by Peter Corris
We were forced to abandon much of our gear and some of our supplies as we pressed on in some haste and uncertainty now towards the ranges. The remaining camels appeared unaffected, though we watched them anxiously for the next few days. Sali, the camel expert, was unable to explain the affliction of the camels.
'Desert clean place,' was all he could say.
Hamet was badly troubled and took ill to having to walk most of the time. Basil and I rode the camels usually, occasionally allowing Sali and Hamet to ride. Billy walked and said nothing but he appeared to be distressed and I several time saw him conferring with Hamet in an almost conspiratorial manner. I drew Basil's attention to this and he laughed.
'I overheard them the other night when they thought I was asleep. Brute superstition.'
'What d'you mean?'
'Billy's got the idea this expedition is cursed. Something to do with me firing a shot back at the maze, remember? Says it disturbed some spirits or the like. Bloody nonsense, but he's got Hamet's putrid imagination working.'
'What about Sali?'
'Sali's sensible. He knows I'll pull us through.'
Thus Basil's confidence was scarcely shaken and it remained strong for another couple of days. By now I was feeling the effects of the rough diet and the longer periods of walking. Our camps were less comfortable and, although none of us chose to mention the fact, we were all visibly weakening and consuming more water than previously—one of the cruel things that happens in the desert. We crossed a seemingly endless plain of spinifex and low scrub, a remorselessly grey and drab landscape, and were heartened by the appearance of a green smudge across the sand ahead.
'Gully,' Basil said, 'and a spring.'
He urged his camel on and I did the same. The Afghans and Billy trotted after us but before we reached the gully I heard Hamet yelling for us to stop. I went on, intoxicated by the thought of running water and the possibility of bathing. Those sounds were the last Hamet ever made. A swarm of black flies rose from the gully and hovered over us like a huge dark cloud.
Billy screamed, 'Jump down, boss. Cover head!' I leapt from my camel, dragging the saddlecloth with me and lay on the ground with the cloth clutched tightly around my head. I was dimly aware of Basil doing the same. The flies descended in a thick, buzzing mass. They clustered around my head, hundreds, thousands, millions of them. I was terrified; I pushed my face into the sand and held my breath and only moved my head fractionally to get air when it seemed that my lungs would burst. I had scratches from the spinifex on my legs and I could feel the flies inside my trousers, attaching themselves to the wounds. They stung and itched abominably but nothing would have induced me to uncover my head.
The assault appeared to last for hours but the worst of it was probably over in a matter of minutes. I heard Basil's voice close to me. 'Dick, all right, old fellow?'
I nodded, still not daring to remove the cloth.
'Stay there. I'll see to the others. Move to the gully.'
Hearing his calm, strong voice, I felt like a coward and forced myself to move. I wrapped the cloth around my head as best I could to cover my nose and mouth and cautiously sat up. The flies were still present but not filling the air as they had been. I stood and blundered towards the gully. When I felt the ground dip under me I slid down and crouched under a rock, squinting through the gap I had left in the cloth. I saw Basil and Sali exerting all their strength to hold one of the camels which was bucking and splaying deadly kicks in all directions. There was no sign of Billy, Hamet or the other camel. The flies were maddening—creeping into my eyes and nostrils and ears and clinging to the cuts on my legs.
'Basil,' I yelled. 'What d'you want me to do?'
'Find Billy and keep your mouth shut.'
I realised the import of this immediately. The few words I had spoken had allowed hundreds of flies into my mouth. I spat, clamped my lips shut, struggled to my feet and set off in search of the half-caste. I scrambled up the wall of the gully, clutching the cloth around my head and beating at the flies with my free hand. They were becoming fewer but were still intolerable, buzzing, stinging, probing for any patch of moisture or soft flesh on the body. I stumbled along the edge of the gully searching for Billy, squinting through eyelids barely open. After a few minutes I was ready to abandon the apparently pointless quest. The fly swarm appeared to grow more dense again and I thought I was about to scream and so open my gullet to the deadly stream of insects when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
'Billy?' I spat flies but I had to speak.
