The winner of our short crime fiction prize, a signed copy of Ian McEwans The Children Act (Jonathan Cape, $36.99) is local author Craig Arthur. Congratulations, Craig! This is his tale: One inevitable conclusion kept staring me in the face. It glinted, eager for me to feel its poison-tip. Eager to draw blood. It was the same assumption already on everybody’s lips. That you received advance warning of what was going to happen. You knew the fate that awaited the Indian-Pacific. Yet did nothing to warn your fellow passengers. Why else would you stop the train? Why else would you get off when you did? * The lever is stiff as a mousetrap. The instructions tell you to hold it down for three seconds. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three – The electro-pneumatic brakes kick in, severing the flow of compressed air, and the brake cylinder pistons dig in their spurs, clamping the cast-iron pads to the galloping wheels. Those wheels claw at the rails, bringing the 28-car juggernaut to a halt. Opening the carriage door exposes you to a furnace-blast of heat. A northwesterly wind billowing off the desert at the continent’s heart sears your cheeks, whipping your hair about your face like flickering brushfire. You do not give a damn about the repeated warnings never to leave the train. One small step, one giant leap, you jump from the bottom rung of the ladder to the ballast beside the tracks then slide your bag down after you. Nobody else gets off. No one is insane enough. Only you. The carriages stretch into the distance in either direction, walling off the view to the south. Dust and grime camouflage their stainless steel bodywork and dead insects mottle the wedge-tail eagle logo – symbol of the Indian-Pacific Railroad – emblazoned on their sides. Any passengers looking down from the windows are too high to notice a lone woman trudging along the ballast. Then a shout from behind you: one of the crew leans from the train, checking whether anybody has gotten off. Uncertain whether or not they have seen you, you duck beneath the nearest carriage. The ballast forms a bed of coals underneath you. The chalky patina coating its baking stones prises at your nostrils, as does the sump-oil stench of the wheels and axles, the brassy, blood-clean smell of the rails. Compressed air still hisses from the brake-pipes near the couplings. Your thudding heartbeats marking the passing seconds, you crouch there in the shadows, ignoring the buzzing flies, listening for the crunch of footsteps. Nothing. Still nothing. Once on your feet again, you keep looking back. Nobody. You are in the clear. No one has seen you leave the train. Then without warning the ground begins to float away from the carriages. You are suddenly unmoored, adrift. If you were quick – quick and willing to jettison your bag – you could make a dash for the ladder of the next carriage or the next again. You could swing yourself back aboard before it is too late. You could do. You do not. The determination to stay put exerts a stronger pull. The carriages sweep past you, gathering momentum. Until suddenly you are alone. Alone with the wind and the chirruping insects, staring at vacant tracks as the hollow clickety-clack of the wheels fades into the distance; the 7.6 million square-kilometre Australian landmass haemorrhaging outward around you. © 2014 by Craig Arthur
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:25:07 +0000
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