Poison Bay Read online

  “I didn’t know Tom and Bryan were close.”

  “They know each other through the hunting club. But lately he started going over to Bryan’s place all the time, and he’s usually tired and tense when he comes home.”

  “Probably helping organize this tramp.”

  “Since Lily got sick again the visits to Bryan seemed to really upset him.”

  “I didn’t know about Lily, Nyree.”

  “Didn’t you?” She looked surprised.

  “Doreen and Arthur told me this afternoon. Tom never mentioned it.” Peter shrugged uncertainly.

  “I wonder why not.” She looked down the garden, but her eyes were seeing something other than the evening light on the trees. “She was doing so well, and then she started having pains about a month ago. They whacked her straight in for treatment, no mucking around. Chemo and radiotherapy this time. It’s really knocking her.”

  “What have the doctors said?”

  She looked at him and shook her head, just once, and then stared at the ground.

  “I’m so sorry.” He couldn’t imagine how he’d cope if it happened to Tahlia. Hank shifted at Peter’s feet, and looked from the man to the woman, his ears pricked, sensing something in the atmosphere. “It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to talk about it,” muttered Peter, almost to himself.

  “He’s not talking much to me about it either. He found some miracle cure on the web, and I was negative. So now he just doesn’t tell me what he’s thinking at all.”

  “What miracle cure?”

  “Some place in the States. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where would we get that kind of money? Perhaps we could sell the car?” The hard, sarcastic tone was unusual for Nyree, and she seemed to repent of it almost immediately. “Well, anyway, the doctor said it was nonsense. He said they’d just take all our money, and we’d have nothing to show for it.”

  And it’d be much easier to believe the doctor, when you can’t do anything about it anyway. He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he jumped as Tom appeared around the corner of the house.

  “Sorry, did I frighten you, Mr Big Policeman?” Tom drawled, mischief in his dark eyes.

  “I was worlds away. Didn’t hear your car arrive. Which is pretty amazing, considering those brakes of yours.”

  “They’re a special feature. You gotta pay extra for that.”

  Nyree was already heading for the kitchen, as Tom collapsed into another of the folding chairs. She returned with another beer and another bowl of stew, and Lily followed silently in her wake. The little girl crawled into her father’s lap, and buried her face in his shirt. He simply held her, his hands gentle, his expression fierce. Steam rose in plump wraiths from the bowl of food, grew thinner, and finally petered out, and still Tom held his daughter.

  Peter felt a shaft of the man’s pain as if it were his own. He filed away a mental note: he’d ask Bryan Smithton for a donation to the Granton family, once he finally emerged from the wilds. Bryan’s wealth was legendary around town, even though no one ever discussed it with the man himself. Surely he could afford to help a sick child.

  But he didn’t say anything to Tom and Nyree. There was no point getting their hopes up.

  18

  “Stop!”

  Callie looked up, rolling her shoulders under the weight of the two packs she carried.

  It was Kain. He had come back down out of the whiteout to rejoin them.

  “We can’t keep going,” he said. “The snow is too thick. I ran into a drift up there that was waist deep, and it took me forever to find a safe way out of it. Even the shallowest snow is knee deep now. We’ll fall in a hole and break a leg, or fall off the mountain altogether. There are ledges we’ll have to sidle along further up, and the cliffs drop sheer from the edge.”

  “Well what are we going to do?” Adam said. “We can’t go up, and we can’t go down.”

  Callie said, “We’ll just have to pitch camp here. We need shelter. And we need to get something warm into Sharon. She’s barely conscious.”

  “Well, there’s no wood up here, even if we could get it to light,” Jack said. “How much gas have we got left?”

  “I think there’s enough if we use our water bottles rather than snow. It would take too long for the snow to melt. We’ve still got seaweed, and the ferns we picked this morning.”

  “We can huddle under one tarp, with the stove in the middle. Give it the best chance to burn. And put Sharon in the middle of us too, so she can warm up.”