The boy did not reply. Instead he escorted me to a sheltered spot and began to rub a sticky substance onto my face. He was carrying bundles of a weed which he squeezed to extract a whiteish juice which repelled the flies. Frantically, I helped him milk the leaves and stem and smeared the stuff liberally over my head, arms and ankles. The relief was immediate and enormous. I was able to abandon the headcloth and go with Billy into the scrub to tear up sheaves of the weed which we carried back into the gully to Basil and Sali. They had tethered the camel by this time and covered its head. It stood quivering as the flies attacked its anus and underbelly.
Basil and Sali were exhausted and nauseated by the ingestion of flies. Billy and I applied the repellent to them and the camel and both men and the animal quickly gained relief. Following Billy's mimed action, Basil and Sali thrust fingers down their throats and vomited hugely. Sali induced the camel to do the same. After a time all were able to drink a little water and move about slowly. Men and beast were left weak and shaken as the fly swarm buzzed in the gully but kept its distance.
'Hamet?' Basil said at last.
Billy shook his head. 'Die finish.'
Sali wept. When I was sure Basil and Sali werein command of themselves, Billy and I climbed out of the gully and retraced our steps. We found Hamet by following the flies. His head, hands and feet were black where the flies had settled. They were consuming his flesh, entering his eyes, nostrils, ears and mouth and burrowing in under his fingernails. With tears running down his face, Sali began to pile rocks over the corpse of his friend. The flies buzzed angrily and this gave us extra strength. Foolishly, we worked in the sun, lifting and carrying rocks, stacking them up in piles and allowing them to collapse until the body of the Afghan was completely covered and the flies desisted. When the work was done, Sali sank to his knees and began praying in a high, keening wail. I left him and walked back to the gully. The skin on my hands was battered and the flies were attacking again. I ran, jumped down into the gully, seized some of the weed and let the juice cover my torn fingers.
Our plight was desperate. We had lost most of our supplies and a good deal of water when the other camel had bolted. Sali searched for several miles in each direction but found no sign of the animal. He laboured for hours in the sun to construct a cairn over the body of his friend.
We tramped away from the gully and the flies to a place on the plain where the mulga scrub afforded a little shade and wood. Several bottles of brandy were aboard the camel we still had and Basil uncorked one almost as his first act on making this camp. I accepted the bottle, spat out some flies that had got into my mouth as we had quit the gully and took a long pull on the brandy. I wish to God I had a bottle now . . .
40
ENTRY TEN
This will be my last entry in this sorry record. Basil is growing weaker by the minute and I have no hopes of survival now. I must be brisk. Time is short, my strength is fading. We sent Sali with the camel to the nearest cattle station on the Docker River. We had lost our maps so were not sure of the distance, but both Billy and Sali were confident that, even in its weakened condition, the camel could make the journey.
Billy, in fact, was anxious to go himself, but Basil insisted that we needed him in our search for water and food over the small area we had agreed to range. Sali understood that we would leave signs of our movements to help him locate us when he returned with fresh camels and supplies. Basil gave him money, the shotgun (the rifle had b
een lost on the other camel) and we bade him godspeed. It was a disgruntled half-caste and two very concerned Englishmen who made camp that night.
'Could be worse, Dick,' Basil said. 'We're uninjured, the rescue party's out and your notes and observations are safe.'
By chance, my materials had been in a pack on the camel we had not lost. It was a small comfort to me. I had a feeling that the following day would be decisive. If Billy found water close by we could survive; if not, our chances were slim. Basil had vomited several times more and was visibly weaker than I had ever seen him. I wondered what poisons might be working in his system as a result of having played host to thousands of flies. I accepted another tot of brandy, knowing that I would regret it in the morning but needing the comfort. 'This is the desert, Basil,' I said. 'As you very well know it will come down to a question of water.'
