by Justin D'Ath
Suddenly the brown water peeled back and a strip of grey daylight opened along the top of the windscreen. Once again there was the sound of heavy rain on the roof; only this time it wasn’t noise, it was sweet music to my ears. The ute had risen to the surface. It was floating.
I took a deep breath to calm myself. I knew I needed to be calm. I needed to think clearly. A ute wouldn’t float in a river for long. I had to get out. I had to get out and back to shore. Get Nissa back to shore. Perhaps I could be a hero after all.
‘Nissa?’ I whispered to the top of her small, wet head. ‘Nissa, are you okay?’
She didn’t answer. Her body felt limp and cold and lifeless on my lap. She wasn’t shivering any more. Oh, please, don’t let her be dead! I prayed as I searched desperately for a heartbeat.
Nissa giggled. ‘Don’t tickle!’ she said.
‘Sorry.’ I was so relieved she was alive that I almost giggled myself. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘Big plash.’
‘Yes. Very big splash.’
‘Too much water,’ Nissa said solemnly. She frowned at the big raindrops that flowered across the narrow strip of clear glass along the top of the windscreen.
‘Way too much water,’ I agreed.
It was like being in a submarine. Muddy brown, swirling with silt and debris, the floodwater pressed against the windows. Only the small strip of bluish-grey daylight around the top showed we were partially floating. In front, the windscreen wipers arced to and fro, their rubber strips catching and stuttering on the submerged glass as they fought to hold back the river.
A tremor ran through the ute. There was a loud scraping noise, then a tall reddish-brown column slid slowly past my window. It was a submerged termite mound. We were moving, being pushed along by the current. Being carried downstream. I wondered how far it was to the ocean. Part of me knew we would never get that far. The ute would sink long before that. It would settle on the bottom and that would be the end.
A cold sensation around my toes caused me to look down. My feet were underwater.
‘Nissa,’ I said, my voice high and unsteady, ‘we have to get out of here.’
The cab was slowly filling with muddy brown water. Already the floor was covered. It was deeper under the dashboard because the ute was tilted forward at a slight angle. I could see a steady brown trickle coming in around the edge of the door near my left calf. A floating five dollar note and two soaked twenties nudged against my ankles. For the first time since we’d ploughed into the river, I turned to look at the robber. He was slumped forward with his head on the steering wheel. He hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt. A small spider-web pattern blossomed in the glass directly above his head. Fat drops of pearly brown water seeped in through the net of fine cracks that radiated from its centre.
‘Excuse me,’ I said softly. ‘Mister? Are you okay?’
He didn’t respond. Didn’t move. The shotgun was partially afloat under the dashboard between his knees. Just its cut-off wooden handgrip poked above the rippling surface. I carefully unclipped my seatbelt, shifted Nissa onto my left thigh, and leaned over, but I couldn’t reach the gun without moving the robber’s left arm out of the way. Afraid to touch him, I pulled my hand back.
‘Bad man go nigh nigh,’ Nissa said.
The ute swayed. A submerged tree trunk slid past my window, travelling from the back of the vehicle to the front. We had turned around since we passed the termite mound. Now our leaky submarine was facing upstream. The floodwater was carrying it along backwards. I don’t know why, but this seemed worse than going forwards. I shut my eyes and leaned my head back in the seat. All at once I felt defeated. It was hopeless. We were never going to get out of this.
‘Tam,’ said a little voice. That was Nissa-speak for Sam.
‘What?’
‘Go home now?’
I remembered the promise I had made to Nissa earlier. Me and my big mouth, I thought. We were going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it.
But I had to try. I owed it to Nissa to at least try to fulfil my promise. Opening my eyes, I lifted the soaked, shivering little girl and turned her around to face me. I forced myself to smile.
‘Guess what?’ I said brightly. ‘We’re going for a swim.’
‘No want wim,’ she said.
‘Nissa, it’s the only way we’re going to get out of here.’
She shook her head. ‘NO WANT WIM!’
I sighed. ‘Okay. I can probably carry you.’
