Python Adventure

by Anthony McGowan

  ‘OK, then a better way is the bow drill method.’

  Roger Hunt nodded. ‘Yep, that’s what I’d go for. So what do we need?’

  ‘Er, a bow and a drill, for a start. Then the softwood for the bottom, the what-d’you-call-it, er, fireboard, that’s it, and some hardwood for the top section.’

  ‘I usually find a rock is best for that – especially if it’s a nice soft rock like sandstone, that you can dig a notch in. And what do you plan to use for cordage?’

  ‘Cordage?’

  ‘The string, for the bow.’

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Er, I know you can twist together plant fibres. Me and Amazon made some pretty good rope by doing that with coconut fibres on a desert island …’

  ‘See any coconuts?’ Roger smiled.

  ‘No, but there must be something else …’

  ‘Your Aunt Ling-Mei can make cord out of just about anything. But me, I like the easy way. Take your boots off.’

  ‘What? Oh.’ And then Frazer started laughing. ‘My bootlaces! Of course.’

  Ten minutes later, they had collected everything they needed from the area in and around the ruins. It helped that the moon had finally risen beyond the last of the clouds and cast its quicksilver light over the scene.

  Roger had found an old splintered branch of cedar wood, and wrenched it apart to form the fireboard. He used Frazer’s pocketknife to cut a notch in it, and then scraped a little pile of bark from the outside, and set it neatly a few centimetres from the notch. Then he cut and trimmed a piece from the edge to form the spindle – the ‘arrow’ to go with the bow. The bow itself was a stout twig, as thick as Frazer’s finger. Roger bent it, and tied Frazer’s shoelace to each end with a simple knot. Then Roger twisted the spindle in the shoelace, so the lace formed a loop around it.

  As Frazer watched his uncle completing their preparations, he couldn’t help but compare Roger with his dad. Hal Hunt was a powerful man, with short, strong fingers that seemed indestructible. They were impervious to heat – Frazer had seen him pick up pans from the fire that even ten minutes later were too hot for Frazer to touch. Roger’s fingers were longer – they looked more used to playing the piano than making fires – but Frazer could see the intelligence in them, and a steely, springy strength.

  When Roger had finished, he handed the bow and spindle set-up to Frazer.

  ‘Really, me?’ said Frazer, looking amazed and flattered.

  ‘Sure. You know what you’re doing, I can tell that.’

  Frazer arranged the bow and spindle so that the tip of the arrow was in the notch. Then Roger pressed firmly down on top of it with a flattened piece of sandstone wrenched from the wall. Frazer began to move the bow backwards and forwards, which made the spindle spin. Or it should have done.

  ‘Too much friction,’ said Frazer, getting frustrated.

  ‘How clean are your ears, son?’ asked Roger, smiling his slow smile again.

  ‘Huh? Well, not too clean I guess – haven’t had a shower for a couple of days. Can’t quite see how it matters, though, what with us about to be hunted down by a bunch of psychopaths and all …’

  ‘Wax,’ said Roger, hardly able to stop himself from laughing. ‘The perfect lubricant for the top of the spindle. Have a good dig into your ear and see what you can find.’

  Now Frazer joined in with the laughter as he rooted around in his ears.

  They’d sent Chung out to gather firewood, and he came back at that moment carrying a fairly meagre armful.

  ‘Mad Yankees,’ was all he could think to say, seeing the man and the boy helpless with laughter, as the boy stuck his finger in his ear.

  And the strange thing is that it worked. Frazer got just enough wax out of his ears to lubricate the spindle. The bow now worked perfectly, and in no more than thirty seconds they had first smoke, then a tiny hot cinder that caught in the dust created by the drilling. Roger moved it deftly to the shavings of bark, breathing life into it with infinite care.

  Once the red eye of hope was set in the shavings, he blew a little more firmly, and smoke was soon billowing out. Frazer added a few twigs to the growing mini-inferno, and quickly real fingers of flame flickered out into the darkness.

  In another minute, the branches brought by Chung had been carefully arranged around the flames and the fire was made.