'True,' Basil said. He was drunk and almost giggled. 'I calculate we've got a couple of gallons, plus a couple of pints of brandy.'
'Not enough,' I said.
'True again. Should be the other way around.'
Billy built a fire that would last the night through. He grinned each time the brandy came his way but indulged only moderately. He banked the fire, laid a few sticks of the fly-repellant bush on it and rolled himself in his blankets a little distance from Basil and me.
'I'm afraid to close my eyes,' I said. 'I think I'll have a nightmare about the flies.'
Basil chuckled. 'Think of Sydney. Cottage by the sea. Sunshine all the year round. Healthy women and all the cigarettes you want. How's your supply, Dick?'
'Low,' I said.
'Good thing. Filthy habit.'
A few seconds later he was snoring softly. I lay in my blankets staring up at the still-unfamiliar southern sky. The stars seemed large and close, as if they might fall out of the heavens during the night.
In the morning, Billy was gone. He took with him certain things from the camp, including one of the larger water canteens. Basil slept late and I had time to do an inventory of what remained with us. I had my notebooks and pens and the reels of film. We both had blanket rolls, hats and the clothes we had slept in. Basil had a heavy woollen jacket as well. We had about a gallon of water and one bottle of brandy, two boxes of matches, some salt, rice, flour, sugar and tea—not much of these. A frying pan, two tin plates, two clasp knives a single fork and a couple of enamel plates and mugs made up the rest of our worldly goods. Basil had a .38 Smith and Wesson pistol with him inside his blankets. I did not know how much ammunition he had.
I woke Basil and told him the news.
'Black bastard,' he said. 'I'll skin him alive when I catch him.'
'What should we do?'
Basil squinted at the sun, now well above the horizon; the air was heating up fast and there would be scarcely any shade here at midday. 'Get moving, look for shelter and water.' He sprang from his blankets like a young man and had wrapped the pathetic remnants of our equipment—we had abandoned almost everything not necessary for survival—into an oilskin ground sheet to make a portable bundle in a matter of seconds. He set off towards the east. I carried the water. As he walked, Basil took the pistol from his belt and checked it. I felt for the pens in my shirt pocket.
We walked for several hours without food and without finding any signs of water. Eventually we made camp under a small stand of desert oaks. We ate damper and drank a very little sugared tea. We slept for part of the afternoon and moved on late in the day and into the evening until it became too cold. This was the pattern for the next few days and nights. The spinifex tore at our boots, the sun beat down on us remorselessly and the nights chilled us. Mercifully, there were no more fly swarms. Our food, brandy and water ran out and we were reduced to spreading our shirts on the spinifex at night and wringing the moisture from them in the morning. Once, when we failed to wake in time, the warmth of the sun had dried the grass and the cloth and we had no water that day.
We lost track of time and distance. We may have wandered from the area Basil had outlined for Sali. It scarcely mattered. We were doomed men and we knew it. I suppose we went mad but I do not offer that as an excuse. We talked hardly at all, preferring to save the saliva in our mouths, so precious had any moisture become.
We staggered up a rise in the late afternoon, two skeletons carrying enough wrung-out water in a canteen to allow us to loosen our tongues and swallow perhaps twice before we fell into an exhausted sleep. My eyes were sand-blasted and crusted with salty rime and I could see almost nothing. Suddenly, I felt Basil's hand, heavy and strong on my shoulder.
'Down, Dick. Salvation is at hand.'
I crouched and expended precious spit on clearing my eyes. In the fading light I saw four figures gathered around a small, smokeless fire. They squatted in the dirt, naked and misshapen-looking as one body cast a shadow over another. A smell came from the shallow decline where they were camped and it was the most delicious aroma I had ever experienced. They were cooking meat.
'Food and drink,' Basil whispered. His voice was a harsh croak, but even so I feared that the wild people would hear him.
