Chapter 26 -Crocodile Watcher
Vic had a vague sense of being still alive and hurting, really hurting. His mind seemed to be unable to focus, but he had a vague awareness of being wet and cold and that one of his legs felt like it was on fire. He seemed to drift in and out of awareness over and over again. He had a woolly memory of his helicopter refusing to respond to the controls, then of a smashing and tearing impact as it hit the cliffs.
Based on this his mind said he should be dead, people did not survive crashes like that. But his leg hurt like hell, and the rest of his body and head hurt in lots of places too – now his mind formed a muddled thought. I hope this is not hell, with all this endless pain; this would be a seriously bad place to end up if I have died. And he was so thirsty, he badly needed a drink and soon. Apart from the pain in his leg he thought his thirst was the thing forcing him to wake up.
At last his mind seemed to get enough clarity to open his eyes and try and look around. He realised that was lying tipped back and to the side and his body was held against something that was behind him. He tried to look up but his vision was blocked by a huge wall of rock and something on his head. He looked down towards where the pain in his leg was coming from. His leg seemed bent back under whatever he was lying on at a funny angle; that did not look good and no wonder it hurt.
As his mind began to clear he tried to feel his hands. He brought one up to his face, and with it felt for the other which was squashed under him at his side. With his good hand he pulled the other hand free and it seemed to work too. Now he looked at them both. Yes they were both there and neither looked too bad, a few cuts on the knuckles of one, his left hand, but the other hand looked just fine. This left hand, on the side underneath him, transmitted pain to his shoulder when he moved it but the other, the right one, seemed to move properly and did not even hurt to move.
With this right hand he started to explore his surroundings. First he tried to feel his face and work out what was blocking part of his view. He realised it was his helmet which was still on his head. As he felt around towards the helmet’s left side he realised that his head was resting up against an uneven rock and there was a series of cracks and fissures running through this side of his helmet, like a broken egg still held together with sticky tape. He felt under his chin, sure enough the strap that held the helmet on his head was still closed. It took a few goes but finally he managed to click it free.
Now he needed to try and take the helmet off his head so that he could see properly. First he tried with just his right hand. That brought pounding pain into his head as the helmet twisted sideways while staying in place. Nothing for it but to bring his left hand into action too. This hand seemed to be able to move OK but Christ his shoulder hurt as he tried to grip the other side of the helmet at the same time. It felt like something had pulverised the muscles of that shoulder. He touched rock below this shoulder. He was lying pushed into the rock and had probably landed hard that way, bruising lots of muscles. But he could move it so he did not think anything was broken.
He took a deep breath, this was going to hurt, whatever he did. He might as well get on with it. He gritted his teeth and with two hands together managed to pull the helmet free of his head. Both his head and left shoulder felt like they were on fire and waves of fog flowed through his brain along with the surges of pain. He lay still for a minute, willing the pain to stop. As it receded the thirst and pain in his leg came flooding back. He knew he had to keep going.
So now he explored his head with his fingers. There was a bit of sticky stuff that felt like dried blood on the side of his head next to the rock and some parts that really hurt to touch. But nothing felt like it was broken there either, so perhaps the broken helmet had saved a busted skull and instant death.
Now he used his hands to feel what was behind and under him. It was flat and smooth and slippery. As his brain slowly processed this touch information it came to him that he was still strapped into the helicopter seat. He and the seat were lying on a rocky shelf at the base of a huge rock cliff.
The realisation dawned on him that the helicopter seat, with him strapped into it, had torn free from the rest of the helicopter and fallen down the side of the cliff until it hit this rocky base. He made himself lift his head and look around. Now he could begin to get his bearings. As his eyes travelled upwards they followed the line of a huge rising cliff, going almost directly up for what looked like hundreds of feet. The only things that could get up there would be birds and ants. It was beyond all ordinary animals to climb this rock face, well beyond a rock wallaby or even a cat. He tried to look over his shoulder and behind him. His view was blocked by something that must be the seat.
