Flares! Spencer thought. Boats had them—what about gliders? He peered through the diminishing light at all the gear that had been flung around the cabin. Or—what were those other things? E-things? Charlie’s dad’s boat had one; his mum’d insisted on it when they got the boat, otherwise ‘there wasn’t gunna be a boat’—Charlie had said, doing his best-ever impersonation of his mum in scary mode. EPIRB: that was it. He had no idea how they worked, but it was possible that there was one in the Drifter somewhere. If only Dad were awake and sensible, he could ask him this stuff. Spencer looked over at him, spread awkwardly with jumpers strewn this way and that. He looked pale. He hadn’t eaten anything since the crash. Or had any water. Spencer was going to have to get him to have something, to keep his energy up, as Mum would say. In fact, neither of them had had anything since that apple on the tarmac back at Skippers.
Spencer reached over and grabbed the esky bag. Mum. Thank you. He was ravenous, he realised, looking at the food. Go easy, champ. Don’t know how long you’re gunna be stuck up here.
His throat glued up at the thought of that, of what might lie ahead.
He put the bag down again. He didn’t think he could eat.
After a moment, in that grey fear, Spencer reached for the bag again. He took out one of the water bottles. He’d heard Dad talk about nurses doing this with really sick patients in hospital: wetting their lips, just keeping them moist. He spun the lid off the water bottle, and took a slug. He felt guilty as it went down, cold and clean—he guzzled almost crazily—but he felt better almost instantly. He hadn’t realised how much he’d needed a drink.
Spencer dipped his fingers into the bottle and daubed drops of water over Dad’s lips. Dad moved his head slightly. Spencer watched as, semiconscious, he tucked his bottom lip into his mouth and sucked the water off.
‘That’s good, Dad,’ Spencer murmured. ‘You need to drink.’ He poked his finger back into the bottle and smeared his lips again. Once more, Dad sucked the water off. Spencer kept at it for a good ten minutes or so, until Dad seemed to have had enough and slumped back into himself.
He couldn’t put it off any longer. Spencer leaned over him. The blood in Dad’s hair had congealed darkly. There was a sticky patch just to one side of his head. Gingerly, Spencer tilted Dad’s head to one side, so that he’d be looking out the window, if his eyes were open.
‘Wish you could enjoy the view better, Dad,’ he murmured, as a balloon shape of blood floated towards him.
Spencer panicked and snatched the fleece from Dad’s chest and dropped it onto the blood to soak it up. Then he got down as low as he could so that he could see whatever he needed to see.
Carefully, he lifted Dad’s head up off the floor about a centimetre. It was actually quite heavy. Spencer felt his own pulse come to the top of his throat as he looked. A raw meaty gash yawned from the back of Dad’s head. Blood flooded into it as he watched. It was deep and messy.
He rushed: pushed the arm of the fleece over it and slightly in, to block it up as best he could. Then Spencer rearranged the jacket around Dad’s neck for comfort and lowered his head down onto it. He pulled his hands back quickly: he couldn’t wait to get away from it.
The rain got steadily harder. Every few minutes Spencer looked over to Dad’s head, to see if there was any blood seeping out under the fleece. So far, so good. Spencer knew that he had to try to stop the bleeding.
Through the window, Spencer stared at the thin long wing of the Drifter. It shone—far too white amid the dirty green scrub, and the grey rock that was scattered about like broken tiles wherever he looked.
After he’d wiped the sticky blood from his fingers onto his cargo pants, Spencer looked around for something he could catch some of the rain in, in case it stopped—though that seemed very unlikely. There were no cups. Or bowls, or pans. This wasn’t meant to be a camping trip! He needed a plastic tarp or something. His eyes landed on the wet weather jacket he’d brought. That could work. He grabbed it up and twisted around in his spot to face the door. He spread the jacket out flat on the ground, bunching it up at the edges so the water wouldn’t flow away. A bowl, of sorts.
He could have let himself be hypnotised by that rain, he could have just stared at it splashing and plipping and forget the stupid two-way and the mobile phone and bloody Dad lying there like a spaz.
He turned back to the stuffy, broken interior of the Drifter. He checked again: no blood.
Reg may have had their flight plan, but Spencer had been thinking about that: crashing into the side of Bluff Knoll wasn’t likely to be on Dad’s itinerary. So, apart from Reg thinking that they were running a bit late, he wasn’t exactly in the know, was he?
He looked at his watch. It was 3.30.
Spencer wasn’t sure how much longer Dad could handle being in and out of consciousness, or having a football for a knee joint. Or bleeding from the head.
It wasn’t a decision; there was no choice. If no one had come for them by the morning, Spencer was going to have to go and get help himself.
There was a road running across the bottom of the ranges, they’d seen it from the air. It was like the cut-mark of a carving knife, smooth and long. As the afternoon inched on, he thought it through: in the morning he’d find the highest spot he could, a place where he could see far around. He had no idea if they were near any trails, but if there happened to be one nearby it would make getting down a million times easier. If not, he already had his mantra: Do not freak out! It didn’t matter how he got down—he’d just walk in a straight line downhill. As long as he was going downwards, he was going in the right direction, he reckoned. Now, Spencer climbed up onto the slippery wet wing of the Drifter, and then onto her white belly. He stood tall, but couldn’t see much from there, especially not through the rain. Now he knew—really knew—what people meant when they talked about poor visibility. The scrub was thick and steady in every direction. There were no paths he could see from here and certainly no road—but he knew the road was there.
The caravan park was along that road. People—in cars—used that road. It wasn’t rocket science. He needed to get down there.