“There is no we anymore,” he says. “You two have made that quite clear.”
Nothing I say is going to make a difference. “Okay, fine,” I say. “Think what you like, but I’d rather not be stuck out here. Do you have the sat phone?”
He gestures at the truck.
A fear that is close to panic is starting to grip me. No vehicle. No communications. And Mel isn’t going to be the grown-up here. He doesn’t have a backup plan. He isn’t going to rescue us.
So it’s up to me and Nat.
I turn to Nat. “Let’s get the stuff we salvaged and go back to camp.” I try to sound calmer than I feel. “We’ll come up with a plan.”
She rubs her wrist. I can see red marks where Mel gripped it. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”
Nat and I walk together. Mel doesn’t come with us, which is just as well. I’m so angry that I’d probably end up hitting him if he said another word to either of us. We managed to save three water jugs and a box of food, in addition to whatever we unloaded back at the camp earlier. We leave one water jug for Mel to carry and set off with the rest.
“I’m sorry,” I say after a few minutes.
“You? What for?”
“Mel. I don’t know. He’s my uncle.”
She shakes her head. “That’s stupid.”
“I guess so.” I don’t have the energy to argue. I’ve got a water jug in each hand, and they weigh a ton. My arms will be a foot longer by the time we reach our camp. I put the jugs down, flex my fingers and rub my reddened hands. “You okay?”
Nat gives a short laugh. “What do you think?”
“Yeah. I guess not.” The heat pushes down on us like a heavy weight. “I feel like I’m on some other planet,” I say. “Closer to the sun. A planet with more gravity than Earth.”
“Uh-huh.” She stops and puts down the box of food. “How much farther,do you think?”
All I can see is the tracks stretching off toward the horizon. “I don’t know. We should drink something.”
“Okay.” Nat sits down, and I drop to the ground beside her.
This heat…It’s like being in a sauna, only there’s no door out. I twist the lid of a water jug and pass it to her. She tilts it toward herself, careful not to spill, and drinks thirstily. The sun is getting lower in the sky, and while I am relieved that the temperature will be dropping, I am also anxious about reaching our camp before dark. I take the jug from Nat and drink. The water is warm, but I’ve never appreciated a drink so much in my life. I gulp it down.
“Go easy,” Nat says softly.
I stop drinking. She’s right. This water will have to last us for…I push the thought away because I don’t know the answer and I can’t bear to think about that right now. I stand up. “Come on,” I say. “It can’t be much farther.” I pick up the water and we walk on, one foot in front of the other, back along our own tire tracks.
It is almost dark when we reach our camp. My face feels baked, my lips swollen and sore, and my back and shoulders and hands are wrecked from carrying the water.
“Jayden?”
I open the water jug and take a small sip. And another. “Mmm. What?” I pass it to her.
“Do you want to sleep in my tent tonight? In case Mel shows up?”
I’m not sure if she’s thinking of my feelings or if she’s scared of him, but either way I am quick to agree.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she says, ducking into her tent.
Until she said that, I hadn’t. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll be unconscious as soon as I lie down.”
I sit alone for a while, watching the dark get blacker and deeper. Then, chilled and exhausted, I grab my sleeping bag, crawl into Nat’s tent and flop down beside her. I’m almost asleep when she says, “How long do you think that walk was? Tonight?”
“I don’t know.” I roll to face her, but it’s too dark to see her face. “Maybe three kilometers? It would’ve been okay if we weren’t carrying so much stuff.”
“Mm.”
I wonder what she’s thinking.
“Jayden? Do you know how far it is to get anywhere from here?” She’s whispering, but I can hear the fear in her voice.
I reach out and find her hand in the blackness. “Tomorrow,” I say. “We’ll come up with a plan. I promise.”
Maybe half an hour later, I hear rustling and footsteps, followed by the sound of the zipper on the other tent. Mel’s back. I wait for a few minutes, wondering if he will come over to Nat’s tent and start yelling at us again, but within minutes, I hear him start to snore.
And the next thing I know, the sun is streaming through the thin canvas and tomorrow is here.
Chapter Ten
I crawl toward the tent door, trying not to wake Nat, and open the zipper slowly.
“Morning.” Nat sits up. There are dark circles under her eyes and pillow creases on her cheek.
“Hey.” I rub my hands over my face. “Morning.”
“Mmph. Don’t suppose we have any coffee.”
“Doubt it.”
She grimaces. “Jeez, my shoulders are sore.”
I roll my own shoulders experimentally. “Yeah. That was some hike.” Our eyes meet, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing: that hike was nothing compared to what it’ll take to get out of here.
We crawl out of the tent and start taking inventory of our supplies. It’s hard to believe, sitting here in the cool morning light, that we are really in any danger.
“Mel brought the last water jug. So that’s four jugs at six gallons each. Twenty-four gallons. How long will that last?” I ask.
“Shh,” Nat whispers. “Don’t wake him.” She looks over at Mel’s tent, and I follow her gaze.
I’m in no hurry for him to join us. In fact, the way I feel right now, I’d be happy never to see him again.