He could hear a roaring and gurgling noise from behind him, it must be the river, bare metres away. His body was wet and cold, his clothes were drenched. He wondered if he had been in the river. But that seemed unlikely if he was still strapped in and the seat had landed here. More likely rain had made him wet.
As he had this thought a huge flash of light, followed by an almost instantaneous crash bang, told him he was in the middle of a great thunderstorm. As the flash died away he realised that it was approaching dark, only a small amount of light remained in the sky. He must have lain here since mid-morning, probably eight hours ago. No wonder he was thirsty, despite the rain, after lying in this valley for most of a hot wet season’s day.
Suddenly rain came cascading down onto his face, huge cold splashes. He turned his face towards it and drank in the large drops, not enough to quench his thirst but the moisture cleared his mouth and helped him to think more clearly.
First he must unstrap himself from the seat; then he must try to extricate and attend to his leg. After both these things he would get a proper drink and try and work out what to do. He felt for the belt release in his waist and pressed the release mechanism. It popped free and his body slumped sideways coming to rest hard against the rock, sending spasms of pain through both his leg and his shoulder.
He felt towards his foot, trying to determine the source of the excruciating pain. He realised it was twisted at a strange angle and trapped under part of the seat. He discovered that by turning his body further to the side and facing down the pain in his leg was eased. In this position he could get both his hands underneath him. He pushed himself upwards and, as his weight came fully off the seat, a spasm of pain shot through his leg, like boiling water tipped on it. His body dropped back towards the hard rock but that set off another even worse pain in his leg. This time he cautiously lifted himself, inch by inch. It eased the pain up to a certain place and then it started to increase again. He watched what happened. Initially his lower leg straightened which reduced the pain. But then it started to twist the other way bringing the pain surging back.
What he needed was a way to lift the seat base clear of his leg so that he could get his leg out from underneath and put it straight. The bones in his lower leg must have broken to let it twist like it had. So he got himself into a half kneeling position on his opposite hand and knee. With the other hand he gradually levered the seat out of the way. At last its weight took over and it fell sideways, away from his leg. As it moved it was accompanied by another pain spasm, but now his leg was clear.
He moved his body to bring it into line with his foot. Using a half kneeling gait he slowly dragged his body away from the edge of the cliff and towards the water. This was visible as a phosphorescent glow in the near dark, as it thundered its way down the gorge. At the edge he used his good arm to scoop up handfuls of water into his mouth. He was tempted to shove his face into the water to quench his thirst but knew it was best to drink slowly. After a few minutes of sucking handfuls of water his thirst eased.
He lifted up his head to gaze out across the wild white water. It was an endless thundering cascade that stretched to the other side of the gorge where another similarly sheer cliff rose, maybe 200 metres away. His place by the water was sheltered by a protruding rock, a
couple of body lengths in front of him. It was three times his height and about two metres wide. It jutted out into the cascading water, and gave a relatively calm edge for him to access.
A movement at the periphery of his vision caused him to look to his side, down river. Barely a metre away two eyes sat in the water watching him. He realised it was an enormous crocodile. With one swish of his tail it could have lunged forward and grabbed him, finishing off the work of the crash.
But it did not move, it just stared, motionless in the water. It seemed to be watching him with purpose but not with malicious intent. He almost felt it was guarding him; perhaps it was not hungry now and would look to feed later. As imperceptibly as he was able he eased back from the water. His leg protested but that was secondary to survival. The silent watcher remained unchanged.
Now that he had drunk and relieved some of the pain in his leg he could barely move. Every muscle and bone in his body felt bruised. Each crawled step took great effort. It was barely five metres from the edge of the water to the cliff face and the back of the rock ledge was little more that a metre above the flow.
He realised if the crocodile decided to come after him there was nowhere he could go. Slowly he dragged his body back as close to the cliff edge as he could go. It was raining still and now he was shivering with cold. He pulled up the remains of the seat and propped it against the rock wall forming a roof and barrier of sorts from the river. This gave some shelter from the torrential sky. He curled his body under it as best he could, and tried to takes his mind away from where he was.
