11 a.m.
Walker is lost. Mark’s vehicle – a heavy-duty country ute with an open tray and a proper strong bull bar – handles well. The interior is worn and messy, the seats dusty and torn, the back seat stacked with empty jerrycans, a couple of empty tinnies and a Coke can rolling in the passenger footwell, but the suspension and high clearance mean it rides the rough track without any problems. He’d driven off, confident he was on the route back the way they’d come in – parallel with the ridge, take the second right – but perhaps he’d missed a turn, the bumpier-than-expected ride requiring all his concentration, or he’d miscounted on the way out. The track he’s on now is twisting and snaking, going up and then down again, heading away from the ridge and getting worse by the second. He has to work hard to keep the vehicle moving, the ute’s back wheels spinning in sandy patches and then bucking and bouncing through deep ruts. It’s much rougher than he remembers and he’s certain he’s come the wrong way, but there’s no obvious place to turn so he goes on.
He reaches a crossroads, a track running north to south across the one he’s on, heading east. He pauses, undecided. Should he turn around and go back or turn left here, head north, hoping this track leads to the road into town. He decides he’ll scout forward a little way on foot to see if he can get a sense of where this track is headed and its condition before he drives any further. He pulls the black ute under the shade of a tree, climbs out, locks it out of habit and starts off on foot.
The sun is warm on his back and the bush noises have returned. Something is rustling in the undergrowth beside the path, parrots are squawking in the trees above, he can hear the buzz of insects, leaves moving in the breeze. He follows the track for a couple of hundred metres, rising first, then sloping down. It improves a bit as it heads downhill and seems to be relatively well used – he can see tyre tracks. Perhaps this is the right way after all. He spots something glinting in the sun a couple of hundred metres or so ahead, half-hidden by a line of trees. A creek, perhaps. His doubt returns. They hadn’t crossed any water on their way out. He walks towards the trees, trying to orient himself using the sun, the ridge. But as is often the case in bush country you don’t know, he can’t quite get his bearings.
As he approaches the stand of trees, he sees that they’re the smooth-barked gums that usually grow beside water, which confirms he must have glimpsed a creek or billabong. The track makes a sharp turn to the left and because he’s walking on the left, making the most of any shade from the sun high over his shoulder, the turn obscures what’s around the corner until he’s right on top of it. As he rounds the curve, the shock of what he sees freezes him to the spot.
The track ends here, at a small circle that’s been carved out of the bush, wide enough to allow a vehicle to turn round. The circle is surrounded by a thicket of brush and more of the smooth-barked eucalypts, but what stops Walker dead is what’s hanging in the branches that surround him.
Gleaming and glinting, clicking and turning, are tens, maybe hundreds, of knives, machetes, tools and implements, their blades honed and sharp, strung from branches with thin wire, rustling and jangling in the light breeze, the sound tinny and foreign. They transform the peaceful bush into an uncanny and sinister place.
He debates with himself for a moment. Retreat is a definite option. This isn’t an opal miner’s camp, the countryside too low, too flat for mining. No equipment in sight either, no vehicles, no sound. It’s not likely to be a grazier either. He’s seen no cattle or sheep, no spoor or dung, nothing to indicate grazing herds. The back of his neck is prickling with the knowledge that, whatever this is, it’s bad news. He stands, barely breathing, listening hard. Aside from the ominous metallic clank of the implements in the trees, the bush around him is silent. That, and the absence of any vehicle, eventually convinces him that he’s alone here. He’ll check out what it is. It’s too eerie to simply ignore.
There’s a path leading into the bush off to his right. It’s not wide enough for a car but is clearly used regularly by foot and he can see water shimmering between the trees. He walks across the turning circle and steps, quietly as he can, onto the path that wends down to the water. In the trees and scrub around him more blades and tools hang from the branches. The path is slim and as he walks his shoulders brush the implements, heightening their discordant sound. The path turns and thins, the trees and shrubs with their menacing decorations pressing closer. He sidesteps slightly to avoid a big boulder and brushes against one of the bushes that line the path.
The movement sets off a cacophony of scrapes and clatters, loud and clanging in the otherwise silent bush. He reaches out to stop the sound, but the clever way they’ve been hung means every time he touches one it bumps and jangles into another, setting off a chain reaction of noise. He stops, the sound setting his nerves on edge. What is this place?
After a second, he starts walking again, faster now, wanting to get off the track, wanting to get to the water and see where all this is leading. The path turns once more and, as he rounds the corner, he can’t suppress a shout of shock. Blocking the path in front of him, a hatchet held high in his right hand, the blade gleaming in the sunlight, is Warren Harris. Walker can see the Vandals tattoo on Harris’s arm move as he lifts the hatchet and steps forward. Time slows. Walker can hear the blood rushing in his ears, feel his throat tightening, his mouth going dry, his heart beating loud. They’ve got him. The Vandals have finally got him.
Harris opens his mouth, says something that Walker can’t hear over the thumping of his heart, the roaring of blood, the noise of his fear. He’s remembering the terrible state of Mark Bailey and Karen Mullins’s bodies, destroyed by a hatchet. He’s remembering lying in a boat on a river in Surfers Paradise, every muscle in his body on fire with pain, ready to fight two Vandals for his life. But this time, in the middle of nowhere, facing a maniac with a machete, with no back-up, no one who knows where he is, he doesn’t have a chance.