Page 35 of Lost In Kakadu

Mackenzie had no idea what to say as his mind turned over all the likely possibilities.

Maybe they were low on petrol and left to refuel?

Were they getting help?

Maybe they landed a long distance away and were now walking back to them.

But the most obvious explanation was they hadn’t seen them.

“Jesus Christ!” He screamed at the sky.

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing we can do. They can’t see us. We can’t contact them. It’s bullshit.”

“They might come back.”

“That might’ve been our one and only chance.”

Mackenzie sat by the fire and watched, heartbroken, as the last of Rodney’s suitcase crumbled to ash and vanished.

Was that what’s going to happen to us?

Are we destined to disappear without a trace?

ChapterFourteen

Mackenzie finally pushed to his feet and looked at Abigail. She’d at least had the sense to take her heels off. She looked as crushed as he felt. Her eyes had lost their glimmer. He strolled to Charlie and the old man looked up at him with expectant eyes, as if Mackenzie had the solution to their problem.

“I’m going to get your satchel. Are you okay for now?”

Charlie nodded and Mackenzie turned from him, grabbed the backpack, walked through the clearing and into the bushes. He felt hollow, empty of all emotion.

But he couldn’t give up.

He’d suffered complete hopelessness before and survived.

And he would just have to do it again. He’d take each day as it came and pray that one day soon, they’d be rescued.

His eyes fell on the thick, woody bark wrapped around a large tree’s lower trunk and the white, semicircular fungi that jutted out like wing-nut ears.Mushrooms.

He flicked out the knife and sliced one off. The underside of the mushroom was a curtain of layered brown flesh. Its strong, earthy aroma made his mouth water, but he resisted the urge to bite into it, knowing many species of mushroom were poisonous. He cut off the others, dropped them into the backpack and took a sip of water before he carried on.

His senses seemed heightened, maybe from hunger. Smells were more prominent; sounds were louder, and he was pleased he could both hear and see birds for a change.

Mackenzie stopped short. Ahead of him a small, four-legged animal crawled along a willow branch. Mackenzie smiled in awe as he noted the thick, grey fur that covered the bulk of the animal’s body, its white belly and the long furry tail.

He let out a little laugh. “A sugar glider. How about that?”

At the end of the branch, the sugar glider pushed its pink nose into the red tubes of a eucalyptus flower, and he heard it licking the juicy nectar. Its ears flicked backward and forward. As he stared at the creature, he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he stood so close to a wild animal.

The sugar glider lifted its nose from the flower, turned back on itself, slinked up the thin branch, and disappeared into the tree canopy. Mackenzie continued on, buoyed by his brush with nature.

A little further on, the tail of the plane appeared in the distance, its smooth manmade surfaces totally out of place to the natural surroundings.

Reluctantly entering the wreckage, he suppressed a wave of nausea as he glimpsed Tom’s grotesque body.

How do we get him down?

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