We were forced to spend as much time scrambling up into the bush as we were in the stream. Often we had to haul ourselves up near-vertical banks. With Rebecca and Jonathon’s new interest in each other I was left to slog it out with Lisa. I quickly became used to the feel of her hand gripping mine, stronger than I expected, and her little grunts of thanks and encouragement.
We were making terrible progress. At first it was okay pushing on, believing the broad Tauherenikau Valley would appear around the next corner, but after four hours hemmed in by rock and pummelled by the rain I was past believing we were even headed in the right direction. My thoughts became more and more negative—we would never get out. We were using up the last of our precious energy. We were stupid trying this in the dark. Disaster lay just ahead. When I was out of earshot the others talked about me. I was sure they blamed me for Ms Jenkins’s death—misery settled on me, becoming almost comfortable. I wallowed in it and dragged my feet, so the others were forced to wait for me more and more. Eventually it became too much for Jonathon, who had gone all night without slagging anybody off.
‘Jesus Marko, get it together will you?’
In reply I sat down on the nearest rock.
‘Fucken hell,’ he muttered.
‘Jonathon, you won’t make him feel any better,’ Rebecca said, speaking like I couldn’t hear them, or was too young to understand.
‘Okay then, what’s wrong?’ Jonathon asked.
‘What do you think? We’ve got no food. We’re not going to make it out of here. She doesn’t even know where we are.’
‘Yes she does. She’s already said.’
‘So how come we still haven’t reached the river?’
‘I’d like to see you do any better.’
‘I’m not saying I could. I just think we should stop pretending everything is all right. It’s not all right. We’re going to die.’ And then I was crying. Pathetic. So now I’m ashamed to write it down. But that’s how it happened. That’s how I was. I was weak.
‘Look Marko.’ It was Rebecca and her schoolteacher’s voice. ‘We know how you feel. But you have to keep going, okay? We don’t have any choice. Lisa, what’s the time?’
‘Almost three.’
‘Another three hours then. Can you do another three hours?’
‘Maybe.’
‘We’ll make it to the river by then.’
‘We were meant to be out of here by then,’ I countered, just like a spoilt child. That’s what I was. I wanted a world where if I complained loudly enough someone somewhere would give in and change the rules. I wanted a world that doesn’t exist. Someone should have hit me. Jonathon almost did. He was standing over me, so close I could smell the last precious cigarette on his breath.
‘Well we’re moving on now, you useless fuck, and I don’t care whether you come with us or not. I haven’t got the energy to save your arse. Got it?’ Then to the others. ‘Come on, let’s go. We’ve got to keep moving or we’ll freeze.’
It worked. It snapped me out of my self-pity.
‘Sorry guys,’ I called to them as we moved on. The other two didn’t answer but Lisa dropped back, put her arm around me and squeezed.
‘I’m glad you’re here Marko,’ she said.
We found the river after another hour of following the stream but it wasn’t the same river we’d crossed three days earlier. It was more like a lake now. It had slowly filled and then spilled out over its edges, so the trees on the side were surrounded by water, like some fairytale swamp. In the darkness it was eerie, the sort of place where you could imagine a hooded figure gliding by in a silent boat. A silent boat to match the other dark silences, because for a river that high it wasn’t making any noise. It hardly seemed to be moving. The gurgle from the stream rushing down to join it was the loudest noise. It wasn’t a flood. Rain hadn’t done this. The earthquake had.
‘Damn it,’ Jonathon said.
‘Probably still rising,’ said Rebecca. ‘Further down, the river turns left, straight through the hills. A gorge must have collapsed. It makes getting out trickier.’
Lisa had already edged into the water, in amongst the trees. Suddenly she shrieked and jumped backwards.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Something moved.’
‘Where? Show me where. No, exactly. This could be dinner.’ Jonathon moved forward, using his lighter as a torch. ‘Oh yes, shit that’s long.’
‘What is it?’
‘Mother of an eel. Okay, Marko. Come here. Hold the lighter.’
