SHI-NI-WEI: WALKER ON THE WIND (2025 Ed)

Is the Walker on the Wind real? Could he wipe out the human race?

Simon D’Souza raised the brim of his slouch hat long enough to scratch at an imaginary itch. Then, as if the 65-degree Celsius temperature had stung him, he quickly dropped the hat back into place. He looked across to where his wife of five months, Maryette, stood near their two-person tent a few metres away, crouching to enjoy the shade of the tent. Although much less fatiguing than out in the open, the shaded area was still well over 40 degrees.

Staring at Maryette, Simon wondered how she managed to look so fresh. After two hours in the open, Simon’s T-shirt was plastered to his flesh by sweat, and he was almost gagging from his own BO. Although he had not married her just for her looks, being a tall, beautiful honey-blonde with legs that went all the way up, had not exactly hurt. Still, he wondered how she managed to look so damn good in this stinking heat.

If I look half as bad as I feel, no wonder she’s keeping her distance, he thought, smiling at his own joke.

“If we don’t find it soon, I’m tempted to chuck the whole thing in,” said Simon. He ran a hand across his sopping brow, then shook the sweat away in disgust.

“Old Tickner will go spare,” warned Maryette.

“Rob Tickner can go to buggery,” said Simon. He thought, Actually, he’d probably give us a medal. Then he could claim that a team of experts had carefully surveyed the Forbidden Rock area without finding any trace of a sealed cave, let alone any sight of Shi-Ni-Wei, or anyone else.

Forbidden Rock itself was more a great red-brown mount than a rock. Fifty metres high, two hundred metres long, and forty metres wide, it was a single slab of granite. A slab of granite, which no one had paid much attention to until recently. Until the North-Western New South Wales Mining Corporation (NWNSWM) had bought the mining rights to the area. After finding gold and precious gems in other granite in the area, NWNSWM had announced that they were going to mine Forbidden Rock. At which point the local Aborigine tribe, the Nawawei People, had used the Mabo Legislation to have the mining (at least) temporarily halted. The Nawawei claimed that the rock was one of their sacred sites.

As though sensing her husband’s thoughts, Maryette asked, “What do you think of all that Shi-Ni-Wei stuff?”

“That the Walker on the Wind, a Dream-Time demon made of clouds and swirling leaves and stones, was somehow captured by an Aboriginal medicine-man and sealed in a cave in Forbidden Rock?” asked Simon. “What can I think of it? It’s bullshit, of course. How could a creature made of wind, stone, and leaves possibly exist? And if it did exist, how could they possibly have caught it and sealed it in a cave? It’s like something out of an H.P. Lovecraft story. Sheer bullshit. It’s Paul Keating’s fault; he never should have pandered to the Aborigines with this Mabo land rights crap.”

“Don’t you believe in Aboriginal land rights?” asked Maryette.

“Of course, I believe in them having land rights. The same land rights that the rest of us have: the right to own any land that they’ve paid for with money that they’ve earnt by their own labour.”

“So you don’t believe that Shi-Ni-Wei ever existed?” she asked, hurrying to add, “In Dream-Time legend, I mean.”

“It’s very convenient if he did, isn’t it? Not a word about him in any published text over the last two hundred years, until they want to mine here. Then up pops Shi-Ni-Wei, the Walker on the Wind.”

“But there have been many legends of wind spirits around the world,” pointed out Maryette, an authority on legends. “Gaoh, the air god of the Iroquois in the USA. Hotoru, of the Pawnee Indians. Adad, the Kassite god of storms. Negafok, the Eskimo cold-weather spirit. Enlil, the Babylonian storm spirit. Thor, the Norse thunder god. Tha-thka, the Hittite storm god. The Irish Banshee. The Canadian Indian god, Tornasak ....”

“All right,” snapped Simon. “So there are a lot of wind elementals in primitive legends. That doesn’t mean that this particular one is authentic, does it?”

Seeing her hurt look, Simon felt like a bastard for snapping at her. But before he could apologise, she said, “Maybe you should cool off in the shade for a while, while I hunt for Shi-Ni-Wei’s cave.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he agreed, walking past her, toward the tent. “Sorry, babe.”

He gave her a playful pat on the behind, as she strolled past her. Then grimaced at the sight of the sweaty handprint that he had left on the seat of her jeans.


It was less than ten minutes later when Maryette called out, “I think I’ve found it.”

Trying not to feel pissed-off that she had found it so quickly, Simon set off after the sound of her voice. He found her kneeling near a group of smaller rocks, partway up the side of Forbidden Rock.

“It wasn’t at ground level,” said Maryette. She pointed to what was obviously a cave opening filled with rocks, clay and tree sap. Around the sides of the cave was a series of Aboriginal paintings.

“Can you translate them?” asked Maryette. Her husband could read nearly twenty Aboriginal dialects and was the author of what was widely regarded as the definitive Aboriginal Dialect to English Dictionary.

“No problems,” he answered. “It’s a warning that Shi-Ni-Wei has been sealed inside and that if the Walker on the Wind is released, it will mean doom for the human race.”

“Maybe we’d better not open it then?” suggested Maryette.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” insisted Simon. “For all we know, the Nawawei People may have painted it themselves, to con poor, gullible Rob Tickner again.”

“It looks pretty ancient,” pointed out Maryette. The words and pictures were dry and flaking. Some had fallen off while Simon had been translating them.

Despite Maryette’s reluctance, they prepared to unseal the cave. First, Maryette took nearly fifty colour photographs of the cave site and Forbidden Rock itself. Then, using a small prospector’s pick, Simon carefully hammered away the outer layer of clay and gum used to stick the stones together.

Simon had expected the mass of stones and gravel to quickly fall away after he removed the clay. But, to his dismay, they were stuck together so firmly that it took nearly two hours just to remove the outer layer.

Then, as they finally broke through the inner layer, Maryette and Simon were assailed by a great blast of noxious air. Unlike the stale air from other tombs that they had opened, this air smelt like human excrement. Like a sewerage farm, only many times stronger.

