Death is Forever

sun-hammered pastels of Western Australia.
    Slowly she realized that Cole was standing over her, shading her with his body and the khaki shirt he held between his hands in a makeshift canopy. When she tried to stand, he put his hand on her shoulder.
    “Rest. The dizziness will pass.”
    This time.
    But he didn’t say it aloud. He’d expected Erin to reach the end of her resources yesterday or the day before. Her continued endurance in the face of a climate her body was badly prepared for both amazed him and made him more determined than ever that she would survive.
    “Better?” he asked finally, his voice gentle despite its dry rasp.
    She nodded.
    “Ready to try standing?”
    “Yes,” she whispered.
    With his help, she pulled herself to her feet. He led her to the thin shade of an acacia and started making true shade with the survival blanket.
    “No,” she said hoarsely. “We’ve got to keep going.”
    “Not yet. Give yourself a chance to recover.”
    He put his shirt back on and studied the land from the sanctuary of the artificial shade he’d created. The surrounding ground was still largely flat, still the floor of a basin that had no visible outlet. The only real landmark among the broken hills that surrounded the basin was the flat-topped hill that had been receding before them like a mirage.
    At least the hill didn’t look flat any more. Nor did it look like a hill. It was like a rough-surfaced mesa. Wind-and water-sculpted stone formations poked above the sparse vegetation.
    “Cole?”
    He looked away from the tortured rock shapes to the woman whose determination to survive was as great as his own.
    “Are you sure we haven’t been here before?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    She shaded her eyes and squinted, trying to see through the odd gloaming beneath the restless, opaque sky. Her breath came in with a tearing sound.
    “Where are we?” she asked.
    “In the Kimberley,” he said gently.
    “Yes, but where? Are we close to any of Abe’s claims?”
    He thought for a moment, reviewing his memories of the maps he had spent hundreds of hours studying. He checked the compass, glanced at his watch, did a few rough calculations, and looked back at her.
    “We could be on the edge of one,” he said. “Why?”
    For a moment she couldn’t answer. She felt like she’d been sleepwalking and had just awakened to find herself in a new world.
    “Were you ever here before?” she asked.
    “No. It’s a small claim. Gold hunters worked it over real thoroughly forty years ago. They found just enough dust to keep them trying for years before they gave up. Too dry for placer mining.”
    “Did you ever hear Abe mention this claim?”
    “Only when he was drunk, but he mentioned a thousand places when he was drunk. He never attached any particular importance to it. Why?”
    “I think that’s Bridget’s Hill,” Erin said simply. “I can’t be sure because the angle is different. If that’s the hill, the photographs were taken from somewhere off to the left and looking more north.”
    He narrowed his eyes and compared his memory of the photographs with the worn, eroded land.
    “Be damned,” he said. “You might just be right. If you are, there should be water at the base of the hill during the dry. That would explain how Abe camped there. And that’s where the tracks were headed before I lost them.”
    She struggled to her feet.
    “Easy,” he said, bracing her. “There’s no rush. That pile of limestone has been there a long, long time. It will be there for a few more hours.”
    “But will I?” she whispered as the world dimmed and brightened in time with her erratic pulse.
    He tightened his hold. “You’re stronger than you know.”
    Thunder rolled in the distance. A breeze came from the direction of the blackening clouds.
    When he looked up, he saw that the clouds had thickened, dimming the sun’s brutal strength. A dense, sultry wind gusted, bending spinifex and spindly gum trees alike. He sniffed the air as intently as any wild animal, and his nostrils flared at the unmistakable scent of rain.
    “Cole?” she whispered, looking at the sky.
    “It’s coming, honey.”
    “When?”
    Lightning arced invisibly, burning pathways through the clouds. Thunder came again. It was closer, louder.
    “I don’t know. I’ve seen it go on like this for days. And I’ve seen it rain an ocean within hours.” He looked down at her pinched face and the green eyes whose beauty even exhaustion