Everything went back into their bergens: hammock, ropes, poncho, stove and dry kit were all carefully packed to stop water getting in. They refilled their water bottles and put away the collapsible storage containers.
Then it was the same routine: Paulo in the lead, same order behind. Count ten metres, check map, adjust position if necessary, move on.
Amber noticed Alex’s face as they got back into the rhythm. ‘You’re still loving this, aren’t you?’
Alex nodded.
‘Glad somebody is.’ Amber shivered. Normally she’d get warm if she was walking but they weren’t able to move fast enough to do that, and the constant stopping was frustrating. Not only that, but her bite and the wounds from the wait-a-while plant were sore. She’d put more antiseptic on but the infection had taken hold. She’d just have to keep putting the cream on. Six more days of this began to seem like a very long time.
‘You know what?’ said Hex. ‘I’ve come up with this theory for surviving the jungle. Don’t go near it.’ The camp had been an escape; now once again he was battling the nagging branches, the leaves in his face and the feeling that he was constantly squeezing through a gap that was a bit too small.
‘What on earth was that thing screaming last night?’ said Paulo. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it.’
‘Sounded vicious, whatever it was,’ grumbled Hex. ‘Li, how big is a jaguar?’
‘Not very big,’ replied Li. ‘About the size of a dog.’
‘What kind of dog?’ said Amber. ‘A poodle or a St Bernard?’
Alex looked thoughtful. ‘Dad said some of the Indians talk about a creature that hunts the jaguar but I think it’s a myth. Dad never saw it.’
‘Well, did your dad ever hear anything like that screaming thing?’ rejoined Paulo.
The others laughed nervously.
‘Hey,’ said Hex, ‘did anyone ever see that film
Predator,
where there’s an alien hunting people in the jungle?’
Paulo stopped. He’d seen something. ‘Guys, look at this – it’s been cleared.’
‘It’s a camp,’ said Alex.
‘A camp?’ repeated Amber. ‘Who else would be out here?’
An area about ten metres wide had been cleared, the foliage trodden down, and the ashy remains of a fire smouldered in the middle. One A-frame bed, made from local wood and lashed together with vines, stood in front of the fire area.
‘It’s a wrecked camp, to be precise,’ said Hex. He pointed to the bed. One of its legs was shattered. The whole structure was tipped onto the floor. A cooking pot lay upside down near the fire. On the other side of the hearth was a frame of dampened woven branches, built to reflect heat like the back plate of a fireplace. One half had disintegrated entirely, its pieces scattered across the area.
The five friends looked at the destruction and the sweat running down their backs turned icy cold. Was this what they’d heard the previous night?
Amber’s voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘We were just lying in our hammocks, totally vulnerable. What if it had come for us too?’
‘It was quite a long way away,’ said Li. But she sounded worried, not comforted.
Hex looked at the upturned cooking pot, the smashed bed. ‘I thought things kept away if you had a fire.’
‘So did I,’ said Li quietly.
Paulo made a notch in a tree so they could deviate off course and investigate.
Alex and Hex squatted down to get a closer look at the debris in the fire area. On the ground was a fresh skin from a tapir. A couple of older animal skins lay stiff as cardboard in the leaf litter. Cigarette butts were sprinkled everywhere. And the whole lot looked like something had been dragged through it. ‘Looks like someone was here for quite a while,’ said Hex.
‘Who’d be living out here?’ asked Amber.
Alex replied, ‘I suppose you always get someone living off the land, wherever you are.’ With his finger he traced the tracks on the ground.
Hex stood up and dusted down his hands. ‘But he had a visitor. What on earth did this? A jaguar?’
Li was inspecting the bed frame. ‘I don’t see any blood. It doesn’t look like he was dragged away. I think if it was a big cat there would have been some injuries – and claw marks on the wood.’
‘Anyway, think of the noises we heard,’ said Amber. ‘Big cats sound like – well – big cats. Growling and stuff.’
