Rites of Passage (8 page)

It was not moving. I guessed its occupants had seen us and halted, wary.

Edvard brought the truck to a stop and called out to Danny.

Seconds later Danny and Kat squeezed into the cab and crouched between us.

“What do you think?” I said.

“Big,” Danny said under his breath. “Impressive arrays. Of course, they might not all be in working order.” He screwed up his eyes. “I don’t see any evidence of a rig. Wonder what they do for water?”

Kat said, “What should we do?”

“Break out the rifles, Pierre. Ed, take us forward, slowly.”

I slipped from the cab and hurried into the lounge. I unlocked the chest where we kept the rifles and hauled out four. I carried them back to the cab and doled them out as the truck crawled forward.

The occupants of the other vehicle were doing the same, advancing carefully across the desert towards us. We slowed even further, and so did the other truck. We must have resembled two circumspect crabs, unsure whether to mate or fight.

“It’s a hovercraft,” Kat said. Despite her years, she had sharp eyes. Only now, with the vehicle perhaps half a kay from us, did I make out the bulbous skirts below the layered solar arrays. As Danny had said, it was big; perhaps half the size again of our truck.

“Okay,” Danny told Edvard. “Bring us to a stop now.”

The truck halted with a hiss of brakes. Edvard kept the engine ticking over.

The hovercraft stopped too, mirroring our caution.

My heart was thudding. I was sweating even more than usual. I gripped the rifle to my chest. Minutes passed. Nothing moved out there. I imagined the hovercraft’s occupants, wondering like us whether we constituted a threat or an opportunity.

“What now?” I asked Danny. I realised I was whispering.

“We sit tight. Let them make the first move.”

This was the first time I’d seen a working vehicle, other than our own, in more than three years.

“What’s that?” Kat said.

Something was moving on the flank of the vehicle. As we watched, a big hatch hinged open and people climbed out. I counted five individuals, tiny at this distance. They paused in the shadow of the craft, staring across at us.

Minutes passed. They made no move to approach.

Edvard said, “Looks like they’re armed.” He paused. “What do we do?”

Danny licked his lips. “They made the first move. Maybe we should match it.”

“I’ll go out,” I said.

“Not alone.” This was Kat, a hand on my arm.

Danny nodded. “I’ll come with you.” To Edvard and Kat he said, “Keep us covered. If they do anything... fire first and ask questions later, okay?”

Kat nodded and slipped the barrel of her rifle through the custom-made slits in the frame of the windscreen. Edvard crouched next to her.

Danny and I left the cab and hurried through the lounge, grabbing sun hats on the way. Danny cracked the door and we stepped out into the blistering heat. I stopped dead in my tracks, drawing in a deep breath of superheated air, thankful for the shade afforded by my hat. This was the first time in months that I’d ventured from the truck in the full heat of day and I felt suddenly dizzy.

I expected the ground to be like the desert, deep sand making each step an effort. Instead it was hard, baked dry. We paused by the truck, staring across at the five figures standing abreast.

“Okay,” Danny said.

We left the truck at a stroll, our rifles slung barrels down in the crooks of our arms. Ahead, there was movement in the group. One of the figures ducked back into the hatch and emerged with something. At first I assumed it was some kind of weapon; evidently so did Danny. He reached out a hand, staying my progress.

As we watched, four of the figures erected a frame over the fifth. It was some kind of sun-shade. Only when it was fully erected, and the central figure suitably shaded, did the entourage move forward.

“Christ,” I said. We were a hundred metres from the group now, and I saw that the central figure was a woman.

She was tall, statuesque, like one of the models in the old magazines. She was bare legged and bare armed, wearing only shorts and a tight shirt which emphasised the swelling of her chest. As we drew within ten metres of the group, I saw that her face was long, severe, her mouth hard and her nose hooked. But I wasn’t looking at her face.

Something turned over in my gut, the same heavy lust I experienced when looking at pictures of long-dead women.

Danny said, “Do you speak English, French?”

“I speak English,” the woman said in an accent I couldn’t place. She looked middle-eastern to my inexperienced eye.

Her henchmen were a feeble mob. They looked starved, emaciated, and a couple were scabbed with ugly melanomas which covered their faces like masks.

