The Dreaming 2.25

By Asynca

Thanks to C-Kunks.

The only good news we had that night was that Amanda had abandoned Macca's car in the airport car park. We discovered it tucked behind an enormous camper van while we were moving the old car somewhere less illegal. Surprisingly, the people mover was still in one piece. Macca had gingerly tried the doors and found them unlocked, and on closer inspection found the keys in the ignition. At that point he looked as if he was torn between bursting into tears and throwing his arms around it.

While he was digging around in the back of it for a beer cache he'd apparently created for emergencies, I checked on our suitcases. Call me cynical, but I just wanted to make sure than none of my equipment had gone missing. We were in luck: most of it was still lying on top of our cases and as far as I could see, it was all still there. All of it.

The car had been so well taken care of Amanda might as well have had it detailed and hung a pine-scented air-freshener inside.

I stood back from the car and stared at it. I didn't trust Amanda – not one bit – but now I knew she was Larson's daughter it was really hard for me to get him out of my head. I hadn't trusted him, either, and what had happened as a result? Then again, where Larson had helped me, Amanda had given me no similar reason to trust her. She'd been openly hostile and now it was very clear that she'd manipulated, lied to and used all of us. To what extent, I couldn't tell. I hoped she hadn't planned it all along, but in my heart I doubted her friendship with Macca and Jammas was genuine. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if her emotional outburst at the hospital may have been staged. I felt so stupid. I should have guessed, I should have. I just couldn't bring myself to believe that any daughter of Larson's could have done the things Amanda had done, and God knows what else she was planning. Poor Larson. I was so glad he would never know.

Something poked my arm. "Oi, Lara," that was Macca's voice beside me, "you look like you could use one of these." I looked down my arm and saw a beer bottle pressing into it, and behind it, Macca grinning at me. He'd obviously found his beer cache.

I smiled slightly and shook my head. "Thanks, but I'm basically half-asleep already, that would finish me off."

"I'll take hers!" Sam called from inside Macca's car, and a hand shot out and accepted the beer from him.

Seated on the perfectly mown lawn beside the car park, Jammas had already downed one beer in under ten seconds and was working on number two. I winced. Macca went to join him and I climbed into the car behind Sam, leaving one set of seats between us so we weren't too close.

There was nothing to do but sit there and wait, it seemed. Despite being exhausted, I was restless. Every time I found a comfortable position to slouch in, one of the spirits would slither across the surface of my skin. It was such an odd feeling, as if my whole body was covered insects.

Sam already had her camera attached to her iPad, and her screen looked like a replica video deck. She could even move the sliders with her fingers. I thought it was pretty impressive, but she kept getting frustrated with the controls.

I had been watching her fast-forwarding past some footage she'd taken in the park with Blanket and Macca, when it occurred to me Amanda could not have possibly planned the steal the Slave Stone from us or kidnap Blanket right from the beginning. To all appearances we'd all learnt Blanket's secret in that park. No one was that good an actress, right? Or were they? I let my eyes fall closed; what a headache.

In any case, if kidnapping Blanket had been a last-minute addition to Amanda's plan, maybe she didn't have anything awful in mind for the little girl. Or maybe I had too much faith in people and I should be really worried about what Amanda's intentions were for Blanket.

"Sam." I opened my eyes and looked up at her. "Do you think Blanket is in immediate danger with Amanda?"

"I don't know," Sam said and then made a frustrated noise. "Shit! That doesn't work. I should have used the other clip." She looked up from the iPad for a moment. "Amanda's a total bitch," she said finally. "And she's a liar, and a thief and she totally strung us along. I mean, I knew I didn't like her, but I had no idea she was planning to screw us all over."

"Is that a 'yes'?"

Sam shrugged and looked back at the screen. "I don't know if that means she's, like, some psychopathic sadist, though. She seemed okay with Blanket before."

I leant my head back against the headrest, looking up into the fabric on the roof of the car. "Can someone be all those horrible things and still be trusted with the welfare of a child?"

"Sean had kids. They seem okay," she pointed out. I sighed. That was a good point. Sam was stretching her neck and had glanced out the window. "Hah," she said, sounding amused by what she saw. "How bromantic."

I followed where she was looking: Macca and Jammas had passed out beside each other on the lawn. They hadn't even finished their beer.

