The Amazing Spencer Gray (7 page)

Since no one else was departing from Skippers Cove airstrip that day, and he wasn't expecting any arrivals, Reg pulled across the enormous steel doors that closed the hangar to the elements. He noted that the wind had picked up somewhat, could see the sock pulling hard to the south-east, its mouth gaping wide to the north like a plankton-feeding whale shark. He made a mental note to keep an eye on the conditions.

The Doc and his boy would be back around 3pm, so that gave Reg plenty of time to go home now and have some lunch and a little nap before returning to meet them, help push the
Drifter
off the runway and sign off on the paperwork for their flight. As the duty pilot, it was his job to make sure the day's flights were completed safe and sound.

Right now, though, ham and cheese toasties and a snooze were beckoning him.

The wings of the
Drifter
intercepted the raindrops loudly. They should have landed gently in the soil, on the small scrubby leaves, a quiet arrival, but not this fat
splot splat splot.

Spencer looked at Dad. His knee had swollen to the size of a footy, despite the ice.

And Spencer suddenly realised: even if he could wake him, what was Dad going to be able to do? Hop down the mountain?

The
Drifter'
s radio was down. There was no mobile reception. He either had to sit tight and wait for help to come to them, or he had to go and find help himself.

‘Mphhhhh,' Dad groaned.

Spencer leaned over. ‘Dad?'

‘Mm?'

‘Dad, if I talk, can you hear me?'

He moved his lips painfully, and croaked, ‘Yesh.'

‘Okay. I'm gunna talk, and tell you what's happened and what I know.'

‘Mmph.'

‘We've crashed. The
Drifter,
it's crashed.'

‘Yesh.' His eyes moved behind the lids.

‘We're on the side of the Stirlings. Bluff Knoll. The big one.'

Dad frowned. ‘Sho shorry ... gushty wind...'

‘I know, Dad, don't worry about that now, it doesn't matter.'

‘Shorry...'

Spencer gripped Dad's hand. ‘Dad, I think you've broken your leg—or your knee. It looks bad.'

‘Mmph.'

‘I think you might have some other ... injuries, too. But I don't know what they are. It's just that you're unconscious most of the time and I don't think that can be from the leg.'

There was silence for a moment, then Dad said, ‘No.'

‘Do you know what else is wrong with you, Dad? Is it shock, or something?'

Dad sucked in a breath before saying, ‘Donno. Not shock.' His forehead creased up, like he was in pain, or was really concentrating.

Spencer squeezed his hand and knelt forward so he was directly above Dad's head. He checked out the bloody area without touching anything. ‘It looks like you've cut the back of your head. There's a bit of blood there ... Is it hurting?'

‘No.'

‘Really? Okay ... but I'll look at it in a little while just to make sure. I'll have to move your head a bit to do that, Dad, is that okay?'

‘Yesh.'

‘One other thing—the two-way—I can't get it to work. No one's answering, anyway. Is there a trick? And I found your mobile and tried to call Mum and then I tried to call Reg but there's no reception up here.'

Spencer could see his dad struggling to open his eyes.

‘Flight notice _____ Reggggh.'

‘Huh? Flight notice? What's that?'

‘Reg _____ has _____ route. Duty _____ pilot.'

‘Do you mean that Reg knows where we were going—the route we flew?'

‘Yesh,' Dad said thickly, his face slumping back into sleep.

That was good to know. Very, very good to know.

‘Rest up now, Dad.' Spencer said quietly. ‘You need to rest up.'

Spencer tried to make him more comfortable in the limited space, shoving anything soft underneath and around him. He kept away from the leg. The Leg. It wasn't nice, that thing. The angle of the lower part to the knee was hideous.

He knew he couldn't avoid Dad's head much longer. Even The Leg was better, somehow, than blood oozing from your dad's head.

He took deep slow breaths, like Mr Petrich showed him to do when he had a stitch and wanted to stop running.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.

And again, Spence, in through the nose, out through the mouth...

‘Shall we head off, Pips?'

Pippa sighed. ‘I s'pose.' She paused, an idea brewing. ‘Will you play Monopoly with me when we get home?'

Mum noted the greying sky and shunned a little nub of worry that was trying to make its way in. She took a breath and looked at her daughter. ‘I'll have to get the washing in off the line, but after that, yes, I don't see why not. So long as I can buy the railway stations.'

‘Mum, you can't
always
get them, you know.'

‘And why not?'

Pippa rolled her eyes. ‘Well, it's not fair, is it?'

‘Says she, who always racks up hotels on premium real estate!'

