ow that he had committed himself to returning to Sydney, he pressed on as hard as he could, travelling at night and resting by day. Despite the weight of the rucksack, he found that cycling was less tiring than walking. Also he enjoyed it more: the rapid, even motion; the rush of cool air against his face. Most of all he liked free-wheeling down the long hills. As the bicycle picked up speed he would click his tongue and the dog would leap up onto the coat draped across the handle­bars. Leaning forward, his cheek pressed against the dog’s quivering side, he would go hurtling down through the darkness, the bicycle bouncing over the splits in the tarred surface.

In a very different way he also enjoyed the days – their calm, uneventful quality. Holed up in some ruined house or hidden in a clump of trees, he was able to sleep more peacefully than he had for months. Always, when he awoke in the late afternoon, the dog would be sitting there watching over him, its eyes bright with expectation; and the moment he stretched and yawned, it would leap up, eager for the journey ahead.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Ben would grumble as he climbed stiffly to his feet, ‘you’re not weighed down by a load of gear.’ But secretly he was growing fond of the small animal, even though, wary as ever, he refused to give it a name.

That first part of the journey was generally a carefree time for both of them. The one moment of danger occurred early on, when Ben foolishly tried to cycle through a small town. He noticed the old sixty-kilometre sign at the town’s edge, its pole bent, the sign itself peppered with shot, but he decided to push on anyway. It was only the dog which saved him. Long before he heard a sound, it growled out a low warning. Ben stopped and listened. From somewhere ahead there came a shuffling noise, of someone creeping towards him. Quietly, he wheeled the bicycle off the road and into the overgrown ditch, he and the dog crouching behind a cluster of young wattles. Minutes later, by the meagre light of a thin moon, he saw the tall figure of a man emerge from the shadows.

‘See anything?’ a voice hissed.

The man stopped and peered along the dark road. Ben, now lying flat on the ground, was so close he could hear his wheezing breath.

‘No,’ the man answered gruffly, ‘musta bin a roo or somethin’.’

He turned and shuffled back to his hiding place, speaking loudly to his companion. And Ben, under cover of their voices, picked up the bicycle and stole off.

It had been a narrow escape, and from then on he gave any settlement a wide berth. He was especially careful to avoid the bigger towns – now dark, deserted clusters of dwellings – circling around them in the dead of night; always moving steadily eastwards, drawing closer to the Great Dividing Range.

As he travelled, he grew more confident that he was not just running away. Pedalling laboriously up the foothills of the mountains, he felt that the past was over and done with; that he was making a wholly fresh start. Admittedly there had been that episode with the horse, but that too lay behind him. From now on, he told himself, there would be no more broken trust. Life in Sydney, somehow, would be different.

He was encouraged in that belief by the strange, defiant cry which originated somewhere beyond the mountains. It reached out to him every evening, just as darkness was about to descend. Day by day it grew louder, and he was almost sure now that it issued from some kind of animal. Why such an animal should be living in suburban Sydney he had no idea; but he never doubted that it was there, a creature different from any animal he had encountered in the bush. And from that alone he took courage, interpreting it as a sign, a proof of the new life that awaited him.

With the end of his journey now so close, he decided as an added precaution not to follow the main road over the Blue Mountains, but rather to take the old Aboriginal route, known as the Bells Line of Road. As he had hoped, it was deserted, its surface eroded by rain and frost. He crossed the heights in the middle of the night, the stars so bright in the chill atmosphere that he felt he could brush them with his fingertips. Wrapped warmly in the greatcoat, the dog perched precariously on the handlebars, he breathed in the cool air and just caught the distant, musty odour of the forested valleys, the scent blown to him on the night wind. ‘Soon,’ he murmured happily, ‘soon,’ feeling the bicycle gather speed as he began the long descent.

When dawn broke he was still in the hills, though not far above the river which separated the mountains from the plains. He would have liked to push on, but he was passing houses now, at fairly regular intervals, most of them ruined or deserted, and he decided not to take unnecessary risks. Half way down a steep, thickly forested section of the road, he ran the bicycle in amongst the trees and stopped for the day.

The sun rose soon afterwards. And while he was still eating a simple meal, the bell-birds began calling, their clear melodious song filling the morning. There was something so joyous, so untroubled about their song that it was hard to believe that the previous two years had ever occurred. Everything, it seemed, was back to normal. He, too, returning to where he truly belonged. The nightmare over at last.

With that thought he curled up on the soft leaf-mould and went peacefully to sleep. Only the dog remained wakeful: its light brown eyes, formerly so trusting, now watchful and alert; its sharp kelpie snout pointing uneasily towards the plains.

He slept longer than usual, until after sunset, and so he failed to detect that defiant cry which always greeted the night. It was the dog, whining nervously, which finally roused him and he sat up in the dusky light and stretched lazily.

‘Not far to go now,’ he said, failing to notice that the dog was restless and edgy.

Swallowing a hasty meal, he wheeled the bicycle out onto the road. Already he could smell the muddy dampness of the river. Silently, with only the faint swish of the tyres to mark his progress, he allowed the natural slope of the road to draw him downwards, the dog crouched before him as he steered around the shadowy bends.

The moon had risen when he reached the river. By its dim light he could just make out the whitish outline of the bridge, the twin lanes choked with burned-out cars. It was the kind of scene he had expected, a typical remnant of Last Days, and he stopped briefly. Half-hidden by the scrub at the road’s edge, he surveyed the clogged, narrow crossing.

‘What d’you think?’ he murmured, addressing the dog as if it were another human being.

The animal tensed forward, listening, scenting the breeze. What little wind there was blew fitfully down river, carrying with it the odour of mud and rotting vegetation. Apart from the doleful call of a mo-poke and the murmurings of the river itself, the night was silent.

