The Amber Trail (2 page)

Dig stared at his father. “You
okay?”

His father didn’t answer. His
head was bowed forward between his thighs and his mouth was open;
saliva dripped from his lips. He gagged again, and coughed, and a
small object fell from his mouth to the ground, where it sat
waterlogged—twisting and flapping in the creases of the
rock.

Dig looked closer. It was an
insect, with a thick orange body covered in hairy black stripes. A
pointed black stinger throbbed from its rear.

It was a wasp.

“
Dad?”

“
Bugger.” His father
pulled himself roughly to his feet, clutching at his neck. “Must
have flown into my beer.”

“
Did it sting
you?”

He nodded. “Got me in the
throat.”

“
Aren’t
you—”

“
Allergic? Yep.” He
swallowed, wincing with pain.

“
Don’t you have some
kind of antidote needle?”

“
The Epipen? Left it
back at the house.”

Dig pursed his lips.

“
Well I haven’t been
stung since I was a kid.” His father frowned. “And I didn’t think
we’d be down here long.”

“
But if your throat
starts swelling up...”

His father nodded.

“
We need to get you
to a doctor.”

Dig’s first instinct was to grab
for a mobile phone, but they didn’t bring one. They only had their
swimmers and sandals with them, and a half empty beer.

“
Let’s go,” Dig
said.

They pulled on their shoes and
turned for home. They had about two kilometres to travel, but
suddenly that seemed like a marathon distance.

Dig let his dad take the lead,
settling in behind him as he broke into the stiff jog of a man
whose knees had given up running years before. Dig jogged a few
paces behind, trying to let his dad set a pace he was comfortable
with—but adrenaline was pumping in his veins, and he had to
restrain himself from running the track at a sprinter’s
pace.

The first section of the track
climbed up and over a large rocky outcropping. They stepped from
rock to rock in big strides, trying to maintain balance in their
sandals.

The track levelled out as they
passed through the rocks, and trees gathered close to the track,
pitching eucalyptus branches out over their heads. The sun
splintered through the leaves, throwing shadows at their
feet.

Dig’s breathing increased, and he
tried to keep an eye on his father—who was jogging with his head
tilted forward and his mouth open. His cheeks were pink
and
dots of sweat lined his forehead. Dig could hear
his breathing, and he noticed it had taken on a rasping quality,
his chest heaving in and out in time with his steps. Dig tried to
ignore it, but he knew what it was. It was the sound of an airway
closing in on itself.

“
How’re you
doing?”

His father glanced back and
smiled weakly. “I’m...okay,” he said. “We’ll get there”. He
continued in a stiff jog, his shoulders hunched, his eyes staring
forward.

A tree branch hung over the track
ahead of them; it caught his father’s face and flung back in Dig’s
direction. Dig dodged away and regained his stride. The next time
he looked up, he saw the branch had sliced a red strip across his
father’s cheek, just below his eye. A bead of blood tracked down
his face, but his father didn’t seem to notice.

Dig tried to remain calm. The
adrenaline rush he’d ridden to this point was bottoming out, and
replaced by fatigue. Sweat poured from his body, running down his
chest and face; his head felt like a furnace. He was sure his
father must be feeling much worse.

They followed the track for a few
minutes as it wound down through a swampy section of high grass.
The ground was mushy here, and his father’s strides shortened to a
shuffle. His arms hung low at his sides and his face was red; the
tip of his tongue hung on his lower lip like a slug.

The track snaked out of the swamp
and up a small rise, and his father dropped the pace back down to a
walk. His hands went to his head, and for the first time Dig
noticed swelling on his face and neck. His left eye was puffy, and
partially closed.

His dad tilted back his head and
took in three deep breaths—a sound like air being sucked through a
wet straw. His torso swayed left, and with a dull thud his foot
caught hard on a tree root protruding from the track. He pitched
forward and reached out, but took the impact on his shoulder. He
rolled to his back, eyes closed, gasping and wincing with pain.
Brown sand clung to his arm and chest.

Dig fell beside him.
“Dad!”

His father opened his eyes
briefly, then closed them again. His bare chest rose and fell
rapidly as he took in shallow, ragged breaths. “Just...need...to
get...my breath back.”

Panic churned in Dig’s stomach.
This can’t be happening,
he thought.

His father’s breathing regulated
slightly, and he lifted his head and opened his eyes.

“
Dad.” Dig’s eyes
were wide. “I’m going to run ahead and bring the needle
back.”

His dad reached out with a clammy
hand to grab Dig’s forearm. His forehead was creased in fear. “No,”
he said. “Just stay with me. I can get there.”

Dig clenched his teeth, nodded
slowly, and grabbed his father below the armpit to hoist him to his
feet. They stood together on the track for a moment, shoulder to
shoulder, covered in dirt and sweat.

After a few deep breaths, his
father took a step forward
and
they moved
away in a brisk walk. Dig kept his arm hooked around his side,
supporting him the best he could.

How far had they run?
Dig
thought.
Halfway? More than that?
His concept of time was
skewed. He tried to gauge his position on the track.

They trudged along, step by step,
following the trail as it snaked through the shadows of trees by
the creek. Up this close, Dig couldn’t ignore his father’s laboured
breathing, which had slowly developed into a wet bubbling in the
back of his throat.

Finally, the track broke away
from the creek and turned up to the house. They were almost
home.

As they walked up the first rock
step, his father coughed and retched out a sticky glob of phlegm
that fell forward and hung from the end his chin, wobbling in time
with his step. Dig wiped it away with the back of his hand. His
father’s face was bloated, and his left eye swollen
shut.

