On the Run

by Tristan Bancks

  “No,” she said quietly.

  They sat for a few minutes. Cawing and buzzing all around. The flow of the river.

  “Sam Gribley is a survivor. You could drop him in the desert or on the moon and he would find something to eat. We have to think like that too.”

  “Is Sam Gribley real or made-up?” Olive asked.

  Ben put his wet shoes back on without socks. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. He headed for the giant tree, where he had seen the hard green fruit lying on the ground. Olive followed.

  He picked up one of the pieces. “Wonder what these are.”

  “Figs,” she said.

  He looked at her.

  “It’s a fig tree,” she said, as though he should know.

  He flicked open his knife and sliced off a piece of the fruit. He put it into his mouth. It was bitter and crispy. He spat it out, offered the fruit to her. She put her thumb in her mouth, cuddled her dirty stuffed rabbit, and shook her head.

  “C’mon. We’re going to find food,” Ben said. “There must be heaps out here.”

  FIRST NIGHT

  Imagining that your parents were dead was not a nice feeling, Ben found. Particularly when it was dark and mosquitoes were biting and you were sitting on the ground against a tree and you had no fire and your belly was empty and your little sister Olive had been crying and angry at you and you were angry at yourself.

  Life had always seemed hard at home. He had to walk to school and he only got to order lunch once a week and he had to wash the dishes sometimes and put the garbage out and feed the dog every day and shower and remember to brush his teeth. And he had to eat potatoes for dinner even though he didn’t like potatoes, except when they were in chip form.

  But then, at the cabin, things had seemed harder, with the not-knowing and Dad being more nervous and angry than ever and Ben trying to find out why there was a bag full of money hidden in the roof. Then Mum and Dad locked them in and the police came late at night and they had to escape on the raft.

  But now, lying here in the pitch-dark on the damp ground and feeling the deepest fear he had ever felt, he would have done anything to be at home or at the cabin. The cold swept up from the river, blowing through him, eating his muscles, clutching his bones.

  He listened. The shhhhh of the river calmed him a bit, but he was not listening for the river now. He was listening for the sounds beyond it, and he had never heard anything that scared him so much. It was as though the noises were on his skin and in his ears. Screeks and craaaarks and yowls from wild things all around.

  They had wandered for hours in the day and not found anything that Ben would call food. He had picked grasses, peeled bark, and crushed leaves in his fingers—searching and smelling and feeling for things to eat. Not even good things. Just things. He had thought about eating insects and, in the afternoon, he had eyed off the blue-spotted sandwich, but none of it was right.

  They had argued all day about whether to walk upstream or downstream. Ben had laid piles of wet hundred-dollar bills, about a quarter of the money, out in the afternoon sun and dried it. He half hoped that the police helicopter would return. In the end, they had stayed put, and as the sun went down they had each filled up on a bellyful of reddish river water and an unripe fig before snuggling into their tree root home. Ben’s stomach was not fooled.

  Now darkness had folded in on them. Ben desperately needed to go to the toilet but he would wait till morning. He had never even been camping before. He imagined the luxury of having a tent, fire, a flashlight, a sleeping bag, food. He had nothing. Just him, wilderness, Olive, fear. Fear was his fire, keeping him alert and alive. Growing up in a house in the suburbs, right next to a highway, had not prepared him for this. Playing thousands of hours of video games, watching hundreds of movies, playing soccer, helping out in the wrecking yard, watching game shows with Nan—none of it was useful to him now. Someone had pressed “reset” on his life. He had no pantry, no fridge, no shops, no cars, no lights, no bed, no blankets, no roof.

  He sat up straight, back against the tree. His bottom was wet and cold. He had large leaves beneath him, but they didn’t help. He was gripping a short, thick, heavy branch that he would use as a club if he had to.

  “I’ll go on watch first,” he had said to Olive. But he knew that he would be on watch second too. He would stay up all night. Someone had to protect them from animals and insects and strangers and ghosts and police lurking in that fine, silvery moonlight.

