check?” said Yunus, looking from Treasure to Dawie to Eva.
“Didn’t you?” retorted Dawie.
“Well, it wasn’t, er . . . no . . . I thought that . . .” Yunus stammered.
Julia cut in. “Who cares whose fault it is? Leo’s probably dead! No one could survive being out in a storm like that.”
“What are we going to do?” Yunus said. He ran from window to window and opened the back doors of both Land Rovers as if he expected to find Leo among the luggage.
Humphrey took out his cellphone. “Darn! No service. Just like down south. We can’t call for help.”
Treasure leapt into the driver’s seat and adjusted it until her feet reached the pedals. “I’m going back for him.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Dawie. Being the president of the club, and the oldest in the group, he was responsible for everyone.
“That’s crazy,” said Eva through the driver’s window. “Better to go on to Keetmanshoop and tell the police. They’ll send a search party.”
“Even a helicopter,” said Victor.
Dawie slammed the back door shut causing Yunus to leap out of the way. “It’ll take time to organise that,” he said. “We can’t wait that long. Every second counts when someone’s lost in the desert.” He ran round to the passenger’s side and climbed in.
“It’s madness to go back,” Eva insisted. “You don’t stand a chance of finding him. It’ll be dark soon.”
“Too bad,” said Treasure, turning the key in the ignition. “We’ve got to try.” She pictured Leo, alone and without shelter during the storm. That they could have been so careless! And it’s all my fault. It had been her idea to invite him on ABSO. When his mother said she wasn’t happy about him going, Treasure had used all her persuasive powers to get her to change her mind. She remembered something Mrs Knight had said:
The Namib is a dangerous place. People get lost.
When Treasure promised she wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Leo, Mrs Knight stared at her and said, “Eight years ago, a four-year-old boy vanished in Namibia right under the nose of the person who was looking after him. It could happen again.”
Treasure hadn’t taken much notice at the time; it was the sort of thing an over-protective mother would say. Now, as she released the handbrake, she felt ice cold. It’s almost as if Leo’s mother could tell the future. Only this time, the boy is twelve. “And we’re the ones who left him behind!” she said out loud, pressing her foot down on the accelerator.
Eva jumped out of the way as the vehicle did a U-turn. “No,” she yelled. “You’ll achieve nothing. We must go to the cops.”
“You do that,” said Dawie. “Organise a search party when you get to Keetmanshoop.” He held up his cellphone. “Let us know when you do.” With that, he and Treasure began speeding west in a race against the lowering sun.
“He’ll be okay,” said Dawie, as always trying to look on the bright side.
Treasure bit her lip and said nothing.
“Really, he will be,” Dawie persisted. “He’s a clued-up kid. I bet he waited out the storm sheltering on the lee of the inselberg.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Treasure.
“It’ll have been scary, and he’ll be really thirsty by now,” said Dawie, “but we’ll find him. When we turn off the highway at Aus, we must just keep our eyes peeled for that gravel track.”
Treasure didn’t think it would be that simple. It was at least a hundred kilometres to Aus. How many more from there to where they’d left Leo? And that was how long ago? Four or five hours? Leo couldn’t have come through the storm unscathed. “I wish we’d never gone down that track,” she muttered and cast Dawie an accusing look. It had been his idea to explore it. He could never resist taking side roads. Look where this one landed us, she thought.
On they went, hurtling past those dusty sidings that punctuated the railway line going west to the diamond port of Lüderitz on the Atlantic coast. Through Guibes and on, neither of them speaking, past Asbospan, and, ten minutes later, Schakalskuppe, at least thirty kilometres from Aus.
Dawie checked the time. “It’s gone five already. Let’s hope we get to the picnic spot before dusk.”
Treasure barely heard him above the words that screamed inside her head . . . a boy vanished without trace. It could happen again.
* * *
A snuffling sound and something soft touching Leo’s face brought him back to the present. He forced his eyes open. A blur of brown huffed hot air on him. Something pink and damp – damp! In the desert! – wiped across his face. Compared to the puffs of hot air, it felt cool.
The dog, he realised when a furry face came into focus. Close up, the features seemed magnified: the nose like a patch of black leather; the tongue pink and long; the white whiskers bristly against Leo’s cheek; the eyes big, oval, softly brown. Troubled.
The dog whined, pawing Leo’s shoulder. Wake up. Get up, he might have been saying.
Leo groaned. Somehow he managed to find the strength to push himself up onto his hands and knees. Exhausted, dehydrated, aching all over, he couldn’t decide whether he was glad to be alive or miserable that he wasn’t dead. He vaguely remembered falling over. How long had he been lying out for the count in the sand?
The dog nudged Leo’s arm with his nose. Get up. Get up.
“I can’t.”
The dog pawed him again, and again, and licked his face and neck. Come on. Get up.
Leo hauled himself onto his feet. His head spun. Or was it the world spinning around him? He closed his eyes until everything slowed down.
The dog barked at him. Let’s go.
When Leo looked, he was trotting away.
Perhaps he was on his way to somewhere. I’ve got nothing to lose, thought Leo. Either I stay here and die, or walk for as long as I can. Mustering up every last bit of strength, he forced himself on, concentrating on the paw marks in the sand. It was a while before he realised the sun was much lower in the sky, its heat almost spent. That was one consolation at least. He looked up and noticed something else: the dog was heading for a rocky hill.
It looked familiar. It’s the inselberg I climbed! He had gone round in circles. Thanks to the mongrel though, he was back where he started. That must mean he was a tracker dog after all. The others must have raised the alarm and the dog was brought in to find him. “Phew. That was a close shave.”
Rescue and water were just moments away.
* * *
“If he found his way back to the road, he might have hitched a lift,” Dawie said when they were nearing Aus.
A lorry heading east flashed past them on the other side of the highway.