“We’re from the north,” Danny said.

“Old Egypt.” The woman inclined her head. “My name is Samara.”

“I’m Danny. This is Pierre.”

I glanced at the hovercraft. I saw the barrel of a rifle directed at us from an open vent. I nudged Danny, who nodded minimally and said under his breath, “I’ve seen it.”

The woman said, “Do you trade?”

“That depends what you want.”

Samara inclined her head again. “Do you have water?”

Beside me, Danny seemed to relax. We were in a position of power in this stand-off. He said, “What do you have to trade?”

The woman licked her lips. I found the gesture sensuous. I gazed at her shape, the curve of her torso from breast to hip.

She said, “Solar arrays.”

I sensed Danny’s interest. “In good working order?”

“Of course. You can check them before the trade.”

“How many are you talking about?”

She pointed to a panel which overhung the flank of her craft. “Four, like that.”

Danny calculated. “I can give you... four litres of water in return.”

“Ten,” she said.

“Six,” Danny said with admirable force, “or no deal.”

I stared at the woman. She needed water more than we needed the arrays. I saw her look me up and down, and I felt suddenly, oddly, vulnerable.

She nodded, then spoke rapidly to one of her guards in a language I didn’t recognise. Two of her men returned to their craft, the weight of the sun-shade taken up by the two who remained.

I was reminded, by her regal stance beneath the shade, and her henchmen’s’ quick attention to duty, of an illustration I had seen in a magazine of an Ancient Egyptian Queen.

Her big, dark eyes regarded me again. She smiled. I found myself looking away, flushing.

Her men returned, hauling the solar arrays. They laid them on the sand and backed off. Samara gestured, and Danny stepped forward to examine the arrays while I covered him.

He looked back at me and nodded.

“They look okay,” he told the woman. “We’ll take them.”

“I’ll have them placed between our vehicles,” she said. “If you bring out the water, we will meet halfway.”

Danny stood and rejoined me. To Samara he said, “What have you been doing for water?”

She paused before replying. “There is a settlement with a rig about two hundred kilometres east of here, along the old coast. They have a deep bore. We trade with them every so often. You?”

Danny said, “We trade with a colony up in old Spain.”

The woman nodded, and I wondered if she’d seen through the lie. She said, “And how many of you live in the truck?”

“Five,” he said. He nodded at the hovercraft. “And you?”

“Just six,” she said.

“We’ll fetch the water,” Danny said.

We turned our backs on the woman and her men and began the slow walk back to the truck. I felt uneasy, presenting such an easy target like that, but I knew I was being irrational. They wanted water, after all; they would gain nothing by shooting us now.

“You hear that?” Danny said. “A mob has a deep bore, east of here. So there
is
water.”

He unlocked the hatch on the side of the truck where we stored the water. We hauled out two plastic canisters and carried them back to where the woman’s lackeys had placed the arrays. She stood over the shimmering rectangles, watching us as we placed the canisters on the ground.

She snapped something to one of the men, who opened the canister and tipped a teaspoonful of water into his palm. He lifted it to his cracked lip and tasted the water. After a second he nodded to Samara and said something in their language.

I could not keep my eyes off the woman. Her legs were bare, long and brown, and I could see the cleavage of her breasts between the fabric of her bleached blouse. She saw me looking and stared at me, her expression unreadable. I looked away quickly.

She said, “Where are you heading?”

Danny waved vaguely. “South.”

She looked surprised. “Tangiers?”

“In that direction, yes.”

She calculated. “Then we should travel together, no? There are bandits in the area. Together we are stronger.”

Danny looked at me, and I found myself nodding.

“Very well, we’ll do that. We stop at sunset, set off at dawn.”

Samara smiled. “To Tangiers, then.”

She said something to her men and two of them took the canisters. She turned and walked towards the hovercraft, flanked by her sun-shade toting lackeys.

I watched her go.

Danny laughed and said, “Put your tongue away and help me with these.”

We hauled the arrays across the sea-bed and stowed them in the truck.

~

W
e stepped into the lounge to find an altercation in progress.

Skull was standing at one end of the room, Kat and Edvard at the other. Skull’s face was livid with rage, his lips contorted, eyes wide with accusation.

