open my mouth a crack — ugh!' And he spat out yet another wet fly.
Liz squirmed and grimaced. 'What the hell do they live on, I wonder? Way out here, I mean?' She swatted and missed as something small, black and nasty went zipping by.
'Things die out here/ Jake answered grimly. 'Maybe that's what they live on.' And just when she thought that was it, that he was all done for now: 'Anyway, the sun's going down over the hills there. Another half-hour or so, it'll be cooler. It won't get cold — not in this freaky weather — but at least you'll be able to breathe without frying your lungs.' Then he was done.
She turned her head to look at him more fully: his angular face in profile, his hard hands on the wheel, his lean outline. But if Jake noticed her frowning, curiously intent glance, well, it scarcely registered. That was how he was: hands off. And she thought: We make a damned odd couple!
She was right, they did. Jake hard yet supple, like whip-cord, and Liz soft and curvy. Him with his dark background and current… condition, and Liz with her—
— Which was when they hit a pothole, which simultaneously brought Liz's mind back to earth while lifting her backside eight inches off her seat. 'Jake, take it easy!' she gasped.
He nodded, in no way apologetically, almost absent-mindedly. He had turned his head to look at her — no, Liz corrected herself — to look beyond her, westward where the rounded domes of gaunt, yellow-and red-ochre hills marched parallel with the road. They were pitted, those hills, pockmarked even from here. The same could be said of the desert all around, including the so-called road. 'These old mine workings,' Jake growled. 'Gold mines. That was subsidence back there, where the road is sinking into some old mine. I didn't see it because of this bloody heat haze.'
'Gold?' Squirming down into her seat, Liz tried to get comfortable again. Hah! she thought. As if I'd been comfortable in the first place!
'They found a few nuggets here/ he told her. 'There was a bit of a gold rush that didn't pan out. There may be gold here — there
probably is — but first you have to survive to bring it up out of the ground. It just wasn't worth it…'
'Because even without this awful El Nino weather, this was one hell of an inhospitable place to survive in/ she nodded.
'Right/ Finally Jake glanced at her — at her this time. And while he was still looking she grinned nervously and said:
'What a place to spend your honeymoon! I should never have let you talk me into it/ A witticism, of course.
'Huh!' was his reply. Shielding his eyes, he switched his attention back to the rounded hills with the sun's rim sitting on them like a golden, pus-filled blister on the slumping hip of some gigantic, reclining, decomposing woman.
'Fuel gauge is low/ Liz tapped on the gauge with a fingernail. 'Are we sure there's a gas station out here?' In fact she knew there was; it was right there on the map. It was just the awful heat, the condition of the road, evening setting in, and a perfectly normal case of nerves. Liz's tended to fray a little from time to time. As for Jake's… well, she wasn't entirely sure about his, didn't even know if he had any.
'Gas station?' He glanced at her again. 'Sure there is. To service the local 'community'. Heck, around these parts there's point nine persons per hundred square miles!' While Jake's sarcasm dripped, it wasn't directed entirely at Liz but rather at their situation. Moreover, she thought she detected an unfamiliar edge to his voice. So perhaps he did have nerves after all. But still his completely humourless attitude irritated her.
'That many people? Really?' For a moment she'd felt goaded into playing this insufferable man at his own game… but only for a moment. Then, shrugging, she let it go. 'So what's it doing here? The gas station, I mean/
'It's a relic of the gold rush/ he answered. 'The Australian Government keeps such places going with subsidies, or they simply couldn't exist. They're watering holes in the middle of nowhere, way stations for the occasional wanderer. Don't expect too much, though. Maybe a bottle of warm beer — make sure you knock the cap off yourself… yes, I know you know that — no food, and if you need the loo you'd better do it before we get there.' Good advice, around these parts.
The road vanished about a mile ahead: an optical illusion, just like the heat haze. As the hills got higher, so the road began to climb, making everything seem on a level, horizontal. Only the throb of the motor told the truth: that the Land Rover was in fact labouring, however slightly. And in another minute they crested the rise.
Then Jake brought the vehicle to a halt and they both went off into the scrub fifty yards in different directions. He got back first, was leaning on his open door, peering through binoculars and checking the way ahead when Liz returned.
'See anything?' she asked, secretly admiring Jake where he stood unselfconsciously posed, with one booted foot on the door sill, his jeans outlining a small backside and narrow hips. But the rest of him wasn't small. He was tall, maybe six-two, leggy and with long arms to match. His hair was a deep brown like his eyes, and his face was lean, hollow-cheeked. He looked as if a good meal wouldn't hurt… but, on the other hand, extra weight would certainly slow him down. His lips were thin, even cruel. And when he smiled you could never be sure there was any humour in it. Jake's hair was long as a lion's; he kept it swept back, braided into a pigtail. His jaw was angular, thinly scarred on the left side, and his nose had been broken high on the bridge so that it hung like a sheer cliff (like a native American Indian's nose, Liz thought) instead of projecting. But despite his leanness, Jake's shoulders were broad, and the sun-bronzed flesh of his upper arms was corded with muscle. His thighs, too, she imagined…
'The gas station,' he answered. 'Sign at the roadside says 'Old Mine Gas'. There's a track off to the right from the road to the pumps… or rather the pump. What a dump.' Another sign this side of the shack says… what?' He frowned.
'Well, what?' Liz asked.
'Says 'See the Creature!'' Jake told her. 'But it's spelled C-r-e-e-c-h-u-r. Huh! Creechur…' He shook his head.
'Not much schooling around here,' she said. Then, putting a hand to the left side of her face to shut out the last spears of sunlight from the west, 'That's some kind of eyesight you've got. Even with binoculars the letters on those signs have to be tiny.'
'First requirement of a sniper,' he grunted. 'That his eyesight is one hundred per cent.'
'But you're not a sniper, or indeed any kind of killer, any longer,' she told him — then caught her breath as she realized how wrong she might be. Except it was different now, surely.
Jake passed the binoculars, looked at her but made no comment. Peering through the glasses, she focused them to her own vision, picked up the gas station's single forlorn pump and the shack standing — or leaning — behind it, apparently built right into the rocky base of a knoll, which itself bulged at the foot of a massive outcrop or butte. The road wound around the ridgy, shelved base of the outcrop and disappeared north.
And while she looked at the place, Jake looked at her. That was okay because she didn't know he was looking.
She was a girl — no, a woman — and a sight for sore eyes. But Jake Cutter couldn't look at her that way. There had >em a woman, and after her there couldn't be anything else. Not ever. But if there could have been… maybe it would have been someone like Liz Merrick. She was maybe five-seven, willow-waisted, and fully curved where it would matter to someone who mattered. And to whom she mattered. Well, and she did, but not like that. Her hair, black as night, cut in a boyish bob, wasn't Natasha's hair, and her long legs weren't Natasha's legs. But Liz's smile… he had to admit there was something in her smile. Something like a ray of bright light, but one that Jake wished he'd never known — because he knew now how quickly a light can be switched off. Like Natasha's light…
'Not very appetizing,' Liz commented, breathing with difficulty through her mouth.
'Eh?' He came back to earth.
'The dump, as you called it.'
'The name says it all.' Jake was equally adenoidal. 'Probably the entrance to an old mine. Hence 'Old Mine Gas'.'
A great talent for the obvious, she wanted to tell him but didn't. Sarcasm again, covering for something else.
'So what do you think?' she finally said, as they got back into the 'Rover.
