by John Marsden
So the time drifted by. Even on our last full day, when food was getting short, no one could be bothered going all the way back to the Landrover to get more. Instead we improvised, and put together snacks that at any other time we would have chucked at the nearest rubbish tin. We ate meals that I wouldn’t have fed to our chooks. There was no butter left, no powdered milk, no condensed milk because we’d sucked the tubes dry on our first day. No fruit, no tea, no cheese. No chocolate – that was serious. But not serious enough to motivate us to get off our butts. ‘It’s catch twenty-something,’ Kevin explained. ‘If we had chocolate it’d give me the energy to get up to the Landie to get some more. But without it I don’t think I could make it to the first step.’
It was hot, that was our main excuse.
Homer was still rapt in Fi, always wanting to talk to me about her, trying to accidentally put himself wherever she happened to be going, turning red every time she spoke to him. But Fi was being very frustrating. She wouldn’t discuss it with me at all, just pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about, when it must have been obvious to anyone short of a coma.
The seven of us had got through five days without a serious argument, which was good going. Quite a few little arguments, I admit. There was the time Kevin had blown up at Fi for not doing any cooking or washing up. It was after the Great Snake Shemozzle; I think Kevin was embarrassed that he hadn’t come out of that with much credit. Then his Sausage Surprise got such a poor response, so he probably was feeling a bit sensitive. Still, Fi was getting a reputation for disappearing when work appeared, so Kevin wasn’t too far wrong.
There was Corrie’s frequent cry of ‘That’s not funny Homer’, heard when he tipped cold water on her in her sleeping bag, when he did cruel and disgusting things to a black beetle, when he dropped a spider down her shirt, when he tore out the last page of her book and hid it so she didn’t know whether the lovers made up or not. Corrie was one of Homer’s favourite victims: he only had to give her a glimpse of the red cape and she charged straight at it every time. He was lucky she didn’t hold grudges.
If I’m going to be honest I’d better admit that I managed to annoy one or two people once or twice. Kevin told me I was a know-all when I made a few suggestions about rearranging the fire. In fact the fire got me in trouble a few times. I guess I liked fiddling with it a bit too much. Whenever it died down a little, or the smoke started coming in the wrong direction, or the billy wasn’t over the best coals, I’d be in there with a stick, ‘fixing’ it. Well, that’s what I called it. The others called it ‘being a bloody nuisance’.
My worst fight was really stupid. I don’t know, maybe all fights are really stupid. We started talking about the colours of cars, which ones are the most conspicuous and which ones the least. Kevin said white was the most conspicuous and black the least; Lee said yellow and green; I said red and khaki; I forget what the others said. Suddenly it got quite heated. ‘Why do you think they paint ambulances and police cars white?’ Kevin yelled. ‘Why do you think they paint fire engines red?’ I yelled back. ‘Why do you think they have so many yellow taxis?’ Lee yelled a bit, although I don’t think his heart was in it. It went on and on. I thought I was on safe ground with khaki for inconspicuous, because that’s what the Army uses, but Kevin told some long story about how he nearly had a head-on with a black car a week after he got his P’s. ‘That doesn’t prove black’s hard to see,’ I said, ‘it just proves you shouldn’t be allowed on the roads.’ I can’t even remember how it ended, which goes to show how stupid it was.
But on our last night, sitting around the fire playing True Confessions, Robyn unexpectedly said, ‘I don’t want to go back. This is the best place and this has been the best week.’
‘Yeah,’ Lee said. ‘It’s been great.’
‘I’m looking forward to a hot shower though,’ Fi said. ‘And decent food.’
‘Let’s do this again,’ Corrie said. ‘Back here in the same place with the same people.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ Homer said, obviously thinking of another five days to spend adoring Fi.
‘Let’s keep this place a secret,’ Robyn said. ‘Otherwise everyone’ll start using it and it’ll be wrecked in no time.’
‘It is a good campsite,’ I said. ‘Next time we should have a proper search for where the hermit lived.’
