47 Degrees

by Justin D'Ath

  The man gives him a thumbs-up through the glass, then the white car drives off in the other direction.

  ‘What will we do now?’ Zeelie asks, placing Fly on the floor between her feet so she can wriggle out of her too-hot jacket.

  Her father checks the road in both directions before making a careful U-turn. He says, ‘Same as them, I suppose. We’ll head for Yea.’

  8

  GROWN UP

  Zeelie doesn’t see it, she just hears the bump.

  ‘Shoot!’ growls her father, as the van suddenly slows down.

  They are driving up the steep section, where the road winds its way over the lightly forested hills about halfway between Flowerdale and Yea.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Zeelie asks.

  ‘Wombat.’ Her father pulls over into the dusty bracken at the edge of the road and switches off the engine. ‘Stay here,’ he tells her and climbs out of the van.

  Zeelie waits until his door is closed, then she removes her seatbelt, puts Fly back on the floor and scrambles across to the driver’s seat. She uses the outside mirror to see what’s behind them. There isn’t much of a view, just a whole lot of smoke and the fuzzy outline of a tree. The mirror is adjusted for her father, who is a lot taller than Zeelie. She raises herself high in the seat and cranes her neck. Now she can see a narrow slice of road. There’s no sign of her father. But about 40 metres away, halfway around the last bend, a small, dark mound lies on the bitumen. Zeelie can barely make it out in all the smoke, but it must be the wombat.

  Poor thing, she thinks. Is it dead?

  Suddenly her father rises into the view. His head and shoulders fill the mirror. Standing side on to Zeelie, he rubs his nose. He’s staring down at something that she can’t see. Then he ducks out of sight again. Zeelie wonders what he’s doing. The wombat is nowhere near him, it’s way down the road. She cracks the door open a few centimetres and peers out through the gap. Wowsers, it’s so hot! She sees her father kneeling next to the back wheel, looking under the van.

  ‘Dad? Are you going to check the wombat?’

  He sees her and frowns. ‘It’s dead. We went right over it.’

  ‘You should check.’

  ‘There’s no need to, Zuls. Now close that door, you’ll be letting the heat in.’

  She doesn’t listen. She has a better view of the wombat through the partly open door – the mirror made everything look smaller. She draws in a big, hot breath.

  Did it move?

  ‘Dad! I think it’s alive!’

  He turns his head to look. A passing gap in the smoke allows them a clear, snapshot view of the run-over animal. There is no movement of any kind. Zeelie might have imagined it.

  ‘It’s dead,’ says her father. ‘But I’ll go and drag it off the road when I’m finished here. Now close that door, like I told you.’

  With that, he lies down on the road and wriggles under the van until only his legs are still visible. Zeelie doesn’t close the door. She’s watching the wombat closely. It moves again.

  ‘Dad! I think it’s alive!’

  ‘I’ll go and check in a few minutes,’ he says, his voice faint beneath the van.

  He doesn’t even care, she thinks. What if it is alive and another car comes around the corner and runs over it? What if it’s a mother with a tiny joey in its pouch?

  By this time, Fly has jumped up off the floor and crawled over onto Zeelie’s lap. She pushes him firmly back onto the passenger seat. Then she slips out through the driver’s door and quickly closes it behind her.

  Her father’s head is still under the van; he doesn’t see her walk past. He must have heard the door close though, but he’ll think she’s inside the van, not out on the road. There’s a fluttery sensation in Zeelie’s chest as she approaches the wombat. This is the second time today that she has disobeyed her father. But she’s nearly 13 now, not a baby. If she’d obeyed him the first time, Atticus would be dead. Now it’s a wombat – and possibly a tiny joey – that needs her.

  The wombat is lying in a big, brown heap in the middle of the road. It does look dead. Zeelie can see straightaway that it’s a male, so there won’t be a joey to rescue, either. Bummer! she thinks – it would have been so cool to find a joey. She stoops over the carcass. OMG, it’s shivering! It is alive! One small, open eye seems to look up at her as Zeelie crouches and extends a tentative hand to pat the injured animal.

