Girl in an Empty Cage

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 2 - Helicopter X

  Vic was flying low and fast, enjoying the thrill as he twisted his helicopter through the gorges of the Fitzmaurice River. He had done a job between Wyndham and Derby yesterday and was due at Timber Creek tomorrow to do a scenic trip for some tourists who wanted to see the country where the Victoria River cut through the ranges south of the town forming a series of spectacular carved out river valleys. These people were obviously well heeled and, in the wet season, regular work was quiet; so today he had a day to kill in Timber Creek, just a a sleepy place on the Victoria River, barely more than a two horse town.

  He logged his flight with flight control on leaving Wyndham, putting in a flight path from Wyndham Airport direct to Timber Creek.

  But, feeling bored with the idea of a whole day in this quiet little backwater and knowing he had full fuel tanks and a couple of spare jerry cans, giving plenty of flying time, he had made a diversion from his logged route, flying east north east over the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, a place of monumental tides, rather than going south east direct to the town. As he crossed over the Gulf he noted the tide in its huge river estuaries was full but still running in. That fitted with the almost new moon he had seen late yesterday evening.

  He had been avoiding reading the document Susan had given him on the tiny memory chip. He knew he needed to read it; he had bullied Susan into giving it to him. He did not feel proud about that, he had promised Mark that he would take care of her. Yet, in his rage, he had slapped her up; he could still see the shock and the red marks outlined on her face from when he had backhanded her.

  Now, even though he should still be mad with her, he just felt sorry for her. It had come to him, with dawning clarity as she talked, that Mark had done something really, truly awful and she had found out. Yes, she had killed him. But Mark was a wild and dangerous man, notwithstanding being a brother, always living at the edge and sometimes way past the edge. Vic had sensed in Mark a dangerous spirit that sometimes drove him to do bad things.

  So something bad had happened between them which had tipped her over the edge. In the heat of it Mark ended up dead. It somehow seemed a fitting way for his mate to go, killed by a lover then given to crocodiles, which were his other true love.

  He knew part of the story of the bad Mark lay hidden in the diary which Susan had given him. But he wanted to hold on, just for a little bit longer, to the good memory of his friend. That was the real reason why he was avoiding reading it. He knew that, once he read this story, his mind’s image of his friend must mind must inevitably be transformed for worse. He did not want to go there.

  So, in the meantime, Susan was ‘holding the can’ for this awful thing. He was sure Mark would not want that. So he must bring himself to read and understand Mark’s story, then decide what to do. But, for now, he was in avoidance mode, at least for another few days. This helicopter thrill ride was part of this avoidance, just like the other things he had done to fill up his days since he found out about Mark’s diary, days when he could have found time and means to begin reading, but did not want to.

  He justified it that it was still only a few days after Christmas, actually the day before New Year’s Eve. So most shops were still closed, his laptop could not read this tiny memory card that Susan had given him, he must buy a Micro SD card holder that would fit into a regular memory card slot. He had not got the chance to buy one yet, he had not been in a town on a day when the shops were open – they were his excuses anyway, even if only half true.

  He would go into Katherine for a couple days after New Year’s Day and he would do it then. In the meantime he was flying in one of those beautiful remote places of the Territory, the Fitzmaurice Gorge. He had only ferried over the top of it in his helicopter a couple times, and looking down as he flew over he had marvelled at the massive cliffs that fringed this river, which was in the middle of nowhere. In his mind he had always thought of this block of country as an empty place and he had heard other locals talk of it that way too, the emptiest and most godforsaken part of the NT, so hard to get to and almost completely uninhabited. Even the Daly Reserve blackfellas, his coastal cousins, rarely came here and he knew why. It was too rough to walk through and, with the big tides and lots of supersized crocs, only a madman would come here in a small boat, particularly a dugout canoe.

  Today he had decided he would have an up close look. This morning there was a big fresh flow thundering down the gorge, the result of big storm rain up around the back of Pine Creek.

  It was such a blast skimming over thundering white water, running hundreds of metres wide, with beetling cliffs rising alongside. It was sort of like those Gulf Rivers, but even wilder, here the wet season flows had combined with the thundering tides to be just awesome.

  It was hard to think of a more inaccessible place, particularly in the wet, it must be a hundred miles to the nearest trafficable road, not even a rough bush track within 50 miles. God help anyone who got stuck out here. No one would ever find them and it was hard to see any way to get out of a place like this.

  The helicopter engine was running like a dream, such a steady and sweet thump came from the blades of his metal bird. He passed a big creek running in from the right hand side, swelling the river with its own flow. There was a big sharp turn coming up, a hard turn to the right, with cliffs rising up straight ahead; he would go with it using his reflexes and the engine’s power to pull him and his chopper around the river bend before it hit those beetling cliffs. It would take full power to pull the old bird around this tight corner.

  The cliff came racing towards him. He held off on his turn, wanting the thrill of pushing the limit of the machine. Now he must turn, it was barely a hundred yards to the cliff, right directly in front and he was closing at seventy knots. He had to make a thirty degree right turn to stay in the gorge and there was nowhere else to go; even with his machine at full power he could not pull a sharp enough climb to get out of here.

  At that last critical moment when he knew he had to respond, he pulled the control stick hard right.

  What was wrong? It would not move; it felt jammed solid. He tried to flare up, jammed that way too. He threw all his weight behind the stick to move it right. It felt like steering a Mack truck without power steering. He managed to move it a few millimetres with huge effort, turning the metal bird to the side so the skids came up towards the cliff.

  With sudden clarity he knew it was way too late, this would be his date with destiny. He had just a half second to turn off the power before the helicopter slammed into the cliff face, fifty feet above the raging river. He reckoned his speed was fifty knots in that split second before impact.

  He felt a fleeting sense of his life passing before his eyes as this metal thing crumpled around him and his body crumpled inside. Then, as full impact hit, he felt nothing.

  The hawks, soaring overhead, watched as this strange metal bird first attached itself to the cliff with a crashing and grinding sound and then slowly fell away into the river below. It was picked up by the raging white water and swept along with the current around the bend and then on down the river. For a minute or two it was partly visible on the surface as it bobbed along. Then it vanished from view.