‘He might have just had a shelter here and it’s fallen down,’ Lee said.
‘But he built that bridge so well. You’d think he’d build his shelter even better.’
‘Well maybe he just lived in a cave or something.’
True Confessions resumed, but I went to bed before they could make me confess to all the things I’d done with Steve. I figured I’d told enough already, so I got out while the going was good. But I still didn’t sleep well. Like I said, normally I was a heavy sleeper, but the last few nights I just couldn’t settle down to it. To my own surprise I realised I was quite anxious to get home, to see how things were, to make sure it was all OK. I did feel some kind of strange anxiety.
In the morning everyone got moving early, but it’s a funny thing, you can have ninety per cent of the work done in the first hour, but the other ten per cent takes at least two hours. That’s Ellie’s Law. So it was nearly eleven o’clock and starting to warm up before we were ready to go. A last check of the fire, a regretful farewell to our secret clearing, and we hit the track.
It was a steep climb, and we soon began to realise why we hadn’t been too keen to do day trips back up onto Tailor’s Stitch. Our biggest motivation, apart from Fi’s enthusiasm for showers and food, was to see where the track started at the top. We couldn’t figure out how we – and all those other people over the years – had missed it. So we kept plugging along, sweating and grunting up the hardest bits, sometimes pushing the person in front through a narrow gap in Satan’s Steps. I noticed Homer stayed close to Fi, giving her helpful pushes whenever he got the chance, and she’d smile at him and he’d go red. Could she possibly like him, maybe? I wondered. Or was she enjoying stringing him along? It’d serve Homer right if a girl did that to him. One girl could get revenge for all of us.
Our packs were lighter, thanks to all the food we’d eaten, though after a short time they felt as heavy as ever. But soon enough we were close to the top, and looking ahead to see where we’d come out. The answer, when we got close enough to tell, was surprising. The track suddenly veered right away from Satan’s Steps and struck out across a landslide of loose gravel and rocks. This was the first time we’d been out in the open since leaving the campsite. It took a few minutes to find it again on the other side, because it was much fainter and thinner. It was like going from a road onto a four-wheel-drive track. It was in public view, but it still would have been invisible to anyone standing on the arete. And anyone stumbling across it would have thought it was just an animal track.
It continued to wind upwards then, finishing at a big old gum tree near Wombegonoo. The last hundred metres were through scrub so thick that we had to bend double to get along the path. It was almost like a tunnel, but it was very clever because people looking down from Wombegonoo would see only impenetrable bush. The gum tree was at the base of a sheet of rock that stretched up to Wombegonoo’s summit. It was an unusual tree, because it had multiple trunks, which must have parted from each other in its early days, so that now they grew out like petals on a poppy. The track actually started in the bowl in the middle of the tree: it brought us cunningly into the bowl by leading us under one of the trunks. The bowl was so big that the seven of us could squash into it. Either side of the tree and below it was the jungly scrub of Hell; above was the sheet of rock which, as Robyn said, would leave no tracks. It was a perfect setup.
We took a break on Wombegonoo, not for long because we had virtually no food left and we’d all been too lazy to carry any water up from the creek. It was about a forty minute walk to the faithful Landrover, which we found where we’d left it, backed in under the shady trees, patien
tly waiting. We fell upon it with cries of delight, getting into the water first, then pigging out on the food, even the healthy stuff that we’d rejected five days earlier. It’s amazing how quickly your attitudes can change. I remember hearing on the radio someone saying how prisoners of war had been so grateful for any little scrap of food when they were liberated at the end of World War Two, then two days later they were complaining because they got chicken noodle soup instead of tomato. That was just like us – and still is. That day at the Landie I was dreaming of an ice cream I’d chucked out from the fridge at home a week earlier, because it had too many little ice crystals sticking to it. I’d have given anything to have had it back in my hand. I couldn’t believe how casually I’d thrown it away. But after an hour or two at home I guess I would have thrown it away again.
