Authors: Belinda Pollard
Behind him trailed a gaggle of young people. Peter automatically did a head count: eight, counting Bryan—four women, four men.
Peter greeted Bryan with a nod. “So you’re off to George Sound?”
One of the party answered, “Nah, Milford!” Peter glanced at the speaker: tall, around six foot, blond, athletic build. The national park contained only a handful of marked trails, and the George and Milford Tracks were in vastly different sections. Peter mentally filed the contradiction in case it turned out to be important later.
The man received a quelling look from Bryan, who said to Peter, “Yes, George Sound.” So the lad was probably just confused because Milford was the more famous track.
Peter said, “Good weather today.”
“Yes.”
The atmosphere was uncomfortable—probably the Smithton-factor. Peter decided it would be more fun to go to his cold, empty office and write his report on the car accident.
3
Jack Metcalf watched his old friends react to their first view of the Fiordland mountains, as the launch chuntered its way across the lake. They didn’t say much, but they stared. Maybe it was dawning on them what they were getting themselves into. To be frank, he felt a twinge of concern himself.
These were professional mountains. If they were buildings, they’d be at least four hundred stories high. They were impossibly steep, rising suddenly from ground level; sharp-topped, crowding close together.
Jack had expected immunity to the scale of Fiordland. He’d seen it before, on a visit years ago when he’d helped Bryan bury his parents. They’d even taken a day hike on one of the popular trails. And yet these peaks astonished him all over again. “An astonishment of mountains.” Perhaps he should offer that to Callie. She liked to invent collective nouns.
He’d managed to score a seat beside her on the boat, without even trying. At least, he was pretty sure he hadn’t tried. It hardly mattered, since he now had the dubious pleasure of watching her watching Kain, opposite them.
He returned his attention to the view through his little video camera. No photo could capture the scale of this place, but he was going to give it a shot. Only two weeks till summer, and there was still snow on the jagged mountain tops, which perforated both sky and lake, their reflection so perfect a man needed gravity to tell him which way was up. The breeze teasing the back of his neck came from the momentum of the launch. The morning air wouldn’t have been moving at all if it didn’t have to get out of their way. Perhaps it was half-asleep like the rest of them.
Yesterday, they’d endured a nine-hour drive from Christchurch, crammed into a rattly mini-bus, and followed it with a hard night on a hard floor at Bryan’s tiny house. They had been brusquely woken in the dark, and ordered to eat oatmeal and toast, which they’d had to do standing because there were no chairs. What a weird house Bryan had chosen. It had shocked his old friends; they’d been expecting something more like the riverside mansion that had been their playground as teenagers.
Jack panned the camera back towards the town they’d just left, squatting on the south eastern shore. Sunrise tickled the tops of the taller trees. To the north, the lake disappeared into misty distance. Sixty-five kilometers long, according to Bryan, their guide, leader and protector. And completely uninhabited on the side they were heading for, a national park of 12,500 square kilometers. No roads. No phone signal. They would be like ants out there.
“This lake is twelve degrees Celsius,” announced Bryan over the chugging of the engine. “If you fall overboard, you can only survive a few minutes. It’s half a kilometer deep—the bottom is below sea level and covered in ice. No one will ever see you again.”
Jack noticed Callie, beside him, flinch at the strident voice. A Botticelli-angel smile appeared on her face and just as quickly dissolved. When he caught her eye, she flushed. Whatever amusing thoughts Bryan’s words had prompted, they probably weren’t kind.
“Hey,” she said in a stage whisper camouflaged by the engine noise, “what do you make of his hair? Are you tempted to try dreads yourself?”
Jack surveyed the dreadlocks protruding through the gap on the back of Bryan’s cap. “I think I liked his old short-back-and-sides better.”
“Me too. It wasn’t pretty, but you at least knew where you were with that haircut. The new do is too whimsical for his head. Like his hair is having a party on a tombstone.” She paused and grimaced. “An insensitive thing to say about someone who’s been to so many funerals, I guess. Is this where his parents died?”
“Yep. They’re in a little cemetery south of town.”