I felt like I could do with a long sleep myself, but given that it was only two or three hours before we'd need to board, I was worried that the alarm on my watch wouldn't be loud enough to wake me up. My mobile was nearly flat, too, so I didn't trust it to last. I couldn't really rely on Sam to get us up on time, either; Sam was a lot of wonderful things, but she was probably less likely to wake me up than either my watch or my flat mobile. We'd missed flights before.

So, I had to stay awake. However, there was nothing I could actually do, I hadn't even brought any books. Just sitting there while Amanda got further and further away from us didn't seem right, especially after nearly eighteen hours of action. I felt like I still needed to be in action regardless of how I was aching all over.

Sam wasn't being very interesting, either. She had her back to me in the seat, and all I could see over the top of it was her head and shoulders. Her hair was getting long, I thought, admiring how perfectly straight it was. And that neck…

"I can totally feel you staring at me," Sam said without turning around. I could see the reflection of a grin in the window.

"No, you can't," I said. "I was gazing through you and trying to figure out what to do about Amanda." Well, it wasn't really a lie. I'd been worrying what to do for most of the night, just not those last few minutes.

She half-turned toward me in the seat. "You do this sighing thing all the time when you're stressing out about stuff. You weren't doing it." She flipped her hair. "Not that I blame you. I'm totally hot." She was grinning.

I rolled my eyes. "Sam."

She propped the iPad on top of the spine of her seat. "Since you're looking already, you want to see what I've got? It's just clips with the original audio at the moment but I think it still flows okay. It's what was really going on at the mine. I'm sick of the news treating Diane and Sean like missing heroes."

I squinted at her. "Do you really think it's a good idea to tell people about the Slave Stones?"

Sam looked surprised and then laughed a couple of times. "No…" she said at length. "But people just love to hate big business. I can work with that." She reached around the front of the iPad and touched the play button on the screen.

Her video started with an advertisement for the mine that I'd seen on telly. She'd cut it with Diane giving a speech about how many local jobs would be created, and immediately after that had some raw footage she'd taken of the miners collecting luggage from carousels from other countries and speaking maybe five or six other languages. The ad continued talking about all the measures Frost International had taken to protect the local environment, but instead of the original video, Sam had overlayed images of me discovering that the mine shaft led up into the spirit cave. Then she had Macca looking really distressed and saying that they'd breached their permit and the whole gorge was under threat, cut with two of the performers from the blockade talking about how important the gorge was to them spiritually. The last two shots were of some of the hardened miners walking about in the rain with makeshift weapons and Macca talking about how he'd been arrested just for protesting against Frost. The footage faded to the end of the original ad and the original voiceover brightly saying, "Frost International: it's all part of our plan for the future."

"It's good, right?" Sam said. "I mean, the audio doesn't mix cleanly. I need to get the crossovers less choppy and more faded. But I think it'll work. I'm going to upload it to maybe four or five different places so heaps of people will see it before it gets taken down. Frost probably has stocks in both Google and Facebook so it'll come down pretty quickly."

It was good, but it was also very controversial. The Frosts were missing and presumed dead, and the video was painting them as corrupt and dishonest. "Not that I really care what happens to the twins, but do you think now is really a good time to upload it? Right when they're probably pulling both their bodies out of the water up there?"

Sam looked smug. "Now is the perfect time. You just watch. It'll be all over the news in half an hour."

That was what I was worried about. Still, Sam was the media guru.

It was a huge relief when the horizon started to get lighter, and the airport terminal lights flickered on. Sam and I had been debating waking Macca and Jammas, but while we were checking we had everything packed, the sprinklers came on and did the job for us. Predictably, their wet singlets came off. It would have been like a Calvin Klein advertisement, except that they both looked worse than they had before they'd slept.

When I'd finished repacking everything, all that was left were Sean's two empty handguns. I held them in either hand, staring at them. I couldn't take them on the plane with me, but it was such a shame to have to dump two perfectly good pistols.

Macca saw me. "I'll bring those across for you," he said. His voice was hoarse from lack of sleep. "I have to drive back to Sydney anyway."

I looked up at him. "Really? You're not worried about getting caught with illegal firearms?"

He shrugged. "They have to have reasonable cause to search my car. I won't give them cause."

"Dude, your hair gives them cause," Jammas told him and pushed him in the back of the head.

