by Justin D'Ath
‘Call the police,’ I wheezed, then realised how ridiculous my request was. As if the rustler was going to call the police!
‘Call them yourself,’ Adam said, and hung up.
I let the phone slip from my fingers. I will call the police, I promised. And when I do, they’ll come looking for you.
My breath came in big rasping sobs. The oxygen in the air was being consumed by the fire. I was growing dizzy and disoriented from carbon monoxide poisoning. It was hard to think clearly. I was trapped. The rear of the truck was well alight now. Sheets of yellow flame leapt up the wooden sides and sailed off into the smoke-filled sky. I watched the sky for a moment, then my oxygen-starved brain kicked in and I realised I wasn’t trapped. The top of the truck was open. I could climb out.
It was like being in a strange, slow-motion dream. My mind seemed to shut out the terrible heat, the pain in my broken foot, the lack of oxygen. I scrambled to my feet, taking my weight on my hands and the toes of my right foot. The air quivered. I knew I couldn’t breathe in; the burning air would sear my throat and lungs. So I kept my mouth firmly shut. I ordered myself not to breathe in through my nose either. My chest quivered. My vision became dark and misty.
I faced the wall in the front corner of the cattle-pen. I put my fingers between the slats. I began climbing.
When I reached the top, I looked down on the dusty black roof of the truck’s cab. The fallen branch still lay across it, but at least it wasn’t burning. There were no flames between me and the road. Just a thick soup of flying sparks and cinders and swirling blue smoke. Behind me, the rear half of the truck was completely enveloped by fire. The nearest flames were only two or three metres away. The wind whipped them around like deadly yellow snakes. The heat was intense.
I rolled over the edge and fell through the leaves onto the roof of the cab. I landed on my right hip and shoulder. My ears no longer seemed to be working. I gulped air. It was full of smoke but at least there was oxygen in it. I filled my starved lungs. For four or five seconds I lay on the roof of the cab, gasping like a newly landed fish, letting the oxygen replace the poison in my blood. There was a whistling sound in my ears and my hearing returned. I could smell the pong of singed hair. My left foot was throbbing. My right foot felt sticky with blood. I was hurting all over but at least I was alive. The fire was behind the truck, not in front of it. It was just the spot fire I’d seen earlier. The wind must have driven it along the creek and made it larger. The main fire wasn’t here yet. There was still a chance I could escape.
I pushed myself to the edge of the cab and swung down to the ground, using the bent mirror for support. I was careful not to put any weight on my broken left foot. My right foot was okay as long as I kept the bandaged heel off the ground. I started hopping through the trees. The burning truck roared and crackled behind me. My eyes stung. I felt weak and bruised and light-headed, but self-preservation is a powerful instinct. I had to escape the fire. I wasn’t going to let it beat me.
I got as far as the road, then collapsed in an exhausted heap.
16
TOO SLOW
I had to think fast. What would my brother Nathan do in a situation like this?
Nathan is a tour guide in the Northern Territory. He’s a survival expert. Make your surroundings work for you, he told me once. The forest is your friend, not your enemy.
Today it was my enemy. It was bringing the fire. If I remained in the forest, I was going to die. So much for Nathan’s words of wisdom.
There was a rustling noise behind me. I sat up and watched a metre-long goanna scurrying along the edge of the road. It was followed by a small furry animal – a bush rat or a bandicoot. From further up among the trees came the thump thump thump of fleeing wallabies and kangaroos. Overhead the sky was dotted with birds and bats and winged insects. Everything was going in same direction. Away from the fire.
They had the right idea.
I struggled to my feet (to my foot, actually) and started hopping down the middle of the road, following the fleeing wildlife. I had gone less than twenty metres when I had to sit down and rest. It was hopeless. No way in the world could I make it on my own. Not on one foot. Certainly not on the toes of one foot. The fire would overhaul me within a few hundred metres, provided I didn’t drop dead from exhaustion first. Either way I was probably going to die, I thought, as I watched an echidna overtake me and go waddling down the road.
