| |
The two men juggled the fossil, which looked like a slab of prehistoric road-kill, into the boot at an angle. The back of the car sank noticeably under the extra weight.
Cobb jiggled his arrangement a bit then carefully tested that the lid would lock down over it. It did. Reinhold, happier now, shook Cobb by the hand and promised to stay in touch, then got into the car. Cobb, red from exertion and grinning broadly, gave the lady a big cheerful double-thumbs-up through her closed window. She flicked him a brief queenly wave as the car purred louder and started to turn.
“Get down!” hissed Piho suddenly, and dragged Randy deeper into the bush before the headlights swept over them. They watched as the car went past, its muffler scraping on the rough track. Cobb went back to his caravan. They heard the door shut, then the floodlight went off.
“So that’s why Cobb was celebrating,” said Randy as they emerged from their hiding place, “He must’ve sold that fossil to the Berlin Museum.”
“Yeah well, there’s big money in fossils,” said Piho.
“How’d you know?” said Randy, hitching his bag onto his shoulder and stumbling towards Cobb’s caravan in the darkness.
“Read it in the paper, eh.”
“So, ah, you think it’s best we don’t mention what we just saw?”
“Definitely, mate, definitely. Besides, we want a free feed, remember?”
“Yeah, and to use the phone, remember? Then it’s on to Tammy’s!”
“Whatever,” muttered Piho non-committally. He still had his mind on scoring a couple of free beers off Charlie Cobb.
#
COBB DID HAVE A PHONE but no-one answered when Randy tried the number. He tried five times in ten minutes, getting more and more flustered.
“Crikey, mate!” said Cobb after a while, “you’re like a tiger in a flaming cage. Relax why don’t ya?” He pointed to the little table where Piho sat, already tucking into his third smoked salmon sandwich.
“But I’m so close. What is it? Ten kilometres to town?”
“Thirteen exact.” Cobb said between mouthfuls, “Hey it’s great to have company. You play cards?”
Randy tried the phone again. “Still not home!”
“Why don’t you get back on the road?” said Cobb understandingly, “We’ll keep trying her from here. Tell her you’re coming.”
“You sure? Thanks!” Randy grabbed up his bag, “Tell them I’m on my way!”
“Right, yeah, you should be good. Moon’ll be up soon. But listen, if you don’t get a lift by ten then jack it in. You won’t be safe. Get back here with us, Okay?”
“How come?”
The road’ll be full of drunks and hoons, I can tell ya straight.”
“Okay, sure, but I reckon I’ll be home and hosed by then.”
“Course you will. Here’s my number. Call us when you get in.”
“Will do!” Randy was gone.
“And stay on the road!” Cobb called after him.
“Course I will,” answered Randy from the dark, “I ain’t stupid.”
Cobb sighed and shut the door, “Sheesh! He was driving me nuts!”
“Me too,” said Piho, “Try spending a month with him!”
“Not on your Nelly, mate. Want some cake?’
“Sure!”
#
RANDY STUMBLED HASTILY back along the track, anxious about missing even one ride. But the road was empty and the mozzies were swarming thick as flies and anyway he just couldn’t stand still, so he began to walk. Lightning still flickered to the west, now a bit closer, and he heard the first mumbles of thunder. A hot wind stirred the tree-tops. Three cars went past in quick succession, all accompanied by drunken shouting. Randy gave them the finger, safe in the dark behind them.
To his now-fevered brain 13 kilometres didn’t seem that far, so he kept going, and going. The wind gusted from behind, sending a cooling waft through his damp T-shirt. His feet began to fly along the tar-seal. Behind him the thunder rumbled louder.
He started to jog.
The road was still winding through the same landscape, up gentle slopes and down into long shallow valleys. The wind blew stronger, roaring in the trees. He heard branches snapping. Suddenly a big flash of lightning went off, followed two seconds later by a massive boom of thunder. It began raining hard.
Finally he was cool!
He jogged on, feeling slightly insane (not such an uncommon feeling) and glad to be on the move. He could see the road quite well in the almost constant lightning that now played across the heavens. Thunderstorms had never frightened him. In fact he rather enjoyed them. For a start he hardly noticed the warm water rushing sideways across the bitumen beneath his feet.
He slowed to a walk, the water on the road now up to his ankles, and for the first time that day he began to develop the slightest niggling shadow of a doubt that just possibly this had might not have been such a good idea.
The water surged higher. He took three more steps before his left foot plunged off the side of the bitumen and he fell full-length into wet blackness.
He pulled his spluttering face from the muddy water and said a very rude word.
The flood was getting deeper by the moment, rushing across the road from his right, forcing him towards the bush. He clambered up against the flow and got his feet back onto the bitumen. In the next flicker of lightning, he spotted a roadside depth marker, indicating that this place often got flooded. There were more of them further along, all sticking out of an unbroken slick of moving muddy water. He was right in the middle.
“I can do this ... Arrrrgh!”
His feet were moving sideways of their own accord. It reminded him of the one and only time he’d ever been ice skating. After three minutes he’d lost control of his skates and crashed into some girl and ripped her skirt off as he went down.
They threw him out and told him never to come back.
Ah, such fond memories, and no time to enjoy them.
He skidded off the bitumen and fell into deep water. His back-pack caught a surge and turning him around, then he was rolling over and over. He crashed into things; painful things. His cap was gone and the bag kept dragging him under. Desperately he wriggled out of the straps and let it go. Even so he couldn’t find enough air to breathe! He felt himself slide over a rocky edge, bump over some dirt, bounce around a tree, then repeat the procedure in a different order.
