by Justin D'Ath
Everything went black.
18
SAND DUNES, SAND DUNES, SAND DUNES
I lifted my face out of the hot, suffocating sand and spat out a mouthful of grit. Powderfinger and Emu were nowhere in sight. Struggling to my feet, I raced to the top of the dune. I guessed it had been about two minutes since I’d taken my tumble – Emu and Powderfinger were probably half a kilometre away by now. Luckily my estimation was wrong. They were just over the rise. Emu had abandoned ship seconds after I fell. Dragging on the reins, he was leading the reluctant camel up the slope towards me.
‘Powderfinger smelled a lady camel, I reckon,’ he said cheerfully.
The distraction of his wild relatives was too much; Powderfinger would no longer go the way he was supposed to. Every time Emu and I tried to remount him, he veered off in the wrong direction. Finally we gave up. Pulling the snorting camel around, Emu began leading him on foot, with me perched up on the saddle like a sheik.
Emu’s cowboy boots weren’t designed for walking on sand. After a short distance, he stopped and removed them. He threaded them upside down onto the branches of a dead gidgee. They were two-hundred-dollar boots and he was going to leave them behind.
‘Pass them up to me – I’ll carry them,’ I offered.
Emu was busily tying his red-and-black football socks around another branch. ‘Nah,’ he said casually. ‘I’ll get them on the way back.’
Barefoot, Emu was much faster. He led us along at a steady jog. But I wondered how long he could keep it up. I knew from last night how hard it was to run across the dunes. I also knew, thanks to my recent fall, how unbelievably hot the sand was. His feet must have been burning.
‘Let me have a go for a while, Emu,’ I called.
He half turned and grinned up at me from inside his red-chequered hood. His dark skin glistened with perspiration and I could see his rib cage heaving in and out.
‘I’m a good runner,’ he puffed. ‘That’s why they call me Emu.’
He kept running. I hoped he knew where he was going. To me, the sand dunes all looked the same. Emu didn’t even have a watch to tell him where north was. After twenty more minutes, I made him stop. I slid from Powderfinger’s saddle and handed Emu the drink bottle. ‘You’re going to kill yourself,’ I said.
Emu took a small sip, then wiped the sweat out of his eyes. ‘Your brother might die if we take too long.’
‘He will die if you drop dead from heat exhaustion,’ I told him.
From then on we took it in turns. I would lead Powderfinger and Emu for five or six minutes, then we’d swap. I wasn’t as fast as Emu (no way was I going to take off my boots!) but at least the stockman’s brief spell in the saddle gave him time to rest.
It was hard yakka. By midafternoon we were swapping places at one- or two-minute intervals. Even Emu had slowed to a walk. Powderfinger still hadn’t forgotten the wild camels: each time we tried to ride him in tandem, the pig-headed animal veered off in the wrong direction. We had no alternative but to continue our exhausting relay – one in the saddle, the other stumbling along in front, holding Powderfinger’s rope and leading him along like an oversized dog.
The heat was unbelievable. I didn’t know how much longer we could keep it up. We were nearly out of water and I was starting to see spots again.
Red spots.
There were two of them. The nearer one hung low in the sky about five hundred metres ahead. The second red spot sat on the shimmery horizon far to our left. They looked real. But they weren’t flares, they weren’t Min Min lights, and they didn’t appear to be moving. I was having a spell in the saddle at the time, so I had a better view of the red spots than Emu did. Not that I expected he would see them – people don’t see each other’s hallucinations. But as we drew closer, the spots didn’t fade or disappear like the other hallucinations I’d seen. They grew larger and more distinct.
‘Emu, what’s that?’
He shaded his eyes. ‘Looks like flags.’
His eyes were sharper than mine; from the crest of the next dune, I saw that he was right. The red spots were flags. They were about a kilometre apart and hung limp at the top of their poles.
‘Are there flags at Tilden Bore?’ I asked hopefully.
Emu shook his head. ‘Might be a different camp.’
