‘Fate doesn’t need an executioner. Fate happens. It’s unavoidable,’ said Chandler.
‘In your opinion. I used to be a passenger of fate too, until I realized that both my hand and its are equally as unsteady at the wheel. Why should it steer me, when I can steer it myself? It had already allowed me to escape the car crash.’ Gabriel stared at Chandler. ‘Martin always believed in fate.’
Chandler had no answer to this.
Gabriel continued, ‘And think about it, happiness is never celebrated for as long as sadness is endured, is it? Is that because we anticipate sadness lurking around the corner? Well, I tested it out—’
‘Tested what?’ asked Chandler. He was growing sick of Gabriel’s half-arsed philosophy, the supposed justification for his actions. He wanted his children back and as the gun wavered in Gabriel’s hand and he offered his validations, Chandler began to worry that Nick was going to get impatient or nervous and take the shot before Chandler got the information he needed.
‘Suffering fate. One day I was on top of a rock overlooking a valley searching for Martin when I slipped and fell down an embankment. A long way down. I got to the bottom still conscious but with an ankle twisted badly enough that I couldn’t climb out of there. So I lay at the bottom, the sky and the trees around me unmoved by my suffering. I got to wondering if this was what happened to my brother all those years ago, waiting to die, lost and alone. I thought I should feel at peace, but I still felt unfulfilled, as if there was something I had to achieve before the end. So after an hour or so I found a sturdy branch and hobbled up the incline back to the cabin. I spent the next long, cold month stuck in there, out of supplies within two weeks, shivering to sleep at night and starving to death during the day. I wondered if my fate was to die up there but again, the peace that I thought should have been forthcoming didn’t arrive. So I picked a day to live or die. I managed to hobble back to the car and drove to Port Hedland. To hospital.’
‘So you survived,’ said Chandler. ‘Fate didn’t take you. Shouldn’t you be glad? Shouldn’t you want to help people, not hurt them?’
‘Why? No one helped me. I tested my fate, others can test theirs.’
‘Not two kids.’
‘And they won’t have to. You will take the test for them.’
‘But then I am deciding Heath’s fate.’
‘No,’ said Gabriel. ‘You are only handing him over. His fate is decided after.’
Chandler shook his head slowly. ‘Why did you come back after you escaped from the hotel?’
Gabriel smiled. ‘To see if you would recognize me now. Or maybe, somewhere deep down, I was looking to be caught. I also prefer to finish what I start. It’s cleansing. But what do you know about finishing what you start?’
Chandler had nothing in response. The overwhelming silence hung for a few seconds before Gabriel continued. ‘But I’m prepared to give you one last chance. Bring Heath to me or else I’m afraid I’ll have no choice.’
To make his point Gabriel raised the gun and pointed it at Chandler’s head. ‘I’ve already killed one Sarah. A nice girl, quite flirty as I recall. Let’s see if fate’s still on Heath’s side or your daughter’s.’
‘Don’t,’ said Chandler, his voice choked and quiet. By now he had a full picture of who Gabriel was and what he had endured. Losing his family in what might have been a suicide pact, orphaned, then shacked up with the foster parents from hell. He had endured so much pain, but Chandler couldn’t allow his children to go through the same. He had to give Heath over. He was about to become the hands of the Devil.
A shot rang out, the echoes held by the trees and spat out again and again.
In front of him the torchlight fell.
Chandler rushed forward as the beam hit the ground and span around, illuminating the prone form of Gabriel. The soft yellow light highlighted the dark patch spreading rapidly across his chest. The narrow, soft-spoken lips were open but nothing uttered from them, no gasps for help, no pained cries. Silenced for good.
‘Where are they?’ said Chandler kneeling beside the lifeless body. ‘Where are my kids?’
He grabbed Gabriel by the collar and pulled him up. Gabriel’s head lolled back. ‘Where are they?’ he shouted, loud enough to wake the dead.
