Page 97 of Lost In Kakadu

“Stay with me.” She stretched for the water bottle and was just able to reach it. With Mackenzie’s head tilted, she poured a small amount onto his lips, but it dribbled off to the side.

“Come on, baby, drink.” She removed her shirt and splashed water onto it. She turned his face skywards and dabbed the shirt to his lips, squeezing small drops onto his tongue.

His eyes continued to flicker as if he was living his own world of terror. Abi’s mouth was dry with panic as she pulled him to her bare chest and rocked backward and forward. “You’re okay, babe.”

He reached up with his hand and she thought he’d heard her, but he scratched at a red welt swelling on his cheek.

She clutched his hand to stop him and frowned at a sharp spike on his finger. His thumb and forefinger were swollen and red and covered in dozens of small, pus-filled pimples. Caterpillar spines were still in his flesh. “Jesus.” She pulled the spines out with her fingernails.

Her mind flashed to a comment Spencer made about a man dying from an insect bite on one of his trips. She dimly remembered thinking at the time that he was exaggerating, but now she wasn’t so sure. With trembling hands, she searched the rest of his body and plucked out dozens of the spikes. Then she bathed him with a generous amount of water, redressed him in shorts and a shirt and put socks on his hands to stop him from scratching.

The heat from the morning sun intensified with every passing minute, and combined with the heat of Mackenzie’s raging fever, Abi felt like she was sitting in a sauna with the temperature at maximum. As the day dragged on and Mackenzie’s condition failed to improve, shebecame consumed with the agonising realisation he could die. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she tried to imagine herself walking out of the jungle without him. She couldn’t.

“I won’t do this without you,” she whispered. A terrible feeling of loneliness welled up inside her. “If you go, I’ll have to …” She let her voice trail off as she considered ways to end her own life. Hanging, poisonous berries, jumping off the cliff they were searching for, were all possibilities.

But the thought of being severely injured after attempted suicide was more terrifying than the act of doing it. It wasn’t going to happen. She dabbed the sweat from Mackenzie’s forehead.

We are walking out of here together.

Abi swallowed a mouthful of water, cleansing away the bitter taste of defeat.

“Okay.” She massaged a plan of action into her mind. “Hey babe, we need to get you into the shade, before the sun burns you to a crisp.” She carefully slid Mackenzie’s head off her lap and onto the ground and pushed to her feet. With her arms under his armpits and her hands clasped across his chest, she leaned back, using her weight to lift his upper body off the ground, and pulled. Her shoulders took the brunt of his weight and despite fierce determination, she could only move him in short bursts.

Breathless, she lowered him to the ground and checked her progress. Her biceps burned and her arms were weak. The overhang of the tree was still about three metres away. Gritting her teeth, she slipped her hands around him again and with the last of her strength she heaved.

Her grip kept slipping. She closed her eyes and willed herself to go just a little further. The line of shade gradually slid down Mackenzie’s body with each movement and when he was completely in the shade, she lowered him down.

Shaking her arms, she flopped to the ground, and pulled his head onto her lap. Sweat trickled from beneath her exposed breasts and down her belly.

“Have some water, babe.” She parted his lips, dribbled water onto his tongue and squeezed his mouth shut. His eyes shot open, and a breath froze in her lungs as she waited for him to swallow.

He did. Then he closed his eyes again and she let out a shaky breath.

They’d come too far to go like this. He was going to make it. No other outcome was acceptable. Mackenzie’s forehead was like a furnace and any comfort she provided with the damp cloth instantly evaporated.

But there was nothing else she could do.

Chapter Forty-Six

As her mother’s empty casket was slowly lowered into the ground Krystal reached for her heavy gold locket. Inside was the last picture she had of her mother; sadly, it was over five years old. The bleak sky and threatening storm were a fitting backdrop for the mood of the mourning crowd.

She scanned the faces around her and noted the crowd had dwindled since her father’s funeral just twenty minutes before. With a sudden clarity she knew why there’d been so many young women at his funeral, all who cried genuine tears of loss.

Krystal put the pieces together.

I was just a pawn in my father’s sadistic game of dominance.

He never loved me.

He just used me to make mother’s life hell.

The casket reached the bottom and as the smooth white straps slithered out of the ground, she remembered the emptiness in her mother’s sad eyes when she left her at the airport.

As she wept openly it was impossible to miss Thomas’s great hulking figure at the back of the crowd. Her father’s partner was like a vulture waiting to pick up the pieces.

That night, Krystal, exhausted and completely drained of tears, reluctantly joined her grandmother for dinner. She stared down the long dining table and its highly polished wood surface reflected theimage of her grandmother who sat rigid at the opposite end. The old woman’s pale skin was a dramatic contrast to the dark wood. Krystal despised her constant, vacant staring. The air between them bristled as if charged with static.

Ever since her father had disappeared, Grandmother Mulholland had shrivelled further into the shadow that began consuming her years ago. Her alcoholism worsened to the point where she no longer tried to hide her drinking habit and she rarely ate anything. Some days she refused to even get out of bed. Her skeletal frame and dark, bulging eyes gave her the appearance of a sick praying mantis. Krystal shuddered at the thought and looked away.

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