Trail of Lies, page 14
“It’s not that!” Conflict and frustration made Declan’s tone sharp. “I don’t want to take you anywhere, but home. Please Calli, we can work this stuff out, I’m sure we can...”
“No!” Calli’s answer was final as she turned away from him, biting her lip to stop the ready tears of fear betraying her.
“I’m afraid for you, the world isn’t what you think it is,” he whispered and Calli resisted telling him how she knew the truth of that statement.
They left the trees in silence, cutting back up to the track and across again, narrowly avoiding a group of foreign tourists who were heading south, bubbling and chatting excitedly to their mountain guide.
“Can we take a short detour?” Declan asked finally as the teenagers hid in the undergrowth, waiting for the group to pass. She nodded, hoping fervently it involved an easier route, but not surprised when it didn’t. They ate lunch by the trees, some crushed gluten free snack bars Declan grabbed from Levi’s stash in the pantry at home and then forgot about, the food lasting them as they worked their way east through the bush for an hour and a half until Declan pulled up and put his finger over his lips. Calli halted obediently. “Dad’s clearing is around here,” he said keeping his voice low, laying the yellow compass on top of the map and rotating it slightly.
“But why are we whispering?” Calli asked.
“Because those guys are also here somewhere, unless they left already. It’s the right kind of distance from our camp for the dog noises, so I think this is where they’re growing their drugs.”
Calli looked at him in annoyance, condemning him with her eyes for leading her near the spiteful males just to satisfy his own curiosity. He blinked guiltily under the silent chastisement and looked apologetic. “Ok, we’ll go. Sorry.”
He looked so defeated Calli relented. “Fine! But be really quick. I want to go, this place feels nasty.”
Declan looked sad and Calli realised she had inadvertently been mean about somewhere special to him, because of the last memories with his father. She grew annoyed with herself. Declan progressed forward another hundred metres or so and then stopped so sharply that Calli smacked into the back of him and gave herself a bloody nose. It dripped rather than poured, but it hurt nonetheless. She mopped herself up with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and failed to see anything humorous in the accident. They were in the process of picking their way through the dense undergrowth and Declan’s face went a sickly shade of grey as he turned and used the hem of his tee shirt to clean his companion’s upper lip and chin of blood. Calli looked at him questioningly and once she was relatively blood free, he drew her to his side and pointed down towards the floor. “Look, Cal,” he whispered.
Calli stared but saw nothing except leaves, dirt, dust and bush debris. Crouching lower, Declan pointed to something about fifteen centimetres above ground level and squinting, Calli could just see the hint of a line of some kind, suspended in mid-air.
“What’s that?” Foolishly, she reached out to touch it, stopped only by Declan seizing her fingers and yanking her hand back. His dark eyes flashed dangerously.
“That was stupid!” he hissed, pointing along the almost invisible strand of fishing line. She followed it with her eyes, feeling hurt at Declan’s harsh admonition and unnerved by the trace of fear in his expression.
The opaque line ran to the right, disappearing and reappearing through the undergrowth. Declan pointed to its end with a shaking index finger and Calli gaped. At first she saw nothing in the undulating montage of bush colour, brown and green, intermingled and confused. And then she saw it, leaned against a punga trunk to the right of them. Pungas are not your friend. The thought came randomly into Calli’s brain as she stared down the barrel of a shotgun. It was Declan’s phrase. He said it after she fell through the punga trunk on the track, warning her against the deceptively solid looking trees, which disintegrated to the touch.
“Don’t move!” Declan’s voice was sharp as he scanned the ground around them. He seized her hands tightly in his, to prevent her from bolting, perhaps recognising the signs in Calli’s panicked movements. The dark barrel threatened her like an evil eye, trained on her body somewhere between her knees and her guts, the point of the thin fishing line becoming apparent as sickness settled in Calli’s stomach. It was a trip wire.