He slept fitfully. Every time he moved spasms of pain shot through his leg, his shoulder throbbed continuously and the hard rock dug into tender parts of his body. But he needed rest and this was his best option for now. He woke in the early predawn light.
The sky was still a heavy grey but the rain had stopped. In the night the river had risen and half of his rock shelf was now gone. He realised he could not stay here. If the water rose two more feet all his dry land would be gone.
He eyed off his options as the light slowly brightened. The cliff on the other side of the river seemed slightly less forbidding. But there was no way he could cross over two hundred metres of thundering water, even if his leg was not broken and, with only one leg to kick with, it was totally hopeless. If his dry land was taken by the river it would claim him anyway and, if it did, he would let it wash him where it willed, until rocks smashed him apart.
But for now he was still alive. When he contemplated his survival it felt miraculous; to have landed in a way where his seat and helmet protected him from death and to have found shelter on a tiny rock ledge just beyond the water seemed remarkable despite everything else about his circumstances looking totally grim.
It reminded him of the story Mark had told him of the bullet wound to his arm, how he had to patch himself up and make the best of it for many days without medical attention apart from a bandage and a few antibiotic tablets. He felt a kinship to Mark in this place; he did not understand why. As he thought about it more he remembered the crocodile from last night. He felt as if it had been sent by Mark to guard and protect him, perhaps help him to find a way out of this mess.
He looked around the water’s edge, wondering where the crocodile had gone while he slept. At first he saw nothing. Then he made out a shadowy outline in the stiller water. It was still there, sheltered by the jutting rock. As he watched, first a few scales along the back and tail broke the surface and then more of the head and body emerged. This animal was truly monstrous, he had nothing to work from to measure its size, but when he thought about the length of his helicopter from tail rotor to nose, it did not seem to be much different. That was well over twenty feet in length, way bigger than anything he had seen before.
Funnily enough the crocodile’s head was now facing the other way from last night, facing down river. Vic was tempted to try and head up river. It seemed the most logical way to go, in the direction of civilisation. There was a rock ledge five metres upstream which ran about five metres above him where the sheltering rock joined the cliff. He looked at it wondering if he could scale it. It would bring him higher above the water which seemed extremely desirable with a rising river. But as he surveyed it, he could see no way up its smooth edge. He may have managed to climb it with two legs and two properly working arms but with one good arm and leg he could not.
He looked at the crocodile again. Was it his imagination or did it seem to be waving its head and tail in a way which pointed down river. It must be my crazy imagination, he thought, but there did seem to be something of Mark in it which was trying to direct him; sending a whispered message from Mark’s crocodile brother saying, “Come this way, come this way.”
He tossed up what to do. In the end he decided to defer his decision while he checked the helicopter seat carefully in case it held something useful. Then he needed to examine his broken leg properly and see if he could find something to splint it with. His glance in the half light had shown a massive area of purple bruising six inches above the ankle and he could feel the bone ends move and his foot flop around when he moved his leg, along with stabs of shooting pain. So it was clearly broken, but at least the foot still seemed to have feeling and the skin was not broken, so those were good signs.
He decided he would watch the level of the river for a few minutes, see whether it was still rising, while he also looked for a way to support this broken leg. It would be very difficult to travel far the way it was, and the continual movement of the bone ends must be doing further damage, not to mention the pain.
