The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group (17 page)

‘I feel sick!’

‘It’s just a panic attack,’ I hazarded. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘It is! I can’t see!’

‘Of course you can’t see. It’s pitch black in this tunnel.’ He didn’t move, though, and I lost my temper. ‘Get up! Right now! Or I’ll leave you here!’

‘No! Don’t leave me!’

‘I will if you don’t move!’ Needless to say, this was an empty threat. Without Sergio’s help, I had no way of climbing out of the pool. But he was too distraught to remember this all-important fact – and I certainly wasn’t about to remind him of it. ‘You don’t hear
me
complain, and my head is splitting!’ I concluded. ‘So why don’t you just suck it up and gimme a break?’

When at last we arrived at the hatch, I was fully prepared to punch Sergio in the nose if he gave me any more trouble. I realise now that I was being unfair. The poor guy was half-crazy, thanks to what he’d been through; it wasn’t his fault that he kept sniffing and whining and being a total nuisance. Luckily the fresh air did wonders for him. As soon as I pushed the hatch open, his mood changed. He became a different person, enthusiastically spouting helpful suggestions while we manoeuvred our drum through the narrow opening.

‘We forgot the sheets!’ he lamented. ‘Should I go back for them?’

‘No.’ I couldn’t believe he was even offering. ‘We can use the chain instead. It might be long enough.’

‘I wish we had a torch,’ he whispered, scanning the rim of the pool. Above us, the moon was still glowing in an inky sky. ‘I wish we had shoes.’

‘Yeah. Well – I wish we had a lot of things.’

‘Do you know where we are?’

‘Nup.’

‘It doesn’t smell like a town, does it?’

I flashed him a look, thinking:
So you really are like me
. For the first time, I felt as if we were on exactly the same wavelength. ‘You can smell that, huh?’ I inquired.

‘Yeah. Can’t you?’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘What about trying a corner? That corner over there might work, don’t you think?’

I agreed. The corner of the pool was a good place to start. By wedging myself into the angle where two walls met, I would have more support while Sergio was balancing on my shoulders. That was Sergio’s theory, anyway – and it made a lot of sense. So we positioned our steel drum in one corner; then I gave Sergio my chain and climbed onto the drum, before Sergio tried to climb onto me.

Boy, he was heavy. I hadn’t been expecting such a dead weight. When I squatted down so that he could sit on my shoulders, I wasn’t able to rise again. Even with my forearms pressed against the enfolding walls, I didn’t have what it took to launch him skywards. My knees weren’t strong enough.

‘Okay, wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll get off so you can stand up. Then I’ll start again.’

‘How do you mean?’ I wasn’t reassured. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to pretend you’re a ladder,’ he rejoined. And that’s exactly what he did. While I stood with my shoulders hunched, my chin tucked into my chest and my face pushed into the corner, Sergio hoisted himself onto my back. Using my hipbones as footholds, he wriggled up until his knees were clamped on either side of my neck.

I was surprised at how nimble he was, until I remembered how nimble
I
was. Perhaps he had quick-growing hair as well.

‘This is great!’ he breathed. ‘I can almost touch the edge!’

‘Ow! Ouch!’ It felt as if my collarbones were about to snap. ‘Be careful . . .’

‘I’m gunna stand up now. Okay?’

‘Hang on—’

‘I won’t tread on your ears, I promise,’ he assured me.

The next bit was dire. I couldn’t help squealing. He placed one foot on my left shoulder and shoved down hard, before lurching upright with a mighty grunt. I nearly toppled.

‘Look out!’ I squawked.

‘Got it! I got it!’

‘
Yeowch!
’

‘Gimme a push, quick!’

I did my best. Bracing myself against the wall, I reached up to grip his ankles. Then I gave a huge shove, nearly dislocating half a dozen joints in the process.

‘
Gnnn!
’ Flailing around desperately, he caught me a glancing blow on the head with his foot. ‘
Aah-aah—’

‘Yeowch!’

Suddenly the weight was off my shoulders. I could breathe again. My arms and neck were aching.

I peered up and saw the black silhouette of a leg against a paler, star-studded canopy.

‘Sergio?’

‘Ooof!’ The leg vanished.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Ow!’ A pause. ‘Bloody hell!’ he continued, his voice sounding faint and muffled. ‘There’s razor wire!’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ I’d forgotten to warn him.

‘It’s okay. It’s not high. I’m stepping over it.’

I heard a scuffling noise, followed by a few more grunts. I waited. And waited.

‘Sergio?’ When he didn’t speak, I began to feel scared. ‘
Sergio?
’

‘Aw, jeez . . .’ he said at last. His tone wasn’t encouraging. ‘Aw, jeez.’

