Читать книгу Desert Prisoner - Andrea Abbott - Страница 4

Shade! It was all he could think of. The only patch was his shadow, but that was useless to him. It was like a nervous dog, edging away whenever he tried to move toward it.

The scorching sun showed no mercy and the sand was a branding iron against his legs. He flopped down, drew up his knees and bent over them, tucking in his head and arms to protect himself from the fierce rays. The others must be looking for me; they’ll find me soon.

He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Nothing moved. No welcome noise of an engine broke the stifling silence. It was so still, Leo could hear his ears ringing. The shrill zinnnnggg was like the sound of cicadas in summer.

Time wore on, the sun seared its way across the sky, the zinging in Leo’s ears grew louder. The only thing that faded was his hope that the others would be back. Perhaps someone else will come along instead. But that was wishful thinking. What chance of anyone suddenly appearing in that harsh and empty place? I’ll die of thirst before that happens. He was desperate for a drink, his tongue swollen and his throat as dry as the sand around him. The craving grew until it was all he could think of. Nothing else mattered right then.

Dreams of shade gave way to a fantasy of water: sparkling water; glasses of water, ice blocks chinking; crystal clear rivers gurgling over rocks; waterfalls cascading down mountains; lakes of water, cool and blue and deep; rain drenching everything; fresh water filling his mouth, running down his throat, cooling him, quenching that terrible thirst.

A slight noise, like someone breathing, interrupted his daydream. He looked up.

A dog was standing nearby. A thin, rangy mongrel stared at Leo, panting.

Leo blinked. I’m hallucinating.

But the dog was no illusion. He was as real as the heat. His sparse, sandy-brown coat looked corrugated where his ribs stuck out, and the tips of his ears were ragged and fly-bitten. He had a powerful head though, with a broad forehead and a black muzzle. Standing tall, on tight-muscled legs, he held his tail straight out behind him.

The dog was shabby and rather ugly, and Leo didn’t want him to come any closer. He was probably a stray, turned wild and vicious. One wrong move from Leo and the dog might attack. That’s all he needed now!

“What do you want?” he said. His voice quivered, betraying his fear.

The dog kept up his steely stare.

“Shoo! Go away.” Leo gathered up a handful of sand and threw it at the creature.

It backed away, but not in a tail-between-the-legs, hangdog way. Carrying himself tall and straight, he was neither nervous nor menacing but confident, judging from the way he gazed at Leo. Unblinking, and holding his head to one side, he could have been quizzing him. He was certainly not the cur he’d seemed at first. Nor did he appear to mean any harm.

Cautiously, Leo stretched out his hand. “Are you lost too?”

The dog trotted off, stopped, turned, and looked back at him with that same curious expression.

Leo got up and went toward him.

Again, the dog darted off, stopping just beyond Leo’s reach, like he was playing a game.

Leo wasn’t in the mood for games. “Forget it,” he said, and flopped down on the sand once more.

The dog stared at him.

“What do you want?” Leo said.

The dog trotted away, glancing back over his shoulder. When Leo didn’t follow, he returned. This time, he stopped so close that Leo could smell his canine odour and feel his hot breath on his neck. He waited to see what he would do next.

For a while, neither of them moved. But it was the dog who eventually broke that stalemate, repeating the same behaviour as before. He moved off, stopped after a few metres, turned, and came back, this time giving a short bark too.

“Are you trying to tell me something?” Leo said. “Like you want me to go with you?”

The dog loped away. Leo got up and followed. He kept glancing back, in case someone pitched up. “Where are we going?” he said, more to himself than to the dog. There seemed nowhere to go. As far as the eye could see, the desert was a hot, dry sea of red. Its waves were the horizontal waves of heat. Cruel mirages, they tricked thirsty desert travellers into thinking there was water ahead. But, like shadows, they were always moving away. No one ever got close to them.

