Read Online Outback by Robin Stevenson - Free Book Online

we’re more likely to spot paths or turnoffs in the daylight.”
    â€œHow’re you feeling?”
    She just shrugs. I hate how helpless I feel. I stand up and roll my aching shoulders. I can’t see anything hopeful ahead: no wells and no decent shade. Just red dirt, dunes, rocky outcrops, clumps of viciously spiky grass and pastel-green shrubbery.
    We wriggle ourselves back into the water-carrying frames and Nat stumbles under the weight. I catch her elbow and steady her, and feel a clutch of fear deep inside.
    â€œI’m okay,” she says, shrugging me off.
    â€œOkay. Good.” We walk on, but already the temperature is starting to rise. I bet we can’t walk for more than half an hour before it gets too hot, and I wonder if we can make some shade somehow. I wish we’d brought a tent. We could have rigged up a shelter of some kind.
    Beside me, Nat stops. “Jayden.” Her voice is low and tight.
    â€œWhat?” I follow her gaze. Just off the track, maybe a hundred feet ahead of us, is a mound. A sprawl of white and khaki. “Mel,” I say. I put my water down and half walk, half run toward him.
    He is lying facedown, the backs of his bare legs blistered. I put my hand on his shoulder, but he doesn’t move. “Mel,” I say again.
    Nat catches up to me. “Is he…? Jayden, is he…?”
    â€œHe’s dead.” My fingers are on his neck, searching for a pulse, but I know I won’t find one. “Don’t look,” I say, and I roll him over. His face is swollen and bloated. His mouth is open and his tongue protrudes slightly. Flies are crawling around his half-open eyes. I turn away, sickened, and hear Nat dry-heaving a short distance away.
    I feel like I should cover his face but have nothing I can use. Finally I just roll him back the way we found him and walk over to Nat.
    She is bent double, holding her stomach. “It’s okay,” I say.
    She doesn’t answer right away. She sits down, pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them. When she finally speaks, her voice is flat. “It’s not okay, Jayden. It’ll never be okay.” She gestures toward Mel’s body. “That’s us in a week or two. Lying beside the road, here or a hundred kilometers from here, crawling with flies.”
    I feel like shaking her. “It will not. Nat, we’re getting out of here.”
    â€œWe’re so screwed, Jay. We’re as good as dead.”
    I grab her shoulders, gripping hard. “Listen to me, Nat. Before I came on this trip, I was a mess. Okay? Like, barely leaving my room, wishing I was dead. I used to make lists of ways I could do it. You know, pills or jumping off the balcony or whatever.”
    â€œJayden!” She looks up at me, clearly shocked. “Why?”
    â€œI don’t know. I guess mostly because I got dumped by my girlfriend. It all seems kind of trivial now.” I look at Nat and I can see that her face is already thinner, her jawline sharp and the skin drawn tight around her eyes and cheekbones. I feel a pang of something that could be fear or love or sadness; or maybe all three. “I don’t want to die,” I say. “And you know what? We’re not going to.”
    â€œOkay,” she says, and her voice is thick with tears. “Okay.”

Chapter Fourteen
    We decide to walk a short distance farther, to get out of sight of Mel’s dead body, and to find some shrubbery to hide under for the heat of the day. It’s going to be a bad one: already the sun is fierce. Just breathing in air this hot feels dangerous, like you could get cooked from the inside.
    â€œYou think he was on his way back to our camp?” I ask.
    â€œMaybe. We’ve only gone a few kilometers.” Nat’s voice is strained. “If we’d kept walking like we planned to, we’d have walked right past him in the dark.”
    I take a last look at my