Tracks of the Tiger

by Tracks of the Tiger (retail) (epub)

  ‘She would have had a few favourite trees as her territory,’ Nakula told him. ‘If the loggers took them, then she was homeless. No other female would let her into their territory, so . . .’ He shrugged. ‘In the cities, the homeless can line the streets and beg. Here, no streets. They starve quickly.’

  ‘How bad is it?’ Peter called. ‘The logging? You said the timber was in demand in the west.’

  ‘Oh, yes, very much. Hardwood in particular. It is sold through Malaysia and Singapore and sent on to Europe, to the United States, to Japan . . . It has many uses – furniture, picture frames, ornaments. It brings a lot of money, which is why it always springs up again, despite what the authorities may do to stop it.’

  ‘There’s no sustainable way of doing it?’

  ‘Oh, of course there is. There are schemes, but sustainable wood costs more. Two thirds of the logging in Indonesia is still the illegal kind. It destroys hundreds of square miles, it wipes out ecosystems . . . and there is a human cost too. If the jungle dies, then the environment dies around it. The ground erodes and water flows in different ways. The paddy fields do not flood, the crops cannot be harvested. So communities can starve too. The only people who benefit are the ones doing the illegal logging. It takes a lot of money to buy an easy conscience, but they have a lot of money—’

  The jeep swerved suddenly. Beck was flung against the side of the car and had to grab hold of the bar.

  ‘Whoa!’ Peter had been jolted so hard his glasses were askew. He pushed them back onto his nose. ‘Did we hit something?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Nakula said grimly. He slowly brought the jeep to a halt. They sat with the engine ticking over, apparently waiting for something. Then the keeper jumped down from the vehicle and took a few paces along the road. It looked like he was picking his way with great care. He seemed to be testing the ground with the soles of his feet.

  ‘What—?’ Peter asked, and suddenly the whole car shook. Nakula staggered and almost fell. The trees on either side shuddered as if a mighty wave was passing through them. The usual jungle background noise of cheeps and chirps erupted into screams of protest from a million birds.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Peter shouted over the racket.

  ‘Feels like an earthquake,’ Beck yelled back.

  ‘A tremor,’ Nakula corrected him. ‘A big one but not serious. This close to the volcano it is not unusual. Still, it would be best to get out of here.’ He pulled himself into the driver’s seat and revved the engine hard. The jeep shot forward. ‘Medan is well away from the volcanic area.’

  Beck remembered what the tour guide had said about Indonesia and the Ring of Fire, and wondered if anywhere in the country was well away from volcanic activity. But he saw what Nakula meant. Right now they were practically on the flanks of a big volcano. Anywhere else would probably be safer at the moment.

  BOOM!

  The explosion felt like red-hot needles stabbing into their eardrums without warning. Beck and Peter both cried out and clapped their hands to their ears. The jeep swerved again but Nakula fought to control the steering wheel. He glanced back at the boys and Beck saw his lips move. He couldn’t make out the words over the ringing in his ears.

  The ringing slowly died away and Nakula’s voice faded in, like someone turning up the volume control.

  ‘. . . more than just tremors. It may be an eruption.’

  The jeep shot through a cleared patch of jungle, and just for a moment Beck had a glimpse of Lasa, towering over the trees. A thick column of solid black smoke belched up from the summit. It was already twice the height of the volcano. Then the trees hid it from view again.

  ‘Shouldn’t there be warnings?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Sometimes. Not always. It goes off every few years – always small explosions; nothing to worry about if you are a safe distance away. It is the volcanoes that sleep for centuries that cause real destruction.’

  Nakula was driving much faster now, trying to find the happy compromise between getting as far away as possible and keeping control of the jeep. A puncture could trap them here. Peter opened his mouth to say something else, but Beck just put a finger to his lips and shook his head. Nakula needed to concentrate on the driving. There was nothing either of them could do to help except sit back and let him focus.

  More bangs, more hidden rumblings. Beck wasn’t sure if he was pleased or sorry that the volcano was hidden from sight. If an inescapable wave of molten lava was flowing his way right now, did he want to know?

