The Fall

I listened hard for Kelly and looked back up towards the road but I didn’t hear a car or people, just fat raindrops falling from nearby trees.

Trying to escape was another risky move that my mother would advise against, but Harry was right. Our prospects weren’t good if we just stood here. I had seen what Kelly was capable of, and he hadn’t driven us to a remote location and walked us through the bush in the early hours of the morning to watch the sun rise.

‘You ready?’ Harry whispered, wrapping my arm tightly around the back of his neck.

‘Yep.’

Now or never. My saliva was thick, my throat sore with thirst. A shiver rippled through me but I kept my body tight, muscles tensed. Adrenaline, rage and fear boiled beneath my skin. All I could do was trust my father. I barely knew him but I put every thread of faith I had into him in that moment.

‘Let’s go,’ he whispered and we limped, top speed, into that dead, black night. Full dark, no stars. Across the rock, through the grass and into the trees.

THIRTY-FOUR NOW OR NEVER

Kelly sprayed the bush to the right of us with torchlight, casting hundreds of shifting, tangled tree shadows across our path as he gave chase. Then he snapped the torch off again after a couple of seconds. Maybe he was trying to avoid being seen by whoever was in that car.

I waited for the loud bark of his weapon and a sharp explosion of pain between my shoulderblades, a feeling I had imagined many times while writing my comics.

But the gun didn’t fire and Kelly didn’t say a word. He moved steadily through the undergrowth about thirty metres back and to the right of us, hunting us down like deer, or foxes. Foxes, I thought. We needed to be wily, determined, resilient and cunning, not frightened and skittish.

Maybe we should have been screaming for help. Would that make the driver of the vehicle come towards or away from us. Scarlet? I wondered again, but it didn’t add up. Campers maybe. Or teenagers.

I leaned heavily on Harry as we three-legged-raced through the night. I took most of my weight on my left leg, but my right foot touched the ground lightly between hops, propelling me forward. It hurt so bad but we were running for our lives, so the pain seemed a worthwhile investment.

I hoped that Harry could see what was up ahead better than I could. For all I knew we were running towards another cliff. Tree trunks sped towards my face and Harry pulled me right or left before another tree appeared. Ghost gums, I thought. Their tall white shapes appeared from nowhere.

There was a patch of moonlight for a moment, tiny knives of silver light cutting through the tree cover, revealing steeper, rockier ground up to our left before the clouds smothered the moon once more.

‘Up there?’ I whispered, knowing how difficult this would make it for Kelly to follow but not considering how difficult it would be for us to find a way. We veered to the left and up the slope. It was the same hill we had come down with Kelly but about fifty metres further along, away from the cliff. There was no visible track. Just steep, uneven ground peppered with slippery rocks that were carpeted in what felt like moss beneath the soles of my squelchy, waterlogged sneakers.

We came to a very steep section and Harry grabbed hold of a meaty tree root poking from a crack in a slab of sandstone. The rock was as tall as me and, from what I could see, sloped back up the hill at about 45 degrees. I could hear the shiny bottoms of Harry’s smooth-soled city shoes slipping and sliding on the surface. Harry tried to keep his arm around me and drag me up with him but I was slipping behind. I twisted a thin vine around my hand and used every splinter of strength I had to pull myself upwards. My left knee dug into the mossy rock, shredding layers of skin. Harry groaned under my weight then squeezed my upper arm and pulled even harder, heaving me onto the next flattish section of ground, only to face a steeper, rockier incline a few metres further on.

I heard Kelly swear quietly somewhere in the pit of blackness we were climbing out of but I couldn’t tell where it came from or how close he was.

There was another moment when the cloud cover thinned and, squinting into that foggy, dark wild, I made out a diagonal sliver of track up to the left.

‘What about here?’ I whispered, panicky.

The little I could see of the narrow gap was choked with leaves, fallen branches and smaller rocks. Harry scrambled up first, his shoes scratching for grip on anything they could find. He leaned down, grabbing my hand, dragging me up. I scraped and clawed and clambered onto the flat, bashing my injured knee in the process. I sat at my father’s feet and whined quietly, massaging above and below my knee.

‘This is insane,’ Harry croaked, already exhausted. He grabbed my hand again, helping me to my feet, and we stumbled on into the night. Harry steered us left, along flatter ground. It felt like we might be circling back towards the track we had come down with Kelly, back towards the cliff edge.

I heard Kelly again, moving through the bush below. I tried to make out the shape of him but it was hopeless.

Soon Harry and I came across a fallen gum tree blocking our path. It was almost as thick as I am tall and there was no clear way to get past it. To my right it seemed as though its roots had been torn from the ground. They towered over us like a giant claw at the base of the next steep section of the slope. We would have to go up that slope and around the roots, or climb right over the thick trunk in front of us.

Harry turned and rested against its smooth surface for a moment, taking fast, shallow breaths, then he leaned forward, dry-retching.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

He answered by vomiting loudly. I felt it splat around my feet and ankles and I rested my hand on his back. His shirt was soaked with sweat.

Kelly was running through the bush below us now. We were out in the open, sitting ducks.

‘We’ve got to move,’ I whispered. ‘If we get over the tree and keep going across the slope here, maybe we can make it back to the track we came down in the first place.’

‘Give me a minute,’ Harry said, stifling a cough.

Kelly flicked on his torch again for a second and sprayed the bush just below us with light. I saw my sneakers glow for a moment before the torch went off again.

‘We don’t have a minute,’ I whispered.

I bent down and looked beneath the fallen tree. There was a narrow crawl-space beneath the trunk. I grabbed the shoulder of Harry’s shirt and pulled him to the ground. My chin hit hard and I wondered if my face had landed in my father’s vomit.

‘Go under,’ I whispered and Harry slid back along the wet, mulchy earth, slipping into the thirty-centimetre gap beneath the fallen gum tree. I slid in too, my cheek scratching the paper-thin bark and leaf litter on the ground.

I strained to hear Kelly’s movement between the night sounds of insects, a low, mournful bird and the fast rhythmic splat of raindrops. He had seen or heard us, I knew.

I turned my head towards Harry, the tip of my nose scraping the underside of the tree.

‘Can you go right under?’ I asked, hoping we could slip beneath the tree and get out the other side. The trunk wasn’t lying flat on the ground. Roots or branches must have held it up at either end.

‘The gap’s not wide enough,’ he said. ‘I’m wedged in as far as I can go.’

‘Are you okay?’ I whispered.

‘I’m okay,’ he croaked.

Harry will get us out of this, I thought.

But I didn’t believe it any more.

I heard the crack and snap of Kelly coming up the slope. He was so close now I could hear his asthmatic wheeze, and I turned to see the dark, round shape of his head appear above the edge of the rock. He pulled himself up onto flatter ground, pushed up off his gut, knelt, stood and hunched forward, hands resting on his knees. He took three belts on his puffer. His breathing sounded a lot worse than Harry’s.