Death is Forever

Canadian pair wanting to see Windjana.”
    Street hesitated. “Canadian?”
    “Right.”
    “Man and a woman?”
    “That’s right. Name’s Markham.”
    “When did they make their reservation? Last month?”
    “Called from Perth a few hours ago. They’re catching the Ansett flight. Why?”
    Street thought quickly. He could assume it was simple coincidence that a pair of Canadians got a sudden urge to see Western Australia’s bleak outback wilderness. He could assume it was simple coincidence that Windjana Gorge was in the direction of Abe’s station. He could assume Blackburn and Erin were still hiding out in Darwin, nursing a wound.
    Street could assume all those things, but he’d be a fool not to at least get a look at the couple.
    “Luv,” he said, “I’d really like them delayed. Say until tomorrow morning.”
    “What’s in it for me?”
    “Eight inches of the best you’ll ever get.”
    “Cocky bastard, aren’t you?”
    “You should know.”
    “When you going to pay up?” she asked, laughing.
    “I’ll be there before dark.”
    “I’ll be waiting.”
    Street hung up smiling and feeling an anticipatory ache in his crotch. Nora was the prettiest single girl in Derby, which meant that she was only as plain as a termite mound rather than as ugly as a burned stump. But she had her oddities in bed, which put most men off. Not Street. He found her inventiveness stimulating.
    Whistling softly, he began packing a small rucksack, hoping Cole Blackburn—if it was him—chose the overland route instead of flying in. There were very few roads between Derby and Crazy Abe’s station.
    Jason Street knew every foot of them.

21
Derby
    Derby had the feel of a town on the downhill slide from exhaustion to extinction. The buildings perched unevenly on stilts, as though the wide plain at the edge of the ocean flooded regularly. Although Derby’s street was wide enough for multiple lanes of traffic in both directions, only one lane in each direction was paved. The parkway between the lanes was planted with grass and baoboab trees, with their huge trunks and spindly branches that resembled roots. The patchy asphalt was soft from the heat. No cars, trucks, or buses were moving. The climate sapped people of everything but the ability to sweat.
    Darwin had been hot, air-conditioned, and modern. Derby was hot and primitive.
    Cole and Erin had been waiting eighteen hours for a vehicle that had been promised seventeen hours ago. When the Rover finally appeared, it was as unimpressive as the town itself. The vehicle looked like what it was—a well-used, shambling, rattling sort of reliable wreck, filled with junkyard odds and ends, toolboxes and tarps, spare tires and jacks, metal mesh, and God knew what else, all of it stored in cabinets held shut by nails stuck through hasps. A railed cargo platform ran the length of the top. The fenders were loose, but the steel mesh that separated cargo from passengers was securely fastened and strong enough to hold back a bull.
    Even though Cole had waited a long time for the Rover, he still insisted on giving it a thorough vetting before they left town. Between Derby and Fitzroy Crossing several hundred kilometers down the Great Northern Highway, there were no towns, no settlements, no service stations, no crossroads, no tow trucks—nothing but the spinifex, gum, and wattle wastes of Western Australia.
    Erin stood in the miserable shade cast by the overhang of a tin roof and watched Cole check out the Rover’s engine. If his wound bothered him, he didn’t show it. Nor had he shown it that morning, when he had awakened her with kisses and touches that had melted her until their bodies were joined in an intense pleasure that made pain impossible.
    Smiling at the memory, she ignored the sweat that gathered beneath her sleeveless, scooped-neck T-shirt and trickled down toward the shorts that had already begun to turn an unappetizing shade of brown. Despite Derby’s incredible humidity, the air was thick with a rust-colored dust. Flies descended in the pause between gusts of sultry wind. Automatically she waved the persistent insects away from her face.
    Cole did the same as he bent over the Rover’s grimy engine. The gesture was known as the “outback salute.”
    The heat kept taking Erin by surprise. Now she knew why Cole had insisted on having shorts, tank tops, bikini underwear, and thong shoes for the car. The only concessions to Western dress were socks and sturdy