When he shouldered his rucksack, she followed him out of the rock shelter into the naked land. They walked.
The sun vanished with an abruptness that Erin found startling after Alaska’s long twilights. Even in darkness, heat still came up from the Kimberley’s ground in tangible waves. The humidity was high enough to be suffocating, but not high enough to preserve the moisture in her own body or to prevent her sweat from evaporating.
Cole walked steadily, reading his compass by flashlight until the clouds thinned and broke to reveal the glittering massed stars of the southern sky. The Milky Way was a tidal wave of distant light washing across a third of the sky. From various quarters of the horizon, lightning stabbed upward, looking hardly brighter than the stars. The moon added its silver glow.
Erin walked in Cole’s wake through spinifex and rocky scrubland. Their only rest came when he checked the compass against the stars or the black, uneven silhouette of the night horizon. More often than not, he chose to walk in dry watercourses despite the soft footing. In the dark, places where water had flowed were a lighter shade of black than the rest of the land and usually had less obstacles.
They drank the last of their water in the small, nearly cool hours of night.
By the time dawn exploded across the sky, Erin was stumbling from weariness. The land around them had changed a bit during the night. The hills tended to be steeper and separate rather than strung out in long, low ridges.
Cole took advantage of the light to walk more quickly. He kept to a hard pace through the increasing heat until he found a place where thin-leafed trees shaded a ravine at the base of a hill. He stretched the survival blanket between two tree trunks and lashed it in place, creating a canopy to shade them as they slept.
“Lie down in the shade,” he said. “Don’t move any more than absolutely necessary.”
He dumped the rucksack on the ground for a pillow, grabbed the shovel, and walked out until he was in a place without shade. He dug a hole three feet wide by two feet deep and lined it with leaves he stripped from the acacias and gums. He put his large tin mess cup in the center of the hole, spread one of the plastic sheets over it, and anchored the sheet with rocks. He placed a rock in the center of the plastic, making it sag to a point over the cup.
Without pausing he came back to the shelter, grabbed several more plastic sheets and went to work again. These sheets he wrapped around the ends of living tree branches, then carefully gathered the edges of each sheet until it made a bag with green, living leaves inside. He tied off the neck of each bag tightly and went back to the shelter’s welcome shade.
Erin looked up as Cole sank to the ground beside her. “What are they?” she asked, gesturing toward the shiny, clear bags.
“Stills. There’s a lot of moisture in leaves. We’ll let the sun work for us rather than against us for a change. Sleep.”
She licked her lips, wondering how she could feel so dry when the air was so muggy. It was only a brief moment of curiosity. Sleep slammed down over her like a tropical sunset. Just as consciousness spun away, she felt Cole rubbing sunscreen into her skin. She tried to thank him, but the effort was too great.
The next thing she knew, she was being shaken awake.
“Erin. Wake up, honey. Breakfast is on the way.”
The thought of food made her salivary glands contract painfully. She sat up and rubbed eyes that were gritty with dust and sleep.
“Breakfast?” she asked.
“You’ll have to work for it.”
“How?”
He pulled Erin to her feet. “See that?” he asked, pointing to a spot about fifteen feet away.
“See what?”
Then the snake moved, curling sinuously through the dry debris beneath a gum tree, hunting prey or simply a cooler place to rest.
She made an odd sound. “Breakfast, huh?”
“If we’re lucky.” He handed her a leafy branch as long as her arm. “Take this and keep him occupied while I circle around behind. Don’t stir him up, just hold his attention. He’ll be a lot harder to catch if he makes it to the rocks.”
“Is the snake dangerous?” she asked as he started out from the shelter.
“Only until I kill it. Then it’s food.”
She shook off the last of her lethargy and walked out from the shelter to head off the snake. Though it was late afternoon, the sun beat down through the clouds with savage force. She rattled the leaves at the tip of the branch against the dusty ground. The snake turned toward the motion with a muscular twist of its body.
“I’ve got its attention,” she said.
The reptile watched her with eyes like flakes of black glass. The snake showed no nervousness at her presence. Mulgas were the undisputed lords of the outback. For them a human being was a novelty rather than a threat.
“Don’t get too close,” he said.
“Look who’s talking.”
He didn’t answer. He just eased closer to the tail of the snake while Erin made small movements that kept the mulga’s attention fixed on her.
Suddenly Cole’s hand shot out and fastened on the snake’s tail. He jerked his arm, snapping the mulga like a bullwhip, breaking its spine and killing it instantly. He gave the snake a final snap to be certain, then waited.
Four feet of food hung limply from his hand.
Swallowing dryly, Erin reminded herself that protein was protein was protein. Her mind might know the difference between snake and sushi, but her stomach wouldn’t. Certainly snake couldn’t taste any worse than seal.
“There’s a lot of water in snake meat,” he said as he drew his knife from its sheath on his wrist. “If you don’t believe me, watch me skin it out.”
“No, thanks.”
“Don’t worry. After you cook it, the meat is white and tastes just like—”
“Chicken,” she interrupted, grimacing.