“Oh my God!” gasped Simon, trying to turn away. But hit by the main blast of effluence, he was overcome by the odour. Gagging, his head swimming, he felt himself falling.


At first, Simon D’Souza thought that he had fallen backwards off Forbidden Rock. But looking round, he wondered if he had fallen through some kind of space warp or time portal. It looked as though he had been transported instantly to some distant place.

Instead of the stony desert of western New South Wales, he was looking out over a snow-covered plain. Instead of the arid, unrelenting heat almost melting the flesh from his bones, his senses were assaulted by almost mind-numbing cold.

He sat up carefully, not knowing what injuries that he may have sustained in his fall. Looking round, he saw no sign of Maryette. At least she’s safe! he thought.

A hundred metres from where he sat was a band of twenty or so Aborigines. Men, women, children, and two yellow dogs (which looked only vaguely like dingoes) sat huddled around an open fire, upon which the carcase of a kangaroo was cooking.

Well, at least I’m still in Australia! thought Simon. But how the Hell can I be? It doesn’t snow in Australia, except in the mountain ranges. And certainly not in the middle of summer!

It looks more like an English winter than an Aussie summer! thought Simon. Except that it was peopled by Aborigines clad in kangaroo pelts.

Simon considered approaching the Aborigines to ask for their help, but then he hesitated. He had spent much time on Aboriginal settlements over the last twenty-five years, and something was wrong with this tribe. They had a wild, almost Neanderthal look about them: low sloping foreheads and hairy, almost simian faces. Also, their dress was strange. Modern Aborigines wore only loincloths before being Westernised. These Aborigines were draped in form-concealing kangaroo furs.

Simon wondered if they might be one of the lost tribes that turn up from time to time: Aborigines who had wandered so deeply into the interior that they had never seen white people in the two hundred years of white settlement of the continent.

Simon had slowly climbed to his feet when, almost immediately, a panic broke out in the Aboriginal camp. Women and children began wailing from terror; men grabbed for their spears, woomeras, and large, hunting boomerangs. At first, he thought that he was the cause of the commotion. My God, they’ll kill me! he thought. He knew that there was no way that he could outrun the spears.

He looked about wildly for any possible hiding place among the snow-blanketed plains. Seeing none, he had already sprung into frantic flight when he heard the Aborigines behind him screaming, “Shi-Ni-Wei! Shi-Ni-Wei! Shi-Ni-Wei!”

Turning back, Simon saw that the Aborigines had not even noticed him. They were standing, huddled together a few metres from the fire, pointing toward the sky.

It’s not fuckin’ possible! thought Simon. He stared up at the mixture of cumulonimbus and nimbostratus clouds heading their way. Although formations responsible for snow and violent thunderstorms, it was not the clouds that had panicked the Aborigines. Rather, it was the creature standing upon the clouds.

Shi-Ni-Wei was composed of snow clouds and swirling detritus: leaves, stones, and gravel that flowed up and down the form of the creature, giving it a weird kind of solidity. Though roughly man-shaped, its feet were webbed and would leave duck-like prints in the snow should he ever step down to earth.

As the storm clouds approached, Simon’s senses were again overwhelmed by the noxious odour of faeces. He realised that it was the inhuman smell of Shi-Ni-Wei.

The Aborigines had not moved. Despite their shrieks of terror, they remained rooted to the spot, screaming or crying, staring up at the monstrosity approaching.

Shi-Ni-Wei answered their wailing with a shriek of his own. A strange, almost metallic-grinding sound that assaulted the eardrums.

“Jesus!” cried Simon, clutching his ears in agony. As the Wind Walker shrieked again, Simon blacked out for a second and fell to the snow.

When he came to, Simon saw Shi-Ni-Wei with his right arm stretched out, pointing toward the huddled Aborigines. A yellow bolt, like greatly oversized lightning, lanced from the creature’s hand and exploded upon impact, sending the Aborigines flying into the air.

Holy shit! thought Simon, as the natives were sent flying like ten pins. Before they hit the ground, Simon gagged and vomited onto the snow as his senses were assailed by an overwhelming odour like an electrical fire, and then the stench of roasting human flesh.

Expecting the Aborigines to be all dead, Simon was surprised when nearly half of them were able to claw their way to their feet again. No longer frozen to the spot, the eight or nine natives took off in all directions.

Not fast enough! They’re not running fast enough! thought Simon.

Shi-Ni-Wei stretched out his right arm again toward a running lubra. The yellow bolt of lightning hit the fleeing woman, making her scream in agony. The bolt lanced through her body like a belaying pin, for a second holding her in a standing position. Then the bolt exploded and with it the body of the woman atomised into a fine red, pink, and white mist which spread out across a large area of the snow.

There’s nowhere for them to run to, nowhere to hide! thought Simon, looking all around. Behind him was a great snow-covered mound -- Forbidden Rock? --otherwise the area was open, snow-coated plains for as far as the eye could see. There weren’t even trees or rocks for the running Aborigines to shelter behind.

Not that rocks or trees would do much good, Simon realised as the Wind Walker aimed again. This time at a fleeing woman and her teenage daughter, who held hands as they fled to the east.

Shi-Ni-Wei’s yellow lightning flashed down again. It narrowly missed the mother, but cut the young girl in half from head to toe like a laser torch.

For a few seconds, the woman ran on, dragging the left half of her daughter’s corpse through the snow behind her. Then, as the weight of the half-carcase slowed her down, the woman looked back. And began to scream at the sight of her daughter’s remains.

“Run, damn it, run!” Simon shouted, not caring about his own safety.

But the woman stood her ground, wailing in distress at the death of her daughter. Simon guessed that she no longer even wanted to avoid the yellow bolt that flashed down from Shi-Ni-Wei’s arm in her direction.

Simon gagged, dry-retching from the smell of electrical fire first, then the sight of the woman pureed before his eyes.

The five or six remaining Aborigines had covered almost a kilometre in all four points of the compass. But as fast as they ran, none of the natives had any hope of survival. Again and again, Shi-Ni-Wei’s lightning streaked out to dissect one Aborigine, atomise another, behead another. Until only corpses and slimy entrails remained.