I did as I was told. The light was useless but the eel was so big it didn’t matter. ‘Okay, just keep the light over it. If it moves, follow it.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to use this stick to flick it out of the water. If either of you two let it get back in, you’re dinner. Okay?’
‘How do we stop it?’ Lisa asked.
‘You get a big rock and you beat its brains out.’
Jonathon edged forward. I could see his concentration and I tried to do the same. The eel glided forward with a swish of its huge tail and I waded after it. I heard the other two picking up rocks, all four of us moving in for the kill.
Jonathon struck. In the darkness I lost sight of it but he definitely got it out of the water. Then chaos as we all searched for our prey before it could slither back to safety.
‘Got it! Over here.’ Lisa’s voice. When we reached her she was already going for it, bringing the rock down on the eel’s head.
‘Thought you were scared of them,’ Jonathon said.
‘It’s still moving.’
‘Try the tail. I think they have nerves in their tail.’
‘You try.’
So Rebecca crouched at the other end and the two of them pummelled the creature with clockwork ferocity.
‘I think it’s dead now,’ I said. We stood back. It was a metre and a half long and thicker than my wrist. A lot of eating.
‘Okay then, let’s get this sucker gutted.’ Jonathon’s knife was already out.
‘What’ll it taste like raw?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m lighting a fire.’
‘No you’re not,’ Rebecca told him.
‘Come on. Why not?’
‘They might see it, or smell the smoke.’
‘They’re nowhere near here. It’s food. We’ll never get out if we starve.’
‘Please,’ Lisa added.
‘We should get over the river first,’ Rebecca said.
‘How? It’s got to be way deep in the middle.’
‘We can have a fire on the other side.’
‘We’ll be soaked,’ I said, forgetting my promise to myself not to whinge again. ‘I’m already cold.’
‘Same,’ Lisa agreed.
‘We’d have a fire,’ Rebecca argued. ‘It’s not light yet, we should keep going. We’ve got one packliner left. If we put our clothes inside it, inside the pack, and float it across, they’ll stay dry.’
‘You want us to take our clothes off?’ Lisa asked.
‘No, I want us to get out of here alive.’
‘And I want to get this cooked,’ Jonathon added, a bit too keenly. ‘Come on, let’s do it.’ His bag was off, then his polar fleece, then his shirt.
‘Leave the underwear on, eh?’ Rebecca told him. ‘It’s not quite that desperate yet.’
We stripped and packed our clothes together in the one non-mutilated bag. Rebecca rolled the end up tightly and stuffed it inside the pack. Jonathon hacked off the eel’s head, ‘in case it gets any ideas during the crossing’ and wrapped the body around his neck like some crazy scarf. I tried not to look at the others, but I didn’t do too well. It was freezing. I could feel the wind passing through my skin. There was no chance of hanging about.
‘You can all swim, right?’ Rebecca thought to ask.
‘I’m not real good,’ Lisa admitted.
‘You swim the pack over then. It’ll float. Marko, y
ou’re a bit of a swimmer aren’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ I used to compete, until Year 10.
‘You help her then. Let’s go.’
As always Rebecca led the way and, as was becoming custom, Jonathon was close behind her. I watched their white bodies move jerkily then blur into the darkness. There was a single splash and they were swimming.
‘You okay?’ I asked Lisa.
‘I think so,’ she replied, her voice vibrating with the cold.
It was the strangest feeling, standing so close, half-naked, almost connecting, the darkness and the danger making it more unreal. Awkwardly I tried to make the moment pass. I reached out to touch her shoulder, to say ‘thanks’, and ‘it’s all right’. She moved, or it was the lack of light, and my hand found her breast, before I realised and pulled away.
‘Sorry, I didn’t...’ I was too embarrassed to finish the sentence.
‘I know. Come on. You have to help me.’
‘Use it like a kickboard. I’ll swim downstream from you.’