But Gabriel didn’t wake.
Why the fuck did Nick shoot? That was not the plan. But Chandler recognized that the plan had been flawed from the start. He should have . . . should have what? Called backup? He had needed a willing accomplice and Nick had been the only one he could trust. Gabriel had pointed a gun at him so Nick had decided—
‘Is he dead?’
The voice wasn’t Nick’s. Nor Heath’s. As Chandler swung around, the lanky figure stalked towards them, weapon drawn. Mitch.
‘Is he dead?’ repeated Mitch.
‘What the fuck were you doing?’ yelled Chandler.
Mitch was beside him now, staring at Gabriel’s body. He seemed pleased with himself.
‘I needed him alive,’ said Chandler.
‘He was pointing a gun at you.’
‘He wasn’t going to shoot me, he wanted Heath.’
‘Yeah, the innocent man you took to trade.’
‘He has Sarah and Jasper.’
‘I know, Chandler, but that doesn’t give you the right to choose one person’s life over another.’
‘I wasn’t going to trade him,’ said Chandler, convincing himself it was the truth. ‘I needed to buy time. Get him to reveal where they were.’
‘And?’
‘You shot him.’
Mitch’s face was unmoved.
Chandler pointed at the body. ‘Do you understand who he was?’
Mitch shrugged his shoulders and slipped his gun back into his holster, safe in the knowledge that the killer wasn’t getting up.
‘It’s David Taylor. Davie.’
Mitch’s face twitched. Recognition flared in his eyes. ‘Davie? No . . . The kid whose brother we couldn’t find? Him?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wouldn’t have . . . I didn’t recognize him. So was this— All this shit was about revenge?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Chandler, ‘but I don’t have time to explain.’
‘You do and you will explain. At the station. About exactly why you used a suspect as bait.’
Mitch was attempting to be forceful but Chandler was in no mood to obey.
‘I need to know where my children are, Mitch. He said they would be in trouble if he didn’t return.’
‘Probably a lie.’
‘He abducted them from my parents’ house. From Teri. Roughed my dad up. That was no lie,’ said Chandler. ‘We need to get planes in the air. Search for someplace out here that he could have been hiding them.’
‘I give the orders, Chandler.’
‘Well give the fucking order, then.’
51
Back at Chandler’s car, Heath had been uncuffed. He responded to the news of Gabriel’s death with a rant that included threats to press charges against Chandler, the state and the police.
Chandler tried to ignore him as he and Mitch, each on a radio, tried to organize a ground search immediately and an air search at first light.
As Chandler diverted manpower from the roadblocks on the highways to the new search, Heath continued to rant that he was going to sue them all. Chandler shoved a finger in his ear to listen for the response from the Staties, running close to the edge of his patience.
Just then, Mitch dropped his radio and turned to Heath. ‘Why don’t you make your way out of town, Mr Barwell?’
‘Oh, now you want me to go,’ laughed Heath, entirely without humour.
‘Go, then come back with a lawyer and we’ll talk,’ said Mitch, calm and assured. ‘Until then, leave us to our business. We have two kids to search for.’
‘I’m not going to forget this.’
‘I’m not asking you to forget,’ said Mitch, ‘I’m asking you to fuck off.’
Within th
e hour twenty-four people were recruited to the search team: Mitch’s crew, including the still aggrieved Roper and Flo, Nick, Tanya, Jim and Luka, breaking into pairs and setting off into the outback in a desperate scramble to find Chandler’s kids.
Chandler went too, quickly pulling away from Nick who had been assigned as his partner, crashing through the undergrowth, crying out every few steps for his kids. He shone his torch over the ground but in this terrain it was useless, the long shadows creating a false impression of the layout of the earth, full of darkness and little light, the bushes creating shadows that in his mind were Sarah and Jasper.