First we had to get out of the ute. There wasn’t much time. The cab was filling fast. If I opened the doors, floodwaters would rush in and send us straight to the bottom. We might even drown before we got out. I wasn’t sure what to do. I needed an adult’s advice. Gingerly gripping the robber’s shoulder, I gave him a gentle shake.
‘Excuse me. Can you hear me?’
He didn’t answer. I dragged him clear of the steering wheel and pushed him back in his seat. He was heavy. His head slumped forward, his bearded chin rested on his chest. His beanie had come off in the crash and there was a large purple and red lump on his forehead. It looked pretty bad. Was it bad enough to kill him? I raised my voice to make myself heard above the loud hammering of the rain above our heads.
‘Can you hear me?’ I repeated.
Nothing. I shook the lifeless man again, roughly this time. I was getting angry with him. This was all his fault. Who did he think he was, coming to Crocodile Bridge and robbing Auntie Erin’s shop, then kidnapping Nissa and me and driving at full speed into a raging flood?
‘Wake up!’ I shouted, jerking his shoulder savagely. ‘Wake up, dammit!’
Thump! The noise seemed to come from behind. It was accompanied by a heavy jolt. The rear of the ute lifted sharply, tipping me forward in my seat. I braced my legs and grabbed Nissa to stop her from falling against the dashboard. For a few seconds we clung to each other, then she began to whimper.
‘It’s okay, Niss,’ I said, knowing that it wasn’t.
What had happened? We weren’t moving. The ute tilted forward at a much steeper angle than before. Floodwater filled the whole windscreen now; even the strip of daylight along the top had disappeared. Yet the interior wasn’t as dark as it had been when we’d first run into the river, when we’d been completely submerged. And I could still hear the rain on the roof.
I twisted around in my seat. Yes! The window at the back of the cab was completely above water. Beyond the rain-spattered glass, the ute’s tray reared up against whirling treetops and scudding grey clouds.
Trees! We had run aground. We were saved!
5
‘NAKE’
We were still trapped inside the ute. It was three quarters submerged in the swirling floodwater. It wouldn’t be safe to open the doors. Our only escape was to climb out through the rear window. I had to work out a way to get it open.
There was one obvious solution. I leaned over the robber and grasped the shotgun’s wooden stock. It was heavier than I’d expected. Two streams of brown water poured out of the barrels as I lifted it over the lifeless man’s knees. Knocked out, he was no longer scary.
‘Bang-bang,’ Nissa snivelled.
‘That’s right,’ I told her. ‘Big bang! Cover your ears.’
I knew a bit about shotguns because my brother Nathan owned one. He had taken me clay-target shooting once. But this wasn’t like his gun. It was more like a very big pistol. I held it with both hands, pointed it at the centre of the rear window, and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
What was wrong?
Water was still leaking in around the doors. It was almost up to my waist. I was sitting in it. I could feel Nissa shivering as she clung to me. Perhaps the shotgun wasn’t loaded. Fumbling, my fingers shaking and clumsy, I worked the lever that clicked the gun open. It was loaded, all right: there was a big, brass-backed shell in each barrel. I hoped water hadn’t got in and wet the gunpowder. Closing the weapon, I tried to remember what
Nathan had done. Safety catch, I remembered. Was this it? I pushed the little red button forward. Then I pointed the gun at the window again, clenched my eyes shut, and pulled the trigger.
The blast was deafening, and the force nearly jerked the gun out of my hands. Glass exploded everywhere. Nissa shrieked and clamped her arms around my neck.
‘It’s okay, Niss,’ I said, my ears ringing. I gently freed myself from her stranglehold. ‘Sorry about the noise.’
Wind and rain blew in my face. I used the smoking gun to chip the remaining glass shards out of the rubber seal around the edge of the broken window. Then I tossed the ugly weapon out into the ute’s tray and turned to my little cousin.
‘I’m going to lift you out,’ I said, ‘then I’ll climb out after you.’
Nissa shook her head. Her face was red and tears dribbled from the corners of her eyes. ‘Too much water!’ she said, her mind made up.