And so there was one more thing to take over my thoughts and drain my energy, one more game of staying alive. The water was icy but I hardly noticed. I was too busy staying afloat, keeping my bearings and worrying about Lisa. She gave in to fear, trying too hard, the way you never should in water. I saw her thrashing about. Her head went under then came back up. She tried to climb right on top of the pack but it would never hold her weight. If it went right under, the water would get in.
‘It’s okay,’ I told her. ‘Relax.’
I swam beneath her. ‘Turn onto your back. I’ve got you. Don’t even kick. Okay, now just one hand on the pack, I’ll swim us in.’
Like I’d practised so many times at the surf club. We were being pulled down by the current. It was stronger than I’d expected and I had to work hard, so by the time we could stand I was fighting for breath.
‘Thanks Marko.’ Lisa clung to my neck for a moment, before standing up herself. The others were waiting at the edge of the water. Jonathon took the pack and his freezing hands struggled with the buckles.
‘Yes, it’s still dry!’
We used a sweater of Lisa’s as a towel and changed back into our clothes as quickly as we could, but cold and embarrassment made us clumsy. We talked about the swim while we did it, like we were trying to cover up how weird it felt, being naked. I wanted to apologise again, for everything, but Lisa stopped me before I could get going.
‘Forget it will you, Marko? You got me across the river. I would have drowned.’
As if that could make everything all right. It didn’t, not at all, but I couldn’t explain so I stayed quiet.
We built our fire further up in the bush, or at least we watched Jonathon build it. Our only contribution was to yell at him every time he tried to stoke it up.
‘Jesus, just trying to get some heat here.’
We sat around with our underwear hanging off sticks, trying to dry it out. The light of the fire danced over the others’ faces, bringing them to life. Jonathon cut the eel into four strips and we followed his lead, wrapping it around a stick and turning it over in the flames.
It was the warmth of the fire. It was the feeling of being safe, on the other side of the river. It was the taste of the food, hot and solid and smoky. It was the other bodies, more real now, beneath their clothes. It was so many things. I’ve never felt so warm, so in place. I’ve never felt so much that I wanted to stay alive. There was only one thing wrong, one thing missing, but none of us mentioned her. Instead Jonathon and Rebecca, who’d both finished their food, stood up together, like it was something they’d planned.
‘We, ah, might just go off for a bit of a walk, check out the way for tonight,’ Jonathon said, because even here, it still felt best to lie about some things.
‘We’ll be back soon,’ Rebecca said, ‘before it’s light.’
‘Funny isn’t it?’ Lisa said, when they’d left.
We were sitting close. The heat of the fire made my eyes water. I looked into the flames. ‘What?’
‘Those two.’
‘Suppose.’
We sat in silence, the sort of silence where you can tell there are things that need to be said, pushing in at the edges. Eventually Lisa found the words.
‘I still can’t believe she’s dead.’
‘I know.’
‘Tell me again, how it happened.’
So I did, and this time it came out different, because the way she was listening was different. This time her face wasn’t bruised with the shock of it, trying to block it out, so I didn’t have to hurry, or try to make it sound any way in particular. I could just tell it like it was, so it was like being there again, and this time Lisa was there with me. I finished and there was quiet again, quiet filled with remembering.
‘Do you think, like, that she knew?’ Lisa asked.
‘Knew what?’
‘That she was dying.’
‘It was very quick.’
‘Yeah...’
‘I wish I’d done something.’ The tears tasted salty in my mouth. ‘She didn’t even know I was there. She thought she was on her own.’
‘You couldn’t have done anything,’ she said. She put her arm around me but I still couldn’t believe her.
That’s when Jonathon and Rebecca came back, crashing through the bush.
‘Now you two, keep it decent,’ Jonathon said, then he saw the tears. ‘Oh, sorry man.’
‘Nah, it’s sweet.’ I sniffed.
‘It’s a bummer.’ They sat back down. ‘You know what I’d do to those fuckers if I ever got the chance?