“You told her!” he yelled across at us as we entered. “You contacted her and told her I was here!”

I looked across at Edvard, who explained, “He came flying from his berth, shouting insane accusations.”

“That’s because you bastards told her!”

I was glad he had a broken leg; able-bodied, he would undoubtedly have attacked us.

Danny said, “Calm down. We told no one. Listen to me – we don’t have a radio, okay? How could we have contacted her if we don’t possess a damned radio? And anyway, why the hell would we tell her we’d picked you up?”

Skull let go of his crutch to gesture beyond the truck. “So how come she’s found me?”

I moved into the lounge and sat down, watching Skull. Danny joined me, gesturing Skull to a seat opposite. Glaring at us, he stumped across the lounge and sat down. Kat and Edvard joined us.

Danny said, reasonably, “Are you sure it’s the same mob?”

“How many hovercraft you think are out there?” Skull snorted. “And you think I wouldn’t recognise the queen bitch herself?”

Kat said, “It’s a coincidence. They saw us from a distance. They needed water.”

Skull shook his head. “Some coincidence! Do you know how big this desert is? The chances of two tiny vehicles meeting like this...”

Edvard said, “We didn’t contact them, Skull. So it has to be coincidence, no? What other explanation is there?”

“The plane,” Danny said. “You took it from them, right? What about this: that she had it tagged with some kind of tracking device? It’d make sense, a valuable piece of kit like that.”

Skull held his head in his hands and sobbed.

I said, “What have you got to fear?”

He looked up, staring through his tears. “She’s evil. They all are. I ran out on her because I didn’t like what she was doing. She won’t rest till I’m dead. And now she’s found you, she won’t stop at just killing me.”

“You make her sound like a monster,” I said.

He nodded. “Oh, she is. She might have traded solar arrays now, but she’ll be scheming to get them back – and more. Right now they’ll be working out how to kill us and take the truck.”

Danny shook his head. “I don’t think so. There’s only six of them – and we’re well armed. The truck’s armoured. We can defend ourselves.”

Skull brayed a laugh. “Six! Is that what she told you? She’s lying. There were a dozen of the bastards with her when I left.”

I looked across at Danny, who said, “Like I said, we can look after ourselves.”

“Okay, but the best defence is distance. Let’s get the hell away from her before she attacks us, okay?”

Danny considered. We had agreed with Samara that we would travel south together; it would be hard to shake her, especially if Skull was correct and she
had
come for him.

Danny nodded and said to Kat, “Okay, start us up. Let’s move on.”

Kat and Edvard moved to the cab. Skull nodded, gratefully. “Thank Christ,” was all he said before hiking himself upright on his crutches and hobbling back to his berth. I watched him go, wondering what his reaction might be when he discovered that Samara was following us.

I sat with Danny. The silence was broken by the drone of the engine as Kat kicked the truck into life.

I said, “What do you think?”

Danny rubbed his beard. “I think we trust no-one but ourselves, Pierre. We keep Samara at arm’s length, and as for Skull...”

“Yes?”

“As Edvard said yesterday, I don’t trust him as far as I can spit.”

~

I
moved to the rear of the truck and sat before an observation screen, staring out across the sea-bed. Through the sandy spindrift of our wake I made out the scintillating shape of the hovercraft. It was perhaps half a kilometre behind us, and keeping pace.

For the next couple of hours before sunset, my thoughts slipped between Skull’s warning and fantasies involving Samara. I interpreted the way she looked at me as indicating desire on her part, and told myself that her henchmen were less than prime physical specimens.

The sun went down, replaced by the deep blue of night shot through with the raging flares of magnetic storms. Kat brought the truck to a standstill and Edvard fixed a meal.

The hovercraft slowed and came alongside, sinking to the sand a hundred metres from us with a curtsey of rubber skirts.

I moved to the lounge and joined Danny and Kat. Edvard ferried plates from the galley and slid them onto the table. The heady scent of braised meat filled the air.

We ate quietly, subdued. Danny had told Edvard and Kat about the travel pact with Samara, and from time to time I saw Kat glance through the hatch at the settled hovercraft across the sand.