Off the Track

by Cristy Burne

  ‘An old firebreak,’ guessed Deepika.

  ‘Any Waugal?’ Harry asked.

  Deepika pointed at the black-and-yellow snake that led their way. Beyond the marker, the dirt road rose steeply uphill. ‘Let’s make an arrow,’ she said, ‘so they know we’ve gone the right way.’

  They spent a few minutes gathering some honky-nut-sized rocks and arranging them into a neat little arrow that pointed the same way as the Waugal. Then they made an H and D to go with it. ‘So they know it’s us,’ said Deepika, dusting the orange dirt from her hands and onto her trousers.

  ‘We left you an arrow, over,’ radioed Harry, as they walked away.

  There was a pause, rather a long pause.

  At last Ana’s strained, static voice came through. ‘We’ll be with you in a bit. There’s just some urgent email, over.’ He could almost hear the eye-roll in her voice.

  ‘Roger,’ said Harry. ‘Over and out.’ He turned to Deepika and made a brave sort of face. She made a wacky face back, and it made him smile. It was nice that she understood. He felt like maybe they’d been friends for ages, not just a morning’s walk.

  ‘Do you remember,’ he said suddenly. ‘Right at the start. The red car, I mean.’

  Deepika lowered her voice. ‘The first time I ever went hiking, I saw a car like that, just parked in the bush, and I thought maybe it might be stolen,’ she confided.

  ‘I know, right,’ Harry whispered. ‘Why else would you hide an entire car?’

  ‘I know, right,’ whispered Deepika. ‘Where do you think he is now, the driver, I mean?’

  They stopped to look around. It was so quiet, and the heaviness of empty bush seemed to press around them. The miles and miles of trees and scrub and dirt began to shimmer and loom and Harry’s heart beat faster. But it was dumb to worry. It was also dumb that they were whispering. The driver was probably just a hiker, Ana said so, and she knew everything about everything about hiking.

  ‘Race you to the top,’ he said. Because there was no way you could worry about red cars or mysterious drivers when you were scrambling up a hill. And there was no way you could fall either. Whoever heard of falling up? It was the perfect distraction.

  They laughed and raced and puffed, and it was like running on ice, thrillingly steep and incredibly slippery. They stayed neck and neck, arriving at the top triumphant, with hands and shins scratched and faces glowing.

  ‘Great view!’ said Deepika. ‘Snake?’ They were all out of frogs.

  They shared the last of the jelly snakes as they walked. They chewed and made up jokes and the hill didn’t seem so steep, not now they were at the top. Soon they were faced with coming down the other side, and it seemed even worse. In places the hard dirt was layered with pea gravel, in others rain had eroded the ground into jagged channels, eating it away like termites into wood. They scooted down on their bums, chatting and chewing and using their hands as anchors, sometimes pausing to roll rocks down the crooked gutters, making bets on how far each rock would go.

  ‘If it started raining right now,’ said Harry, ‘this whole hill would turn to mud, and we’d probably sink into quicksand and never be seen again.’

  Deepika grinned. ‘If it started raining right now, we could make a raft from all the trees and sail it down the hill like a mudslide, all the way to the ocean.’

  Harry looked around. ‘Which way is the ocean, anyway?’

  Deepika shrugged. They were a long way from any ocean. ‘You hungry for chips?’

  At the bottom of the hill they threw off their packs and dug around for the chips. Then they sat right in the middle of the dirt road to eat them. Because there was no way cars could really use it as a road. It was too steep and washed away. And they didn’t want to waste time looking for a prettier spot. They were hungry now.

  The chips were just original, not Harry’s all-time fave, salt-and-vinegar, but for some reason they tasted incredible. Crunchy and super-salty. Harry spaced them out with swigs of water, secretly glad Ana had made him carry so much.

  Deepika pressed the walkie-talkie button. ‘Did you see our arrow yet? Over.’

  They grabbed a handful of chips, munching while they waited for a reply. None came. The wind washed like water through the treetops. Deepika asked again, but there was no answer.

  ‘They must be out of range,’ she said.

