The Landy had stopped again, of its own accord. Bart contemplated the beach before him. The reason why he thought of it as a beach could possibly be the sand in front of the bonnet, and the water beyond the sand  slowly creeping out of the trees and onto the track.

The wind had decided to keep him company. She’d spread out a little bit, and didn’t seem as compacted around the vehicle as she had half an hour ago, and she seemed to be enjoying whipping up little ripples of water into the air and randomly throwing them at the windscreen.

‘I am very quickly coming to the conclusion that this weather has an incredible sense of humour,’ he said.

Random question.

‘What the fuck?’ He lurched sideways on the seat, nearly strangling himself with the seatbelt.

Oh, sorry. I’m back, by the way. The man ducked his head to look out the side window at the sky. Wow, she’s doing a good job, isn’t she? I think I like this one much more than the new one. She’s a hell of a lot bigger. I wonder if she can go all around the world?

‘Why?’ Bart frowned. That was what he wanted to ask this bloke? Couldn’t he think of a better question?

Considering it’s my random question, not yours, I’m not going to answer your question until you answer mine. I think that’s fair don’t you? Fairness being the operative word here, because I am beginning to think we don’t have that around as much as we used to. Not that I’d know, because… well I won’t tell you I’m dead because I’m not dead. I’m just kinda floating around at the moment, and I’m incredibly excited to have someone to talk to. Did I tell you not too many people come down here? Never did, to be honest. They knew it was a flood plain, kinda thing, and no one wanted to get their feet wet. Go figure. Anyway, what was the random question I was going to ask you?

‘How the hell would I know?’ Bart watched the water under the trees. It didn’t seem to be moving anymore, which was lucky. He looked behind the Landrover. The back end was sitting at the edge of the hill. It seemed a lot safer here, although he hadn’t ever felt particularly unsafe this entire afternoon. He wondered what time it was. The wind blew a little harder, giving the vehicle a bit of a shake. It felt like a dog drying itself after a swim.

Oh I remember now. Have you seen her eyes yet?

‘Who’s eyes?’ Bart glanced at the man. His eyes seemed to be smiling, if that was a possibility, which it apparently was, but his mouth was kind of thinned out, and one of his long knobbly fingers was trying to tap the piece of the door where the window went in, whatever that was called, and he didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of it anyway, because the finger was disappearing into the door and not making any sound. His blue-clad knee was also jiggling, which to Bart’s mind indicated the man might be ever so slightly nervous about something, and this now made Bart feel a little bit nervous himself.

Her eyes. According to the old stories she’s got eyes, but no one has ever seen them. I was just wondering whether you had.

‘Oh.’ Bart wondered if he should tell this man what he had seen on the video yesterday afternoon. It might not have been an eye. It may have just seemed like an eye. That it had been in mud, and sitting under what had definitely looked like paperbark trees, of which there seemed to be absolutely none in this area at all, had him seriously considering whether it should be mentioned to anyone at all, and now, it seemed to him that this man, whoever he was, was definitely trying to get information out of him that he did not need to know, and if Bart did tell him, he thought it was possibly not going to end well. He didn’t know why he thought this. He just did.

‘I didn’t see any eyes.’

Why not? Oh fuck. That’s a word I just learnt from you, but I think it’s appropriate. She knows I’m here. The man’s body began to tremble.

‘Who knows you’re here,’ Bart asked, just as the wind started smacking into the passenger side door.

Your lizard friend. She doesn’t like me now, let me tell you. Infact, I am getting the felling fulfilling feeling she wants to eat me, but not too badly, under-snafi fring, wow, I better go.

And, just like that, the man disappeared again, the four-wheel-drive was pushed about five feet up the hill, and the rain really started pissing down.

Bart decided to put on the handbrake.

7/ Making do

Solway found herself sitting on a very apologetic woman’s knee while the woman’s husband frowned furiously at a GPS.

‘I’m sorry there isn’t any more room,’ the woman said for about the third time. ‘We were just heading home from a camping trip,’ she added, which was new information. ‘Ronald likes to take absolutely everything on a camping trip, no matter how short or long it is. He likes to be… –’   She raised her hands on either side of Solway’s head and made ditto marks in the air with her fingers. ‘ – Prepared. Don’t you, darl.’ The last little bit didn’t seem to be a question.

‘I think we’ve lost the signal,’ he replied, which didn’t make much sense.

Solway very carefully adjusted her backside on the woman’s knees. This was a little awkward. The front seats of this vehicle were bucket seats, and every other part of it seemed filled with camping equipment, which was possibly why the woman seemed to be apologising so much. It also now seemed that what she had just said may have been a little white lie, as the woman’s husband (at least Solway thought it was her husband, they seemed rather familiar with each other) had now stopped looking at the thing in his hand and started looking at his wife.

