He moved quietly away from us, back across the sandstone shelf towards the bottom of the track. He walked slowly, steadily, into the dark until I couldn’t see him any more.
Whoever had driven down that road was not someone he had expected. This was good for us, but who was it? Scarlet and her mother? Scarlet was the only person who knew I was in trouble. But how would they have followed us all the way out here without being seen by Kelly?
Can you come get me now? I’m in trouble.
They were the last words I had texted to Mum.
I’ll come right now, she had said. Getting in car. Please text me back so I know you’re okay.
But I didn’t. And I’m not. She would be at Harry’s now. Maybe she drove right past us. I had never in my life wanted so badly to see her.
‘Sam,’ my father whispered, close enough to my ear that I could feel his breath but still only just loud enough to be heard.
‘Yes.’
‘We’re going to run.’
‘What about–’
‘We don’t have a choice. If we stay here, someone’s going to get hurt.’
‘Okay,’ I said, swallowing hard. ‘Who do you think was in that car?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know, but obviously he doesn’t either, which is good. We’re on the edge of a steep drop, so be careful. We’re going to slip across into the tree line there when I say.’
I turned and saw that the line of trees began about four or five metres back from the cliff edge. Its tall, sinister outline was even blacker than the sky.
‘Okay,’ I whispered, not knowing if I should act brave or say the next thing on my mind. ‘I’m scared.’
‘Me too,’ Harry said, his eyes trained on the dead dark void to our left that had swallowed Kelly moments before.
I wanted to cry or puke. It was one thing to be scared yourself but when your father, a crime reporter and your hero, whispers to you that he is scared while being held captive by an armed and dangerous man on the edge of a cliff in the middle of the night, it feels like the end of the world.
Can I outrun Kelly? I wondered. I couldn’t run , let alone outrun . I could hop, but I was fairly sure that I couldn’t hop faster than a police officer, even an outrageously overweight one. And I certainly couldn’t hop faster than a speeding bullet.
I listened hard for Kelly and looked back up towards the road but I didn’t hear a car or people, just fat raindrops falling from nearby trees.
Trying to escape was another risky move that my mother would advise against, but Harry was right. Our prospects weren’t good if we just stood here. I had seen what Kelly was capable of, and he hadn’t driven us to a remote location and walked us through the bush in the early hours of the morning to watch the sun rise.
‘You ready?’ Harry whispered, wrapping my arm tightly around the back of his neck.
‘Yep.’
Now or never. My saliva was thick, my throat sore with thirst. A shiver rippled through me but I kept my body tight, muscles tensed. Adrenaline, rage and fear boiled beneath my skin. All I could do was trust my father. I barely knew him but I put every thread of faith I had into him in that moment.
‘Let’s go,’ he whispered and we limped, top speed, into that dead, black night. Full dark, no stars. Across the rock, through the grass and into the trees.
Kelly sprayed the bush to the right of us with torchlight, casting hundreds of shifting, tangled tree shadows across our path as he gave chase. Then he snapped the torch off again after a couple of seconds. Maybe he was trying to avoid being seen by whoever was in that car.
I waited for the loud bark of his weapon and a sharp explosion of pain between my shoulderblades, a feeling I had imagined many times while writing my comics.
But the gun didn’t fire and Kelly didn’t say a word. He moved steadily through the undergrowth about thirty metres back and to the right of us, hunting us down like deer, or foxes. Foxes , I thought. We needed to be wily, determined, resilient and cunning, not frightened and skittish.
Maybe we should have been screaming for help. Would that make the driver of the vehicle come towards or away from us. Scarlet? I wondered again, but it didn’t add up. Campers maybe. Or teenagers.
I leaned heavily on Harry as we three-legged-raced through the night. I took most of my weight on my left leg, but my right foot touched the ground lightly between hops, propelling me forward. It hurt so bad but we were running for our lives, so the pain seemed a worthwhile investment.
I hoped that Harry could see what was up ahead better than I could. For all I knew we were running towards another cliff. Tree trunks sped towards my face and Harry pulled me right or left before another tree appeared. Ghost gums, I thought. Their tall white shapes appeared from nowhere.
There was a patch of moonlight for a moment, tiny knives of silver light cutting through the tree cover, revealing steeper, rockier ground up to our left before the clouds smothered the moon once more.
‘Up there?’ I whispered, knowing how difficult this would make it for Kelly to follow but not considering how difficult it would be for us to find a way. We veered to the left and up the slope. It was the same hill we had come down with Kelly but about fifty metres further along, away from the cliff. There was no visible track. Just steep, uneven ground peppered with slippery rocks that were carpeted in what felt like moss beneath the soles of my squelchy, waterlogged sneakers.
We came to a very steep section and Harry grabbed hold of a meaty tree root poking from a crack in a slab of sandstone. The rock was as tall as me and, from what I could see, sloped back up the hill at about 45 degrees. I could hear the shiny bottoms of Harry’s smooth-soled city shoes slipping and sliding on the surface. Harry tried to keep his arm around me and drag me up with him but I was slipping behind. I twisted a thin vine around my hand and used every splinter of strength I had to pull myself upwards. My left knee dug into the mossy rock, shredding layers of skin. Harry groaned under my weight then squeezed my upper arm and pulled even harder, heaving me onto the next flattish section of ground, only to face a steeper, rockier incline a few metres further on.
I heard Kelly swear quietly somewhere in the pit of blackness we were climbing out of but I couldn’t tell where it came from or how close he was.
There was another moment when the cloud cover thinned and, squinting into that foggy, dark wild, I made out a diagonal sliver of track up to the left.
‘What about here?’ I whispered, panicky.
The little I could see of the narrow gap was choked with leaves, fallen branches and smaller rocks. Harry scrambled up first, his shoes scratching for grip on anything they could find. He leaned down, grabbing my hand, dragging me up. I scraped and clawed and clambered onto the flat, bashing my injured knee in the process. I sat at my father’s feet and whined quietly, massaging above and below my knee.
‘This is insane,’ Harry croaked, already exhausted. He grabbed my hand again, helping me to my feet, and we stumbled on into the night. Harry steered us left, along flatter ground. It felt like we might be circling back towards the track we had come down with Kelly, back towards the cliff edge.
I heard Kelly again, moving through the bush below. I tried to make out the shape of him but it was hopeless.
Soon Harry and I came across a fallen gum tree blocking our path. It was almost as thick as I am tall and there was no clear way to get past it. To my right it seemed as though its roots had been torn from the ground. They towered over us like a giant claw at the base of the next steep section of the slope. We would have to go up that slope and around the roots, or climb right over the thick trunk in front of us.
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