  Harry just shrugged and poked at his shoes. It hurt that his mum couldn’t spend five minutes without checking her phone. It hurt worse than his blistering heel. ‘They won’t be long, they’re probably just over the hill.’

  They ate a few more chips, then Deepika tried again. ‘Why did the emu cross the road? Over.’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Why?’ Harry asked.

  ‘To prove he wasn’t a chicken,’ she said.

  Harry groaned and rolled around on the ground.

  Deepika’s brown eyes danced as she watched Harry over the top of the handset. She pressed the button. ‘What kind of music do kangaroos listen to? Over.’

  But he knew this one. ‘Hip hop,’ he said.

  She laughed and his heart leapt. ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘And hopera. Get it? Over.’ She lowered the walkie-talkie. ‘Hop-era.’

  They both laughed now, the sound swallowed into the nothingness of bush.

  There was still no response on the walkie-talkie. Harry felt a kind of worry grip his stomach. Probably too many chips.

  Deepika tried again. ‘Why did the emu cross the road? Over.’

  They waited a while longer, then Harry stood and stretched, looking up and down the road. Into the surrounding bush. No sign of Mum or Ana. No sign of anyone.

  And no sign of a sign, either. Not even a Waugal. He gulped. Icy cold shot up and down his limbs, despite the sun. Surely his mum couldn’t spend this long checking messages. Surely she cared at least a bit about where they’d got to. About non-phone stuff. About making it to the hut in time for marshmallows and more noodles and all the fun stuff Deepika had been telling him about.

  He looked around, wondering how much farther the hut would be. Wondering how far they’d already come.

  There should at least be a trail marker.

  When was the last time he’d seen a Waugal, anyway?

  WAITING FOR A SIGN

  Ages. That’s how long since he’d last seen a Waugal. Ages. Maybe way back at the top of the hill? Or maybe before that, back at the dry creek? Or by the giant tree? Or …

  Or maybe they were lost.

  Harry instructed himself to relax. No point freaking out. Deepika had probably been keeping track of Waugals. She did this sort of thing all the time, hiking, and adventure stuff. She knew to watch for trail markers.

  So they were almost certainly not lost. All the same …

  ‘We should probably go back,’ he said. ‘Just till the walkie-talkies are in range.’ He’d feel better when they could hear Ana’s or Mum’s voice.

  Deepika offered him the handset. ‘You wanna try?’

  Harry tried not to seem desperate. ‘Hello? Mum? Do you read me? Ana?’

  Silence trickled into the space between them. Then it filled up that space and began to spread, stretching into the trees and then the sky, devouring everything, till Harry wondered what might be eaten up next.

  Then, finally, he spoke. ‘They’re probably really close by now. She can’t have that many messages.’ It was sort of a joke, but not a very good one.

  Then they just sat, side by side, waiting for their parents to catch up. Not too far ahead. That’s what Ana had said.

  Half an hour, Harry promised himself. That’s how long they’d wait. He didn’t have his phone though, so he wouldn’t know when half an hour was up. Stay calm, he told himself. Stay calm.

  They waited forever, seriously, actually, forever. They listened to the wind in the leaves, birds singing from the trees. They watched giant ants scurry for chip crumbs. They rolled pea gravel along the track. But that was all there was. No cars, no footsteps. No non
-stop chatter or requests to pose with this flower or that leaf. They just sat and sat and sat, till Harry began to feel cold.

  Then Deepika cleared her throat in an odd kind of way. ‘So,’ she said. ‘When was the last time you saw a Waugal?’

  Harry kept his eyes on the ants. Crickets chirped but the silence stretched.

  Deepika threw a fistful of gravel at the track. It scattered and bounced then fell still, mingling with the dirt road, so you couldn’t see which bits were new, and which had been there all along. ‘Me too,’ she said.

  They looked at each other. It was awful, the quiet and the waiting and the cold that was settling in Harry’s heart. ‘Maybe we should go back.’

  Without a word, they hoisted the heavy bags onto their backs and began the long climb back to the top of the hill, retracing their footsteps up and along the gravel road. They climbed past all the ruts and dry rivulets and pea gravel traps. No Waugal.