His voice soon grew hoarse as he fought with the realization that they could be anywhere out here or in town where a smaller team, bolstered with the help of eager locals, was scouring every dive and dump for any sign of his children.
On he drove through the undergrowth, pursuing the echo of his cries but never catching up. He pushed on harder because he was panicked and he pushed on harder because of the tears streaking down his face. He didn’t want anyone to see his hurt, immersing himself in the trees, dirt and despair, Nick just a few steps behind, his protector. In the short time Gabriel had he couldn’t have taken the kids far. That was the hope he clung to. That they had to be somewhere nearby. With enough effort, with enough people, they should be able to find them.
His thoughts turned to consider Gabriel as he was and Davie as he had been back then. The boy that had turned into a serial killer, driven by revenge, driven by hatred of what had happened to him. All of which traced back to the search on this hill all those years ago. He wondered whether this was indeed his plan, his final revenge: to have Chandler crawl through the woods in a desperate attempt to find his children; Chandler turned into Arthur. Nobody, not even the Devil, could be that cruel. To put him, nearly eleven years later, on the other side of the search.
But this time he would not give up. Not if it took him the rest of his life.
Chandler stayed out all night, burrowing through the trees, heading in the general direction of the burned-out cabin, not because he thought his children would be there, only that it was as good a direction to go in as any. It was only Nick reminding him that they should check in to see if anyone else had news that made him turn, storming back towards the car park via an alternative route that proved equally as fruitless as the original.
Nothing was found that first night, the search now focused solely on the Hill, the extensive search of the town proving a bust.
During the next two days the search increased in scale, quickly outgrowing that held for Martin, which seemed bitter irony to Chandler as he traipsed through the brush leading off from where Gabriel had been gunned down.
Overhead, drones whirred just above the level of the trees, sent up at first light and remotely controlled from the base in the car park. So far, all they had beamed back was a carpet of pale green, dotted with vivid red, no Sarah, no Jasper.
It took sixty hours for Chandler’s body to shut down, forced into two hours of restless sleep before continuing, against all advice, into the night. People sought to give him sympathy, which he merely deflected. He couldn’t have cared less for fucking sympathy. He didn’t need or want the negativity. He didn’t need or want anything, the hugs, the words, the attempts at providing comfort, food, air – he needed to walk until he found them.
His bubble of fear only had room for one. Even watching Mitch comfort Teri meant nothing to him. The whole world could swallow him up as long as he found them.
As the days wound on they started to blend into one, the fleeting, often impromptu fits of slumber nothing more than restless dozes that made him feel ill with shame, before commencing another arduous shift. Days were characterized by long shifts and false hopes, sightings that turned out to be nothing but a fallen log or campfire long since dormant. And with each of these discoveries he understood. For the first time he truly understood what the Taylors had gone through, the fluttering highs and crashing lows, his entire existence distilled into nothing other than walking, searching and trying to maintain hope. Calling out their names in the faint hope of hearing something in return. The volunteers shouted their names too. He wanted to tell them all to shut up and to let his children breathe.
He slammed his fist into a tree. It shook but stood firm. The pain carried through his knuckles and up his arm but failed to shake the terrifying thoughts from his head.
52
As the search wound down on its fourth day Chandler was angry. He, more than anyone else, recognized the telltale signs of people beginning to lose belief. It had only been four days. It would be another ten before the kids would be in serious trouble of starvation. Dehydration was, of course, a different beast. He had snapped at Luka yesterday for staring at his phone as he trekked through the woods. Today he had torn a strip from some poor constable dragged in from Newman who had dared wonder if the kids were dead already. Nick and Mitch practically had to drag Chandler away, pointing him in a direction he had never been before and letting him loose to walk off the anger like a wind-up toy.
The past played on his mind. How they had given up on Martin. How the teenager could have been out there and alive, if only they had chanced upon him. But nature buried everything eventually, including the sins of the past.