’ We all had ideas on that, all except for Lisa, who kept her thoughts to herself while we outbid each other with gruesome punishments. The sky lightened and the air filled with the sound of birds coming awake. Rebecca suggested we move further back into the bush and find a place to sleep. She volunteered to put the fire out and do the first watch. This time we found a bigger flat patch to lay out the bags. It didn’t feel at all strange when Lisa lay down behind me and folded her body into mine. It wasn’t even too weird the way she wrapped her arms around me and kissed my neck. I put my hand over hers and squeezed it and I got this funny feeling, like when you’ve just seen a great movie and walking out you wish you were one of the people you see lining up to go in, because you’ll never be able to see it like that again. I was still hungry and we were still half lost and there was so much to still be properly frightened of but as exhaustion turned to sleep I had a smile on my face.
That night when we moved off I was beginning to believe we’d make it out. We were close, less than seven hours from the road end, according to Rebecca. The river had come up a bit more but seemed to be levelling off. We would climb the next ridge, down to the Waiohine River, and follow it out. It sounded simple, even in the dark. We were all talking again, making jokes and giving each other shit, so different from the thick silence of the night before. Just like four teenagers having some fun in the bush. Like it was over. Like we had beaten it.
It’s easy now to say we should have known, but we’d been so careful for so long and careful is exhausting. It’s easy to keep yourself from thinking things that should be thought. Things like how dangerous we were to those three men, knowing what we knew, how they might be just as desperate as we were. How, once you’ve killed someone, what is and isn’t reasonable has got to change. Or how much ground you could cover if you travelled by daylight, and had food, and how obvious our path out was. How easy smoke from a morning fire might be to spot.
They were waiting for us, listening to our voices the whole time, tracking us from above. They meant to kill us all, I’m sure of that. I don’t know how they thought they’d do it, but suddenly they were amongst us. Lisa screamed first, then Jonathon. It was dark and there were only three of them and whichever way they’d figured it, it was always going to go crazy then.
I get aggressive when I lose my temper. I just go wild. I’ve always been like that. Mum was th
e one who decided I should do judo. She thought it might give me some discipline. It didn’t work out that way. I heard Lisa’s scream and straight off I was there, kicking out hard at a knee. In a situation like that it’s mostly luck. I must have got lucky because there was a groan and he crumpled. To my left there was another scream, not one of us, and then running. I saw them all, Lisa, Jonathon and Rebecca, familiar shapes in the darkness, running off together. I had to get with them, but as I moved I felt someone take hold of my ankle.
‘Got one,’ I heard him shout.
‘Where?’
‘Here.’ Time enough for me to get a fix on his position and stomp on his face. I was free, pumped full of adrenalin and hatred. Disorientated too, with no time to get my bearings. So I ran blindly, hoping it was the right direction, and my ears filled with the sound of crashing feet behind me.
‘This way!’ my hunter was shouting. ‘This way!’
All three of them after me, and then a tree root to help them, so I was tumbling down, and as I hit the ground another weight crushed me from above. My face was in the dirt and his knees were on my back. I felt his bony fingers digging into my neck, trying to choke the life out of me. Not trying to hold me down, not trying to subdue me, trying to finish me off.
I had no time. The world was in slow motion but not slow enough. You win by surprise, by tricking your opponent into movement you can use. So I didn’t try to throw him, or prise his hands from my throat. I reached for his elbow and pulled him forward, and he didn’t resist because he wasn’t expecting it. As his weight came forward I rolled into his movement and it toppled him. I was on my back but on top of him. I hit out with my elbow, hard where I calculated his throat would be. I heard the gurgle. Not hard enough to kill him, it wasn’t a direct hit, but enough to be free. The other two were close, coming on fast in wildly waving torchlight. As I threw myself forward I turned and for a moment we were face to face, just as a torch beam steadied on us.
‘There they are!’
I could see only his eyes, filled with hatred and pain. It was him, the one who had killed her. A face I can never forget, staring for that split second into mine. The Doctor.
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