‘I hope whoever it is has got a mobile phone.’
‘Or a two-way radio,’ Emu added.
We were in for a disappointment. When we reached the first flag, there was no sign of a camp. There was no sign of anything except the other flag in the distance – and sand dunes, sand dunes, sand dunes, in every direction. It was weird – almost like aliens had landed and planted flags to show they had been here. The barren red landscape even looked a bit like a scene from another planet.
‘Give me another look at the map,’ Emu said. He spent a minute studying it, then folded it and passed it back up. ‘Tilden Bore’s that way.’ He pointed slightly to the right of our present course.
I wasn’t nearly as confident as Emu as we made our way down the side of the sand dune. How could he possibly know where we were? There were no landmarks anywhere, just the two mysterious red flags that didn’t mark anything.
But I was wrong about that – they did mark something.
‘Look!’ Emu cried two minutes later.
We had just come through a gap between two dunes. This time I was leading and Emu was in the saddle. Directly ahead, swimming slightly in the heat haze, was the dark rectangle of a building.
19
‘HIT THE DECK!’
Something seemed wrong. As we approached the building, I noticed that the wall facing us was crisscrossed with wooden beams. It looked more like the inside of a wall than the outside. There were no windows, no doors, no roof. Two extra-long beams leaned against it, one at each end, like supports.
Emu pointed over to the left. ‘There’s more over there,’ he said.
We were clear of the dunes now, at the head of a long sandy valley. About forty metres to our left stood a second wooden structure, identical to the one in front of us. Beyond it, spaced at regular intervals, were four more. The two farthest away were nearly side-on to us. From that angle, we could see they weren’t buildings at all. They were just thin, wall-like structures propped up with wooden beams – billboards of some kind. I didn’t know what to make of them. What would anyone be advertising out here?
Emu raised his eyebrows. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he said. Like his eyes, his ears were better than mine, too.
I held my breath and listened. After a few seconds, I heard something. Although very faint, the sound was unmistakeable. It was a truck or a four-wheel drive. Coming in our direction.
Please have a phone or a two-way radio, I prayed, straining my eyes into the shimmering heat haze.
The valley before us was roughly four hundred metres wide by about two kilometres long. The engine noise came from the other end. I could see a cloud of red dust rising into the air, but the vehicle itself was lost in the mirage that pooled like a silver lake along the valley floor.
‘Can you see anything?’ I asked Emu.
He stood up in the stirrups. ‘Just dust.’ Then he made Powderfinger kneel and swung nimbly to the ground. ‘Your turn to ride, Sam.’
I shook my head. I’d had enough camel riding for one day – for a lifetime, actually. ‘I think I’ll walk,’ I said.
Emu rubbed his backside. ‘Me, too,’ he said.
There was no longer any need to hurry. The vehicle was coming in our direction. It would reach us soon enough. Leading Powderfinger by his rope, we began walking to meet it.
There was a lot of dust, I thought, for just one vehicle.
Over the past few hours I had largely forgotten about the terrorists. The heat, the lack of water, my growing concern for Nathan (who’d been underground for nearly twenty hours by now) had pushed all other thoughts from my mind. But I was about to be reminded.
‘Leaping lizards!’ gasped Emu
. He stopped so suddenly that Powderfinger nearly knocked him over.
‘What is it?’ I asked, frowning at him.
He didn’t say anything, simply pointed.
I shaded my eyes.
Oh myyyy gooooooooosh!
There were six of them. Spaced roughly fifty metres apart, they came rumbling towards us in a line that stretched from one side of the valley to the other. All we could see were their turrets, floating above the rippling silver haze like strange alien spacecraft. The lower parts of them – their massive armoured bodies, their caterpillar tracks – were lost in the mirage.
Tanks.
‘Quick!’ I cried. ‘Get behind the billboard!’
Heads down, we made a dash for the nearest billboard, dragging Powderfinger behind us. The distance was only thirty metres, but it seemed like three hundred.
