Tracks of the Tiger

by Tracks of the Tiger (retail) (epub)

  Urgent, angry male voices came through the trees, and they were aware of people pushing their way through the undergrowth.

  Peter and Beck turned and ran.

  There was no time for hiding or camouflaging themselves now. All they could do was put some distance between themselves and their pursuers. It was a straightforward race, driven by desperation. The losers would either go to jail or end up dead.

  Vines and twigs lashed at their faces. Fallen branches twisted and moved underfoot. The jungle seemed to be against them, as if it wanted to hold them back and deliver them into the hands of the men who were ruining it. Beck had no idea of direction and no plan for hiding or evading.

  The shouts behind them grew fainter, but there was still someone coming after them. It sounded like just one man. One very determined man – which also made him dangerous.

  A wall of thorns loomed in front of them. Even as they ran towards it, Beck was scanning it, trying to work out a weak spot where they could squeeze through. But there wasn’t one. The vegetation was impenetrable. He cursed under his breath. They were going to have to go round it, left or right. And he could hear the man getting closer and closer, and—

  And suddenly every one of his worries became secondary. The hunter chasing them was nothing compared to the hunter that Beck suddenly saw poised on a fallen trunk just off to his side.

  The tiger’s yellow eyes glared at them. It dug its claws into the tree and bared its long teeth . . . and roared.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Its stripes made it part of the light and shadow of the background. The jungle seemed to shift and shimmer for a moment, then there it was, two metres and 130 kilos of muscle. It felt like the avenging spirit of the rainforest, come to punish the wrongdoers who’d invaded it.

  Peter stood paralysed, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Beck’s mind raced: blurred images of a thousand different survival scenarios flashed through his mind in a second. He couldn’t latch onto a single one. Fear was winning the mental battle to find a strategy. He fought to control the panic. What to do when a tiger is facing you? Maybe there wasn’t anything he could do. Maybe that was the point. His mind was working better now. Just stay still, he told himself.

  The noise of someone crashing though the jungle behind them made Beck look round. The logger! He was the least of their worries now. Beck tried to swallow, clear his throat, shout a warning. But his body wouldn’t obey him. It felt like some force was compelling him to keep quiet.

  Then he remembered that tigers like to attack from behind. He whipped his head back to face the animal. That was one thing he did know about encountering a tiger – try to keep facing it. This one didn’t seem very impressed by the show of resistance. It snarled and lashed its tail.

  The tiger’s face was narrow. The deep fur around its eyes was striped white and black. Beck suddenly felt he was looking into the eyes of an old, wise man. They were golden, he saw now, not just yellow, and the tiger’s gaze seemed to bore into his skull. And Beck suddenly felt goose pimples up his back. He felt their minds connect.

  You invade my realm. You take what isn’t yours. You bring fire and axes and machines to destroy and despoil.

  No! I take only what I need. I eat to stay alive. I make no mark on your jungle. I respect your jungle. Totally.

  And through all his terror, Beck felt such respect for the tiger. It was an amazing creature. A perfect killing machine. Every particle of it belonged in this humid, overgrown world. It didn’t matter how hard Beck and Peter tried, they would always be strangers here. Maybe the tiger was the jungle’s defence mechanism, the same way Beck’s body would produce antibodies if he caught a cold. Maybe this was how the jungle fought back.

  Never turn and run . . . Beck remembered now. His father had often told him how tigers are chase animals. They pursue you if you try to outrun them. Hold your ground. Hold your nerve. Beck’s father’s voice was loud and calm in his ear, as it had always been at critical moments in his life. Hold your nerve. Somehow Beck felt calm now; he just knew that whatever was about to happen was right and they couldn’t fight it.

  Then the tiger pounced and the spell was broken. A deadly predator was flying straight at them. Beck instinctively dived and pushed Peter away with all his strength, then scrambled away in the other direction. Give it two targets: one of them might survive.

