Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook

like abstractions of flight.
    Grant forgot even his hangover as he watched the hunter springing after the kangaroos as they crossed the plain like the shadows of aircraft.
    The mob rose in a wave over one of the occasional fences that appear inexplicably in the plain country, but two baulked and turned along the fence towards the road.
    Immediately the motor of the car roared, the gear slammed in and Dick drove diagonally off the road, cutting across the flight of the two kangaroos.
    There was not much difference between the road and the open country, but there were boulders on the plain and Dick performed mighty deeds with the car, keeping it at fifty miles an hour, swerving hard when he reached the fence and driving straight down to the kangaroos.
    The dog anticipated the manoeuvre and turned diagonally out from the fence.
    The kangaroos sighted the car and they too turned outfrom the fence, heading back to the patch of scrub. And now the kangaroos and the dog were travelling in two lines which would soon meet.
    Tydon had his rifle out now and was firing through the window. Joe was trying to aim across Grant’s shoulder, and still the car bounced over the ground at fifty miles an hour.
    The men were shouting, the motor was roaring, the sharp smell of gunpowder drowned all the other smells in the car.
    The dog pulled down one of the kangaroos in a tangled heap about fifty yards from the fence. The other kangaroo paused for a moment when its mate fell and Grant could see it watching the slaughter, immobile, expressionless.Then it streaked back towards the fence again.
    But the car was between it and the fence.
    Dick, yelling madly now, drove straight at the kangaroo, pressing down the accelerator, driving as no sane man would do, crashing over stones, through low scrub, wrecking the mudguards on the remnants of trees, and still the kangaroo came on, unharmed by the fusillade of bullets which Tydon was pumping out the window.
    Grant clung to the seat, fascinated, watching through the windscreen the fluctuating approach of the kangaroo. Up it went and down, then up, up, and down, a wild grey figure bearing down on them as though in passionless attack.
    It turned ten yards from the car, but Dick, quite mad now, pulled the car around and ran the animal down.
    It disappeared quite suddenly under the bonnet.
    A thud, the car lifted, skidded, rocketed almost over on to its side, righted itself and stopped.
    Grant looked out of the rear window as the others tumbled out. A grey bundle was flopping about in the dust behind the car.
    Following the others over to the broken mess, Grant saw Dick draw a long-bladed knife from a sheath at his side, kneel down, and cut the animal’s throat. It died then.
    ‘It’s not worth cutting up,’ said Dick.The kangaroo had split open and trailed entrails for a dozen yards. Its body was so shattered that bones stood out from the skin every few inches, white and glistening.
    Joe and Dick started off to look at the damage to the car, but Tydon lingered, took out his own knife and neatly castrated the carcass.
    Grant watched the incident blankly and Joe said:’Doc eats ‘em, reckons they’re the best part of the ‘roo.’
    Grant thought wanly of the hash that Tydon had given him that afternoon.
    Tydon, meanwhile, slipped the scrotum into his pocket and they all walked over to the car then.
    The radiator grille was dented slightly and there was a fairly deep curve in the bumper bar. Underneath they could see grey patches on the gearbox.
    They all got back in and Dick drove across to where the greyhound was worrying the other carcass.
    ‘He’s a dead loss too,’ said Joe.
    The kangaroo had apparently had some disease, its hindquarters and belly were a mass of black scabs.
    Joe dragged the dog away and bundled it into the car. Now it smelt of blood and dead kangaroo.
    It snuggled against Grant.
    The vibrations in his head that Grant had noticed back in the hut had become a fierce drumming that