Once more, Simon had to cover his ears to keep out the deafening agony as Shi-Ni-Wei shrieked his metallic-grinding shriek. Watching the demonic “face” of the creature -- formed by swirling leaves, snow, and other detritus -- Simon realised that the monster was no longer shrieking in rage.

My God, he’s laughing! thought Simon. That monster is laughing at all the pain and suffering that he’s caused!

Until then, Simon had been too shocked by the massacre of the Aborigines to worry about his own safety. But with the last native dead, Shi-Ni-Wei began looking round the plains for further sport. And just as Simon realised the danger that he was in, the Walker on the Wind looked in his direction.

Shi-Ni-Wei laughed his metallic cog-grinding laugh again, and his cloud plateau began sailing toward Simon.

Thinking that the Wind Walker was going to send a lightning bolt in his direction, Simon cowered in terror. But didn’t run, having seen how futile flight was.

Shi-Ni-Wei stretched out his right arm toward Simon, as though to send his death-bolt flying. But then he hesitated, as though thinking better of it. Instead, the monstrous Walker on the Wind stepped off his cloud platform and came swirling down to earth, as though walking down a long, winding, invisible staircase. As he walked, swirling, cyclonic eddies sent snow flying all around him.

Simon shivered in terror and felt his bladder release, as a gigantic webbed foot, the size of a battleship, landed metres away from him.

As the Colossus touched down, the earth rumbled and seethed from the weight of the monster.

Holy shit! cried Simon as he was sent flying. He tried to scramble to his feet again. But as the Wind Walker touched down with his second foot, the ground began to buck and weave like a stormy sea.

My God, his arms bring lightning and his feet bring earthquakes! thought Simon. He resigned himself to his death.

Thrown onto his back, he was unable to even sit, much less stand, as the earth quaked beneath the tread of Shi-Ni-Wei.

Seeing him helpless, the Wind Walker threw back its monstrous head and let out its grinding laughter again. Then it lifted one foot and slowly lowered it toward where Simon D’Souza bobbed about on the quaking, seething ground.

Closing his eyes in terror, Simon blacked out ....


When he came to, Simon was still shaking, but much more gently than before. Instead of Shi-Ni-Wei’s monstrous metallic laughter, he heard Maryette’s sweet voice calling, “Simon, on my God, Simon. Wake up, for God’s sake, wake up.”

Opening his eyes, Simon saw Maryette’s beautiful blonde face looking down at him. He realised that the shaking was Maryette trying to rouse him.

“Oh, thank God, I thought you were in a coma,” cried Maryette. She threw her arms around him, hugging him in relief.

“No, not in a coma, just dreaming,” Simon replied.

“Dreaming?” she asked, clearly puzzled.

Simon hesitated for a moment, not wanting to seem foolish in her eyes. With her help, he sat up on the plateau on the large red-brown granite rock. After a moment, he slowly related his dream, or as much of it as he could remember.

“Oh my God, it’s a warning,” cried Maryette. “Some kind of psychometry.”

“Psychometry?” asked Simon. He wondered if he had heard correctly.

“Clearly, you had a clairvoyant flash and saw into the past,” explained Maryette. “What you saw really happened. It is the history of the Forbidden Rock area.”

“No, honey, it was just a dream.”

“But you smelt the kangaroo cooking, smelt the electric-fire smell of the lightning,” pointed out Maryette. “That rules out ordinary dreaming. You can’t smell things in dreams.”

“Yes, but,” began Simon. He stopped, puzzled, as he realised that she was right. “But it can’t have been really happening,” he said, thinking aloud.

“No, not now, but some time centuries, even millennia in the past,” said Maryette. “You said that the natives didn’t look like modern Aborigines.”

“No, they had a kind of Neanderthal look to them.”

“Then they probably were Neanderthals. It’s thought that the Aborigines came to Australia 50,000 to 80,000 years ago,” pointed out Maryette. “Which is well back into the Neanderthal era. You may well have been seeing something that happened that long ago.”

“But how could ...?” began Simon. Then, knowing how stubborn she could be when she got her teeth into an idea, he decided against arguing the point.

“Well, that’s that then,” said Maryette. “We can’t go on now. We’ll have to leave.”

“What? Just because I was knocked out by the stale air sealed in the cave, and had a nightmare ...?”

“It wasn’t a nightmare,” insisted Maryette. “It was a psychometric flash.”

“Even so, if what you say is true, even if what I saw really happened, it was millennia ago,” pointed out Simon, trying a different tack. “So that there’s no reason for us not to finish our job.”

“But are you sure that it’s safe?” persisted Maryette. “After all, you were knocked out by the fumes.”

“Just stale air. All archaeologists encounter fetid air when they open ancient crypts. It’s like a house that goes musty when locked up for a few years. But in this case, it’s been locked up for centuries or millennia.”

“Which means that this cave has not been sealed recently?”

“Not in the last few centuries anyway,” conceded Simon. “I’m afraid Rob Tickner is going to be disappointed.

Rob Tickner was the Australian Federal Government minister for Aboriginal Affairs. When first appointed, he had been almost fanatically pro-Aboriginal, an avid supporter of the Mabo land rights bill. Until his political career had been all but buried in the Hindmarsh Island controversy, which broke in mid-1995. Hindmarsh Island was being developed as a tourist resort until a proposed $6 million bridge to connect the island with the mainland was stopped by Rob Tickner after Hindmarsh Island Aboriginal women claimed that the bridge site was a sacred Aboriginal place where “secret women's things” had taken place. As a consequence, the development company went bankrupt in July 1994. A year later, four of the Aboriginal women involved came forward, publicly admitting that the “women’s secrets” was a lie devised by the women to stop the building of the bridge. Despite calls for his sacking from both sides of the political fence, Rob Tickner had managed to hold onto his post as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, but his credibility was gone forever. So, gradually, he had shifted to an increasingly anti-Aboriginal stance, blaming the Aborigines for his own culpable gullibility.

