by Jack Heath
All the locks click.
‘Where are they going?’ Taylor demands.
And then the Hummer starts rolling backwards.
You unbuckle your seatbelt and wrench at the door handle, but it’s locked. You’re trapped!
‘Myron!’ Taylor yells. ‘We’re stuck!’
The Hummer rolls faster and faster. You feel sick. You grab for the backpack, dig out the phone and dial emergency services—
But it’s too late. The Hummer lurches backwards, and suddenly you realise that it’s falling over the cliff into the ravine!
‘Noooooooo!’ you scream, as the vehicle plummets down and down towards the jagged rocks …
THE END.
For another try, go here.
‘I have your phone!’ you scream.
Everyone freezes.
Myron looks faintly amused. ‘Pardon me?’
You dig the phone out of your pocket and hold it up. ‘I have your phone and I called emergency services and they heard this whole conversation so you can’t push us off the cliff because they’ll know you did it,’ you say rapidly.
‘Give me that!’ Myron demands.
The driver grabs for the phone. You hold it out of reach.
‘But,’ you say, ‘if you let us go, no-one can prove that this wasn’t all just a big joke.’
Myron and the driver look at one another.
A distant thudding sound fills the air. You can see a helicopter circling overhead, searchlight beaming through the fog. The train conductor probably summoned it, but Myron doesn’t know that. He might think it’s the cops.
‘Time to decide,’ you tell Myron. ‘Are you going to prison, or not?’
Myron glares at you for a long time.
‘Let them go,’ he finally tells the driver.
‘Yes, Your Grace.’ The driver releases your collar.
‘I can’t believe you would do this to me!’ Taylor bellows at Myron.
‘Do what?’ Myron smiles. ‘This was all just a big joke.’
You survived! There are ten other ways to escape the danger—try to find them all!
You catch up to Taylor quickly. He’s sprinting down the tracks, screaming. He could probably run faster if he saved his breath, but you’re too puffed to tell him so.
It’s hard to believe that only a minute ago you were worried about freezing to death. It’s boiling now. You can feel the lava approaching. When you risk a glance over your shoulder, there it is in the distance: a bubbling river of orange rock streaming down Mount Grave towards you. Steam and ash blend to turn the air into a toxic fog.
‘We’re going to die!’ Taylor wails. ‘We’re going to die!’
‘There!’ you yell, pointing. Just off the tracks you can see a shadow in a rock wall. The closer you get, the surer you are—it’s the entrance to a cave. Somewhere to shelter from the lava.
But as you run closer and closer, you start to worry. What if it’s not deep enough? Or too deep—what if there’s more lava inside? Maybe you should keep running down the tracks instead.
Taylor has seen the cave too. ‘Do we go in?’ he shouts over the quaking of the mountain.
If you go into the cave, go here.
If you keep sprinting down the slope, go here.
You turn away from the rails and sprint towards the shadow, desperately hoping that it’s a cave and not just a divot in the rock face. Taylor is right behind you, huffing and puffing. The heat of the lava singes your skin through your clothes.
You hit the shadow and keep going, sprinting into the pitch blackness of the cave. Yes! It’s deep enough. Deep, and cool. There isn’t any lava bubbling up within. Hopefully the flow outside will cruise right past.
You run through the darkness, arms outstretched until you crash into a wall. Taylor bumps into you.
‘Keep going!’ he hisses.
‘I can’t!’ you say. ‘It’s a dead end!’
The cave stops here. There’s nowhere else to go.
‘No!’ Taylor cries. ‘The lava’s right behind us!’
‘What?’ You look back, and then you see the tell-tale flickering glow. You can feel the heat. The lava is coming into the cave, as if it’s hunting you.
‘What do we do?’ Taylor shrieks.
Earlier, did you pick up the two halves of the railway sleeper?
If you did, go here.
If you didn’t, go here.
‘Forget the cave!’ you shout. ‘Keep running!’
You sprint desperately down the mountain, faster than ever before. Chunks of stone whistle past your ears like bullets. The lava hasn’t reached you, but the rails are glowing red beneath your feet. It feels as though you are running on a hotplate.
You risk a glance over your shoulder. The top of the mountain is just gone, the remains of the shattered peak barely visible in the smoke. The lava is close, rolling down the hill towards you. But your real problem is the ash raining down from the sky like crows’ feathers.
At school you learned about Pompeii, an ancient Roman town. When a volcano near Pompeii erupted, it wasn’t the lava that killed everyone—it was the ash, burying eleven thousand people alive.
‘I can’t breathe!’ Taylor cries. His face is black with soot. ‘We have to get out from under this ash cloud!’
Earlier, did you pick up the two halves of the railway sleeper?
If you did, go here.
If you didn’t, go here.
The walls of the cave aren’t smooth. There are cracks between the jutting rocks.
You toss one of the planks to Taylor. ‘Help me!’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Saving our lives.’
You jam one end of the sleeper into a crack. Taylor gets the idea. He sticks the other plank into the crack and you both pull down with all your might.
