The Other Side of Nowhere (25 page)

‘The dinghy’s heading back to shore,’ I shouted.

Matt stood up in the bow and flipped them a one-finger salute and Nick let out a victory howl and squeezed George’s knee. She smiled at him and wrapped her arms tightly around Amira.

I turned to take one last look back at the island. I shook my head in disbelief as I stared at the towering cliffs. The thought that we had climbed down inside that cliff to find Matt and then somehow made it off the beach was unbelievable.

‘Woo hoo!’ I yelled, and everyone else took up my cry.

Somehow we had done it. We hadn’t always stuck together like we should have – but we’d done it.

But then I looked down at all the money that lay at our feet. Somehow, as desperately as I wanted to feel that we really had won, I wondered if all we’d done was make a powerful enemy angry.

We raced out of the bay and hit the bigger swell of the open ocean. Salty spray flew over the bow of the inflatable and I closed my eyes and let it wash over me, relishing the cool on my tingling skin.

We rounded the point where
The Dolphin
had run aground and zipped across the wide expanse of water towards the next point, which marked the start of the bay where we had first come ashore during the storm. Beyond that there was the long line of cliffs all the way to the tip of the island.

Amira’s crying had subsided to a whimper and she cocooned herself in George’s arms. The look in her father’s eyes as he thrust her into the boat had been a strange mixture of anguish and relief, as if it were the easiest and the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. God only knew what he must have been through to make such a sacrifice.

The thought sent a shiver through me. I looked back but there was no sign of anyone behind us. We were well clear of the bay and speeding away.

I should have been high as a kite, overjoyed to have freed Matt and to be speeding away from a place that had felt like a prison for days, but that’s not how I felt at all. I couldn’t shake the vision of Ali and the others. What would happen to them now? If their situation had been hopeless before, hadn’t we just made it a whole heap worse?

I looked back over my shoulder again at the bubbling wake and thought of the moment we had run from Zaffar and left Matt to fend for himself. I felt I was being tested again. Only this time I wasn’t about to fail.

‘Nick, slow down,’ I yelled, motioning for him to reduce the speed of the engine.

Nick tilted his head trying to hear me, but when I yelled again to stop he wound the throttle back. As the whine of the engine dropped a little I felt our speed drop by a notch. ‘What?’

‘We can’t leave them. We have to go back,’ I said firmly.

Nick stopped the boat. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘We have to! If Ali was in danger before, we’ve only made it worse. We have to help him. We have to help all of them!’

George leant forward, Amira under her. ‘Johnno, I hear what you’re saying, but what can we do?’

‘I don’t know. But doesn’t it feel like we’re just running away? They need our help,’ I blurted out.

George shook her head. ‘Johnno, the best way we can help them is to get to the police when we get back to Shell Harbour.’

George sat back, looking at Nick for an answer. But he just kicked with his foot at a translucent container that was connected to the motor. A dark smudge sloshed around inside, barely covering the base.

Nick bent down and picked the container up. He screwed up his face in dismay.

‘What?’ George demanded.

‘There’s not much petrol …’ he announced, sounding grim. ‘We’re not going to make it.’

‘How far will it get us?’

Nick paused as if trying to calculate it his head. ‘Not far enough to make it to the mainland.’

For a moment, no-one said anything. The only sound was the waves lifting the little boat up and down in a steady rhythm.

‘Could we at least make it to the other side of the island?’ George asked, finally. ‘Just to get away from Zaffar and his mates?’

Nick shrugged, looking doubtful about the idea. ‘Look, I just don’t know. But you saw – it’s pretty much rock all the way round to the other side. If we ran out of juice, we’d have to take our chances at sea.’

George groaned.

Nick looked over at the beach and then grinned. ‘But there might be people, tourists over on the other side of the island … It might be worth a try. We might be able to get some help. Let’s go in here and make it across to the other side on foot.’

‘How long will that take?’ I asked.

Nick shot a look at Amira. ‘Well, we won’t be breaking any records. But it might be the safest option.’

‘Okay, then,’ said George, making the decision. ‘Let’s go in and start walking.’