Declan made sure they were safe to move, his pupils raking the ground through which they had carelessly walked. Calli’s eyes grew wide at the sight which suddenly became blindingly obvious, lying just beyond their reach. Declan’s chest was close to hers, his breathing laboured with alarm as she gasped and pointed behind him. He turned, slipping his arm possessively around her shoulders and stumbling in surprise at the spectacle.
The sea of green marijuana bushes was extensive, completely filling a clearing which was partially open to the grey sky. The strange green of the plant was jarring against the beautifully contrasted hues of the bush. Everything about it was wrong, the texture, the brightness of the leaves. It was an interloper, a cuckoo and didn’t belong here.
“That’s why they’re here,” Declan whispered into Calli’s hair, “look, the drought is killing the plants.” Calli looked harder and could see the brown infusing with the green, the curling of leaves and the general deadness of some of the foliage. “We need to get out of here. Don’t touch anything. Hold my hand and follow exactly in my footsteps.”
Calli’s eyes were wide, her pupils almost obscuring her bright blue irises as Declan shimmied past her in the tiny space he designated as safe. He gripped the fingers of her right hand tightly and gave her a small smile as he squeezed past, trying to instil confidence in her and failing. He looked back crossly when she resisted his tug on her arm, transfixed to the spot with panic indecision. She had frozen.
To Calli’s surprise, Declan’s novel way of getting her to move was effective. The full kiss which he placed on her slightly open mouth was both urgent and perceptive. Calli took in a heavy breath, scenting his masculine smell at the same moment she woke up. And moved.
Declan led her back the way they came, as far as possible tracking their original steps in the dust and the undergrowth, picking through the same supplejack vines and being attacked by the usual reaching arms of the thorny bush lawyer.
“Stop!”
The shout echoed off the natural walls, reproducing itself from the hard grey rock faces and bouncing back out of tree trunks and foliage, dimmed but no less threatening. To his credit, Declan’s first reaction was to protect Calli, turning towards the sound and hurling himself in front of her. He trod on her foot and she found herself flat on her back in the undergrowth yet again, as Declan faced the man from before, met on the track south of the hut. This time, he stood near the trip wire in the place the teenagers just vacated. He must have watched them from the trees to the right and walked around to see what they were doing. “Seen enough?” the man snarled, the bearded growth not improving his looks, making his face seem half in shadow. Declan wisely said nothing.
Calli sat half up in the dirt yet again. She was becoming unwillingly familiar with the floor. Declan’s legs shielded her from view, but she had no doubt the man knew she was there. He looked angry and brandished another shotgun, this time fully cocked and pointing at Declan.
“Get over here,” the man ordered and waved the barrel of the gun as a pointing stick. Calli could see Declan’s tense thigh muscles protruding from the legs of his shorts, the sinew and tendons behind his knees taut and ready as they dipped inside his green gaiters. Declan’s arms were by his side and his fingers tensed into fists and then flexed again, as though he was getting ready for something. Calli’s hands scrabbled around behind her in the undergrowth and her palm contacted something hard and sharp. Teasing at it until it came free of the dusty soil, Calli released a piece of grey rock, solitary but sharp and deadly. The man shouted something else at Declan, waving the gun and obviously not appreciating being ignored.
Callister Rhodes was an awesome shot. In the same way she instinctively knew how wide or long an object was to the nearest centimetre, she could also calculate distance incredibly accurately, by eye. Calli was amazing at netball, able to shoot a perfect goal from anywhere within the goal circle. She tried out for the Year 12 team, but despite her incredible skill and the difference her presence would have made to their game, her face didn’t quite fit their closed and insular group and she was rejected.
Taking her weight on her right arm, she fixed the stone securely in her left hand, sensing the heaviness and judging the speed and the throw required to hit the man. It would be an awkward manoeuvre, not least because she would have to lean around Declan’s legs. Calli did the physics, another of her favourite subjects in school and recalculated so as to drive the stone successfully between the two pungas standing erectly between the teenagers and the man. “Don’t look round at me,” she hissed to Declan’s back, “and stand still.”
Before the boy properly registered her warning, the rock whizzed past his ear, journeying on an ideal trajectory and hitting the man squarely between the eyes. He went down backwards and hard. Two shots rang out loudly, making Declan jump and stand on Calli again. She squealed.
