by MG Leonard
As Bertolt shuffled through the leaf mulch to get closer to the tree, Darkus saw the head of a snake rise up out of it. ‘Bertolt!’ he shouted, running towards his friend.
Bertolt screamed, stumbling backwards and falling to the ground as the snake’s head darted forward. Angelo leapt at the attacking snake with his stick, pinning its head to the ground by its neck, before picking it up and moving it away from the group.
‘Bertolt! Are you OK?’ Virginia and Darkus helped their friend up from the forest floor.
‘Yeah— ouch! Thank you, Angelo.’ Bertolt winced as he tried to stand up. ‘The snake didn’t get me, but I think I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He put on a brave face as he limped away from the tree. ‘I’m fine. I just need a minute.’
Darkus looked at Uncle Max.
‘How about I give you a piggyback until we find a spot to set up camp?’ Uncle Max suggested to Bertolt.
‘No, really, I’m fine,’ Bertolt said, looking pale.
‘I insist.’ Uncle Max took off his rucksack and handed it to Motty. ‘Come on, hop up. We need to get set up before it gets dark.’
Bertolt scrambled on to Uncle Max’s back with Virginia’s help. ‘You’re as light as a feather, Bertolt!’ Uncle Max exclaimed, setting off after Angelo.
‘It was a fer de lance!’ Virginia whispered to Darkus. ‘It could have killed him.’
Darkus nodded. ‘But it didn’t.’ His eyes searched the ground as they walked, his heart knocking against his ribs as the image of the rising pit viper played over and over in his mind.
‘I’ve got a first-aid kit,’ Motty said to Bertolt. ‘I’ll strap your ankle up as soon as we’ve made camp.’
They finally came to a clearing of high ground surrounded by stout-trunked trees. Angelo pointed up to a long pole, a slender tree trunk that had been felled and suspended across from one tree to another, on the other side of the clearing. It seemed this spot was regularly used as a camp – there was even a charred fire pit.
Uncle Max took out a folded plastic sheet, which he called a basha. He tied a stone into one corner and threw it up over the pole. Removing the stone, he then pulled the plastic sheet out, passing guy ropes through loops at the corners and sides. He and Angelo climbed up surrounding trees, tying the ropes around the trunks, stretching the sheet out across the clearing, making a roof and giving them shelter from the rain.
Darkus and Virginia scrambled under and wriggled out of their backpacks. They pulled out their hammocks, made of orange parachute silk suspended inside a transparent tent of mosquito netting.
‘Here, give me yours, I’ll hang it for you,’ Darkus said to Bertolt who’d crawled over to sit beside him.
‘Yes, let Darkus and Virginia do the beds,’ Motty said, pulling a washbag out of her backpack and extracting a roll of bandage. ‘I need to take a look at that ankle.’
Virginia and Darkus suspended the five hammocks from the central tree, tying the foot of each to a different tree around the clearing so that they formed an orange star under the basha. Then they dug out the old fire pit and built a fire from dry kindling that Uncle Max had brought in a plastic bag in his rucksack, whilst he hunted about looking for dead wood that wasn’t too wet.
Bertolt sat with his back against the central tree, his foot on Motty’s lap as she gently removed his boot and sock. Darkus saw that his ankle was swollen, and purple with bruises.
‘Ooh, that’s nasty,’ she muttered, unreeling the bandage. ‘It looks like a sprain.’
‘I’ll be fine, though, won’t I?’ Bertolt asked anxiously. ‘I’ll be able to walk tomorrow.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ Motty said, but she sounded unconvinced.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Escarabajo Gigante
Darkus woke with the sun. He clambered out of his sleeping bag, untucked the mosquito-net tent and stepped out into the wet Amazon morning. Everything was dripping water, but at least there was no rain falling from the sky, and the patch of ground beneath their basha seemed mainly dry.
Motty was up, sitting cross-legged on the ground, reviving the embers of last night’s fire.
‘Morning,’ Darkus said, quietly, not wanting to wake the others.
‘Morning, Darkus,’ she replied with her thin-lipped, pug-like smile. ‘I’m trying to get enough of a fire together to make coffee. I need petrol to put in the old tank.’ She patted her chest. ‘We’ve got a long hike ahead of us today, and my legs aren’t as young as yours.’
‘Do you think Bertolt’s going to be able to make it?’ Darkus asked.
