The Other Side of Nowhere Page 16

  George gave Nick a firm nudge in the back. ‘Nick, c’mon. You have to go now. No-one’s watching,’ she urged.

  Nick nodded distractedly, not taking his eyes off the fishing boat. ‘Okay, listen … If this all turns to crap, head back to the hut. We’ll meet up there when we can … Good luck guys.’ Before either of us could wish him luck in return, he was off, sprinting across the sand towards the cave. I watched as he jumped the stream in one stride then disappeared from sight in the shadow of the cliff face on the other side.

  ‘So, how are we going to distract them?’ whispered George.

  ‘Stuffed if I know.’

  ‘We could just walk down the beach towards them with our hands up. You know, pretending like we were surrendering,’ she suggested.

  I shook my head. ‘We have to keep Baldy away from the water, away from Nick when he wrestles Zaffar. We need him to come to us.’

  ‘There must be something we can use,’ she said, looking around the tent. ‘We could pull the tent down … or start a fire. Maybe there’s something inside one of the tents.’

  At the mention of fire, I had an idea. I slipped the backpack off my shoulder and pulled out the Very pistol – the ancient flare gun Nick had found at the hut. ‘We could use this.’

  George eyed it suspiciously, ‘You really think that thing’s gonna work?’

  ‘Soon find out. Anyway, it’s worth a try.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To set fire to the tent.’

  Baldy and Matt were about to pass by again. As Baldy came into view, I felt an intense urge to rush him, to fire the flare gun point-blank into his ugly face. But the fear that nothing would happen, leaving me exposed as a kid with a toy, kept me from moving.

  As they disappeared into the cave George pulled me close. ‘Okay then, if that’s our best shot, let’s do it. We need to watch for Nick, though – don’t try the gun until we see him in the water.’

  We looked out towards the water, but there was no sign of him. The trawler had come to a halt about halfway out in the bay. What if Matt’s in the first lot to be ferried out to the trawler? I wondered. But I had to push my worries aside and focus on the job at hand.

  Baldy came out of the cave and headed down the beach, this time walking a few paces ahead of Matt, who was struggling with the weight of a large suitcase. I don’t know what made him do it, but as Matt drew level with the tent he turned and looked straight at me. He paused, looking at Baldy as if he was contemplating whether or not he should make a dash for it. I almost waved him over, for a split second thinking the best thing to do would be to get him and run. But even if we could outrun Baldy and his gun, we couldn’t just leave Nick.

  Reluctantly, I motioned for him to keep walking. He gave me a puzzled look before slowly regaining his stride, continuing down the beach with the suitcase dragging in the sand. Then George grabbed my arm and let out an amazingly good birdcall. Matt spun around and stopped.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered. George held up her hand urging Matt to stop. ‘Stay there,’ she mouthed. Matt looked torn, confused by our conflicting messages. He looked at Baldy, now a good ten paces ahead of him and thankfully still walking. Then Matt dropped the suitcase and fell to the ground as if he had passed out.

  ‘It’s Nick,’ George whispered to me, pointing to the far end of the beach.

  It took me a moment to spot him. He was in the water, his head little more than a small brown ball bobbing near the headland rocks just beyond the shore break. He was edging closer to the inflatable, his body submerged up to his eyeballs.

  Zaffar had climbed out onto the sand and was speaking to the group of people sitting on the sand next to him. He looked up and must have noticed Matt on the sand. As Baldy came towards him, Zaffar shouted something that caused Baldy to look back at Matt lying prone on the beach. When Matt didn’t move, Baldy started to storm back up the beach, looking mad as hell.

  It was now or never. I stepped back away from the tent. The gun felt heavy and cold and the handle was too big for one hand. Even with both hands it still felt like it was going to tumble from my grip. I had no clue on how to work it.

  Suddenly everything was happening. Zaffar was back in the inflatable fiddling with the motor. For a moment it looked like he couldn’t get it to fire, tugging hard with increasing force at something until, with a low growl, it roared into life. Baldy reached Matt and roughly hoisted him to his feet. I could no longer see Nick and even though George’s eyes were urging me to wait, I couldn’t.