“I remember when you took time off uni to fly over for the funeral.”
“At the time I wondered why he didn’t take their bodies home to Brisbane, but afterwards when he moved here to live, it made sense. Sort of.”
“He worshiped the ground they walked on. Weird that he doesn’t have any photos of them in his house.”
Jack nodded. Next to Kain, he saw Sharon bend her feet up and back, looking at her cheap boots. “Do you know why Sharon didn’t buy the stuff on Bryan’s list?”
“Apparently she used Bryan’s check to pay her credit card bill before she discovered how much this gear costs.”
“Understandable, when she’s got a little kid and no husband.”
“Yeah.” The tired eyes became lively. “I could have punched Bryan when he made her cry about it last night, carrying on as though her life depended on a few clothes.”
“I know what you mean. But I guess he’s under pressure to keep us safe. It’s dangerous out here—avalanches, blizzards, wind storms, flash floods, the works. Did you know they get about seven meters of rain a year? It’s one of the wettest places on earth.”
“Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “Not something Bryan bothered to mention in his invitation.”
He laughed. “Enjoy the sunshine. You might not see it for a while.” He became serious. “What do you think of the trek he’s planned for us?”
In last night’s briefing, Bryan had given almost no details about their route, except that it would take ten days to reach world-famous Milford Sound but stray far from any existing tracks. They would begin on the rarely-used track to George Sound, and that was the destination they would mention to anyone who asked. After a couple of days, they would head off-track into deep wilderness. Bryan wanted to create a brand new trail in honor of his dead parents. He’d tested the route himself, and now it was time for a group of hikers to confirm it. They’d been ordered to keep their goal confidential.
Jack said, “Why choose us to test something like this? We’re not exactly trailblazers. And why does it need to be hush-hush?”
“He must be trying to protect the naming rights or something. Can you imagine if we asked him to change the itinerary now? He’d probably grab an ax and kill us all. I’m hoping it won’t be as hard as we think. But at least we’re carrying our own body bags if we need them.”
Jack grimaced. Apart from providing waterproof storage, the huge orange plastic bag in each of their kits was big enough to contain an adult in an array of scenarios, the color designed to catch the eye of searchers. He said, “They’re very useful looking bags, but Bryan didn’t need to be quite so grim.”
“Never fear, I’ve got duct tape if anything goes wrong.”
Jack smiled. “You too?”
“I’m a seasoned traveler. But seriously, we’ve got the satellite phone and emergency beacon—and he did notify the authorities. Surely that’s a safety net.”
Bryan had told them he’d registered at the Department of Conservation office. Someone would start looking if they didn’t come home.
***
Their “track” was nothing like the one he’d hiked with Bryan all those years ago. At the time, he’d thought it rough compared to Australian trails. But that scrappy gap in the rainforest seemed like a city footpath in comparison to what they were walking today.
The occasional orange triangle nailed to a tree was the only way to tell they were even in the right part of the valley.
Most of it was an undergrowth-infested bog. Some of it was ankle deep in water. Today’s weather might be glorious, but it had obviously rained yesterday. Hard. And probably the day before and the day before that.
They clambered over fallen trees and boulders the size of cars. Not for the first time in his life, Jack wished he was taller. To scale the larger rocks, he had to reach up so far his arms were almost fully extended, then lift the combined weight of his body and rucksack. The women were being helped—a leg up from below, a hand reaching down from above. But he couldn’t ask for that. The other blokes were managing.
Long tendrils of hairy lichen hung from the trees, glowing in slivers of sunlight. They tugged at his arms, slapped his face.
Waterfalls hurled themselves down slopes so steep they were virtually forested cliffs. The group ate lunch near a place where the vegetation had apparently lost its courage and let go, laying bare a strip of granite wide as a freeway and one hundred stories high.
“What caused that?” Jack said to Bryan.
“Tree avalanche. They happen after heavy rain.”
