February 21st, later
My knuckles are white as I grip the steering wheel, driving fast, the car bumping and lurching over the rough ground, my body jerking, my head hitting the roof. My skin is on fire, sweat all over. The red warning light on the petrol gauge came on a while back, but the air conditioning is off and the windows open; I’m even talking to the car.
‘Keep going,’ I say, over and over.
Maybe I’m talking to myself. The car rumbles over softer sand, sputtering. A tyre will blow. The fuel will run out. I’ll break down here and that will be it. But I don’t want to die on a mining access road. I have to live. I have to get far away.
Your face appears in front of me, smeared across the windscreen, your skin covered in blood and sand. No, I can’t think about you right now. I shake the sweat from my eyes. I need to keep driving. The car moans and I stroke the steering wheel, will it on.
‘Good car,’ I say. ‘Hang on.’
The last bottle of water is rolling around on the passenger seat. Not enough to get me through the next hour, let alone beyond that.
‘I’m thirsty too, my friend,’ I say to the car, as I rattleheadlong down the dirt track.
Again and again, I flick sticky hair from my face. The ache in my right shoulder is spasming all the way to my forehead, my head pulsing with pain, but I grit my teeth and keep my foot down on the accelerator. Perhaps the real story of me starts here, driving fast with the engine screaming. This is my real release.
Soon the car is sputtering harder, moving more slowly through the sand. The wheels grind and spin as I manage to swerve off the track and under some trees. Then with a shudder, the car stops. I gulp hot, dry air. What now? Gum trees and scrub. Roo shit. Huge silhouettes of birds against the massive sky. No water. No petrol. No you. I topple out of the car into a blast of steam coming from under the hood, then leap away fast. I try to shelter under the scraggly trees, slouching down in the dirt, eyes on the car in case the smoke turns to flames. The sand on this part of the track seems more compact. Does that mean I’m not far from the tarmacked road, after all?
‘You did your best,’ I tell the car. ‘You did all you could.’
I murmur sweet nothings about the car’s bravery and ability to cope in a crisis, then stop when I realise how nuts I sound. But it’s miraculous the car and I got this far; that it wasn’t bogged when I started it up; that I could drive after what I did. In the footwell is the scrunched receipt from when I bought us fish and chips in that mining town. I remember you sucked the grease off your fingers and gnawed bits of batter from the wrapping. I blink sweat from my eyes as I see you again, sprawled across the dirt, blood all over you. When I blink again, there’s only red sand in front of me, swaying and dancing in the heat. I rub the heels of my hands into my eyes. Your feet and your toes must be cool, deep in the earth, even if your face and shouldersare sizzling hot. Could I go back to you? Is it a sign that the car broke down before I reached the road? I could walk back to where I left you.
When I push away from the car, I’m no longer sure which way I’m facing. Everything is spinning, the trees are on top, the earth is blue, not red. My hand flies out to the car to steady myself, and I scream from its sudden heat against my skin. Again, I shelter under the trees; I’m going to be sick. But when I retch, nothing comes up. Heat stroke? Or guilt? I deserve this. Dehydrating on a miner’s track after what I’ve done would be a fitting end. But if I die now, what would be the point of any of this? I don’t trust myself right now: if someone stopped to pick me up, I’d start babbling, revealing everything. I’m still too close to you.
I pinch the skin on my arms.Just get the fuck together.
I grab the last bottle of water and start to walk; I’ll keep going as long as I can. This time you won’t rescue me. And Mum doesn’t know where I am. There’s no worldwide manhunt paid for by government funds. It’s up to me.
I walk with my head down. Close up, I see how well maintained the track is. We couldn’t have lived our days out here in blissful isolation; someone would have found us eventually. And maybe, not too long from now, someone will find you. Will they recognise you? Will they frame what happened as a revenge killing?
As I walk, I try to formulate a plan. Once I get to the main road, I’ll flag down a car, hitch a ride back to the petrol station where we filled up for the last time. I’ll drink cool, clean water, and hitch back with water for the car to drink, before driving it back to Perth. After I’ve cleaned it up and got my money back,I’ll ring Mum and say the island trip was amazing.
Then I’ll forget this whole experience. I’ll forget you.
I won’t drive past 31 Banksia Drive and check what that woman is doing, and I won’t look for that teenager in the park. I’ll just get on the plane I’m booked on and leave.
I put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
Then, like a mirage, the bitumen road.
I go close enough to touch it. Flinch. The tar is glistening in the sun, melting from the heat, but it’s real. Ten years ago, it took longer than this to reach a proper road. The land is changing.
I shelter beside a termite mound at the side of the road, checking both ways. No vehicles, just the trembling movement of a heat haze. I sit in the dust and wait, ants crawling over my legs immediately. I’m burnt and sore, like you must be now. And I’ve almost finished the water. I peer down the road. The heat haze is playing tricks: I see trucks that aren’t there, camels and horses. When I stare across the glistening road and see dead, blackened trees, they look like hunched shadow-men, surreal sculptures. Far away, dust moves through the land, wound in a dark tornado. Everything else is still. Everything is dead.
One last mouthful of water. I’d be stupid to save it. What if a car came by and saw me like this? I use it to wash your blood from my hands, clean my face.
There’s movement down the road, a vehicle approaching. I sweep the wet hair from my face and stand, my fingers holding me steady against the termite mound. No flag on the hood, not a mine vehicle. As it nears, I see it’s a white transit van with a logo on the side.Desert Dreaming Journeys.This is going to lookweird, me being here.
The van stops close to me, too close. The window goes down and a man’s face appears. He is round and red-cheeked and clean-shaven, so different from you.
‘Where’ve you come from?’ he says.
I feel the tickle of a nervous cough, but swallow it down.
‘I’ve been travelling,’ I say, my voice steadier than I feel. ‘Hitching.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Why’d you get off here?’