  “While you’re doing that, I’ll see if I can find some flattish spaces for the tents,” Kain said. “Our best place to ride out this blizzard will be in a tent in a sleeping bag.”

  “Yep, good idea,” Adam said. “And maybe when we wake up, the snow will have finally stopped.”

  ***

  The zipper on the tent flap slowly opened, one click at a time. Then there was silence, apart from the gentle breathing of the three sleeping women, one breathing more shallowly than the others. Two gloved hands reached carefully inside. One cupped Sharon’s chin, the other hand pinched her nostrils closed. She struggled feebly against the restrictions of her sleeping bag. And then she was still. The hands withdrew, and the tent zipper closed. One click at a time.

  19

  Wednesday, Four Days Lost

  Callie stood frozen in fear on a narrow rock ledge, willing her limbs to move. Everyone else was out of sight, and she felt desperately alone. Why had they left her? The ground under her feet began to vibrate, and then to shake violently. Suddenly the ledge crumbled from beneath her and she was pitching forward into an awful void.

  She desperately wanted to reach out for a branch, a tuft of grass, anything to halt her fall, but her arms were stuck to her sides; they wouldn’t move. She tried to scream, but no noise came. Far away, she could hear Rachel calling her name, over and over, and a branch dug into her shoulder.

  “Callie! Wake up!”

  The sky was green. She was falling and the sky was green and her heart was pounding with adrenaline. But that wasn’t the sky, it was the roof of the tent, sagging inwards with the weight of snow. Her sleeping bag was tangled around her, and everything was okay. It was just a dream.

  “Callie,” Rachel said, her voice hoarse and strange. “Sharon won’t wake up.”

  Callie propped herself up on her elbow and looked at Sharon. In her disorientation she hoped this was another bad dream. Sharon was an odd color, and her eyes weren’t fully closed.

  “Rachel, get Erica. Quickly.” While Rachel was struggling out of her sleeping bag on the opposite side of the overcrowded tent, Callie sat up properly and began to rub Sharon’s face. So cold. How could she be so cold, when they had spent so much time warming her up?

  A commotion outside the tent flaps materialized into Erica, quick and purposeful, wearing her professional face. Erica felt under Sharon’s chin, first on one side, then the other.

  “I can’t find a pulse,” she said, and then directed her voice back over her shoulder. “You guys, help me get her out of this tent.”

  Strong hands reached in and slid Sharon and her sleeping bag out onto the mountainside. Callie clambered out after her, fumbling for her boots as she registered the snow burning her bare feet, her eyes aching from the sudden brightness of high-altitude sun in a pale blue sky. Snowy mountains stood back and watched, detached, cool, impersonal.

  “It can be hard to find a pulse on a hypothermic person,” Erica said to no one in particular, and put her ear to Sharon’s chest. “Let’s get her out of this sleeping bag and do some CPR. Quickly!”

  Jack unzipped Sharon’s bag while Adam grabbed her under the armpits to pull her out.

  “Wait!” Erica said. “Bend her arm for me.”

  Adam tried to pull Sharon’s elbows, but they were stiff. “She’s stuck. Let me try another angle.”

  “Stop.” Everyone looked at Erica, breathing hard, ready to pounce on her next instruction, but her face had changed. Closed.
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br />   “I’m sorry guys,” she said. “That’s rigor mortis.”

  They kept staring at her, waiting for a solution, unable to comprehend. Refusing to comprehend.

  “She’s been dead for hours. There’s nothing we can do.”

  Callie felt herself shrinking inside her skin, coming away from the sides of her being. It’s my fault, she thought. I didn’t keep her warm enough. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep.

  “But she was so much warmer,” Rachel said, her face blank with shock. “She was doing so much better. Wasn’t she Callie?”

  But Callie’s mouth had lost any connection with the rest of her.

  Adam jumped in. “Callie, Rachel, you did everything you could for Sharon. We all did. It’s not your fault.”

  “I don’t understand it myself.” Erica seemed to be talking mostly to herself. “She was improving. I wouldn’t have gone to bed otherwise. And rigor has set in so fast.”