‘M-u-u-m!'

‘All's fair in love and Monopoly, Pippa-Poppa. Race you to the car!'

Flares! Spencer thought. Boats had them—what about gliders? He peered through the diminishing light at all the gear that had been flung around the cabin. Or—what were those other things? E-things? Charlie's dad's boat had one; his mum'd insisted on it when they got the boat, otherwise ‘there wasn't gunna be a boat'—Charlie had said, doing his best-ever impersonation of his mum in scary mode. EPIRB: that was it. He had no idea how they worked, but it was possible that there was one in the
Drifter
somewhere. If only Dad were awake and sensible, he could ask him this stuff. Spencer looked over at him, spread awkwardly with jumpers strewn this way and that. He looked pale. He hadn't eaten anything since the crash. Or had any water. Spencer was going to have to get him to have something,
to keep his energy up,
as Mum would say. In fact, neither of them had had anything since that apple on the tarmac back at Skippers.

Spencer reached over and grabbed the esky bag.
Mum. Thank you.
He was ravenous, he realised, looking at the food.
Go easy, champ. Don't know how long you're gunna be stuck up here.

His throat glued up at the thought of that, of what might lie ahead.

He put the bag down again. He didn't think he could eat.

After a moment, in that grey fear, Spencer reached for the bag again. He took out one of the water bottles. He'd heard Dad talk about nurses doing this with really sick patients in hospital: wetting their lips, just keeping them moist. He spun the lid off the water bottle, and took a slug. He felt guilty as it went down, cold and clean—he guzzled almost crazily—but he felt better almost instantly. He hadn't realised how much he'd needed a drink.

Spencer dipped his fingers into the bottle and daubed drops of water over Dad's lips. Dad moved his head slightly. Spencer watched as, semiconscious, he tucked his bottom lip into his mouth and sucked the water off.

‘That's good, Dad,' Spencer murmured. ‘You need to drink.' He poked his finger back into the bottle and smeared his lips again. Once more, Dad sucked the
water off. Spencer kept at it for a good ten minutes or so, until Dad seemed to have had enough and slumped back into himself.

He couldn't put it off any longer. Spencer leaned over him. The blood in Dad's hair had congealed darkly. There was a sticky patch just to one side of his head. Gingerly, Spencer tilted Dad's head to one side, so that he'd be looking out the window, if his eyes were open.

‘Wish you could enjoy the view better, Dad,' he murmured, as a balloon shape of blood floated towards him.

Spencer panicked and snatched the fleece from Dad's chest and dropped it onto the blood to soak it up. Then he got down as low as he could so that he could see whatever he needed to see.

Carefully, he lifted Dad's head up off the floor about a centimetre. It was actually quite heavy. Spencer felt his own pulse come to the top of his throat as he looked. A raw meaty gash yawned from the back of Dad's head. Blood flooded into it as he watched. It was deep and messy.

He rushed: pushed the arm of the fleece over it and slightly in, to block it up as best he could. Then Spencer rearranged the jacket around Dad's neck for
comfort and lowered his head down onto it. He pulled his hands back quickly: he couldn't wait to get away from it.

The rain got steadily harder. Every few minutes Spencer looked over to Dad's head, to see if there was any blood seeping out under the fleece. So far, so good. Spencer knew that he had to try to stop the bleeding.

Through the window, Spencer stared at the thin long wing of the
Drifter.
It shone—far too white amid the dirty green scrub, and the grey rock that was scattered about like broken tiles wherever he looked.

After he'd wiped the sticky blood from his fingers onto his cargo pants, Spencer looked around for something he could catch some of the rain in, in case it stopped—though that seemed very unlikely. There were no cups. Or bowls, or pans. This wasn't meant to be a camping trip! He needed a plastic tarp or something. His eyes landed on the wet weather jacket he'd brought. That could work. He grabbed it up and twisted around in his spot to face the door. He spread the jacket out flat on the ground, bunching it up at the edges so the water wouldn't flow away. A bowl, of sorts.

He could have let himself be hypnotised by that rain,
he could have just stared at it splashing and plipping and forget the stupid two-way and the mobile phone and bloody Dad lying there like a spaz.

He turned back to the stuffy, broken interior of the
Drifter.
He checked again: no blood.

Reg may have had their flight plan, but Spencer had been thinking about that: crashing into the side of Bluff Knoll wasn't likely to be on Dad's itinerary. So, apart from Reg thinking that they were running a bit late, he wasn't exactly in the know, was he?