He glanced up at her, surprised. “Did you eat snake in Alaska?”
“No, but I’ve been told the same thing about frog legs and grubs and every other so-called delicacy I’ve ever eaten. It’s a lie. Chicken is the only thing that tastes like chicken.”
“Snake is better than goanna.”
“As long as it’s better than seal, I won’t complain. Much.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up. “Have I told you that you’re good company?”
Without waiting for an answer he began dressing out the snake with quick, skilled motions. She watched through narrowed eyes and decided it was about as bloody as cleaning a fish and far less gory than seal.
“Get a fire going,” Cole said as he worked. “You can roast the meat while I empty the stills. If you can’t eat your share now, I’ll save it for you. After we’ve walked all night and your stomach is gnawing on your backbone, mulga will taste better than smoked salmon.”
She didn’t believe him but she didn’t argue. When the time came to eat, she would eat, because it was the only way to survive.
By the time Erin was finished roasting chunks of protein over the eucalyptus fire, Cole had emptied the four solar stills. The result netted just under a gallon of water. While she watched, he divided the water evenly between two canteens.
“This one is yours,” he said, handing it over to her. “Drink.”
The water tasted as exotic as the snake meat had, for both were flavored by eucalyptus and acacia. Despite her thirst, she drank less than a third of the water in the canteen before she reached out, took the tin cup from Cole’s belt, and poured in half the water remaining in her canteen.
“This is yours,” she said. “Drink up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’re twice as big as I am. That means you need twice the water I do.”
“Erin—”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. “If you can carry everything because you’re bigger than I am, you can damn well take your real share of the water and food.”
For a long moment he looked into her clear, beautiful g
reen eyes. “I’d rather you drank it,” he said finally.
“I’d rather carry my own gear, but I’m being sensible about it. If both of us are going to survive, we both have to be sensible, right?”
He hesitated, then drank the eucalyptus-flavored water to soothe the thirst that had been tormenting him. When he was finished, he bent and brushed the last drops over her lips in a gentle kiss.
“You’re quite a woman, Erin Shane Windsor.”
“And you’re quite a man,” she said simply. “If I have to die, at least I’ll have had a chance to live. Thank you for that, Cole. I wouldn’t have made it alone.”
His fingers caressed her cheek before he turned away and methodically began packing the rucksack. When he was finished, he consulted the compass and his memory of the map. Then he held out his hand to her.
“Ready?” he asked.
She smiled almost sadly. “As in ‘Ready or not, here I come’?”
“Something like that. I know you’re tired, but we do make much better progress with some daylight to help us.”
She took his hand and they set off into the staggering heat and emptiness of the Kimberley Plateau.
Cole led her carefully around the area where he’d spotted fresh human tracks that morning. There was no point in letting her know their meager progress was being watched. If she knew, she’d begin wondering why they were being played with instead of being finished off in a single merciful stroke.
It was something he wondered himself.
40
Kimberley Plateau The fourth night
Thirst was their savage companion. It was more consuming than the darkness, more suffocating than the heat, as vast as the star-strewn sky.
Erin tried not to think about water. Instead she concentrated on the need to walk steadily. Cole walked in front of her, seemingly unaffected by the grim rations and desperate thirst.
But she knew he wasn’t.
She’d seen the fine trembling of his hands when he’d dressed out the goanna he’d shot. Despite the endless humidity and daily cups of exotically flavored water, their bodies were drying out hour by hour, breath by breath.
Between black shapes of clouds, cold white points of starlight gleamed. Occasional strokes of heat lightning lanced through clouds that didn’t thin as much as usual as the night wore on. Despite the scattered stars, moon, and lightning, the night seemed darker than any she’d ever endured and longer than the longest winter above the Arctic Circle.
A sheet of lightning ran from top to bottom of the towering cloud formations along the horizon.
In the sudden, stark flash of light, she caught a glimpse of Cole. He’d turned and was holding out his hand to her. His expression was as dark as the clouds and the night.
When she took his hand, he drew her close. He knew if they sat down they would sleep, wasting vital hours. So they stood quietly together, holding one another, resting in the only way they trusted themselves to.
Distant lightning flickered and flashed. The fitful rumble of thunder that followed was more felt than heard.
“With a little luck,” he said in a raspy voice, “it will rain in a day or two.”
She nodded, because it was too much effort to talk.
After a moment he pressed his cheek against hers and released her. He checked the compass, scanned the surroundings in the uncertain illumination of lightning, and headed toward a ridge that was either near and low or distant and steep. Whichever, it lay across their path to the Gibb River Road.
The ridge seemed no closer when the sky in the east began to slide from black toward gray. Cole stood and waited for Erin to come up beside him. He pulled the canteen from his belt, took two swallows, and handed it to her.
“Last one is for you,” he said.
“No.”
Cole took the water himself, then pulled her close for the kind of kiss he hadn’t given her since Windsor station. When her lips parted, he gently gave her the water she’d refused to take from his canteen. Startled, she had no choice but to swallow. He laughed softly and kissed her until they both forgot their thirst for a few sweet moments. Then he held her like it was the last time.