Near demented by thirst, hunger and exhaustion, I at first mistook his meaning. For a dreadful second I thought he meant that these human beings themselves represented food and drink, meat and blood. I shook my head and peered through the gloom, trying to distinguish the ages and sexes of the Aborigines, but I could not do so.
'Two men, two women and a child,' Basil said. 'Miserable-looking individuals, but they'll serve.'
'What d'you mean?'
He did not reply. To my horror he drew his pistol and ran down the slope towards the camp. When he was close he began firing. I stumbled down after him, yelling at him to stop, feeling a jarring pain in my legs as my wasted muscles coped with the rocks and ruts and seeing a scene of horror in the flickering light of the tiny fire. Basil's shots smashed into the tightly clustered group and seemed to fling them apart from each other. I heard screams of alarm and pain and there was a flurry of movement before another series of shots. When I reached the bottom of the hill, two bodies lay still on the ground; Basil was sitting astride a wriggling dark shape. He struck once with the pistol and the wriggling subsided. He thrust his hand in to the coals and pulled out the smoking lump of flesh. He tore at it and crammed it, ashes and all into his mouth.
I wailed, 'Basil, what have you done?'
He held out a steaming fistful of meat. 'Saved your miserable life again,' he said. 'Eat this. It's good.'
Despite my horror I ate the flesh and drank some of the water that the Aborigines had been carrying in a canvas bag. The food tasted delicious through the ash and grit and no drink ever tasted sweeter. We built up the fire and in its light examined the results of Basil's assault. The two dead Aborigines turned out to be an old man and a young female. Her face was hideously disfigured by a whitish skin disease, part growth, part decay. When I moved her body I was shocked to see that the fatal bullet had also killed the child. This was a monster with a distorted head and stubby, half-developed limbs. It might have been two or three years of age, it was difficult to tell. The body of the old man carried the usual scars one saw on Aborigines but also patches of white and pink skin as if a blowtorch had been applied to the chest and upper legs.
'Who are these people?' I said.
Basil was examining the spears and throwing sticks beside the old man's body. He stared out at the darkness and I suddenly remembered that there had been another man in the party. 'I can guess,' he said slowly. 'The British government conducted atomic explosion tests to the south of here some years ago. I'd guess these people were in the prohibited area and paid the penalty.'
'What about the other man?'
'I think I winged him,' Basil said. 'With any luck he'll be dead.'
'What are your plans for the woman?' I nodded in the direction of the other woman who lay stunned in the dirt. Like the others she was naked apart from a woven belt of hair and other fibres. With no need for clothing in the
daytime, the desert Aborigines cope with the cold at night by sleeping close-clustered together in trenches almost on top of the fire. The light fell on the unconscious woman and I could see that she was young and shapely, although terribly thin in the legs and incredibly dirty. Basil, who had felt lust for fur-swaddled Mongolians, a negress with filed teeth and Apaches reeking of bear grease, barely glanced at the woman. 'We'll use her the way the early explorers of this godforsaken country used her kind,' Basil said. 'She'll find water for us and we'll whip her until she does.'
Basil trussed the woman up with his belt and tied her to the corpse of the dead black. The horror in her eyes was profound but I feared to protest. Basil seemed to be driven by some terrible force. His cruelty had a disembodied, practical aspect. He wanted to survive and so, despite the despair I felt and the repugnance for the things we had done, did I. We took turns at standing guard through that night and the next. We saw no signs of the other man but the woman, now only tied at the wrists, walked slowly, surveying the landscape from time to time, and it was impossible not to believe that there was hope in her attitude. She found no water, though. Basil mimed the action of drinking and even offered her some of the wrung-out water from the canteen. She refused to drink and merely plodded in apparently random directions. Her eyes remained fixed firmly on the ground except for those occasional sweeps of the barren landscape. We entered a stony section of the desert where there was no spinifex, just split rocks and grey sand. Next to the Silver Plate in Mexico, it was the most inhospitable country I was ever in.