The sleeper shifts the massive rocks. They tumble into the cave with a tremendous boom, blocking the path of the lava. When the echoes die away, you can’t hear the eruption anymore. The rocks have blocked out all the sound from the outside world.
‘At last,’ you say. ‘We’re safe.’
‘Safe?’ Taylor says. ‘We’re trapped!’
Suddenly it dawns on you: he’s right. The fallen stones may be keeping the lava out, but they’re also keeping you in! You have no phone and no digging tools. The lava is already cooling, turning into solid rock.
You and Taylor are buried alive—forever!
THE END.
For another try, go here.
You don’t have the planks, but the walls aren’t sheer.
You can see plenty of cracks to use as hand- and footholds.
‘Climb!’ you shout. ‘Go, go, go!’
Taylor scrambles up the wall like a possum up a tree. You follow him, fingers aching against the hot stone, the soles of your feet burning.
The ceiling isn’t high. Soon you’re both pressed up against it as the lava rolls into the cave beneath you.
‘Now what?’ Taylor demands.
‘I don’t know! I’m thinking.’
But you’re out of time. The air shimmers around you. It’s too hot to breathe. You feel like you’re a chicken roasting on a spit. And then a bubble pops in the lava below, shooting up a ball of fire—
THE END.
For another try, go here.
‘Take this!’ you shout, and throw one of the planks to Taylor.
He catches it. ‘What for?’
‘Snowboarding!’ Is it possible to use half a railway sleeper as a snowboard? You can only hope so.
‘But there’s no snow!’ Taylor yells.
You look down. He’s right. The snow has melted in the heat from the lava, leaving only a slushy mud made of water and ash.
‘Ride the rails!’ you cry. Without waiting for him to reply, you jump. In mid-air you press the plank to your feet and land sideways on one of the tracks. Suddenly you’re sliding down the mountain like a pro skateboarder on a handrail.
Taylor gets the idea im
mediately. He leaps onto his plank with ease and zooms past you on the other rail, his arms stretched sideways for balance.
‘Woohoo!’ he bellows as he rockets away down the mountain.
You know how he feels. Despite the danger, it’s thrilling; the wind blasting your face, the heat at your back, the pounding of your heart as you ride your improvised snowboard out of the ash cloud.
There’s so much smoke in the air that it takes you a while to realise that some of it is coming from beneath you. When you look down, you realise that your plank is shooting sparks. The friction against the hot rails is burning through the wood.
‘Taylor!’ you shout. ‘My board’s on fire!’
Go here.
‘Just keep running!’ you scream, but you’re not sure if Taylor hears you. The ash cloud descends thicker and thicker, clogging the air with black flakes. Even without carrying the added weight of the railway sleeper, you can’t outrun it.
Taylor is invisible. The whole world has turned black.
‘Taylor?’ you yell.
No reply except the thundering of the mountain.
Now you’re not so much running through the ash as swimming in it. The flakes sting your skin and burn the inside of your nostrils. You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe!
Your limbs go floppy and you slip off into a dreamless sleep, never to wake up.
THE END.
For another try, go here.
Taylor is too far ahead to hear. He’s zooming down towards—
The train station. You’re almost at the bottom of the mountain! There’s blue sky above you; you’re out of the ash cloud.
Something honks behind you. It sounds like the foghorn of a cruise ship. You look around and see the train careening down the mountain towards you.
They must have turned around when you and Taylor fell out the back. Now the train is travelling at top speed, trying to outrun the lava flow.
You throw yourself off the plank and land in the slush beside the tracks. You’re out of harm’s way, but that’s not good enough. Your plank is lying sideways across the train’s path. If the wheels hit it they could skip off the rails. Pigeon and everyone else on board is in danger.
You drag yourself back through the mud to the plank as the train thunders nearer. The churning of the gigantic wheels is deafening. They’re too close. If you try to grab the plank, the rims could slice off your hand.
If you reach out and try to snatch the plank out of the way to save the train, go here.
If you crawl to safety, go here.
You grab the plank and pull. But it’s jammed between the rails!
‘No!’ you scream, as the train thunders towards you.
You pull even harder, adrenaline filling your veins.
There! The plank comes free of the tracks. You tumble over backwards just in time as the train rockets past, brakes shrieking. You scramble to your feet, coughing up soot, and chase it down the hill to the station.
Taylor has already climbed onto the platform by the time the train arrives. Two broad-shouldered men with crew cuts and black suits hustle out the doors of the carriage and huddle around him, as though he’s the President of the United States and they’re the secret service. One of them is muttering into his cufflinks, perhaps talking on a hidden radio.
They must be his security detail. He was telling the truth after all.
You haul yourself up onto the platform just as Pigeon walks out of the train.
‘Pigeon!’ you yell.
She turns around and gapes at you. Only then do you remember that you’re covered in ash, mud and splintered pieces of railway sleeper.
She hugs you anyway. ‘What happened to you?’ she demands.
‘I’ll tell you on the way home,’ you say. ‘Let’s get out of here. For our next holiday, how about we go to the beach?’