Once we got to the Landrover it seemed like the others lost any sense of urgency to get home. It was a hot day, humid, with quite a lot of low cloud drifting past. You couldn’t see the coast at all. It was the kind of weather that sapped your energy. That wasn’t really true for me though. I was still a bit uneasy, keen to get back, wanting to check that everything was OK. But I couldn’t force the others to go at my pace. I was affected by Robyn telling me just that morning that I was bossy. I was a bit hurt by that, especially coming from Robyn, who didn’t normally say unkind things. So I kept quiet while everyone lay around in the patchy sunlight, sleeping off the effects of all the food we’d just eaten.
After a while Kevin and Corrie disappeared down the road a way. Homer was lying as close as he dared get to Fi, but she didn’t seem to be taking any notice of him. I talked to Lee a bit, about life in the restaurant. It was interesting. I didn’t realise how hard it was. He said his parents wouldn’t use microwaves or any modern inventions – they still did things in the traditional way – so that meant a lot more work. His father went down to the markets twice a week, leaving at 3.30 in the morning. I didn’t think running a restaurant would suit me, once I heard that.
Eventually, around midafternoon, we got going, picking up Kevin and Corrie down the road a kilometre or so. We lurched our way down at about the same speed as we’d lurched our way up. As we got a better view of the plains we were surprised to see six different fires in the distance, scattered across the countryside. Two looked quite big. It was really too early in the year for major bushfires, but too late for burning off. But that was the only unusual thing we noticed, and none of the fires was remotely close to our places.
At the river there was a majority vote for a swim, so we stopped again for a long time, more than an hour. I was getting quite edgy, but there was nothing I could do to hurry them up. I only swam for five minutes, and Lee didn’t go in at all, so when I came out of the water I sat and talked to him again. After a while I said, ‘I wish they’d get a move on. I’m really keen to get home.’
Lee looked at me and said, ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I’m in a funny mood. A bad mood.’
‘Yes, you seem a bit wound up.’
‘Maybe it’s those fires. I can’t figure them out.’
‘But you’ve been uptight most of this hike.’
‘Have I? Yes, I suppose I have. I don’t know why.’
‘It’s strange,’ Lee said slowly, ‘but I feel the same way.’
‘Do you? You don’t show it.’
‘I try not to.’
‘Yes, I believe that.’
‘Maybe it’s guilt,’ I added, after a while. ‘I feel bad about missing the Show. We exhibit there quite a lot. Dad thinks we should support it. It takes ages, grooming stock and getting them in there and brushing and feeding and walking them, and then presenting them. Dad was cool about it, and I did help groom them, but I left him with an awful lot of work.’
‘Do you only take them in there to help keep the Show going?’
‘No ... It’s quite an important show, especially for Charolais. It helps keep your name in front of people, so they realise you’re a serious breeder. You’ve got to be so PR conscious nowadays.’
‘That’s one thing the same about restaurants ... Here they come.’
Sure enough Robyn and Fi, the last two people left in the water, were coming out, dripping and laughing. Fi looked fantastic, flicking her long hair out of her eyes and moving with the grace of a heron. I sneaked a look at Homer. Kevin was talking to him and Homer was trying to act like he was listening, while he stared frantically at Fi out of the corner of his eye. But looking again at Fi, I was sure that she knew. There was something just a bit self-conscious about the way she was walking, and the way she stood there in the cooling sunlight, like a model doing a fashion shoot on a beach. I think she knew, and loved it.
It was about half an hour from the swimming hole to home. I don’t know if I was happy that day – those tense and edgy feelings were getting stronger and stronger – but I do know I’ve never been happy since.