  ‘Poor darling,’ she murmurs.

  Suddenly there is noise and light. Zeelie looks up, startled. All she sees is her own crouched shadow, projected like a hologram onto the moving wall of smoke that drifts across the road. From the other direction, from behind her, comes a scuffing sound, like paper ripping, only much louder. A car horn wails. Zeelie swings her head around and is blinded by headlights. She can’t move, there isn’t time. Somewhere deep in her brain, Zeelie once again hears her father warning her to stay in the van.

  She should have obeyed him.

  The skidding car stops less than two metres from her. Zeelie is still crouched on the road, paralysed by everything that’s happened. The car looks huge. For an indeterminate time, there is just the sound of the wind in the roadside trees and the thud thud thud of her racing heartbeat.

  I nearly died, she thinks, more surprised by this realisation than scared.

  Strong hands grip Zeelie’s upper arms and she is lifted to her feet.

  ‘Sweetie,’ says her father, wrapping her in a big, safe hug.

  Orange hazard lights come on. They turn the smoky air around them into a flashing lightshow, like special effects at a concert. There’s the creak of a car door opening.

  A woman says, ‘I only saw her just in time. Is she all right?’

  ‘You okay, Zuls?’ her father asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ she murmurs.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ her father says to the woman.

  Zeelie wonders why he’s sorry. Then she remembers what she was doing in the middle of the road in the first place. He’s sorry about the wombat.

  She isn’t thinking clearly.

  ‘It’s still alive,’ she says, pulling away from her father. ‘We have to take it to the vet.’

  They both stare down at the wombat. The woman comes to look, too. She’s wearing tight pink shorts that are totally wrong for someone her age, and her dimply thighs seem to wobble in the flashing orange hazard lights from her car.

  Her voice is kind, though: ‘I think it’s dead, love.’

  ‘It was shivering,’ Zeelie says.

  But there’s no movement now. A speck of ash settles on one of the wombat’s open eyes, and Zeelie thinks, Please blink. But the eye doesn’t.

  ‘Go back to the van, sweetie,’ her father says gently.

  This time Zeelie does as she’s told. As she walks back up the side of the road, she hears the two adults talking in low voices.

  ‘Poor kid,’ says the woman. ‘I must have scared the living daylights out of her.’

  ‘I think she’s more upset about the wombat.’

  ‘What was it doing on the road at this time of day? I thought they only came out at night.’

  ‘Normally that’s the case,’ Zeelie’s father agrees. ‘But today is hardly what you’d call normal. I guess it was running away from the fire, same as us. I’ll drag it off the road.’

  Zeelie doesn’t look back. She might be nearly 13, but all she wants right now is her mother. She decides to check the phone again – there might be a signal up here.

  But there is an unpleasant surprise waiting for Zeelie in the van. While she was gone, Fly has found her father’s phone in the little tray between the seats where she left it, and he’s chewed it to bits. The plastic casing is wrecked and the battery has fallen out. At least he hasn’t chewed the battery itself, Zeelie notes with relief. The stuff inside might have poisoned him.

  ‘Bad boy,’ she says, but she doesn’t really mean it. It was her fault for leaving Fly unattended. And for leaving the phone where he could reach it. He’s j
ust a puppy, and chewing things is what puppies do.

  But why pick Dad’s phone to chew? Oh boy!

  Putting Fly on the floor, where he can’t do any more harm, Zeelie tries to reassemble the phone. But it won’t go back together. One edge of the rear casing is shredded. And now Fly is chewing something else!

  ‘What have you got this time?’ she asks, working her fingers between his needle-toothed jaws. It’s the SIM card. Or what’s left of the SIM card – the shiny bit in the middle is gone, there’s just a rectangular hole where it used to be. Wowsers!

  ‘Did you swallow it, Fly?’

  Fortunately he didn’t. Zeelie finds the missing SIM fragment on the floor. But it’s cracked in two places and won’t fit back in where it’s supposed to go. The phone is kaput. Knowing that her father could return at any moment, Zeelie puts all the broken phone parts back in the glove box and shuts it. She tries to think what she’ll say to him. His phone is wrecked and it’s her fault. He’s going to be pretty mad!