Paulo was looking at the smashed fire screen. Nearby there were long marks raked through the leaf litter into the dark earth. It was like looking at a fence after a bull had broken out. ‘Whatever it was, it was strong.’
The tracks went from the fire screen, past the bed frame and into the uncleared jungle, leaving a swathe of broken saplings and flattened vegetation.
‘We’ve got ourselves a trail,’ said Alex.
He and Paulo stepped into the undergrowth.
‘How far are you going to go?’ said Li.
Alex called back to her, ‘We’ll just take a quick look.’
Amber turned to Hex as she watched them follow the trail of wreckage. ‘What if they find a body?’
Hex grimaced. ‘What if they don’t? There might not be anything left.’
Amber shuddered.
It wasn’t long before Paulo’s voice came back through the trees. ‘Guys, come and look.’
Li led the way through the undergrowth. Paulo and Alex were standing looking at something on the ground. Alex was waving flies away from his face. An awful lot of flies.
‘Do I really want to see this?’ groaned Amber. ‘What have you found?’ She kept her eyes on Paulo and Alex until the last moment and then looked down.
‘A donkey!’ Li was incredulous.
It was lying on its side. Flies buzzed around its eye and nostril, packed into its ears like currants. They swarmed into various small wounds on its body.
‘Probably died last night, by the look of it,’ said Paulo.
‘What killed it?’ asked Hex. ‘What are all those cuts?’
‘It’s not those you need to look at,’ said Paulo. He touched his boot to the donkey’s knee. A cluster of flies rose, buzzing angrily. Underneath was a swelling and a small, sticky wound. ‘That’s not like the other wounds. It’s a snake bite. And look at this.’ Paulo touched its head gently with his boot. The flies lifted; underneath was a dirty halter. There were sweat marks on its coat where it had carried panniers. ‘It was probably tethered in the camp, got bitten, panicked and bolted.’
For a moment they looked down at the corpse. It looked so small and harmless. Big furry ears, its eyes and muzzle ringed with white fur. Poor thing, they thought, to die like that.
They retraced their steps back through the camp to the notch in the tree. Amber and Alex reorientated themselves with the map and they were soon back into their routine again.
‘A donkey,’ said Hex. He began to giggle. He tried not to but it quivered inside him like jelly. Next to him, he saw Amber’s eyes and mouth screw up.
That was it. The five friends roared helplessly, clutching each other, holding trees, letting out the tension.
Li was the first to recover. ‘It’s not funny.’ She dabbed her eyes, shaking her head. ‘It must have been horrible.’
‘We really scared ourselves there,’ gasped Amber. She caught Hex’s eye.
‘A donkey,’ he said severely.
Amber biffed him on the shoulder. ‘Oh, don’t make me laugh again – it hurts.’ But then she was off again, and so were the others.
She stopped laughing all of a sudden and froze.
‘Hey, Amber,’ said Hex, ‘why so serious?’
Amber spoke through gritted teeth. ‘There’s something under my foot.’ Slowly she looked down.
The others followed her gaze.
The last embers of their laughter dwindled away when they saw what it was.
Just beyond the black toe of Amber’s boot something in the shape of an arrowhead was swaying from side to side.
A snake.
5 S
NAKE
Li moved away. ‘Whatever you do, Amber, don’t move. Your foot is stopping it biting. Alex, you’re too close.’
Alex shifted backwards, never taking his eyes off the thing Amber was standing on. She had her boot on it, just behind its head. The rest of its body lay in a coil behind her. It blended so well with the dark brown leaf litter that until it moved it was invisible.
Amber stared down. She felt it shift under her boot and froze. Her stomach did a somersault. ‘Um . . . the way you’re all looking at it tells me it might be a bit . . . poisonous?’
‘It’s a fer-de-lance,’ said Paulo quietly. ‘A kind of viper. Very, very poisonous.’
