Page 44 of Lost In Kakadu

“We should get him down from there.” Mackenzie must have read her mind.

The air was thick with the foul odour of death. Abigail covered her mouth and followed Mackenzie into the wreckage but stood back from the body. Mackenzie glanced at her, and she could see him wrestling with his own horror. His Adam’s apple moved several times.He’s fighting nausea too.

She looked away, still holding her breath and willed her stomach to settle.

When she looked at him again, Mackenzie was stretched up, fighting with the buckle on Tom’s safety belt. She nearly threw up as she realised the stiff fabric of the belt would be embedded in the bloated body. Mackenzie squeezed his eyes shut. Black flies formed a shifting, buzzing cloud around his face and hands.

He jumped back and the body fell with a sickening crunch. Mackenzie dashed out of the plane and threw up in the bushes. Abigail squeezed her hands over her ears, wishing the new round of horror to be over. She couldn’t resist a glance at the body, but instantly regretted it as she too escaped the wreck. Grotesque images burned into her mind that would haunt her forever.

She leaned against a large tree, sucking in short, shaky breaths, fighting nausea.

Mackenzie finally approached her. “Are you okay?”

A dam of built-up emotion released, and she sobbed into her hands. She couldn’t cope any more. Confronting death was bad enough but having to handle the bodies both alive and dead was insane. It all had to be a nasty nightmare. No-one should go through this.

Why did I survive and not Spencer? He would cope with all of this.

She fell into Mackenzie’s chest and welcomed his arms around her.

Mackenzie stroked her hair. “We have to bury him.”

“I won’t touch him.” She heard his heart beating through his chest as she waited for his response.

“I’ll see if I can find something to cover him first.” Mackenzie released her, walked back to the wreck and disappeared inside.

She rubbed her sore eyes and wiped her sweating palms onto her skirt as she listened to the plane creak under Mackenzie’s weight. After a series of indecipherable noises, Mackenzie finally emerged from the wreck. He bent over his knees and his chest rose and fell with deep breaths.

She walked toward him. “Are you okay?” It was her turn to ask.

“I found a parachute. Wrapped him as best as I could.”

“So, what do we do now?”

Mackenzie’s eyes replicated the exhaustion the rest of his body showed. “We have to look for water.”

They stepped over the shredded wires, into the cabin and were forced to step over the parachute-clad body. Abigail avoided looking at the dried blood as she crept along the creaking cabin. Although she tried not to breathe, the smell of death, cloying and repulsive still invaded her nostrils.

At the back of the cabin, she read the upside-down sign on the toilet door. “What about the toilet?”

“What about it?”

“It must have a water compartment somewhere.”

Mackenzie punched the air. “Abi, you’re a genius.”

She smiled and didn’t bother correcting her name. Mackenzie stuck his head into the small cubicle and moments later crawled back toward her. “Clever girl.” He touched her shoulder. “Come on, I need your help.”

She was stunned. No-one had ever called her clever before. His praise boosted her spirits.

“We need to roll the plane over, so we have to take him out.”

Despite the protection of the parachute, she still cringed as she grabbed onto the shoulder of the body. Mackenzie gripped the other shoulder. The sight of Tom’s rigid feet sticking out from beneath the colourful parachute somehow seemed worse than seeing his hideously swollen face, hidden just inches away.

Abigail felt like she was involved in an evil plot to dispose of a murder victim.

She couldn’t believe how heavy he was. The termdead weightrolled around in her mind and now she had every appreciation of how appropriate it was.

Tom’s heavy boots dredged parallel trails in the dirt as they dragged the body further from the wreck. He seemed to get heavier with each step backwards.

---