You survived! There are ten other ways to escape the danger—try to find them all!
You dive backwards just in time. The massive train wheels don’t cut off your hand. But when they hit the plank, they skip off the rails and land in the mud.
The train stops dead and moans like a dying dragon as it starts to tilt, engine screaming, metal creaking, wheels churning against the ground. Too late, you realise that it’s going to topple over—
And that it’s going to land right on top of you!
You try to scramble out of the way, but the train is falling too fast. A hundred tonnes of steel block out the sun as the train tips over.
The last thing you see is Pigeon’s terrified face behind the window.
Crunch!
THE END.
For another try, go here.
‘Taylor! Wait up!’ You follow him towards the bushes, trudging across the ice.
He’s already touching the frost-rotted leaves and pulling them aside. ‘Here, puppy!’ he says in a sing-song voice. ‘Here, puppy! Here, pup!’
There’s no dog. Instead, when he pushes the branches out of the way, a hole is revealed in the stone behind. It’s a cave—no, wait, there are rails on the floor inside, and wooden support struts propping up the ceiling. It’s a mine shaft. It must have been abandoned many years ago—long enough for these bushes to grow over the top of the entrance.
‘Wow! Cool!’ Taylor says.
You don’t think it’s cool. You think it looks like a great place to fall into a hidden pit and break your neck.
‘Let’s go in,’ Taylor says.
‘Let’s not go in,’ you say. ‘What if the train comes back and they don’t see us?’
‘What if we freeze to death before it gets here? We need to get out of this wind, at least for a while.’
You stare into the gloom of the mine shaft. It doesn’t exactly look warm, but you know Taylor’s right. That wind is a killer.
‘OK,’ you say finally. ‘But keep listening. We want to hear that train coming, all right?’
‘Relax. They know where we fell off. They’ll find us.’
You’re not convinced. Maybe you should scatter the broken pieces of your phone outside the cave entrance. They’re shiny. They might be visible from the train window.
On the other hand, the fragments are also sharp. Someone might step on them and get hurt. But why would anyone be barefoot out here?
Do you fling the bits of phone out onto the snow, or do you leave them in your pocket? Make your choice, and then turn here.
The conductor waits until everyone is seated before making an announcement over the PA: ‘OK, everybody, buckle up. We’re going to head up to the top of Mount Grave so we can use the radio equipment to call for help.’
You wonder if he came to this decision on his own or if you managed to convince him.
‘Well,’ Pigeon says, ‘you got your way.’ She doesn’t say I hope you made the right decision, but you can see her thinking it.
You don’t reply. That’s the trouble with unspoken criticisms; you can’t respond to them.
‘I’ll ask you all to lean right back in your seats,’ the conductor says. ‘We’ll be going at our top speed.’
You press the back of your head to the chair just in time. The train launches forward like a ball out of a cannon. It’s much faster than before—your whole body is crushed into the seat. There’s a painful pressure in your head, as though your brain is being squished against the inside of your skull.
‘Whooooooo!’ Pigeon crows. At least she’s having a good time. You turn your head to look at her, and immediately regret it. The force on your neck is enormous, and the trees are flying past the window so fast that you start to feel sick.
You’re about to throw up all over Pigeon when the train begins to slow down. The wheels clatter with less and less vigour, and the squeezing inside your head fades. Is it possible that you’re nearly at the top already?
The conductor seems to read your mind. ‘Welcome,’ he says, ‘to the peak of Mount Grave.’
Go here.
When you stoop to follow Taylor into the cave
, you see him walking deeper into the darkness. ‘Where are you going?’ you hiss.
‘Why are you whispering?’ he asks. ‘There’s no-one else around. That’s our whole problem. Helloooooo?’
His voice bounces around the blackness of the mine shaft.
You shush him. ‘We should stay near the entrance.’
‘But look at this place!’ He sweeps his arm around. ‘Why don’t you want to explore?’
A growling echoes through the gloom, much louder than before. It sounds like an idling lawnmower.
‘That’s why!’ you whisper.
All the colour drains out of Taylor’s face. ‘Where is that coming from?’
It’s hard to tell. The dog—or whatever it is—could be deeper in the mine shaft. Or it could be concealed by the bushes just outside the entrance.
Which way should you go?
If you go further into the tunnel, go here.
If you head back towards the entrance, go here.
As the bear pulls Taylor towards its terrifying maw, you run at it, waving your arms. ‘Let him go!’ you scream.
There’s no reason to believe that the bear speaks English, but the yelling actually seems to work. The creature gives you a puzzled look, and then drops Taylor. He hits the ground with a thump, whimpering.
‘Now go away!’ you shout.
The bear doesn’t. Instead, it lumbers towards you, black lips peeling back over sharp teeth. Hot, foul breath washes over you.
‘No!’
You turn to run, but it’s too late. The bear grabs you, crushing your ankle with a mighty claw. You trip and land facedown in the dirt. Your nose stings as the bear drags you backwards into the darkness of the mine shaft.
If you scattered the pieces of your phone outside the entrance, go here.
If you didn’t, go here.
