The car stopped and the animal kept kicking. Sporadic, seconds between thrums. Sidney breathed and fought against his weakness but knew the animal had him pinned. Somehow, though, it soon fell off him, out of the car. He slumped back into his seat and looked at the roof of the car and looked at his hand smeared with red. Amy—the last thought clear in his head before he forgot everything.

ELEVEN

VERNON MOORE

The kid stopped speaking and instead seemed to concentrate all his energy on driving. His hands fixed to the wheel, gripping it hard. Both hands. Like he was still learning. Ten and two o’clock. Vernon remembered briefly teaching Caleb. The kid––Sidney, he said his name was–– was going a bit fast round the bends considering the poor traction on the dirt, but Vernon was giving him the benefit of the doubt. Had driven it thousands of times probably. The gun on the floor behind was small comfort but he knew now the kid was unarmed, would have reached for something if he had it. The car was a dump, full of boxes and mess, old cling wrap scrunched up and thrown in balls near his feet.

Vernon shifted his weight in the seat. He didn’t want violence. Just an audience. Just a sit-down, man to man, with Ernie. He wouldn’t even bring the gun in. Just the kid.

They rounded a bend and Vernon saw the kangaroos, saw a lot of them munching their grass, saw one of them bound towards the car. The kid, in that instant, was looking in the other direction and Vernon saw the collision before it happened. He managed to duck before the car slammed into the kangaroo, his arms braced against the dashboard for impact. The thunderous smash of glass and the grunting of the animal and the swerving of the car. Vernon held onto the door handle with one hand, put the other on the handbrake. The kid was being pummelled. The massive hind legs of the animal were cartwheeling against his chest and in the dark with his head back and his mouth open he was screaming like a child. As the car slowed, Vernon opened his door, the kangaroo’s tail smacking into his head. He fell with an awkward thud onto the dirt. It didn’t take long for the car to stop completely.

He levered himself up and hobbled as quick as he could to the front of the car, his old knees aching. The kangaroo was still on the bonnet. One of its eyes was bulging out, almost out of the socket. He grabbed at its fur and pushed it off the car. It was so impaled in the metal he had to lift it a bit. It flopped onto the dirt and lay there kicking, its tail rigid, quaking, its eyes unseeing. Just black glossy dots amid the mess. Its legs were all bent.

He looked through the smashed windshield and saw the kid in there breathing in big hurried gasps. There was blood coating his chest, soaking his flannel shirt so that it was reflective like the eye of the roo. No moonlight in the car though. His eyes were shut in a grimace, his teeth bared. But he was breathing.