Outback

by Robin Stevenson

  The next day dawns as hot as ever and with every minute that passes, the temperature climbs higher. Morning slips into afternoon, the sun blazes in the blue sky and the sand beneath us radiates heat. “We shouldn’t have left Mel out there on his own,” I say. “We should have made him come back here with us.”

  We’re sitting in our patch of shade, sipping water every couple of hours and trying not to think about anything. “Not like we had a choice,” Nat says.

  “I guess.” I think we’re both wondering if he is still alive, but mostly we avoid talking about it. We also avoid talking about the heat, our steadily diminishing water supply, or the fact that we have no idea how long we could be here. We’re both sleeping in Nat’s tent, as if we think Mel might still come back and claim his, but it seems increasingly unlikely with every day that passes.

  “I wish I believed in a god I could pray to,” I say.

  Nat doesn’t answer. Above the horizon, the sun is slowly sinking lower in the sky. The desert glows orange and red in the late afternoon light. The landscape is like a living thing, the way its colors shift and change. “I wish I had my camera,” I say.

  “You sure have a lot of wishes,” Nat says. “How about something useful? A jeep, say.”

  “Mm. Or a hotel. With a swimming pool.” I grin at her. It amazes me that even now, Nat can make me laugh. I can’t imagine how awful it would be to be out here alone.

  On the morning of the fourth day, I wake up early to the sound of Nat crying. It is so unlike her that it frightens me. I roll toward her in the tent and prop myself up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”

  She makes a choking sound that is half laugh, half sob. “Everything.”

  Stupid question. “I mean, other than the obvious.”

  “Other than the fact that I’m going to die here?” She wipes her hand roughly across her eyes.

  “You’re not going to die,” I say. “You’re not. It’ll rain and we’ll get more water. Or we’ll walk to the next well and refill our jugs. Some of the wells must have drinking water, right?”

  She starts crying again and covers her face with her hands.

  “We can find food,” I say. “If we need to. There’s plants and animals, stuff that has to be edible.”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “There’s lizards,” I say desperately. “I don’t care how endangered they are— they probably still taste like chicken.” I have to make her laugh, to snap out of this slump, to be her usual tough self. “Maybe we’ll eat the lizard Mel’s looking for. Hey, Nat?”

  No answer. Her shoulders shake with silent sobs.

  My stomach tightens with fear. I want to shake her. “Stop it, Nat. Come on. It’ll be okay. For sure someone will come. Even if it’s six weeks, we can make it. We can.” I sit up, reach over and push her hands down so I can see her face. “Nat. Look at me. We are going to be okay.”

  “No.” She pulls her hands away and sits up. “We’re not going to be okay, Jayden.”

  There’s an awful emptiness inside me. I don’t want to admit it, but I’m scared that Nat is right.

  By the next day, I have a new worry. Something is wrong with Nat. She’s not herself. Not just the crying, which was weird enough, but she seems sick. She’s pale and lethargic, lying in the tent even after it gets way too hot. Twice she wanders off without saying why, and she seems unsteady on her feet. When I ask her what’s wrong, she just gets mad and says she’s fine.

  The third time she walks away, I follow her and find her throwing up in the bushes.

  My heart sinks. “You are sick. I knew it.”

  “I’m sorry.” She’s kneeling, looking up at me with swollen red-rimmed eyes. “ There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What is it?” I can’t imagine anything that could make our situation worse, but I find myself holding my breath anyway.

  She takes a deep breath. “A couple of years ago, I got sick. Really sick. Tired, losing tons of weight. Finally the doctors figured out that I had Addison’s disease.”

  I’ve never heard of it. “What’s that?”

  “It’s an endocrine disease. A problem with the adrenal gland.”

  “You’re okay now though, right? You seemed okay until the last couple of days.”

  “Yeah. Because I take medication twice a day to replace the hormones my body doesn’t make.”

  I remember her running back to the burning jeep to rescue her daypack. “And if you don’t take it?”

  “I’ll die.”