Tickner had not said point-blank that he wanted the D’Souzas to bring down a finding against the Aborigines in this case. But he had made it plain that he would not be unhappy if they announced that they had found no sign of Shi-Ni-Wei or any cave in Forbidden Rock.

“Disappointed isn’t the word for it,” said Maryette. Reluctantly, she helped chip away the rest of the rock in the cave entrance, then followed her husband as he squeezed through the entrance into the cave. “Brrr, feels like someone left the door open at a meat-packer’s.”

“It’s bound to be cooler in here than out in the desert sun,” Simon said. In desert areas, even the shade of small trees can decrease the temperature by 20 degrees Celsius over the unshaded heat. Shivering against the temperature in the cave, he rubbed his hands together and thought, My God, she’s right, it’s like a freezer in here.

Trying to concentrate on something -- anything! -- but the inexplicable cold in the cave, he shone his torch around and whistled in amazement.

“My God, it’s huge,” said Maryette. Instantly forgetting the cold, which had her cheeks flushing pink. She shone her own torch around the rust-brown walls of the granite cave, surprised at its immensity.

Although only one large “room”, it was easily the size of most single-storey houses. A cavern rather than a cave. All around the cavern, the walls as high as the eye could see were covered in Aboriginal figure art.

“Can you read them?” asked Maryette.

“Some of them,” replied Simon. Some of the diagrams’ meanings were obvious. On one wall, they found a great tableau of a swirling monster, which could only be Shi-Ni-Wei, hurling its yellow death-bolts down at fleeing Aborigines. Like the natives in Simon’s “dream”, these had a strange Neanderthal heaviness to their features and low, sloping, ape-like foreheads, suggesting that the cave had been sealed millennia ago.

After helping to set up the portable lights, Simon went back to the tent to collect his laptop PC, leaving Maryette to take hundreds of photos of the wall art. Not knowing what effect that the fresh air would have on the ancient ochre-based paint, it was important to record the art for posterity before it crumbled away.

Although it was breathable now, the air inside the cavern was still far from fresh. Simon could detect a faint odour like human faeces and felt the urge to flee in terror from the cavern.

When at last Maryette was finished, Simon set to, with the help of the laptop and various Aboriginal dialect dictionaries on computer disc, to attempt to translate the artwork.

Much of the artwork agreed with his strange dream. “According to this,” he said, pointing to one series of diagrams. “Aeons ago, the area around Forbidden Rock was an Antarctic region, due to the influence of the Walker on the Wind. Shi-Ni-Wei hunted and brutally slaughtered the Aborigines with his lightning bolts. Also, by causing earthquakes when he stepped down to earth, and by calling up willy-willies and cyclones.

“So, afraid that they would all be slaughtered, the Aborigines appealed to a great medicine man for help. They asked him for magic to allow them to kill Shi-Ni-Wei. But the shaman told them that the Walker on the Wind could not be killed. However, he agreed to work his magic to help capture Shi-Ni-Wei and seal him in this cave.”


After nearly two days photographing and translating the cave art, the D’Souzas were ready to return to Robert Tickner with their findings.

“Old Rob Tickner will chuck a psycho fit when we tell him,” said Maryette. She was driving the Land Rover, so that Simon could work on his notes in the passenger seat beside her.

“It’s his own fault,” said Simon. He juggled half a dozen notepads on his knees at once. “We were employed to discover the truth about the Shi-Ni-Wei legend ... And we found it.”


After nearly five hours driving through the seemingly endless desert, they came to a signpost saying “Copplestone”. In fact, the “town” was no more than three houses and a grocery store-cum-post office-cum-service station. Four near-derelict white weatherboard structures in an otherwise unbroken brown-dirt desert.

“I don’t know about you,” said Simon as Maryette pulled up beside the single petrol pump outside the store, “but I could sure use one of Mrs. Cannizzo’s home-made meat pies right now.”

“You’re not wrong,” agreed Maryette, climbing out of the Rover. Unscrewing the cap of the petrol tank, she said, “You go in and place our order; I’ll fill ’er up.”

“Okay,” said Simon. He placed his notebooks behind the seat.

Finding the screen door unlocked, he stepped inside the grocery store and shivered at the cold air after the heat outside. The old lady must have turned the air-conditioning up too high, he thought. Then he remembered that a few days earlier Mrs. Cannizzo had apologised for the sweltering conditions in the store, saying, “The cooler’s on the blink.” She must’ve got it fixed! he thought.

The old-fashioned store had been modernised to the extent of having a cake and doughnut tray and a glass-fronted pie-cooker. And also two small round tables for diners. Although two tables seemed an extravagance since, by Mrs. Cannizzo’s own admission, customers could be two or three days apart.

“Mrs. Cannizzo?” he called out. Simon expected the matronly Italian lady to call out a greeting as she came thumping down the rickety wooden staircase from the living quarters behind and above the store.

Instead, he was greeted by an almost eerie silence.

“Mrs. Cannizzo?” Simon called a second time. Again, without an answer.

Where can she be? he wondered. He looked around the untended shelves of groceries. He recalled her saying that she seldom left the store anymore. After a moment, he started down the aisle of groceries toward the white-painted, carpetless stairs at the back of the store.

“What’s the matter?” asked Maryette. Coming into the store, the tall blonde saw her husband staring up the stairwell at the back of the store.

Startled, Simon looked back and said, “She doesn’t seem to be in. Wrinkling up his brow, he thought, Where the Hell could she possibly go, out here? There’s nowhere to go, it’s two hundred kilometres from the next town!

“Gee, it’s cold in here,” said Maryette. She blew into her hands to warm them. “Maybe she’s gone across to visit someone in one of the houses?”

“Possible. But you’d think she’d have seen us go into the shop,” replied Simon. Noting the flushed look on his wife’s face, knowing that she found extreme cold as unbearable as he found the desert heat, he said, “And why leave the cooling up so high if she was going out?”

“To stop the groceries going off in the heat.”

“Most of the things she sells aren’t perishables. And even the cakes and lollies don’t need this kind of cold to stay fresh. Anyway, wouldn’t she lock up if she were going out?”

