On the Run (15 page)

“I'm hungry,” Olive said.

Ben closed his eyes, took a slow breath.

“Maybe they have food,” she said. “I don't want to play pirate-bushrangers anymore. Let's tell them we're here. Let's get rescued.”

Ben thought about it. She was only seven but she was smart, and Ben often wondered if she knew more than him.
Maybe we should get ourselves rescued,
he thought.
I mean, how will we survive out here alone? Could we make it back to the cabin? Where else would we go?
He looked at the bag. The zip was slightly open. He could see the money, soggy now from the river, a green hundred-dollar bill on top of a pile. The grim-looking man with the mustache stared back at Ben from the bill. Next to him cannons, images of battle. Ben looked up at the chopper, hovering.
We should turn ourselves in,
he thought.
We should.
But then it moved.
Chk-chk-chk
again.

Ben stood, and Olive too. She ran out from under the tree. Ben watched her go but the helicopter moved away quickly. Thirty seconds later, the sound was gone.

And hope too.

 

STUCK

“What do we do now?”

Ben shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Then why did you stop me waving to the police?”

Ben shrugged again. But he knew why. To protect her from whatever happens to kids after their parents go to jail or die.
Not die,
he thought.
The shots were not for them.
His mind wavered.

“What are we going to do?” she insisted.

Ben walked out from beneath the tree, toward the river. He left the bag of saturated money lying on the ground in among the roots. Was that why he had stopped Olive? Was it to protect his parents, his sister, himself? Or was it to protect the money? Maybe. He hoped not. But maybe. It was a lot of money. The police would take it away.

“Which way should we go?” Olive asked.

Ben looked down into the red-stained river. The red was from a plant, he thought. Too much for it to be blood. But still it made him feel sick. He looked upstream, toward the not-knowing place, where he had been at the mercy of his parents. A place he and Olive could not go back to now. He looked downstream into the unknown shadows and shapes created by the trees on the bank. The river twisted into a gnarled tunnel. He turned and looked into the savage sprawl of wilderness behind him and on the other side of the river. A place to become lost.

For the first time in Ben's life, he could choose to do whatever he liked, go wherever he wanted—and he felt stuck.

“I'm hungry,” Olive said.

“What do you think we should eat?” Ben asked.

“Do you have any chips?”

Ben looked at her. “No. I don't have any chips.”

“Crackers?” she asked.

Ben sat down at the river's edge and hung his feet off the steep, muddy bank. He peeled his wet shoes and socks off. The river was only about twenty feet wide here with dense bush on the far side. Back near the cabin it had been wider. How far downstream had they floated in the night? He had stayed awake for a couple of hours and couldn't remember when he had fallen asleep, but he did know that the river had been running quickly. He let his backpack slide off his shoulders.

The day was starting to warm, and in the sunny patches steam rose from the moist, damp earth around him.

“What have we got?” Ben asked.

“Huh?”

“In your pockets and stuff. What have you got that could help us?” Ben unzipped his backpack as he spoke. He placed his wet video camera on the flat sandstone rock next to him. His knife and soggy notebook and
My Side of the Mountain
. A random array of pens, pencils, felt-tip pens, and pencil shavings from the zipper part at the front.

Olive laid Bonzo down, waterlogged and pathetic.

“Is that all you've got?” Ben asked.

She stuck her bottom lip out, nodded.

Ben produced a soggy mess covered in plastic wrap from the bottom of his bag. He placed it in the sunshine next to the other things. A long-forgotten sandwich. Not in the traditional sense. It was more like a handful of mushy porridge with bright blue and green spots.

“What is
that
?” Olive asked.

“Sandwich. It's a bit old.”

“I am
not
eating that. I would rather die.”

He shoved it at her face.

Olive squealed and ran.

Moldy sandwiches were one of Ben's favorite things in the world. He and Gus had a competition running to see who could find the bluest sandwich in the bottom of their bag. This one was a contender. Ben was annoyed that Gus was not there to see it, and part of him, down near his belly, sank. His old life felt as foreign as this place now.