  My heart thuds so hard it feels like something kicking me in the chest. “How much do you have?”

  “Two weeks’ worth, maybe. I had more in the jeep, but…” She trails off.

  Two weeks. Even if we manage to get more water somehow…“That’ll only take us to mid-March,” I say.

  “Maybe less.” She sits back on her heels. “The thing is, if I get stressed or sick I need to take more hydrocortisone than usual. And I’ve been trying to take a bit less than my usual dose, to make it last longer, but…” She gestures helplessly. “You can see how well that’s working.”

  It’s pretty obvious that our situation would qualify as stressful. I take a deep breath. “We’ll have to walk out,” I say. “Thirty kilometers a day. That’ll get us to that place—that Aboriginal community—in ten days.”

  “We can’t carry enough water,” she says. “And it’s too hot.”

  “We’ll walk at night. And we’ll stop at the wells along the way. We’ll carry as much water as we can and refill every chance we get.”

  Nat shakes her head. “No. Because you know what? It’s crazy. If we stay here, at least you’ll have a chance of making it until someone comes. If we try to walk out, we’ll both die.”

  “We’re walking out,” I say. “And we’ll make it. I promise.”

  “I can’t,” she says. “Jayden, I feel like crap. I can barely walk fifty feet.”

  “I know.” I take a deep breath. I’m afraid she is right—that walking out is suicide, that we are both heading to our deaths if we leave the camp. But the thought of staying here, watching Nat get sicker and sicker…I can’t even stand to think about it. “We have to at least try. If you take more of your medication, you’ll feel better, right?”

  She nods. “Yeah, pretty much right away. But I’ll run out sooner.”

  “Ten days,” I say. “That’s all we need.”

  “Jayden.” Nat’s eyes are wide and scared. “I don’t want to die.”

  Me neither. But all I say is, “Then take your medication, Nat. Now. The sooner we go, the better.”

  Despite the awfulness of Nat’s secret, I feel oddly hopeful. I know our situation just got a lot worse, but having something to do is easier than just sitting and waiting. I spend the next morning—our sixth day PF, or post-fire—taking apart Mel’s tent and using the poles and fabric to make a water-carrying contraption.

  While I curse quietly and wish for duct tape or string, Nat collects light-colored rocks. She’s feeling stronger but she still doesn’t think we should leave the camp. She’s convinced that she’s putting my life at risk. In my mind, there’s no choice: I’d rather risk dying out there together than sit here and watch her die.

  By midday, the heat is unbearable. There is a slight breeze, but there is nothing pleasant about it. It is like the blast of hot air you get when you open an oven door, like a furnace breathing in your face. I feel wrecked, but I’ve made progress: I’ve used tent poles, parts from the campstove and strips of tent canvas to piece together a makeshift frame that fits across my shoulders.

  I attach one water jug securely to each end, squat underneath it and straighten up. The pole feels like it’ll cut right through me. I use part of Mel’s sleeping bag to pad it, which improves it considerably. I figure I can carry two full six-gallon jugs this way. We have about eighteen or twenty gallons left, so if Nat can manage two half-full jugs, we can take all our water with us. I start building a second frame for Nat.


  “What do you think?” she calls out.

  I stand up. She has laid out a giant X and an arrow pointing north, using pale rocks against the red dirt. “It looks great.”

  “You think it’ll be visible from the sky?” she asks.

  We both look up at the vast empty blueness, shielding our eyes against the harsh sun. “Yeah,” I say. “For sure.” We haven’t seen any planes fly close overhead, but I remember reading online that people sometimes take sightseeing flights over Lake Disappointment.

  It’s a long shot. Then again, long shots are all we have.

  By evening, we are ready to leave. We’re not taking the tent or the stove, but we’re bringing all the water and as much food as we can carry.

  And then I realize something. “Nat? If we take all the water with us…”

  She looks stricken. “Oh god. Mel.”

  I almost wish it hadn’t occurred to us. Because if Mel is still alive out there, looking for his lizards and convinced that Nat and I are the enemy, he could show up anytime. Thirsty, hungry and desperate.

