Getting back

by William Dietrich

  "That's the observable truth and we better start talking frankly about what we're doing. They said we'll live by our wits and what's on our backs. Well, we've lost half what we had on our backs. We need to think."

  "Think, not panic."

  "If we don't find water, it doesn't matter," Amaya said.

  Tucker nodded. "Two days back to the last water hole and none tonight, either. I'm almost dry."

  "So," Daniel reasoned, "the riverbeds we've encountered have run mostly north and south. Going east should be the best bet to cross one."

  "What if we don't?" Amaya said. "This plain may be waterless. Maybe we should retreat and try following one of the dry beds we've already found."

  They sat, considering that. Finally Tucker shook his head. "And get nowhere. Daniel's right. We can't start walking in aimless circles looking for water. All we can do is put on the miles until we hit the next source and then decide what to do."

  "What if we don't agree?" Ico asked.

  "We vote."

  "We split up," said Ico. "I'm not betting my life on majority stupidity."

  "No!" Amaya cried.

  "We're not splitting up," Daniel said wearily. "We'll agree as a group or we'll end up dying as individuals. But first we have to walk to water so we can think straight. East looks as promising as north or south. Let's stick to it."

  There were no answers. Ico reluctantly put his map away.

  They built a fire and slept uneasily. Daniel was restless, waking sometimes with the feeling of being watched. But there was no one out there.

  He roused Tucker in the chill of predawn. "Come on. We need to hunt."

  The big man groaned. "Can't we wait for a well?"

  "I'm thinking an animal might lead us to one."

  They crept out of camp under the fading stars, the sky beginning to blush to the east. They heard the call of a few waking birds, but otherwise the desert seemed empty. Except for the scuttle trails of a few crawling insects, there was no sign of game. After half an hour they sat down.

  "This is more discouraging than selling computers."

  "You really couldn't sell any?"

  "I really didn't want to sell any. I didn't care. All my life nothing I've done has quite jelled. I just want to succeed at something, but first I have to decide what I want to succeed at. Now it looks like I might succeed at dying of thirst."

  "We just have to hang in there. Do you know what happened to Burke and Wills?"

  "Who?"

  "The first white men to cross Australia, south to north. They left most of their party at a creek, pushed on, almost reached the sea, and came back. They were starving. When they got back to the creek their help was gone. Their companions had given up the wait that morning. They died."

  "Geez, there's some luck." Tucker looked out over the desert. "You were a history major, right?"

  "Military history."

  "And why that? All that killing?"

  "I liked the courage. Courage I doubted I had. Like the Spartans."

  "I heard of them. Kick-ass guys, right?"

  "A Spartan who came home heroically dead from battle was a joy to his mother, but one who died with a wound on his back was a humiliation. They were awesome. Three hundred of them took on a Persian army of tens of thousands, and almost won. They blocked a pass."

  "Almost?"

  "They were betrayed and the Persians got around them. But until then they were invincible. They gave the rest of Greece time to prepare."

  "So what happened to them?"

  "They died. It was a sacrifice."

  "And like their moms, you think that's good."

  "No, I think it admirable. What's life for? For them it was to train, and die like heroes, and save Western civilization. They found their why."

  "And for us?"

  "We just have to prove we can stick it out, Tucker, until we find our own why. Prove that people still belong to a place, instead of the place belonging to them."

  "I hope I belong here. It's not as easy as I thought."

  "I won't disagree with that."

  "It's not the dying I would mind. I just want to count for something, you know? In today's world there's too many of us, so nobody matters."

  "Out here you matter."

  They sat for a while, the lack of a sign giving them little inducement to look farther. Then something big flicked out of sight.

  "Kangaroo!" Tucker breathed.

  "No," said Daniel, suddenly uneasy and sitting straighter. "It didn't jump like that." He peered hard at the shadowy brush but couldn't see any movement. "It was that guy again. Come on!" They trotted to where they'd seen the figure and separated, looking for tracks.

  "Uh-oh," Tucker called. "Oh boy. You were right."