  There was nothing to eat – it was far too dark and dangerous to forage – but Chung passed round the bottle.

  ‘Don’t worry, crazy lady,’ he said when he saw Ling-Mei’s fierce face in the flames. ‘I saw a stream. Cleaned out bottle. Water not so nice, but better than nothing.’

  There was enough for a swallow or two each. The water, muddy and gritty, still tasted good to Frazer. He hadn’t realized just how thirsty he was.

  She was not really designed for travelling long distances, but eventually she caught up with the humans. She tasted them in the air long before she reached the place; she also tasted the smoke. She didn’t like that, but her hunger was driving her on. She was twenty metres away from the ruined temple when she detected another presence. First she felt the tiny vibrations in the earth caused by careful footsteps. And then she caught the new scent. Human again, but this time uncontaminated by the nasty fire.

  She moved towards it, the rough scales of her belly gripping the dry earth and inching her forward.

  And there, in the moonlight, she saw him.

  The human, like her, was now lying on his belly. He had something in his hands. Of course she didn’t recognize it, but it was a mobile phone. The keypad gave off a low green light. He punched in the digits, focused on what he was doing. It was perfect, so perfect.

  She struck, her jaws closing round the man’s upper body. His eyes burned white for a moment of intense shock and terror. He opened his mouth to scream, but only the first strangled syllable emerged before her coils were around him.

  At last she had her meal.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  Frazer sat bolt upright. They had all begun to drift off in the warmth of the fire. Amazon was nestled between her parents, their comforting presence better than any blanket.

  Roger was on his feet in an instant.

  ‘It was human, I think. Give me your knife, Fraze.’

  Frazer handed it over.

  ‘Thanks. Wait here.’

  ‘Be careful, Dad,’ said Amazon.

  ‘I’m coming,’ said Chung, surprising everyone. ‘Can’t sleep with all snoring from Hunts. Like living in zoo.’

  Roger looked at him and nodded his assent.

  As they went out through the broken doorway in the ruined wall, Frazer instinctively began to follow. Ling-Mei put her hand on his shoulder. She shook her head.

  ‘They know what they’re doing,’ she said. ‘You stay here. After all, who else will look after me and Amazon?’

  Frazer, Amazon and Ling-Mei didn’t have to wait long for the other two to return.

  ‘What was it, Dad?’ asked Amazon. Then she saw that they were carrying some objects.

  ‘There was nothing there,’ said Roger. ‘I mean, no one there. But we found these.’ He held out a broken mobile phone and a gun.

  ‘Does the phone work?’ asked Ling-Mei hopefully.

  ‘No. But the gun’s OK. And that could be the difference between life and death out here.’

  ‘It was probably scout,’ said Chung.

  ‘So what happened to him?’ asked Frazer.

  ‘Oh, he got eat. Lots here to do eating. Probably eat you, too, before long. We gotta go.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Frazer.

  ‘Well,’ said Roger, ‘this means they know we’ve gone. I thought we’d have until the morning. Who knows how many men Kaggs will have out here, looking for us?’

  He opened out the roughly drawn map that Mehmet had given him, and everyone gathered round.

  ‘This big horseshoe shape here is the wall. And here’s the river. We’re in the middle, here, in the temple
ruins. The hunting lodge is here, halfway to the front gate. The way I see it, we’ve got two choices – either we try to hide out until Hal finds us. There’s at least a chance that Mehmet might be able to get through. The trouble is that Kaggs’s men will be looking, too, and we don’t know if that scout managed to get a message out before … before whatever happened to him. I know Hal will turn up, I just can’t guarantee that we’ll still be alive when he does.’

  ‘Not just Kaggs’s men,’ said Chung. ‘I have bad feeling about those others – the killers. I think they might enjoy hunting ultimate prey …’

  The others all looked at him, their faces incredulous, doubtful, horrified.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ said Frazer.

  Chung shrugged. ‘Getting killed is not something I joke about.’

  ‘OK,’ said Amazon, ‘maybe we should assume the worst. And we’ve still got plan B – the river.’