‘What?’

‘This is bad. It looks bad.’

‘
What?
’

‘I think it’s the desert. It looks like the desert. I can’t really . . . it’s so dark.’

‘Aren’t there any houses?’

‘No. Yes. There’s one, I think.’

‘Where? Is it close?’

But Sergio didn’t seem to hear. Once again, he was losing his cool.

‘This fence is bad,’ he quavered. ‘It’s got barbed wire on top. We’ll
never
get over
that
.’

I frowned. ‘Didn’t you say you could step over it?’ I asked, kneading my sore muscles.

‘That’s the razor wire. That’s different. Oh!’ He caught his breath. ‘Oh, man!’

‘What?’

‘Oh, wow!’

‘For God’s sake!’ I was ready to throttle him. ‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’

‘I think it’s . . . hang on . . . just let me . . .’

I tried to be patient. As he squeaked and cursed and scurried about overhead, I clenched my fists and closed my eyes.
You can do this
, I told myself.
You’re halfway there. You’re gunna make it.

Then a metallic
clank
reached my ears
–
and my eyelids snapped open.

‘Hey! Hey, Toby!’ Sergio spluttered. I glanced up to see his fuzzy hair glinting in the moonlight. ‘Guess what I found?’

He was so excited that I jumped to conclusions.

‘A phone!’ I exclaimed.

‘No.’

‘A bus stop?’

‘It’s a ladder!’ he shrilled. ‘And there’s a gate in the fence! With a padlock!’

‘Oh . . .’

‘All you have to do is pick the lock!’ He was practically hyperventilating. ‘Just one lock and we’ll be out! Free! We can make a run for it!’ At this point he broke off with a gasp, left momentarily speechless as something dreadful occurred to him. ‘You still have that shim, don’t you?’ he finally found the strength to ask. ‘Toby? Did you keep it?
Did you keep the shim?
’

W
ell, of course
I’d kept the shim. It was in my pocket. I told Sergio this before instructing him, fiercely, to pass me the damn ladder.

‘Just push it down here, will you?’ I urged. ‘I wanna get the hell out!’

‘It’s heavy.’

‘So what?’

‘Be careful. I might drop it.’

But he didn’t. With a lot of scraping and swearing, he lowered it into the pool until I was able to grab the bottom rung – which seemed to be made of aluminium. The whole ladder clanged and rattled as I guided it into position; aluminium’s much noisier than wood when it bounces off a tiled wall.

‘Shh!’ Sergio hissed, getting more and more anxious. ‘Keep it down, or they’ll hear!’

‘I’m trying. Okay? I’m not doing it on purpose.’

‘They could be in that house. They might not be asleep . . .’

Though the ladder was certainly long enough, it didn’t feel very stable. Even with Sergio holding the shafts up top, the whole thing creaked and shook with every rung that I climbed. At last, however, I reached the edge of the pool, where Sergio was squatting on a narrow strip of concrete between a razor-sharp tripwire and a four-metre drop back into the pool.

‘Jesus.’ That tripwire was the first thing I saw from the topmost rung. Moonlight glinted off jagged shards of steel shaped like deadly bow-ties. The wire itself was about twenty centimetres off the ground; it had been threaded through a kind of picket fence made from widely spaced, raggedly cut lengths of metal pipe. ‘What the hell is that for?’ I wheezed.

‘It’s for keeping
us
in,’ Sergio softly rejoined.

‘But we can step over it!’

‘Only when we’re like this.’ He grabbed my wrist, pulling me up. ‘If it was a full moon and we managed to jump out, we’d probably run straight into that wire.’

I felt a sudden chill, though the night was pretty warm. And I was grateful when Sergio changed the subject. Gesturing into the darkness, he said, ‘The padlock’s over there.’ At which point I realised that we were penned in by a high fence made of steel mesh and barbed wire.

It was so close, I could reach out and touch it.

‘Jesus,’ I said again, appalled at the size of the thing. ‘They’re really serious, eh?’

‘That’s what the people stand behind.’

‘Huh?’

‘The people who come to watch.’ Sergio’s low-pitched voice became unsteady. ‘I was down in the pool and I saw them, once. Before sunset. While I could still . . .’

He choked up, thank God, because I didn’t want to hear. No way.

‘This is gunna be tricky,’ I announced, as I carefully stepped over the tripwire. It was hard to see. Everything was hard to see. Beyond the mesh fence lay a dim, uneven, grey-washed landscape that seemed to roll on forever. It was covered in mysterious black tufts. The only bright spot was a distant square of golden light – possibly a lamp in a window – which was embedded in a dense, shadowy, squared-off shape and surmounted by a sheet of something that had a faint gleam to it.

