The first fat drops of rain fell just as Jahmin nearly fell off the edge of a cliff. He teetered dangerously, windmilling his arms for balance, and managed to catch hold of a ponga tree trunk leaning out into space. Ferns and bushes dotted the slick grey sides of the gorge, and far below the water churned and boiled.
‘Bloody hell!’ Jahmin gasped as he steadied himself.
Liam peered over Jahmin’s shoulder. ‘I thought we were headed straight. The river must have bent round. I don’t remember that.’
‘I dunno. All I remember is trying not to drown.’
‘It’s heaps skinnier. It must be an offshoot. We’ll have to cross it.’
‘How are we going to get down there?’
‘Helicopter.’
‘Nice. Here’s one I prepared earlier.’
The rain was heavier now, spraying off the leaves and leaving dark round patches on their barely dry hoodies.
‘Let’s wait till the rain stops,’ Liam said.
‘But we’re going to get wet down there, anyway.’
‘Maybe not. See?’
Liam pointed down to a line of dark round shapes protruding from the water. ‘Stepping stones.’
Jahmin raised a doubtful eyebrow. The stones looked quite wide apart, even from a distance. ‘Maybe if you’re a Russian gymnast.’
‘Let’s get undercover, anyway. That hole in the bank. It’ll do.’
Liam led the way back. They broke into a run as the rain came down harder, drumming against the leaves. They shouted to each other, playfully, as though it was some kind of game.
For a moment, Jahmin lost himself in their breathless haste. He was someplace else, someplace happier. It felt good.
Shelter wasn’t far. Liam swept aside the curtain of vines and they tumbled into the space behind it.
It only took a moment to realise that the hole wasn’t a hole at all.
‘Wow,’ Liam said, staring at the old wooden beams shoring up the entrance, the rusty rails half-buried in dirt. ‘It’s an old mine.’
His voice echoed in the small space. They could see a fall of rocks a few metres in, cutting off the rest of the tunnel.
‘Might be part of Seddon Corp, maybe?’ Jahmin said. ‘Dad said they’ve got land around here.’
‘I thought this was the national park? Government owned?’
‘Maybe we crossed over or something.’
Jahmin started and yelped, banging his head painfully against a beam. He brushed frantically at his halo of ginger hair, now covered in a thick skein of spiderweb.
‘When are you going to cut that frizz ball?’
‘Never,’ Jahmin hissed, wiping sticky bits of web off his fingers with a handful of wet vines.
‘Glad we don’t have to build a shelter,’ Liam remarked, settling down on the bare earth. The rain was sheeting down. It was like being behind a waterfall.
‘Me too. Wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Beth and me used to play huts all the time when we were little.’
‘Life skills, huts.’
‘What’d you used to play?’
‘Computer games.’
Liam laughed. ‘Not much help out here.’
‘Not unless the big boss shows up,’ Jahmin snapped his fingers, ‘and then that mother is going down.’
He felt a tickle on the back of his neck and automatically raised a hand to scratch it, but he froze as the tickle moved. ‘Liam! There’s something ...’
Liam leaned over. ‘Don’t move. I got it.’
He reached out and gently picked something off Jahmin’s neck. Jahmin shuddered involuntarily.
‘What the hell is it?’
Liam opened his hand to reveal a large, brown wētā covering his palm, long feelers circling, jagged legs twice the length of its body.
Jahmin let out a high-pitched scream and threw himself into the rain, slapping at his shoulders and body, hopping from leg to leg. Liam almost choked with laughing. He placed the wētā down carefully and it crawled away into a mass of dead leaves, not bothered at all by the uninvited visitors.
‘It won’t hurt you.’
‘It scared the shit out of me!’
‘You’re getting wet.’
‘Like I care. I’m not going back in there. There might be more!’
‘Prob’ly. But they won’t hurt you. Okay, sometimes they bite but they’re not poisonous.’
‘Bite? They bite?’
‘You can always bite it back. Harden up.’
Reluctantly, Jahmin returned to the shelter. He took off his sweatshirt, hung it across a broken beam to dry, and thoroughly checked the ground before settling next to Liam.
The two rested quietly for a time and then Jahmin said, ‘I wonder what we’ll find.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘The bus. Who else made it, you know? Maybe no one did. Maybe it’s just us.’
‘Nah, no way. Can’t be.’
‘What if they’ve all been rescued already? Gone home?’
‘Doubt it. We’ve only been gone, like, twenty-four hours. There’ll be heaps of searchers. Divers and rescue teams. They’ll want to find everyone, dead or alive.’
‘I still can’t figure out what happened. I thought Awhina was going to smash the driver.’
‘She’s so perfect, he prob’ly deserved it.’
‘Perfect, you reckon?’
‘Nah, not really. She’s not my type. Eva’s more me.’
Jahmin was surprised. ‘Evs? You know she’s a lesbo, right?’
‘Yeah. I’m kinda hoping it’s a phase.’
Jahmin grinned, remembering the uproar two years earlier when Eva had broken into the principal’s office during third period and announced she was gay over the school intercom. ‘I just wanted to get it over and done with,’ she’d protested, but the principal had given her detention for the rest of the year regardless. Breaking and entering, vandalising school property (she’d smashed a window to get in), interrupting students’ work time, inciting insubordination, the list went on. Eva had tried to play the homophobic card, but the principal had trumped her by outing himself as well. Consequently, Eva and Jahmin often sat next to each other in detention, and he’d got to know her quite well. She’d helped him pass History.
‘It’s not a phase, Liam, it’s who she is.’
‘Maybe she just hasn’t met the right guy.’
‘Yeah, she has ... and his name is Mandy. But good luck with that, bro. We all need dreams.’
Liam rubbed at his temples, wincing. To Jahmin’s questioning look he replied, ‘It’s just a headache. It’s nothing. Nothing heart related, anyway. Probably lack of– what was that?’
Jahmin groaned. ‘Not again!’
Liam shushed him and the two listened, Jahmin with an attitude of pained resignation, but it was hard to hear anything over the sound of the rain and the river.
‘There! What’s that?’
‘Nothing, bro! Jeez!’
But Liam was already scrambling out of their shelter, scanning the bush intently.
Jahmin lingered at the cave entrance, loath to go back out into the rain.
‘There! Look!’ Liam said. ‘That flash of blue. See it?’
Jahmin squinted. ‘I can’t see shit.’
Liam groaned. ‘Nah, he’s gone.’
‘Who?’
Liam turned back to Jahmin, his face strained. The rain streamed down his face like tears. ‘Who d’you think? Eugene.’
