by Gary Gregor
The room appeared to be empty. The light was dim and the flickering lamp cast dancing shadows bouncing off the walls and into the corners making it difficult to clearly discern specific items in the room. For what seemed like a long time, she stood with her head around the door slowly casting her eyes back and forth around the room, lingering in the dark corners, looking for any signs that the man might be in there. In the far corner, pushed up against the wall, she recognised the shadowy shape of a camp-stretcher. It looked to be empty.
Finally, satisfied the man was not in the room, she dared to step around the door and into the dimly lit space. As she entered, she pushed the door open wider, making for a quick escape back into the room where the children lay sleeping if she felt threatened.
A step or two inside the room she paused for a moment and waited. The silence was profound. The man had to be gone, she reasoned. Then, her eyes focused on the dark outline of the next room; the first of the four-room complex. The room where they tied her to a chair and photographed her. She shuddered with the memory of it. Although it had only been a few days, it seemed such a long time ago. Was the man in the next room, she wondered? The urge to turn and go back and be with the children was strong. Her feet would not move.
“H… hello,” she heard herself whisper with a falter in her voice. She received no answer. “Hello,” she said again, a little more confidently this time. Still there was no response.
Cautiously, she took another step deeper into the room, and paused. She turned her head and looked at the open door behind her. Her children were back there. What if one of them woke and couldn’t see her? They would be terrified. Should she go back and wait until daybreak? Her mind wrestled with her options. Continue or go back? Continue or go back?
‘Continue’ won the struggle. It was more about being curious than it was about being brave. Bravery had nothing to do with her decision to continue. In fact, if she took the time to analyse the decision, she was certain foolishness would be right up there with curiosity, with bravery a distant last.
“H… hello, sir,” she called again. “Sir?” “Sir?” What the hell was that about, she asked herself? “Sir?” The man was not a ‘Sir’! He was a criminal! Stupid, stupid woman, she admonished herself! What the hell was she thinking? ‘Sir’ was a term of address for a man worthy of respect and admiration. Respect and admiration were not words that belonged in the same sentence with this man. Get yourself together, girl, she reprimanded herself!
“Hello, are you there?” she called into the gloom. Again, she received no answer.
She turned her attention to the dark shape of the doorway to the outer room. Beyond that room would be the outside; and freedom. She could see no light coming from the outer room and, once again, she struggled with her options. Crossing this room and checking the outer room would take her that much further away from her beloved students. But she had to know if she and the children were truly alone and the only way to determine that was to take the short walk and see for herself.
Bracing herself, she took a deep breath and walked quickly across to the dark doorway. She stopped and peered into the gloom of the outer room. It didn’t seem as dark as she imagined it would be. There was no artificial light that she could see from where she stood in the doorway, it was more like natural light. Like it might be coming from outside.
“Hello,” she called softly. “Are you there?” When no response came, she stepped through the open door and into the first room. Immediately her eyes were drawn to her right. There was another door there. Dull, insipid light from the outside seeped into the room. Now she knew for certain. She and the children were alone.
Tracy’s emotions swung from excitement to despair. Excitement because this could mean they could all finally leave this awful place. Despair because she had no idea exactly where they were other than alone somewhere in the desert in the dead of night.
With mildly invigorated confidence she walked across the room to the doorway leading to the outside. Here, she paused and looked up the length of the short, sloping ramp into the star-filled night sky above. Slowly, accompanied only by the almost audible beating of her heart, she walked slowly and cautiously up the length of the ramp, stopped at the top, and looked around at the dark, desolate landscape beyond the hill under which she and the children had been confined. There was no sign of the man. He was gone.
A limpid, translucent veil of light emanating from the moon and stars in the vast, cloudless sky, and cast upon the ground below, offered the only source of light by which to navigate if one was to elect to walk away from this place in the middle of the night. It was enough light to see up to perhaps twenty or thirty metres in any direction but any further than that was a black, scary, uninviting nothingness. Other than the hill Tracy had just come from beneath, there were no structures, no trees, nothing that would cast as much as a ghostly shadow upon the ground. Nothing by which she might be able to get some small degree of perception of space and distance.
Tracy wanted to call out to the man. The silence around her was so profound she figured if she called loudly her voice would carry a long way. If the man was out there somewhere, he might hear her and return.
‘Who are you fooling?’ Tracy said to herself. ‘The man is not coming back. Yell, and scream, and cry as hard as you like, he is not coming back!’
Tracy didn’t know how long she had been standing at the top of the ramp. How long she had been there was not something she consciously thought about. There was way too much other stuff crowding her mind to think about something as trivial as how long she had been standing there staring into the distant darkness of a desert night.
It was the cold that snapped her back to the here-and-now. It was freezing. She was dressed in lightweight, summer clothes. That’s what you wear on oppressively hot days in the Australian outback. She was taking the children to Papunya on a school excursion. You don’t wear heavy jackets and head-warming beanies in the daytime in this part of the country when you are only going to be away from your home for a few hours.