  But Nakula glanced round at them and smiled. A little. ‘I think we are leaving it behind,’ he said. There hadn’t been any more tremors now for a couple of minutes, and the bangs were getting quieter.

  ‘Look out!’ Peter shouted suddenly. Nakula turned back, but too late.

  There was high ground to the left side of the road, low on the right. Glowing red lava had poured down from the left and carved a trench across the road. It was about two metres across and they could feel the heat beating at their faces through the open window. The sides of the trench were scorched black.

  Nakula was going too fast to stop. He did the only thing he could, which was turn the wheel hard. The vehicle swerved off the road and plunged down a sharp bank into the trees.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A branch punched through the windscreen and shattered it into a thousand pieces. Beck just had time to raise an arm and ward it off, but he felt a searing pain from his elbow up to his shoulder. Then he had a confused image of green leaves rushing towards him. He and Peter bent over double as trees and branches lashed past. Their ears were assaulted by a deafening barrage of torn metal and breaking wood. Finally the jeep crashed into a tree with a thud and stopped. Peter and Beck were flung forward and their seat belts tightened into a steel grip. Then the world was still again. Beck and Peter sat there for a moment, dazed. Their ears were ringing and there was a smell of petrol in the air.

  Leaves clung to Beck’s head and upper body. He instinctively lifted his hand to brush them away, and gasped as pain stabbed through his right arm. He gingerly held it up to check. Blood was welling up and staining the material of his shirt. The branch had gouged a nasty gash in him.

  ‘Pete? You OK?’

  Peter stared at him vacantly, but he was sitting up, and he didn’t seem to be bleeding from anywhere.

  ‘Nakula? Uh . . . Nakula . . . ?’

  Nakula was slumped forward over the steering wheel, not moving. Red, sticky blood plastered one side of his head. Something had caught him a very nasty crack. Beck gingerly released his seat belt, steeled himself and leaned forward, wincing again as his arm reminded him of the gash. He felt gently for the keeper’s neck, putting his index and middle finger next to Nakula’s Adam’s apple. If there was a pulse, that was one place it would show, where the carotid artery beat next to the windpipe.

  But there was nothing, and Beck knew with a sinking, hollow feeling that Nakula was dead.

  He had a sudden flashback to the plane crash in Alaska a few months earlier. A very similar situation, in fact. Pilot killed outright, friend Tikaani possibly injured . . . Beck felt a surge of adrenalin shoot round his body, bringing with it an urge to survive.

  As a wise man once said, let the dead bury the dead. That had been his first-aid instructor’s harsh, uncompromising advice, back in his cadet days. Your first priority is to the living.

  And that meant Peter.

  The smell of petrol was very strong indeed. Beck had an uncomfortable vision of it trickling onto a hot piece of metal and the jeep turning into a fireball. He jabbed at Peter’s seat belt, grabbed both their daysacks and kicked open the passenger door.

  ‘C’mon, we’re leaving.’

  Peter had to be half dragged out of the jeep, but they staggered a safe distance away and collapsed at the base of a giant clump of vine-shrouded bamboo. Peter could clearly walk OK, so Beck guessed nothing was broken. Possible concussion was another matter. His friend was blinking, showing a bit
more awareness than before, but he still seemed dazed.

  There were four tests for concussion. Beck had used them on Tikaani that time in Alaska. Confusion, Concentration, Neurological and . . . what was the last one? Oh, yes, Memory . . . Beck smiled at the irony. Time to get to work.

  ‘Pete . . . Pete?’ Peter’s gaze swam around a little but eventually it settled on Beck. ‘What’s your name?’

  Peter sighed. ‘Peter William Grey. That’s the Confusion test, right? I can also do this’ – he shut his eyes and touched his nose with both hands, one at a time; that was the Neurological test – ‘and I can count the months of the year backwards. December, November, October, September, August—’

  ‘OK, OK.’ Beck grinned, relieved. ‘You’re not concussed. Though I haven’t done the Memory test yet.’