  “Could it be the low temperatures here?” Jack asked, rubbing his face.

  “I don’t know.” Erica shook her head slowly in puzzlement. “I’d expect this level of rigor to take about twelve hours at home.”

  Rachel erupted. “Could we stop acting like we’re in the fresh meat department! This is Sharon we’re talking about. There’s a little boy in Brisbane who has no mother this morning. And he doesn’t even know.” She burst into tears.

  “Come here, sweetie.” Callie moved beside her friend and folded her arms around the trembling shoulders. “They didn’t mean it like that, they’re just upset and worried like we are.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said. It’s just so awful I can’t even breathe. I can’t believe I slept. While Sharon died. I lay there and slept. And it’s all my fault. She should never have been here. She should have stayed back at Poison Bay.”

  ***

  Jack felt hollow, echoing inside. This was even worse than Bryan’s death. Not just because Bryan had wanted to die and Sharon hadn’t. This time there was a body to deal with. They’d all been in the presence of death once before, at Liana’s suicide. But that time there had been professionals to handle the practicalities. This time, it was all up to them.

  “Well congratulations, Reverend.” Kain’s voice dripped malice. “Your ‘keep the team together’ strategy has been an overwhelming success. Perhaps you could tell us what to do next, since you’re not only our resident wise man but also our expert on the afterlife.”

  Jack flinched. Everyone was looking at him. No one defended him, not even Adam, who’d supported him yesterday, or Rachel, who he’d been trying to help. No one said: It’s not Jack’s fault. And then Callie spoke.

  “Kain, if you can’t say something helpful, I suggest you just shut up. We’re all doing our best to get every single one of us out of here alive, and we all feel gutted that Sharon won’t be going home.” Her voice broke and she took a deep breath. The others shifted weight, looked somewhere else. “But Jack, do you have ideas about what we could do for a…” she waved her hands uncertainly “…funeral type of thing?”

  They were all looking at him again, all except Kain—this time with something like hope. He felt as lost as the rest of them, but apparently he’d drawn the short straw. Oh God, help me.

  He rubbed his face with both hands, then shoved them deep into his pockets, stalling for thinking time. “How about this. We leave Sharon in her sleeping bag inside her big orange plastic rescue bag. That will protect her from animals and weather, and it’ll also help the searchers find her eventually, so she can be returned to her family.” More inspiration struck. “We need to go through her pack to see if there’s anything that might help the rest of us survive. Whatever is left, we pack it up nice and tight and leave it beside her. Then we have a bit of a funeral, to say goodbye. And then we pack up all our stuff and get the hell off this mountain.” He lost it on the last few words, and bent his head to look at the snow, his vision blurring with tears.

  “I think that’s a good plan, mate,” Adam said. Several others nodded.

  Soon afterwards, Jack was marveling at this odd group of people, and how they could be at each other’s throats and then such a team when the need arose. Adam had tipped out Sharon’s pack onto a tarp and was sorting through the contents with Erica’s help; Kain was dismantling and packing the tents with silent precision; Callie and Rachel were attending to Sharon’s body, trying to make her “comfortable” in the sleeping bag, combing her hair, straightening her clothes. Jack helped them manhandle her into the big orange bag, but he left her face uncovered for the moment. It went against every instinct to cover her with plastic, even though she wasn’t breathing any more.

  Jack was setting up his mini tripod on a nearby rock when Kain came up behind him. “Tell me you’re not going to film this!”

  “Yes I am.” Jack was quietly sure of himself this time. “One day her son will want to know about what happened to her, and then he can choose whether or not he wants to see it. If I don’t video it, he has no choice.” He had a sudden thought. “Hey Adam, don’t forget Sharon’s camera.”

  “Why would we need that?”

  “One day her son might like to see the photos on it.”