  With a guttural roar, I screamed, ‘Get away from him!’ and took aim at the tent, pulling hard on the trigger.

  But nothing happened, not even a click. I pulled again and again – still nothing. In frustration I smacked it hard into the heel of my hand then pulled the trigger again.

  BANG! With a violent kick the gun exploded in my hand. Instantly it was fiercely hot and I dropped it and at the same time raised my arms instinctively to shield my face from the blinding flash. The gun fell to the sand as a stream of sparks shot into the air.

  ‘My god, Johnno, you’re on fire!’ I heard George shriek.

  I couldn’t see a thing, just a flickering light, strobing blue and white. The side of my face stung like I’d been hit by a swarm of wasps, and the pungent smell of singed hair filled my nostrils. George was frantically patting my head with her hands. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I can’t see, I can’t see! George … GEORGE!’ I cried, stumbling forward. My foot caught on one of the tent’s guy ropes and suddenly I was sprawled facedown on the ground. ‘George … where are you?’ I yelled through a mouthful of sand.

  A shadow appeared beside me. ‘I’m here, it’s okay. Show me your face.’ I looked up in the direction of her voice and was jolted by a cold splash of water into my eyes. I tried to open them but could only make out the fuzzy outline of George standing over me.

  ‘Where’s Matt?’

  ‘I don’t know, but the big guy’s coming this way,’ said George. I felt her arm around my shoulder, trying to lift me up. ‘C’mon, we’ve gotta get out of here.’

  I tried to look down the beach to where I had last seen Matt but it was like looking through the bottom of a glass – everything was distorted and blurred.

  George tugged my arm, ‘C’mon, Johnno. Run!’

  Then suddenly, at the water’s edge, a blur leapt out of the water. I knew it had to be Nick and I caught the fuzzy outline of him as he pulled one of the figures backwards and down. The outboard motor whined like an angry mosquito as the inflatable surged forward then spun wildly on the spot. A tortured scream wailed above the noise of the engine and even through my foggy lens I could see the water turning crimson red as the inflatable sped off out of control along the shoreline.

  Baldy had been closing in on the campsite, but the roar of the motor had caused him to stop and spin around. Torn, he looked at George and me, barely metres away, then back at the inflatable, hurtling away with whatever treasure was in the bags. He growled in frustration, like an animal forced to give up its prey. Then, swearing loudly, he turned away and broke into a loping run. I was sure I saw his hazy figure take his gun from the waistband of his pants as he ran.

  My head throbbed with the whine of the outboard and the distressed cries coming from the water. The tingling on my hands and face was starting to burn, but slowly my eyesight was returning. I still couldn’t see clearly, but I could make out Baldy raising his gun as he slowed to steady his aim. Somehow I knew it was Matt he was taking aim at. Suddenly, amazingly, among all the madness, everything became clear. It was as if I was outside my own body, watching myself run towards Baldy with gathering speed.

  Crack, crack, crack!

  Three shots rang out before I slammed into the wide expanse of Baldy’s back with a force that knocked him to the ground. The gun jolted from his grasp, spinning through the air before dropping onto the sand just beyond his reach.

  His whole body shook with fury as he began to cra
wl towards the gun with me still on his back. Then abruptly he sat upright and tossed me off with ease. He turned on me and landed a stinging blow on the side of my face, followed by a whack on the point of my nose. Rocking backwards, I felt the blood flood over my lips like water from a tap.

  He stepped closer, his giant shadow almost blocking the sun as he stood above me. When he drove his boot into my ribs, I wasn’t sure if I heard the crack or just felt it, but the air left my body quicker than a pin-pricked balloon. I felt dizzy and nauseous as he kicked me again, and again and again. All I could do was curl up into a ball and try to make myself as small as possible. Just when I felt sure he wouldn’t stop until there were no bones left to break, I sensed, rather than saw, him step back and move away.