Chapter Six
The dogs were dead. That was my first thought. They didn’t jump around and bark when we drove in, or moan with joy when I ran over to them, like they always had done. They lay beside their little galvanised iron humpies, flies all over them, oblivious to the last warmth of the sun. Their eyes were red and desperate and their snouts were covered with dried froth. I was used to them stretching their chains to their limits – they did that in their manic dancing whenever they saw me coming – but now their chains were stretched and still and there was blood around their necks, where their collars had held. Of the five dogs four were young. They shared a water bucket but somehow they had knocked it over and it lay on its side, dry and empty. I checked them quickly, in horror, one by one: all dead. I ran to Millie, their old mother, whom we’d separated from the young dogs because they irritated her. Her bucket was still standing and held a little water; as I came close to her she suddenly gave a feeble wag of her tail and tried to stand. I was shocked that she was still alive, after I’d made up my mind that she too must be dead.
The rational thing to do would have been to leave her and rush into the house, because I knew that nothing so awful could have happened to the dogs unless something more awful had happened to my parents. But I had already stopped thinking rationally. I slipped Millie’s chain off and the old dog staggered to her feet, then collapsed forward onto her front knees. I decided, brutally, that I couldn’t spend any more time with her. I’d helped her enough. I called to Corrie ‘Do something for the dog’, and started running for the house. Corrie was already moving that way; her mind was working faster than the others, who were still standing around looking shocked, starting to realise that something was wrong but not making the connections that I was making. I was making them too fast, and that was adding to my terror. Corrie hesitated, turned towards the dogs, then called to Kevin, ‘Look after the dogs Kev’. Then she followed me.
In the house nothing was wrong, and that was what was wrong. There was no sign of life at all. Everything was neat and tidy. At that time of day there should have been food spread out on the kitchen table, there should have been dishes in the sink, the TV should have been chattering in the background. But all was silent. Corrie opened the door behind me and came in quietly. ‘Jesus, what’s happened,’ she said, not as a question. The tone of her voice terrified me even more. I just stood there.
‘What’s wrong with the dogs?’ she asked.
‘They’re all dead except Millie, and she’s nearly dead.’
I was looking around for a note, a note to me, but there was nothing.
‘Let’s ring someone,’ she said. ‘Let’s ring my parents.’
‘No. Ring Homer’s parents, they’re nearest. They’ll know.’
She picked up the phone and handed it to me. I turned it to ‘Talk’ and started pressing numbers, then realised that I’d heard no dial tone. I held it closer to my ear. There was nothing. I felt a new kind of fear now; a kind of fear I hadn’t even known about before.
‘There’s nothing,’ I said to Corrie.
Robyn and Fi came into the kitchen, with the others close behind them.
‘What’s happening?’ they were asking. ‘What’s wrong?’
Kevin came in carrying Millie.
‘Get her some food from the coolroom,’ I said.
‘I’ll go,’ Homer said.
I tried to explain everything, but I got confused trying to do it as quickly as possible, and ended up taking too long. So I stopped, and just said wildly, ‘We’ve got to do something’.
At that moment Homer came in with a bowl of mince and a smell. ‘The power’s off in the coolroom,’ he said. ‘It stinks terrible.’
‘Terribly,’ I said, in absent-minded fear.
He just looked at me.
Robyn went to the TV as Homer and Kevin tried to persuade Millie to eat. We watched Robyn as she switched on the set, but it too was dead. ‘This is weird,’ she said.
‘Did they say they were going away?’ Fi asked.
I didn’t bother to answer.
‘If your grandmother got sick ...’ Corrie said.
‘So they cut off the power?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘Some big electrical problem?’ Kevin suggested. ‘Maybe if the power was off for days they had to move.’
‘They’d have left a note,’ I snapped. ‘They wouldn’t let the dogs die.’
There was a moment’s silence. No one knew what to say.
‘There’s just no explanation that fits all this,’ Robyn said.
‘It’s like UFO stuff,’ Kevin said. ‘Like aliens have taken them away.’ Then, seeing the expression on my face, he quickly added, ‘I’m not trying to make a joke of it Ellie. I know something bad’s happened. I just can’t figure what it could possibly be.’
Lee whispered something to Robyn. I didn’t bother to ask them what it was. When I saw the naked fear on Robyn’s face, I didn’t want to ask.