‘There’s the house,’ I murmured, unnecessarily. I was surprised at how far away it was. Why build your pool so far from your back door? ‘I thought it would be closer than that.’

‘It’s still too close for comfort,’ was Sergio’s jittery response. ‘We gotta get out. Sooner the better.’

‘Yeah, but that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It won’t be easy. I’ve never picked a lock in the dark before.’ Taking care to avoid the razor wire that lurked at my heels, I groped along the fence until I reached the gate that Sergio had mentioned. As promised, it was padlocked shut. ‘You know what you should do?’ I said quietly, fingering the lock. (It was smaller than the last one.) ‘You should go get your mattress. Just in case.’

‘
What?
’

‘See, I’m not sure if this’ll work. And even if it does, I’m not sure how long it will take.’ I began to fish in my pocket for the shim. ‘But we could easily climb this fence if we had something to put over the barbed wire on top. Like a mattress, for instance.’

Sergio swallowed. I could actually hear him do it.

And I sympathised.

‘I know you don’t wanna go back. Who does? It’s just that we need a plan B,’ I went on. ‘And now that we’ve got the ladder, it won’t be too hard – not with a foam mattress, anyway. Those things are really light.’ As he hesitated, I was struck by a sudden misgiving. ‘Is your mattress down there a foam one?’ I asked. ‘Because mine was.’

After a moment’s silence, he mumbled, ‘Yes.’

‘Good. Okay. I figured it would be.’ My gaze wandered away from the padlock towards our barely visible escape route: an endless stretch of scrubby terrain that smelled as dry as wood ash. ‘You should bring back your bottle of water, so we won’t die of thirst out there,’ I added. ‘It looks like we’re miles from the nearest town.’ When Sergio didn’t reply, I turned my head – and saw, to my astonishment, that his shadowy form had retreated to the edge of the pool. ‘Will you be okay?’ I said. ‘Do you want me to hold that ladder?’

‘No.’ The top rung creaked under his weight. ‘I’ll be fine.’

He didn’t sound fine, but I let him go. To be honest, I wasn’t too hopeful about the lock in my hand; it felt a bit rusty (though I couldn’t be sure, because the light wasn’t good enough for a close look), and I didn’t think rusty tumblers would be a cinch to pick. It seemed to me that climbing the fence would be much easier and quicker than standing around for half an hour, flick-flick-flicking away with my shim.

So I tackled the lock in a half-hearted kind of way, casting worried glances at the house while I listened for any telltale noises down in the pool. I heard the pad of Sergio’s footsteps. I heard the hatch creak open as he crawled back into the tunnel. After that, there was dead silence for quite some time, except for a breeze rustling through leaf litter and the tap
-
tap-tap of the shim that I was jiggling.

Left alone, I was suddenly conscious of the vast, mysterious space in which I stood.
We could be anywhere
, I thought.
We could be in the Simpson Desert
. I felt sure that I was still in Australia, because the stars looked familiar and the air smelled of native plants. Until the sun rose, however, I wouldn’t even know my compass points. So how would I find a way out? Where was the nearest road? What if we walked off into the wilderness and died of thirst in the baking summer heat?

I could feel a nasty surge of panic bubbling up inside my chest, like rapidly boiling water. Then all of a sudden –
click!
The lock fell open. I couldn’t believe it. Were my ears playing tricks on me? Cautiously I felt around, tugging at the lock, sliding back the bolt, pushing at the gate. When the hinges squealed, I knew that I wasn’t mistaken.

I’d done it. I was free.

The trouble was, I now faced another problem. What should I do about Sergio? It crossed my mind (very briefly) that I could make a dash for it and leave him to fend for himself. But I dismissed this thought almost at once. It wasn’t only mean, it was impractical. Why run off and leave Sergio with the water? More to the point, why run off and leave him with the mattress? Because we were going to need the mattress. I realised that as soon as I took a step through the gate and felt something hard and sharp prick at my bare heel.

‘Hey! Sergio!’ I rasped, trying to call his name without making too much noise. I’d been hoping that he might be on his way back, but he wasn’t. No one replied. So I pocketed the shim and retraced my steps until I was standing in front of the hatchway again, shoulders hunched, peering into a long dark hole.

‘Hey! Sergio!’ I repeated, even more softly. Still nothing. To say I was nervous is an understatement. The
last
thing I wanted to do was to climb into that tunnel again. As I tried to stoke up my courage, however, I became aware of a scraping, shuffling sound. And I held my breath to listen.