“Eight gallons each,” Nat says softly. “That’s not very much. I planned for at least two gallons each per day when I was organizing this trip.”
“Maybe we could stretch it to a week?”
“Depends what we’re doing,” she says. “Sitting in the shade, not moving around…maybe. I wish we’d saved more from the jeep.”
In a week it will be almost March. I guess it’s possible that someone will show up before April, but it sure isn’t a gamble I want to take. “Nat? I don’t suppose you happened to tell anyone where we were going?”
“A few friends,” she says. “But they won’t be any help. If I don’t show up, they’ll just assume I decided to do some more traveling or whatever.”
“Your parents?”
“They know I’m traveling with Mel. We’ve been having some arguments lately, so if they don’t hear from me for a while, it won’t be unusual.” Nat runs her hand through her hair, which is sticking up wildly. “Your folks?”
I shake my head. “Mom thinks we’re at the university. I don’t have any other family. Well, just Mel.”
We both look at his tent again, and neither of us says anything for a long moment. “You hear these stories,” Nat says, without looking at me. “Every year. Dumb tourist drives off on some remote track, dumb tourist’s car breaks down, dumb tourist wanders off into the desert.”
I can guess how these stories end. “Dumb tourist’s body found some months later?”
“Yeah.” She sucks on the silver rings in her lower lip. “Well, not always.
Some German guy got bogged down in Lake Disappointment a while back. Totally clueless. He had no water at all, just a case of beer.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was lucky. He got found three days later by some other travelers.”
“Huh.” At least he had the sense to get stranded at the right time of year.
“They always say that you should stay with your vehicle, because you’re more likely to be found,” Nat says. “But our vehicle’s not even close to the road.”
“Better to stay at our camp,” I say. “We’ve got shade here, a coup
le of trees anyway. We’re right by the road.”
“Do we have a map?” Nat asks. “I mean, how far exactly is it to…well, to anywhere?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Far. The maps were in the jeep.”
“It’s over six hundred kilometers back to Wiluna,” she says. “Probably more like seven hundred, since we’re closer to the north end of the lake than the south.”
“Might as well try to hike to the moon,” I say bitterly. And I realize something: I don’t want to die. After months in which a good day meant not caring either way and a bad day meant making mental lists of ways to end it, I actually want to live.
My timing sucks.
“There’s an Aboriginal community north of here,” Nat says. “Kunawarritji. I’m not sure how far exactly. Maybe three hundred kilometers?”
“In this heat? A hundred times as far as we walked yesterday?” I shake my head. “There’s no way, Nat. It’d take us…I don’t know. Too long.”
“If we walked thirty kilometers a day, we’d be there in less than ten days.”
I rub my aching shoulders. “I couldn’t carry any more than I did yesterday. Those water jugs must weigh fifty pounds each. We’d run out of water before we even got close.”
“We can’t stay here,” Nat says, and there’s a note of panic in her voice. “We can’t.”
“Look, it’s not like I want to either,” I say. “But our water will last us longer if we stay in the shade and don’t do too much. The longer we can stay alive out here, the better the odds of being found.”
She is fighting back tears.
“Nat…”
“Sorry.” She rubs the back of her hand across her eyes roughly. “I’m so mad at myself. I mean, I knew this was too early in the season. I knew we should travel with at least one other vehicle.”
“Yeah, well, you couldn’t have predicted the fire. Anyway, if you’re going to be mad at someone…” I trail off and gesture toward Mel’s tent.
“Believe me, I’m plenty pissed at him too.”
There is a long silence. The sun is still low, but the heat is already rising, sure as a tide coming in. The light out here is different than anywhere I’ve been before, constantly transforming the colors of the landscape in an ever-shifting array of red and orange and brown. There is no wind and no sound at all. It is eerie.
And then it occurs to me that it is not only eerie, it is downright weird. Because Mel snores with the volume of an oncoming freight train.
I get up and walk over to his tent.
“Jayden!” Nat hisses. “What are you doing?”
“Just checking on him.” I stop, listen for breathing. Nothing. I hold my breath and slowly unzip the tent. I don’t want to wake him and have him start freaking out, but I need to make sure he’s not dead or something. I stick my head in through the open flap.
Mel’s not there.
I sit back on my heels. “He’s gone. He’s taken off.”
“Looking for those damn lizards,” she says. “Only room for one on the pinnacle and all that.”
And it’s an awful thought, but it occurs to me that if Mel never came back, there’d be more water for Nat and me.
Chapter Eleven
Nat and I spend the next couple of hours sitting in a tiny patch of thin shade, trying not to move or talk or even breathe any more than we have to. It is unbearably hot. I find myself trying to think of ways to describe the heat, just in case I ever have the chance to tell anyone about this. The words we use for hot days back home don’t fit at all. The language that comes to mind is one we use to describe cooking. Baking or roasting or broiling or sizzling. It’s like sitting in an oven.
Or a fire. Burning. Scorching. Blazing. Blistering.
I imagine spending day after day just sitting here, waiting in this pathetic patch of shade, praying for rain, watching our precious water supply dwindle and hoping that someone happens to drive by.
Waiting here might be the sensible thing to do, but the thought is almost unbearable.