An agonised moan rent the air as Calli clambered to her feet, hauling herself upright using the back of Declan’s tee shirt. He stood transfixed, looking in the direction of the man with the gun. The man was gone, replaced by the hiss of air particles settling down after the shots and the dreadful groaning.
Calli tugged at Declan’s tee shirt. “Come on, let’s go!” She pulled at him again, not understanding why he wouldn’t move.
“He’s frickin’ shot himself!” Declan whispered, turning guilt laden eyes in her direction. He looked shocked and distressed.
“So what?” Calli couldn’t have cared less. “Let’s go!”
A look of horror coasted across Declan’s honest face and Calli knew with annoyance that the boy was taking responsibility. Her heart sank hopelessly as she contemplated the scene to come. Declan would go and make sure the man was all right, discover him bleeding and call for help. Calli’s runaway days would be truly over.
“Declan, no,” she fixed both arms around his waist in an attempt to prevent his forward motion, clinging to him to make him see sense. But it was fruitless, his conscience was too well oiled and he uncoupled her fingers and set off towards the moaning sound, picking his way carefully across the ground.
The man’s gun had fallen forward and Declan expertly removed the remaining cartridges and secured it, leaving it on the ground again. The horrid man had fired off one shot in surprise as the stone contacted his forehead and caused him to fall backwards. Whilst that shot was probably buried in a tree trunk somewhere, the gun rigged up to the trip wire had fired and met its mark with incredible accuracy. Calli moved nearer, following in Declan’s footsteps through the undergrowth. The spiteful man lay on his side, clutching at his shoulder and rolling in agony. His body had fallen backwards across the trip wire and he was shot by his own trap. The other shotgun, still over by the tree lay jauntily to one side, partly suspended by its moorings. Declan kneeled down by him, his day pack containing an emergency first aid kit and the boy scrabbled around inside it, spewing its contents out onto the dusty ground. “Is it bad?” the man asked him and Declan shook his head.
“You won’t die,” he replied, packing the holes in the man’s flesh, just visible through the sleeve of his tee shirt, with the contents of a plastic wrapper.
“Get help,” Declan said to Calli, throwing her his mobile phone. She looked down at the screen, seeing instantly the device had no reception.
Irrational rage fought inside her, vying with her respect for Declan’s skewed values. In frustration, she stamped her foot, releasing a cloud of dust which billowed up around her face and head. Self-preservation was high on her list of priorities and an idea began to surface. Calli acknowledged a distinct flush of pleasure at the blue bruising and cut on the man’s forehead, from her well-aimed stone. It was innately satisfying. “Stupid idiot,” she crowed.
As Declan did schoolboy first aid on the man’s wound, Calli used the sleeve of her fleece to wipe his fingerprints off the gun he unloaded. She grew up around policemen for long enough to know what wrong conclusions they could jump to. Then she set off back up the hill, aiming to find the track and see if she could get phone reception. “I won’t be long,” she promised Declan, sneering at the prone man as she caught his eye. “Unless I get distracted. Then I could be ages.”
Unseen divine influence summoned by Declan’s frantic prayers caused the bars on the screen to light up suddenly after Calli covered less than a hundred metres through the relentless bush. Something made her check the display as she battled with yet another supplejack vine which seemed intent on planting her face first in the ferns beneath her feet. Tentatively, Calli dialled ‘111’ and waited for the signal to stop and force her to continue clambering towards where she thought the track might be. Waiting for the operator to answer her call, the girl looked around her, suddenly dismayed at the identical views in each direction. Declan talked to her often about the deceptiveness of the bush and how it could fool her into walking round in circles. “Trust your compass,” he told her.
Calli took stock of which direction she faced and fixed her eyes on a landmark. “I don’t have one,” she told Declan’s remembered mantra. The punga she chose to stare at was an interesting ‘S,’ shape, describing its battle to follow the sunlight during its upward struggle. She planted her feet facing the tree, knowing it marked the direction of the track.
