Death is Forever

against the rough limestone. Tongues of soot rose where campfires had burned.
    “Aborigines,” he said, glancing around. “A band must have camped here during the wet.”
    She forgot about the heat as she looked at the pictographs. By reflex she reached for her camera, remembered, and had to be satisfied with thinking about how she would have photographed the images if she could have.
    “We can’t be spotted from the air here,” Cole said. “We’ll be safe until dark.” As he turned away from the drawings he saw the expression of longing on Erin’s face. “If it makes you feel better, there are thousands of places like this scattered around the outback. This won’t be your only chance to photograph an old Aborigine camp.”
    She nodded, wondering if he believed the implication of his own words—survival, not death. But she didn’t ask.
    Their odds of living wouldn’t improve by talking about it.
    “Looking at those hand designs is rather eerie,” she said.
    “Holy ground.”
    “Really?” She examined the pictographs with new interest.
    “Every piece of landscape that’s the least bit different is sacred to the Aborigines. Every seep, every oddly shaped rock, everything that isn’t flat and spinifex or rumpled and covered with sparse gum.” Cole shrugged out of the rucksack and flexed his shoulders. “But we don’t need to worry about guests dropping in. This place hasn’t been used since white men landed down under.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “No broken bottles or beer cans.” Cole pointed to the rucksack. “Use that for a pillow. Sleep if you can. We’ve got a long night of walking ahead.”
    “All night? Are you really that afraid of being spotted?”
    “We’ll need less water walking at night and sleeping by day.”
    She hesitated, then asked the question she’d told herself she wasn’t going to ask because the answers really wouldn’t change the outcome. “How long will it take to reach Gibb River Road?”
    “Four days, if we’re lucky. Six days, more likely. The country gets rougher than hell in the last half, and we’ll be a lot weaker by then.”
    “How much time do we have?”
    “With only the water in the canteens, we’d be dry by this time tomorrow. By the day after, we’d be staggering.” He sat, leaned against the wall of the overhang, and pulled his hat down to cover his eyes. “If we get lucky, we’ll find an unmarked seep. If not, there are other ways.”
    Before she could ask what he meant, he was asleep.
    She closed her mouth and envied him that catlike ability to sleep whenever and wherever the opportunity offered. She didn’t think she would be able to sleep, but her body surprised her. Even the few miles she’d walked that day had drained her strength. Her last thought before she dropped off was relief that she wouldn’t have to face another hike through the brutal sunlight.
    Erin didn’t awaken until she felt Cole stirring beside her. The quality of the light told her it was late afternoon. Pale, almost invisible lightning stitched through the dark gray sky. The river of clouds had become a seamless, seething lid over the land, holding in heat without bringing the cool sweetness of rain.
    “You’re sure it rains here?” she said, swallowing to relieve the dryness in her mouth.
    “Eventually. But not today. The clouds will be gone in a few hours. That’s just heat lightning.” He stood and held out his hand to her, pulling her to her feet. “We’ll make much better time while it’s still light.”
    When he shouldered his rucksack, she followed him out of the rock shelter into the naked land. They walked.
    The sun vanished with an abruptness that Erin found startling after Alaska’s long twilights. Even in darkness, heat still came up from the Kimberley’s ground in tangible waves. The humidity was high enough to be suffocating, but not high enough to preserve the moisture in her own body or to prevent her sweat from evaporating.
    Cole walked steadily, reading his compass by flashlight until the clouds thinned and broke to reveal the glittering massed stars of the southern sky. The Milky Way was a tidal wave of distant light washing across a third of the sky. From various quarters of the horizon, lightning stabbed upward, looking hardly brighter than the stars. The moon added its silver glow.
    Erin walked in Cole’s wake through spinifex and rocky scrubland. Their only rest came when he checked the compass against the stars or the