  Ben had a plan. If anything came for them, he would wake Olive and they would climb the tree. He had worked out the quickest route to the top. Olive was a good tree climber so she would be okay.

  He was glad he wasn’t out there alone. As the hours passed he watched the moon crawl slowly across the sky, in and out of the branches of the tree above. Each minute felt like forever. When his head drooped to his chest he pinched and even slapped himself. He focused on the moon. He thought about Pop. When Ben was little he would sit on Nan’s back stoop and they would look up at the moon and she would tell him that Pop was up there.

  “In the moon?” Ben would ask.

  “Yep,” she’d say. “Looking down on you. He loved you so much.”

  He hoped that Pop was looking down on him now. That someone, somewhere, was watching over him. And even though Pop had not met Olive before he died, Ben hoped that he would watch over her too.

  He needed a plan.

  Something to tell Olive.

  To make her think he knew what they should do.

  To look like they were in control. Not out.

  What are we going to do? she would say in the morning.

  And he would say …

  Nothing. He would say nothing.

  Icy bottom. Freezing fingers. Cold nose. Aching body.

  Plan. Why are we running?

  He could not remember.

  Running because … Mum and Dad did the wrong thing. Because of the money. Because of the police. Because the policeman had cut them off, forced them to run downhill to the raft. Then the gunshots. Dead? Maybe. Sometimes he felt certain the shots were for Mum and Dad. Other times he was sure they were okay.

  They could run into the wilderness. Go back to the cabin. Try to make it home to Nan. Or tell the police, hand themselves in.

  These were Ben’s final thoughts before sleep took him. He did not wake until he heard the footsteps. They were in his dream at first. A man’s feet, in boots, close and staggering through undergrowth. Then vines clutching the man’s legs, tendrils curling around him, trying to stop him. The man breaking the vines.

  But when Ben woke he still heard the steps. They were close. He stood, raising the stick. He wanted to wake Olive, but he was struck silent by the footsteps.

  Ben was sure he was about to die. That this person did not mean good things for him. He ruled out police officers. They don’t work alone, and Ben was sure it was just one person. Was it a person? The heaviness of the steps sounded like a man or some large animal. His father? Maybe Dad had come downstream in search of them? Should he say something?

  Closer now.

  Ben pressed himself back into the roots of the tree and squeezed his club tight, ready to beat whoever or whatever it was over the head, ready to protect Olive. Death could not be worse than this. At home he was scared by his parents arguing after he went to bed, hoping that Dad would not leave. But that did not compare to this feeling now.

  Slow steps. Close. Steady. Rustling in between. Dragging. Was it dragging something? Ben strained to see through the black, black night. Too late to wake Olive. Too late to climb the tree. He could not control this. It was not a stop-motion movie.

  TANGLED

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” Olive said.

  Ben slipped, one foot skidding into the cold river. He pulled himself up onto the boulder. He had his school backpack on and $982,300 in the bag in his hand. He had counted the money, some of it sun-dried and crispy, at first light. Olive had helped. Ben had decided to te
ll her everything. She had flipped out, could not believe that Mum would do this. Then she started planning what she would do with the money.

  “We should be going downstream,” she said.

  “Upstream,” Ben said.

  “Down.”

  “Up,” Ben said. “Back to the cabin. Back to Nan’s. She’ll know what to do.”

  They used the boulders at the edge of the river as their path, leaping from one to the next.

  “We shouldn’t have left the raft,” Olive said.

  “Feel free to drag it up the river if you like.”

  Ben had not slept after the thing went by in the night. He doubted he would ever sleep again. Not out here. He still didn’t know who or what it was or if, in that soup of darkness, dream, and fear, he had imagined it. In his next life, Ben planned to be brave.

  “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

  That line came to him. Who had said that? History teacher. Mr. Stone. Silver glasses, wild gray eyebrows.

  “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

  Was that true? He wanted to believe it, but he wondered if the person who had said it originally had ever been stuck in the wild with snakes and insects and bodies dragging by after midnight.

