Fear Is the Rider Read Online Free PDF Page A

the struggling Honda at eighty kilometres an hour.
    But the Honda couldn’t be seen, only the billowing pall of dust that hung behind it, bigger and denser in the desert than on the track.
    The Land Cruiser charged towards the thickest area of dust because the centre of that was where the Honda had to be. The Honda was barely making fifteen kilometres an hour: the Land Cruiser needed only seconds to run it down.
    Shaw’s arms were aching as he held the steering wheel hard to the right, forcing the driving wheels to plough through the sand. He was holding the wheel down so hard he felt something must give in the steering linkage. But if he could get back to the track the little Honda would shoot ahead of the Land Cruiser and then Yogabilla was only thirty kilometres away. Katie was shouting something, but he couldn’t hear her over the screeching motor. He was still driving through the dust fog that the Land Cruiser had raised on its charge down the track, but the track itself couldn’t be far away.
    The Land Cruiser was driving blind and fast in the dust cloud of the Honda. The driver knew that the Honda was somewhere a few metres ahead, but the dust was all encompassing; the only visible world was the inside of the vehicle. But he knew that in the open desert there was only one thing he could hit and that was the Honda, and he kept the Land Cruiser roaring through the dust, waiting for the impact of the bull bars on the frail metal of the small car.
    The dust had cleared ahead of Shaw and he could see the track fifty metres to the right. He was travelling almost parallel to it now, forcing the Honda round in the long arc. The track was clearly defined by the low ridge of gibber stones along the sides, running like wide railway tracks towards the scrub of Pattersons Creek a few hundred metres away. The Honda was holding steady at just over ten kilometres an hour. In the long swing he was making towards the track he would be almost at the scrub before he made it. If he made it. Where was the Land Cruiser? He knew nothing about desert travel. Was the Land Cruiser struggling with the soft surface like the Honda? If so, he would make the track. But if it weren’t…
    It wasn’t. It came surging past within a foot of the Honda on Shaw’s side. He was suddenly aware of the vast bulk of the thing roaring past just to his right. Shaw looked up to the offside window of the Land Cruiser and could see nothing but the blur of the vehicle flashing past, travelling so unbelievably fast, untrammelled by the sand, that the Honda might have been stationary.
    It was ahead in a second and its dust rolled across in front of the Honda and Shaw lost all vision again. He knew the track was to the right and he had to hold the Honda over, fighting against the pull of the sand. But now the Land Cruiser was ahead of him. Whoever was driving it was determined to kill him and Katie. Vaguely he realised that sometime he would have to wonder why, but now his mind was curiously detached, capable of observing his own aching arms, the distraught girl beside him, the rolling, smothering dust that enveloped that car and was seeping into the interior. The man in the Land Cruiser would not be able to see the Honda now, Shaw reasoned, because his own dust cloud would hide it. So he would swing around in a wide half-circle to get around his own dust. Then he would be able to see the Honda, then he would run it down before it reached the track. Or he might just turn and hurtle into the dust, then do it again and again, keep on doing it until eventually he hit the Honda.
    Either way, Shaw realised, the Honda had very little chance of reaching the track.
    Could they just get out and leave the car? Run through the dust to the scrub of Pattersons Creek? Too far. The dust would clear and whoever was in the Land Cruiser would see them and run them down long before they reached the scrub. Meanwhile, Shaw was holding the Honda to the right, crawling nearer the track,