“
Come on Dad! Nearly
there!” he said, but Dig could feel the energy depleting from his
father’s body. His steps were slower and his balance off, until Dig
felt like he was supporting his whole weight, willing him to take
one pace after the other.

“
Come on Dad!” Tears
ran down Dig’s face. “Help!” he shouted towards the house, the
waterhole, the sky. “Help us, please!” The words echoed around the
bush and returned to him.

His father took two more
shuffling steps, and then tipped forward. Dig tried to support him,
but his body slipped from his sweat soaked grasp. He landed heavily
on his back against the trunk of a gum tree.

His father opened his good eye
and looked upward. “I’m sorry...bud.” His face had a blue tinge,
and his breathing was a shallow wheeze. “Can’t...do it.” He grabbed
Dig’s arm and met his eyes. “Listen,” he said in a weak, croaky
voice. “The brewery...is not...what you think. If I go...you
should...shut it down.”

“
Forget work!” Dig
stood over him. “Where do you keep the needle?”

“
Tell Max...the
deal...is off...no more...packages.”

“
Shut up!” Dig
screamed. “
Where’s the bloody needle?
”

“
My...sock
drawer.”

“
Okay. I’ll be back.”
His father nodded.

Dig sprinted up the remaining
track at a breakneck pace, ducking and weaving through foliage at
the side of path that ripped at his torso. When he reached the
house, he bounded up the steps at the side of the building, through
the back door and into the kitchen.

His mother stood at the kitchen
counter, unpacking groceries. The radio played Frank Sinatra. She
looked up, and her expression dropped.

“
Dad’s in trouble,”
Dig said, breathing hard. “We need to call an
ambulance.”

She looked at him blankly.
“What?”

“
He was stung by a
wasp...and is having trouble breathing.”

“
He’s allergic!” she
said in a high pitch.

“
I know!” Dig ran
past her into the hallway. “We need to find his Epipen!” At the end
of the hall he turned into his parent’s bedroom.

His mother’s voice echoed down
the corridor behind him. “—in his sock drawer.”

Dig skirted around the
neatly-made bed and yanked open the top drawer of the dresser. The
drawer pulled out completely and the contents fell to the
floor.

He crouched and scrambled amongst
the paired socks and underwear until he found what he was looking
for—a thin, pen shaped object that had
Epinephrine
Auto-Injector
written on the side. He grabbed it and scrambled
back out of the room, striking his shin on the corner of the
bed.

He passed his mother in the hall.
She held her phone to her ear. Her eyebrows were drawn together.
“Where is he?”

“
Down the bush track,
not far...” Dig bounded through the kitchen, out the back door and
across the deck. His mother followed behind him, speaking to
emergency services as she jogged.

His father lay on his back
beneath the large gum, his face turned up to the sky. Dig was
relieved to see that his chest was moving shallowly. He knelt
beside him and fumbled with the needle.

“
Oh Shaun!” his
mother whimpered as she knelt on the other side. She held a bottle
of water in a trembling hand, and lowered it to his mouth. The
liquid bubbled between his lips, only to dribble away and run down
his cheek.

Dig grabbed his father’s leg and
positioned the Epipen over his thigh, then jammed down the catch,
firing the needle into the muscle.

His father’s good eye opened and
darted around. He met his wife’s gaze, and his breath laboured in
his throat with a sickening constricted squeal; the words came out
slow and punctuated. “I’m...sorry...guys.”

“
Shaun!” His mother
grasped his hand, her fingernails digging into the skin. “Come on
now, breathe!” A curtain of her hair fell from its bun and hung
over her face. Tears ran down her cheeks.

The wail of an ambulance
approached in the distance, before filling the air, then shutting
down altogether.

Dig ran the short distance up the
track to see the ambulance screech to a stop outside the house. Two
paramedics, a petite blonde woman and a big bald guy, leapt out of
the vehicle, equipment in hand.

“
This way!” Dig
shouted. “Quick!” He led them down the track.

His mother was hunched over her
husband when they arrived, cradling his head, panicked. “He’s
stopped breathing!” The paramedics took over, starting CPR, and
injecting further drugs into his arm.

Dig pulled his mother gently to
her feet and led her a distance up the track. The CPR wasn’t
something they needed to see. She fell to her rear, clutching the
bottle of water to her forehead like a crucifix. “Oh please,” she
whispered. “Please God.”

Dig sat beside her with an arm on
her shoulder. Tears ran down his face, uncontrolled.

Above him, the cicadas sang
uninterrupted in the trees. A bird with feathers of green and blue
crossed the sky.

Eventually, the female paramedic
approached them. “Mrs. Buckley?”

Dig’s mother looked up. Her eyes
were red and wet.

“
We’re sorry. But
your husband isn’t responding to treatment. He had a severe
allergic reaction, and there wasn’t enough time for the Epinephrine
to arrest it.”

The energy drained from Dig’s
body and he closed his eyes.
This can’t be real,
he
thought.

But unfortunately it was. And
even worse, it was just the start of the upheaval to
come.

DIG SAT WITH SLUMPED SHOULDERS
in
the lounge room of the family home as an overhead fan pushed warm
air down from the ceiling. His mother sat beside him, holding a
handkerchief; her hair hung over her face in ragged strands. Dig’s
grandfather paced on the opposite side of the room, his furry
eyebrows knitted together as he mouthed words to
himself.

A straight-backed policewoman
wrote into a small notebook. Dig’s mother spoke to the woman
between long pauses, during which she would squint and hold her
handkerchief up to her mouth.

An engine whined outside the
house, followed by a screech of rubber on asphalt. The screen door
thumped open and Jake stood in the doorway, wearing shorts and a
damp sports shirt. His cheeks were pink, and he stared wildly
around the room.