They stopped again late in the afternoon when Stokes spotted a roo flung back from the side of the highway and so camouflaged with dust that Li had missed it. It was a boomer, a big one. She and Dev helped him haul the carcass onto the bonnet and tie it down. Lucas swapped the front seat with Jasmine, who chose the spot beside Li, facing Stokes. She sat braced with her legs apart, dismantling one of the phones for no good reason Li could see, except to demonstrate that she had plenty of kit in a metal toolbox bolted to the tray. Stokes started whistling some three-note tune and kept it up until Dev elbowed him quiet.
Halfway through putting the phone back together, Jasmine dropped a screwdriver. She hunted cursorily among the bags and legs and then turned to Li. You got a Phillips eight-mil?
Li considered denying it but to stay in the ute she had to be useful. She picked out the screwdriver by feel – no need to show Jasmine what else she had. Waited for her to hand it back. Then she turned away and watched the road and the scrub and the fence and the sky running together. The faces on the roadside were easy to account for now because there were so few of them and they were all going the wrong way. She felt speed, acceleration. No ache in her ankle. Played it over and over, the moment she caught up to Matti, how she wouldn’t be empty-handed. Twenty-one days. She opened her mouth and swallowed the road.
They’d been driving about two hours when a tyre blew out. The ute swerved and skidded into the dirt, Shaun fighting for control. He jacked it up and they examined the tyre in the fading light.
Well, shit, he said.
Stokes and Eileen went to look for a place to camp. Li saw that the ute had been modified to fit truck wheels, suspension raised and the rims ground out to fit the oversized hubs. She’d learned to do this in Teresa and Navid’s garage. She wondered if Shaun had done it, and where he’d got a welder.
Where’s your spare?
Shaun pointed at the right front wheel. He sent Mira to hack off armfuls of spinifex and they packed the busted tyre tight. Stokes came back and said they’d found a place near a dry riverbed on the inland side of the highway. Shaun drove there slowly across the tussock and sand. It was a good spot, well into the scrub and with tree shelter.
The group set up efficiently. They rigged up a big tarp between the trees and unrolled their swags under it, and no one objected when Li made her bed on the fringes. Mostly they acted like she wasn’t there. When Stokes asked her for a hand with the roo she helped him to rope the carcass over a branch and slit the throat and skin and gut it. It was good not to be sitting around.
The phone gig, back in the town, Stokes said. You think we’re just ripping people off, right?
She concentrated on where to make the cuts. You’re charging what the market allows.
We’re providing a service people need. And we pay market for phone credit too. Bulk price, but still market. We have to make a margin.
Why don’t you buy straight from Cnekt?
We look like an approved provider to you? He shrugged. Okay, Jas lets it go to her head sometimes but we have to control the exchange, otherwise we’re just going to get overrun.
Li thought someone like Jasmine would always find a reason to control the exchange. But Val had taught her a version of the same thing. If you couldn’t command respect, you might as well hand over your tools and do it for free.
They worked in silence for a bit. She needed to ask about Matti, she would soon. It was just that she’d already heard so much bullshit on the road.
You been much further north? Stokes asked. There’s some good salvage up there. Inland settlements off the main drag, not even on the map, most of em. Not as picked over.
Li shook her head. I get by with the roadside dumps. People don’t know what to look for.
True. But you need towns for dumps though. Tarnackie was the last highway town between here and the range. It’s mostly industrial and military from here.
She should have guessed that. Her map was fifty years old at least. So, what, there’s nothing?
There’s a roadhouse about eighty k east, he said. And then there’s Transit. We tend to steer clear. They have a bit of an aggressive recruitment policy.
So that’s what Matti was walking into – a Company labour camp or a military zone. She tried not to let the fear in. There was no point. All she could do was follow.
Why are you still going east then?
Dev got a tip-off, so we’re checking it out. We’re just careful. Stokes whistled and the dog left Mira and came over expectantly. He threw down the offal. Not keen to stray from the highway, are you? I saw you watching out. Something you don’t want to miss?
She told him.
That’s shithouse, he said. Genuinely, as far as she could tell.
Maybe you’ve seen something?
He thought about it. Not anywhere we’ve stopped. On the road – harder to say. People are kind of a blur, you know. He helped her with the rump, where the skin clung hard. Shaun does most of the driving. Reccies and stuff. And Dev talks to people, sets stuff up. One of them might know something.
When she asked Shaun at dinner, he thought he remembered passing a big group on the way back from a fuel run two days earlier. They looked young, you know? And they were heading east, which nobody else is. He scooped up his meat with