He looked at his watch. It was 3.30.

Spencer wasn't sure how much longer Dad could handle being in and out of consciousness, or having a football for a knee joint. Or bleeding from the head.

It wasn't a decision; there was no choice. If no one had come for them by the morning, Spencer was going to have to go and get help himself.

There was a road running across the bottom of the ranges, they'd seen it from the air. It was like the cut-mark of a carving knife, smooth and long. As the afternoon inched on, he thought it through: in the morning he'd find the highest spot he could, a place where he could see far around. He had no idea if they were near any trails, but if there happened to be one nearby it would
make getting down a million times easier. If not, he already had his mantra:
Do not freak out!
It didn't matter
how
he got down—he'd just walk in a straight line downhill. As long as he was going downwards, he was going in the right direction, he reckoned. Now, Spencer climbed up onto the slippery wet wing of the
Drifter,
and then onto her white belly. He stood tall, but couldn't see much from there, especially not through the rain. Now he knew—really knew—what people meant when they talked about
poor visibility.
The scrub was thick and steady in every direction. There were no paths he could see from here and certainly no road—but he knew the road was there.

The caravan park was along that road. People—in cars—used that road. It wasn't rocket science. He needed to get down there.

Reg looked at his watch. It was 3.30, and still no sign of the Doc and his boy. His hands rested gently on the counter. He peered out the window at the now-dark cloudbank to the north. It just couldn't be that they'd got into strife. It just
couldn't
be. That boy was only, what? Twelve, thirteen?

He snatched up the two-way. ‘Skippers Cove to
Drifter.
Come in, Drifter.'

Nothing.

He enunciated his words, spoke slightly louder, in case the line was poor. ‘This is Skippers Cove to
Drifter. Drifter,
do you read me?'

Reg let out a hard breath of frustration. He had no other guys in the air, so couldn't get anyone else to fill him in on the conditions up there. His take on the sky was simply that it didn't look good.

‘Rory, this is Reg at Skippers. Do you read?'

The empty buzz on the other end was so loud it seemed to fill the office.

He looked out the window. The windsock swung about wildly. Filled then deflated. Filled hard.

3.40pm. Reg shook his head. Nah, something wasn't right. He reached over to the landline. In twenty-five years he'd only had to do this once before. He hoped this time they were more successful.

The number was preset into the phone.

‘Southern Districts Police Station, this is Constable Fitch,' said a young voice.

‘It's Reg Calder, Duty Pilot at Skippers Cove airstrip. We've got a problem over here. I think we're gunna need a ... a search-and-rescue.'

It didn't take long before the emergency plan was activated. The rescue chopper pilot was called in, and a hastily arranged search-and-rescue team, made up of local police and State Emergency Service volunteers. Reg was kept on communications detail, in case Rory or Spencer made contact. Reg also had to let Suzie know. He looked at his watch, which he'd taken off his wrist and laid out in front of him on the counter. It was now 4.37. The weather was making itself increasingly felt, and, with every passing minute of roaring silence
on the two-way, Reg knew: something had definitely gone wrong up there.

‘Hello?'

‘Suzie?' Reg asked, knowing full well it was her.

‘Yes, speaking!'

‘Ah, Suzie, it's Reg here from the airstrip.'

There was a long pause. ‘Oh, hi, Reg, is everything ... Oh_____'

‘They're just a bit late coming in, Suzie.'

‘Oh no.'

‘Now, don't get ahead of yourself, we're just being extra cautious as there's a bit of weather on the way.'

Silence.

‘We're sending up the chopper to make sure they're okay.'

‘They—they should've been back with you about 2.30!'

‘2.30 or 3 is what Rory said to me as they left, yes.'

‘Have you ... used the two-way, or whatever it is?'

Reg heard the little girl's voice in the background.

‘It's nothing, love,' he heard Suzie say, the sound slightly muffled. ‘No, no, it's okay. Off you go now. Put on a DVD if you want,' she said. ‘Yes, love,
Horton Hears a Who,
that's fine.' There was a pause. ‘I'm back, Reg.
Sorry about that.' She sounded disorientated. ‘So ... have you been able to contact them?'

‘I've tried. I'll keep trying. But they're not ... answering at the moment. It could be nothin' more than a bit of interference, but we've got things moving down here just in case.'

‘Oh, Reg,' she whispered.

‘I know, Suzie. I know. Let's just keep positive. You stay by the phone. I'll call you as soon as I know anything.'

‘Yes—you must. I'll be here.'

‘I know. We'll find them. I'll call you soon.'