" I think I filled my pants ."
Those six words effectively prompted the lads to disembark and all four scrambled out , with Bert and ' Nod ' McNab ( 600 proddy champ ) dragging the unconscious pilot out .
" It didn ' t blow up ," Bert mused . " I thought they always went bang ."
" I think the gas tanks were in the wings and they ' re somewhere back there ," Max replied , pointing to thick plumes of black smoke about 70 metres away .
" I ' m hungry ," Nod ( a slightly overweight lad with a penchant for five or six meals a day ) said . Max rolled his eyes . " We ' re lost . Nobody knows we are . We don ' t even know where we are . We have no radio . We have no means of getting out of here . We are battered and pissed off ... and Nod wants something to eat ."
Nod , shamed , looked at the ground as silence again descended . After a couple of minutes , Max again spoke . " Mind you , we will have to find something to eat I suppose ." Bert piped up and said he ' d seen a film once about a bunch of plane crash survivors who , after taking stock of their plight while setting up a makeshift crash-site camp , all emptied their pockets and belongings to create an eclectic pile of food .
To prompt proceedings along a similar line , he dug out a chocolate bar and half-a-dozen barley sugars .
Max dragged his sports bag from the wreckage and pulled out a packet of ginger biscuits ( he reckoned they prevented air-sickness ) and a muesli bar . Lenny had a carrot . " What the hell are you doing with a bloody carrot ?" Max asked .
" Better than vitamin pills ," Lenny replied . " And you can have a bite a day and it won ' t start to rot like a banana or an apple ... there ' s a week ' s worth of vitamin A , calcium and potassium in that ( he paused for effect )... bloody carrot ." All eyes turned to Nod . Being a slightly chubby lad who enjoyed grazing , they expected to be confronted by a veritable mobile larder . But he disappointed them ... although no one was too surprised to watch him sheepishly add 11 crumpled chocolate and fruit bar wrappers to the pile . Of greatest concern was the lack of water . None of the lads had shuffled aboard with anything to drink at all . Max gently shook the groaning pilot . " Anything to drink ?" he asked hopefully . " Yes please ," he groggily replied . Max , shaking his head as the full awareness of their predicament started setting in , stood up and surveyed the scene . He listened for something ... anything . But the silence was absolute . Absolute and unsettling .
NO BIRD NOISE ... Despite the density of the bush and forests surrounding them there was no bird noise . No soul-inspiring sounds of trickling fresh water . No wind playing tunes among the leaves . Nothing .
They had clearly flown hundreds of miles off course ... which was not surprising given what
FICTION they now knew about the condition of the Air Chartercheap aircraft they had made the mistake of boarding .
Max knelt down and asked the pilot if he had any idea where they were . The reply was a weak shake of the head . " GPS ?" Another shake of the head . " Any form of navigational aid at all ... a sextant perhaps ?"
There was a final weak shake ... then the pilot checked out from humankind and entered whatever dimension lies beyond . " He ' s gone ," Max said matter-of-factly . Lenny looked bewildered then replied ... " no he hasn ' t ... he ' s right there ."
It was Bert who clarified things for the young 250 proddie rider who had clearly received more than a fair share of blows to the head during his racing career .
For the moment , given the ground was like granite and there were no hardware shops selling shovels nearby , they dragged his body away and stuffed it into the crumpled fuselage . " We ' ll sort him out tomorrow ," Max said . " What we need to do now is get a fire going and find food and water ." Fire was the easy part . Bert removed one of the pilot ' s shoes then stumbled off to the smouldering remains of the starboard engine . He returned with the rubbersoled shoe burning nicely and set alight the piled up old gorse , twigs and branches the rest of the lads had gathered .
Food was not an immediate problem , given they had a small pile of contributions to be going on with . Water ... therein lay a major problem . The clear skies of late spring , along with the dry ground and evidence that only the hardiest of nasty plants and trees were showing any signs of greenery , set off warning bells inside Max ' s head ... although he didn ' t want to panic his less savvy mates . The wisps of smoke drifting high over their heads from the fire lifted their spirits . Any aircraft within 20 or 30 kilometres would see it ... but only if they were looking for it .
Then Max went cold as he analysed things a little deeper . If the idiot pilot flew without any navigational gear , and without an emergency beacon , and forgot to put the wheels down for the landing ... then there was no way he would have filed a flight plan .
A LAST-MINUTE WHIM And the lads had chartered the flying scrapheap on a last-minute whim . A bit of a laugh . They wanted to be first at the track ... cheekily meet the other arrivals who would have asked ; " how did you guys get here so fast ?" A sort of psychological slap for the rest of the competitors .
They had told no one what they were up to ... so no one would have a clue where the hell they were .
This was worse than running out of gas on the last lap , Max figured .
As night fell the four sat around the fire , staring at it ... as if expecting some sort of divine or otherwise intervention to emerge and save them all .
Bert silently made calculations about how far they would have travelled , working with what he estimated would be the speed of a misfiring twin-engined piece of garbage , and how long they had been in the air .
He figured , roughly , that they were about 350km from the airport at Gravel City where they had set out ... but the direction they had meandered off in was anyone ' s guess . They were ' somewhere ' in the rugged and effectively inaccessible Bruder Ranges .
He spoke quietly with Max while Lenny and
Nod were off getting more firewood . " Two things are certain I think ," Bert said . " One is that we ' re definitely lost ... and the second is that if we are ever going to get out of here we will have to do it ourselves ... ain ' t no one going to have any idea where we are ." Max nodded . " And if they do mount a search it won ' t be around here ... we ' re so far off what should have been the flight path to the track it ' s not funny ."
Nod arrived back at the campsite first . He looked stricken .
" We ' ve gotta find somethin ' to eat ," he moaned .
" I ' ve seen those smartarse survival blokes on telly who show you how to eat and drink from what they call Mother Nature ' s larder ... well they obviously haven ' t been around these parts . There ' s bugger all growin ' here ... there ' s nothin ' livin ' here ... there ' s nothin ' to drink here ... the whole place is just a big dirty old empty supermarket ." Max told him to calm down . " Panic uses up calories mate ," he said , adding the lack of food had not gone unnoticed and that like the rest of them he too could kill a well-grilled steak .
" But there ' s no fresh meat here so end of story ."
That was when Nod set eyes upon the folded-up carcass of the dead pilot . " I ' ve got a bit of an idea ," he said . " Don ' t even think about it ," Max snarled .
( Next Month : " We ' re going to ride our way out ?")
64 KIWI RIDER