  ‘Memory test? I remember you telling me all about how you had to do this test on Tikaani. Does that count?’

  ‘Yeah, it counts. Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘You’re, uh, hurt . . .’

  Peter was looking at his arm. Beck studied it again, more carefully this time. The flow of blood seemed to be slowing down. The material of his shirt was sticking to the wound and helping the blood to clot. It wasn’t an ideal bandage but it was better than nothing.

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  Then Peter went white. His gaze was fixed on Nakula. ‘What about . . . ? Is he . . . ?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Beck said gently. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘I . . . I’ve never seen a . . .’

  Most of you will never have seen a dead body before. Beck’s instructor’s voice was back. The man had been frank and unsympathetic but Beck had always been glad of the training. If you ever do, you will find they all have one very distinct characteristic. They are dead, and that means, except in very bad movies, that they’re not going anywhere.

  There was a cracking sound through the trees and Beck remembered how they had got into this in the first place. They had swerved to avoid a stream of lava. The lava was on the move.

  It came flowing very slowly down the bank towards them. It didn’t look immediately life-threatening, but it ate up the ground remorselessly and there was no stopping it – glowing red sludge, four metres wide and half a metre deep. The front end was charred black, and a dark crust floated on top of it. The red shone out through cracks in the crust. Whenever a leaf or a branch was touched by the flow, it flared up into flame and was consumed in seconds.

  The jungle air was hot and humid. Beck could already feel a sheen of sweat clinging to his body. But the lava radiated a hot, dry heat, like an electric fire turned up way too high. If the jungle hadn’t been so damp, Beck guessed it could have started a fire that would have killed them already.

  He suddenly remembered the petrol. They probably had only minutes left to escape. ‘We really need to get out of here,’ he said.

  Peter visibly pulled himself together. ‘Yeah, we do.’

  They scrambled to their feet and looked at the jeep.

  It clearly wasn’t going anywhere, the wheels twisted and the engine smoking. So, Beck thought, they were on foot in the middle of the jungle . . .

  His mind ran through what they had brought with them. They were dressed in reasonably good clothes for the jungle. They had bottles of water in their packs. He felt for the comforting weight at his neck, where his fire steel hung. It was a useful gadget for making fire and he (almost) never went anywhere without it.

  On the other hand, they didn’t have a knife, they didn’t have supplies of food, they didn’t have any wire or rope . . . Beck bit his lip. Peter’s parents might have raised an eyebrow if he’d said he wanted to take some rope with him on the trip – but he should have brought along his pocket knife, at least.

  He leaned into the back of the jeep and rummaged around with his one good hand.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking for stuff . . . anything we can use . . .’

  ‘Like on the plane?’

  ‘Like on the plane.’

  Peter meant the plane they had been forced to jump out of over the Sahara to escape diamond smugglers who wanted to shoot them. They had searched the cargo area for anything that might help them stay alive in the desert. There had been a first aid kit, some water bottles, a knife and food. This time . . .

  ‘There’s nothing here!’ Beck exclaimed in disbelief. ‘Not even a first aid kit! Who goes driving in the jungle without a first aid kit?’

  Beck was frantically looking under the seats, then in the side door pockets. He soon found an oil-stained roll of canvas wrapped around the jeep’s wheel-changing tools. They came tumbling out onto the ground. He couldn’t see a use for most of the items, but at least there was a crowbar. One end had the solid grip that fastened onto the wheel nuts. The other end was a flat wedge, like a giant screwdriver. Now, that had to be useful.

  One thing there wasn’t, though, was a knife. Beck couldn’t imagine getting by in the jungle without one. On the other hand, fragments of the windscreen lay all around. One in particular caught his attention. It was almost fifteen centimetres long – a thin, jagged triangle that came to a very sharp point. He carefully picked it up between two fingers, holding it firmly on its flat sides. This was probably the closest he was going to get to a knife.

  He leaned into the back of the jeep where they had been sitting, and pressed the tip of the glass into the seat leather. It easily punctured the covering. Beck worked it back and forth and the seat’s stuffing burst out of the cut. It was dry and yellow and fluffy.