‘He wants to try.’ Motty said. ‘I offered to take him back to the lodge last night, but he got very upset.’ She paused, then nodded. ‘I’m sure he’ll be able to make it.’ She pointed over to a tree. ‘Your uncle made him a walking stick last night.’
Darkus saw a long Y-shaped stick, and beside it four smaller ones.
‘What are the other ones for?’
‘They’re for each of us, to check the ground ahead of us for snakes. Angelo says they are everywhere.’
As the smell of coffee flavoured the air, the rest of the camp started to stir. Virginia had to help Bertolt down from his hammock, and even though he said he felt much better, Darkus didn’t believe him. Bertolt couldn’t put weight on his right foot without his face twisting in pain.
Angelo appeared out of the trees and cheerfully helped them pack away their basha and hammocks.
In under an hour, their bags were packed and they were walking again.
Bertolt used the crutch Uncle Max had made him to good effect, wedging it under his armpit and leaning on it every other step, but it slowed him down and tired him out. Virginia walked beside him, chatting away merrily to keep his spirits up, and Motty walked behind them.
Darkus walked at the front with Angelo and Uncle Max, keen to push forward and find the Biome. As the morning wore on he couldn’t help feeling a mounting frustration at their slow progress. He watched Angelo stride easily through the forest, aware of its trips and traps. As the trees become dense and the ground harder to traverse, Angelo unsheathed a giant knife – a machete – and hacked at branches to clear the way for them.
They stopped to eat lunch and give Bertolt a rest, while Angelo went scouting on ahead to clear a path. Darkus wolfed down his sandwiches and got up, wandering after him. He heard Angelo yell, and rushed forward, eyes alert. The sound had come from a dense copse of trees. He gripped his stick, prepared to see a jaguar. Angelo came thundering towards him, leaping over tree roots like an Olympic hurdler. Darkus dived to one side, narrowly avoiding getting barrelled over by the terrified man.
‘¡Un monstruo! Monstruo!’ the guide shouted.
‘What is it? ¿Que es?’ Uncle Max jumped up and grabbed Angelo by the upper arms. ‘¿Que es?
‘¡Un escarabajo gigante!’ Angelo pointed back along the path excitedly. ‘¡Uno de los animales de las brujas! ¡Un escarabajo gigante!’ He wrenched himself from Uncle Max’s grasp and ran away, back along the path they’d forged that morning.
Darkus knew the word escarabajo was Spanish for ‘beetle’. He crept forward. Gigante was almost the same as ‘gigantic’ in English. He saw the guide’s fallen machete and picked it up.
‘Baxter,’ he whispered to the rhinoceros beetle in the bamboo cage around his neck, ‘can you sense any danger?’
Baxter shook his head, and Darkus moved forward with more confidence. There was a snap behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to find Uncle Max and Virginia right behind him. He passed the big knife to his uncle. They could see how far the guide had got, because branches were hacked away and the path clear. When they reached an untouched curtain of leafy foliage, he looked at Uncle Max, who nodded, holding the machete up high. Darkus carefully pulled it to one side and then cried out, putting his hand up to tell his uncle the knife was not needed. He stumbled forward, falling to his knees in front of a giant Hercules beetle, the size of a baby elephant. The beetle’s horn was sheared off and it was
on its back. One of its legs was missing and the others were swimming weakly in the air. Its eyes looked dry, and Darkus knew that the beetle was dying.
‘Virginia, quick, get my banana,’ Darkus cried out, and he heard her feet pound away.
Carefully, Darkus moved to the side of the beetle. It had been in some kind of fight, perhaps with a caiman, although it was most likely to have been a frightened human. Darkus made soothing clicking noises as he approached the beetle side-on and slid his arms around its mottled thorax. ‘Help me,’ he said to Uncle Max. Together, they slowly lowered the beetle down on to its five legs.
‘There we go,’ Darkus stroked the beetle’s elytra. ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’
The giant beetle’s legs slowly clawed at the forest floor, like it was swimming in soil, digging itself down a foot before it ran out of strength.
Virginia was back. Skidding down on to her knees, she held out all their bananas. Darkus peeled them and, breaking off chunks, he reached under the beetle’s head, holding them in front of its mandibles. Sensing the fruit with its trembling antennae, the beetle opened its mouth, and Darkus carefully fed the bananas to him.
‘Is it going to be OK?’ Bertolt asked from the path, Motty beside him.
Darkus shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘There must be something we can do,’ Virginia said, her voice cracking.
Darkus just kept shaking his head. He was trying not to cry.