  They scrambled back down the other side of the super-steep hill, the one they’d raced up. It was almost impossible to walk down, so they didn’t bother. Instead they half-ran, half-rolled. Their shoes slid like skates and the pea gravel was like polished ice. The honky nuts were like wheels and soon they were going too fast. Deepika slipped twice and grazed her hands, but she didn’t say a thing. Neither did Harry when he slipped and grazed his elbows. And still there was no Waugal. No Mum. No Ana.

  Why weren’t they coming along the trail? Harry remembered the smell of something dead along the track. He began to feel ill.

  Then they found their arrow, the one they’d made by arranging rocks, and they found their H and D as well. All their rocks were still there, untouched, still marking the point where the track left the bush and joined the old gravel road. The Waugal they’d spotted was there too, pointing in the direction they’d just come from. So they weren’t lost.

  But where were the mums?

  Harry started a slow panic.

  ‘Maybe they made a mistake, went the wrong way?’ he suggested. Except they wouldn’t. There was the arrow, and the Waugal. And Ana knew about these things. ‘Or maybe …’

  He spun, searching for answers, as if their mums might be hiding in the trees. And then he saw it.

  A Waugal. Another Waugal. The Waugal they’d missed. Deepika saw it too.

  It was only a few metres along the gravel road, but on the other side, tacked to a tree about five metres into the bush, on the left. The Waugal was the right colour. It was the right size. And it marked the thin, winding trail as it turned off the dirt road and dived back into the thick of the bush.

  They’d missed it. They’d been so busy climbing the hill, so busy beheading snakes and telling jokes, they’d totally missed the track.

  Harry thought about being alone in the middle of such an enormous chunk of uncharted wilderness, and refused to cry. Deepika sucked on her bottom lip. There was just one thing for it.

  ‘We better be quick,’ she said.

  He nodded. It was the only way. Thank goodness they still had their packs.

  They took turns in the lead. They walked faster, heaps faster than Mum and Ana could ever manage. They had a good chance of catching up before their parents even realised they’d been lost.

  They raced off the dirt road and into the thick bush, following the Waugal, always following the Waugal. Harry’s muscles pumped harder, his shoe rubbed faster. But they had to go fast, because they’d been sitting for ages, just waiting for their mums to catch up. And all along it’d been Harry and Deepika who’d been left behind.

  Soon he was breathing hard and feeling better. Something about putting one foot in front of the other seemed to lift his sad, sick mood. There was something about the bush, alive and rustling around him, and the comfort of the path, as it moved and changed beneath his feet. And there were Waugals on loads of trees. They were on the right track. It was going to be okay.

  ‘They’re going to freak when we find them,’ Deepika puffed from behind him. ‘We could be like, “Boo!” and they’d be all amazed.’

  Harry grinned, but didn’t stop walking.

  ‘We could pretend to be tigers,’ said Deepika. ‘Or gorillas.’

  ‘Or wild pigs,’ said Harry.

  Except wild pigs weren’t so funny.

  Something grabbed him across the face. He yelled, throwing his hands up to protect himself. Nothing.

  ‘You okay?’ Deepika asked.

  ‘Spider web,’ he said, pulling the sticky web from his face. ‘Gross.’

  ‘Yeah, gross,’ she said, looking nervous. ‘Come on. Before it starts getting dark.’

  After that they walked in silence, except for when they spotted a Waugal.

  Harry imagined his left heel and little toe might wear completely away. He wondered whether the pain might stop if they did wear away. But it only got worse.

  The afternoon seemed horribly hot. Flies buzzed at Harry’s face. And his shoulders hurt from carrying his pack. Which, incidentally, was way heavier than he’d thought at the start.

  What was in there, anyway? Harry’s sleeping bag wouldn’t fit, not even after Ana had repacked it into a tiny stuff sack. She’d had to shove it into her own pack and she’d given him another super-daggy spare jumper to carry instead. So now all he had was … He tried to work it out. His water bottle. Two spare jumpers. Muesli bars. Too many warm socks. Some seaweed crackers … That was it.

  Perhaps Ana snuck in something extra? Like slippers made of lead? He wouldn’t put it past her.

  He was deep in thought when Deepika cried out.

  ‘We’re here!’