Trudging behind the dog, Leo knew he was taking a risk. Stay put, came that advice from long ago. But that was if you didn’t have a dog to lead the way. Without ever pausing to sniff the ground or scent the air or even look about, the dog ran on. There was a purpose about his movements that made Leo think he knew exactly where he was going.

So after checking behind one last time, Leo decided once and for all to throw in his lot with the mongrel. Like any living being, a dog couldn’t survive for long without water. And for this one to be alive in this parched place, he must know where to find some. Even better, he seemed almost tame. He had to belong to someone. He could even be on his way home now.

It’s been hours since the others drove off, Leo reasoned. His shadow gave him a sense of time. It was so much longer than when he’d climbed that hill at lunchtime. And the only one who has come along is this dog. At this rate, I could wait for the rest of the day, and all night, and still not be rescued. And then I’d die of thirst.

Weighing all things up, he decided that following the dog was his best chance of being rescued. He’d have to trust him.

* * *

“Eish!” said Victor, pressing an ice-cold can against his cheek. “Just what I need.” He snapped the ring on the lid. There was a hiss as the froth of sweet, black liquid fizzed out and ran down the sides. He slurped it up. “That’s sooo good,” he said and drained the can in one long gulp.

* * *

Leo would have given anything for a single drop of liquid. The desert air was a drought in his mouth and throat. He was dizzy, and the zinnnggg in his ears so loud, it nearly drowned out the sound of his own breathing and the thud, thud, thud of his pounding heart. His head throbbed, and his eyes burned so much that he could hardly see the dog. The animal was as blurry as the heat mirages in the distance.

He knew now he’d made a terrible mistake. The mongrel was no hero, no Lassie on an incredible journey home through wild and hostile country; he was no St Bernard on a daring search-and-rescue mission, or a tracker dog trailing scent tracks. A stray, that’s all he was, roaming through the desert with about as much purpose as any creature that lived there.

Leo couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid! I should have waited. I bet the others came back after all.

There was no going back though. He and the dog had been walking for ages, probably in circles. He’d never find his way back to that inselberg.

* * *

“Where’s Leo?” asked Treasure, when she noticed he wasn’t outside with the rest of them. She stood on tiptoes and peered into Eva’s Land Rover, thinking he was probably asleep on the back seat.

“He’s with you,” said Eva. “Isn’t he?”

Treasure dropped her cold drink. The can clattered on the tar. “No!” she gasped, clutching her face with both hands.

“Hau!” exclaimed Humphrey. “We’ve left him behind.”

* * *

Stumbling after the dog, Leo tripped on something, his own feet perhaps, and fell face down.

Spread-eagled on the desert floor, he felt his strength ebb away. He tried to get up, but couldn’t move a muscle. It’s the end. No one will find me. I’m going to die.

A peculiar feeling came over him, like he was drifting off, beyond himself, away from the thirst, the heat, and fear. The red-hot world around him drifted away until everything went bright white, like a star exploding. Just when he thought he couldn’t stand the brightness any longer, blackness flooded in and extinguished it.

Oblivion.

Or was it? The nothingness gave way then and he began to see his life flash before him. First, he saw himself as a small boy splashing about in a paddling pond with another young boy who seemed vaguely familiar. An old man came into view, and Leo thought he recognised him: his long-dead grandfather, perhaps?

Like the next scene in a movie, the picture changed suddenly to a vision of his home in the village of Salt Rock on the east coast of South Africa. As clearly as if he was standing in front of it, Leo saw the white cottage perched on the cliff high above the Indian Ocean. Seagulls wheeled above the roof in air so salty you could smell it and taste it on your skin.

Sounds came to him along with the pictures, ones he’d known his whole life: the shrill call of gulls, the pounding of waves on the rocky shore below the cliffs, the howling of wind on stormy nights. And voices now. Leo’s best friends, Noel and Roddy, calling to him. “Are you coming to the beach, Leo? The surf’s brilliant.”

