CHAPTER 62

Ghan jammed his body against the rock face and slid down to the ground. Sand and dust crumbled from the stone and sprinkled down his collar. His mouth dried with held breath. His lips trembled. Gunshots still rang against his eardrum.

Another shot broke the still air. Ghan grabbed his knees and rolled into a ball. More shots fired, each one jerking his body as if the bullets landed in his back. Then silence. Ghan’s ears strained against the drumming, soundless noise that kept tempo with his throbbing veins. An engine started, drove away. And still Ghan listened, kept crouched below the rocks. He didn’t want to look up—didn’t want to see what had happened.

Ghan settled his insides, unclasped his knees. He closed his eyes, stretched his body up past the rocks, sucked in air and then opened his eyes. A sick wave rippled down his body. Three bodies lay flopped and crooked across the ground—a bloody massacre.

Ghan peered down each end of the road and licked his cracked lips. Man might come back, he reminded himself. His gaze became more frantic. Might be a bunch of men. Ghan limped out to the open, his crippled body exposed in the wide terrain. He hurried across the dirt road, his peg leg leaving circles in the soft dirt.

Sweat drenched his back, made his beard itch. He stepped up to the bodies. The first one was facedown, the back of his head open and raw, his clothes dark red down to the backs of his legs. The sickness thrust upward too quickly and Ghan vomited onto his boot. He bent over and gagged. He turned away, but the smell of blood hung to the heat, cooked under the sun.

The flies began to gather and swarm. They flocked to the wound of the open skull. The crows flapped from above, their black shadows elongating across the bodies and the ground. The bile churned again. These men would be picked apart within the hour. The flies would start it, then the crows and the buzzards. Dingoes would smell the death and come running—growl and tear them apart.

They needed to be buried. The fact poked Ghan with wizened fingers. No way, Ghan argued with himself. He was too old to bury one of these men, let alone all of them. Ghan stared at the sun. He’d die trying to dig the graves in this heat—four bodies instead of three. The crows watched him, wobbled sideways up and down the branch in wait. More flies came. Can’t let a man get picked away, though. Not right. Ghan could feel the burden of the shovel in his empty hands. They’re already dead! his mind shouted. Skin and bone were going to fall away whether buried or not. Not worth the sweat.

Ghan slapped a fly, cursed the crows, then stomped to his tent for the shovel.