  They had to get back before dark.

  “We’ll get there by dusk,” he told Olive as they trudged uphill.

  “And what if the police are still there, Mister Smartypants?” Olive asked. She was just ahead of him.

  “Watch out for the mossy rocks.”

  “What if?” she asked again.

  “We’ll be careful.”

  What if Mum and Dad are dead? he wondered. He had not shared his fear with her.

  “I hate Mum and Dad.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Well, I do. They wrecked everything.”

  “They’re still our parents.”

  * * *

  Later, when the rocks became steeper and slipperier, they were forced to make a path through thick undergrowth beside the river. Scratchy lantana bushes with tiny pink, white, and yellow flowers grew everywhere. Green-leaved vines twisted through it. Tall palm trees soared upward, searching for light through the canopy.

  Upstream.

  They had been a day and a half without food. But they would eat tonight. They would make it to the cabin and they would find food there.

  “I can’t go anymore,” Olive said eventually. She stopped and dabbed at the cuts and grazes on her arm. She started to cry. Ben felt like crying too, but he could not. He was the father here, and Dad had assured him that real men don’t cry.

  “Don’t be a baby,” he snapped, pushing on through thick, bristly vines and ferns, blazing a trail. “I’ll have to leave you here.” He felt bad for being so harsh but unless he was tough on himself, tough on Olive, they would not make it back to the cabin before dark.

  Listen for the river, he kept saying to himself. Sometimes it was easier to veer away from the river, but he could not leave it behind.

  “I’m hungry,” Olive moaned, scrambling to catch up. “I want to buy something. We could eat anything in the whole wide world with all that money.”

  Ben was bone-hungry. Blood-and-bone-hungry. Mum always told him to eat less, exercise more. “You don’t want kids teasing you for being fat,” she would say when he asked for a sundae at the drive-thru. Mum thought that standing out or being teased was the worst thing in the world. Now he was eating less. Eating nothing. He wondered if she would be proud.

  “Do you like Mars Bars or Milky Ways better?” Olive asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ben said. “Don’t talk about food.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. Mars.”

  “I like Milky Ways,” she said. “Dogs or cats?”

  “I’ve never eaten either.”

  Olive laughed. “For a pet!”

  Ben sighed loudly. “Whatever. Cats.”

  “What about Golden?” she asked. “I like dogs. Lego or TV?”

  “Be quiet,” Ben said.

  “I like Lego,” she said. “You can do heaps more than just watch it. Do you like James or Gus better?”

  “Neither. I like them both. I miss those guys. I even miss school.”

  They walked on, absorbed in the bubbling and stirring of the river, the sunlight in dappled patches all around, always moving forward.

  “Do you think Uncle Chris knew?” Ben asked. He had been thinking about this a lot.

  Olive pulled her thumb out of her mouth. “He gave Dad the bag of money. And that dumb car.”

  “Dad always said Uncle Chris was dodgy.”

  “And now Dad’s dodgy too,” she said.

  Ben looked down at the bag of money. He had taken the money and run with it. What did that say about him?

  TEMPEST

  A camera flash. That’s how it looked at first. A bright flash a long way off. But then the wind came too, and he sat up, looking into the tall trees around him. The clouds moved quickly against the dead black sky, all lit up for a moment and then gone again. The lightning was mainly upstream. Olive had worked out that upstream was west, over the mountains. Then came the rumble, and the wind answered it, flurrying around him and whistling ice into his bones.

  He looked down at Olive who was lit in fits by the flickering white light. She rubbed her nose in a tired way and cuddled into herself for warmth, then jammed her thumb back into her mouth. Ben wished that he was a seven-year-old thumb-sucker lying by a river, eyes closed, three-quarters asleep, not knowing.

  Rush of water, dark of night, wink of lightning, ominous roar, tremble of body, whirling wind. And fear. Terrible fear.

  Choices.