"Don't think I won't deck you because you're cut about some chick," Macca warned him, but he was smiling. He turned back to us. "Guess this is it for now," he said. "I'd hug you, but I don't need any more tattoos." He didn't hug Sam, either, and I was grateful. After what had happened it would have been odd for him to do it in front of me, especially given he was topless. "I hope by the time we rock up in Sydney, you'll have Blanket and the stone thing and have sorted Amanda out."

"Me too," I said, but I had a feeling it wasn't going to be that simple.

There was a different security guard on duty that morning, and other than looking strangely at my bruised nose, he didn't give us any trouble. We were the last people to board, though, because Sam was trying to upload her video and, according to her, the WiFi in the airport dropped out more often than she had at school.

It was only when the staff were actually on the brink of closing the gate that we boarded, and before the plane took off Sam announced it had uploaded successfully.

"It'll be all over the news by the time we land," she said, and then leant against the window and went to sleep before the plane had even taken off.

It was a relief when the plane did finally take off, because there was a spare seat next to us and I was able to put some space between Sam and I. I had reclined my seat and settled in for a long nap when suddenly I had a vivid memory of Min's car not starting in Sydney.

I opened my eyes. What if the spirits weren't happy about me taking them away from their cave and caused the engines in the plane to stop suddenly, too? I looked out the window, past Sam's peaceful face and at the wings of the plane. It was impossible this high, but I swear I saw birds, and that reminded me of that plane that had crashed in the Hudson River in America because of geese. Could the spirits on me do that as well, I wondered?

I took a few deep breaths and tried to relax. I'd nearly fallen asleep again when one of the spirits moved across my stomach. It felt warm and heavy like an actual creature. I jumped and inadvertently caused the person behind me to spill orange juice in their lap.

That whole flight, I didn't manage to get any sleep at all. Every time I'd relax my mind would race – so many short, sharp images of jumping around, falling and flying through the air.

I had been reclined with my eyes closed trying not to think about crashing when someone had touched my shoulder. Before I was completely aware of what I was doing I had shouted, "No, don't touch me!" and recoiled violently. It was then that I realised it had just been the stewardess telling me to put my seat upright for landing, and now I had half the plane gaping at me.

It must have been very loud, too, because it woke Sam up. I swallowed as I looked up in horror at the stewardess. "I'm so sorry!" I said, but I obviously couldn't explain why touching me was so very dangerous. Judging by all the shocked faces around me, though, they'd all decided I was some egotistical celebrity who had a weird thing about personal space.

Sam was quick to try and comfort me. "On the bright side, since we're landing and there's no electronic equipment allowed, no one would have got that on video."

"Well, as long as no one can put it on YouTube…" I said dryly, drawing a deep breath and releasing it a length. God, I was exhausted. People posting things online about me was the last possible thing I cared about at that moment. Though, judging by the teenager across the aisle from me, it was something I was going to have to be more conscious of. He was staring at my arms. At least I couldn't feel the spirits half-tucked under my sleeve moving.

"Cool tats," he said, after working up enough courage to speak to me. "Where'd you get them?"

I smiled politely, but hurriedly pulled my sleeve down in case they did decide to move. "It's a long story."

It was close to midday when we alighted, and stepping into the full sun on the tarmac did actually make me feel a little better. I'd pulled all-nighters before exams before, I'd probably be right for at least a little while.

The first thing I did was try to turn my phone on, but it was completely flat. I swore under my breath as we walked inside the terminal. "Can you get our stuff?" I asked Sam.

She'd already found a mounted telly in one of the gates. "In a second," she said distractedly, staring at it. "I just want to see what coverage we're getting."

I sighed at her and then went in search of a socket. I found one in the corner, but had to sit on the ground to use it. Ignoring my shaking muscles, I crouched down and I selected Min's number. It only rang a couple of times before a recording of her voice said, "Hi, this is Min Lee…" I hung up before I could hear the rest of the voicemail message and tried to call her again. Again, the call was rejected.

I stared at my phone.

I worried for a few moments that Min and Bree had been somehow captured by Amanda. If anything happened to them, it would be all my fault.

While I was panicking, my phone vibrated and a message from Bree popped up. I'd never opened a message faster in my life. "we cant talk rite now," it read, "will explain soon just tell taxi to take u to cronulla park asap."

