Once he’d made the decision to leave, Spencer just wanted to get going. But he knew he should bide his time till morning—‘They might come,’ he said out loud. They might be sitting in that rescue helicopter right now, you never know! They might have just finished checking it for readiness to fly; the pilot might be depressing the engine starter button now; maybe the engine is firing up right now. Right now. No, you have to sit tight for a bit, Spence. Besides, it’s too late to start the walk down now. You’re lost enough as it is, aren’t you?!! If the Drifter was a car by the side of the road, would you walk away from it? No way. That’s what they say: stay with the vehicle.
Spencer knew that it got dark at about 6.30 at the moment, because that was when Star Wars: The Clone Wars was just finishing on TV each night, and he never missed an episode. Except for tonight, of course. There’d be no Clone Wars tonight.
An hour or so passed. Spencer peered into the esky bag. The ham and cheese sandwiches were still in there. He opened the plastic box they were in and the smell of lunch box sandwiches filled the cabin. He gagged and dropped them back in.
‘Dad.’
Silence. Spencer looked at his dad’s chest, noted the slow rise and fall of it.
‘That’s good, Dad, you rest up. Do you want some water?’ He tipped a little water onto his fingertips and moistened his lips again.
Spencer sat up. He pushed his head out the door and looked around. In the distance he could hear something; a very different sound, mixed up with the rain. A very particular sound. The chopping sound of a propeller cutting through the air.
Spencer jerked his head to the sky.
A chopper! Reg? They were looking for them; they were here!
Spencer’s knees nearly caved as he scrambled out of the Drifter. He scraped the skin off his back as he went through the doorway but it barely registered. He launched himself up onto the underbelly of the plane. He steadied himself, not wanting to look away from the sound. The wind gusted sharply and threatened to blow him right off and back into the bushes. He glimpsed something, quite far away, but it looked familiar, a bright flash of red; matching the red RESCUE he’d seen on the Bell chopper tail at Skippers airstrip. Was that really this morning? It seemed more like a week ago. So much had happened since he’d walked around on the tarmac, waiting for Dad and Reg to stop talking. He’d been so keen to get up in the air, to get that flight— this flight—happening.
It had to be them. Spencer raised his arms and crossed them over and over and over above his head, but he knew there was no way anyone in the chopper could see him through the thick grey curtain of rain. They weren’t up high enough to see them. They’d have to change direction and altitude; the best chance he had of being found was if the chopper flew directly over the crash site. He imagined the scene the rescue people would glimpse from above: the sudden whiteness of the Drifter, the trail of flattened trees, the smear of destruction.
Then, all of a sudden, as if it were sucked into a black hole, it was gone. The sound and the colour just disappeared. Spencer turned around, put his hands around his ears to maybe catch the vibration of the big rotor through the air—any noise from the helicopter at all—but there was nothing. Nothing but gutless punches from the wind. Spencer fell backwards off the Drifter, and lay there, on a medley of bushes, winded, shocked, wild with hope and fear.
Had the rescue chopper crashed as well? Or had the crew just not seen the Drifter and decided to look elsewhere, or go back? Spencer’s stomach inside-outed itself. He wondered if he would ever find out.