  And if we take all the water, we’re sentencing him to death.

  In the end, we decide to leave one full jug. Six of our eighteen gallons. A third of our water.

  I don’t know whether it is the right decision or the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We start to walk when the sun is low in the sky and the temperature beginning to drop. We don’t have a compass, so we decide to stick to the track. Maybe we could save time by cutting straight across the dunes, but we’d be equally likely to lose our way in the dark.

  An hour after the sun disappears completely, a thin crescent of moon appears. “Thank god,” Nat says.

  “No kidding.” Without that sliver of silver light, walking at night would be almost as impossible as walking in the heat of the day.

  Mostly we walk in silence, concentrating on the track beneath our feet, trying to ignore the weight of the water on our shoulders. I’m carrying two six-gallon jugs, both now three-quarters full, for balance. Nat has another half-full jug plus the food. She isn’t complaining—she never does— but she is walking more and more slowly. Sometimes she stumbles and almost falls. I try not to think about how far we have to go.

  Twelve gallons of water won’t last us a week, let alone the ten days we’re guessing it’ll take us.

  Nat’s obviously thinking about the same thing. “We could walk past a well in the darkness and not even know it,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. “But what else can we do?”

  “I keep trying to remember the maps, and all the stuff I read when I was planning the trip,” she says. “I think there’s a well north of us that’s supposed to have drinking water.”

  “Right on the stock route?” I ask.

  “That’s just it,” she says wearily. “It might be a couple of kilometers off the route. I can’t remember.”

  I don’t say anything. There is nothing to do but keep walking and hoping.

  We’ve been walking less than two hours when Nat stops.

  She sinks to the ground, shrugs off her carrying frame. “I can’t do this.”

  “Yes, you can. Come on. I know it’s hard, but…”

  Nat rolls onto her hands and knees and throws up.

  I can’t stand to think about how much water she is losing. “Do you need more medication?” I can hear her breathing hard, smell the sour vomit. “Nat, if you need more, take it.”

  She shakes her head and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I think you should go on.”

  “And leave you here? No way.”

  “No use both of us dying.” She curls up on the ground. “If you make it out, you can get help and come back for me.”

  She’s trying to make it possible for me to leave her—to give me a chance—but we both know that it’d take at least ten days for me to get help. We both know that if I leave her here, she’ll die here.

  I lie down beside her. “Take some more medication. We’ll sleep for a while. Maybe tomorrow night you’ll be able to walk farther.”

  “You’d have a better shot without me,” she says.

  “Forget it.”

  Nat opens her backpack and pulls out a small blue canvas kit. “There’s a syringe in here. Injectible hydrocortisone.” she says. “For emergencies.”

  “How will you know if it’s an emergency?”

  “You’ll know,” she says, popping a pill in her mouth. “I’ll be unconscious.”

  For hours I lie awake and listen to the steady sound of Nat’s breathing. I’m terrified that she’ll die before morning. Finally, I slip into a black dreamless sleep. And then it is dawn, and Nat is looking at me, dark shadows under her eyes and a look of steely determination on her thin face.

  “Morning, sunshine,” she says. “Let’s walk. We need to find that well, and we’re more likely to spot paths or turnoffs in the daylight.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  She just shrugs. I hate how helpless I feel. I stand up and roll my aching shoulders. I can’t see anything hopeful ahead: no wells and no decent shade. Just red dirt, dunes, rocky outcrops, clumps of viciously spiky grass and pastel-green shrubbery.

  We wriggle ourselves back into the water-carrying frames and Nat stumbles under the weight. I catch her elbow and steady her, and feel a clutch of fear deep inside.

  “I’m okay,” she says, shrugging me off.

  “Okay. Good.” We walk on, but already the temperature is starting to rise. I bet we can’t walk for more than half an hour before it gets too hot, and I wonder if we can make some shade somehow. I wish we’d brought a tent. We could have rigged up a shelter of some kind.