I had learned that it was no use arguing with a two-year-old. ‘Okay, I’ll go out first.’
I wriggled out though the narrow aperture into the back of the ute. The forward part of the tray was half full of muddy water. Wind and rain lashed my face as I scrambled on hands and knees up to the tailgate. My heart fell. I’d been expecting to see land. Instead my eyes were greeted by a churning brown sea that stretched into the rain-blanketed distance. Apart from the occasional treetop and termite mound, everything was submerged. The trees I’d glimpsed through the back window stood in two or three metres of rushing water.
The ute had run aground on a very large termite mound. Wedged beneath the tailgate, its broad summit had been damaged by the impact. Gradually, the floodwaters were eating into the porous red clay. As I watched, a large chunk broke off and tumbled away in the frothing current. The ute trembled and seemed to subside slightly beneath me. We might be carried off at any moment.
I slid back down the tray. Nissa stood on the passenger seat, tummy deep in brown water. She raised her arms to me as I leaned in to lift her out.
‘Bad man waked up,’ she said in my ear.
Only then did I notice that the robber had turned his head slightly. His glazed, bloodshot eyes stared into mine from a distance of less than thirty centimetres.
‘Help!’ he gasped. ‘Help … me.’
I was too shocked to say anything. I whisked Nissa out and carried her to the rear of the tray, where I sat her in one corner with her back to the tailgate. Removing my jacket, I wrapped it tightly around her.
‘Stay here,’ I told her. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Want Mummy,’ she said, putting her thumb in her mouth.
I touched her cheek. I almost said, I’ll take you back to Mummy soon, but stopped myself in time. No more rash promises.
The shotgun lay halfway down the tray where I’d thrown it. I made sure the safety catch was on, then I peered cautiously into the cab. I was careful not to point the gun directly at the injured man.
‘Can you move?’ I asked.
‘Can’t move my legs,’ he said weakly.
I knew that was bad. ‘Are you in pain?’ I asked, remembering my First Aid from school.
‘My head hurts.’
‘What about your legs?’
The man shook his head. ‘Can’t feel them,’ he said. ‘Help me. Please.’
The water lapped around his chest. It swirled with half-submerged bank notes: fives, tens, twenties, even a fifty. Part of me didn’t want to help him. He was the cause of all this. He had robbed Auntie Erin, he’d kidnapped my little cousin, he’d even threatened to kill me. My hand tightened around the shotgun.
‘Promise you won’t try anything?’ I said.
He made a little blowing noise, halfway between a laugh and a sob. ‘What … could I do? Mate, I can’t even … move!’
So I was his mate now. No longer ‘Good guy’ or ‘Kid’. I didn’t trust him, but I had no choice: I couldn’t leave him to drown. I placed the shotgun on the narrow ledge where the front of the tray met the cab. I wanted it to be within easy reach. Then I wormed my head and shoulders in through the narrow gap.
‘I’m going to turn you around,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll pull you out into the tray.’
There was very little room to manoeuvre, and without the use of his legs the man was heavy and awkward. He had partial use of his arms, though, and helped as much as he could. Pretty soon we had him turned around. I dragged him up into a kneeling position on the seat and got him to take some of his own weight by gripping the rubber lip of the window hole. Then I reached in and clasped him beneath the armpits. I was so close to him that I could feel his bristly beard against my ear.
‘Okay,’ I gasped. ‘On the count of three, we’ll drag you out. One, two –’
THUMP!
The ute lurched sideways. I knocked my cheekbone hard against the man’s head. Behind me, Nissa shrieked. I let go of the robber, reversed out of the cab and twisted around to see what was happening.
We were in a tree! A dark wet mass of leaves and branches blocked out half the sky. They completely engulfed the tray. I couldn’t even see Nissa. From somewhere within the tangle of rain-whipped foliage, she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
‘I’m coming!’ I yelled. ‘Stay where you are!’