  Daniel came over. As the eastern sky glowed a brighter pink, he saw what his companion was hypnotized by. It was a human boot print, but not one of their own. The waffle soles of a hiking boot. He looked closer. The tread design was peculiar. The grid looked like a street map.

  "We got company," Tucker said. "Is that good?"

  Daniel glanced around. "It must be another Outback Adventurer. Why'd he run?"

  "Maybe he's a loner."

  "Maybe he knows the way to water."

  They followed the tracks, winding circuitously through the brush. The course seemed deliberately confusing. "He's trying to lose us," Daniel said. "Or get us lost."

  "So where is camp?"

  "We'll see the breakfast smoke when Ico and Amaya wake up. He must have seen our fire last night."

  "So why doesn't he just say hello? This is weird."

  As the sun broke the horizon they saw another flicker of movement at a low ridge crest. As soon as they saw it, the stranger was gone.

  "Goddamnit." Tucker bolted ahead, moving agilely for such a big man. He bounded up the lower sand slopes of the ridge and scrabbled toward the steeper rocks.

  "Tucker! Wait up!" Daniel trotted after him with his spear.

  Tucker was up on the ridge now, hoisting himself through the boulders in hopes of getting a glimpse of the elusive fugitive. He climbed heedless of caution, half leaping from one hold to another. Daniel stopped to map a more prudent route.

  Then Tucker screamed, springing backward from the rocks as if he had been fired from a cannon. He made a twisting loop, roaring and flinging his right arm, launching something long and rubbery into space. Then he crashed into the dirt at the base of the rocks and rolled downward, Daniel following through Tucker's cloud of dust.

  "Snake!" Tucker shouted, curling into a ball and holding his arm. "Snake, snake, snake! Oh-my-God-it-hurts!"

  "Tucker, stop! Where's the snake?" Daniel pulled at him wildly, fearfully looking for the reptile before realizing that it must have been flung away. The big man no doubt put his hand into a nest in his anxious scramble upward. Now Daniel grabbed his bitten hand and saw fang marks plain in the flesh in back of the thumb, the skin beginning to swell. He paled. Australia had some of the most venomous snakes in the world.

  "It hurts so bad," Tucker moaned. "I hate snakes!"

  "Then you should have gone to the Arctic." It was a lame attempt at levity. Daniel yanked at the man's shirtsleeve, ripping it from the shoulder. He wound the material around the forearm and pulled tight to make a tourniquet. A pocketknife made a quick, bloody incision and he squeezed the flesh, hoping he was squeezing some venom out. His friend howled as he did it, blood spraying to spatter gray leaves.

  "Jesus, what a mess!" How poisonous was it?

  Tucker was sweating despite the dawn cool, his chest heaving frantically. Daniel was frightened he was going to die. "Okay, lay back, I'm going to get some help," he told his friend with more reassurance than he felt. Their antivenin kit had been lost in the flood. "You're going to be all right, understand?"

  Tucker nodded, pale with fear. "Where's the snake? I'm afraid of the snake."

  "The snake? You must have put it in orbit. Don't worry about snakes, your thrashing has just about
scared the shit out of everything in Australia, with legs or without."

  "That's good." He gave a grimaced smile. "Man, I'm hurt from the fall too. What a screw-up mess."

  "I'll be right back, okay? Just wait."

  He groaned. "Like I'm going to go anywhere."

  Daniel could hear the confused calls of the others and shouted back, jogging off in that direction. They were only a few hundred yards away. He stumbled into camp.

  "Where's Tucker?"

  "Snakebite," he gasped.

  The other two looked stricken.

  "And I was right, someone else is sneaking around here."

  They looked about wildly.

  "Look, I think the stranger's gone, but Tucker's in bad shape. We'll have to carry him into camp."

  "We can't carry Tucker!" Ico protested. "He weighs a ton!"

  "I think we have to."

  They hurried back to the weakening man. He was delirious when they got to him, curled again and shaking, looking like a ghost from the coating of dust. "Holy shit," Ico breathed. "He looks like he's dying."

  "What kind of snake?" Amaya asked.

  "How do I know? It's not like it matters now."

  "How can we move him?"