I released a breath I hadn't been aware I was holding. I read it a few times and then took out a pen and wrote the name of the park on the back of my hand. I wanted to message her back, but since my phone needed to be plugged in to stay on and the longer it was plugged in the longer it was going to take us to get there, I didn't.

Sam was still parked in front of the telly where I'd left her. "Bree messaged me, we have to get to somewhere called 'Cronulla'," I said as I approached her.

"Hmm?" she said, still looking at the screen. "Look, the Frost exposé went viral. Two million views so far. There's been some awards show or something on for the past five minutes, though, so I can't get much of an idea about coverage." She held up the iPad. "And both this and my cell are dead so I can't check online."

"We don't really have time to, anyway," I said, motioning for her to follow me. "Come on, we have to get going, I think they've found her."

She didn't move. "Just two seconds…"

I would normally have taken Sam's hand and dragged her away from the screen. Instead, though, I just walked towards the luggage carousel and when she realised I'd actually gone without her, she came running after me.

After we'd collected our luggage and I'd fished out the only long-sleeved top I had and ducked into the women's to put it on, we did as Bree instructed and hailed a taxi.

It was going to be a hot day, and despite the fact my top was fast-wicking fabric, it was horribly warm and clung to me like a second skin. "Did you buy this?" I asked Sam, trying to fan some air inside it. I didn't remember buying anything so horribly tight.

"I got it at the North Face sale," she said, and then leaned forward and spoke to the taxi driver. "Hey, would you mind if we had the radio a little louder?"

He turned it up, and we spent the next few minutes listening to a series of generic pop songs and waiting for news coverage while Sam writhed impatiently.

Meanwhile, I worried about what we'd find when we made it to Cronulla. They hadn't been able to talk, what did that mean? Were they hidden somewhere, following her? Were they in any danger? I scrunched my eyes shut. God, I shouldn't have brought them into this, but what other choice did I have?

The window was wound down, and it wasn't long before we could smell the salt air. The driver pulled up at a park before we'd had the opportunity to hear any news at all. Sam settled the bill and the driver took our cases out of the boot for us, and then drove off.

On one side of the road were a series of apartment buildings that reminded me of the Gold Coast, and on the other was a park and beyond that, a beach. Families with children eating ice-creams wandered past us, and there were groups of people lying all over the lawn in the park. The apartment block gardens, the palm trees lining the road and the grass in the park, they were all such a rich, juicy green. It was a stark contrast to the dry orange sand and parched shrubs in The Kimberley.

I spotted someone by the beach waving at us with both hands, and recognised the mass of blond curls and indecently small amount of clothing. Behind her, Min was inclined with one arm crossed against her stomach and a single hand raised toward us.

"There they are!" I said to Sam, pointing and waving back. I quickly realised Amanda wasn't with them, though, and my heart sank. They must have lost her.

We wheeled our suitcases through the park anyway to greet them, anyway.

Bree rushed up and looked as if she was going to hug me, but I stepped back and put my hands up to stop her. The hurt showed on her face, and that felt like a punch in the stomach. "I have something contagious," I explained quickly. "I'll show you later."

She made an 'oh' shape with her mouth. "Yeah, you look terrible," she said. "You must be pretty sick."

Sam looked at me for a second, and then burst out laughing. Min still had that long-suffering expression, but said much more tamely, "Hi, guys. And Lara, you don't look as bad as Bree says. Well, except for your nose."

"Luckily, I can't see myself," I said and then got straight to business. "I gather you lost Amanda and Blanket?"

Bree and Min looked at each other. "Well, not exactly," Bree said, and then made a face. "When they left the café, we just couldn't follow them."

I frowned, I didn't understand what Bree was implying. "Are they inside one of these buildings?" I looked up at the row of them towering over the park.

When Min stood straight, I realised she'd been leaning against something. She put a hand on top of it; it was a set of those old coin-operated binoculars that looked like Wall-E, mounted on a pole and facing out to sea.

Sam and I both stared at the device and while we were, Min put a twenty-cent coin in it and stood aside. I looked at her and then leant forward to the eyepiece and adjusted the focus.

When the image sharpened, I understand exactly what Min and Bree had meant.

Way out to sea and almost not visible over the horizon, a huge cargo ship was anchored.