Poison Bay (11 page)

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 Kain stared at the ground, silent and withdrawn.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, and 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.
 

And those marks on her face. Something was bothering Callie about those marks. It nibbled away at the back corner of her consciousness like a little mouse; whenever she tried to pounce on it, it darted away.

She didn’t want her mind to be filled with Sharon’s face. Because it made her want to weep and weep and weep. So she focused with all her might on the burning pain where the melted snow was soaking through to her knees.
 

And took another step.

And then it hit her, with awful clarity.

***

Miraculously, they’d finally found a pass over the mountain’s shoulder into the next valley, and were back below the tree line at last, and out of the snowdrifts. Jack had been longing for this moment. Under the trees, there would surely be less snow, less undergrowth, and it would be much easier to walk. Surely.

For two hours they had been fighting snow-laden mountain scrub that ripped at their clothes, snagged on their rucksack straps, dragged them backwards. Sometimes it was knee-high, other times right up to their armpits.
 

Bringing up the rear, there were times Jack found it easier because the others had trampled the wiry vegetation ahead of him. Sometimes it was harder because they had ground the snow and earth to slippery mud.

Now, under the trees, instead of the clearer path of Jack’s daydreams, they encountered even worse conditions. Slippery rocks, tangled tree roots, dangling moss slapping at their faces, ferns and undergrowth clawing their bodies.
 

And the worst of it was that, for each excruciating fifty meters of mountainside, they didn’t even know if they were headed in the right direction.

They could be heading away from help, away from rescue. Away from medical people with fresh medical supplies for Rachel, who was scrambling over a vine-entangled rock just ahead of him. Away from life and into disaster.

Yesterday morning, it had seemed so clear they needed to keep moving, that inactivity was the fastest way to certain death. But now, Sharon lay still and silent in yesterday’s valley, and Jack wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Maybe it really was his fault that Sharon was dead. He’d been so focused on Rachel he’d forgotten about Sharon. How could he face her motherless little boy? Maybe it would be better if he didn’t survive either.

His dark thoughts were interrupted by a shout from up ahead. Adam, today’s trailblazer, had found a useful clearing and called a halt for lunch. Not that there was much to eat, just more stupid ferns—but they definitely needed the rest.

Jack also needed a toilet break—the world might be ending, but the body kept processing. He ditched his rucksack and started staggering off into the rainforest. As he tried to cross the small stream whose course they were following, he noticed his leg trembling—with fatigue? Grief? He lost power as he committed his weight to a mossy rock, and skidded sideways, breaking his fall by grabbing a slimy vine on the way through.
Oh God, I need your help. Please get us out of here. Show me what you want me to do.
He became aware of noises behind him, and looked over his shoulder to see Callie following.

“Ladies loo is thataway, Cal,” he said, pointing in the general direction of anywhere else.

“I’m not looking for the loo, I’m looking for you.” She swayed vaguely for a moment, and said with raised eyebrows, “That rhymed.”

“Well, I am looking for the loo, so if you don’t mind…” He left a meaningful pause.

 
“I do mind. I need to talk to you. Now.” The vagueness had disappeared.

“What’s up?”

“Not here. Walk a bit further.”

They struggled over the tangled terrain for several minutes more, until at last Callie was satisfied. The rest of the group was out of sight.

“What is it, Cal?” He sank down onto a fallen tree. She slumped against a slimy boulder and wriggled her shoulders, massaging them. The heavy vegetation hung all around them, eavesdropping.

“Have you got your camera?” She must have seen him tense, because she added, “I just want to see something. From the funeral-thing we did for Sharon.”

He pulled the camera from his pocket and began locating the correct recording. “What is it you’re looking for?”

“There were marks on her face, and I didn’t know why they were bothering me. But now I’ve realized they were bruises.”

“We’re all bruised and battered.” He didn’t feel very patient just now, especially with anything Callie had to say about his video. And he wanted the loo.

“Not like that. Rachel and I were fixing her hair, trying to make her look nice. The stupid, pointless things we do for someone who doesn’t care anymore.” She stopped and drew a deep breath. “Anyway, I was looking at her face. Up close. For quite a while. And it had these strange marks on it. I thought they were just the cold, the hypothermia, you know?” She ended on an upward inflection, asking for a sign that he understood.