‘I’m not the one who likes to keep this vehicle filled with random camping gear, Jenny, you are. I mean, it’s fair enough that I seem to like getting all the latest new gear and like to see what it does and so on and so forth, but it’s not me who wants to keep it all in the vehicle. That’s you.’

‘Well, I’m not the one who leaves it all lying all over the living room floor and filling up the spare room with it all, and pulling it all out to play with every now and again. That’s you,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s better having it all together in one spot.’

‘Which happens to be this vehicle,’ he said. ‘Which, you know, we shouldn’t really be doing, because adding too much weight to said vehicle is a damn good way to get us bogged in hairy situations such as this one could be, and besides that, if we wanted to pick up random hitchhikers in the middle of the bush, where the hell would we put them? No offence,’ he said, grinning at Solway. ‘But I’m sure my wife’s lap is not where you’d like to be sitting right now.’

‘I don’t want you to feel like you’re putting your safety at risk by picking me up,’ said Solway, then blinked. Where had that come from? ‘I mean, not that your safety is at risk. I just thought I’d put that out there.’

The man, Ronald was his name wasn’t it, grinned. ‘I would be more concerned about whether your safety is at risk, ah… What’s your name?’

‘I think, if my safety was at risk,’ Solway said. ‘You probably wouldn’t be asking my name.’ She began to smile, then hit her head on the window as the woman underneath her adjusted her knees.

‘Sorry,’ the woman, whose name was Jenny if Solway remembered correctly, said. ‘I’m Jenny. This is Ronald, and please don’t turn around to shake my hand because there is just not enough bloody room in the cab for that to happen in a nice way and you’ll probably elbow me in the boob.’

Solway couldn’t help it. She started to chuckle. ‘I’m Solway.’

‘That is an awesome name,’ Jenny said. ‘Where does that name come from,’ she asked, just as her husband said…

‘Is that Norwegian?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cool. I think I have Norwegian relatives from way back in the day. Maybe they were Dutch. Can’t remember. That’s a cool name though. Do you know anything about GPS’s?’ He looked down at the little piece of machinery in his hand. ‘This thing is going haywire. It keeps losing the signal, and that’s just not something that happens.’

‘Why not,’ his wife asked.

‘Because it collects information from satellites,’ Ronald and Solway said at the same time.

Solway tapped her lip thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure whether we really need it though. I just want to get down to where Bart is, and get … Oh.’ She looked in the backseat of the vehicle again. ‘We can’t, can we.’

‘No, we can’t. Well, we can, but there wouldn’t be too much we could do. That’s why I was trying to get the coordinates, so I would be able to place a marker so we could make sure we came back to the right spot, kind of thing,’ Ronald explained. ‘I suppose I could make some kind of physical marker.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to put the marker at your entry point,’ Jenny said. ‘Rather than, you know, randomly half way down a track.’

‘Does this track veer off anywhere? Like, does it have forks, or pull off points, or random “I’ll just go this way today” mini track type things on it? Just out of curiosity,’ Ronald asked, ignoring his wife.

‘No, it’s just one straight line,’ Solway replied. ‘Well, almost. I mean it turns, but there aren’t any other tracks, not that I could see.’

‘Okay then. Well, we should be right.’ Ronald looked over his shoulder and out of the driver’s side window. ‘I’m going to have to reverse her up off the track so I can turn around. Not that I can see a bloody thing. This rain is insane.’ He scowled as he turned back to face Solway and the wife Solway was quite sure she was squashing into the seat. ‘Maybe we should wait until it stops so I can get a clear view of what we’re backing into. I’ve done this before, and it didn’t turn out well.’

Solway felt her heart sink. It didn’t look like they’d be getting back to Bart this afternoon. As lovely as these people seemed to be, they had their hands full and there seemed to be absolutely no way they could help make things better. Not immediately anyway. She stared out the window at the sleeting rain.

I hope that creek hasn’t risen too much. He’ll be in serious trouble if it has.

‘You don’t happen to have any bars on your phone, do you,’ she asked hopefully.

‘I’m afraid not,’ the woman underneath her muttered. ‘We lost bars as we were coming down from that siding further up on the main road. It didn’t seem too important at the time. I’m sure your partner will be fine,’ she added hurriedly. ‘These sort of things happen all the time, like Ronald said. He’s been in enough situations like this himself. Try not to worry too much about it.’

‘Easier said than done,’ Solway replied, not bothering to hide the distress in her voice.

‘I know how it feels,’ Jenny said softly. Solway noticed her husband’s face had gone very still. ‘Let’s get you back to where the siding is, and maybe then you’ll be able to start making calls. We’ll work out what to do from there.’

‘We can’t do that just yet,’ Ronald reminded them. ‘We have to wait for this rain to stop or we could end up in the exact same situation.’