Leo pictured them in his mind: Noel, tall like Leo, but two-and-a-half years older, his hair sun-bleached and his eyes blue like the sea, and Roddy, the same age as Leo but shorter than him and with curly dark hair, brown eyes, and an accent that everyone thought was American until he put them right. “Canadian,” he’d say.

More voices now. Leo’s parents, Marius and Zara Knight, talking late into the hot, humid night on the veranda of that white cottage.

“What are your afraid of, Zara?” Leo’s father was saying quietly. “That he’s still vulnerable?”

“Well, he is,” came the answer. “Especially as they’ll be passing through Aus. And you know only too well that that gang will never give up.”

Aus? What about it? And what gang? Leo had wondered.

“They’re ruthless, but they’re not complete fools,” Marius argued. “They’ll be miles from Aus. They’re probably not even in the country anymore, otherwise they’d have been picked up by now and Axel would . . .”

Zara’s voice cutting in. “I know. Perhaps I am being paranoid, but which mother in the same situation wouldn’t be?”

“I suppose so,” said Leo’s dad in a gentle tone. “I’ve been thinking lately that it’s time we told Leo. He has no memory of it, but it’s only fair that he knows the truth.”

The truth about what? It all sounded very interesting! Leo sat up in bed and leaned toward the window so he could hear everything clearly.

But his mother put the lid on it all. “No!” she said firmly. “Not yet.”

“Well, when?” said Marius.

“When he’s in high school and can deal with it better,” said Zara.

That’s next year! Ages away. Bursting with curiosity, Leo nearly got up to go and ask what the secret was. But he knew his parents would be cross that he’d been eavesdropping (“It’s rude to eavesdrop,” his mother would probably say) so he stayed where he was. How he wished, though, that she wouldn’t treat him like a ninny who couldn’t handle serious things. Hey, I surf in the Indian Ocean where sharks swim! he wanted to call out to her. And you’re not worried about that.

“Apart from everything else,” Zara was saying, “I’m not sure he belongs with that astronomy crowd. He’s only just twelve. The others are so much older: nineteen, twenty. And Dawie’s twenty-two. Should Leo really be . . .?”

“They invited him,” said Marius, “I’m sure they’re responsible people, even though they’re students. And ABSO’s all he can talk about right now, remember. Think about it. How many twelve-year-olds are keen astronomers, and have the gumption to join a university astronomy club?”

Zara sighing. “Very few, I suppose. It just shows how deep things run in families.” A pause, then, “Who would have thought that? After . . .” She hesitated again, “. . . everything.” Spoken very softly, her words were almost drowned by the swish of the waves on the beach below, but nothing could smother the bitterness that laced them.

“You’ve got to let go,” Marius, gentle again, diluting the bitterness. “Or it will destroy you.”

“It already did, Marius. A long time ago. And not just me. All of us. Axel most of all.”

Axel? That name’s familiar. There came a fleeting vision of a small dark-haired boy but it didn’t last long enough for Leo to work out who he was.

“We’ve somehow kept going,” Marius went on, “and we still have each other.” The creaking of the wicker chair as he leaned forward, or settled back into it. “Always remember, we did all we could and more. And I’ll never give up hope. Deep inside, I believe that . . .” He stopped abruptly, then changed the subject. “Look, Zara. We’ve got to move on. It’s the least we can do for Leo. Nothing will change the past, and we can’t let it ruin the future completely. We can’t let it restrict our son. We have to let him – you know – spread his wings, explore.”

Silence for a while, then Zara sighing again. “You’re right.” Sniffing now like she was fighting back tears. “I only wish that ABSO was somewhere else. Anywhere, but . . . but . . . where it all happened.”

Six months later, thousands of kilometres away, sprawled out on the desert floor, hearing the conversation so clearly again, Leo might have been in his own bed, lying awake, listening to his parents’ voices drifting in through the open window, wondering what had happened that had destroyed their lives. Now he’d never find out.

He should have listened harder that night. He should have taken notice of his mother’s worry instead of wishing she wouldn’t treat him like a baby. He might have stayed at home.

And he wouldn’t have met his end in the desert.