  It was Ico who had the idea to build a triangular travois like the Plains Indians and drag their big companion. They cut branches and vines to fasten a crude frame, rolled Tucker onto it despite his roar of protest, tied him down, and gave a tentative heave. The poles dragged along the ground with less friction than his full body. "Okay, this will work," Daniel said. "Here we go. One, two, three, pull!" A jerk and they were off, dust spurting from the ends of the two poles. Weaving this way and that, they pulled him back between the mulga trees and got to camp at mid-morning.

  When they returned, all their food- except the sack Amaya had hung from a bush- was gone. Their campsite was spotted with the strange maplike grid of a waffle-soled boot.

  A trail of boot prints led east and so they went that way too. The four of them had one gallon of water left to share and the temperature was arcing with the sun. Tucker had slipped into uneasy sleep on his travois, his bandaged arm grotesquely swollen. Flies crawled across his sweating face.

  They managed half a mile per hour and collapsed by noon. The sled was exhausting.

  "Look, we have to leave him," Ico croaked.

  "No way!" protested Amaya.

  "Just until we find water. Then we come back and get him."

  "Ico, he could die!"

  "We'll all die if we don't get some water."

  She shook her head. "You two go ahead then. I'll wait with him."

  Daniel vetoed that. "I'm not leaving you alone with this crazy guy wandering around. And I don't want just one of us scouting for water, either. We have to stay together."

  "Dyson…"

  "Come on. This guy, or guys, must be heading to water too. We follow them as a group. It's the safest way."

  By mid-afternoon, though, the growing impossibility was obvious. Their water was gone. The desert shimmered, its heat climaxing near one hundred degrees. The trio was exhausted from their turns pulling the travois. Tucker seemed to be slipping into permanent unconsciousness. And the landscape was unchanged.

  They dropped into the shade of a stunted tree, a parade of ants marching up its twisted trunk. A kite wheeled in the cloudless sky. They felt absolutely demoralized and exhausted.

  "We're done," Ico said.

  "Don't say that," Amaya pleaded.

  "Even if we find water we've lost too much gear. We don't have much food, we don't have tools… what did we last, a week and a half? They'd laugh, if they ever knew."

  "We've just had bad luck. That guy robbed us. That's like trying to murder us."

  "Ten to one he's succeeded within twenty-four hours."

  "But why?"

  "Maybe he got hungry himself. So he preys on the newcomers. Dog eat dog. There's a survival lesson for you."

  "Then why not just slit our throats? He could have, last night."

  "Maybe he's fastidious."

  Daniel looked up at the desert sky. Not a cloud, not a plane, not a hope. He hadn't known it was possible to feel so alone. "Okay, Ico, you go on ahead," he conceded. "It's our only chance. Take the water containers and we'll wait with Tucker. I don't want to leave Amaya alone."

  Ico nodded. The decision was inevitable. "I'll need the last food."

  "No."

  "Dyson, I have to eat to hike. I'll push faster with it than without it."

  "No. I want you to come back."

  "Jesus!"

  "The last food stays here. You're the one who talked about splitting up."

  Ico sullenly gathered up the remaining canteens as Tucker groaned restlessly. Amaya dug in her pack and gave him some of their last emergency ration bars. "Daniel didn't really mean that," she whispered.

  "Yes he did." Ico left without looking back.

  They watched the sun set with their hopes. Daniel had seldom been truly thirsty before, but now his throat was closing, his tongue swelling, and the need for water was intruding on all other thoughts. Soon it would hurt to talk.

  The flies left, the stars came, and a chill crept into the air. He looked at Amaya, sitting small and forlorn next to Tucker. "Amaya," he croaked. "Come here." She crawled to him and he put an arm around her. "Help me stay warm."

  "I'm scared, Daniel," she confessed. "I want to go back."

  He hugged her, kissing the top of her hair with his dry, cracked lips. "Me too. But we can't, not yet."

  She cuddled, relaxing in his embrace, and they listened to the sounds of the night creatures. The heat of her body felt good. A spark of life. "I'm glad I'm not alone," she said.

  He nodded. "Me too. Can I make a confession?"

