The Street Had No Name

Chapter 9

SOMEWHERE, Now and Its Own Time

The grass blew gently against his face, the dawn now letting a little more of its light into the world. The noise was now fierce; fierce, a good word to describe it. In the middle distance, a plume of dust exploded from the horizon as the thunder of hooves against blue metal and gravel shot past him like noise arrows to a distance target.

The cacophony was complete with other sounds, sounds Vicarel could never find name for but sounds he knew were formed from the efforts of moving whatever it was that was being moved.

Peter found that he was just there. His mind seemed to have accepted it all like a circuit breaker tripping after an overload. Providing a secondary power route until something was done to restore the normal systems. After all, he knew he was here, knew he had been there, so be it. To ponder too much on here and there and not now was of no value. He remembered the dismembered body whose blood was showing now as dark streaks on his black trousers, remembered and understood that that could just as easily have been him.

He remembered the things that had taken The Scroll, remember the shock he had both felt and defeated. No, this was now, here; that would do.

And, being here and now, he crouched behind the spinifex bush and waited as the sounds grew louder, the dust cloud stronger and the arrival more imminent.

The road fell away into a dip that must have been a small valley for he knew it was now there and approaching. Soon, it would crest the hill and be upon this section of road that seemed to run flat for about a kilometre and turn and disappear behind a row of trees, now visible in the dawn’s welcome, looking like match sticks with Afro hairdos.

He moved slightly to the left, to be as far away from the line of sight of that part of the road as possible.

Just then, it crested the hill. A giant coach, as black as the night, eight wheels down each side and drawn by a team of horse-like animals. Not horses per se, more like bullocks with horse features. Their flanks were as black as the waggon, their bridles festooned with red feathers and black gems. Their eyes wide like those of rabid dogs and their sweet and saliva streaming back and down the sides of the coach.

Vicarel watched, amazed at the eye and mind’s ability to take in so much detail in such a short time. There were sixteen of the horse things all at full gallop. The waggon or coach for it seemed a mixture of both was swaying and rocking, defying all known laws of physics Vicarel would have thought to apply.

From the driver’s seat came a whip crack and he could see the driver, appearing all the world like Ratty from Wind In The Willows, read to him by Mrs Something or Other as a child. He remember that picture, remembered how it had scared him so, now, there he was, flesh and blood, in expert charge of this omnibus. He sniffed the air like a dog and turned his head in Peter’s direction for a moment. Vicarel ducked even further as the coach thundered past.

There was no writing or display of any kind on its flanks. It must have been two stories and was as large as the largest Greyhound coach. The sides were punctuated with windows, the top ones glazed and curtained by a red-black material with, of all things, pompoms rocking back and forward. Heads appeared in most, some against the glass in the manner of any traveller anywhere would sleep while the miles unwound.

In one, a face, a man, looking out, directly to where Peter was hiding, a vicious grin spread across his countenance as if saying to Peter “I can see you” like some kid’s game, yet going directly to his heart like a knife.

Peter ducked further, almost disappearing into a ball as he did.

The bottom row was barred like prison cells. They were not glazed and Peter saw hands holding the bars, saw faces, some man-like, others beyond his terms of reference. Some quietly, passively there, others screaming at some unseen torment.