Just as he released her, dawn came up in a silent, seething violence of light. The sun exploded through half-formed clouds. Within seconds the earth was transformed into a place of startling distances, rich colors, and vivid textures.
“To hell with diamonds,” she whispered slowly, looking at the glorious, timeless transformation of night into day. “I’d trade everything for a camera and some unexposed film.”
He smiled slightly through dry lips. “I believe you would.” He ran his palms over her tangled mahogany hair, pushing it away from her heat-flushed face. “Diamonds are to me what film is to you, the key to another world. But if I had Abe’s diamond mine right now, I’d trade it for film and give it to you.”
He saw the shock in her expression, felt it in the movement of her body as she pulled away to look at him.
“You mean that, don’t you?” she whispered.
“I always say what I mean.” He pulled Erin closer, shielding her brilliant green eyes from the sun. “Discovering Arctic Odyssey made me feel like I’d just found a diamond mine—full of adrenaline and awe, alive all the way to the soles of my feet.”
For a few moments more he held her, then stepped back. “Keep your eyes open for birds or a clump of lush vegetation. This is karst country. Water must have collected in cracks or deep limestone potholes or even in a cave or two. All we have to do is find where—and pray that nothing found it before us.”
But no water appeared.
Two hours after dawn, Erin and Cole lay in the shade of the thin blanket stretched between two spindly trees, watching waves of heat rise off the land. The water in the canteen was almost hot. It tasted strongly of the gum leaves that had given it up. Yet the liquid felt wonderful sliding down Erin’s parched throat.
As she drank, he studied the dark clouds that were streaming in from the Indian Ocean, thunderheads clawing toward the sun while their massive, slate-colored bottoms dragged ever nearer to earth.
“So close and yet so damned far away,” he said hoarsely.
He measured the wild, thick river of clouds that was already fanning across the sky, breaking into separate storm cells as air currents tore it apart.
Finally he forced himself to look away from the distant, taunting ghost of rain and concentrated on the land ahead. Pale gum trees were scattered haphazardly across flat red earth. Waves of heat shimmered above the dirt. Clumps of hard spinifex competed for space with weathered blocks of limestone.
The flats were surrounded by broken hills. In the distance a long, flat-topped hill or ridge rose steeply, marking one edge of the basin where runoff water must certainly collect during the wet, for there was no notch or ravine or canyon where the water could break free of the depression.
Yet no matter how carefully he looked, there wasn’t any sign that the flats became a temporary lake in the rainy season.
A vague tendril of excitement uncurled in his gut, taking his mind off the hunger and thirst that had steadily eroded his strength.
“What are you looking for?” Erin asked hoarsely, studying the landscape.
“Some sign of where water runs off during the wet.”
She looked around in silence for several minutes. Then she frowned and looked more closely. “Didn’t we come through here yesterday?”
He gave her a sideways look and wondered if heat, hunger, and dehydration were blurring her mind.
“No,” he said.
“It looks…familiar.”
“The landscape looks pretty much the same from here to the Admiralty Gulf.”
“Are you sure?” She squinted through the shimmering heat, feeling more certain with each moment that she’d been here before.
“Don’t worry. I’m not wonky enough from thirst to be walking us in circles. Go to sleep,” he added, pushing himself to his feet. “It wil
l be time to walk soon enough.”
“Where are you going?”
“Up there.” He jerked his thumb at the small hill they’d just climbed down.
“Why?”
“I want to take a look from the top. I might be able to see a splash of green or birds flying.”
When Cole left the rucksack but picked up the shotgun and stuffed extra shells in his pocket, Erin looked at him sharply.
“Is there something you aren’t telling me?” she asked.
“Sleep if you can. I won’t be long.”
“Cole?”
“It’s all right. I’ll be able to see you from the top of the hill.”
He was gone before she could ask any more questions that he didn’t want to answer.
Sighing, she lay back in a kind of daze while the clouds thickened, reducing the hammering force of sunlight and dropping the temperature a few degrees. The air thickened too, becoming a weight that was too heavy to breathe and too thin to drink. The density of various cloud cells increased as the indigo promise of rain climbed from the base of the clouds to halfway up the towering clusters of thunderheads. One of the cells was directly overhead. Thunder echoed through it restlessly, pursuing hidden lightning.
Random drops rattled on the canopy Cole had rigged.
She shot to her feet and ran out into the open, tipping her head back and holding out her hands to catch any rain. After a moment she felt a drop fall just above her upper lip. Her tongue flicked out. Even though the raindrop was mixed with her own sweat and the fine dust that coated everything in the Kimberley, the hint of water tasted sweet and clean.
A dozen raindrops fell. Lightning winked and flirted while thunder cracked with startling force. More rain reached the thirsty earth. The drops were fat and heavy, pregnant with the possibility of life. Each drop made a dark splash pattern on the dusty ground and vanished.
“Come on,” she said hoarsely, trying to coax a steady rain from the threatening cloud overhead. “Come on.”
As quickly as the rain had started, it stopped. The storm cell moved on, driven by the sun’s savage heat.
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