“No need to out these parts, no one out here would rip her off,” said Maryette. Raised on a farm in the Mallee district, she knew how trustworthy most outback people are. “It’s only you city-slickers who need to lock up against thieves.”

Ignoring his wife’s teasing, Simon turned back to the staircase. He put one foot onto the first step, then hesitated. Do we have any right to go upstairs to check? he wondered. Mrs. Cannizzo had been jovial and easy-going a few days ago when they had stopped last. But she might be less friendly if she caught them trespassing upstairs. She seemed to trust us earlier, but we weren’t invading her living quarters then!

As though reading her husband’s mind, Maryette suggested, “Maybe it’d be better if we just took what we need and left the money behind. We can leave a note with it to let her know that we’ve been and gone.”

“Yeah, all right,” agreed Simon. He was relieved not to have to go upstairs. He could smell a strong aroma of excrement upstairs, as though someone had had an accident, or else the toilet had backed up.

Taking his hand from the rickety old banister, he thought, Out these parts they probably don’t have the sewerage on yet. He knew from his own youth how much old-fashioned “Jerry's” smelt compared to proper toilets. Nevertheless, the faecal smell strangely alarmed him, reminding him of his dream of Shi-Ni-Wei. He had to fight the urge to run screaming out to the Land Rover.

In a bid to calm himself, Simon took two or three deep breaths. And immediately regretted it since he inhaled the sewerage smell deeply into his lungs.

Coughing, he turned and forced himself to remain calm. Trying hard not to run, Simon headed toward the front of the store, where he saw Maryette heating up a couple of Mrs. Cannizzo’s home-made pies in the pie-oven.

“Those look nice,” Simon said, trying to make casual conversation.

“Yes, but a couple of days old,” said Maryette. She sounded surprised that the old lady would sell stale goods.

While Maryette was warming the pies, Simon went around the other side of the counter. He collected $25 worth of chocolate bars and soft drinks to last them over the two hundred-kilometre drive to the next small town. He left a note and the cash on the counter.

Then, seeing Maryette heading toward one of the two round, vinyl-topped tables, he took her by the arm and led her almost brutally outside. “We can eat while we’re driving,” Simon said.

“What?” she said, obviously surprised. “Oh, all right.”

As they stepped outside, a voice said, “She’s dead! Mrs. Cannizzo’s been murdered!” Startled, Simon almost dropped the plastic bag full of sweets. At first, he thought that it was Maryette speaking. He looked hurriedly around the brown dirt yard, thinking that his wife had spotted the old lady’s body somewhere. But seeing Maryette climbing into the driver’s seat of the Land Rover, he realised that it was his own thoughts that he had heard.

Simon hurried to catch up with Maryette. He didn’t want to give her any excuse to delay their departure.

Instead of climbing into the passenger seat, Simon said, “Move over, I’ll drive for a while.”

Looking surprised, Maryette did as instructed.

“That way you can eat two-handed,” he explained. But the real reason was so that he could plant his foot on the accelerator to leave the dinky town behind as quickly as possible. He knew that Maryette was a more cautious driver than him, and he couldn’t explain his terror of Mrs. Cannizzo’s shop to her without appearing foolish.

“Okay, but take a care,” advised Maryette, knowing what a speed demon he was.


After they had finished eating, despite his objections, Maryette insisted that they swap seats so that Simon could return to his notes.

“All right,” he agreed reluctantly. He knew that Maryette would put the brakes on the wild speed with which they had fled Mrs. Cannizzo’s store.

Simon had been working away at his notes for nearly an hour when he stopped to rub at his tired eyes. Looking down again, he was horrified to see that he had spent the last hour writing, “She’s dead! The old lady’s dead!” over and over, until he had filled four pages with his spindly, close-set printing.

Now why should I think that? he wondered. The effluent smell was just a backed-up toilet. Why should I be scared witless by a backed-up toilet? But try as he might, he couldn’t get the idea out of his head that the old woman was dead. The idea that the old woman was killed by the Walker on the Wind! We released him from his cavern, and just like the legends say, he has started to kill innocent people wherever he goes!

He wished that they had seen someone -- anyone! -- alive in the small town. So that he wouldn’t think that the occupants of the three weatherboard houses were all lying dead inside. All killed by Shi-Ni-Wei. Just like Mrs. Cannizzo was killed by Shi-Ni-Wei, because we ... because I released him! Maryette wanted to leave the cave sealed, so it’s all my fault. I insisted on unsealing it, I killed Mrs. Cannizzo and the others!

Trying his best to act casual, Simon folded up the four sheets of paper, then carefully tore them into a hundred pieces. He lowered the side window and dropped the paper out.

“Litterbug,” teased Maryette.

Simon tried his best to smile, but knew that it must have looked more like a grimace.


The D’Souzas were about an hour outside the next town when Maryette called out, “What’s that up ahead?”

Looking up from his notes, Simon saw a Land Rover and an ancient yellow-and-black Hr Holden Premier, both just off the verge of the dirt road. “Looks like a crash,” he said.

But when they stopped to investigate, there was no physical sign of damage to either vehicle.

They found an old man who looked over eighty sitting up at the wheel of the Rover. His mouth gaped open in a silent scream, a look of abject terror on his face; his brown eyes stared sightlessly out through the windscreen.

“Oh my God!” cried Maryette. She did her best to fight back the bile which rose in her throat. But all the chocolate that she had eaten over the last 150 kilometres got the better of her. Turning away, she dropped to her knees and started throwing up over the lifeless brown soil of the desert.

“Are you okay, honey?” asked Simon when she had finished. He knew that it was a stupid question.

Taking her by the shoulders, he helped her to stand. Then he half-led, half-carried her back to their Land Rover. Tossing his notes into the back of the Rover, he helped Maryette into the passenger seat.

“Wait here,” said Simon. “I’d better check out the other car.”

In the yellow-and-black Holden, he found a middle-aged man and two slightly older women. All three were dead. All three were grimacing as though they had smelt something nasty.

None of the occupants of the two vehicles had received more than superficial scratches in the “accident”. And when Simon examined them, there was no obvious cause of death.

