The Mongrel almost missed it, even with the headlights on high beam. The lack of streetlamps or houselights—he’d passed nothing but bushland for the last two miles—didn’t help, nor did the fact that the map on his phone had lost its connection during his low-gear ascent up what amounted to an asphalted goat track. Driving on the left had never agreed with him at the best of times, not to mention he’d embarrassed himself at the car-rental yard by hopping into the shotgun seat before remembering the steering column was on the other side. Admittedly, Rome had been far worse. At least in Australia there weren’t mad Italians shedding blood for a hair’s width of lane. He hit the anchors and threw a hard right, watching the high beams sweep across close-packed eucalypts and then knife down the dark throat of the trailhead’s parking lot. The shimmying Toyota chewed across the scrim of wood chips and leaf litter laid atop the lot’s graded dirt. Then the wheels straightened and the Mongrel was riding moonbeams and a funnel of dust to a split-log parking bumper.