  Beside me, Nat stops. “Jayden.” Her voice is low and tight.

  “What?” I follow her gaze. Just off the track, maybe a hundred feet ahead of us, is a mound. A sprawl of white and khaki. “Mel,” I say. I put my water down and half walk, half run toward him.

  He is lying facedown, the backs of his bare legs blistered. I put my hand on his shoulder, but he doesn’t move. “Mel,” I say again.

  Nat catches up to me. “Is he…? Jayden, is he…?”

  “He’s dead.” My fingers are on his neck, searching for a pulse, but I know I won’t find one. “Don’t look,” I say, and I roll him over. His face is swollen and bloated. His mouth is open and his tongue protrudes slightly. Flies are crawling around his half-open eyes. I turn away, sickened, and hear Nat dry-heaving a short distance away.

  I feel like I should cover his face but have nothing I can use. Finally I just roll him back the way we found him and walk over to Nat.

  She is bent double, holding her stomach. “It’s okay,” I say.

  She doesn’t answer right away. She sits down, pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them. When she finally speaks, her voice is flat. “It’s not okay, Jayden. It’ll never be okay.” She gestures toward Mel’s body. “That’s us in a week or two. Lying beside the road, here or a hundred kilometers from here, crawling with flies.”

  I feel like shaking her. “It will not. Nat, we’re getting out of here.”

  “We’re so screwed, Jay. We’re as good as dead.”

  I grab her shoulders, gripping hard. “Listen to me, Nat. Before I came on this trip, I was a mess. Okay? Like, barely leaving my room, wishing I was dead. I used to make lists of ways I could do it. You know, pills or jumping off the balcony or whatever.”

  “Jayden!” She looks up at me, clearly shocked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess mostly because I got dumped by my girlfriend. It all seems kind of trivial now.” I look at Nat and I can see that her face is already thinner, her jawline sharp and the skin drawn tight around her eyes and cheekbones. I feel a pang of something that could be fear or love or sadness; or maybe all three. “I don’t want to die,” I say. “And you know what? We’re not going to.”

  “Okay,” she says, and her voice is thick with tears. �
�Okay.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  We decide to walk a short distance farther, to get out of sight of Mel’s dead body, and to find some shrubbery to hide under for the heat of the day. It’s going to be a bad one: already the sun is fierce. Just breathing in air this hot feels dangerous, like you could get cooked from the inside.

  “You think he was on his way back to our camp?” I ask.

  “Maybe. We’ve only gone a few kilometers.” Nat’s voice is strained. “If we’d kept walking like we planned to, we’d have walked right past him in the dark.”

  I take a last look at my uncle’s body and notice something: he’s lying on his bag, one arm clutching it to his chest. “Mel’s bag,” I say.

  She makes a face. “Let’s just go.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” I really don’t want to touch him again. Those flies…“But what if he’s got food in there, or water purification tablets?”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t have to help.”

  “No, it’s okay. You lift him and I’ll grab the bag.”

  It’s harder than you would think, lifting a dead body. Mel’s a hefty guy. I lift his shoulders, trying not to look at his face. Nat pulls the bag free.

  “Okay,” I say. It’s weird, just leaving him here. I feel like we should say something to him but I don’t know what. Besides, even now he’s dead I’m still angry with him. He’s the reason Nat and I are stuck out here, fighting to stay alive. His stupid ambition, his mistrust, his greed.

  So in the end we just walk away.

  We don’t find any decent shade, but it is too hot to continue walking, so we huddle in the thin patchy shelter of some shrubbery. Nat drinks slowly.

  Then she passes me the water jug. It’s almost empty. After this jug is gone, we are down to nine gallons.

  “Nat, you should rest here. I’ll walk back to the camp to get the water we left for Mel.”

  Nat nods reluctantly. “I gave him my water bottle too,” she says, pushing his bag toward me. “But I bet all he’s got in there is dead lizards.”

  “I’ll eat them.” I unbuckle the bag and flip it open.

  And I can’t believe what I see.