Closing the door of the Holden, he quickly pulled his hand away as though stung. At first, Simon thought that he had been burnt by the metal heated to scalding point by the desert sun. But then he saw the thin white film upon the door near the handle.

He tentatively prodded one finger at the film, which broke away. Ice! he thought. How the Hell could ice form on the outside of a car in this heat!

“What ... what killed them?” asked Maryette, wide-eyed in shock, when Simon returned to their Rover.

“I’m damned if I know,” Simon replied. He shook his head in wonder. “There doesn’t seem to be any cause of death. Perhaps the old man died of shock if the two cars almost had a head-on collision and ran off the road. But none of the others were old enough to be scared to death by a near-miss like that.”

“What ... what will we do?”

“Well, we can’t take them with us,” said Simon. “So we’ll just have to leave them where they are and report it at the next town.”

Maryette agreed without argument. She started to move over to the driver’s side, but Simon stopped her. “No, no, you stay there and recover.”

“No, I’m okay now,” she protested. “Besides, you have to get your notes finished.”

“Stay where you are, ” he insisted. He knew that, unlike him, she had never seen a human corpse before. “I’m not likely to be able to concentrate on my notes for a while after what I’ve just seen.”


Two hundred kilometres closer to Sydney than the last town, Duggan was noticeably larger: eight white, yellow, or pale blue weatherboard houses, a milkbar-cum-service station, a grocery store, and even a single-room Uniting Church. It also possessed a one-man police station, complete with a tiny holding cell out back.

“Over there,” directed Simon. He pointed to the redbrick building displaying a blue “police” sign.

Maryette drove across to the concrete horse-trough beside the wooden porch in front of the police station.

“Well, let’s get it over with,” said Simon as they stepped up to the fly-screen door. Like Maryette, he had butterflies in his stomach. He had had an hour to think over what they had seen outside town, yet he still had not been able to think up the right words to say.

Simon knocked on the screen door and called out, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

Receiving no reply, he tentatively opened the door and walked inside, followed by Maryette. Nearly a third of the front room was taken up by a large blackwood desk. Behind the desk was a water-cooler, a cork bulletin board, and a slight rusty, grey, four-drawer metal filing cabinet. But there was no sign of the policeman in charge.

“He might be out back,” suggested Maryette. But they quickly confirmed that there was no one in the small metal-doored holding cell behind the station.

“He might be over at the milkbar, I guess,” said Simon.

Starting to feel uneasy, they both walked across to look.

“Hello?” called out Maryette when they reached the milkbar. She ting-tinged the small metal bell on the vinyl-topped counter. After a few seconds, she ting-ting-tinged the bell again more insistently.

“Is there anyone here?” called out Simon. He walked down the grocery aisle to the door at the back of the shop.

Although not as bitingly cold as Mrs. Cannizzo’s had been, Simon felt his cheeks flushing and thought, Not another air-conditioner playing up!

He touched the round doorknob and quickly pulled away his hand, “stung” by the cold as he had been by the car door earlier. Taking two handkerchiefs from his trousers, he wrapped the hankies around the doorknob and tried the door. The knob turned, so he swung the door open wide ....

And almost passed out again at the reek of faeces that rushed from the back room. Almost doubling over, he quickly swung shut the door again.

“Did you see anyone?” asked Maryette.

Coughing to clear his lungs, he was unable to answer for a few seconds. Finally, Simon said, “No, this place is deserted too.”

“My God, what in Hell is going on?” asked Maryette. She sounded on the verge of hysteria. “Did someone call off the world today, or what?”

They’re all dead! a little voice inside Simon’s head told him. Everyone in town is dead! Just like they were all dead in Copplestone!

“Um, maybe we should drive straight through to Sydney,” suggested Simon. “We could be there by tomorrow morning.”

“We need to fill up the tank of the Rover again,” said Maryette.

Trying to keep his voice even, Simon said, “Why don’t you go and do that, honey? While I pick out what we need here.”

“Okay,” agreed Maryette.

Simon gave her a smile of encouragement, then watched as she walked outside. He waited till he heard the Rover’s engine. Then he took a deep breath before opening the door to the back room again.

Inside, among the shovels, tins of paint, and boxes of stores, he found the corpse of a grey-haired old man. Like the people in the cars, the old man’s face was screaming silently as though he had seen something too terrible to mention. Like the people earlier, there were no obvious wounds or any reason for his death.

The only thing out of the ordinary is that ghastly, shitty smell! thought Simon.

Afraid that Maryette might come looking for him, Simon hurried back to the storefront. He grabbed a couple of two-litre bottles of Coke and a couple of bags of doughnuts and chocolate bars, then headed outside.

“Did you leave the money behind?” asked Maryette as Simon climbed in behind the steering wheel.

“No time to waste,” said Simon. He gunned the engine, forcing her to run around to the passenger’s side for fear of being left behind.

“But we can’t just run out without paying,” protested Maryette. She climbed into the Land Rover just in time as Simon sped off.

No point leaving any money behind when the owner’s dead! thought Simon, but he kept the thought to himself. He was grateful that Maryette had not seen the old man’s corpse, or smelt the faecal smell which Simon knew foretold the passing of Shi-Ni-Wei.

As he started down the dirt road for Sydney, Simon thought, He’s ahead of us somewhere; the Walker on the Wind! Maybe we’re going the wrong way; we can never overtake him. Maybe we should head the other way, across the desert to Adelaide? Or even Perth?

But he wondered how to explain such a decision to Maryette. They had promised to take their findings to Rob Tickner in Sydney as soon as they had investigated Forbidden Rock. She’s nervous enough now, he thought. The last thing I need is for her to think that I’ve cracked up or am suffering from heatstroke.


At the next small town, there were no external signs of life either. So, seeing a human corpse lying between two houses, Simon quickly drove on, hoping that Maryette had not noticed. He knew that they had enough in the fuel tank to get them almost to Sydney. We can top up later! he thought as they sped on.

“Aren’t we stopping here?” asked Maryette. She sounded surprised.

“No need, we might as well keep going, try to get through to Sydney by noon tomorrow.”