  Ben had to believe he had choices even now, when it seemed he had none. His mind was foggy. How could he have been so stupid not to build a shelter when it was light? They had walked and walked till it was too late and the darkness had rushed to cover the sky. It had rained two nights since they had left home. The night they had been locked in the cabin and back in the motel, Rest Haven. Flickering fluorescent lights and bedbugs. Ben would have done anything to be lying on those bedbug-ridden couch cushions now.

  The first drop of rain landed on his scalp, and it was cold. His arms felt the big, biting splats, and soon he settled down into a deep shiver. It shook low and heavy through his bones like a train through a mountain tunnel. Hips, knees, ankles, wrists, elbows, shoulders, toes, fingers. That’s where it bit worst.

  “Shelter,” he whispered. He needed to find some but he couldn’t leave Olive here by the river. What shelter would he find? A cave? Not likely. And the fig trees were a long way downstream now. At the edge of the river here there were just tall, naked palm trees and lantana.

  The sky snarled and the wind picked up and the rain forest all around hissed and warned him not to enter. But he would. Had to. He stood, shouldered his backpack, and picked up Olive and Bonzo and the bag of money. Lightning lit Bonzo’s right eye, and it reminded Ben of the rabbit on the chopping stump.

  Ben stepped to another rock, heading up the bank, and the bag fell away from him. One of the handles tore and, in the flickering light, he saw four wads of cash fall through the broken zip. He panicked, even though he could not care less about the money now.

  He put Olive down and bumped her head on a rock and still she did not wake. He reached down and grabbed at one of the piles of cash on the rock and it slipped into a crack. It fell into the water and floated off down the river in the flashing white light. Fifty thousand dollars, he thought. It meant nothing. It could have been fifty cents.

  He stuffed three piles of money back into the bag and left it on the riverbank for the moment as the rain began to teem. He picked Olive up. The rain roared in his ears and thunder made the ground quake beneath his feet as he ran. He was so cold. Bushes slashed at him. He went on like this for five minutes.

  The dark outline of a giant tree, not a fig, loomed ahead, rising like a mushroom cloud i
n a blast of white lightning. Olive had pointed one of these trees out in the day as they forced their way upstream. He rested her against the trunk, still asleep. He ran out through the rain. He gathered fern fronds and anything soft that he could find and he ran back beneath the tree and made a bed for Olive. He laid her on it.

  Rain still pelted through the tree canopy, so he gathered branches from the ground around them. The pain of exhaustion sawed through him. Ben tried to erect something like a tepee over Olive. He put four, seven, ten sticks up into a cone shape as she slept. He used his knife to cut fern fronds and wove them through the sticks, trying to protect her from the wind.

  The money flickered into his mind, but, still, he left it, beside the river. For all he cared it could fall in and float away. He collapsed under the tree, ripped his backpack off, shivering, and the rain streamed down his face.

  Things will get better, he thought. This is as bad as it gets. As sleep gripped him, he had the feeling of melting down into the earth. There was no difference between him and the ground and the trees and the rain and the river. All one.

  THE END

  Scratched, bruised, tired, dehydrated, vomiting. That was how Ben found himself as the talons of first light scraped his eyelids. Lying on a flat rock on the edge of the fast-moving river, using the bag of money as a pillow. Water taking leave of his stomach.

  Mosquitoes had woken him an hour before dawn. With the storm gone, he had been drawn to the river. He’d vomited and fallen asleep on the rock, too delirious to worry about Olive back at the tree.

  “You okay, Thunderbolt?” said a croaky voice behind him.

  “Yep,” Ben said, his throat acid.

  “Why did you move me?”

  “Storm.”

  “I was sick in the night too,” she said.

  Ben felt it rise up in him again. He leaned over the edge of the rock and dry-retched, body tingling, trying to force whatever it was out of him. Nothing would come.

  Olive squatted and rested a hand on his back. “Are we going to die?”

  He splashed his face and looked upstream through the wall of water dripping from his brow. Exhausted, light-headed, still cold.