Tracy had been living and working at Haasts Bluff long enough to learn that desert days are extremely hot and desert nights are freezing cold. Here she was, standing in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the night, dressed in nothing more substantial than a lightweight summer skirt and cotton blouse. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her chest. Surprisingly, she found herself wondering if the man was cold. She wondered if he had warm clothes on. A person could easily, and very quickly freeze to death in these conditions. He would be out there, somewhere, walking through the cold, dark desert alone. If he didn’t stay warm, he would surely perish. They might never find his body, she thought.
Why did she care, she wondered? He had to know how cold the nights can get. He had to know that to walk alone in the desert at night was to invite hypothermia and quite possibly an agonising death at the hands of the elements. Why did she care? If he died, he died. There was nothing she could do about it. He was gone and she didn’t even know it what direction he went. She did ask him to wait until daylight but he wouldn’t listen. Who cared if the freezing cold killed him? She shivered again, hugged herself tighter, then turned and hurried back down the ramp and into the dungeon.
38
Walking across the dry bed of Lake Lewis, baked hard under the relentlessly hot daytime sun, was much easier. The smooth, white, salt-encrusted surface, unadorned by vegetation or gibber stones, stretched out across the landscape in every direction. The pale light from the moon and stars on the surface of the lake bed made for an image one might imagine in an apocalyptic ‘end-of-the-world’ motion picture. In whatever direction one chose to look, there was nothing. Just an eerie, white expanse as far as the eye could see.
There was no wildlife out here on the salt-pan. Nothing could survive. No tiny insects, no birds, no creatures of any variety. In the heat of the day, the temperature could, and often did, soar above fifty degrees Celsius; hot enough to cook food on t
he surface of the lake. On the rare occasion there was water on the surface, it was far too brackish to drink and, rather than save the life of anyone foolish enough to try to cross in the heat of the day, the concentrated salt content would only enhance the thirst.
Craig Garrett stopped and drank more water from his canteen. Satisfied he was almost half way across the lake and making good time, he rested a little longer than on previous occasions. The walk, silent save for the sound of his footsteps crunching on the thick bed of salt, gave him time to think. The thoughts that accompanied him were, unfortunately, not pleasant thoughts.
He thought about his friends, Liam Frayne, and Mark Thomas; wondering where they could be. Many scenarios past through his mind but he always seemed to arrive at the conclusion that they had to have been captured. Perhaps something went wrong at the ransom drop point and the police now had them in custody. Perhaps the paramotor failed; or worse. Perhaps it crashed.
The one peculiarity that concerned Garrett most was that he had not received any messages from Thomas or Frayne. If they were okay, they would have messaged him a long time ago. He had heard nothing. They would never have taken the ransom and abandoned him. It simply would not happen; he knew both men too well. Like himself, Thomas and Frayne were from a military background. They were combat soldiers and the unwritten, live-by rule as a combat soldier is ‘never leave a mate behind’. Never.
Garrett looked up at the sky and again searched for the Southern Cross constellation. He gave his compass to Tracy and now had to navigate by the stars. Celestial navigation was something he learned in his early days in the army and now, in this place in particular, he was glad he had. It was all about drawing an imaginary line between the top and bottom stars of the constellation and another from the two closest bright stars to its left. The point where the two lines intersected was north. Simplistic in its application and not exactly pin-point accurate but it had served early mariners for hundreds if not thousands of years and was universally accepted as the best compass to have when you haven’t got a compass.
Here, on the flat, featureless surface of the lake, there were no landmarks to navigate by. In the daytime he could align his watch with the position of the sun, or perhaps be guided by a distant land feature on the horizon, but at night there was only the stars. Without that knowledge it would be easy to become disorientated and wander aimlessly in circles, confused and lost until the heat or a raging thirst took your life.
Satisfied he was still heading in the right direction, he set off again, quickly gaining pace as he went and thinking he would easily reach the Tanami Road before dawn. There he would turn east and start walking towards the far-off junction of the Stuart Highway and the Tanami Road. Traffic along the Tanami Road was sparse but he was sure he would get a lift that would take him to Alice Springs, or at least to the road junction.
He would have to explain his being there; hitching a ride along the edge of the unforgiving Tanami desert, but he didn’t see that as a problem. A vehicle breakdown further back along the track would do it. Most people who traveled the Tanami Road were familiar with the hazards one is likely to meet along the way, like a vehicle breakdown, and it would be rare leave a hitchhiker stranded in such an inhospitable environment.
Garrett was tired. It would be so easy to stop, sit down on the salt-pan and take a long rest, but if he did, he would surely fall asleep. He had to keep going. One foot in front of the other. Over and over again. There was nothing to look at, nothing to pique his interest and take his mind off the tiredness. There were a few occasions when he suddenly realised he was no longer walking briskly but trudging, slow and heavy-footed, and had absently wandered from his intended north-easterly direction. These were the times when he knew he was slipping into a sleep-deprived fugue and he had to stop, take a sip of water, and re-focus before setting off again.
There had been many times as a combat soldier in the deserts of Afghanistan where he and his fellow soldiers were required to cover long distances by foot at night but there was always the man in front, or the man immediately behind, to talk to you every now and then. Staying alert meant staying alive. Out here on this seemingly endless salt-pan, there were no buddies. No one to snap him out of his reverie. He was alone, and he was very tired. Now his body was running on nothing but adrenalin and determination. If he stopped, he died.