  I tried to sit up but couldn’t move from my foetal position on the sand. From a weird slanted view, I saw the inflatable. It had careened up onto the beach and was stuck fast in the wet sand. Matt was there, too. He was holding a bag, shaking it and there was something spewing out, falling to the wet sand and blowing away across the sand with the breeze. Baldy was heading towards him, cursing angrily. I tried to call out to Matt but my mouth was clogged with a mixture of blood and sand and only squeak came out.

  I became aware of something under my hand, something hard. I curled my fingers around it, a stone – smooth, heavy and almost perfectly round.

  I managed to stand and began to lurch forward. Strangely, I felt almost no pain, just the tingle of an all-over numbness. Baldy had stopped and was looking back at me as I shuffled towards him. He stared back at me with undisguised contempt, his sneer revealing putrid, horrible teeth.

  I was no longer scared or confused. I drew back my arm and, with all the defiance left in me, hurled the stone towards his hulking frame. It flew as straight as any stone has ever flown and if I did it a thousand times over I could not have hit him more squarely between the eyes. A burst of cherry red bloomed in the centre of his forehead and he dropped to his knees, then folded forward face-first onto the sand.

  ‘Someone should have taught the fat bastard to duck,’ chirped Matt, as we stood over the unconscious Baldy, transfixed by the pear-sized egg growing in the middle of his forehead.

  Matt picked up Baldy’s gun, which lay on the sand nearby. He gripped its thick black handle, curling his finger around the trigger, toying with it, fascinated by it.

  ‘Chuck it, we don’t need it,’ I told him.

  George and Nick were trying to hurry along the beach towards us, but Nick looked bad. He was leaning into George, his arm draped over her shoulder for support. Behind them, I saw Zaffar lying on the sand, clutching his leg below the knee. Blood poured through his fingers and onto the sand as he rocked back and forth in pain.

  As she drew closer, George gasped at me, placing her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my god, Johnno!’

  Nick was gawking at my singed head and gave a wry smile. ‘Nice hairdo, dude.’

  I tried to laugh, but it caused an unbearable ache in my side. ‘You okay?’ I asked through gritted teeth.

  ‘Yeah, fine. Lucky, though. The boat’s propeller missed me by a bee’s dick.’

  There was a huddle of people around Zaffar, crying and wailing in a mixture of fear and confusion. Out in the bay, it looked like a couple of men on board the trawler were trying to launch a dinghy.

  ‘Guys, we have to keep moving,’ George said.

  We ran to the inflatable, and Nick gave it a shove out into the water as George climbed in. Matt had grabbed the suitcase from the beach and chucked it on the floor of the dinghy with the two duffel bags. One of the bags was open and inside were hundreds of foreign money notes, maybe thousands, mostly held together in thick wads. A dozen or so notes sloshed around in the water near the shore and a few more lay scattered on the beach. That was what Matt had been emptying out earlier, then.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ whistled Nick. ‘No wonder they weren’t giving up without a fight.’

  He jumped over the side and, as soon as the propeller came free of the sand, pulled on the choke and the motor sprang into life.

  Ali was coming towards us with Amira skipping along beside him, oblivious to all that was going on around her. As I pushed the bow seaward and was about to get in, Ali appeared at my side. He held up Amira and pushed her into George’s arms. ‘Please, please you must take my Amira. Take her to safety in your country.’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ said Nick quickly.

  ‘Take her, please, take her please!’ Ali implored, desperation etched across his face.

  Amira was wailing in fright, desperately trying to cling onto Ali, but he wrestled her away, almost tossing her into George’s lap. Amira squirmed and tried to jump back out of the boat, but George clutched her tight.

  Others were coming, starting to run along the sand and wade through the shallow water towards us, their arms waving, beckoning.

  ‘Go!’ screamed Ali. ‘Go now!’ With that, he lifted me up and, ignoring my cries of pain, heaved me into the inflatable.

  The boat was surrounded. Desperate hands clutched at the rubber sides, trying to get a grip as Ali did his best to push them away.

  ‘They’re going to tip us over,’ yelled Matt as the inflatable rocked sideways.

  Nick twisted the tiller and the inflatable shot forward. For a second I thought we were going to head straight up the beach again, but he quickly flicked the steering arm sideways and the boat spun around.

