John Marsden - Incurable

I nearly lost the track and had to swing sharply left hoping that the faint line I’d seen out of the corner of my eye was a road. Those bush tracks are so deceptive. They’ll run along like a regular road while you listen to the music and enjoy the view, and then for no obvious reason they start to degenerate, and before you know it there’s not much more than a choice of paths, decorated with kangaroo droppings and rabbit holes, and you can’t be sure they’ve got anything to do with humans even. They look more like animal routes to the tastier patches of grass. And then you can’t pick up any radio stations and you think, ‘OK, what happened to civilisation?’

Still, I thought I was on a man-made track. It seemed to be heading back towards a highway I could see in the distance, with regular traffic. We started going across the crest of a hill, but then the path turned again and went down the back of the hill. That’s when Lee called out, ‘Are those rocks up there?’

‘Yeah I think so.’

‘Hit the brakes when we get there. And stay ready. Don’t get out.’

He and Homer had been talking in the back seat from time to time, but I hadn’t heard what they were saying and I hadn’t tried. Too busy keeping us alive. But I knew from our experience in the war that when someone like Lee tells you to do something, if it’s a time of real danger, you’d better do what he says. Every other time you can ignore him, and you’re probably better off if you do.

As soon as we reached the rocks I stopped with a lurch. I knew now why he wanted to stop. It was because the motorbikes were out of sight for a minute. The three boys piled out. The vehicle rocked as someone got up on the tray. I heard the scraping of a drum across the metal floor.

‘What are they doing?’ Jess asked nervously.

I glanced back at her but didn’t answer. At least she’d stopped trembling, more or less. How should I know what they were doing? It involved the spare drums of fuel, that’s all I knew. The ute lurched again as the boys jumped off the back. It felt lighter now, somehow.

Lee’s face appeared at the window. ‘Get going,’ he said. ‘Stop up there somewhere after we’ve set it off

Set what off? Lee turned to the other two boys and said, ‘You two spread it and I’ll light it. That way I won’t get any on my clothes.’ By the end of his sentence we were gone.

We rocked and bumped on, going up a rise now. It was tough stuff. Smart of Lee to think of that detail. Otherwise he could have become a human torch. We turned right, still following a track. The motorbikes appeared again, coming pretty fast, making up the time and space they’d lost. I couldn’t see the boys. From one of the bikes came a familiar flash of flame. It was the mark of a gunshot. So they were still keen to kill us. And of course there could be no other outcome really. They couldn’t take us prisoner. They’d be too scared to try that in the middle of the night when we’d already proved how dangerous we were.

I didn’t really understand how Lee would stop them with a small petrol fire. After all, the bikes could be manoeuvred around that. No big deal really. The three boys hadn’t even taken their guns, so it wasn’t like they were going to shoot the riders while they were distracted by the flames. Then I realised and I cried out.

‘What?’ Jess asked, looking scared.

I stopped the ute and looked back down the hill. I wasn’t sure how good a view Jess had. Mine was pretty good. Of course Lee had volunteered to be the one who’d light the match. He was the only one who could do this. I couldn’t have done it.

Like a pack, the bikes came on. There were three, not two. I saw at least one pillion passanger. Maybe they’d paused when they did to pick up reinforcements. Now they probably had time to register that the car had stopped, up on the rise. They were in a bunch bunched together. Lee had chosen the spot well, considering he’d had so little time. The gradient on either side of the track meant they were forced together and the rocks caused them to slow down.

I wondered if they smelt the petrol and had time to think about it for a moment. They lit up slowly, or that’s what it seemed like. Of course it must have all happened in a second. When I replay it in my head it seems like slow motion. I didn’t see the match. The first thing I saw was a glow that was almost phosphorescent. It rose like a dancer who was getting to her feet to start the performance. Funny how something so terrible can be so beautiful. It spread across some grass and almost instantly came to the first motorbike. It paused there. Everything seemed to hang. This bike, and one of the others, had a rider and a passenger. The rider threw up his hands as though he suddenly didn’t care about the bike; he was just going to let it fall, let him and his passenger be thrown into the flames. Suddenly all three bikes, all five men, became blazing statues. Lee’s timing had been as perfect as his choice of location.

I turned away, sickened, unable to watch any more. Even above the engine of the ute I could hear screams. ‘Revenge for Shannon,’ I thought, trying to give it meaning, make it bearable. I put the car into reverse to get the three boys. I only had to back up about thirty metres before they arrived. This time they had the sense to use different doors, Jeremy and Homer on one side, Lee on the other. They reeked of petrol. I think the horror and enormity of what they’d done had sent them into supershock. But they had given us a chance to get out of here. I put my foot to the floor. We went on to the top of the rise. The track now took on a more definite direction again. In the distance I could see the highway again, with quite a few cars going along it. How strange, that normal life was going on over there, while behind us men were staggering around trying to put themselves out. Well, maybe sometimes we all had to be foxes and feel nothing for our victims. For some minutes my main concern was the petrol fumes in the car. It was terrible, even with the windows down and me driving as fast as I dared. I even used the word ‘terrible’ when I was yelling at Jeremy to wind down the window, which says something about me or about language or about both, because there was only one thing that was terrible during that time.

We got to the highway through a couple of gates. Jess got out and opened them. I thought it was a good sign when she did that but a bad sign when she started closing the first one again. God, what a waste of time, although maybe she thought she’d slow down anyone else who was following. I think we all screamed simultaneously at her. We’d be on the highway before any more chasers appeared. ‘Always leave gates as you find them,’ yes, and it went against the grain to leave these open, but what did we care about their stock? They’d probably stolen them from us anyway.

Getting away always seems lighter somehow. Of course it’s logical it would feel that way, but almost every time we’d had to escape during the war it worked out to be easier and quicker. Maybe the relief gave wings to our feet, a richer mixture to the fuel in our carburettors. When there were no cars in sight I slipped onto the highway — it wasn’t really a highway, just a busy main road — then took the first turn to the left. It was a long straight road, heading vaguely in the direction we wanted. I pulled over to the side, opened the door and got out, saying to them as I did so, ‘Well, have a nice ride home, people. I’m going back to find Gavin.’

The thing I most don’t like about Jess is that she wants life to be a huge drama with her as the star and so she kind of organises people that way. Not to an extreme, like I’ve seen worse, but at the end of the day it’s always about her. Steve can be a bit like that too, which is one reason we broke up, but Jess is worse than Steve.