He picked up the speed to thirty-five K. The wild dogs followed suit. Forty-five K and the dogs sped up as well, getting closer. He could imagine a point up ahead where they would meet. He turned right, away from the intersecting dogs on their left, and wondered how far off the road they were.
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the dogs turn to follow, but they didn’t appear to be gaining. He wished he could go faster, but he didn’t want to take the chance of hitting one of the sharp rocks that peppered the dry ground. A flat he didn’t need, but a flat he got.
Slowing, he was surprised to see that the dogs maintained their distance. And when he stopped the car, the dingoes stopped their pursuit, keeping a football field’s distance behind, fading into the shadows of the sunset.
He didn’t relish changing the tire and the biting desert evening would normally be enough for him to set up camp on the spot. He probably would have built a fire, made coffee, eaten and changed the tire in the morning. He was out of the race now. However, with the wild dogs so close in the shadows, it seemed best to get the spare on and get away before dark.
Keeping his eyes on the predators behind, he shut off the ignition, put on the emergency brake, jumped out of the Jeep, grabbed the jack and tire iron and unbolted the spare. His fingers burned with the cold as he loosened the lug nuts, while Ann jacked the car. They replaced the tire with race speed, then they hopped back in the Jeep. Rick cranked the ignition, popped the clutch, hit the lights and they sped off.
Once they started moving, the dogs started moving too. Fuck the rocks, he thought. He wanted to be back on a road before the sun faded altogether.
“ They’re gaining,” Ann said.
“ Don’t worry, honey, they can’t catch us.” He hoped he was right.
He shifted into second, picking up speed, then into third and felt a surge of relief when the lights played over a road ahead. Keeping it in third, he turned a hard right onto the smooth dirt track, shifted into fourth and left the wild dogs in the distance.
Thirty minutes and thirty kilometers later, they were sitting by a campfire, watching flames leap into the night.
“ I wasn’t scared,” Ann said.
“ I know,” he answered, but he thought maybe she was, a little. He certainly had been.
“ Come over here, Flash.” She patted her sleeping bag. She only called him that when she wanted to make love.
“ Now?” he smiled. “In the middle of the desert?”
“ I can make all the noise I want,” she said. “Nobody to hear.”
He rose and put more wood on the fire. “All the better to see you with,” he said as he watched his wife remove her clothes, down overcoat, sweat shirt, tee shirt, bra and Levi’s.
“ Come on over,” she said, clad only in sheer cotton panties.
Eagerly he closed the distance that separated them and embraced her, marveling, as he had many times in the last twenty-five years, at the large breasts pressed against his chest and the firm body he encircled with his arms.
Ann raised a hand, brushed his hair aside and ran her tongue along the length of the scar behind his left ear. She knew that drove him crazy. It was odd that a scar left by a bullet that could have put him in a body bag, turned out to be one of the most sensual places on his body.
“ Wait!” he said. “I think something’s out there.”
“ I don’t hear anything.”
He held an index finger to his lips and they listened.
“ Whatever it was, I think it’s gone,” he said after about a minute.
“ I’m glad.” She thought about picking up where they’d left off, but the mood had passed. Then she raised the wrinkles on her forehead, the way she always did when about to ask a serious question. “Do you think about what it’s going to be like not having to work anymore?”
“ I try not to, but sometimes I can’t help it. I’m going to miss it.”
“ But it’s what we’ve worked for all these years, so that we could quit when we were still young. It’s why we took all those chances.”
“ I know, but it was exciting. We traveled a lot.”
“ We’ll still travel,” she said, “and we won’t be looking over our shoulders all the time or worrying if the phone is tapped. We’re free now, nobody’s after us anymore.”
“ I know you’re right and I hate myself for wanting to get back into it,” he said. She saw him tense up. “Ann, move over by me!”
“ There is something out there, isn’t there?”
“ Yes.”
“ Is it the dingoes?”
“ I don’t know.”
“ Are you sure there’s something there?”
“ I’m sure.”
“ Oh, my gosh!” Ann saw the glowing eyes and dog shapes at the edge of the firelight. “The dingoes found us,” she said.
Rick stood in time to block one of the animals as it raced toward the fire. He placed himself between the wild dog and Ann, taking the animal’s flying charge. The dog closed its powerful jaws on Rick’s arm, dragging him down. He hit the ground hard and was knocked unconscious, blood spilling from his forehead. The animal shook him for a few seconds, before releasing him and returning to its companions in the dark.
Ann sat, still as death, by the fire, staring unblinking at five pairs of dingo eyes, limpid pools of red, reflecting the fire’s glow. She wanted to go to Rick, see if he was okay. She wanted to crawl into her sleeping bag and hide. She could do neither, she was frozen, dead still.
A scream roared out of the dark, tearing into her soul, but still she couldn’t move, other than to wet her pants. Another scream, closer, so close it shook her body as well as the night. Another roar rocked her as something leapt over the dingo dogs, landing in the fire. It spun around, a miniature tornado, shaking flames and embers as a wet dog does water, eventually coming to a stop, standing still in the middle of the flames, front paws resting on a blazing log.
She could feel its breath, smell its hate, see its gaping mouth with canine teeth that were unnaturally long. The animal was huge, big, black, powerful and somehow beautiful. Beautiful and horrible at the same time. It wasn’t at all like the dingoes she was used to. Much bigger and its claws resembled those of a big cat. It looked at home in the fire.
She thought it was going to attack, to kill her, but instead the most horrible looking man she had ever seen walked in out of the night. He had skin like burnt toast and breath like rotten fish. His clothes were shabby and torn, falling off his wasted body. He was short, old and evil. He captured her eyes with his and she was afraid.
“ Smell-your-fear,” the ragged man hissed.
She felt a blast of hot air and all of a sudden the fire was consumed by a star-white light, engulfing the screaming creature, causing it to leap from the flames. Then the light was gone and where only a moment ago the beautiful, horrible animal had been, there was only the charred smell of death.
“ Smell yours!” a deep voice attached to a man behind her said to the ragged man.
Without a word the ragged man fled, followed by the dingo dogs.
“ Are you all right?” He was the oldest man Ann had ever seen in person. An aborigine, but he didn’t dress like one. He wore Levi’s with a red checkered flannel shirt and cowboy boots. He was tall. His skin was rough and cracking. His hands were large. His arms were long. He had light brown skin, dark brown eyes and silver-white hair. He was thin and needed a walking stick to help him stand and Ann knew that he was a friend.
“ I guess so,” she said, “but my husband is hurt.”
The old aborigine bent over Rick, touched his head and said, “He’ll be all right in the morning.”
Ann looked disbelieving and said, “There isn’t any blood. Where did it go?”
“ Just a nasty bump, he’ll be fine.”
“ Will you stay until he comes to?” Ann asked as she searched her backpack for a fresh pair of panties.
“ I’ll stay, but you have to do something for me.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small wooden box and handed it to Ann. She opened it and looked inside.