Fear Is the Rider Read Online Free PDF

metre by metre. Only minutes now.

    If he could only hold the curve he was on, he would reach the track in minutes. If the Land Cruiser charged at them blind through the dust, the odds were it would miss. There was a chance, just a chance. Shaw’s right leg was aching as he unconsciously strove to push the accelerator down further, desperately seeking more power from the roaring motor.
    The dust ahead suddenly evaporated. They had driven out of the dust of the Land Cruiser. That meant…
    There it was. Over to the left. Fifty metres away. It had driven ahead and waited until its own dust cleared. Now each vehicle was clearly visible to the driver of the other. The Land Cruiser, momentarily stationary in the desert, waiting; the Honda wallowing slowly towards the track. Shaw knew what would happen now.
    The Land Cruiser seemed to spring into motion like an animal attacking. Immediately the dust spurted up behind it as it bore down on the Honda, a missile of irresistible force.
    The Land Cruiser gathered speed as it came diagonally at the Honda: Shaw knew they would collide long before the Honda could reach the track.
    Was this death, death in this still half-cool shell of a car out here in the arid, heat-stricken, barren wilderness under the impact of a huge weapon of mobile metal propelled by a maniac? Neither fear nor anger gripped Shaw, just a sense of irritation at the futility of it all, so intense as to be unbearable.
    With the instinct of a hunted creature taking the last desperate chance, he withdrew his foot from the accelerator and stamped on the brake. He knew once the car stopped there was little chance of it starting to move through the sand again. It would settle, the wheels would spin and they would sit there at the mercy of the lunatic in the Land Cruiser. But if he kept going the Land Cruiser would hit them in two seconds. The Honda hadn’t stopped moving when Shaw shoved the gear into reverse and stamped on the accelerator. The gearbox protested and crashed, but the gears meshed. The little car slid to a halt, but the driving wheels were reversing while the car was still going forward and almost at the instant it stopped it began to move backwards. The wheels had no time to sink in the sand and suddenly the car was going backwards fast, disappearing into its own dust cloud.
    The Land Cruiser, now touching sixty or seventy kilometres an hour, rushed past the bonnet of the Honda as it wallowed backwards. The dust of the Land Cruiser rolled over the Honda and again both vehicles were hidden. As he slid backwards into the yellow obscurity Shaw again glimpsed the man at the wheel of the Land Cruiser; just a fleeting impression of something big. Did the great shaggy head turn towards him as the Land Cruiser flashed past?
    Shaw drove backwards through the dust into the desert, away from the track. There was nothing for it now but to throw the car into first gear and head straight for the track.
    He did it, again fearful that the gearbox would shatter, changing from reverse to forward before the car stopped, but he got away with it. The Honda went forward, Shaw still blinded by the dust, but knowing the track was only a couple of minutes ahead.
    He couldn’t guess what the driver of the Land Cruiser would do now. There was so much dust floating above the surface of the desert that minutes would have to pass before either driver would be able to see anything. Unless the Land Cruiser drove far enough away and then swung around ahead of its own dust cloud. But then all its driver would see would be the cloud near the track through which Shaw was blindly and doggedly pushing the Honda.
    He felt the crunch of stone as the Honda hit the line of gibbers that ran along the edge of the track, then the front wheels bit on the firmer surface of the track itself. At the same moment they broke clear of the dust and Shaw saw the Land Cruiser fifty metres up the track to the east.
    The Land Cruiser was on the track to the east,