‘Did they see us?’ Emu asked as we cowered, sweating and puffing, in the billboard’s thin shadow.
‘I guess we’ll find out,’ I said breathlessly.
Up close, the billboard was small. It was barely large enough to hide a camel. Emu had to wrap both arms around Powderfinger’s neck to stop him peering over the top. I leaned against one of the rough wooden beams that propped up the structure and listened to the rumble of the approaching tanks.
‘Even if they didn’t see us, they’ll find us if we stay here,’ whispered Emu.
‘What else can we do?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe my bad luck. Twice in about eighteen hours I’d blundered into the terrorists’ secret training operation. Last night had been bad enough, but this time I’d done it in broad daylight. Good one, Fox!
‘I guess we could make a run for it,’ Emu said.
I didn’t respond immediately. I was listening to the tanks. Their engine noise had changed from a deep rumble to a quiet hum. Cautiously, I peered around the edge of the billboard. The tanks were eight or nine hundred metres away, still half submerged in the mirage. Their engines were idling, but they were no longer moving.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Emu, who couldn’t look because he had his hands full keeping Powderfinger under control.
Before I could answer, one of the tanks belched a yellow ball of flame. There was a whistling sound, followed by a loud CRACK. The billboard next to ours shuddered as a spray of woodchips and debris flew out the back of it.
‘Jinglers!’ gasped Emu, struggling to keep Powderfinger from bolting. ‘They’re shooting at us!’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Unless they’re very bad shots.’
Another tank fired. CRACK! It hit one of the other billboards.
‘What are they shooting at then?’ Emu asked.
A third shell came whistling up the valley. This one struck the billboard at the far end, taking out one of its wooden support struts. The whole structure turned sideways, allowing me to see what was on the front of it: a large red circle, surrounded by a series of expanding black circles.
Uh oh! I thought.
Before I had time to explain to Emu what was going on, I saw a yellow cannon flash from the tank at our end of the line.
‘Hit the deck!’ I cried.
20
GOING DOWN FIGHTING
Even as the words left my mouth, I knew it was too late.
KER-RACK!
A huge shock wave drove me face down into the sand with the force of a pile-driver. All the wind was knocked out of me. I saw stars. For a few seconds I was completely out of it.
Then someone was gripping my arm, roughly shaking me. ‘Sam? Are you orright?’
Still groggy, I looked up. Emu was crouched next to me. He had lost the shirt from around his head and his hair stood up in a wild, bushy tangle.
‘I thought you said they weren’t shooting at us!’ he gasped.
My ears were ringing and it was hard to hear him. ‘They’re not,’ I said. ‘They don’t know we’re here. It’s target practice.’
‘Target practice?’ said Emu, looking confused.
I pointed up at our billboard. ‘Problem is, we’re hiding behind one of the targets.’
Two metres above us, a large splintery hole had been blasted through the wood. It was exactly in line with where Powderfinger had been standing last time I’d looked. Dreading what I was about to see, I slowly swivelled my eyes sideways. And heaved a big sigh of relief. Instead of a dead camel, all I saw was Powderfinger’s saddle. Or what remained of his saddle. It lay upside down in the sand fifteen metres away, among a scatter of spilled straw, broken girth straps and bits of splintered wood.
‘What happened to Powderfinger?’ I asked.
‘The shell knocked his saddle clean off,’ Emu said. He pointed. Far in the distance, a galloping camel was disappearing over the crest of a sand dune. ‘Gave him a proper scare. I couldn’t hold him.’
I shook some wood splinters from my hair. ‘Do you think the terrorists saw him?’
‘I reckon,’ said Emu. ‘But only after his saddle got blown off. They probably think he’s a wild one.’
There was another loud CRACK from further down the line of targets, and Emu and I flattened ourselves to the ground. We lay there for a few seconds, with our faces only a few centimetres apart. Emu looked terrified, which was exactly how I felt. What were we going to do? We were hiding behind a target and six terrorist tanks were firing shells at us! I was all set to leap up and run. But somewhere in my brain, the voice of reason started talking to me.
