The Girl in the Hard Hat (40 page)

Chub slowed down a little and she had to fight the urge to bite her tongue at the cautious pace she had just told him to take. In that instant, Mike and all the problems attached to him and the family that had done her no favours receded.

Gavin was her priority right now. She had to get to him before it was too late.

They went to Point Samson first. There were more hotels there. If a tourist wanted to find a safe place to hibernate during the cyclone, it would be there. After searching the car parks of all the accommodation sites for signs of a green Mitsubishi, they were forced to admit that this theory had been wrong. Twice they were scolded by hotel staff, who ran out to tell them to find shelter,
immediately
.

They agreed rather than explaining their situation and moved on. It was just easier.

After that, they drove through the residential housing section and even went into a caravan park that had definitely been evacuated. No sign of that beat-up green Mitsubishi there either.

The phrase ‘needle in a haystack’ kept popping into Wendy’s thoughts.

She bit her fingernails. ‘Come on. Come on. Come on.’

Chub sensed her mood. ‘We still have a couple of hours till impact. Shall we head for Wickham?’

‘Yes.’ It was a struggle to talk at all without throwing up. She glanced at her phone again, hoping for a text message from Lena or Dan saying that they had found him.

Nothing.

They drove to Wickham in silence. She could feel the wind pushing under the car, rocking it slightly as they drove – almost taunting them with its power. Red pebbles spitting against the doors were becoming louder. She rubbed her neck because it had started to ache from sitting so stiffly. But she couldn’t relax. Sitting in a car made her feel so useless. She’d been coiling her adrenaline like the spring in a Jack-in-the-box. Something had to open that lid soon.

They drove past the camp first as it was at the entrance to the town. The car park was completely empty. No sign of a green Mitsubishi. So they carried on and made their way slowly through every street in the small town. It was raining again and visibility was getting harder with the sky losing more light. Chub had his wipers vigorously dashing water from their windscreen but the pace was still slow.

And also fruitless.

Wendy felt panic tickling the underside of her ribcage.

‘I don’t know what to tell you, little mate,’ Chub said softly after half an hour. ‘It might be best if we just headed to Carl and Sharon’s now.’

Wendy clenched her fingers together. ‘I want to go back to the camp. That was the last place we saw him. Maybe the fools are all in the mess or something. The building is old but it looks sturdy enough.’

‘All right.’ She could hear the doubt in Chub’s voice but resolutely chose to ignore it.

She wasn’t giving up until there was absolutely no time left.

Back at the camp, they parked their ute in the car park and exited the vehicle. Wind tore at her clothes and hair. Rain pelted her face, mixing with her tears. They had neither raincoat nor umbrella but Wendy couldn’t allow these circumstances to affect her. In any case, they would be useless against a cyclone. They ran straight to the mess. Wendy got there first and Chub puffed up shortly after. But he was also carrying the bat.

Wendy walked the perimeter of the mess, gazing in windows. Gavin was not inside.

And then she turned the last corner by the back entrance and spotted it. Not the green Mitsubishi.

But Gavin’s ute.

She ran forwards, hoping that it would present her with some clue to its owner’s whereabouts. She didn’t expect to find Gavin strapped to the hood, pale and soaked with blood and water, like a corpse that had been left to rot after execution.

She almost dropped where she stood, but something kept her going.

Oh God! Is he dead?

A wail escaped her lips. Her fingers feathered about on his wrist, looking for a pulse.

His eyes flew open. ‘Wendy?’ he croaked.

‘Gavin, oh Gavin. Thank God. Thank God.’ Blood was roaring through her head with both relief and the urgency of the situation.

Chub lumbered up behind. ‘Shit! What have they done to him?’

‘I don’t care, we’ve got to get this rope off,’ Wendy cried.

Both Wendy and Chub tried to loosen the knots, but the rope was wet and pulled so tight. It was obvious from the cuts on his wrists that Gavin had been struggling earlier and his efforts had only tightened his bonds.

