Sugarloaf Mountain - A free novel set in Australia

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A free novel set in Australia for you read online or download it to read anytime free.
Author, Frits Kruitoff.

PREFACE:

A small town perched high on an Australian mountain range has become the perfect hideout for an organized gang of career criminals. This is hardly a fitting place for a respectable woman to raise her nine-year-old son and yet it is a place where exciting things happen often and character-molding experiences are impossible to avoid.

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The characters and situations in this story are fictitious and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

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CHAPTER ONE:
THE GANGLAND EXECUTION OF DANIEL ROBERT BADDEN.

"God! It’s so dark! There’s no lights anywhere! Are you sure this is the right road?" asked Danny, in a squeaky, uptight voice that disclosed a high level of anxious concern.

"I drove this road a thousand times," said the Chief. I worked here, lived here. I know it like the back of me hand, day or night. What are yuh so scared of?"

"Ahh, nuffent. I ain’t scared . . . Do yuh fink your uncle will buy them TVs?" He looks admiringly over his shoulder at three large cardboard boxes in the back of the station wagon they are traveling in.

"Sure, he’ll wan’ ‘em!" said the Chief reassuringly.

"They’re brand-fucken-new still in the box, you know--not some ol’ rubbish nicked out of some poor bastard’s home. They’re part of a heist. Do yuh reckon he’ll pay good money for ‘em?"

"Yair . . . well, he pays better’n any one else I know. He’s loaded. He’s got his own fucken forest, his own sawmill, two fucken bulldozers . . . he’s even got a back hoe that can dig holes fifteen fucken foot deep. He’s always buyin’ stuff--especially if the price is right. And even if he doesn’t want somethin’ for ‘imself, he buys it anyway if the price is right ‘n’ gives it to one of his nieces or nephews. He likes doin’ stuff like that. He’s a real generous bastard."

"God, how long is it gonna take to get there?"

"What’s yuh big fucken hurry? What’s yuh big fucken worry?"

"I’m just a bit jumpy since the Apache got outa jail."

"The Apache? He got out ages ago!"

"Yair, but he thinks I’m a dog . . . but I never told the cops nuffent."

"Well, I saw the Apache about six months ago. He was havin’ a few drinks with the boys: a kind of farewell party before his flight back to the mainland. I think he was planning to stay up there permanent like. He said Tassie was givin’ ‘im the shits . . . Well, we’re here."

The Chief drives through an open gate and along a driveway until they come to a house. There is a late-model car parked out front, beside which the Chief parks his station wagon. He then turns off the headlights and the engine.

"Come in, meet me uncle, ‘n’ have a drink. After that, we can talk business."

There is a low light inside the house, which emanates through the front windows and out onto the veranda. A TV can be heard. The Chief opens the front door and motions Danny to enter first. Danny obliges him. The Chief follows, shuts the door behind them and locks it with the quick and imperceptible press of a button.

Someone is sitting in front of the television. This, presumably, is the uncle, but he has his back turned to them, so his identity remains a secret until he swivels around 180-degrees in his chair.

While the lighting is poor, and Danny has never met the Chief’s uncle before in any case, he is nevertheless certain the figure seated in front of him now is not the uncle.

That is simply because it is the Apache. Of course it’s the Apache! It is Danny’s worst nightmare: the encounter his fear had tried so hard to warn him about. His fear had known it all along, had tried to protect him, had known what his conscious reasoning didn’t know: that this encounter was bound to take place sooner or later.

Danny squeals like a dumb, trapped animal and turns to run, but the Chief grabs him round the neck in a viselike headlock. Danny cries out in terror, jumps, kicks and thrashes about in a frenzied attempt to break loose--but all his efforts are in vane.

Even in his prime, Danny was never more than a runt, but he now has the scrawny wasted physique of a chronic heroine addict. The Chief, by way of contrast, is stout and powerfully built.

The Apache rises out of his seat, moves toward them, and begins to speak.

"They say every dog has his day. Well, that’s certainly true, because this is your day, your very own dog day. This is the day you die."

"NNNNOOOOOO! YOU CAN’T MEAN IT! IT WASN"T ME WHAT DONE IT! I NEVER TOLD THE COPS NUFFENT!"

The Apache is big and powerful: is six feet tall and two hundred pounds of muscle. He punches Danny very hard in the stomach--hard enough to temporarily immobilize him.

"You turn police informer, turn dog on me, and I get eighteen months--what do you expect me to do about it? Do you want me to say it’s okay? Do you want me to tell the world it’s okay for anyone to do that to me and I won’t do anything about it?"

"But I couldn’t go to Jail," said the winded Danny in a near whisper. "I couldn’t go cold turkey. I couldn’t go off the smack. I didn’t mean no disrespect."

The Apache picks up a twelve-gauge, double-barrel, shotgun. He opens the action and loads a cartridge into each chamber.

"We’re going for a little walk," he said, closing the action with a hard metallic clunk.

"NNNOOOO!" Screamed Danny, kicking and thrashing about wildly. But the Chief is too strong and maintains an iron grip around his neck. He drags Danny out the front door, around the side of the house, and then tries to manhandle him into the cab of a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Danny effectively resists this but only temporarily, because the Chief then tightens his grip around the addict’s scrawny neck until he loses consciousness. The Chief is then easily able to get the now unresisting Danny into the cab.

The Apache drives the trio about a mile to a remote part of the property where a backhoe stands waiting. That machine has already completed the first half of the task it was brought here to carry out.

The Chief drags the still unconscious Danny out of the vehicle and drops him on the ground next to a recently excavated hole, which is exactly fifteen feet deep.

"I don’t even like doing this," said the Apache, "but what else can I do? The cunt gave me no alternative. This is the only thing that can happen now."

"The cunt had it comin’," said the Chief in sympathetic agreement. "He’s a dog, the lowest of the low. There’s nuffent lower than a fucken dog."

They wait till Danny regains consciousness. After a matter of minutes, he seems to awaken from a peaceful slumber, but his face fills immediately with terror upon seeing the shotgun pointed directly at him. He begins to beg for his life and then he begins to cry like a small child.

"You’re gonna have to die like a man even if you never lived as one," said the Apache. From a distance of about six feet, he aims the shotgun at Danny’s side and fires off a round. This removes about a half-pound of his flesh. Danny is screaming with pain. Terrified right out of his brain, he is begging and crying hysterically.

The Apache then takes aim at Danny’s head and fires off the second cartridge, which removes the top of his skull and puts a definite end to him. A supreme team of the finest surgeons in the world could do nothing to save Danny now. He is well and truly past it.

With his foot, the Apache pushes the now lifeless corpse over the edge and into its deep resting-place. It is a resting-place, which had been dug for him already days earlier, which had been planned for him already months earlier, and which, in a prophetic, metaphorical sense, had been waiting here for him all of his life. This hole dug deep into barren ground will set the stage for the final act in a life filled with failure and regret.

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