Panic flooded his brain. He knew he was never going to see Tammy again. Or Piho, or Blowfly, or his parents, or even his annoying big sister Beau. He’d be glad to even see her again. Even her!
For a few seconds his head came out of the water and he gasped in some air, then it started again; bump, thud, face into gravel, thud into tree, grab tree, miss tree, roll over, swallow water, cough it up, bump, tumble, thud (was that three thuds now, or four?) Another tree! Grab it! Yes!
He was secure. In the last few flashes of the storm Randy caught glimpses of his new surroundings. Further down the valley he saw the flood roaring through a narrow gap, boiling like milky tea. He wouldn’t have survived that, for sure. In every other direction, the endless bush sloped uphill. He was chest deep in the flood and only about five metres from ‘dry’ land but the flood held him to the tree with such force that he was terrified of letting go.
So he hung on, tired and hurt and wanting it all to end.
It had to end. It had to end!
And it did. The rain eased off, then stopped. Stars appeared above the trees. But the water continued to bully him, rollicking vigorously between his legs. At some stage of the night something large, warm and furry bumped into him, its head and neck wrapping lifelessly around his middle. He shoved it away with a strangled cry of disgust.
The moon slowly appeared, a fat fingernail of cold white light high in the trees. Even so he felt, rather than saw, the floodwaters slowly recede. When it was about knee-deep he set off again, lunging from tree-hold to tree-hold. Within thirty seconds he was back on solid land. Exhausted he lay down on the first available place and fell asleep. It was a bit lumpy but he really didn’t care.
When he woke up in the morning he understood why it was so lumpy.
It was a dinosaur’s nest.
#
PIHO WOKE AT THE SAME time, suddenly alarmed. He checked his watch, then slipped silently out of Cobb’s lumpy spare bed and reached for the phone.
Last night the line had failed during the storm, but now he heard a reassuring brrrrr in his ear. Once again he dialled Tammy’s number, once again secretly wondering if Randy even had the right number. The phone rang five times, then Tammy herself answered sleepily.
“Hello?”
“Tammy! Hi, it’s Piho! You know, from Kainui? Listen, did ...”
“Piho? Really! Are you calling from home? Hey it’s five thirty in the morning here. Don’t you know there’s a time difference?”
“Yes – no – I know, listen: I’m actually just up the road from you, I’ll explain later. Did Randy get to you place last night?”
“Randy?!” she exploded with excitement, “He’s here?!”
“Yes, yes, listen: he went hitchhiking to see you about seven o’clock last night. We tried to ring you but you weren’t home.”
“Oh yeah,” she said disappointedly, “we were out. Damn.”
“Okay, whatever. So is Randy there now?”
“No,” Tammy was beginning to understand at last. Her voice began to shrink as she asked, “So then ... where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t come back, and there was that big storm...”
“Oh my God!” she began to say, “Oh my God!”
“Don’t panic, Tams. He’s out there somewhere, like the truth, in space!” He couldn’t help it; his bitterness was showing through. “Anyway, can you get into the car? Take the road to...” he racked his brain for the name of the last town they had hitched through, “...Currybumaway?”
“Scurriburroway!” she corrected.
“Yeah yeah, that’s it! So drive for exactly thirteen kilometres and I’ll be waiting. You should have spotted him by then, anyway.”
“Okay,” she said, “Right. Good plan. I’ll go wake Dad. Bye!”
#
RANDY CLIMBED PAINFULLY to his feet and gazed down at the perfect skeleton of the little dinosaur. Well, it was ‘little’ compared to what his mind thought of as normal for dinosaurs. This one, maybe three metres long at the most (and half of that was her tail), was wrapped around what appeared to be a cluster of rocks. Except there was something just too perfect about these rocks, all too precisely the same.
Not rocks; they were eggs!
Randy gasped suddenly and began frantically going through his silt-laden pockets. He found what he was looking for at the deepest point of his left front pocket: Klaus Reinhold’s business card. Carefully he eased it out. It was still intact. He put it away again with relief and squatted to study his discovery more closely.
The flood must have peeled the top layer right off the slab because it had a fresh clean surface, unlike the appearance of most old rock. Here and there around the edges he could see broken tree-roots, as if a large tree had sat upon it for years. He lifted his eyes and looked around. Downstream he saw a large fallen tree lodged sideways against several others, creating a messy dam of smaller broken trees and general bush litter. It had obviously been the cause of the deep water he had spent half the night in. And there was something yellow stuck in the tangle. His bag!
“Excellent!” He stumbled down-slope, wrenched his sodden bag from the dam (carefully avoiding a dead furry thing that was probably the same dead furry thing that had tried to cuddle up to him in the flood) and returned to the fossil.
Then he noticed another detail. One of the dozen or so eggs was already missing. He slid his fingers into the empty socket, scooping out the silt, feeling oddly sad.
“What a shame.”
Another of the eggs appeared to be loose. He set his fingers to it and pulled. Very very slowly, with a slight sucking noise, it came up.
It was heavy. After all, it was rock. He turned it over. The underside was crumpled, as if the egg had been damaged just before its final burial. His disappointment surged.
“Oh well,” he murmured, “Wonder how much that dude’ll pay me for it anyway?”
He slipped it into the zippered outer pocket of his sodden bag and turned towards where he though the road had to be. Right then he heard a car driving through, perhaps only a hundred metres away.
“Excellent! I’ll just hitch!”
Plodding wearily, and in some considerable pain, he started up-slope, driven by the hope that the egg was going to be worth a bit of money.
Oh yes – and it was going to be good to see Tammy, too.