  "A deathbed one?"

  "Don't say that."

  "I'm sorry, I'm just trying to joke. Go on. Confess."

  He hesitated. "I saw you a few nights ago. In the river."

  "In the river?"

  "Bathing."

  "Oh." She was quiet. "How did I look?"

  "Beautiful. The stars, the water…"

  "You were just horny. Or thirsty."

  "No. It was nice. You were nice. I just wanted to say that."

  "A compliment?"

  "That's what I meant."

  "All right. Good. Now, can I make a confession?"

  "Of course."

  She looked at him mischievously. "I saw you too. Watching, I mean."

  "Oh."

  "I liked it."

  "Good." He lowered his face to brush against her cheek and she turned and kissed him then, their lips dry but the touch a quiet comfort. "I wonder what would have happened if we'd had more time?" he asked.

  "I'm glad we had this time."

  He lay there, holding her, wondering what the morning would bring. Maybe there'd be a miracle. Maybe it would rain again.

  Eventually, they slept.

  Daniel was prodded awake at dawn. Silhouetted against the light of the rising sun was a stranger, dark and dirty, with hair down around his ears. He was tanned a tobacco brown and wore faded synthetics patched with animal leathers, with a bone necklace that rattled when he moved. His boots, Daniel sleepily realized, left the same gridded print they'd spotted at their camp. Like a street map. He was holding a skin of water. They could smell it.

  "Want some?"

  The two untangled themselves and sat up. They noticed Ico a short distance behind, like a trailing schoolboy. Uncertainly, they nodded.

  The man uncapped the water skin and drank himself, rivulets running down into the stubble of his beard. Then he held it out to them. "I wasn't going to come back for you, you know."

  Daniel stretched his arm out and took the water skin. The warm dusty water was the sweetest he'd ever tasted. He swallowed a mouthful and gave it to Amaya.

  "Careful!" the man told her. "Sip, or you'll throw up!"

  She complied.

  "Then why did you?" Daniel croaked.


  "He came up on me when I nodded off," Ico spoke up. "I didn't have time to run. I think we'd better throw in with them."

  "It wasn't him who brought me back," the stranger said.

  Daniel looked up at him, puzzled.

  He jerked his head backward. "It was her."

  Now Daniel noticed there was a third figure in the shadows, slim and erect, looking at them with surprise. "So it is you," she said, stepping forward.

  He jerked in recognition himself.

  It was Raven.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "You're not supposed to be in this sector," Raven said to Daniel, her eyes flickering from him to the young woman at his side.

  He stared back in amazement, taking in the familiar features. Her dark hair had been pulled into a ponytail, accentuating high cheekbones turned bronze by the sun. Her eyes revealed puzzlement. Unlike his huddled posture of defeat, she carried herself with familiar athletic quickness and grace, like a poised deer. He was confused by her confusion: he thought she'd be surprised he'd come to Australia at all, not that he was in any particular spot.

  "You told me you didn't think you'd come here," he countered, his voice a croak. "Then I called and you were gone."

  "Yes." She looked at the three newcomers as if trying to decide something. "My situation changed."

  Daniel sipped more water and sat up straighter, the liquid tingling as it circulated, relieving the ache in his brain. "Your timing is good. We were in bad shape."

  "You're very lucky."

  Amaya was looking at Raven with a mixture of bewilderment and mistrust. Raven glanced at her, considering. "This is a surprise for both of us, as you can see," she said to the other woman. "We knew each other before."

  Amaya absorbed this.

  Daniel pointed at the man accompanying Raven. "He stole some of our food," he accused.

  "No I didn't," the man said. "I saved it from a dingo. If I hadn't taken it, it would be gone."

  "We ran to save Tucker," Amaya explained meekly.

  "And left your means of survival to the dogs. I went to find Raven so we could decide what to do. I wasn't sure you could, or should, survive. You're in a hard world now and we weren't planning to meet anyone out here. Then we found this little guy- "

  "Ethan, enough," Raven interrupted. "After talking with Ico there, we decided you needed rescue." It was clear the decision had been hers. "He told us about you."