‘The guide said this was one of the “witch’s monsters”,’ Uncle Max mused. ‘I’m guessing the witch is Lucretia Cutter.’ He looked at Darkus. ‘When I asked for a guide at the lodge, they refused to bring us in this direction. They said there was bad magic here. I had to go to the village to find Angelo, and because of Miguel’s superstitious attitude, I didn’t let on where we were going.’
‘We must be getting close, then,’ Motty observed.
‘He’s one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen.’ Darkus bit his lip. The underside of the sheared stump was soft and velvety. He gently stroked it, making soothing sounds. ‘Look at him. He’s magnificent,’ he whispered. ‘Imagine him flying!’
‘There’s nothing like this in nature,’ Virginia said, sitting down on the other side of the beetle and stroking the fluffy hair sprouting out around his thorax. ‘He’s definitely one of her beetles.’
Darkus lifted up Baxter’s cage. ‘Is there anything we can do for him, Baxter?’
Baxter bowed his head, and Darkus’s head drooped. ‘No, I didn’t think so.’
‘We should push on, Darkus,’ Uncle Max said softly. ‘We’ve still got a way to go, and now we’ve no guide.’
‘I can’t leave him like this.’ Darkus got to his feet and looked about. He tugged at a fallen branch, dragging it over and leaning it against the beetle. ‘We’ve got to hide him from predators. Let him die in peace.’
Virginia nodded, jumping up and helping to cover up the giant Hercules beetle. Soon they’d created a dense cover of camouflage. Darkus stepped away, satisfied that they’d done the best they could. He looked at Uncle Max. ‘I’m ready to go now.’
They retrieved their backpacks and started walking, Darkus and Virginia reading the map and Uncle Max up front wielding the machete.
They’d been walking slowly for a couple of hours when Bertolt stumbled and cried out. ‘I think we need to think about setting up camp,’ Motty said. ‘It will take us longer than last night, without the help of Angelo.’
Uncle Max nodded in agreement. ‘We’ll stop as soon as we come to a good place.’
Darkus slowed down to help Bertolt, putting his arm under his shoulder and letting his friend use him as a crutch.
‘Thanks, Darkus.’ Bertolt smiled and blinked. ‘I didn’t want to say anything, but my armpit is red raw from leaning on that stick.’
‘You’re doing great.’ Darkus smiled at his friend. ‘You should have said you needed help.’
‘I don’t want to be any trouble.’ Bertolt blinked.
They had walked for about twenty minutes when Virginia halted them with a loud, ‘SHHHHHH.’ She put her finger to her lips. ‘There’s something up there,’ she whispered, pointing up into the rainforest canopy. ‘It’s been following us for about ten minutes.’
Darkus looked up, alarmed. ‘Don’t worry,’ Uncle Max shielded his eyes and peered up into the canopy, ‘it’s probably a monkey.’ But he held the machete ready.
Darkus saw a small dark figure, high up in the branches, blonde hair scraped back from a grubby but familiar face. ‘It can’t be,’ he whispered.
‘Who are you calling a monkey?’ Emma Lamb called down to Uncle Max.
‘Emma?’ Uncle Max said. ‘Is that you?’
Emma Lamb, the reporter who’d helped them in their first battle at the Emporium and who’d sworn to expose Lucretia Cutter, jumped from her tree to a lower branch, then another, finally swinging down to the ground.
‘You’re alive!!!’ Virginia cried. She was so happy to see the reporter that she hugged her.
‘Yep, definitely not dead.’ Emma Lamb lightly thumped her fist against her ribs. ‘Although several stone lighter.’
‘Oh, Emma,’ Uncle Max was beaming, ‘am I glad to see you! I tried to send a message, but when we landed in Quito, and they told me it was uncollected, I feared the worst.’
‘I can’t go back to civilization right now.’ She shook her head. ‘Have you seen what’s going on? It’s crazy. Before the Film Awards, I managed to persuade a guy on the inside to share some of Lucretia Cutter’s Biome secrets with me.’
‘You’ve got someone who can help us?’ Darkus asked.
‘Not any more.’ Emma Lamb frowned. ‘Lucretia Cutter must have found out he was talking to me. He’s gone silent.’
Virginia gulped. ‘Silent?’
