“Huh.” At least he had the sense to get stranded at the right time of year.
“They always say that you should stay with your vehicle, because you're more likely to be found,” Nat says. “But our vehicle's not even close to the road.”
“Better to stay at our camp,” I say. “We've got shade here, a couple of trees anyway. We're right by the road.”
“Do we have a map?” Nat asks. “I mean, how far exactly is it toâ¦well, to anywhere?”
“I don't know,” I say. “Far. The maps were in the jeep.”
“It's over six hundred kilometers back to Wiluna,” she says. “Probably more like seven hundred, since we're closer to the north end of the lake than the south.”
“Might as well try to hike to the moon,” I say bitterly. And I realize something: I don't want to die. After months in which a good day meant not caring either way and a bad day meant making mental lists of ways to end it, I actually want to live.
My timing sucks.
“There's an Aboriginal community north of here,” Nat says. “Kunawarritji. I'm not sure how far exactly. Maybe three hundred kilometers?”
“In this heat? A hundred times as far as we walked yesterday?” I shake my head. “There's no way, Nat. It'd take usâ¦I don't know. Too long.”
“If we walked thirty kilometers a day, we'd be there in less than ten days.”
I rub my aching shoulders. “I couldn't carry any more than I did yesterday. Those water jugs must weigh fifty pounds each. We'd run out of water before we even got close.”
“We can't stay here,” Nat says, and there's a note of panic in her voice. “We can't.”
“Look, it's not like I want to either,” I say. “But our water will last us longer if we stay in the shade and don't do too much. The longer we can stay alive out here, the better the odds of being found.”
She is fighting back tears.
“Nat⦔
“Sorry.” She rubs the back of her hand across her eyes roughly. “I'm so
mad
at myself. I mean, I
knew
this was too early in the season. I knew we should travel with at least one other vehicle.”
“Yeah, well, you couldn't have predicted the fire. Anyway, if you're going to be mad at someone⦔ I trail off and gesture toward Mel's tent.
“Believe me, I'm plenty pissed at him too.”
There is a long silence. The sun is still low, but the heat is already rising, sure as a tide coming in. The light out here is different than anywhere I've been before, constantly transforming the colors of the landscape in an ever-shifting array of red and orange and brown. There is no wind and no sound at all. It is eerie.
And then it occurs to me that it is not only eerie, it is downright weird. Because Mel snores with the volume of an oncoming freight train.
I get up and walk over to his tent.
“Jayden!” Nat hisses. “What are you
doing
?”
“Just checking on him.” I stop, listen for breathing. Nothing. I hold my breath and slowly unzip the tent. I don't want to wake him and have him start freaking out, but I need to make sure he's not dead or something. I stick my head in through the open flap.
Mel's not there.
I sit back on my heels. “He's gone. He's taken off.”
“Looking for those damn lizards,” she says. “Only room for one on the pinnacle and all that.”
And it's an awful thought, but it occurs to me that if Mel never came back, there'd be more water for Nat and me.
Nat and I spend the next couple of hours sitting in a tiny patch of thin shade, trying not to move or talk or even breathe any more than we have to. It is unbearably hot. I find myself trying to think of ways to describe the heat, just in case I ever have the chance to tell anyone about this. The words we use for hot days back home don't fit at all. The language that comes to mind is one we use to describe cooking. Baking or roasting or broiling or sizzling. It's like sitting in an oven.
Or a fire. Burning. Scorching. Blazing. Blistering.
I imagine spending day after day just sitting here, waiting in this pathetic patch of shade, praying for rain, watching our precious water supply dwindle and hoping that someone happens to drive by.
Waiting here might be the sensible thing to do, but the thought is almost unbearable.
“Nat? You think we could rig up one of the tents to make better shade?”
Her voice is hoarse. “And all sleep in one? With Mel?”
“Yeah. Maybe not.” I look at my watch. “It's almost noon. Do you think we should look for him?”
She looks at me like I've lost my mind. “Dude, you don't want to go wandering around in this heat. If he's not back by dinnertime, we'll go look. When it cools off a little.”
“Yeah. You're right.” I shift position and stretch my legs out. “Sorry. It's just hard doing nothing.”
“Tell me about it. Actually, don't. You'll need less water if you stay quiet. Breathe through your nose.”
I stink like smoke from yesterday's fire. “I wish we had other clothes,” I mutter.
“At least we both have long sleeves,” Nat says. “And hats. We could easily have leaped out of the truck without hats on and then we'd be even more screwed.”
“You think that's possible?”
Nat doesn't say anything, and I wish I'd kept my mouth shut.
By late afternoon Mel still hasn't returned, but thick gray clouds have moved in, and the temperature has dropped dramatically. “Think it might rain?” Nat asks.
“Maybe. We should figure out a way to collect water. Perhaps we could use the food bins?”
Nat stands, stretches and walks over to the plastic tub of food that we rescued from the back of the burning jeep. “If we put the food in one of the tents.”
“Good thing there's no bears to worry about here.”
“Way to find the silver lining, Jayden.”
We unload the foodâcans of beans, soup, powdered milk, crackers, dried fruit, granola, instant coffeeâinto Nat's tent. I wonder, briefly, if we should be worried about dingoes, but decide not to say anything. We have enough to worry about already, and besides, if we have to choose between food and water, there's no contest. I balance one end of the plastic lid against the side of the tent, making a ramp into the bin.
“That's smart,” Nat says. “Increasing the area we can catch rain from.”
