Spencer’s voice sounded strange in the space around them. ‘It’s getting dark, Dad,’ he said. ‘Here, have some more water.’ Spencer felt like an alien as he dabbed Dad’s lips. He hadn’t told him about the chopper; what was the point?
‘I’m gunna see if I can sleep now, Dad. Well, I’m gunna try. And in the morning I’m going to head down to the road.’
The rain filled the gaps.
‘To get help. It might be quicker than ... waiting, you know?’ They’d never come back now. ‘It shouldn’t take too long for me to get down to the road. Not more than a few hours. We’re not at the top of the Bluff—I can’t even see the top—so that’s good.
‘And I’ll leave a note, in case someone finds you here while I’m gone. I’ll put our names on it, and say that we’re from Skippers, and that it’s Saturday—well, it’ll be Sunday tomorrow, so I’ll put Sunday—and that I’ve gone to get help. And what time it is when I leave.
‘Okay, Dad?’
Spencer nodded like his dad might. ‘Okay,’ he said to himself, in his deepest voice.
Then he cleared a bit of space to lie down in. He had to curl up his body to make it fit. He reached over to the door, which was open a crack. Rain dripped over his hand as he pushed it open a little further.
‘Bit of fresh air, hey, Dad?’ he whispered. ‘Bit of fresh air.’
Okay.
He imagined being at home in his bed, his special super-duper goosedown doona light and warm on top of him. His stomach pulled in tight.
Quietly, Spencer cried hard. He was so scared. He tried to keep it down in that small space. The rain helped with that too.
It was the longest of nights. How could the wreck of a plane make so much noise? From time to time it creaked like his dad moaned. It was like the Drifter was alive. The sounds were metallic, as if it was trying to un-wreck itself, twisting against its injuries. The wind found the crack of the door and swept in like an icy ribbon, and Spencer’s thoughts twisted and knotted in sync with his stomach. What if he got lost going down the mountain? What if Dad got sicker while he wasn’t there?
The square of white light from Dad’s phone was a weirdly comforting companion. He tried to go without it for chunks of time—he didn’t want the battery to die on him; he might need it tomorrow.
He prayed for a while. He didn’t know how that worked, but he reckoned he may as well try everything.
Spencer tried to sleep, he did, but how could you when everything around you was hard and cold and groaning? Gliders weren’t designed for night flying. They weren’t meant to provide shelter—and they didn’t. Spencer’s body ached with cold and he kept shifting for a more comfortable position. Poor Dad couldn’t move at all.
The night crawled by. When would it be dawn? He spent the hours thinking and worrying and planning, and listening to Dad breathing, until he was totally exhausted by it all, by everything he wanted to remember (water! torch! Dad’s mobile! food! the note!).
But he should never have thought about Mum. He imagined her and Pippa in the kitchen, just flipping out. He knew Mum’d be awake all night, like he was. It sent Spencer further into panic, knowing she’d be thinking he and Dad were dead or something, and not being able to tell her that they were all right. We’re all right, Mum! he wanted to yell across the mountain.
Finally, briefly, sleep won. His dreams were ghastly and he pulled himself away from them back into the pitch of that night. He wasn’t sure which was worse: the dreams or the reality. And somewhere in there, somewhere in among the waking nightmare, was the distant, brief, war-like sound of a helicopter that never came.
Watching dawn crack, Spencer felt massive relief and a surge of adrenalin. Time to get moving, get out of there. Get help.