He saw the shimmering on the surface of the lake ahead long before he reached it. In his exhausted, dreamlike state of mind, the significance of the mesmerising shimmer never registered with him. Sometimes it was there and then it wasn’t. He stopped and stared at the distant, intermittent wavering sheen. He looked up at the dark sky and noticed broken cloud cover forming above the vast expanse of the lake. Sometimes the light from the moon and stars broke through and then the clouds obscured it momentarily. That would be the cause of the shimmering, Garrett decided.
Then realisation struck! It was water! Up ahead the lake surface was covered with water. The water was shimmering in the light breaking through the sporadic, patchy cloud cover.
“Shit!” he cursed loudly. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
He looked up again, searching for the Southern Cross constellation, only to find it was obscured by clouds. Now he had no way of telling if he was still heading in the right direction. Spasmodically, the clouds would break and he caught a glimpse of the constellation but not for long enough to assess his true position in relation to north.
He shook his head, and rubbed his eyes as if to disperse the fog of tiredness. Now more than a little concerned, he looked ahead, then to his left, and then to his right. The shimmering seemed to go on forever in every direction.
“Fuck!” he cursed again. “Jesus-fuckin’-Christ, that’s all I fuckin’ need.”
He turned and looked behind him, back over the distance he had travelled. It was too far to go back. It would take far too long to retrace his steps and recommence walking around the lake instead of across it. He looked ahead again.
“Gotta keep goin’,” he murmured. “Come this bloody far, can’t stop now. Gotta keep goin’.” He stepped cautiously into the water. It rose above his ankles, flooding the inside of his heavy boots. And it was cold; like stepping into a tub of ice water. He gasped loudly as the sudden chill closed around his feet and ankles, soaking his thick socks and the lower legs of his trousers. The ground beneath the surface was soft, but firm enough to walk on, he decided.
Steeling himself, and focusing on the wide expanse of water in front of him, he set off. As he progressed, he lifted each foot alternatively out of the water before placing it down again. At first, it slowed him down considerably but was easier than dragging his feet through the icy, ankle-deep water. Soon he settled into a steady rhythm and gradually his pace quickened until he was walking almost as quickly as he had been on the hard, dry surface.
The first time he stumbled and almost fell face-first into the frigid water, he thought he must have tripped on an object, unseen beneath the surface. When it happened again a little while later, he only just managed to break his fall by thrusting his arms out at the last second. He fell to his knees and cried out at the sudden, bone-chilling cold water around his arms and upper legs.
He pushed himself quickly, too quickly, to his feet, and was suddenly overcome with dizziness so severe he almost fell again. He leaned forward from the waist, supported himself with his hands on his knees, and dry retched as an attack of nausea washed over him.
The human body cannot function at its best if sleep deprived. Garrett hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours and he was so tired, a dull headache pulsed behind his eyes, radiating down to his neck and into his shoulders.
Disorientated and confused, nothing in his mind was clear. He knew only that he was freezing cold and struggled to understand why. For a brief moment he had no idea where he was. He stared uncomprehending at the blurry, hazy lake in front of him. He inhaled deeply and the freezing air burned at the back of his throat,
Perhaps
it was the violent shivering, or the chatter of his clattering teeth that brought him back to some degree of sensibility. Only the internal self-discipline and inner-strength instilled in him over many years in the military would keep him moving. From somewhere deep inside his very being, he found a degree of clarity sufficient to continue.
“Keep… going,” he slurred drunkenly. “One foot… in front… of the other. Just keep… going.”
It happened thirty minutes, perhaps a little longer than thirty minutes, after he resumed walking. What started back at the bunker system as a brisk, focused, purposeful walk, was now a labored, lead-footed trudge. His body was so tired and numb with the cold he was no longer in control of his addled mind. He was unaware that, hidden beneath the surface of the water, there was a vast, natural, low spot in the surface of the ground. The water was deeper here; up to a point half way between the top of his boots and his knees. He never noticed the sucking, stinking, freezing mud until he was embedded in it. Stuck fast, up to his calves and slowly sinking.
He pulled hard, one leg at a time, trying to lift his feet out of the mire. It seemed the more he struggled to free himself, the worse it became. Shifting his weight onto one leg while struggling to lift the other from the clinging mud, was awkward and precarious. He fell forward several times and even backwards once, his backside splashing down into the frigid water. Now, his clothes were soaking wet, icy cold, and clinging to his body forcing his core body temperature into free-fall.
Through the foggy, disjointed thought process crowding his mind, he found a momentary modicum of clarity. He was in serious trouble. He had to get out of the mud; and soon. If he didn’t, hypothermia would take him. It would not be a good way to die. Was any way a good way to die, he asked himself? Did it really matter how the end came? Dead was dead, the manner of it was irrelevant, he reasoned. At least he was moving; expending energy struggling against the grip of the mud surely had to be helping keep his body warm. Wasn’t it?
