate,” he said. “Bad idea.”

“Jimmy, remember: five minutes out, then come back. If you can’t find me when you come back, take this damn car back to the hotel in Newton and tell a guest named Judy what happened. She’ll pay you money for your trouble. Guest named Judy. Remember: Judy is her name. Just let me get something out of the car.”

Dennis raced around back, opened the hatch, and pulled out a red backpack. It contained a pair of binoculars, a small digital camera, the silencer for the plastic pistol, a set of Judy’s handcuffs, and a Power Bar. Dennis also grabbed the curved tire iron. Jimmy slid over onto the driver’s side.

“Go!” Dennis yelled as he slammed the driver’s side door.

Jimmy sprayed him with rocks and pebbles as he took off down the gully and up out the other side.

Dennis raced back up to the lip of the ravine and dropped the backpack, but not before pocketing the handcuffs and silencer. Then he hid on the other side of a huge spinifex mound that was beside the backpack.

He did not have to wait long as the sound of the high-pitched ATV engines whined closer.

Dennis was scared, but his anger was stronger; the audacity and violence of their attack had shocked him. He tried to calm himself by staring into the bleached, sharp leaves of the spinifex grass strands.

“Come here, you little bastards,” he repeated to himself.

He heard the two bike-like vehicles roar up and then brake in a spray of pebbles, sand, and dust. They had found the backpack.

Dennis briefly considered shooting the drivers with his pistol, but his instinct told him that the aftermath of his adventure would be immeasurably less complicated if he hadn’t killed two contractors. Still, he was angry beyond control. He slid around the spinifex mound to his right with the tire iron in his hand.