Jack nodded.

“But it has been bothering me ever since. I couldn’t get the picture of her face out of my mind.”

“None of us can get Sharon out of our minds, Cal,” he said gently.

“No, it’s more than that.”
 

“Here it is.” He’d reached the shot of Sharon’s face as she lay in her bag. A close-up he almost hadn’t been able to bring himself to record. But his job in the moment was just to observe the reality. The decisions about how to use it would come later.
 

“See these marks either side of her nose, and this one under her chin. Her eyelids were kind of red too.”
 

He toggled the controls and zoomed in on the image. “I see what you mean.”

“I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me, and then suddenly I remembered. Like my brain had been downloading a photo for hours and then suddenly there it was in front of me.” She shook her head in amazement, but Jack was still mystified.
 

“Sorry, I’ll try to make more sense. A couple of years ago, I went on a three-day course in forensic pathology, you know, a course for journalists. So we’d know what we were reporting and not write so much nonsense.”
 

“Ye-es.”

“They showed us photos of murder victims. Those shots they take up close, showing the gunpowder residue, the angle of the knife cuts. Not just crime scene photos, but the pathology ones as well. Somehow they’re even more creepy when all the blood’s been washed away. Some people were fascinated, but it made my skin crawl.”
 

“Sounds gruesome. But where are you going with this?”

“They showed us a couple of bodies as well, just people who’d died in hospital, so we could get a feel for what it was like for them to handle dead bodies. And then there was this murder victim. Laid out there on a metal table with a sheet over her. They’d saved her for last, like she was a prize or something. It’s half the reason I switched to making documentaries instead of news. I’ll never forget it, Jack, I had nightmares for weeks. A young girl, only twelve years old, and she’d been suffocated by some pervert.”

Jack stared at Callie, and he felt a trickle of fear run down his spine and hit his adrenal glands with a slap. Tired though his brain may have been, it rebooted and started to make connections that he really didn’t want it to make. “You’re not saying…” he began, unable to finish the question.

“Jack, that little girl had the same marks that Sharon had on her face.
Exactly
the same marks.”

20

Ellen stared out the hotel window at driving rain. The surface of the lake was covered in whitecaps. It looked like whipped lead. A tiny floatplane bobbed erratically at its moorings. The hotel’s “No Vacancy” sign swung crazily in the wind. Despite appearances this was the tourist season; she’d been lucky to get this room.
 

She had actually gone to sleep last night despite her expectations, but it had been a restless, dream-filled slumber, where shadowy figures moved through her room, and she couldn’t always judge the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness.

She’d also ordered a full dinner last night as instructed, even though she didn’t think she’d be able to eat until she knew Rachel was safe. But the words of the policeman had been so like what Roger would have said, it gave her comfort. They also recalled the command of a wise medical specialist at the beginning of one of Roger’s long stints in intensive care: “This will be a marathon. Sleep. Eat. Keep your strength up. It won’t help him if you end up in the bed next to him.” The doctor had been proven right, and she knew the policeman also would have seen what happened to family members who neglected their own physical needs during an extended crisis. And so she’d obeyed.

Ellen had been ambushed by the appetite that returned in a rush after the first two reluctant bites. She’d wolfed it down, the whole enormous plate of roast lamb and vegetables, and then to her own astonishment ordered apple strudel for dessert. She felt guilty enjoying it, but then imagined Roger in the seat beside her. “Good girl,” he would have said with a sharp nod. He encouraged rational behavior in times of tension, the wonderful, stupid, absent man. And so she’d focused her mind on evaluating textures and flavors, forcing all other thoughts out for at least a few minutes.

Sergeant Peter Hubble had phoned this morning, even though he had little to report. He seemed to be telling her everything there was to tell, and that helped.
 

They hadn’t yet found anyone who’d seen Bryan Smithton return from the hike. They had talked to the boatie who’d taken the group across the lake, but he had no booking to bring them back. This was unusual but not unheard-of; they might have been planning to walk out via the southern shore of the lake, a possibility given their timeframe. A group of young people just returned from hiking the same area for the past four days, and now doing laundry in the youth hostel, hadn’t seen any of Rachel’s group. Peter was going to try some of the various associations that used the wilderness. A group of eight was a good-sized crowd—people would remember it.