“Which service do you require?” the voice came from the phone, surprising Calli and almost making her drop the handset.
“Ambulance and cops,” she answered, wondering if she should disguise her voice. The operator tried to acquire Calli’s name and phone number, getting a false name and excuses for his trouble. “Marcia Roberts,” Calli replied, mentally kicking herself at the stupidity of using her mother’s maiden name. She couldn’t have given Simon a clearer idea of her whereabouts if she tried. “I don’t know the number of this phone,” she replied to the repeated question. “Mine has no reception and I just borrowed this one from a passing tourist. Please can you send someone quickly? There’s a man lying about five hundred metres off the main track south on Pirongia. He’s got gunshot wounds to the shoulder. He’s also got a crop of marijuana growing in a clearing on the western slope. He fell over his own trip wire. That’s what’s activated the trigger.” Calli stifled an ill-timed snigger.
“Are you with him now?” the operator asked, attempting to give Calli some basic first aid clues to keep him safe until the paramedics got to him. Calli gritted her teeth. No way was she going to betray Declan and admit he was currently wasting perfectly good bandages on the scum bag. Nor did she have any intention of hanging around until help arrived.
“I’m not with him,” Calli said, injecting fake panic into her voice. “I’ve had to leave him to get phone reception.”
“Stay on the line and return to the gentleman,” the operator told her calmly.
Calli made a split decision, “I’ll try, but I know the phone will cut out when I get back down there. Oh,” she made a pretence of speaking to someone, half covering the handset with her hand, “you want your phone back?” Calli paused for a second and then spoke to the operator, “I’ll go back down, but I need to give the phone back to the tourist, sorry.” With that, she hung up and turned the phone off.
Turning herself one hundred and eighty degrees, Calli started off back the way she came. Declan’s continuous stream of bush technique teaching was at times frustratingly boring because she had him to do it all for her. But it came in surprisingly handy as Calli retraced her steps. She recognised her boot marks in the dust and the snapped tendrils of supplejack which she argued with on the way up. She still slipped and slid, opening up old cuts in her palms and squeaking as she spotted another family of wetas rather close to her face while she negotiated a fallen tree trunk. But Calli made it back to Declan’s side in record time. “They’re sending help,” she puffed, gratified by the look of admiration he gave her. Calli held her hand out to him, “Now we need to go!”
Declan knelt next to the fallen man. He had rolled him onto his uninjured side, still across the fishing line. Despite the agony in his shoulder and his flesh resembling a slab of red, tenderised meat, the man managed to slide a malicious look at Calli. “You better not have called the cops, girl,” he grunted in her direction. “This is nothing to do with me. I just found it.” He coughed, shooting a jet of vomit onto the bush floor.
“I don’t care what you tell them,” Calli replied haughtily. “You’re not our problem.” Calli lifted the disabled shotgun in her fleece sleeve and wiped at it with the hem of her clothing again to remove Declan’s fingerprints, not trusting her first attempt. She had been a policeman’s daughter far too long. “Let’s not take any chances,” she muttered to herself.
After throwing it some distance away, she hauled on Declan’s bent elbow, almost toppling him down onto the floor. “Come on, Dec. We need to go!”
Declan looked conflicted, not sure what to do. Calli could see in his face that his Christian values leaned towards staying with the man until help arrived. Calli estimated it was a good twenty minutes since she called for help. The muted sounds of a helicopter overhead illustrated how quickly Search and Rescue could be deployed and she tugged at Declan’s arm again, desperate to leave.
The man flailed on the ground, trying to sit up at the same time as letting out a volley of distasteful swear words, which sounded even more vulgar on his lips. “You’re that runaway,” he spat in her direction. “We tried to find you but the dogs are crap. Thought you couldn’t be far away. Decided we’d have a bit of fun with you, seeing as you’re all cut loose like.”
The leer which accompanied the statement punctuated his meaning and Declan stood up, stepping back suddenly as the man’s intentions penetrated his gentle nature. The boy looked sick.