“I just hope that Rob Tickner appreciates the trouble that we’re going to.”

Simon gave her a half-smile, half-grimace. Trying to lighten the mood, he said, “I doubt it, since our findings will only put his head on the block again.”

“Do you think that he’ll try to suppress our report?” asked Maryette.

“I don’t see how he can. He’d have to cover up ....” He almost told her about the body in the back of the milkbar in Duggan. Stopping himself in time, he said, “The deaths of those three people in the car crash ... or whatever it was.”

“But how is that related to our report?” Maryette asked.

“Probably it isn’t,” agreed Simon. He thought, If Shi-Ni-Wei was released when we opened that cave, and he did slaughter everyone in Copplestone and Duggan -- as the little voice inside his head insisted -- then there’s no way Rob Tickner, Paul Keating, or anyone else will be able to bury this report!


As Simon had suggested, they drove right through the night. They took turns behind the wheel so that the other could catnap for a while, so that they wouldn’t fall asleep while driving. Fortunately, before midnight, they left the dirt tracks behind, grateful for bitumen roads. They quickly located the Great Western Highway and sped on toward Sydney.

While they drove, the excremental smell soon caught up with them. They were soon forced to wind up their windows to avoid choking.

“My God, what can it be?” asked Maryette rhetorically.

“Someone must’ve nuked the local sewerage farm,” joked Simon, trying unsuccessfully to sound jovial. Seeing the pink flush returning to Maryette’s face, he realised that it was getting unseasonably cold. He reached over and turned on the heat, and for a while, the cold vanished.

Seeing Simon turn on the heater, Maryette said, “It must be that damn hole in the ozone layer causing this wacky weather.”

“I guess so,” agreed Simon, wishing that he could believe it. But the ever-increasing cold and faecal odour only convinced him that they were still driving in the wrong direction: still following after Shi-Ni-Wei! What happens when we catch up with him? Simon wondered. He almost turned the Rover around while Maryette was sleeping to start back out into the desert.

There are corpses back there where Shi-Ni-Wei has been! he thought. But it should be safe there now. The Walker on the Wind is heading away from there. Toward Sydney! he realised. He did his best to suppress the thought, terrified of where it might lead him.


Just after dawn, they were forced to stop at Glenbrook for petrol.

They still had seen no sign of life. But Simon had seen several corpses lying outside houses as they entered the town. He was thankful that Maryette had been sleeping and had not seen them.

“Where the Hell can they all be?” asked Maryette as they pulled into the service station. She sounded a little awed, and very frightened.

They’re all dead! thought Simon, but he kept the notion to himself. Seeing Maryette shivering again at the cold inside, he took a fur-lined coat from a rack in the shop. He draped the coat around her shoulders.

“Guess it’s self-serve again,” he joked. He went across to help himself to a Coke and some cakes.

“We really shouldn’t take things without paying,” Maryette said, less insistently than before. However, she was grateful for the coat and zipped it up. Wrinkling up her nose at the faecal smell which was even stronger inside the shop than outside -- if possible -- Maryette said, “I’ll go fill ’er up while you’re doing that.”

Watching his wife walk outside, Simon realised how dumbstruck she was at what they had found. Or what we haven’t found! Who we haven’t found! he thought. He knew that he should warn her about what he feared, but wondered, What’ll she think if I tell her that Shi-Ni-Wei is cutting a swath of death and Antarctic cold from Forbidden Rock to Sydney? If she doesn’t believe it, she’ll think that I’ve had some kind of mental breakdown! And for a moment, he wondered if he had. He wondered if he had suffered brain damage during his seizure outside Forbidden Rock. Then he realised that a mental breakdown would not explain the bitter cold or cloying faecal smell which they had both smelt. If she does believe me, it’ll only terrify her! he decided. As the idea of catching up with Shi-Ni-Wei terrified Simon.

Knowing that the icy cold was unlikely to go away as they headed toward Sydney, Simon helped himself to a fur-lined parka.

“I’ll drive,” said Maryette as he reached the car.

They continued along the Great Western Highway past Penrith, Kingswood, Werrington, Oxley Park, Minchinbury, and Eastern Creek, as they headed toward Sydney. As they progressed, the sewerage smell became almost overpowering, even with all the windows up. And the car heater struggled to combat the icy cold.

The previously empty highway soon started to be filled with crashed or stalled cars and lorries.

Although they did not look too closely, they could see the grimacing or silently screaming corpses in the vehicles as they passed.

“What could have happened?” said Maryette. Simon realised that she still hadn’t connected the opening of the cave with what they were now seeing. “It’s as though there’s been a neutron bomb detonated ... Killing all the people, but leaving the buildings intact.”

Whatever had happened, it had obviously happened at night, or in the evening when there were not many people about. But as they drove through Huntingwood, Blacktown, and Prospect, they began to see corpses of cats and dogs lying by the roadside or on front lawns. By the time that they reached Surrey Hills, they had started to see the corpses of people lying on front lawns or on the footpaths.

“Oh my God, what could have happened?” said Maryette as they drove along. “It looks like the start of World War Three.”

“That’s not very likely considering the détente between the superpowers since the Gorbachev era,” said Simon.

“What about France or China?” demanded Maryette. And Simon had to admit that Australia had hardly been on friendly terms with either nation over the last few years.

“But even if they did start a war,” insisted Simon, “they’re not likely to nuke Sydney or Melbourne first. They’d start with Washington D.C. or London, or maybe even Moscow.”

“A plague then!” was her second guess. “There’s been some kind of plague while we’ve been away.”

“We’ve only been away a few days,” pointed out Simon. “For a plague to decimate the state like this would take weeks, even months. Besides, if it was that virulent, why would it have spared us?”

“Maybe it missed us when we were at Forbidden Rock, then burnt itself out in the few days that we were at the rock,” suggested Maryette.


But the biggest shock of all was when they reached Sydney itself. It was midsummer and should have been over 30 degrees Celsius outside. Instead, the streets and rooftops were buried beneath a thick blanket of snow.