  The crowd jumped out of the way of the spinning propeller. Nick pushed the throttle to full and we leapt forward at such a pace that we all fell backwards. Clearing the shore break, the boat bounced over a couple more sets of waves before Nick eased off and let the motor idle.

  Amira sobbed and wailed uncontrollably, and George had to restrain her from climbing over the side of the boat. I looked back at the beach and saw the water filled with people still wading and swimming towards us, waving at us to come back.

  ‘We’ve gotta help them somehow,’ I said. ‘We can’t just leave them.’

  ‘We don’t have to,’ said Nick. ‘We came to get Matt and we’ve got him. They’re not our problem.’

  ‘Nick,’ cried George, pulling the sobbing girl closer.

  ‘What?’ he yelled over the noise of the motor. ‘It’s true. Anyway, what could we do even if we wanted to?’

  I glanced back again at the desperate figures flailing about in the water and fanned out along the sand. As insensitive as Nick sounded, he was probably right – what could we do?

  Suddenly Matt cried out. ‘Hey guys, better hurry up. They’re coming!’

  I spun around to see where Matt was pointing. At the rear of the trawler, two men were clambering into a dinghy. I shot a glance to the beach and saw Zaffar limping towards Baldy, who was back on his feet.

  ‘Okay, hang on! Next stop, Shell Harbour,’ said Nick, opening the throttle. The inflatable shot forward over a rising swell and for a second we were airborne, until it slapped down on the other side of the wave.

  I looked back and saw the dinghy peeling away from the trawler, bracing myself for the impending chase. But instead of heading in our direction, it went towards the shore where Zaffar was waiting on the sand with Baldy.

  ‘The dinghy’s heading back to shore,’ I shouted.

  Matt stood up in the bow and flipped them a one-finger salute and Nick let out a victory howl and squeezed George’s knee. She smiled at him and wrapped her arms tightly around Amira.

  I turned to take one last look back at the island. I shook my head in disbelief as I stared at the towering cliffs. The thought that we had climbed down inside that cliff to find Matt and then somehow made it off the beach was unbelievable.

  ‘Woo hoo!’ I yelled, and everyone else took up my cry.

  Somehow we had done it. We hadn’t always stuck together like we should have – but we’d done it.

  But then I looked down at all the money that lay at our feet. Somehow, as desperately as I wanted to feel that we really had won, I wo
ndered if all we’d done was make a powerful enemy angry.

  We raced out of the bay and hit the bigger swell of the open ocean. Salty spray flew over the bow of the inflatable and I closed my eyes and let it wash over me, relishing the cool on my tingling skin.

  We rounded the point where The Dolphin had run aground and zipped across the wide expanse of water towards the next point, which marked the start of the bay where we had first come ashore during the storm. Beyond that there was the long line of cliffs all the way to the tip of the island.

  Amira’s crying had subsided to a whimper and she cocooned herself in George’s arms. The look in her father’s eyes as he thrust her into the boat had been a strange mixture of anguish and relief, as if it were the easiest and the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. God only knew what he must have been through to make such a sacrifice.

  The thought sent a shiver through me. I looked back but there was no sign of anyone behind us. We were well clear of the bay and speeding away.

  I should have been high as a kite, overjoyed to have freed Matt and to be speeding away from a place that had felt like a prison for days, but that’s not how I felt at all. I couldn’t shake the vision of Ali and the others. What would happen to them now? If their situation had been hopeless before, hadn’t we just made it a whole heap worse?

  I looked back over my shoulder again at the bubbling wake and thought of the moment we had run from Zaffar and left Matt to fend for himself. I felt I was being tested again. Only this time I wasn’t about to fail.

  ‘Nick, slow down,’ I yelled, motioning for him to reduce the speed of the engine.

  Nick tilted his head trying to hear me, but when I yelled again to stop he wound the throttle back. As the whine of the engine dropped a little I felt our speed drop by a notch. ‘What?’

  ‘We can’t leave them. We have to go back,’ I said firmly.

  Nick stopped the boat. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We have to! If Ali was in danger before, we’ve only made it worse. We have to help him. We have to help all of them!’