Later, they crossed the river on an instrument of torture some joker had deemed a bridge: three steel cables suspended above rushing water, one to walk on, two higher ones to steady yourself. The drop to the sharp boulders and rushing water were bad enough, without the wobble in the wire as he edged across. Even worse, he was forced to wait till last, having been appointed by Bryan as today’s “sweeper”, watching to make sure no one was left behind.
As they made camp in the soft evening light so many agonizing hours later, Jack watched Callie laugh with Kain, and drew ungracious comfort from the suspicion that the other man was hurting from the day’s ordeal.
Kain helped Callie and Erica set out their tent, while they discussed the pleasures of a wilderness without spiders or snakes. Kain said, “No bosses, either. It was the sweetest thing being able to tell him there’s no phone signal out here as I left the office. You should have seen his face.”
Erica said, with a hint of snarkiness, “Why do you stay in that job if you hate it so much?”
“Maybe I won’t. Those ‘golden handcuffs’ might lose their power any day now.”
Jack wondered how often those rippling muscles did anything useful. He had always privately thought Kain’s voluntary work as a surf lifesaver was mostly about being a hero in front of women in bikinis.
And he was going to have to share a two-man tent with him tonight. Rather than use bunks in a conservation hut, their fearless leader insisted they get into practice for the rest of the trek.
Today’s ordeal by jungle counted as a “marked track”, even if it was rarely used. Where they were going, there were no huts. No track. No shelter other than what they carried or nature provided.
Bryan called for their attention. “A trace of mud in your tent each day will become a pig sty by the time ten days are up. The cloth in your kit is to keep everything clean. Use it. Thoroughly. Every night. Wash it in the river each day and hang it on the back of your pack to dry as we walk.”
“Yes sir!” Adam saluted, drawing a few giggles.
Bryan gave him a cold stare, then continued. “Leave nothing outside your tents. When you go to bed, wipe down your boots and take them inside, or you’ll be walking barefoot tomorrow.”
“Why?” said Sharon, wide-eyed. “Will someone steal them?”
It was a strange question, since they’d seen no other human since the boat that brought them across the lake turned back to Te Anau, breaking any connection with civilization.
Bryan harrumphed. “Keas. Mountain parrots.”
Everyone waited for him to elaborate, but Bryan returned to the dinner preparations.
Jack moved to a vantage point, his camera capturing soft colors and moody mists in the distance.
“You’re taking a lot of video.” Callie was suddenly beside him, her own camera pressed to her eye as she rotated the zoom on the big lens.
“I’m thinking about making a documentary.”
“For the web?”
He shrugged. “Web. Television. Haven’t decided.”
“Not for television.”
The energy of his answer surprised even him. “And why not? Is mediocrity illegal now?”
She blushed. “You can’t make a television documentary with a little camera like that.”
“What do you think freelance journos who go into closed areas do? They don’t take fourteen technicians and a makeup artist. They take a camera any tourist might carry, so no one will stop them at the border. They shoot their own pieces to camera by sitting on the ground and holding it with their feet if they have to. I’m not trying to be Attenborough, just tell a story.” He shoved the camera in his jacket pocket and turned back to the campsite, embarrassed and off-kilter.
Later, the weary group made quiet conversation around the campfire, a fingernail clipping of moon hanging overhead. With a warm meal of reconstituted food in their bellies, snug tents awaiting them, and their weight off their feet, the contentment was tangible.
Jack said, “I had no idea those dehydrated things could taste so good.”
“Sure beats crocodile,” drawled Adam.
Sharon said, “Have you really eaten crocodile? Yuck!”
“No, but I had to shoot one last month, to stop it eating a customer. We didn’t put it on the menu. They eat rotting meat. Store it underwater somewhere until it’s ripe.”
A groan of revulsion rippled round the circle.
“I ate crocodile once,” Kain said. “Big overseas client. One of those posh restaurants with main courses for $100, emu and ostrich, that sort of thing.”
“What did it taste like?” Erica said.
“Actually, it tasted a lot like chicken.”
Jack muttered, “Probably was chicken.” Callie apparently overheard him, and stifled a laugh. Their eyes met and Jack felt the awkwardness between them ease.