Why hadn’t I tied Susie to a tree? It was because I hadn’t stayed calm. Because I hadn’t been thinking. If I wanted to stay alive, I had to use my head. I had to think my way out. Nathan’s words came back to me: Make your surroundings work for you.
I stood up and looked around. Trees, bushes, ferns, rocks, fallen branches …
Fallen branches!
I found two branches with forked ends. One was too long, so I inserted it in the narrow gap between two saplings and twisted it sideways until it snapped. I tested it again. Now it was slightly too short, but it was better than nothing. I had a pair of crutches.
They worked. I hobbled along at a reasonable pace for about a hundred metres. I even overtook the echidna. But I wasn’t going fast enough. I could hear the growing roar and crackle of the fire behind me. I could feel the hot wind like dragon’s breath on my back. The pungent smoke burned my nostrils and stung my eyes. It was so thick that I could barely see ten metres ahead.
Then I heard another sound. A drumming noise. I stopped in the middle of the road. The noise grew louder. Suddenly a large, indistinct shape materialised out of the smoke ahead. Susie! My heart pumped with relief. Nan’s little palomino had come back for me.
I was wrong. The shape didn’t turn into a galloping horse. It was a bull. Charging straight at me. At about a hundred kilometres per hour.
17
NUMBER 413
Time stood still.
In the second or two before Chainsaw hit me, my brain went into overdrive. It told me that Chainsaw was going the wrong way. He was running towards the fire, not away from it. My brain also noted that Chainsaw’s head was raised. If he’d been charging, his head would be lowered. And he looked confused, not angry.
Make your surroundings work for you, I remembered.
Chainsaw didn’t see me until the last moment. He swerved to one side, struck me a glancing blow and thundered past. I spun in a circle. My crutches went flying. As I toppled to the road, one of Chainsaw’s sledgehammer hooves missed my head by centimetres.
I barely noticed the close call. Dragging past me through the dust was a long piece of rope. I made a desperate lunge for it.
Here’s what my brain had worked out as Chainsaw charged towards me: the old bull was panicked and disoriented; he didn’t know which way to go. I knew which way to go, but I could barely walk. Together, with my brain and Chainsaw’s brawn, we might be able to escape the bushfire.
It was a good plan but the reality was daunting. I would have to succeed where 412 professional rodeo riders had failed. I would have to ride Chainsaw.
First I had to stop him. I grabbed the rope and held on grimly. The other end was tied round the galloping bull’s neck. Chainsaw weighed a ton. I weighed sixty kilos. It was no contest.
Dragging along the road a couple of metres behind Chainsaw’s swaying rump, I wasn’t slowing him down at all. His big plate-sized hooves flashed in my face. I was eating his dust, literally. Soon my eyes were so full of grit that I had to close them. My front burned from friction with the road. It grew hotter and hotter as my borrowed clothes – Adam’s jacket, Pop’s trousers – became thin and shredded. Soon it would be just my bare skin versus the gravel road. Definitely no contest. I let go.
I rolled a couple of times, then lay still. Not for long. I could still feel heat, but this was a different kind of heat. A great crackling roar filled my ears. When I raised my head, I saw a terrifying sight. A wall of flames towered above the treetops ahead. It must have been fifty metres high and seemed to be rushing towards me. The heat wa
s unbelievable. When I stood up, it nearly bowled me over.
Chainsaw was ten metres further up the road, ten metres closer to the firefront. He stood motionless, watching the approaching flames. Then he turned his head and looked at me. His eyes were red and half-closed. Big tears dribbled down from them. It dawned on me what was wrong with him. He was nearly smoke-blind. No wonder he seemed so lost and confused. I hopped towards him, talking soothingly as I approached. Chainsaw allowed me to come right up to him and pat his heaving flank.
So far so good. Ignoring the heat and the din of the approaching firestorm, I took a firm hold of the loop of rope tied around Chainsaw’s tree-trunk neck. Although he was the size of a car, he wasn’t as tall as Susie. Problem was he had no saddle and no stirrups. This is lunacy, I thought. But it was my only option.
‘Okay, old fella, don’t freak out on me,’ I said nervously.