  ‘That’s our best bet,’ said Roger. ‘We could try the wall, but Mehmet thought it was a no-no. And that gateway is too heavily defended for us the break out there. The only way is the river. We travelled about seven kilometres last night and, if this map is to scale, it looks to be about another fifteen on to the river. That shouldn’t take us more than three hours, even over rough ground.’

  Frazer was looking a little queasy.

  ‘I, er, I really don’t much care for crocs,’ he said. ‘Nothing much scares me in the animal world, but I just don’t like the idea of one of those things dragging me down into the murky depths, and waiting till I drown, then tearing chunks off me by doing that death spin thing.’

  Roger patted Frazer’s shoulder. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘I won’t let any croc mess with my nephew. I’ve had run-ins with the kind of croc that would eat those muggers for breakfast – the saltwater crocs of New Guinea. Some of those boys are nearly seven metres long, and they’d as soon dine on humans as anything else, whereas the muggers aren’t real maneaters usually. No, if all that’s stopping us really are those crocs then we’ve got a chance. Muggers are nasty, but they’re not the smartest creatures in the world. If we can find some carrion – something big, a buffalo, maybe – and dump it downriver, that should draw all the local crocs away and we can swim across.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Chung, who had been listening carefully. The Hunts all looked at him, expecting him to say something else. Frazer thought that he was going to express his doubts about their chances, but he said nothing more.

  When it was obvious nothing audible was actually going to emerge from those narrow lips, Roger continued. ‘OK, let’s get moving. We’ll find breakfast on the way.’

  The pale pre-dawn light was spreading slowly over the forest as the Hunts and Chung began the next stage of their journey.

  Amazon looked around her. It had been impossible to appreciate their surroundings the night before, but now she was almost overwhelmed by it. They were in the sort of jungle you only ever seem to see in films: it was rich with huge hardwood trees, reaching a hundred metres into the sky. In between the towering monsters were smaller trees, and Amazon saw the deep yellows and reds and oranges of ripe bananas and mangoes. Vines reached down from the branches like dreadlocks, and small flocks of bright green parakeets zoomed from tree to tree. And then, stalking through the forest floor, she caught sight of the iridescent dazzle of a peacock’s tail.

  It was almost too much beauty to bear. And yet, for once, the natural beauty was not what caught the eye.

  Everywhere there were the remains of once great buildings, half toppled among the trees. Amazon saw what looked like stepped pyramids, crumbling into rubble. There were walls that looked like they may have belonged to great temples, and columns and arches standing alone, the ceilings they once supported long since fallen. On one wall she saw countless images carved into the stone. She couldn’t quite see what they were in the murk, but they unsettled her and gave off a vague atmosphere of evil.

  ‘Pretty cool, huh?’ said Frazer. ‘I wonder what happened to this place. I mean, why would you desert something as awesome as this?’

  He’d been speaking to Amazon, but it was Chung who answered.

  ‘War. Big kings fighting about ladies or about land. The usual things. When you have war, then you have plague, and then you have famine, and then you have a city turned to jungle. That’s why I don’t like to make war – I like to make money.’

  Soon they passed beyond the ruins, leaving all signs of human history behind them. Amazon was very aware of the life of the jungle around them. It wasn’t quite as noisy as the night jungle, but still barks and roars reached them, sometimes seeming far away, at other times worryingly close.

  Under different circumstances she would have loved this adventure, but she couldn’t forget the fact that they were being pursued by those who wished them nothing but harm.

  It helped them all feel a little more secure that they had the pistol. It was a heavy old Colt 45. Ling-Mei refused to carry it – ‘I won’t have anything to do with guns,’ she’d said. And, of course, no one trusted Chung with the weapon. Frazer would have liked to be in charge of it, but he knew that he was a terrible shot. Amazon was a superb natural shot with a tranquillizer rifle, but she’d never even touched a handgun before. That just left Roger. He switched the safety on and ejected the magazine.

  ‘Five rounds,’ he said, and then stuck the pistol in the back of his trousers.