  But the tiger reached where they had been standing in one bound, then kept going. It sprang right past them and disappeared into the undergrowth, towards the approaching logger.

  Peter and Beck stared at each other.

  ‘It . . . it could have taken us!’ Peter gasped.

  He was right. It could have. Beck didn’t say anything out loud, but he looked back in the direction the tiger had gone for a moment. Did the creature really understand they weren’t the ones who were a danger to the jungle?

  ‘Let’s not wait for it to change its mind . . .’

  They ran in the other direction. Beck wasn’t even sure what direction it was, except that it was away from the tiger.

  The jungle didn’t get any easier to run through. Its hands reached out and grabbed at them. It snagged their clothes and caught their feet. And where do you think you’re going? it seemed to be saying. Just hold on a moment . . .

  But fear made them press on. For all they knew, the tiger might change its mind and come after them. It could be gliding effortlessly through the tangled masses of vegetation while they lumbered their way through.

  But then they heard another noise in the distance – a human scream. Then it was cut off, as if someone had thrown a switch.

  The boys looked at each other and shuddered.

  ‘Will it come back for us?’ Peter asked. His chest was heaving.

  ‘Not if it has its kill.’

  Beck slowed down and tried to get a grip. They needed some plan or they would just end up walking in circles. He had to get an idea of their direction again – and find a source of drinking water and food. They would need shelter for that night. None of the basic survival requirements had changed. Protection. Rescue. Water. Food. Just remember the basics, Beck.

  And they had to keep moving. The tiger was unlikely to be alone.

  ‘We need to find the river,’ Beck said, ‘and keep going.’

  They did find the river again. The sound of running water led them to it. The banks were shallower here. The land was flattening out and the river was widening. Beck knew that this meant they must be getting nearer to the sea. He was still counting on the river bringing them either to the coast or to civilization. It looked like at least one of those might be near.

  The boys pressed on through the jungle with a new urgency. It had fed them and sheltered them, but it had also made it quite clear that it did not belong to humans. It had a life-force of its own and it certainly wasn’t cutting them any slack. So they followed the water, they kept an eye out for crocodiles and they kept moving.

  The river began to widen more now, and its flow grew slower. This was definitely a river nearing the end of its course. The water was getting darker and, Beck noticed, the going underfoot was becoming harder.

  They had been climbing over fallen trees, or ducking under low-hanging branches. Now there were times when that was all they seemed to do.

  ‘Is it just me,’ Peter said eventually as they helped each other clamber over a tangled mat of dead branches, ‘or are all these trees growing horizontally?’

  ‘It’s the tsunami,’ Beck told him grimly. He helped Peter climb back down to the ground. ‘Remember? Boxing Day two thousand and four. This giant wave washed over coastlines all around this part of the world. In some places it went inland a mile and it killed over three hundred thousand people. This place would have been under three metres of water.’

  But nature bounced back, Beck reflected. Animals, insects and plants carried on regardless. Nature’s relentless march. Apart from the fallen trees, there was nothing to tell this had once been a place of death. The tho
usands of corpses had long since rotted away, or been consumed by crocs.

  Peter was quiet for a moment. Then his face brightened. ‘But that must mean we’re close to the sea!’

  ‘We can’t be far,’ Beck agreed, and after that there was a spring in their step.

  They still couldn’t see any further than the nearest river bend. It was fun to fantasize that after the next corner the trees would suddenly clear and they would be looking out at a golden beach and blue sea. Then they could collapse onto the soft sand and let their exhausted bodies recharge.

  After a while, though, a distinct smell began to tickle at Beck’s nostrils and he guessed that they wouldn’t be seeing the sea soon after all. The sea would be clean and fresh. This was pungent and rotting.

  Sure enough, the view did clear as they came round a bend. The trees thinned out and disappeared. The river widened into a pool of dark water that vanished into a tangle of tall green reeds. Beck’s heart sank as he looked out over what lay ahead. He had been forewarned by the smell, but the intimidating vista made the spirit drain out of him. He walked forward to the bank, where dark water lapped at his toes.