  They gathered around Sharon’s body, only six of them now. Jack cleared his throat nervously. “I thought perhaps we could each say something that was special about Sharon. Only those who want to do it of course. And it doesn’t have to be the most important thing about her, just something we’ll remember. And then, if no one minds, I’ll finish off with a prayer.” Several people nodded and no one objected. Apparently religion was okay at a time like this. “I’ll start if you like.”

  He cleared his throat again. “Sharon found this hike the hardest of any of us. She’s been in pain since Day One, with her feet ripped to pieces, but she never whinged about it. She had a much harder life than any of us, but she just soldiered on. Her husband took off with some eighteen year old, but she didn’t expect anyone to rescue her. She went to work, she fed her kid, she took her parents to the doctor and the bowls club and the shops. Sharon, thanks for persevering, and for still being our friend after all these years.”

  There was a pause.

  Adam said, “Shaz, thanks for those fantastic Anzac bikkies you used to make at school.” A little smile of remembrance fluttered around the group.

  Rachel spoke up. “Sharon, thanks for being such an encouragement to me on this hike. For making me think sheer determination can get a person through anything. And I promise you I’m going to do the best I can to get home to that boy of yours, and tell him what sort of a person his mother was, and to make sure he is looked after and loved the way he should be.”

  They stood around the big orange bag on that icy mountainside, and said goodbye the best they could.

  At the end, Jack cleared his throat and prayed aloud, “God, thanks for Sharon and for everything she’s meant to so many people. Forgive us for failing to save her life. Please help her son and her parents to go on when they find out she’s gone. And please help us to get through this thing.”

  A couple of the group said, “Amen.” Others nodded respectfully. Kain stared at the ground, silent and withdrawn.

  Callie and Rachel gently pulled the sleeping bag hood down over Sharon’s face, and tucked the orange plastic over it, tenderly, firmly, sealing out the elements.

  And then they all started walking again.

  ***

  Callie took another step, and the snow’s brittle crust cracked under her weight, allowing her to sink through to the mush underneath. Again. The unseen rock below was at a severe angle, and her ankle twanged as her boot made contact and twisted. Again. Her pants were sodden to knee height, because she just couldn’t stand to wear the waterproof over pants today. Jack had frowned, but she’d ignored him. The squelching noise of them irritated her beyond all reason. Her lower legs were cold to the point of numbness, but she managed to feel hot and bothered just the same. The sun was glaring off the snow, an
d she thought about removing her jacket, even though in truth the temperature couldn’t have been much above freezing way up here in the tops. But she was afraid that if she stopped for any reason, she’d lose all momentum.

  Be thankful it’s stopped snowing today, Callie, she told herself sternly. Be thankful it’s not raining for once. Be thankful you can still walk.

  She was also thankful not to be lugging the extra weight of Sharon’s rucksack this morning. It would have been dragging her shoulders down, crashing onto her thighs with every agonized step. But she couldn’t bear to think about the reason she didn’t have to carry it.

  Nevertheless, her mind had a will of its own, and kept circling back to Sharon’s face. No matter how she tried to redirect her thoughts onto something nicer, it was like herding cats. They just slipped past her, and wriggled and wormed their way back to have another look at Sharon’s face. The look of it, the feel of it, as she and Rachel had prepared their friend’s body.

  No one should ever have to do that for a friend. Too unbearably intimate. Too many liberties to be taken with someone who could no longer give permission.

  Trying to tidy Sharon’s hair, all lank and oily because, like the rest of them, she hadn’t been able to wash it for many days. It seemed horrible that they had to leave her looking so awful. Why does the mind latch onto such a trivial thing in the face of such a disaster? thought Callie. Even back in high school, while Callie had been getting around in mismatched tomboy clothes, too lazy to do battle with her cloud of red frizz, Sharon had always been well-groomed.

  She didn’t wear makeup to school; it was against the rules, and Sharon followed the rules. But outside of school she always had at least mascara and lipstick. There was no color on her face today, where she lay far below them on this mountainside, tucked up inside her orange bag. Callie wondered if she would ever be able to forget the feel of Sharon’s pale and blotchy skin—cold, unresponsive, more like marble than human flesh.