  ‘If we need it, I’ll use it,’ he added, and Amazon knew that he meant it. But just those five bullets in the clip …

  Frazer went to the head of the group – partly to get away from Chung, but mainly so he could lead the way with his compass.

  ‘We’re still heading north, aren’t we, Uncle Roger?’ he asked, checking the bearing.

  ‘North it is. But we don’t have to be precise. As long as we don’t double back, we should hit that river.’

  Thirst was their main problem – the forest was drier than the ones Amazon had previously explored in Russia and Canada, and they were all relieved when they found a stream. They fell on their knees and lapped up the water, which was colder and fresher than the muddy mouthfuls they’d swallowed the night before.

  ‘Pity there’s no way to sterilize it,’ said Ling-Mei, ‘but it’s better than dying of thirst.’

  ‘Hah,’ said Chung, ‘that’s funny. You die of something much quicker than thirst. Bullet move at about a thousand mile an hour.’

  ‘Put a sock in it, Chung,’ said Roger. ‘Or head off on your own.’

  ‘Would very much like to, but got to look after Hunts,’ he mumbled back.

  Roger set a tough pace, but they still had to look for food. Ling-Mei was an expert botanist, and managed to find a few berries to pick and munch as they marched. Amazon and Frazer wolfed them down, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy their raging hunger.

  Then they hit the jackpot. A group of langurs led them to a big mango tree. Amazon and Frazer climbed up into it and threw down some of the delicious fruit.

  From the branches Amazon heard her mother’s puzzled exclamation.

  ‘Hey, looks like our daughter has conquered her fear of heights. She’s like a monkey up there.’

  Amazon threw a mango at her. ‘You can’t be in TRACKS and be afraid of heights.’

  ‘More to be afraid of than heights,’ said Chung, tearing into one of the mangoes, like he hadn’t eaten in days.

  They walked on into the growing heat of the morning. Clouds of mosquitoes arrived, harried Frazer and then, sated, moved away.

  ‘How far have we covered?’ Amazon asked.

  Frazer pressed a button. ‘Ah, only about eight kilometres.’

  ‘Not enough,’ said Ling-Mei, ‘not enough. We must go faster.’

  Amazon noticed that her father kept pausing and looking behind him.

  ‘Something up, Dad?’

  ‘I’ve got a feeling we’re not alone,’ he replied.

  ‘You mean those killers are already on our trail?’ said Frazer
.

  ‘Not the human killers, no. Something else. Leopard or tiger. You can sense it in the jungle. There’s a watchfulness …’

  They carried on, but each of them now felt the threat from the trees around them. But their spirits were lifted by the light spreading from the east. Each knew that light would bring some protection from the night prowlers – the tigers and leopards. Light also meant that they could move more quickly, and they now upped their pace, jogging for brief periods, then walking again, then moving back to a jog.

  And the trees grew ever sparser. That was how Frazer managed to catch his first glimpse. He’d been looking back over his shoulder when he saw the glimmering pattern of light and dark flit between two clumps of vegetation.

  ‘Uncle Roger,’ he said urgently, ‘it’s a tiger, and its right on our tail.’

  The group all stopped and Roger went back to investigate.

  ‘Where?’

  Roger pointed. The tiger was now quite invisible.

  ‘OK, we keep moving. Tigers don’t like to come out of cover. As soon as we get clear of the last of the forest, we’ll be fine.’

  Now they were all running, aiming for the open spaces ahead of them. But the tiger was keeping pace. Roger stayed at the back – the biggest and therefore the one the tiger was least likely to go for.

  They were almost out into the relative safety of the plain when Amazon heard a cry from her father. She looked back, terrified that he’d been attacked by the tiger. However, he’d just fallen, twisting his ankle. They all ran back to him. His face did its best to hide the agony.

  Ling-Mei felt his ankle.

  ‘It’s a nasty sprain,’ she said. ‘Can you walk?’

  Before he had the chance to answer, they heard a snarl and looked up into the face of a huge Bengal tiger, slowly approaching them. The tiger didn’t quite seem to know what to do with this large group. He had planned to swoop on the big one, running at the back. But now this herd had gathered together. Were they dangerous?