The parking lot at Settlers was jam packed when Ben arrived back and he wondered what all the cars were doing there. Was it Beef Week already? But no, Beef Week was earlier in the year, it had been and gone. There must have been some other festival to account for it.
As he pulled up, he saw Allan and Cecile come from their room followed by about half a dozen people, men and women, although mostly men. Amongst them Ben saw one who made his heart jam to a halt in his chest. Strutting along beside a balding, middle-aged dude and looking vaguely disoriented, was Neil Bryce.
Ben slid down in his seat as far as he could and watched them through the window. They all piled into three cars and started reversing out of the lot. Ben watched as the last car rolled backwards, turned in a jerky circle and drove out onto the road. Going against every single shred of common sense he possessed, Ben restarted his car and pulled out after them. Whatever that bastard was up to, he was determined to find out. For all he knew, Allan and Cecile were taking them to the old people's home to spend an afternoon engaging and chatting to the elderly, but he sincerely doubted it. He just hoped it wasn't more bad news for Kath.
Ben followed them through the town and out the north end of town past the Meatworks. The road didn't get much better from here on in, leading only deeper into the country and back-roads to Brisbane.
Not far from town, about ten kilometres out, the procession turned onto a narrow dirt track. Ben pulled up at the mouth of the track and waited until they got far enough down there that they wouldn't see him and followed. That was the best thing about dirt roads, Ben thought as he crept through their dust clouds. You could follow right on the tail of someone else and they couldn't even see you.
Not that he'd followed all that many people.
They cruised a few kilometres down the track, through the paddocks cleared for farming and into the back acres, still heavily wooded. Here the track grew narrow and almost impassable with overgrown trees. More than once, Ben had to ease his car across a shallow crossing where a creek ran over the road.
The further into the bush they went, the rougher the road became until it turned into an even rougher track and Ben had to slow down so they wouldn't see him. They made a sharp left turn and he almost lost them. Speeding up now, anxious to keep after them, Ben almost passed the track they'd used. Although track was a grand word for it, it was really no more than two ruts dug through the grass, a pair of matching cattle trails, perhaps.
Ben drove a little past the turn-off, stopped his car and climbed out. Walking to the head of the track for a better look, he heard the sound of their vehicles fading from his ears and, apart from that, nothing. He paused, there was no other sound in the bush now, it was completely silent. Not the whisper of a breeze through the leaves, not a bird nor an insect. The entire surrounding area hung suspended, waiting.
The air grew oppressive, closing in on him and the bush darkened, despite there not being a cloud in the sky. Ben crept on ever more cautiously, his breath barely a ghost moving through his lungs and open mouth. There came a sudden sound, the yowl of a cat in pain. Or in heat. The sound of it startled Ben and he stumbled backwards, stepping right on a branch that gave out with hearty snap like a gunshot.
Ben didn't hang around to see if anyone heard him, he spun and raced back up the track, cursing himself for ever being stupid enough to come out here. There were no sounds of pursuit from behind him, still he didn't dare look back. You never knew what might be following you.
He flung himself into the front seat of his car and gunned the engine. He reversed onto the rutted cow paths and spun back out onto the track, opening the car up as far as he dared. On this road, it amounted only to about fifty kilometres an hour. Any faster and he risked the whole car shaking itself apart.
As he sped off down the track Ben saw the vehicles he'd been following turn out onto the road behind him before being obscured by the trail of his dust. He couldn't see who was driving or even tell if they'd seen him, but they would clearly know by his dust cloud that someone had been there. The black cloud, he noticed, was gone. As if it had never been.
Not being able to see them behind him, Ben had no idea if they were gaining or he'd lost them or where they were. He kept his foot down as far as he dared, slowing only when he felt the car threatening to slew out around the corners. His hands clenched on the wheel and, despite the coolness of the day, he felt sweat trickling down the side of his ribs. He eased down a little more on the accelerator, splitting his attention between the road ahead and his rear-view mirror. He wasn't sure what was worse, the unbroken cloud of dust or the thought a vehicle might suddenly surge out of it. Ben had a sudden thought that would have been amusing if he knew for sure he was going to live through this. The thought was that they were trying to give him a taste of his own medicine. Ben had followed them all the way out here, now they were going to follow him all the way back into town.
Pretty funny, huh? Ben could have bust a gut laughing.
Finally, he reached the turn-off back onto the bitumen, Ben could have sworn the road out was about three times as long as the road in. He sped back out onto the road, feeling a vast, all-encompassing sense of relief and he relaxed back into his seat. Bitumen meant civilisation, other people, safety. If his pursuers had decided to run him off the road and kill him out in the middle of that bush there would have been nothing he could have done. They could have killed him and dumped him and his car into a creek where he might have gone unnoticed for years.
Behind him, the three vehicles he'd followed out here maintained a steady distance, although now they were accelerating to keep pace with him. The car right behind him - which Ben could now see was occupied by his new friends, Allan and Cecile - turned on its blinker and drifted across onto the opposite side of the road and overtook him. They eased up beside him and when Ben looked across at them his stomach did a greasy back-flip. They were staring right across at him! Both of them, even as they barrelled along toward certain doom should a truck come the opposite direction, gazing across at him with an eerie calm, as if they were all sitting in a coffee shop. Then they were gone and accelerating away in front of him.
The second car behind him also indicated and overtook him and Ben grew more hopeful. They weren't following him after all!
But as the land-cruiser cut back in front of him Ben realised what they were doing and his heart swelled to fill his throat.
The two vehicles in front slowed down so that they were only a metre or two in front of him, forcing him to slow also, and the remaining follower closed in. Effectively, he was blocked in. He couldn't risk stopping or his tailgating buddy would ram him in the arse, and the road wasn't straight enough for him to overtake his honour guard. On the winding section of road they were travelling on overtaking one car would have been risky enough, but two? Fuhgeddaboutit! As they said.
Ben travelled in this weird procession for a while, the fear now a wailing, live thing, beating its wings against the inside of his skull like a trapped bird. The worst was not knowing what they were planning. Were they going to kill him? Run him off the road? Abduct him? And if they were going to kill him wouldn't they have done it out there in the middle of the bush? They hadn't tried to pull him over or even make any kind of indication to him whatsoever. Maybe they were trying to force him somewhere deserted and kill him.
Ben wondered what would happen if he simply took the rear-ender and stopped his car and asked them what was wrong.
All of a sudden, they pulled off the side of the road and let him go by. As they neared a rest area on the left and the three cars all put their blinkers on simultaneously, Ben felt a crazed urge to put his on and stop with them. Instead, he reasoned, quelling that law-abiding part of him, this might be his only chance to escape. So he pushed the accelerator down and sped on past them.
He barrelled down the road past the rest area at a hundred twenty kilometres an hour, nervously, obsessively, glancing at his rear view mirror in case they decided to keep after
him. But even as he glanced back they turned around and drove back the way they'd come.
Ben heaved a shaky sigh of relief as he entered the town limits. He wasn't entirely sure what had just happened but there was one thing he knew. He was never going to follow anyone ever again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN