And then, a little way out on the salt, she found the remains of someone else’s still, half full of parched-looking plant matter. Li got down on her knees and laid her hands flat on either side of it. She had taught Matti how to do this on the road to Valiant, made her practise over and over in the dead resting hours, even though Matti complained that she was hot and sick of digging, that they wouldn’t be around to drink the water.
Right there, she made a list of things that would keep Matti alive. She knew ways to get water, knew how to make a snare out of anything you could bend, how to keep a tent dry and watertight, how to share body heat. She had thermals, some food, some safety in numbers. And she knew how to be among people. Robbie, the kids at school, the kids in makecamp – she was always in the middle of things. Like Safia but without the calculation.
It was a choice she was making to believe Matti could survive, she recognised that, but if she stopped believing it she would never get out of here. So she made a deal with Matti. Wait for me, she told her, I’m coming. I just have to get myself right. Give me three days. Stay with the group, remember what you know. Don’t get in a truck. Just set up camp and stay there and I’ll come.
She widened Matti’s still, firmed up the sides and cut down another bottle. Covered it with her last sheet of plastic. When that was done, she checked the other two and drank half the distilled water with absolute attention. Poured the rest into her waterbag and resealed the stills. Then she ate Matti’s melon. It was overripe and astonishingly sweet. Matti had eaten melon once. Her fourth birthday. The Nerredin co-op had bought up a bulk-load of bruised and damaged watermelons off a truck heading south. They were selling it frozen by the piece. Frank bought enough to fill a bowl, they stuck in the candles. Matti and Robbie wolfed down the sugary chunks, gnawed the rind, asked for more. They didn’t know there were other kinds.
The sugar bolted through Li’s blood and left her sick with betrayal. But in a little while she felt hydrated, her brain sharper and her body responsive. There was something missing, something good, and then she realised that she didn’t have a headache. For the first time since she got here she could imagine walking out, the physical sensation of it. But as long as she was stuck here, she would use the time, so that when she caught up with Matti she could go back to keeping them both alive.
The dunes around where she’d slept revealed the tracks of small night creatures. She unpacked her dump wire and made and set a handful of snares. The stick was no use in the dunes, it was easier to crawl. There had been trees of some kind here that had been ripped down to stumps for firewood. But it wasn’t as barren as she’d thought yesterday; there was saltbush and small mesquite plants, prickly acacia and something that might be rubber vine. Still nothing to burn, but adding plants to her stills would increase the water supply she’d taught Matti that.
The sun was high now, early afternoon. She needed to figure out a way to get off the ground tonight and keep warm.
The four-wheel drive was further into the dunes, about fifty metres from the end of the track and buried up to the bottom of the windows. She found it by the fierce glint off the windscreen. It looked like someone had turned off for shelter, or maybe the track used to come in that far before the dunes had blown over it She shovelled the sand away from driver’s door. Saw that the driver was still inside.
The door was rusted stuck. When she got it open the heat of the cab washed over her, and a smell of leather from the body hunched over the steering wheel. It was brown and shrivelled, a brittle blanket of skin tightened in on itself, still clothed in fragments of shorts and T-shirt. A long time dead. When she put her hands on it, it was smooth like the bark of a ghost gum and weighed almost nothing; she dragged it out easily and it stayed rigid and whole. She propped it on the sand against the rear wheel hub and crawled into the cab.
Small fragments of plastic were scattered over the passenger seat and floor – probably the remains of a water bottle. Three empty cans, labels long disintegrated. The dash compartment yielded registration papers, a vehicle maintenance handbook, and a wallet with nothing in it except an old-style driver’s licence. Daniel Baker. Date of birth more than seventy years ago. A Saint Anthony medallion hung from the mirror. Reaching under the driver’s seat she felt a wad of folded-up paper and drew it out carefully. It was a map, fragile but intact. She put it aside to look at later and hauled herself into the back. Daniel Baker had probably slept here. There was an empty thirty-litre jerry can in the boot, too heavy to carry but still useable. She sat for a minute with her eyes closed, feeling the heat through the glass of this obsolete vehicle that would keep her alive.
Back in the front seat she unscrewed the cover on the steering column, ripped out the wiring and stripped it down for more snares.
When she went back to the lakebed to check her stills, there was something new; a shine to the north. She stood a long time looking at it, shielding her eyes against the glare off the salt. Water. She hadn’t seen it this morning but she didn’t think she was imagining.
Val had a mate he
