Death is Forever

eye. Gradually a car appeared in the emptiness ahead of them. It was the first vehicle they had seen since Derby. She held her breath as the two cars rushed headlong at each other on the single-lane road.
    Two vehicles hurtled forward, each driver holding the single lane until the last possible moment. Neither one slowed in the least. A glance at the speedometer told Erin that the closing speed of the two vehicles was at least 120 miles per hour. At some unseen but mutually understood signal, each driver turned his left-hand wheels out on the shoulder, making room for the cars to pass with inches to spare.
    As the vehicles raced by, each driver lifted his right index finger from the steering wheel in recognition.
    At first Erin thought it was all sheer luck that no one was killed. By the third time an oncoming car roared past in a boil of dust, she realized that she was participating in a bizarre Aussie ritual.
    “This has to be the world’s longest-running game of Chicken,” she said distinctly.
    He smiled, touched her cheek with his fingertip. His smile faded as he glanced in the mirrors, then concentrated on the road in front again.
    “Why is the roll bar on the front bumper?” she asked after a time of silence.
    “It’s called a bull bar out here and a ’roo bar in the rest of the outback. Most outback vehicles have one.”
    “Why?”
    “Cheaper than fenders,” he said. “A bull bar also keeps whatever you hit from getting under the wheels and flipping you over.”
    “What can you hit besides termite mounds?”
    He tilted his head toward a handful of rust-colored, bony cows grazing in the limited shade of the stunted trees. “Kimberley shorthorns.”
    “They’re hardly bigger than mule deer,” she said.
    “They’re big enough to kill you, and they’re not the only thing running around. This country isn’t fenced. Everything roams—kangaroos, feral donkeys and horses, bush bulls. Any one of them could be big enough to get in underneath the front wheels of a Rover.”
    “Does that happen often?”
    “If you drive these roads at night, sooner or later you’ll hit something big enough to matter.” His eyes narrowed as he looked in the side-view mirror. “That’s why a short-barreled shotgun is part of my outback equipment. You can’t be certain of killing an animal outright in a collision. Especially a bush bull.”
    She looked at the cattle again. They were slat-thin, pony-size, and ragged. “Is one of those a bull?”
    “Probably, but that’s not what a bush bull is. A bush bull is a feral water buffalo.”
    She looked dubiously at the sandy, dusty country. “ Water buffalo?”
    “Up around Darwin they get at least sixty inches of rain a year. Most of it comes in a four-month stretch. Monsoon season. It gets plenty wet then.”
    “Fifteen inches a month?”
    “More in January. Less in other wet months. That’s when all the dotted lines on that map turn into huge muddy rivers and every little crease in the land runs liquid.” He watched the rearview mirror for three seconds and then forced his attention back to the road ahead. “The fords are impassable in the wet, and the few bridges that have been built are under water. The unsealed roads and station tracks are useless.”
    “With all that water, why aren’t there dams to ensure a year-round water supply?” she asked. “Then they could at least irrigate hay to feed those poor cattle.”
    “This is the wrong kind of country for dams. Too flat. Even if you could build a huge reservoir, the soil is too porous. The water would just soak in and vanish.”
    As he spoke, he glanced into the side mirror and accelerated gradually, hoping Erin wouldn’t notice.
    “Look at the map again,” he said to distract her. “The Fitzroy and the Lennard aren’t really rivers in the usual sense. They’re floodplain channels that are dry until the wet begins. The rest of the time they’re chains of year-round waterholes that you could throw a rock across without straining your arm.”
    She gave him a startled look.
    “It’s true,” he said. “The Kimberley’s savannah landscape is deceptive. You go through a gallon of water a day just sitting in the shade, if you can find any to sit in. This place will kill you almost as fast as a classic Saharan dune landscape. Maybe faster, because it’s so hard to believe what’s happening. But I believe it. This climate will grind you into dust.”
    Erin turned and looked out at the empty