The snake’s body uncurled. Two metres of zigzagged tail thrashed against a tree, cracking like a whip. Amber flinched. One thought was in her head – keep her foot where it was, at all costs.
The snake thrashed again. It was angry. Hex felt its tail touch his foot and crashed into Li as he darted away.
Amber took deep breaths. It was like standing on a mine – one false move and someone could die.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Now what?’
‘We all run away and you stay standing there,’ said Hex. ‘Only joking.’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘How does she get her foot off the snake?’ asked Alex. ‘Should she just take it off and run?’
Li shook her head. ‘They can move lightning fast. She might outrun it, but if she doesn’t we’re a hell of a long way from a hospital.’
Amber had a flashback to the night before: the donkey’s screams. It had gone on for hours. That was how long it had taken to die.
‘We’ll have to kill it,’ said Hex. ‘Paulo, you’ve got a machete. Cut its head off.’
‘I might chop Amber’s foot off at the same time,’ said Paulo.
‘We could club it to death,’ said Alex.
Paulo was shaking his head. ‘We don’t have to kill it.’
Amber snorted. ‘Thanks. You can afford to be all fluffy. You haven’t got your foot on it.’
‘On the ranch we’d kill it,’ replied Paulo, ‘but that’s domesticated land. This is wild. We shouldn’t try to turn it into our backyard.’ He hefted the machete. The snake registered his movement and lifted its head, giving him a flash of yellow throat.
‘Careful,’ snapped Amber. A shaft of sunlight filtering through the trees glinted off Paulo’s blade. Her eyes widened even further. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Give us a head start.’ Paulo sliced a thin branch off a nearby tree and chopped it so that it ended in a fork, three centimetres across.
‘He’s got a plan,’ said Li. ‘He’s got that look on his face.’ The Argentinian loved tinkering with machines – or making them out of whatever materials he had to hand.
Paulo passed the branch to Amber. ‘Do you think this will go over the neck of the snake?’
She lowered the branch until it was near the snake. It reared its head up and tried to strike. The movement was so violent it actually made her ankle wobble. ‘Vicious little beggar,’ muttered Amber and pulled the stick back sharply. She passed it to Paulo. ‘It’ll probably fit.’
Paulo gave the stick to Alex. ‘Can you sharpen the ends so they’ll stick into the ground, first go?’
Alex took the stick and began to pare it with his hunting knife. ‘Spill the beans, Paulo, what are you making?’
‘I think I know,’ said Hex. ‘Amber will put that stick over the snake’s head, where her foot is. It will be stuck and we can go.’
‘With one modification,’ said Paulo. ‘We’ll have to let it go. Otherwise we’re just leaving it in a trap.’
‘It we let it go it’ll chase us,’ said Hex.
‘But we can get a head start, then pull the stake out with a length of vine.’ Paulo handed the machete to Li. ‘I need it as long as you can get.’
She cut a piece of vine and began to pull out a length of it. It was strong, like cord. She began to make a coil of it around her arm like a cable.
Amber realized her legs were burning. The wait-a-while cuts had chosen this moment to flare up. She looked down at them, longing to dig her nails in and give them a good scratch. ‘You just take your time, guys,’ she said. ‘I’ve got these cuts that are itching like hell, but I can hang on.’
Alex handed the sharpened stick back to Paulo. ‘You shouldn’t scratch anyway. You’ll make them worse.’
‘Yes, thanks for the sermon,’ grumbled Amber.
Li handed Paulo the vine. He looked at it and did a rough calculation of how much there was.
Hex watched him. ‘Paulo, when this contraption of yours is all in place, are we going to stroll away or run like hell?’
‘We’ve got about four metres of vine. That’s not a huge head start. We’ll still have to run.’
‘In that case,’ said Hex, ‘a few of us should get ahead now and mark the way. Then you wait a bit before releasing the snake and—’
Amber glared at him. ‘Are you trying to wind me up? You want me to wait like this even longer?’