Wendy’s fingers were bleeding. The wind was getting louder. She had to shout to get Chub’s attention. ‘We can’t do this. We need something to cut it.’

‘The mess.’ Gavin jerked his head at Chub’s bat. ‘Smash a window.’

Chub ran to the hall’s entrance, where the front double doors had glass window inserts. He brought the bat up and then followed through. Glass exploded and unfortunately blew back on him when the air pressure from inside the hall whooshed out – he received a few small cuts to his face.

‘It’s all right,’ he yelled, giving them both the thumbs up before sticking his arm through the window and unlocking the door from the inside.

He disappeared into the building and Wendy turned back to Gavin.

‘Why didn’t you tell me how much danger you were in?’ she demanded, gripping his arm with both hands.

A crooked smile twisted his now blue lips. ‘Never seemed like the right moment, Sarge.’

His explanation was so wholly inadequate that she didn’t bother to question him further. It was growing more difficult to talk over the howling wind and she would rather save her breath.

She could feel gravel spitting against her jeans. It wasn’t too painful yet, but she knew that it wouldn’t be long before each of those stones would strike like tiny bullets against her calves.

Chub seemed to be taking an age. She gripped Gavin’s arm even tighter, trying to give and receive reassurance at the same time.

‘You shouldn’t have come, Sarge!’ he yelled at her. ‘You should have stayed in Karratha.’

‘We’ll argue about that later,’ she yelled back.

Chub returned with two long carving knives in his hand. He wordlessly handed one to Wendy. They began to work again on Gavin’s bonds. This time the process was much quicker. Pretty soon he was sitting up rubbing his wrists while they were working on the ties holding his ankles. As soon as they were done, he slid down off the roof of his car, groaning at the impact of his broken body hitting the ground.

Chub pointed at his vehicle but he shook his head.

‘They took my keys.’

‘It’s all right,’ Wendy yelled. ‘We’ll all fit in Chub’s ute.’

It was less than an hour till impact. They had to get to Sharon and Carl’s as quickly as they could, which shouldn’t be a problem, given it was only a five-minute drive away.

‘Come on.’ Chub gestured for them to follow and started marching back towards the car. Now that Gavin was safe, some of Wendy’s other senses were coming back online.

Her clothes clung to her skin, wet and cold, chilling her to the bone as wind battered her with invisible fists. It was hard to walk. It hurt to walk.

She could barely see in front of her as they made their way back to the Barnes Inc ute, to the accompaniment of groaning dongas and the high-pitched whistling of the wind.

They made it to the edge of the car park. Chub’s ute was in sight.

Then it came out of nowhere.

A narrow sheet of corrugated metal – maybe a piece that had ripped off the roof of one of the dongas – flew through the air before them, almost as though it had been hurled by a giant knife thrower. It skilleted Chub’s ute cabin like a kebab stick, shattering glass and burying itself in the head rest of the driver’s seat.

Wendy, who had been running towards the vehicle, stopped so suddenly she fell back, landing on her bum. Her hand flew to her throat, as if it too had just been sliced. Her eyes bulged from their sockets as she studied what had been their only ride to safety.

She felt rather than saw Gavin bend down beside her to help her up. Her eyes remained fixed on the ute sitting out in the open car park unshielded by surrounding dongas and buildings. Now that the front and side windscreens were smashed it was an easy tipping target for Mother Nature. The vehicle crashed onto its side and whatever windows had survived the corrugated iron now lay disintegrated on the gravel.

Without a word, Chub turned around and ran back the way they’d come. Gavin tugged on Wendy’s hand and she tore her gaze from the scene to run after him. But where to?

They caught up with Chub back at the mess. He was through the double-door entrance and standing in the main hall, heaving and pale as a ghost. All the trestle tables had been folded away and put at the back of the room, so it was just a huge empty space, surrounded by windows. Wendy saw each of these portals as a threat. Anything could fly in. They needed to shield themselves behind concrete or something.