I hauled myself clumsily onto Chainsaw’s back.
There was no reaction. He simply stood there as I pivoted my body around and sat up in a riding position, my legs splayed wide like a mahout on an elephant. I held the rope collar firmly in both hands.
‘Giddy up!’ I said.
Chainsaw didn’t move. I had been sitting on him for about ten seconds. That’s longer than any rider in history. But, as far as I was concerned, those were ten wasted seconds. Time was precious. The firefront was about a hundred metres away. I saw a tree literally explode, sending a rain of flaming branches and burning bark in all directions.
‘C’mon Chainsaw, get moving!’
I kicked his ribs. That only hurt my sore feet. Chainsaw stood still. He had never been ridden before except in a rodeo arena and he didn’t know what I wanted. I turned the collar of Einstein’s jacket up against the terrible heat of the approaching flames. The heat was bothering Chainsaw too, but not as much as the smoke. His eyes were running like leaking taps. He flicked an ear, then shook his head vigorously from side to side, trying to clear his vision.
‘It’s fire, Chainsaw,’ I cried. ‘You’ve got to run away from it!’
He was nineteen years old. For a bull, that’s about a hundred, so it isn’t surprising that he was confused by everything that was going on.
The firestorm was descending on us like a flaming tsunami. There was no time to hang about. Dragging at Chainsaw’s rope collar, I pulled it round until I could reach the knot. Then I tugged the rope’s loose end up and coiled it on the bull’s withers until just a metre was left. With one hand gripping the rope collar, I swung the loose end like a whip in my other hand and whacked Chainsaw on the rump. It worked. He began walking slowly away from the fire. Walking, not running.
The fire was only fifty metres away. It roared as loud as a jumbo jet. The air rippled and quivered with heat. And Chainsaw was walking!
‘Get a move on!’ I yelled, whacking him again.
He didn’t speed up. Crazy old bull. Didn’t he realise we’d be cooked in about thirty seconds?
Part of the fire had already caught up with us. Not far to our left was the black silhouette of the fiercely burning truck.
I should never have tried to save Chainsaw, I thought bitterly. I should have stayed on Susie and looked after myself. Now, because of a senile old bull who didn’t even have the sense to run away from a bushfire, I was going to …
BOOM!
18
TRAVELLING ZOO
According to Pop, there was only one thing that Chainsaw feared. Fireworks.
Some idiot had thrown a firecracker into his trailer at a rodeo once. Chainsaw went psycho. He completely demolished the trailer, then totalled two parked cars and a caravan.
If I ever meet the person who threw the firecracker, I would like to shake his hand. Because to a bull that’s afraid of fireworks, an exploding truck must seem like the mother of all firecrackers.
The blast from the truck’s detonating fuel tank nearly blew me off Chainsaw’s back. Luckily I was able to hold on, because next thing I knew the old bull was running for his life. For both our lives. Away from the exploding truck and away from the firestorm.
It was a wild, bumpy, terrifying ride. Doubly terrifying because I knew that to fall off Chainsaw’s back would be fatal. He wasn’t going to stop for me or for anything. It was every man and bull for himself. I twisted both hands through his rope collar and held on.
Pretty soon we began overtaking animals. The echidna. A koala. Lizards, snakes, possums, centipedes, wombats, lyrebirds. Even a spotted quoll. It was like a travelling zoo. This time all of us were going the same way. There was only thing on our minds: survival.
A small yellow and green bird, some kind of honeyeater, landed on Chainsaw’s neck and hitched a ride. Other birds weren’t so lucky. Suffocated from flying through the smoke, or simply exhausted, they fell from the sky and landed fluffed up on the road.
I would have liked to help them and the other animals, too. There was room on Chainsaw for more passengers than just the honeyeater and me. But I was helpless to do anything. It was survival of the fittest, the fastest, the smartest. I hoped the slower creatures would find burrows to crawl into or streams to lie in. I hoped the fallen birds would get a second wind and take to the air again.
Most of all, I hoped that Chainsaw would keep going. Already he was chuffing like a steam train.