Nick opened up the throttle and turned the inflatable towards shore. As the whining engine picked up again, the drumming in my temples started up too. Big time. And, as we hit a couple of waves on the way to the beach, it felt like all the pain receptors in my body had banded together to throw a party. Everything started to blur and I felt myself slumping forward.

When I opened my eyes I was staring at George’s face. Worry was written all over it.

‘Johnno, you okay?’

‘Sure,’ I mumbled. I started to get up, but fell back again as the inflatable ran up onto the sand and stuck fast.

Nick and Matt jumped out and held the inflatable steady while George helped Amira and then me onto the sand. Nick tried to pull the inflatable further up the beach but it wouldn’t budge.

‘Just leave it,’ said George. ‘It’ll take too long to drag all the way up the beach. Better to just push it out to sea and let it drift.’

‘What about the money?’ said Matt, staring at the bags at the bottom of the boat.

‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t belong to us, anyway.’

Matt turned on me with an astonished look. ‘No way. It’s totally ours now,’ he said defiantly.

‘It’s not ours at all,’ George started to argue.

Nick cut her off. ‘Why don’t we bury it? We can figure out what to do with it later.’

‘Yeah, buried treasure!’ Matt cheered.

George looked disapproving, but didn’t say anything. She grabbed the little girl’s hand and started up the beach.

Nick reached into the inflatable and pulled out the suitcase first. When all the bags were on the sand, he waded into the water and gave the inflatable a big shove to set it free. At first it drifted along the beach, but soon the tide pulled it out to sea.

‘C’mon, we’re wasting time,’ said Nick.

The three of us grabbed a bag each and headed up the beach to George, who had found a narrow path winding through the trees.

Nick took the lead and we followed him up the track. As I trudged along behind, I wondered if Zaffar and Baldy would try to save themselves or come after us. If they did, they’d probably spot the empty inflatable and figure out the way we must have come. And one thing was for sure – they’d be mad as hell.

Walking tracks crisscrossed through the bush, but we blindly trudged along behind Nick as he led the way. Suddenly the hut magically appeared. We waited quietly for a few minutes among the trees to make sure there was no-one there and then moved cautiously onto the verandah. I creaked open the door. There was no sign that anyone had been back there since earlier that day.

As keen as we were to keep moving, we were exhausted. Even Matt looked done in as he sat on the step clutching Amira’s hand. George sat with her knees tucked up against her chest on the other side of the little girl. She couldn’t even be bothered to push away the hair that was hanging in front of her face. Nick lay down on the overgrown grass, gazing upwards, while I gingerly felt my ribs, half-expecting to find a couple of them poking through my skin. None of us had an ounce of energy left, but it was simply not an option to hang out and rest. I checked my watch. Somewhere along the way its face had been smashed, but it still seemed to be working.

‘It’s five o’clock now. It’ll be dark soon. Look, there’s a shed over there. I’ll see if there’s a shovel or something. Let’s bury these bags here and get moving.’

George lifted herself up and beckoned Amira to follow her. ‘C’mon, Amira, let’s get some water from the stream while the pirates bury their treasure.’

I found three rusty shovels in the back shed. I passed one each to Matt and Nick, and we headed over to the trees at the front of the house. Choosing a large tree with an ugly brown bulge halfway up its trunk, I picked up a sharp-edged rock and carved a small ‘X’ in the bark.

We got digging next to the tree. It took ages to dig a hole deep enough to fit the bags and suitcase. By the time we were done, we were exhausted. Nick and I dropped the bags in and covered them over with sandy soil. Then we sprinkled some leaves and twigs over the top. It might not fool the guys at CSI but for anyone else, finding it would be a total fluke. We returned the shovels to the shed and then came back around to the front of the house to find George with a saucepan full of water for us to share.

Nick was sure that there would be a way across the middle of the island, so we walked around the back of the house and searched for another path through the bush. We found a narrow opening almost hidden by overhanging trees and pushed our way into the bush again. It wasn’t long before the path we were on started to rise and once again we found ourselves stepping up over a crosshatching of tree roots. As I started to breathe deeper the pain in my side returned, like a white hot poker between my ribs each time my lungs expanded.