  She turned to him, brown face flushed and happy. Ahead of her, on the edge of the track, was a low, wooden sign showing a silhouette of a man and a woman. A toilet.

  Harry was happy to find a toilet. He’d been busting for ages, only he didn’t like to mention it. But all the same, he’d been hoping for a hut, even one with only three walls.

  Then Deepika pointed beyond the toilet sign, into the distance. There, fading into the shimmer of the trees, was the unmistakable line of a roof. A dark green, corrugated roof. The hut! The actual hut! They really had made it.

  Deepika and Harry ran the last stretch, calling out as they went.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Mum! We’re here!’

  Harry hoped they weren’t frantic. ‘Mu-um! We made it!’

  There was no answer.

  And when they burst from the track, into full sight of the hut, there was no sign that anyone had ever been there. No heavy packs discarded out the front. No tired hikers relaxing in the last of the sun. No cooker or hot, curly noodles. Just a couple of wooden picnic tables. A concrete fire pit. And the hut, made of wood, complete with the promised three sides.

  Harry could see right inside.

  It was empty.

  AT THE HUT

  Harry took off his bag and placed it on the picnic table.

  ‘They must be hiding,’ Deepika decided. She dumped her pack on the gravelly ground and began searching around the hut.

  But there weren’t many places to hide, and Harry couldn’t remember the last time Mum had played hide-and-seek. He gulped. The hut was as big as his bedroom, which wasn’t saying much. It had bare plywood floors, and on either side were raised plywood platforms, also empty.

  And that was it. No mattresses. No kitchen. No mums.

  Harry guessed the raised platforms were some sort of bunk, for people who liked heights and despised comfort. Ana had mentioned three walls, but not barbaric beds. And she’d also mentioned she was going to be there too, with Harry’s mum, at the hut, all of them together.

  Deepika arrived back from her search. ‘They’re not here.’

  Harry nodded. Suddenly it seemed incredibly dumb to have raced so fast to get here.

  He felt for the walkie-talkie in his pocket.

  ‘Want to call again?’ Deepika asked.

  In a flash he was pressing its button. ‘Hello? Are you there?’

 
; Nothing.

  ‘You forgot to say “over”,’ said Deepika.

  ‘Over,’ said Harry.

  But it made no difference.

  They sat for a while, listening to the dusk creeping closer. The sounds of the bush were changing, the shadows growing longer. Harry wondered what happened to the hut on the days when no one was there. What did it do, when there was no one in it to cook noodles and toast marshmallows? And what about all the animals and birds? What did they do? All the creatures with private, busy lives, all the trees with no one to ever pass them by. What if Harry and Deepika were the only two people left in the world?

  Harry was used to being alone. He spent hours alone every day, in his room, playing games and watching TV. But this was a different type of alone. Even with Deepika there beside him, he felt abandoned. This kind of alone was somehow perilous, as if the sheer scale of the bush was enough to swallow them up. Would they ever be heard from again?

  ‘Maybe we should get things ready,’ Deepika said. ‘For when our mums get here.’

  She was right. Of course, she was right. Mum and Ana would be here soon, and doing a few jobs now would make it easier for when they arrived tired and hungry. They could get started now, prepare the camp. Mum might even be impressed with all the jobs they’d done. But there was one thing Harry had to deal with first. It was becoming increasingly urgent. There could be no further delay.

  ‘I gotta go pee.’

  Deepika nodded. ‘Me too.’

  They set off, backtracking fifty or so metres to the sign with the silhouettes. Harry wondered how many toilets there would be.

  It turned out there was only one. It did have four walls, but that was the most you could say.

  ‘It’s a pit dunny,’ explained Deepika. ‘A long drop. No flush. No water either. Hopefully some loo paper.’ She raised an eyebrow at Harry, as if daring him to freak out.

  He tried to stay calm. It was dark, sure. And small. Yep. And … But that couldn’t be right. It locked on the outside. What kind of toilet locked on the outside? ‘You go first,’ he said.

  A few minutes later, they were both done. Harry had held his breath for as long as possible, but it hadn’t been all that bad. ‘Like a waterfall,’ Harry grinned.