  But when he climbs back into the van, her father doesn’t say a word. He just pats her shoulder. And he pats Fly too, which he totally wouldn’t do if he knew what the puppy has been up to while he was gone! Her father has peeled off the top part of his overalls so the empty sleeves flop down onto the floor, making him look like he’s got four legs. Perspiration beads his forehead and the dark patches under the arms of his shirt go almost all the way down to his waist. Buckling his seatbelt, he starts the engine and drives on up the hill in silence.

  Zeelie is glad that the van’s radio is on. It’s something to fill the guilty-feeling silence. But the news she hears on the radio is all bad. The fire seems to be everywhere. Zeelie listens to the names of towns that are either burning, or are under immediate threat: Kinglake, Chum Creek, Strathewen, Toolangi.

  ‘I keep waiting for them to say Flowerdale,’ she says.

  Her father removes one hand from the steering wheel and wipes the sweat off his palm on the leg of his overalls. They have reached the almost treeless section of road that will take them over the crest of the hill. Normally you can see almost all the way to Lake Eildon from here, but today there is only smoke.

  ‘Try the phone again,’ he says.

  Uh-oh. Zeelie nibbles her lower lip. ‘It’s broken.’

  ‘What do you mean, broken?’

  ‘It fell on the floor and I accidentally trod on it.’

  ‘Let me have a look.’

  ‘It’s broken, Dad. Trust me.’

  He pulls over to the side of the road and applies the handbrake. ‘Where is it?’

  Zeelie opens the glove box and shows him the phone. Her father takes both parts of the outer case and examines the shredded edges that are obviously the work of little sharp teeth.

  ‘I see,’ is all he says.

  ‘It was my fault, Dad. I shouldn’t have left it where Fly could get it.’

  ‘Where’s the SIM?’

  ‘It’s wrecked, too.’

  ‘Show me.’

  She finds both pieces of the SIM card and places them in her father’s palm.

  He shakes his head and sighs. ‘Well, that’s that then.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad. It was my fault.’

  ‘Never mind.’ He tosses everything back into the glove box. ‘Did you bring your phone?’

  ‘Yes. It’s in my suitcase.’

  ‘Good-oh. We’ll stop again where there’s a safer place to park and see if we can find it.’

  They continue driving. The engine noise seems louder than it was before. Zeelie remembers how her father was working under the van after they ran over the wombat. Something must have got damaged. But Zeelie is more sorry for the wombat than about the van. She takes a big, shuddering breath. So many bad things have happened today.

  ‘What will we do if our house does burn down?’ she asks.

  ‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,’ says her father. He reaches over and touches her arm. ‘All that really matters, Zeels, is that you, me, Mum and Lachy are safe.’

  ‘I hope they didn’t try to drive home.’

  ‘Of course they didn’t. Mum’s much too sensible to drive into a bushfire.’

  Zeelie hopes he’s right. But she has learned several things today, and one of them concerns her parents: they aren’t always right. The things they do aren’t always sensible. Her father’s fire plan, for example. Or her mother taking the Rodeo (with its tow bar), when all she had to do was fill up her car on the way home from work yesterday afternoon.

  ‘We should have left Rimu’s gate open,’ Zeelie says.

  Her father doesn’t look at her. ‘He would never have made it.’

  9

  YAY FOR YEA

  Zeelie watches as the first tidy front fences, letterboxes and driveways of Yea begin to scroll past the van’s windows. She remembers living in houses like those – regular houses in regular towns, where lovely clean water arrived through underground pipes, not from smelly rainwater tanks; where both kinds of phones worked, and the electricity always stayed on; where the wind could come from any direction and you still didn’t have to worry about bushfires.

  ‘Yay, we’re in Yea,’ she says, which is what Lachy says every time they come here.

  ‘Yay for Yea,’ says her father, which is what the rest of them say in response.

  But it feels strange – and wrong – to play the Yea game without her mother and her brother being there. Zeelie hopes they’re all right, wherever they are.