First he carefully examined the seat. Apart from a few jagged bits of metal which had come with it when it was torn from its mountings, that was all it was, a single vinyl covered pilots seat along with a piece of the floor, perhaps two feet square that ended in the bubble doorway on his side. There was also a small bit of metal attached above the seat’s left side where the seat belt mounting to his seat had torn away from the rest of the helicopter body and his belt was still attached. He looked more carefully at the piece of floor. He realised that this is what had landed on the side of his leg and trapped it, breaking the bone, somewhere in his fall down the cliff to the ground. He felt lucky he had remained strapped to the seat as he fell. It seemed to have protected him from being smashed apart on the rocks. He was also lucky that his leg had been struck by the rounded edge of the floor piece, where the door met the floor, not by some of the other jagged pieces of metal. Hence the skin on his lower leg was bruised but not torn open. His shoe also seemed to have protected his foot from serious damage. He was wearing just shorts and a tee shirt. He remembered he had put his other clothes in a small overnight bag which went into the space behind the seats when he left Wyndham yesterday. That was gone. He felt his front pockets, wondering if his wallet was there with that infernal memory card, cash and ID. No sign of it; must have fallen out too. Not that it was useful now. Still he had his boots on and they were a good solid pair, he would need them to try and walk to help if he could escape the river.
He resumed his search. In the back pocket of the seat he found his plastic covered flight map of this part of the NT and with it was one other thing. The map was handy but the other thing was of immense value. It was a pocket knife of sorts, one of those multi tool ones. He vaguely remembered having it a couple years ago when he bought this helicopter. But he could not remember having seen it in more than a year. Here it was, this discovery was very timely now.
He looked around the rock shelf where he was to see if anything else useful was in sight. There was no vegetation but there were a few small bits of timber and one reasonable sized stick that he could see; maybe four or five feet long and one to two inches think, a bit knobbly but fairly straight. He wondered if he could use that as a splint for his leg. If there was some wiry grass or bark handy he could use that to wrap around his leg and tie it to the timber to make a splint.
He wondered what else he could use. He knew he ne
eded to support and protect his leg to give it a chance to heal if he was to find his way out of here. He wondered about cutting up his map, maybe the plastic would be strong enough to use to tie the splint together.
Then it came to him. He had all he needed right here, the seat itself. He could use part of the foam lining to provide padding and he could cut the seatbelt and vinyl cover into strips to tie it all in place. He worked away for an hour dismembering the seat with his little pocket knife. Now he had a pile of foam rubber pieces, about twenty pieces of seatbelt strapping and vinyl strips in various sizes up to few feet in length and a few bits of cording and wire from the seat’s internal contents. His tool even had pliers with a cutting edge that he could cut wire with.
He set to work binding his leg. First he padded his leg with pieces of foam tied into place with some of the thinner strips of vinyl. Then he broke the piece of stick into two lengths, each about two feet long, one of which was placed on each side of his leg, running from knee to ankle. He took the stronger and longer seatbelt and vinyl pieces and with them he tied the whole contraption together in several places. Finally he wrapped the cord and wire around as well for good measure. It was not perfect but it kept his foot and leg straight and felt like it would not fall apart when he moved.
As he worked he watched the water level. Now barely a foot of clearance remained from his work space to the water’s edge and it was still rising steadily. That storm further up the catchment last night must have been a serious one, he thought. He suspected there was lots more water to come through yet.
Well, there was nothing for it but to follow the crocodile’s lead and head down river. He looked out and then down the river. It was funny, even though the water was continuing to rise, he felt as if the flow had slowed. Last night’s foaming and thundering white-water river seemed to have eased into something else, still fast and dangerous but less wild, the tumbling whitecaps were gone. It was now almost a metre higher than when he had gone to sleep and the volume flowing was huge, but the broken surface had smoothed to a tea coloured swirling, running tide.
He looked up the river – the cloud above had broken into threads and patches, one of which obscured a weak sun. Sitting below it, between the cliffs, was a thin crescent moon, palely seen in the morning light. Something in his brain clicked, new moon, running tide – that was it. At least part of the rising water and slowing flow was due to the in-running tide pushing back against the storm flow.
He remembered yesterday morning that at this same time, as he flew across the coast from Wyndham, it was high tide in the big estuaries then and still running in. It was one of those king tides which came up twenty feet. Around mid-morning the tide was full. Today high tide would be an hour later. It was acting like a huge dam, holding the new water pouring into the river back and forcing it to rise. The tide was slowing the flow to something more manageable than last night’s thundering rapid. That would have smashed him to bits; maybe he could swim or float in this. He chucked a piece of stick out beyond the protruding rock. It moved downstream at a fast running place, tricky but manageable, he thought.