  ‘It’s a swamp,’ Peter groaned, ‘isn’t it?’

  ‘Yup. It’s a swamp.’

  At least the jungle had given them firm ground to stand on. What lay ahead was a vast expanse of stagnant, stinking black mud and water. Beck knew it could be waist high, or deeper. It loomed in front of them for a width of about twenty metres, the length of a swimming pool. Then, beyond it, a thick mass of two-metre-high reeds grew straight out of the water. They were so closely packed together that they almost looked like blades of grass in a land of giants.

  Beck peered in either direction, along the swamp’s edge. Maybe they could go round? But, no, he knew the band of swamp could stretch for miles and miles and miles. Meanwhile the sea could only be a few hundred metres away, dead ahead. And they certainly couldn’t go back – not into that realm of tigers and illegal loggers.

  Rotting vegetation and putrid water. That had been the giveaway smell. Every dead thing in the jungle that got washed away by the river sooner or later ended up here. This was the sewer of the jungle, more decaying matter and disease per square centimetre than anywhere they had been so far. The home of snakes and death. And they were going to have to wade through it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Can we swim it?’ Peter asked. He was trying to look and sound optimistic. But from the way his face twisted when he looked at the water, Beck knew his friend was hoping for a miracle.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to wade through carefully – and I’ve got to keep it away from my wound. We definitely couldn’t swim through the reeds. The only way to get through them is to push. Backwards.’

  ‘Backwards?’

  ‘The edges of those reeds can shred your face and hands. They are razor-sharp. It’s easier to push through backwards.’

  ‘Easy to keep going round in circles too, I imagine.’ Peter looked thoughtfully at the bed of towering reeds. His mind seemed to be running through the implications of being waist-deep in reeds that were taller than a man. ‘We won’t be able to see a thing. No landmarks; we’ll barely be able to see the sun to navigate by. We could lose all sense of direction.’

  ‘We need a plan,’ Beck agreed. ‘If we had some other kit I’d make a compass, but we don’t.’ He sighed. ‘We’ll just have to keep an eye—’

  ‘What would you need to make a compass?’ Peter interrupted him.

  ‘Something that’s metal, and very small. And it would have to be iron or steel. Magnetic. Your camera’s all plastic and aluminium, so that wouldn’t work and—’

  ‘This is steel.’ Peter held up his left hand and his watch flashed in the sun.

  Beck smiled and shook his head. ‘Sorry, Pete. It’s still too heavy—’

  ‘Not the watch. This bit.’

  Peter unbuckled the watch from his wrist and held it up. It was an old-fashioned leather strap with a buckle at each end. The central part of the buckle was a thin metal pin.

  ‘That’s definitely steel?’ Beck felt his hopes rising.

  ‘Definitely. It said on the box.’

  ‘Then it’s perfect . . .’

  Beck pried the pin of the watchstrap free. It was thin, just over a centimetre long. ‘This is going to sound weird . . .’

  ‘A lot of what you say sounds weird,’ Peter said dolefully, looking at the remains of his watchstrap. He slid it into a pocket of his daysack and zipped it up.

  Beck passed him the pin. ‘You need to hold it like this, between thumb and forefinger, and just stroke it through your hair. Slowly and gently, over and over again. At least a hundred times.’

  Peter’s only further comment was to raise his eyebrows. Then he took the pin and started to do as he was told. ‘And this magnetizes it?’ Stroke, stroke, stroke . . .

  ‘Eventually.’

  Anything with iron in it, like steel, could be magnetized. It was a case of making all the atoms line up in the same direction. That could be done by hitting it repeatedly. Or it could be done with an electric current. Or just a field of static electricity.

  After three days in the jungle, Beck reflected, their hair was filthy. But even unwashed, matted hair generated a slight static charge when something was rubbed through it. By stroking it through his hair, Peter was gently magnetizing the metal pin. And something that was long, thin and magnetized would always point in one direction, like a compass needle – towards the magnetic north pole.