“Nat? You think we could rig up one of the tents to make better shade?”
Her voice is hoarse. “And all sleep in one? With Mel?”
“Yeah. Maybe not.” I look at my watch. “It’s almost noon. Do you think we should look for him?”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Dude, you don’t want to go wandering around in this heat. If he’s not back by dinnertime, we’ll go look. When it cools off a little.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” I shift position and stretch my legs out. “Sorry. It’s just hard doing nothing.”
“Tell me about it. Actually, don’t. You’ll need less water if you stay quiet. Breathe through your nose.”
I stink like smoke from yesterday’s fire. “I wish we had other clothes,” I mutter.
“At least we both have long sleeves,” Nat says. “And hats. We could easily have leaped out of the truck without hats on and then we’d be even more screwed.”
“You think that’s possible?”
Nat doesn’t say anything, and I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.
By late afternoon Mel still hasn’t returned, but thick gray clouds have moved in, and the temperature has dropped dramatically. “Think it might rain?” Nat asks.
“Maybe. We should figure out a way to collect water. Perhaps we could use the food bins?”
Nat stands, stretches and walks over to the plastic tub of food that we rescued from the back of the burning jeep. “If we put the food in one of the tents.”
“Good thing there’s no bears to worry about here.”
“Way to find the silver lining, Jayden.”
We unload the food—cans of beans, soup, powdered milk, crackers, dried fruit, granola, instant coffee—into Nat’s tent. I wonder, briefly, if we should be worried about dingoes, but decide not to say anything. We have enough to worry about already, and besides, if we have to choose between food and water, there’s no contest. I balance one end of the plastic lid against the side of the tent, making a ramp into the bin.
“That’s smart,” Nat says. “Increasing the area we can catch rain from.”
“Yeah. Well, we could be here a while.”
She turns away from me but not before I see the look on her face.
“Nat? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Bull. Tell me.”
She shakes her head. “Forget it.”
I drop it, but I don’t forget it. There’s something she isn’t telling me, and I have no idea how important it might be.
We share a can of soup and some water, and decide to look for Mel. We retrace our steps from the day before, back toward the scrubby hummocks of grass at the edges of Lake Disappointment. We’re maybe halfway back to the burned-out jeep when we spot him.
“Mel!” I shout.
He startles and turns toward us, cursing. “Well, well. Spying on me, are you? Hoping to grab a share of the glory?”
His face is the color of ripe tomato. “Jeez, Mel. You’re really burned. Your face…”
“Traitors,” he says. “I trusted you to help me on this journey and what have you done? Lied. Cheated. Betrayed my trust.”
“That’s crazy.” So crazy I don’t know where to begin.
He waves his hands as if he’s brushing away his own words. “None of that matters now,” he says. “I’m on the verge of a great discovery.” He speaks thickly, his lips swollen and split.
“That’s great,” I say carefully. “You should get out of the sun though. Come back to the camp, have some dinner.”
“My dear boy. Are you listening to me?” Mel’s eyes are bloodshot, but their blue gaze is as piercing as ever. “I saw it.”
“The lizard you’re looking for?”
“The reason we’re here,” he says, nodding. “The point of all this.”
Nat and I exchange glances.
“Mel, the thing is…without the jeep, we’re in a bit of trouble here. Odds are no one will drive by bef
ore April.” I glance up at the clouds, which are stubbornly refusing to release a drop of water. “We need to figure out how we’re going to…manage…until then.” I almost said survive but I swallowed the word before it left my mouth. I don’t want to go there.
“Come back to the camp with us,” Nat begs. “Please, Mel.”
“My dear girl. My dear Natalie.” Mel speaks almost fondly. “You just don’t give up, do you? Surely you don’t think you can stall me until the Rizzards get here?”
“Mel, I’m not working with them, okay? I just want you to be safe.” Nat’s voice wobbles and her eyes are wet, but the way her fists are clenched at her sides makes me think she is angry as much as hurt.
“You can look again tomorrow.” I give a short bitter laugh. “Believe me, you’ll have plenty of time to search for wildlife.”
Mel just shakes his head. “I’ll stop when I’ve got the lizard.”
Nat and I argue with Mel for a while, but I can tell it is futile. I try to point out that he won’t be able to find anything in the dark, but he just accuses me of deliberately wasting the precious last hour of daylight. Finally, we give up. Nat persuades Mel to take her water bottle, and we leave him scrabbling around in the dirt.
The two of us head back to our camp, not talking. Our footsteps are loud in the silence of the evening, and all around us the desert glows like hot coals as the sun sinks down toward the horizon.
Chapter Twelve
The clouds disappear overnight, taking their precious water with them, and morning arrives with no sign of Mel. All day long, I expect him to show up—bragging about what he has found, maybe, or ranting about how disappointed he is in our lack of enthusiasm— but he doesn’t. Nat and I wait until the cool of the evening to search for him, walking in ever larger circles around our camp and shouting his name until our throats are dry and voices hoarse. It would be more efficient to split up and search different areas, but neither of us suggests it. Even together, every time we leave our camp, I am terrified that we will get lost.
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