For all his panting and blowing, I could still hear the roar of the fire. I could still feel its searing heat on the back of my neck. In the last few minutes the hot northerly wind seemed to have picked up, or perhaps it was the fire generating a wind of its own. Dust and smoke eddied around us. A sudden whirlwind nearly blew the honeyeater off Chainsaw’s neck. For a moment the stricken bird hung upside down by one tiny twig-like foot, its eyes closed, its wings flapping feebly.
I grabbed the honeyeater and stuffed it gently into one of the badly shredded jacket pockets. There was nothing I could do for all the other animals and birds, but I could save this one. I hoped I could save it. Everything depended on Chainsaw.
Or did it? Over the roar of the flames, I became aware of another noise. It grew louder.
Thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa!
A kangaroo? No, this was louder, more mechanical. It was a sound I’d heard on another occasion when my life hung in the balance.
I was saved!
19
FITTEST, FASTEST, SMARTEST
Chainsaw heard it too. His ears twitched. We both lifted our heads to the sky. Thumpa thumpa thumpa. The air seemed to quiver. I worked one hand free of the rope and raised it in the air, ready to wave when the helicopter came into view.
It didn’t come into view. The sound passed right overhead. The helicopter couldn’t have been more than fifty metres above the road, yet I saw nothing, not even a shadow. The smoke was too thick.
‘Hey, I’m down here!’ I yelled, waving my hand like an idiot. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’
I could have saved my breath. How was the pilot going to hear me over the noise the helicopter was making? The sound moved away.
Soon all I could hear was Chainsaw’s chuffing breath and the roar of flames. I tried to suppress my disappointment by telling myself that someone was looking for me. Nan and Pop must have reported me missing. It made me feel less alone to know there was a search on. The helicopter would be back. It was only a matter of time before they found me.
We just had to keep ahead of the firestorm until that happened.
Chainsaw had slowed to a trot. His head was hanging, his breath came in great wheezing gusts. Dust and soot clung to his sweaty coat. I leaned forward and patted his heaving ribcage. Poor old guy, he was just about done in. I wondered how much longer he could keep going. It didn’t matter, I told myself. Soon the helicopter would find us.
Us? The helicopter wasn’t looking for us, it was looking for me. Chainsaw would be left behind. It didn’t seem right. The gutsy old bull had saved my life. But there was no way a helicopter could lift him out of the bushfire’s path. It would take a special harness
to do that. I would have to leave Chainsaw behind.
It wasn’t fair.
Survival of the fittest, the fastest, the smartest. On that basis, Chainsaw had earned the right to live. He was fitter than me, and faster. Two out of three. As for intelligence, Chainsaw was smart enough to do what he’d been bred to do better than any other bull in the history of Australian rodeo – 412 cowboys could attest to that. I only managed to ride him because he was blinded and confused by the smoke. And he was a hundred years old in bull years.
‘I’ll stick with you, old fella,’ I said.
But I was still listening for the helicopter as I spoke.
20
TWISTER
In the end I didn’t have to make a choice between staying with Chainsaw or being rescued. The helicopter pilot didn’t find me. He wasn’t even looking.
Ten minutes later the wind changed direction and a gap opened in the smoke ahead. I saw a blue and white helicopter crossing the tea-coloured sky with a large orange bucket dangling on cables beneath it. A faint haze of water trailed down from the bucket. The helicopter wasn’t looking for me. It was conducting a water-bombing operation on the bushfire.
The opening in the smoke revealed something else as well. The ridges on either side of us – Copperhead Spur to our right, and the longer, lower ridge to our left – were both blazing from end to end.
I realised what had happened. Pushed along by the stronger winds up in the high country, the bushfire had raced ahead along both ridges, outflanking the valley we were following in a long deadly pincer movement. Chainsaw and I were caught in the middle. But not trapped.
There was still a way out.
So far the fire hadn’t moved down from the two ridges. A narrow strip of unburned forest stretched ahead all the way to the mouth of the valley. If we could get there before the flames moved down off the ridges, or the firestorm caught up with us from behind, we might still have a chance.