  Instead of taking the right-hand turn into the town centre as they normally do, her father steers the van left.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asks Zeelie.

  ‘Seymour. We can get onto the freeway from there.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘To Seymour or to Melbourne?’ he asks.

  ‘To wherever we’re going to stop next,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not sure. Do you need to stop?’

  ‘I’m a bit worried about Holly and Atti. It must be pretty hot back there.’

  ‘You’re right,’ says her father. ‘We’ll stop soon.’

  ‘Plus I’m getting a bit thirsty.’

  Her father clucks his tongue. ‘I had two bottles of water put aside, but I think I left them on the bench in the garage.’

  ‘Is there any in the back?’ she asks.

  ‘There’s some in the chilly bin,’ he says. Chully bun – it’s what they call an esky in New Zealand. ‘But it’s right underneath everything else.’

  ‘We can get my phone out, too. You said we’d stop and check it.’

  ‘In a minute,’ says her father. ‘Let’s see what’s going on here first.’

  There’s a police car ahead. It’s blocking the road like in a scene from a movie. Its blue and red lights wink dimly through the drifting skeins of smoke. As the van draws near, a policeman steps onto the road with one hand raised towards them.

  Zeelie sits up high to see better. ‘Is it an accident?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says her father. He pulls up alongside the policeman and buzzes his window down. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘The road’s closed, I’m afraid. You can’t go any further.’

  ‘Because of the bushfire?’

  The policeman nods. ‘Are you trying to get home?’

  ‘No, we’re trying to get through to Melbourne,’ says Zeelie’s father. ‘My wife and boy are down there. We haven’t been able to get in touch.’

  As the policeman wipes the sweat off his forehead, Zeelie’s eyes are drawn to the half-empty bottle of water clutched in his left hand. She didn’t realise just how thirsty she is until she saw it. ‘A lot of people are in the same boat, sir,’ the policeman tells her father. ‘The phone networks are in overload, with everyone trying to contact their friends and families or the emergency hotlines; it’s caused the whole system to crash. I suggest you go back home, sir, and sit tight.’

  ‘We can’t go home – we’re from Flowerdale.’

  ‘How a
re things there?’

  ‘Not good.’ Zeelie’s father shakes his head. ‘I’d be surprised if anything’s left.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ says the policeman. And he does sound sorry. He steps further out onto the road and raises his hand as another vehicle draws up behind the van. Then he looks back at Zeelie’s father. ‘All I can suggest, sir, is that you turn around and go back to Yea. You’ll be safe there. I’m sure they’ll have the phones working again soon, and you’ll be able to get in touch with your wife.’

  As they drive back towards Yea, her father’s words reverberate chillingly in Zeelie’s head: I’d be surprised if anything’s left.

  She wonders if he meant Rimu, too.

  ‘Yay, we’re in Yea,’ he says, but this time Zeelie doesn’t play the game.

  The main street is crowded. It’s almost like the middle of Melbourne. The traffic is lined up nose-to-tail in both directions. It inches along at no more than walking pace, pausing sometimes to make room for turning vehicles, or to wait for pedestrians who saunter brazenly between the stalled traffic as if the entire street has turned into a pedestrian mall.

  And the footpaths are just as busy: people walk up and down in single file, or meander along in slow family groups, some pushing prams or carrying babies, others leading toddlers and dogs. A lot of people are eating as they wander about – pies, filled rolls, bananas, icy poles – and almost everyone carries a drink of some kind. Zeelie looks on with envy – not so much at the food, although she is hungry, but at the drinks people are carrying – she has never been so thirsty in her life. Fly is thirsty, too, she can tell from the way he’s licking her wrist, but she’s more worried about Holly and Atticus in the back – there’s no air conditioning back there and it must be stifling. But there’s nowhere to stop. All the regular parking spots have been taken. There are even cars and four-wheel drives, some with trailers, bumped up onto the wide, grassy median strip where Zeelie doesn’t think it’s normally allowed. Next to one of the irregularly parked four-wheel drives, a man and two women sit in folding chairs, looking on as another man kneels on the grass next to a camp stove and pours steaming liquid from a saucepan into four white mugs.