Slowly his mind absorbed the implications of this. He could not stay here, that was apparent; the tide had another hour or two of rise yet and this water would flood his rock shelf completely within the hour. But it was now possible that he could float downstream in this river, at least until he came to a place where there was a break in the cliffs which would give him a place to drag himself out.
So, rather than fleeing the rising water, he needed to use it to help his escape. If only he had a boat or raft, something that would give him buoyancy as he went down river. He looked around. There were not enough pieces of dead wood to make a raft. Could he tie some small bits together? It would help a bit but there was not really enough to add much flotation. His eyes fell again on the seat. The solution came to him with a flash of clarity.
The seat was full of foam rubber, full of tiny bubbles of air. He thought of trying to use the whole seat. It would probably float but the metal parts would weight it down, and it would be cumbersome to hold on to it and to swim with it. No, what he would do was cut out pieces to use. He had cut some out to pad his leg, but the vast majority remained in two big lumps, one at the bottom and one at the back. He would cut these out in the largest pieces he could manage. Then he would tie them together with more strips of vinyl. The strips would give him something to hang onto. If he managed it right he could largely float as he was carried along by the flow of the water.
Somehow he had left that huge crocodile out of his consideration. Sharing the water with it gave him a pang of fear. But it had had plenty of opportunity to harm him already and had done nothing. And it was not like he had any choice. If the water kept rising he would be forced into it soon enough. Then he and the crocodile would be in it together. Better to do it with control, perhaps he could break off a piece of metal from the seat and use this to push it away if it came too close.
He looked at the size of this enormous animal and realised this idea was ludicrous; it could swallow him in entirety in a single mouthful. Still he felt better with the idea of some protection, even if only token, and a piece of metal might come in useful somewhere else in his trip. Come to think of it, he should pull the seat apart and look for anything else useful in it before he left. It was the only potentially useful object he could see in his surroundings.
So Vic set to work. First he cut out two large pieces of foam which he tied together. It was nice and light so the buoyancy would be good. Then he stripped what remained of the vinyl which he cut into long strips for future ties. It was hard work with the little knife, and his bad shoulder pained.
At the back of the seat was an elastic mesh holder, with gaps of about a centimetre between the threads. Perhaps, if he could make up a frame, this could be used as a fish net. He packed all these pieces into his broken helmet which served as a useful basket and then stripped all other pieces of cord, wire and any metal fittings he could remove.
Now there was little more than the metal frame remaining. He cut it free of the seat remnants. He looked closely at it. It was light aluminium so it should be brittle if he could find a way to break it. A fissure ran into the cliff face just behind him so he jammed one end into that. Then he found a rock to bash into the middle where the metal curved around. After several blows he had cracked it through. Now he worked on the other end and broke it through too.
That gave him two curved pieces of aluminium, each about four feet long. As gently as he could he bent each one into a reasonably straight shape, though one had a hook like bit at the end. The pieces did not break or buckle so that was good, they looked strong and could be used as poles to push off rocks and otherwise guide his passage.
Now, only the broken shell of seat remnants remained. He poked around at it seeing if there was anything else useful left. He picked it up to look underneath. As he did he saw a small object fall from a crack between the upright portion of the seat and the base, which were still held together with fragments of fabric.
He looked at it in amazement. It was a transparent plastic cigarette lighter, not something he would ever use as a non- smoker himself. But someone else must have; perhaps the previous owner of the machine was a smoker. It must have sat there for at least a couple years, fallen out of a pocket into that gap, unnoticed.
Remarkably he could see it was still about half full of what looked like lighter fluid. It seemed too good to be true; if he could think of a single extra thing he would need to survive beyond his knife this was it. He felt almost scared to touch it, but he flicked it open. Sure enough a spark and flame came. Quickly he shut it off knowing its precious contents must be preserved.