Keep a cool head, bro, it said, in a voice exactly like Nathan’s.
It saved our lives.
When the target next to ours took another direct hit, Emu panicked and started to get up. I would have followed him had it not been for Nathan’s advice. Instead of jumping up, I grabbed Emu’s shoulder and pulled him down beside me. And not a moment too soon.
KER-RACK!
We were showered with a stinging shrapnel of sawdust and splinters. Above us, exactly where our heads would have been if we’d stood up, was a hole the size of a baseball.
‘Thanks,’ Emu said softly.
‘Don’t thank me, thank my brother.’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said. ‘Are you okay?’
He nodded. ‘I guess so. But we’ve got to get out of here. Let’s make a run for it.’
‘No,’ I whispered, holding him down. ‘We’ve got to stay here, Emu. If we lie flat on the ground, they might keep shooting over us.’
‘You’re crazy,’ he said. ‘We can’t stay here!’
I looked up at the two ragged holes. Emu was right: staying behind the target was crazy. But if we showed ourselves, we’d be targets. It was about a hundred and fifty metres to the top of the nearest sand dune. With six tanks firing at us, we wouldn’t stand a chance.
‘What do you suggest, then?’ I asked. I was right out of ideas.
Emu opened his mouth to speak, but before he got a word out …
KABOOM!
The ground shook, the air vibrated, and the target two along from ours exploded in a blinding yellow flash. Emu and I watched, open-mouthed, as a massive fist of boiling flame punched fifty or sixty metres into the blue desert sky.
The terrorists were using incendiaries now. Exploding shells. The next one to hit our target would blow us to smithereens.
Emu turned to me. ‘We’ll have to crawl,’ he whispered.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer. Because he was no longer there.
I shuffled on my belly to the end of the target and looked round. Emu was already seven or eight metres away, in full view of the tanks, crawling towards them!
And he reckoned I was crazy!
‘Keep low to the ground,’ he called over his shoulder.
I had no choice but to follow. Actually, I did have other choices, but they all involved getting blown up. If I was going to die, I thought, I might as well go down fighting.
It wasn’t going to be much of a fight, though. Two unarmed boys against six
tanks. No contest. I had only gone about twenty metres when a shell whistled right overhead.
KABOOM!
I felt myself lifted off the ground, then I was bodysurfing across the desert on a rolling red wave of sand. The ride only lasted a second or two, then the wave dumped me in a heap.
I saw stars. I felt like I’d been in a car crash. But at least I was alive, and nothing felt broken. Rubbing my eyes and spitting out sand, I started to sit up. Only to find myself flattened again. Not by an explosion this time, but by Emu.
‘Sorry about that, Sam,’ he panted. ‘But you’ve got to keep your head down.’
I pushed him off me and rolled over. In one direction were the fiercely burning remains of the target that had been our refuge until thirty seconds ago. In the other direction were the six terrorist tanks.
‘What difference does it make?’ I asked. ‘We’re sitting ducks.’
Emu shook his head. ‘Long as we stay low down, the terrorists can’t see us.’
I didn’t get it. ‘How can they not see us?’
‘It’s something my uncle taught me for hunting kangaroos,’ Emu said. He pointed at the tanks. ‘See how only the top of them pokes up out of the heat haze? If we stay low like hunters, they can’t see us.’
Finally it made sense. The mirage that lay like silver water across the valley floor was screening us from the terrorists’ view. We just had to keep our heads down.
‘But why are we going towards them, Emu?’
He indicated the sand dunes that surrounded the valley on all sides. ‘We can’t go up there. As soon as we start to climb – boom, boom.’ He made a firing motion with his finger.
I had to hand it to Emu: he was pretty smart.
‘So where are we going?’ I asked as we started crawling towards the tanks again.
‘There’s a creek bed just there.’ He pointed ahead of us. ‘See those sticks? We might find a place to hide.’