“But it never snows in Sydney!” protested Maryette as they drove up Macquarie Street. Looking up and down the street, which looked more like an American white Christmas scene than a Sydney summer, she struggled to recognise any of the buildings. Although she had driven down the street hundreds of times before.

“It’s as though we were suddenly transported from an Australian summer into an American winter,” said Simon, as though reading her thoughts.

They drove slowly down the street, still without seeing a single sign of life.

“Whatever happened, you’d think there’d be some survivors,” said Maryette.

She lowered her side window to look out. Then, as they were both almost overcome by the cold and noxious odour, she quickly wound up her window again. “Sorry,” she said, through a coughing spasm.

After he recovered from his own coughing fit, Simon said, “I doubt if we will.” Then, seeing her look of non-comprehension, “If we will find anyone alive ... Not for a long time anyway.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I think I know what caused all this.”

“What?” asked Maryette.

Simon hesitated, not wanting to scare Maryette or have her think him crazy. But sensing her impatience, he finally told her of his theory that his “dream” at Forbidden Rock was not a dream at all. “I think it was some kind of psychic flash caused by my releasing Shi-Ni-Wei from his prison.”

“A psychometric flash,” agreed Maryette. Then, realising what her husband had said, she stared wide-eyed at him. “Releasing ...?”

“Yes,” he said at hardly more than a whisper. “I think that the Wind Walker was more than a mere legend.”

“But it’s only a Dream-Time legend,” insisted Maryette.

“The Dream-Time mythology isn’t all fantasy,” explained Simon. “The Aborigines include a lot of sheer fancy in their legends, but they also include every plant, fish, bird, or animal that they’ve ever encountered in real life. If the Aborigines really encountered Shi-Ni-Wei at some time in the prehistoric past, he would be included in the Dream-Time sagas, the same as if he were sheer fantasy.”

Seeing her look of stark disbelief, Simon reached into the back of the Rover and scooped up his notebooks. He leafed through them for a minute or two, then said, “This is a translation, as best as I can make it, of the drawings outside the cave.”

Maryette stopped the Rover to take the pages from her husband. She read:

“Long ago, in the days of the Dream-Time, Shi-Ni-Wei roamed the sky on the wind, sending down hail, sleet, lightning, and willy-willies to torment the people of this continent. At first, the Aborigines tolerated Shi-Ni-Wei and accepted the deaths that he caused as a part of their existence. But then the Wind Walker’s victims became more and more plentiful as though tormenting the Aborigines was no longer enough for him. As though the Walker on the Wind had decided that it was time to annihilate the Aborigines.

“Although afraid of the wrath of the demon, the Aborigines were more afraid of what the Wind Walker would do if they did not stop him. So with the help of a great shaman, Gambal Gullagul, they devised spells to lay the demon. In a special corroboree of nearly five hundred tribes, Shi-Ni-Wei was called up by Gambal Gullagul and sealed inside the cave upon Forbidden Rock. As he was sealed up, the Wind Walker cursed the Aborigines. He swore that if he ever escaped, he would annihilate them all. He would annihilate the entire human race and all animal life right across the face of the Earth.”

Maryette read the translation in horror, then finally asked, “So what has that got to do ...?”

“I don’t think it was a myth,” Simon explained. “I think the Walker on the Wind is real. I think he really was sealed in that cave. When we broke the seals and I was knocked out by the outrushing foul wind ... I believe that that wind was Shi-Ni-Wei rushing out. For some reason, in his haste, he let us live. But I doubt if he spared too many others.”

“So you’re saying that we really are the only two people left alive in Sydney?” asked Maryette, obviously unsure if she could believe her husband’s wild tale.

“Perhaps in the whole Australian continent. Perhaps in the whole world.”

Maryette stared at Simon. He knew that she must be thinking that he was crazy. She started to protest, but stopped as lightning flashed seemingly only metres away from them.

“Lightning when it’s been snowing?” said Maryette. "You usually only get lightning in late spring before true summer starts.”

A second lightning flash lit up the sky to her left. They both looked around in time to see the Old Colonial Mint Building disintegrate into a cloud of dust and flying bricks.

“What the ...?” asked Maryette, too shocked to finish the sentence.

Lightning flashed again, and the Sydney Hospital also disintegrated. This time, splitting down the centre like a gigantic cake carven with a woodsman’s axe.

“What caused ...?” began Maryette. Then both of them saw the two great columns of swirling dirt, leaves, and snow hovering above the shattered buildings.

“Tornadoes?” said Maryette. But even as she spoke, she realised that tornadoes would not splinter buildings, then hover above the ruins for so long. Looking down, she gasped. She saw the webbed, duck-like feet beneath the swirling columns. Even before she looked up and saw the monstrous figure of Shi-Ni-Wei, she realised that it was the Walker on the Wind.

Towering nearly two hundred metres tall, the Wind Walker smiled cruelly as it crushed the two classic buildings underfoot.

“My God, that thing ... It’s not even solid ... It’s made up of snow and leaves, yet ... Yet it can do that,” said Maryette.

She shrieked and hurriedly covered her ears as Shi-Ni-Wei let out his ear-splitting metallic shriek again.

“My God, what’s he doing?” asked Maryette, almost fainting as her ears began to ring.

“He’s laughing,” Simon shouted to make himself heard above the metallic, grinding noise. “He’s laughing at the destruction that he’s caused.”

Shi-Ni-Wei held out his right hand, and a great yellow bolt of light flashed forth toward them. Maryette screamed, thinking that it was going to kill them.

Instead, the bolt passed way over the Land Rover and exploded into the State Government Office block behind them. Again and again the Wind Walker fired out his bolts, until the building and two others beside it were reduced to smouldering rubble.

Then the monster turned away from them. Like a small child stamping on a sand castle, he jumped and landed with both feet upon the Library of New South Wales, shrilling in laughter as the historic building disintegrated beneath his webbed feet.

Shi-Ni-Wei laughed for a moment, enjoying the destruction, before moving on to the next building, then the next, then the next. He gradually moved further and further from the D’Souzas, leaving them to ponder their survival. Leaving them to wonder if they really were the last man and woman left alive on the face of the planet?

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia