Lost In Kakadu (17 page)

“Abi!” He increased his pace.

The plane silhouette materialised ahead of him and he ran toward it. “Abi!” He jumped over the last bush and leapt into the clearing. Abigail raced to him, her arms outstretched, her face twisted in fear and relief. Tears tumbled down her cheeks and she jumped up as she reached him wrapping her arms and legs around him, crushing both him and the lizard.

They each spoke excitedly over the top of the other.

“I thought you were dead.”

“I fell down a cliff.”

Her grip remained solid as she crumbled into sobs, choking out disjointed sentences.

“I didn’t … know what to do.”

“I’m sorry. I caught a lizard.”

She thumped him in the back. “I was so scared. I was all alone.”

“Charlie’s here.”

He felt her stiffen. She released her hands and he saw tortured grief in her eyes. “No,” he said before she even spoke.

“He was by the fire writing a letter and I left him alone for a while. I thought he was asleep. But I …” She began wailing again and Mackenzie wrapped his arms around her. He stared over her shoulder at the black clad figure by the fire and hugged her tighter.

“It must’ve been awful.”

“It was.” She slid off him and they stood side by side and looked at Charlie.

“I thought we saved him. I can’t believe it.” Tears filled his eyes. “Did he say anything?”

“Not a word. But he wrote a letter. It’s in an envelope on top of his notepad.”

Mackenzie walked to Charlie’s chair and picked up the envelope. He could see the pink paper inside but he folded the seal down and placed it back on the notepad.

“You’re not going to read it?”

“No. It’s private.” Mackenzie wished he’d asked Charlie about his final mission. Now he’d never know. He glanced at the letter and wondered if he’d written it down, but now wasn’t the time for prying.

Mackenzie gathered Charlie’s frail body, placed him on the grass, and as he spread the black shirt over him again he said a silent prayer. Although he’d only known Charlie for two short days he felt a deep, filial affection for the man. He couldn’t understand why. He’d never had a father figure in his life that he trusted. However, the frail stranger had instilled a deep sense of faith in him and had given him hope.

Their friendship was cemented with a common goal—survival.

* * *

Krystal heard her grandmother calling her name and likened the voice to the screeching cockatoos that woke her every morning as they swooped amongst the palm trees outside her window. She placed her iPod buds in her ears to block out the noise and hoped to be left alone. She rolled onto her stomach and gazed out the window. Beyond the cascading pool a boat full of tourists cruised along the canal, the sun reflecting off their camera lenses like a Morse Code distress signal. She hated the tourists. They made her feel like a prisoner in her grandmother’s embarrassingly gaudy mansion. To relax by the pool meant keeping an eye on the canal and she hated playing a part in their garish freak show.

“Krystal!” Her grandmother grabbed the iPod wire, snapping the bud from her ear.

“What?” She snatched it back and sat up.

“I’ve been calling you.” Her grandmother’s eyes looked like they were gradually being sucked into her brain and the shadows from her heavy eyebrows didn’t help. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Botoxed skin on her forehead made her look part plastic doll. It was impossible for her to frown and Krystal stifled a laugh every time her grandmother was angry with her, which was often.

“Well, as you can see, I couldn’t hear you. What do you want?”

“Police officers are here to see you.”

“Police? What do
they
want?”

“They want to talk to you about your dad and mum.” She avoided Krystal’s eyes.

Krystal jumped up. “Have they found Dad?” Without waiting for an answer she raced down the marble staircase.

The police officer and an obese man in a tattered grey suit were seated in the sunroom. But as soon as she saw them a bad feeling gripped her. She knew from their faces they were dreading talking to her. Krystal felt the room sway ever so slightly when the overweight man dabbed sweat from his forehead with a striped handkerchief.

The female officer saw her at the doorway and got up off her chair.

Krystal stared into her eyes and began shaking her head as the officer walked toward her.

“Hello, Krystal.”

“I don’t want to hear it. I won’t.” She cupped her ears.

“Please, Krystal. Take a seat.”

Krystal felt like her feet were nailed to the floor. “Is he dead?” she blurted out.

“Krystal, please come and sit down. We’ll tell you everything.”

She clenched her teeth until her jaw hurt. She wouldn’t believe it, couldn’t. Not until she saw his body.

“We don’t know if they’re dead.”

She refocused. “What? What do you mean?”

“Come take a seat.”

Her feet released their grip on the plush carpet and she shuffled to the lounge. The leather squeaked as she sat in the corner, her knees pressed tightly together. She was determined not to cry.

“Krystal,” the female officer began. “My name’s Detective Sergeant Powder and this is Mr Hollingsworth. As you know, your parents’ plane disappeared somewhere en route to Kakadu ten days ago.”

Krystal sat frozen, waiting for her to get to the point. Out the corner of her eye she could see the overweight man’s shaking knee. She tried to ignore it.

The police officer continued. “There’ve been no sightings of the plane, or any wreckage and the area where it went missing is thousands of acres of dense jungle. The likelihood of finding a small plane like theirs is minimal.”

Detective Powder cleared her throat. “Krystal, what I’m saying is they’ve called off the search. Your parents are now officially listed as missing and presumed dead.”

The words were a slap to the face. “How can you stop searching? They’re still alive. I know it.”

“Unfortunately we’ve exhausted all areas of search along the flight plan.”

“What about tracking devices. Don’t you have those?”

Powder cleared her throat before she continued. “We haven’t located a signal from any tracking device either.”

“So you’re just giving up? They’re still out there. Starving!”

The police woman sat forward, her hands clasped together. “Without a tracking signal it’s impossible to pinpoint where to look.”

Krystal’s grandmother appeared in the doorway and Krystal couldn’t decide if her expressionless face was the result of Botox, or simply lack of emotion. “Tell them to keep looking,” Krystal demanded.

“They can’t, Krystal. They don’t know where to look.”

Abigail sat cross-legged on the rough ground, unperturbed about getting dirt on her now baggy shorts. As the sun began its push toward the centre of the sky and a pale yellow hue filtered through the trees, she forgot where she was for a while, pleasantly lost in the moment. She watched as a drop of dew slipped down a long leaf, collecting other drops along its way to the lowest point, until it released and fell onto the dry ground creating a symmetrical splatter pattern in the dirt.

In the distance, she heard the call of a bird she didn’t recognise. Not that she was surprised. Before a few weeks ago, she’d never been into the jungle, never even thought about what kinds of birds lived in it, let alone listened to their different noises. A large black ant walked toward her and she blocked it with a stick. It stopped for a second and then tried another direction but again she thrust the stick in its path. She realised that for nearly fifteen years she’d been like the ant and the stick was Spencer, always blocking her path, refusing her freedom. The thought came from nowhere, tumbling into focus amidst the ruins of her life. Taking pity on the ant, she let it go and it disappeared into the underbrush.

Tossing the stick into the bush, she turned to see Mackenzie by the fire, humming a tune as his bloody hands removed the skin from a quoll he’d just killed. She marvelled at how proficient he’d become at catching animals with a slingshot he made from one of her bras. Choosing the bra had caused a heated debate. He’d insisted her most expensive one had the best elastic. In the end, she reluctantly sacrificed it and had watched with detached amusement as he tore it apart. She could tell he was proud of the resulting slingshot. At first he missed everything he shot at, but he was persistent and within days he hit most targets and from a fair distance too. Abigail no longer yearned for the bra—in fact most days she didn’t even bother wearing one. Spencer would have been horrified.

A sudden thought occurred to her. “How many days is it now?”

Several days after the crash, Mackenzie had begun making notches in a large gum tree, a constant reminder of how many days it was since the crash. At first she’d found it frustrating, then it became fascinating but now she barely even glanced at it. What was the point?

Mackenzie counted the notches with his bloody finger. “Sixty-three.”

“Oh.” She traced her fingernail along one of the dirty cracks in her heel. Once upon a time, this would have mortified her. But now …

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just … what do you think the date is? My birthday’s the 25
^th
of June.”

“Okay, well we left on the twenty-fourth of April. Add sixty-three days that’d make it …” He rolled his eyes skyward as he calculated. “It could be your birthday. That’s amazing. Your subconscious was telling you something.”

Her heart was torn. She’d begged Spencer to organise a party for her and now he lay in a shallow grave, only a few steps away. She had grand plans for her celebration with over four hundred people coming from all over the world.

Instead, she was sharing her birthday with a man she’d only known for two months. Shrugging off her sorrow, she walked to the fire. “We had a huge party planned. A lovely white marquee was to be set up in the back garden with a jazz band and we booked the best caterers over a year ago.” She studied the fire as she spoke. “I was so annoyed with my friend Maxine, she wanted me to have a barbecue for something different.” Abigail began to laugh and between breaths she said, “Oh my God, Maxine would be hysterical if she could see me now. I am having a barbecue and to top that off, I’m eating an animal that looks like a giant rat.”

She ran her fingers through her hair, but gave up when she caught a knot. “She wanted to cook prawns, Moreton Bay bugs and lobster. Oh my, this is so funny.” Another thought occurred to her and she stopped laughing. “I wonder if anyone cancelled the caterers.”

“I’m sure they would have. Well, birthday girl, how about I prepare a special dish for you?”

She twisted her diamond ring around her finger. “Mmm, that would be nice.”

“So, madam … how old are you today?”

“Forty. Forty and a widow.” This was the first time she’d spoken those words aloud and it surprised her that she didn’t feel anything. Both labels should horrify her, but instead she was completely numb. Or maybe she’d finally accepted them. Abigail looked for Mackenzie’s reaction, but he didn’t offer one. She cast her futile analysing aside. “So what do you want
me
to do?”

“Nothing. It’s your birthday. Why don’t you make some notes in your diary? I haven’t seen you do that for a while.”

Prior to the crash, Abigail had religiously written in her diary, every day scribbling mundane thoughts onto the gold trimmed pages. But not long after the crash, she realised just how pathetic her journal was. Issues that previously seemed so important were trivial and meaningless. Reading back on some of her entries she realised she’d lived a shallow existence and felt like a fraud. Every entry was contrived. She’d learnt more about herself in the last two months than she had in her lifetime and vowed she wouldn’t return to her nightly writing ritual until she could be honest with herself. She wanted to write what she was feeling without worrying about what people would think. Owning her thoughts and expressing them freely were her greatest desires and she wasn’t quite ready yet.

“I think I’ll do a little reading if that’s okay with you.”

* * *

Mackenzie saw the longing in her eyes but didn’t pry. “Okay, I’ll let you know when lunch is ready.” He watched her walk toward the plane and step inside.

Since they’d dropped the plane from its stranglehold in the trees, their settlement was more comfortable. Mackenzie had removed the last of the chairs and stripped the interior of the plane back to a bare shell. In doing so, he’d discovered a metal box in the cockpit that contained a variety of tools, the most valuable being a small axe that came in handy with everything from preparing meals to cutting wood.

He’d bashed the floor until it was as flat as possible and with two mattresses made from parachutes stuffed with leaves, it now served as their bedroom. Mackenzie built a wooden frame to cover the back half of the plane to enclose it more and protect them from the elements. Despite their isolation, he was quite proud of their cosy little campsite.

His hunting skills were now quite good too and he could usually catch small animals with ease. Although he had to apply limits to the amount of flour, sugar and beans he used with each meal, their supply was steadily diminishing. He dreaded the day they ran out completely.

To celebrate her birthday, he wanted to do something special and as he deboned the quoll an idea formed in his mind. During a recent bush exploration, they’d stumbled upon a shrub with plump green and red fruits. According to Charlie’s journal they were called Munthari and were known as bush cranberries. Their Granny Smith apple flavour tasted great with wild meat and Mackenzie had even used the fruit once to make mini tarts for dessert.

As he stuffed the quoll with a mixture of the berries and crushed wattle seeds he sensed Abigail sneaking glances. He stopped what he was doing, stared at the side of the plane and chewed on his bottom lip as he waited, knowing it wouldn’t be long. She was terrible with surprises, always needing to know the details. Finally he caught her peeking out the side.

“Aha, caught yah. You’ll spoil the surprise.”