‘Looks pretty safe to me,’ Ben whispered – and when the dog failed to growl a definite warning, he cycled cautiously into the open.

It was not easy crossing the bridge. The jumble of car bodies blocked not only the road, but also the raised pedestrian area on one side. Wherever possible Ben wove a path between the rusting hulks. In the very worst places he had to lift the bicycle onto his shoulders and clamber unsteadily over the crumpled wrecks. Even so, he took care not to make a sound – which was why, when he reached the far side, he was not caught unawares.

Once again it was the dog that alerted him. As it let out its familiar low growl, Ben froze into stillness. Hardly daring to breathe, he peered into the darkness. The way ahead seemed clear at first; then there was a movement in the shadows and he saw a man pace slowly out into the middle of the road and stop. He was facing away from the bridge, a short thick-set figure, a gun held loosely in one hand.

The dog was already edging away; but for Ben there was no going back. The bridge, strewn with its grim reminders of betrayal and violence, was too like the past he was fleeing from. There was only one way for him to go now: forward, towards the city; to the house he had grown up in, its rooms filled with the echo of memories he could happily live with.

As if sensitive to his secret feelings, the dog moved up beside him. It too had abandoned any thoughts of retreat, its hackles raised, its lips drawn back in a silent snarl. There was no need for Ben to issue a command. He had only to touch the animal’s shoulder and it darted along the road, its teeth sinking into the back of the man’s thigh. At the same instant Ben bore down on the pedals, surging out into the open.

Confused by the suddenness of the attack, the man spun around, flailing at the dog. Just for a moment, in the silvered darkness, Ben saw his ravaged face tilted up in astonishment. Then, using the weight and momentum of the bicycle, he shouldered the man aside and sped off. Behind him he heard a shouted curse followed by a sharp explosion, and seconds later the dog was scuttling along beside him, barking excitedly.

He didn’t silence it straight away. He was too excited himself for that. Like the unknown beast that called to him each evening, he felt suddenly free, defiant. The cool night wind seemed to be sweeping the past two years away for ever, and it occurred to him that in crossing the river he had accomplished the most difficult part of his journey.

‘Good boy,’ he called encouragingly, ‘well done.’ And the dog, responding to his voice, leaped onto the handlebars and licked eagerly at his face.

They were still in that happy frame of mind when they entered the outlying towns of Richmond and Windsor. Ben had formed a clear idea of what they would be like: deserted and overgrown, but otherwise unspoiled; the buildings and fences largely intact; the main road lined with empty red-roofed cottages. What he found made his heart sink, the towns themselves more like places in one of his nightmares: the fences trampled down; the houses vandalised, their walls blackened by fire, their doors and windows smashed; the broken remains of furniture strewn across the concrete driveways. And with wrecked cars everywhere, like great metal beasts wallowing in the head-high scrub that flourished along the roadside.

Nor were the towns completely deserted. More than once he saw human shapes slink away through the scrub; and at one point, where the road was almost blocked by a fallen power pole, the ragged figure of a man ran out and attacked him. It was only the dog, worrying at the man’s heels, which enabled him to slip past, a hoarse cry of animal rage following him as he pedalled off.

Once clear of Windsor, he tried telling himself that things would improve as he drew nearer to Sydney – that the outlying towns were so dangerous because of the influence of the bush. But it didn’t take him long to realise his error. As he passed through one built-up area after another, the nightmare only grew worse. More and more frequently he was waylaid, wild figures leaping out of the scrub, rocks and sticks whistling past his head, howls of anger disrupting the stillness of the night.

He soon learned that his best chance of survival lay in silence and speed, and he hunched over the handlebars and began pedalling with frantic energy. Shadowy figures continued to leap out, some of them armed with rifles or weighted sticks; but with the dog snapping at their heels they were always too late to intercept him, and he would sweep past to be swallowed again by the darkness.

Eventually it wasn’t these half-wild human beings who stopped him, but rather the nervous strain of travelling through this lightless region of violence and despair. And shortly before midnight he paused to rest. He had just encountered a crude road-block and had swung aside into a maze of side streets. It was while he was trying to find his way back to the main road that he simply gave up and took refuge in one of the ruined houses, where he crouched, wakeful and tense, for the remainder of the night.

By dawn he felt not only tired, but dispirited and close to defeat. As the light strengthened, he looked about him at his place of refuge. It was a shattered husk of a house: the blackened walls cracked and leaning at crazy angles; the roof half fallen-in; the floorboards already spongy to the touch and beginning to rot. Even at their worst, he and Greg had never lived in such a place. Yet during the night he had clung to this ruin. Now, with the early morning sunlight streaming through the shattered windows, he recognised why. He hadn’t merely been afraid of those darkened streets. His real fear had been of what he might find if he pressed on and succeeded in reaching his former home. This perhaps? Or less? A few crumbling walls fronting onto the endless sea. He shuddered at the prospect. But equally he knew that to cycle on was no more dangerous than to turn back. Also, having begun this journey, he felt a strange impulse to see it through to its end, whatever the outcome.

His one real regret was for the dog sleeping peacefully in the corner, its nose tucked against its side. This was no place for it, this shattered remnant of a city. He should have left it back there in the bush. He had only brought it with him to ensure his own safety. The tireless brown body, the trusting and alert mind, both used by him. The same old story all over again. A story which, for the dog anyway, could have only one ending, somewhere out there on the road during the coming night. He didn’t know precisely when or how it would happen, but he could guess – picturing to himself that moment when he would have to choose between his own survival and the dog’s. And with a murmur of shame and regret, he crawled to the farthest corner of the room and lay down alone to sleep.