AK by Peter Dickinson

Author:Peter Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2014-12-29T16:34:55+00:00

8

Behind them in the railway yard something exploded, followed by screams and yells, but there was no pursuit, and the road ahead was as empty and silent as the bush. They trudged through the roasting grey dust, between storehouses and workshops which had been built near the railway years ago, when trade had been good, but were now mostly broken and boarded up. The reek of heated metal blasted from one open doorway, but the men who’d been working there were now settling into bits of shade for their midday rest. None of them glanced at the passersby.

Rubbish lay in drifts around the buildings. A burnt-out pickup nuzzled into a wall—it must have tried to take a corner too fast. Paul had seen pickups like that careering around Dangoum on his previous visit, crammed with illegal fare-paying passengers. This one had been battered and patched many times before its final crash, and one of the patches was a strip of corrugated iron, now almost loose. Paul wrenched it free, bent it double, and slotted the parcel with the gun in it into the fold, tying it firm with the last of his cord.

“Best if I carry it,” said Jilli.

She made a pad with his spare shirt and he helped her balance the awkward load on her head, then took the flask and walked beside her.

“You look fine,” he said. “We’re just another couple of people who’ve made it to Dangoum to look for money.”

Jilli stopped in her tracks and gazed at the desolate, sun-blasted road between the abandoned sheds. A three-legged dog was sniffing the skeleton of a mule for scraps the kites had missed.

“You mean this is Dangoum?” she whispered.

Paul grinned at her. Dangoum would be as full of dangers as the bush—fuller, because he didn’t yet know its tracks or odours or places of safety, but he felt quite confident, in control. The burning of the Mercedes was a sign to him, not just because he’d made it work and struck a blow at his enemy, but because it had turned out the best thing he could have done. Without that diversion, how would they have got clear of the train and the railway yard? It was as though there had been something helping him, putting the car on that very train, then putting the idea of destruction into his mind. No, not something, someone. My mother, the war. She loves me still. She is on my side.

“It’s not all like this,” he said. “The market’s the best bit—I’ll show you that, and the Hilton, and Boyo’s palace. But first I’ve got to find my friends, okay?”

They trudged on, sweating. The road narrowed till it was almost blocked in places by the shacks and shanties propped against the walls of old sheds. Around the railway the air had smelled mainly of coal and ash and acids. Here it smelled of people. Soon the real shantytown began. A few women and children, listless with heat, moved around, but the men lay like dead bodies in any shade they could find.

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