Ash Road by Ivan Southall

Author:Ivan Southall [Southall, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile fiction
ISBN: 9781922148537
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2013-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

7

Siberia

Gramps Fairhall thought for one brief moment of exquisite but incredulous relief that the engine of his car had started firing of its own accord. He had got to the stage where fact and fancy were beginning to merge, but he knew that that sort of thing happened only in dreams. His car was as stubbornly silent as ever. The sound had come from a cursed helicopter beating somewhere overhead.

He leant against the side of his car, panting, trembling, and sweating as he strained to nudge a brick into position behind a front wheel with his foot. He was frustrated, angry, breathless. He hadn’t worked so hard in years, and he was determined, absolutely determined, that the car would not beat him. He’d get it up to the road if it killed him.

He couldn’t see the helicopter; he could never see very far without his glasses. The distance was always invisible and the middle distance was a fog. In fact Gramps rarely actually saw a helicopter or an aircraft in the air; he knew them only by the sound they made, and there was about that sound up there an urgent and fretful note. He did not like the sound; it shouldn’t have been there. The fire had not crossed the crest of the ranges; or so he believed. He knew of no reason why the helicopter should be there. Gramps did not care much for mysteries at any time, and at this moment less than usual. What was that blithering helicopter doing?

He got the brick in position and collapsed against the side of the car, listening to the sound toss about on the wind, worried by it, deeply worried. Oh, he didn’t like this day. It was a bad day, an ominous day; his bones ached with fatigue and foreboding.

‘Go away,’ he bellowed at the sky, and obediently the sound went away. So completely did it dissolve into the roar of the trees that he wondered whether he had heard it at all, wondered whether it was something inside him, perhaps his protesting heart.

He had cranked his car until he couldn’t crank it any more, then with one hand to the steering wheel and the other clamped like a flushed and fleshy vice to the car door, he had started heaving and pushing the obstinate vehicle up the gentle but long slope from the car-shelter to the road. He was a big man with the brute strength of sheer bulk, but he was scared to push too hard, scared to give it everything he had, particularly after he had caught sight of a face in the rear-vision mirror. It was his own face and it was contorted and almost purple. It had given him a terrible fright. If he had not known that his heart was reasonably sound he would have sworn that he was about to drop dead. Yet he had pushed on, holding back the last measure of absolute effort. He had to live long enough to get the car going, to find Peter, and to get him out of these hills.

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