  But Beck still needed something to support it. The field would be so weak that almost any resistance would overcome it and stop the needle from pointing. With a stronger magnet he could have dangled it from a string, or a piece of vine. But this tiny little thing would just be blown around by the slightest puff of wind or movement. Some kind of container was needed, and Beck could only think of one.

  He looked unhappily at his water bottle. He could cut the end off it, fill it with water and float the needle on that. He would be plus one compass but minus a water bottle, and he really needed that too.

  ‘If we had wire,’ Peter said conversationally (stroke, stroke, stroke), ‘we could probably connect the pin to my camera’s batteries. It wouldn’t be much of an electrical current but it would have the same effect—’

  ‘Yes!’ Beck exclaimed. ‘Brilliant!’

  Though it wasn’t the camera he was after. While Peter kept stroking, Beck tugged the camera out of its case and removed the lens cap. It was just a piece of plastic that protected the glass of the lens, about five centimetres across and one deep. And it could hold water.

  ‘Um – may I?’ Beck remembered to ask, knowing it was Peter’s pride and joy.

  ‘Oh, please, be my guest . . .’

  Beck laid the lens cap on the ground and carefully half filled it with water. Then he looked around for something that the pin could float on without sinking. A small green leaf did the trick.

  ‘OK, you can stop stroking now . . .’

  Beck took the pin and laid it on the leaf that bobbed around in the middle of the lens cap. It spun gently, slowed down, stopped, and drifted over to one side of the cap. He poked it with the tip of the knife. It spun again, stopped, and again drifted to one side while the boys peered down at it. It came to rest in the same position.

  ‘See,’ Beck said happily, ‘it’s always pointing in the same direction! We’ve got a compass! Now let’s go back up the river, back to where the water’s clean, and fill our bottles. It’ll be something like ninety per cent humidity in the reeds – we’re going to get thirsty. And then we’ll go for it.’

  Ten minutes later, they slid into the watery gunk of the swamp.

  At first it felt revolting, but that was just in the mind. Beck tried to tell himself that it was no worse than walking into a muddy river with his clothes on. But the goo felt slimy as it trickled into his shoes, soaked his socks, worked its way up his trousers. He tried to imagine it wa
s clear and blue, like the pool back in the jungle.

  Then they started to walk – or rather wade – and the real yuk factor hit them.

  They couldn’t see the bottom through the black mud but they could feel it. It was a twisted mat of rotten wood and roots and silt. The tsunami had laid down a whole new layer of debris which had sunk to the bottom. It was impossible to get a sense of balance. The boys wobbled and wavered, and several times they nearly tripped. It was like wading through wet cement. Meanwhile the disturbed mud sucked and gurgled, releasing gas and vapours from the rotting matter: it was like sticking your head down a loo.

  In no time at all sweat was pouring down their faces. Swarms of flies buzzed around their heads, relentless and aggressive. Beck knew this was truly hell on earth, but he kept his arms above his head, protecting the compass – and his injured arm – and pressed on.

  When you’re going through hell, keep walking. Beck’s father had often quoted Winston Churchill to him as a boy. He’d been one of his father’s heroes.

  And so they walked. Every step was an effort. First you had to twist your foot free of the swamp’s invisible grip. You had to be firm enough to break the suction, gentle enough not to leave your shoe behind. Then you had to find somewhere more or less secure to put your foot down again. It was slow, hard work, and that was just crossing the open swamp to the reeds. The boys were up to their waists in mud and black water, and the man-high reeds loomed above them like a wall. There was no break in it, no obvious way through.

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Backwards?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Backwards.’

  They turned round to face the way they had come, and then started to move backwards into the mass of reeds.

  Immediately it was twice as hard. Every step was a struggle: it took longer to lift up their feet, longer to find somewhere to put them down again, and longer because the sheer weight of the reeds was pushing back at them.