The Flesh of The Orchid Read Online Free

lining the road. “I bet you’re glad I came along when I did. Where are you heading for?”
    “Nowhere,” the girl replied. She leaned forward to peer through the rain-lashed windshield. The light from the dashboard fell on her long narrow hands, and Dan noticed a deep puckered white scar on her left wrist. “Near the artery,” he thought; “must have given her a scare at the time.”
    “Nowhere?” he repeated, and laughed. “That’s a hell of a long way away.”
    “I’ve come from nowhere and I’m going nowhere and I’m nobody,” the girl said. There was a strange bitter note in her hard fiat voice.
    “Telling me to mind my own business and not pulling any punches,” Dan thought, and said: “I didn’t mean to be curious. I’m going to Oakville if that’s any use to you.”
    “It’ll do,” she said indifferently, fell silent.
    They were climbing now and the engine grew hot, filling the cab with warm fumes, making Dan sleepy. His body ached for sleep and his brain grew numb, so that he drove automatically, forgot the girl at his side, swayed like a rag doll to the lurching of the truck.
    He had had only six hours’ sleep in four days and his resistance was now stretched to breaking-point. Then he suddenly couldn’t keep awake any longer and he fell forward, his head striking the steering-wheel. He awoke immediately, Straightened up, cursing himself under his breath. He saw the edge of the road rushing towards him: the grass vividly green in the headlights. He dragged over the wheel, and the truck skidded round with a screaming of tortured tyres. The off-wheels mounted the grass verge, thudded back on to the tarmac. The great towering load of cased grapefruit, lashed down by a tarpaulin, creaked and shuddered, swayed dangerously. For one sickening moment Dan thought the truck was going to turn over, but it righted itself, continued to crawl up the twisting road.
    “Gee! I’m sorry,” he gasped, his heart banging against his ribs. “I guess I must have dozed off.” He glanced at the girl, expecting to see her shaking with fright, but she sat peering through the windshield, calm, quiet—as if nothing had happened. “Weren’t you scared?” he asked, a little irritated at her calmness. “We nearly went over.”
    “We’d’ve been killed, wouldn’t we?” the girl said softly. He scarcely heard her above the noise of the wind as it slammed against the cab. “Would you be afraid to die?”
    Dan wrinkled his snub nose.
    “It’s unlucky to talk like that in a truck. Guys get killed every day in trucks,” he said, and rapped with his knuckles on the wooden dashboard.
    He slowed to take a sharp bend which would bring them on to the mountain road.
    “This is where we climb,” he went on, shifting in his seat to bring himself closer to the steering-wheel. “You watch it—it’s some road.”
    They were hedged in now; on one side by the towering granite mountain and on the other side by a sheer drop into the valley. Dan changed down. The truck began to crawl up the steep gradient, its engine roaring.
    “The wind’ll be bad half-way up,” he shouted to the girl. And already the wind seemed to increase in violence, and somewhere ahead heavy falls of rock crashing into the valley added to the din. “It blows across the plain and smashes itself against the mountain. I did this trip last year in a wind like this and I got stuck.”
    The girl said nothing, nor did she look at him.
    “Rum kid,” he thought. “I wish I could see more of her. She shapes like a looker.” He yawned, gripped the steering-wheel tightly. “I’m nobody from nowhere. Funny thing to have said. Maybe she’s in trouble: running away from home.” He shook his head, worried about her.
    But as he turned into the next steep bend he forgot everything but the handling of the truck. The wind suddenly pounced with the ferocity of a wild beast. The engine stalled and the truck came to a shuddering standstill. It was as if