So much sand and dirt had blown in through that small hole Chub had made in the door already. They’d shut it behind them but it was rattling ominously. The sand that blew through stung Wendy’s face. Her wet clothes clung to her like a robe of ice.

‘We can’t stay here,’ she told the others as they moved as far from the damaged door as possible. ‘This building isn’t safe. This
room
isn’t safe. Can we still make it to Carl and Sharon’s?’

‘You’re not suggesting we walk, are you?’ Chub demanded. ‘Did you see what’s floating around out there? We’d never make it.’

As if to echo this sentiment, the window next to the door that was rattling imploded.

‘Get down!’

Gavin pushed her body to the floor, covering it with his own. When the sound of glass ceased, Wendy looked up at the damage. She didn’t know if something had hit the window or if it had simply given in to the air pressure or the rain pelting every surface. The streaks of water that came in behind the glass were horizontal. Water was entering elsewhere too – through joints and gaps around other windows that had seemed airtight until this moment. She put her arms up to shield her eyes as the wind blew another deluge of glass, sand and water halfway across the room. Luckily, only the dregs reached them but it wouldn’t be long before they’d be standing in the line of fire.

‘How much time do we have before impact?’ she cried desperately.

Gavin squeezed her shoulders. ‘Wendy, I think James is already here.’

‘If we hadn’t created an opening, this space might have lasted longer.’ Gavin’s eyes darted over the walls. ‘But now the air pressure in here is going to go crazy. We don’t have much time.’

Even as he spoke an acacia tree standing near one of the windows, and bending so far backwards you’d think its trunk was made of rubber, finally gave way. Its roots ripped up out of the ground and the tree keeled over, smashing into another mess window. One of its branches was now protruding into the hall, giving them the surrendering wave of a dying soldier.

The eaves of the building groaned.

Wendy could hear plaster bursting and cracking. Sand whipped around the room scalding her arms and legs as more debris powered in through these new openings. She covered her eyes.

‘The roof is not going to hold,’ Gavin yelled over the ever-increasing noise. Even though she wasn’t the structural engineer in the group, she probably could have told him that.

‘Come on.’ He pushed them out of the mess into the kitchen and shut the door. The building shook and trembled. The kitchen was smaller than the mess hall, but the tops of the walls were still lined with windows – the kind that let in light but couldn’t be opened. Wendy hoped this made them stronger.

‘All right.’ Gavin walked around the room. ‘Do any of you know this building? I only use the mess. Got no idea what else is behind the reception room. Is there a toilet or a bathroom? We need to get into the smallest room in the place, hopefully a room with no windows or very small windows. It’ll be the strongest room.’

‘The only other room I know of is the games room, which is a mirror of the mess.’ Wendy groaned.

‘Wait,’ Chub lifted a finger, ‘there are two storerooms behind reception. They’re tiny, like walk-in wardrobes, no windows.’

‘And they have shelving?’ Gavin demanded.

‘Steel-framed shelving attached to the wall on one side.’

‘Perfect.’ Gavin licked his lips. ‘Lead the way.’

Wendy heard a distant explosion as she walked through another door – this one leading into reception.

She tried not to think about what it might have been.

The two storerooms were side by side. Chub flung open the door of the first. It was full to the brim with food. Packets of biscuits, bottles of coffee, cans of every vegetable and fruit you could think of, bags of rice, long-life juice and boxes of cereal.

Gavin pushed open the second door. It was full of blankets and linen.

‘Okay.’ Chub’s eyes widened. ‘I bags that one. You guys take the linen.’

He walked into the food storeroom, his bulk practically filling the space.

‘But don’t we want to stay together?’ Wendy asked. ‘Won’t you get scared in there all by yourself?’

‘Little mate,’ Chub held up a hand at her protest, ‘do you know what I do when I’m scared?’