It was the only food they had, and he knew they might have to eat it if they didn't find anything else soon. He pressed it flat and tried to make it square, so that it resembled a sandwich again. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad once it was sun-dried.

“I'm hungry,” Olive said again.

“Do you think telling me fifty million times is going to make food magically appear?”

Olive looked hurt. Ben felt bad for snapping. He heard his mother's voice in his mind:
She's only seven. Give her a break.

“Well,” Ben said. “Maybe we should go look for food.” He turned to the trees behind him.

Stay where you can hear the river,
he thought.
Don't leave the river.

“Do we have
any
food?” Olive asked. “What about in that bag?”

Ben looked over at the bag of money lying beneath the tree. He laughed. They had so much money. Ben had once heard Mum telling Dad in an argument that “money doesn't buy happiness.” He had thought this strange at the time. Of course money could buy happiness. But now he knew.

“There's no food in the bag,” Ben said.

“Are there any shops?” Olive asked.

“No,” he said. “There aren't any shops.”

Ben felt the force of the wild all around them. In the cawing of crows high in a dead tree and the relentless chirping of insects and the silence of the big blue sky. He was not sure if the force was for or against them. But it was there.

“Do you think Aborigines in the olden days ever ran out of food, like us?” Olive asked.

Ben looked around. Yams. He had heard of people eating yams. Maybe he would find a yam.

“Do you know what a yam looks like?” he asked her.

“A man?”

“A yam.”

Olive did not respond.

Sugar ants. He had seen a show once where a guy ate sugar ants right out of the palm of his hand. Ben looked at the ground next to him. There were ants but he didn't know which was a sugar ant and which was just a mean, biting ant.

“What about bush food? Do you know anything about that?” Ben asked.

“Is my veggie patch bush food?”

Ben looked at her.

“I grew some really good radishes. Maybe we'll find radishes!” she said.

“Maybe.” Ben hated radishes. He opened the copy of
My Side of the Mountain
, gently peeling the wet, stuck-together pages apart, trying not to tear them. Sam Gribley had survived a year in the wilderness by himself.

“He found heaps of food, didn't he?” Ben said. “Berries, acorns, deer. Remember when he ate a deer and used deer fat for his lamp?”

“That was disgusting. We can't eat a deer!”

He wondered if there were even any deer around here. Sam Gribley had been in the Catskill Mountains in New York. Ben wondered if any of the same things grew here. He was pretty sure there would be no raccoons, weasels, or falcons.

“Nothing we ever learned at school can help us here,” he said.

“An Aboriginal man came to my school and showed us how to throw a boomerang once.”

“That's helpful,” Ben said. “Do you have a boomerang?”

“No,” she said quietly.

They sat for a few minutes. Cawing and buzzing all around. The flow of the river.

“Sam Gribley is a survivor. You could drop him in the desert or on the moon and he would find something to eat. We have to think like that too.”

“Is Sam Gribley real or made-up?” Olive asked.

Ben put his wet shoes back on without socks. “Doesn't matter,” he said. He headed for the giant tree, where he had seen the hard green fruit lying on the ground. Olive followed.

He picked up one of the pieces. “Wonder what these are.”

“Figs,” she said.

He looked at her.

“It's a fig tree,” she said, as though he should know.

He flicked open his knife and sliced off a piece of the fruit. He put it into his mouth. It was bitter and crispy. He spat it out, offered the fruit to her. She put her thumb in her mouth, cuddled her dirty stuffed rabbit, and shook her head.

“C'mon. We're going to find food,” Ben said. “There must be heaps out here.”

 

FIRST NIGHT

Imagining that your parents were dead was not a nice feeling, Ben found. Particularly when it was dark and mosquitoes were biting and you were sitting on the ground against a tree and you had no fire and your belly was empty and your little sister Olive had been crying and angry at you and you were angry at yourself.