“Yeah. Well, we could be here a while.”
She turns away from me but not before I see the look on her face.
“Nat? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Bull. Tell me.”
She shakes her head. “Forget it.”
I drop it, but I don't forget it. There's something she isn't telling me, and I have no idea how important it might be.
We share a can of soup and some water, and decide to look for Mel. We retrace our steps from the day before, back toward the scrubby hummocks of grass at the edges of Lake Disappointment. We're maybe halfway back to the burned-out jeep when we spot him.
“Mel!” I shout.
He startles and turns toward us, cursing. “Well, well. Spying on me, are you? Hoping to grab a share of the glory?”
His face is the color of ripe tomato. “Jeez, Mel. You're really burned. Your face⦔
“Traitors,” he says. “I trusted you to help me on this journey and what have you done? Lied. Cheated. Betrayed my trust.”
“That's crazy.” So crazy I don't know where to begin.
He waves his hands as if he's brushing away his own words. “None of that matters now,” he says. “I'm on the verge of a great discovery.” He speaks thickly, his lips swollen and split.
“That's great,” I say carefully. “You should get out of the sun though. Come back to the camp, have some dinner.”
“My dear boy. Are you listening to me?” Mel's eyes are bloodshot, but their blue gaze is as piercing as ever. “I saw it.”
“The lizard you're looking for?”
“The reason we're here,” he says, nodding. “The point of all this.”
Nat and I exchange glances.
“Mel, the thing isâ¦without the jeep, we're in a bit of trouble here. Odds are no one will drive by before April.” I glance up at the clouds, which are stubbornly refusing to release a drop of water. “We need to figure out how we're going toâ¦manageâ¦until then.” I almost said
survive
but I swallowed the word before it left my mouth. I don't want to go there.
“Come back to the camp with us,” Nat begs. “Please, Mel.”
“My dear girl. My dear Natalie.” Mel speaks almost fondly. “You just don't give up, do you? Surely you don't think you can stall me until the Rizzards get here?”
“Mel, I'm not working with them, okay? I just want you to be safe.” Nat's voice wobbles and her eyes are wet, but the way her fists are clenched at her sides makes me think she is angry as much as hurt.
“You can look again tomorrow.” I give a short bitter laugh. “Believe me, you'll have plenty of time to search for wildlife.”
Mel just shakes his head. “I'll stop when I've got the lizard.”
Nat and I argue with Mel for a while, but I can tell it is futile. I try to point out that he won't be able to find anything in the dark, but he just accuses me of deliberately wasting the precious last hour of daylight. Finally, we give up. Nat persuades Mel to take her water bottle, and we leave him scrabbling around in the dirt.
The two of us head back to our camp, not talking. Our footsteps are loud in the silence of the evening, and all around us the desert glows like hot coals as the sun sinks down toward the horizon.
The clouds disappear overnight, taking their precious water with them, and morning arrives with no sign of Mel. All day long, I expect him to show upâbragging about what he has found, maybe, or ranting about how disappointed he is in our lack of enthusiasmâ but he doesn't. Nat and I wait until the cool of the evening to search for him, walking in ever larger circles around our camp and shouting his name until our throats are dry and voices hoarse. It would be more efficient to split up and search different areas, but neither of us suggests it. Even together, every time we leave our camp, I am terrified that we will get lost.
The next day dawns as hot as ever and with every minute that passes, the temperature climbs higher. Morning slips into afternoon, the sun blazes in the blue sky and the sand beneath us radiates heat. “We shouldn't have left Mel out there on his own,” I say. “We should have made him come back here with us.”
We're sitting in our patch of shade, sipping water every couple of hours and trying not to think about anything. “Not like we had a choice,” Nat says.
“I guess.” I think we're both wondering if he is still alive, but mostly we avoid talking about it. We also avoid talking about the heat, our steadily diminishing water supply, or the fact that we have no idea how long we could be here. We're both sleeping in Nat's tent, as if we think Mel might still come back and claim his, but it seems increasingly unlikely with every day that passes.
“I wish I believed in a god I could pray to,” I say.
Nat doesn't answer. Above the horizon, the sun is slowly sinking lower in the sky. The desert glows orange and red in the late afternoon light. The landscape is like a living thing, the way its colors shift and change. “I wish I had my camera,” I say.
“You sure have a lot of wishes,” Nat says. “How about something useful? A jeep, say.”
“Mm. Or a hotel. With a swimming pool.” I grin at her. It amazes me that even now, Nat can make me laugh. I can't imagine how awful it would be to be out here alone.
On the morning of the fourth day, I wake up early to the sound of Nat crying. It is so unlike her that it frightens me. I roll toward her in the tent and prop myself up on one elbow. “What's wrong?”
She makes a choking sound that is half laugh, half sob. “Everything.”
Stupid question. “I mean, other than the obvious.”
“Other than the fact that I'm going to die here?” She wipes her hand roughly across her eyes.
“You're not going to die,” I say. “You're not. It'll rain and we'll get more water. Or we'll walk to the next well and refill our jugs. Some of the wells must have drinking water, right?”
She starts crying again and covers her face with her hands.
“We can find food,” I say. “If we need to. There's plants and animals, stuff that has to be edible.”
She doesn't answer.
“There's lizards,” I say desperately. “I don't care how endangered they areâ they probably still taste like chicken.” I have to make her laugh, to snap out of this slump, to be her usual tough self. “Maybe we'll eat the lizard Mel's looking for. Hey, Nat?”