But his children weren’t dead. Chandler knew it. He pursued those thoughts through the deepest, darkest parts of his brain, beat and mauled them until they never existed. Sarah and Jasper were alive. There was nothing else. They were alive. But were they together? Had one of them managed to escape and gone off to get help? Without a compass or some form of orientation it would have been difficult. Without water the same. An unseen hand twisted his stomach into knots. Why had he never taught them to navigate by the sun, or given them tips to survive in the wild? But who needed those in this day and age? Maybe if Sarah had her phone and it had some type of compass feature on it then she could navigate her way towards town. It was a possibility. Once again he had fought away the dark thoughts only for hope to rear its, by now, ugly head.
No, his kids weren’t free. If they were they would have headed towards the foot of the Hill. They knew that much at least. They had to be confined somewhere. The terrors quickly returned, his imagination let loose. They were both locked up – chained up – in a shed somewhere out here. He refused to believe that they were out in the open where they would freeze to death long before they would die of thirst. The list of killers in the wilderness was long and brutal. Mitch had only shot one of them.
He glanced behind. The past continued to haunt him, this time in the form of Mitch. Today he had appointed himself Chandler’s guardian, genuine concern written across his haggard face. The same bastard that had killed Gabriel. If his kids did die – and they wouldn’t, he reminded himself – it would be his fault. And Chandler couldn’t quite say what he would do.
53
A week passed in a blink of an eye. Like one of his fitful dozes.
The all-party search continued, the police not about to give up on one of their own easily, all resources falling under Mitch’s command, experts from West Australia and further afield dialling in via satellite phone to offer advice and tactics.
Chandler continued his torturous regime of walking twenty hours a day with a couple of short breaks for refreshment that did anything but; water that only reminded him that his children were thirsty, sandwiches that scraped his throat as if Sarah and Jasper’s fingernails were scratching at it.
Camp was moved close to the site of the burned-out shack to maximize time in the field. From his bivvy bag Chandler looked up at the stars, sleep as far away from him as they were from the earth, wondering if his children were watching the same sky, wishing once again that he had taught them some of the constellations for navigation purposes. As a good father rather than an absent one. The shame pushed sleep even further from his mind, the faces of his children now dotted amongst the same constellations.
He climbed out of the bag
, the night air attacking his sweat-soaked clothes. The shaking began, quickly taking over his entire body. He couldn’t control the muscle spasms and involuntary twitches. He couldn’t control them and he didn’t want to. He glanced around at the rest of the team. They were asleep, the soundness of their slumber irritating him further. He could understand their exhaustion but not how they could sleep when his kids were still out here somewhere. He tried to remember what day of the week it was. He failed. All he knew was that it was day nine – AD 9. Nine days after his world collapsed.
54
2002
He watched Arthur sink to the earth, his legs surrendering, staring at the decomposing camel as Chandler eased Davie away from it. The image and odour of the rotting corpse proclaimed the truth more succinctly than Chandler ever could; nothing survives out here for long.
‘It’s over,’ he said to Arthur, so softly he was initially unsure he had even uttered it. He eased the boy away further.
‘It’s over,’ repeated Arthur, all hope gone.
The utter relief that burned Chandler’s guts felt shameful, nauseous at having forced them to give up.
Chandler looked at the boy. He too was lost, staring at Chandler with an expression that cried out for meaning. Chandler had none to impart. He must have understood it was over, but whether he understood that he would never see his brother again, Chandler didn’t know. Given the finality of Arthur’s last two words, nothing needed to be said, the day continuing forth, life continuing on evermore, the wind easing through the trees like a silent assassin, the sun crossing the sky in the same brooding silence.
Chandler cast his eye around for the last time. Martin was out here somewhere, enjoying the same silence, dead now, his eyes eaten out, his tongue too, the soft fleshy parts the first to go. Eventually, after all the flesh was picked clean, he would turn into a cluster of bones, slowly bleaching yellow in the unforgiving sun.
55 Page 30