  Peter was looking really anxious. ‘Um, the lava’s still getting closer . . . What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m making a knife. You gather up as much stuffing as you can and put it in our packs. It will act as tinder later on,’ Beck explained.

  Heat from the lava burned into his back and he blinked trickles of sweat from his eyes. He had to work quickly.

  He had now cut off a strip of the leather. He needed two hands for the next bit of the job, which meant using his right hand – and that hurt. But he managed to wrap the leather round and round one end of the glass shard, and tie it off. There was still half the shard’s length sticking out. Now he could grip it properly, like a knife, without slicing his hand open.

  Unfortunately he didn’t have any safe way of carrying it – not without breaking it or giving himself a nasty cut. He opened up one of the pockets of his daysack and dropped it in.

  ‘The lava’s getting really close,’ Peter pointed out. He had crammed as much stuffing as he could get into both the packs.

  ‘Right.’ Beck could feel it without turning round. The front edge of the lava was maybe two metres away now. He took one last look around, but there really didn’t seem to be anything more they could use. They had daysacks, with water bottles and a lot of seat stuffing. They had a knife, of sorts. They had the crowbar. And that was it.

  And then he gave Nakula a final check. The force of the crash had pushed the wheel and the dashboard right back against the driver. Nakula’s body was pinned in the wreckage. They could probably get him free, but it would be a lot more complicated than just undoing his seat belt. It would take time that they didn’t have.

  I’m sorry, he thought.

  The air around him was shimmering with heat. A cluster of bushes right next to him suddenly burst into flame and Beck staggered backwards. Peter just managed to prevent him from falling.

  Beck picked up his daysack and swung it onto his back. He look around and saw what looked like an animal trail leading away from the crash site. It was a line of slightly less densely packed vegetation, anyway. It was as good a way to go as any.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.

  The lava reached the wrecked jeep before Beck and Peter had even gone another ten metres. There was a high-pitched whine and then a violent explosion. A blast of burning air slammed into their backs and knocked them to the ground – though the mass of vegetation absorbed most of the impa
ct. As Beck and Peter picked themselves up, they saw orange flames flickering through the trees and heard the crackling of burning wood and smelled scorched rubber.

  Beck sent up a final silent prayer for the soul of Nakula. He wondered what religion the keeper had been. Indonesia was officially Muslim but had a strong Hindu past. He was pretty certain Muslims preferred to bury their dead. Hindus went in for cremation, didn’t they? In that case he hoped Nakula was a Hindu. But whatever the man had been, he would surely have understood why they had to leave him. Beck prayed to the God he knew; he prayed silently and quickly – for Nakula, and for the strength to survive themselves.

  ‘So, now what?’ Peter asked quietly.

  ‘I don’t know. Let me think.’

  Beck took in their surroundings. He couldn’t see the lava but it might still be coming. Hopefully it would cool down before it got much further. A burning smell still forced its way through the damp leaves, and there was the small matter of an enormous exploding volcano a short distance away. They needed to check how that was doing.

  The animal trail they had been following had just vanished, dissolving into the foliage – a common experience in the jungle. Dead leaves and vines were thick beneath their feet. Above them the canopy made it as gloomy as an overcast day – they couldn’t see the sun or the sky. The surrounding trees and vines trapped the heat and the moisture of the jungle. It would be at least seventy or eighty per cent humidity – one hundred per cent being the point where the air is so saturated, the water starts falling out of it as rain or mist. The air here was so damp that nothing it touched could ever feel completely dry.

  Beck looked his friend up and down. Peter’s hair was matted and his clothes clung to his body. Beck knew he didn’t look any better – probably worse, in fact, thanks to the cut in his arm. They were both sweating, but in this humidity the sweat wouldn’t be able to evaporate and would therefore have no cooling effect. And the wound to his arm was only going to get worse. Jungles are like that: everything grows bigger faster in the jungle, and that includes bacteria. An open wound could go septic very quickly indeed. If gangrene set in, as cells of his body died and rotted, his arm could need amputating just to save his life.