‘Don’t feel too bad for him.’ Emma Lamb patted her on the shoulder. ‘Henrik Lenka knew what he was doing. He’s a nasty piece of work, one of those people who hedges his bets and sucks up to whichever side is winning in a fight. I think he was talking to me in case Lucretia’s plan failed, and he needed to wriggle out of a prison sentence. Either way, he knew the risk and I paid him very well for his information.’
‘Henrik Lenka?’ Darkus looked at Bertolt and Virginia.
‘From the Fabre Project!’ Bertolt said.
‘Did he tell you anything about Lucretia Cutter breeding giant beetles?’ Darkus asked. ‘We found a beetle the size of a baby elephant back there. It was dying. We couldn’t do anything to save it.’
Emma Lamb tipped her head as she thought. ‘He did say something about one of their experiments escaping the Biome.’ She frowned. ‘He called it a “dinobeetle”, but I thought he was pulling my leg. He said they’d led it out of the Biome on a chain, to see how it coped with the atmosphere. The thing broke its own horn off trying to get away, and left a leg behind in the chains.’
‘They’re chaining the beetles?’ Darkus asked, shocked.
‘Poor dinobeetle,’ Bertolt said, and the children fell silent, thinking about the gentle giant they’d left dying under forest leaves.
‘Emma, please tell us you have a camp we can rest our weary bones in?’ Uncle Max said, changing the subject. ‘We are about ready to expire.’
‘I’ve been copying the monkeys and sticking to the treetops. I just sling my hammock wherever I find two suitable branches. It’s safer up there.’
Uncle Max’s face fell. ‘Oh.’
‘However, I do know of a clearing a safe distance from the Biome, where you can set up your camp.’ She grinned and set off through the trees. ‘It’s this way, follow me.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the Lamb
‘Peeny-wally for your thoughts,’ Virginia said, pointing up to the fireflies fizzing about above Darkus’s head.
He looked up and smiled. ‘Emma says the Biome is half a day’s hike that way.’ He pointed to the narrow path in front of him. ‘My dad is less than a day a
way from us.’
Virginia stared along the path. The sun was setting and it was getting dark. ‘Tomorrow,’ was all she said.
‘Virginia,’ Darkus lowered his voice, ‘I’m worried about Bertolt. We can’t take him into the Biome with an injured foot.’
‘Darkus, we’ve been together the whole way.’ Virginia frowned at him. ‘You can’t leave him behind. We’re a team.’
‘But we don’t know what we are going to come face to face with in there,’ Darkus replied.
‘Precisely.’ Virginia lifted an eyebrow. ‘Which is why we need him. He’s clever in a way that you and I are not.’
Darkus looked towards the campfire, at their motley band of rebels. Uncle Max and Emma Lamb were tying up hammocks, Motty was tending the fire and cooking while Bertolt sat beside her, examining his ankle. He thought about Lucretia Cutter and what they were likely to face in the Biome, and his heart clenched with fear. When he’d rescued his dad from Towering Heights he’d done it alone, with only the beetles and Novak to help him. It had been simpler that way.
‘You hungry, Darkus?’ Uncle Max called over to him. ‘Motty’s made some rice and beans.’
‘Coming,’ Darkus replied, accepting Virginia’s hand and standing up. He sat down beside Bertolt and smiled at Motty. ‘It smells lovely,’ he said politely.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Motty replied, ‘but it will fill your belly.’
Emma picked up a metal bowl and held it out. ‘Fill her up, please, Motty. This is the finest meal I’ve seen in a month.’
Uncle Max sat down beside Emma. ‘So, your Dr Lenka, what did he tell you about the Biome? Anything useful?’
She nodded, while she chewed and swallowed. ‘The whole place is built on a pattern of hexagons.’ She produced a piece of folded paper from a pocket in her trousers – a crude map drawn in biro. ‘This central hexagon is the biggest dome, and from what I can tell it’s full of plants, like a huge greenhouse. I’ve been all the way round the domes, spying on them from the outside to get as much information as possible. Lenka told me that each of the satellite domes has a different use. This one contains the rooms for the scientists, this one is for staff.’ She pointed at two of the smaller hexagons. ‘Lucretia Cutter has one for her personal use that you can’t see into, then this one is for food supplies, laundry, that sort of thing . . . and then there’s this one.’ She paused and looked around the circle of attentive faces. ‘This one is the important one.’ She pointed to a hexagon beside a square that she’d marked as door. ‘This one contains the security monitors, generators, server room, climate control and air conditioning. If we can get into this dome, then we can see everything that’s happening in the Biome, and possibly control what’s going on.’