I had no idea what was going on. How did we end up in a tree? But my main concern was Nissa. She sounded terrified. Almost in a panic myself, I fought through the swaying tangle of foliage. There were too many branches. I managed to snap two or three, and then I came across one almost as thick as my arm. When I tried to bend it aside, the entire thicket slewed slowly around. I rocked the branch experimentally, and the thicket rocked, too. A floating tree! Now I understood what had happened. The tree had been uprooted by the flood and carried downstream in the current until it came to rest against the ute.
I took a firm hold of the branch and cautiously leaned my weight against it. I didn’t want to push too hard, or too quickly, in case I dislodged the ute from the crumbling termite mound that supported us. Gradually, centimetre by centimetre, the mountain of foliage began to move out into the floodwater. When it was nearly clear of the tray, the current took hold. Slowly the tree pivoted against the side of the ute and swung around. For the first time I saw its enormous swollen trunk. It was a bottle tree – a baobab. It went rocking down the flooded river like a strange leafy whale. Thirty metres downstream it became stuck in the branches of a partially submerged gumtree.
I grinned at Nissa. ‘It was just a floating tree, Niss. Nothing to worry about.’
Huddled beneath my jacket, Nissa seemed mesmerised by something beside her. At first glance I thought it was a branch. Nissa removed her thumb from her mouth and, in a small voice, said:
‘Nake.’
6
TOO SCARED TO MOVE
At nearly two metres long, the dark brown snake lay in an elongated S shape across the high part of the tray. Its small bullet-shaped head was centimetres from Nissa’s tiny pink toes, where they poked out from beneath my jacket. The only sign that the snake was alive came from its intermittently flickering black, forked tongue.
‘Nissa,’ I said softly, ‘stay very still.’
I didn’t know much about snakes but this looked like a bad one. A king brown. Perhaps even a taipan. It must have fallen out of the floating baobab. On all fours, I inched my way up the wet, slippery tray towards it. Nathan reckons that snakes aren’t usually dangerous, unless they’re cornered or threatened. I hoped this one didn’t feel either one of those things.
When I was about a metre and a half from Nissa and the snake, I cautiously rose to my feet. Bracing myself as best I could against the gusting wind and the stinging flurries of rain, I leaned forward and slowly extended my hands towards Nissa, making a bridge with my arms across the deadly S of the snake.
‘I want you to stand up,’ I said, ‘really, really –’
I had been about to say ‘really, really slowly’ when she sprang up into my arms. As she jumped, my jack
et fell away from her and landed on the snake. Startled, the reptile coiled out of the way in a quick, fluid slide and finished up with its head resting against my right sneaker.
I froze. Balanced precariously in the sloping tray, Nissa in my arms, the snake at my feet, I was literally too scared to move.
‘Bad man!’ Nissa said in my ear.
Bad snake would have been more appropriate, I thought. Not that the snake had actually done anything bad – yet – apart from being there. And being a snake.
‘Bad man got bang-bang,’ Nissa said.
That was when I noticed that she wasn’t looking at the snake. Her eyes seemed to be directed past me. Towards the cab of the ute.
Uh oh! I thought.
Very slowly, so as not to provoke the snake, I turned my head. And saw, framed in the ute’s rear window, the top half of the kidnapper’s head. Lined up against his right eye was something that looked, at first glance, like two joined pipes, with holes in the ends roughly the size of ten-cent coins.
‘Stay right where you are!’ he said menacingly.
7
DON’T COME BACK!
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘I want you … very very slowly … to raise your right foot,’ the robber said. His voice was coming in gasps as he raised it to make himself heard above the howling wind.
‘Are you crazy?’ I shouted. ‘It’ll bite me if I move!’
‘Not if you … do it slowly,’ he called. His eyes were screwed up against the stinging wind-borne rain. The gun’s barrels wobbled alarmingly. ‘Just raise it … high enough … to give me a … clear shot.’
I wasn’t sure which I feared more, the snake or the shotgun. But I had to do something, and soon. Nissa was growing heavy and it was almost impossible to balance in the gale-force wind. To make matters worse, I had noticed in the last few moments that the ute was moving slightly from side to side, as if it was about to break free from the termite mound.