The Night Is for Hunting by John Marsden Read Free Book Online

we lost him for a few moments. I cut across another park. I think he got a glimpse of us at the last second. His lights swung into the park, as we belted under a bridge.
    I hit a stretch of dirt, probably roadworks that were abandoned when the war started. The trouble was that we made a lot of dust, and he would pick it up in his headlights. At the end of the dirt I slammed on the brakes, crashed the gearstick into reverse and rammed the truck backwards into a bitumen parking area, outside Bunnings.
    He screamed past. His engine made a kind of moaning noise. It was weird.
    As soon as he was gone I went the other way. We went back under the bridge and this time I turned left.
    We raced along a road that ran parallel to the freeway, but much lower. We were going through another big industrial area. There wasn’t much bomb damage, but only a couple of factories seemed to be operating at this time of night.
    I heard Homer yell from the back: ‘He’s after us again.’
    We were just about to drive over a level crossing. I suddenly thought, ‘Well, why not?’ and swung the wheel hard. We bumped along the train tracks. If the suspension was stuffed already from hitting the concrete base of the fence – and it was – then it was really stuffed by the time we’d gone a kilometre along the railway. It got the kids screaming again too. I could hear Homer and the others trying to shut them up, but I wasn’t paying much attention.
    I paid a lot more attention to the train.
    Luckily, like the car, the train was using headlights, or to be more exact, a single headlight. It was like a beam from a torch, but a lot stronger and longer than my Eveready flashlight. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, but I’d guess a kilometre and a half, and coming straight at us.
    The trouble is that when two objects are travelling towards each other at a hundred k’s an hour, a kilometre and a half doesn’t amount to much.
    I looked for an escape route. It was hard to see far ahead in the dark. My eyes tended to be hypnotised by the light of the train anyway. From the back Homer yelled again: ‘He’s on the train tracks too Ellie!’
    I realised he was talking about the car. They were so busy looking out the back that they hadn’t seen the bigger problem out the front. Likewise, I’d forgotten about the car.
    As far as I could tell, we were heading into a narrower section of the track. We were on a hiding to nothing. If I kept going we might end up in a cutting with steep sides, where a head-on with the train was our only choice. On my right was uphill, leading to God knows what. On my left was downhill, leading to God knows what. I didn’t think the truck could handle the uphill. I spun the wheel left and we went for a slide.
    It was pretty hairy. For the first fifty metres we were side-on. I knew not to brake; I just had to hang onto the wheel and try to bring the nose around. I was half standing, straining every muscle to make the truck obey me.
    At least they’d shut up in the back. I think they were too scared to make a noise.
    I’d almost got the nose around when we hit the road. The truck nearly broke in half. I thought I felt it bend. Above us the train rocketed past.
    I don’t know if it met the car or not. If it had, I think we would have seen and felt the explosion. But by the time they would have met, we were gone, herbing down the road. We were at the outer limits of Stratton and I gunned it. We went for ten kilometres before I started to think that we might just have shaken them off.
    There was no slowing down though of course. I went herbing along at over a hundred k’s in some parts. At least the road was smoother, and I think a couple of the kids calmed down, but a couple of them were really upset, and I wondered how tough things were back there. Broken limbs sounded like seriously bad news.
    The biggest problem wasn’t the crying from the back though; it was the steering. It was so badly damaged. I’d point the wheel