It wasn’t the sort of commotion made by two people fighting. Straining my ears, I decided that someone was dragging something down the tunnel towards me. Was it Sergio dragging the mattress? Or was it an armed gaoler dragging Sergio? In case the news was bad, I stationed myself to one side of the gaping hatch, with my back pressed against the tiles.

I had picked up the chain, which Sergio had discarded at the pool’s edge; with a length of swinging metal in my hand I felt more secure, though the pounding of my heart was so loud that it deafened me to the noises in the tunnel. I couldn’t hear much – and I couldn’t see much, either. Only when a hushed voice said ‘Toby?’ did I realise that I was safe.

‘Sergio?’ I croaked.

There was an extended pause. Then Sergio whispered, ‘Where are you?’

‘Here.’ I swung around to face the hatchway, beyond which I could just make out some vague, glimmering, pale patches that moved as I spoke. ‘Here I am.’

‘Why?’ Sergio asked breathlessly, out of the darkness. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’ve picked the lock.’

‘Oh,
man
.’ For some reason, he seemed cross rather than overjoyed. ‘You mean I didn’t have to do this after all?’

‘Don’t worry. We need this mattress,’ I assured him. ‘We won’t be getting far without it.’ And as I helped him to bundle the mattress into the pool, I quietly explained how we could put together some makeshift shoes out of foam rubber and ticking. ‘I just hope my shim is sharp enough,’ I added, gingerly pressing my thumb against the jagged piece of metal.

It was certainly sharp enough to poke a hole through the ticking, which Sergio then tore into strips with his bare hands. But by the time he’d finished, I was still sawing away grimly at the foam – which was very hard to cut and almost impossible to tear. When at last I managed to detach a large, uneven chunk from the main body of the mattress, we decided to abandon the shim and slice our foam fragment into smaller pieces using razor wire. At least,
I
decided to use razor wire. Sergio wanted to abandon the whole project, until I pointed out that there might be snakes out in the desert.

I guess he must have been scared of snakes, because he suddenly became very keen on my idea. Instead of grumbling about the delay, he began to help me carve up our piece of foam. Within minutes we each had two thick chunks of the stuff, which we bound to our feet with several layers of ticking. The result was . . . well, let’s just say it wasn’t ideal.

‘They’re not exactly Nikes,’ I muttered, ‘but they’ll have to do.’

I suppose they were better than nothing, though after about ten minutes spent hobbling over rough ground, I was beginning to wonder how much more we could take. Have you ever gone on a cross-country walk wearing bits of mattress tied to your feet? Take my advice: don’t. It’s very,
very
uncomfortable. In fact it was so uncomfortable that it distracted me from the looming horror of our situation. There we were, stumbling through the darkness in the middle of nowhere, with no shoes, no map, no compass, only half a bottle of water, and not the slightest notion of how to reach the nearest settlement. The one thing we
did
know was that we should steer well clear of the house near the pool. We both agreed that our first goal should be to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the light in the window.

Then, after about fifteen minutes, it suddenly occurred to me: what if the house was on a road?

‘There must be some way to reach that place by car,’ I said with a cough. When Sergio didn’t reply, I pressed him more urgently. ‘If we walk around the house in a big, wide circle, we might find a track. It’d be better than wandering off like this.’

Sergio, however, didn’t agree.

‘No,’ he said.

‘But—’

‘Keep your voice down.’

‘Okay.’ I adjusted my volume. ‘But people die in the outback, Sergio. Especially in summer.’

‘We should keep off the roads,’ was Sergio’s stubborn response. ‘Otherwise they’ll see us.’

‘Not necessarily.’ I knew that he was referring to Gary and Lincoln. ‘Not if we’re careful—’

‘It’s the first place they’ll look!’ he interrupted. ‘They’ll jump in their car and hit the road! It’s where they’ll
expect
to find us!’

He had a point. ‘Yeah, but we’ll hear ’em coming a mile off, won’t we?’ I said. ‘And we can take cover before they’re anywhere near us.’

‘Take cover? Behind what?’ He waved an arm. ‘There aren’t any trees! There’s nothing!’

‘There are bushes. And ditches.’

‘You’re crazy!’

I stopped in my tracks. ‘Listen,’ I begged, trying to reason with him, ‘there are things we can do. We can roll around in the dust to camouflage ourselves. We can stay off the road, as long we keep it in sight.’ I could understand why he was terrified of running into Gary again, but when he kept on walking, I grabbed his arm. ‘Someone else might come along!’ I argued. ‘We might be able to hitchhike! Wouldn’t that be better than dying of heatstroke on a salt pan somewhere?’

‘Let go.’

‘Will you listen to me?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t be such a wuss!’ I said – and instantly regretted it. He batted me off with a shove, his teeth snapping.

‘
Get off!
’