Life had always seemed hard at home. He had to walk to school and he only got to order lunch once a week and he had to wash the dishes sometimes and put the garbage out and feed the dog every day and shower and remember to brush his teeth. And he had to eat potatoes for dinner even though he didn't like potatoes, except when they were in chip form.

But then, at the cabin, things had seemed harder, with the not-knowing and Dad being more nervous and angry than ever and Ben trying to find out why there was a bag full of money hidden in the roof. Then Mum and Dad locked them in and the police came late at night and they had to escape on the raft.

But now, lying here in the pitch-dark on the damp ground and feeling the deepest fear he had ever felt, he would have done anything to be at home or at the cabin. The cold swept up from the river, blowing through him, eating his muscles, clutching his bones.

He listened. The
shhhhh
of the river calmed him a bit, but he was not listening for the river now. He was listening for the sounds beyond it, and he had never heard anything that scared him so much. It was as though the noises were on his skin and in his ears.
Screek
s and
craaaark
s and
yowl
s from wild things all around.

They had wandered for hours in the day and not found anything that Ben would call food. He had picked grasses, peeled bark, and crushed leaves in his fingers—searching and smelling and feeling for things to eat. Not even good things. Just things. He had thought about eating insects and, in the afternoon, he had eyed off the blue-spotted sandwich, but none of it was right.

They had argued all day about whether to walk upstream or downstream. Ben had laid piles of wet hundred-dollar bills, about a quarter of the money, out in the afternoon sun and dried it. He half hoped that the police helicopter would return. In the end, they had stayed put, and as the sun went down they had each filled up on a bellyful of reddish river water and an unripe fig before snuggling into their tree root home. Ben's stomach was not fooled.

Now darkness had folded in on them. Ben desperately needed to go to the toilet but he would wait till morning. He had never even been camping before. He imagined the luxury of having a tent, fire, a flashlight, a sleeping bag, food. He had nothing. Just him, wilderness, Olive, fear. Fear was his fire, keeping him alert and alive. Growing up in a house in the suburbs, right next to a highway, had not prepared him for this. Playing thousands of hours of video games, watching hundreds of movies, playing soccer, helping out in the wrecking yard, watching game shows with Nan—none of it was useful to him now. Someone had pressed “reset” on his life. He had no pantry, no fridge, no shops, no cars, no lights, no bed, no blankets, no roof.

He sat up straight, back against the tree. His bottom was wet and cold. He had large leaves beneath him, but they didn't help. He was gripping a short, thick, heavy branch that he would use as a club if he had to.

“I'll go on watch first,” he had said to Olive. But he knew that he would be on watch second too. He would stay up all night. Someone had to protect them from animals and insects and strangers and ghosts and police lurking in that fine, silvery moonlight.

Ben had a plan. If anything came for them, he would wake Olive and they would climb the tree. He had worked out the quickest route to the top. Olive was a good tree climber so she would be okay.

He was glad he wasn't out there alone. As the hours passed he watched the moon crawl slowly across the sky, in and out of the branches of the tree above. Each minute felt like forever. When his head drooped to his chest he pinched and even slapped himself. He focused on the moon. He thought about Pop. When Ben was little he would sit on Nan's back stoop and they would look up at the moon and she would tell him that Pop was up there.

“In the moon?” Ben would ask.

“Yep,” she'd say. “Looking down on you. He loved you
so
much.”

He hoped that Pop was looking down on him now. That someone, somewhere, was watching over him. And even though Pop had not met Olive before he died, Ben hoped that he would watch over her too.

He needed a plan.

Something to tell Olive.

To make her think he knew what they should do.

To look like they were in control. Not out.

What are we going to do?
she would say in the morning.

And he would say …

Nothing. He would say nothing.

Icy bottom. Freezing fingers. Cold nose. Aching body.

Plan. Why are we running?

He could not remember.