by Bear Grylls
Beck checked the GPS. Its waterproof casing had kept the water out, but he looked at the power bar on the screen. It was still green, but it wouldn’t be long before it reached orange. Once before, Beck had been stuck in the wilderness with a dead GPS, miles from the nearest recharging point. From now on he would only turn it on from time to time, just to check their course.
He slowly rotated until he and the GPS were facing roughly north-west, towards the side of the valley. ‘Thataway.’
‘How far do we have to go?’
‘We could walk it in a day – if we could walk in a straight line.’ Beck squinted up at the way ahead. ‘Problem is . . .’
‘I know. Mountains.’
You simply couldn’t walk in a straight line through mountains. You went over, or round, and sometimes you annoyingly had to backtrack to avoid a dead end. But unless someone had kindly dug a tunnel for you, you did not walk in a straight line.
Beck flicked the GPS off again and pointed. ‘That peak there? That’s our next landmark. I’ll check our course again when we get there.’
They set off, away from the river, heading slowly upwards. Once again, Beck gritted his teeth and forced his legs into a deliberate walking rhythm, ignoring the pain that seemed to jab into his bones with each stride. The sounds of running water faded away behind them, replaced by boots snapping wood and crunching through pine needles as they pushed into the trees that lined the valley. And then there was a loud groan from both of them as they came out of the trees and found themselves facing a sheer wall of rock.
It hadn’t been obvious from down by the river, with the trees in the way. Beck had hoped the valley just kept sloping upwards until they were up at the top. But no: the ground suddenly lurched up vertically. If they could get up on top of this, maybe they could keep walking as planned. But that was a big ‘if’.
They craned their heads back to look up at the top.
‘Thirty metres?’ James asked.
‘More like forty.’
‘We could do it. We’ve got a rope.’
‘Yeah, about fifteen metres . . .’
Once upon a time – and it now seemed a long time ago, though it was less than twenty-four hours – Beck would have loved the challenge of climbing this rock face. With a decent rope, and all the right climbing gear, and an experienced colleague – and, oh yes, a leg that hadn’t been torn open by a bear.
‘It’s just too risky,’ he said reluctantly. ‘We’ll follow the valley north and hope there’s another way up further along.’ He looked thoughtfully at the trees. There was a narrow strip between the trunks and the base of the cliff, and they could probably walk along that. But you never knew when it might suddenly vanish and they could find themselves fighting their way through undergrowth. There was no point in making life more difficult than it had to be.
‘Back to the river,’ he said with a sigh. ‘At least the banks are clear.’
Chapter 22
They turned and set off back down the slope – at a slight angle so as to meet the river further along from their campsite.
‘Could we build a raft?’ James said hopefully as they reached the bank and turned north. The ground here was mostly flat. Tough, scrubby grass jostled for space with small rocks.
Beck stumbled over a hidden stone and his injured leg gave an extra jab as all his weight came down in it – enough to make him hiss through his teeth. At that precise moment, the prospect of travelling by raft was mighty tempting. He remembered the Ptarmigan, the raft he and Tikaani had built in Alaska, where it had been the best and quickest way of getting along. Here it was different.
‘We don’t know what’s ahead,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Rafts are good for slow rivers, but we know how quickly this river changes – there could be rapids or waterfalls or hidden rocks. It could be smashed to pieces and we’d just get soaked and frozen again. Plus it would take some time to build it in the first place, and we don’t really have the material . . .’
James coughed and looked at all the trees.
‘Nothing big enough lying around, and no axe to cut anything down,’ Beck corrected himself. ‘So . . . no. We keep walking.’
‘We keep walking,’ James said with a sigh.
They followed the river downstream, heading north. Beck was pleased to find that his decision to walk had been a good one. The valley had never been very wide, and now it grew narrower as it wound its way into the distance. As a result, the river speeded up. It flowed along briskly, as if too impatient to pause to make conversation. White, thrashing water and waves spoke of hidden obstacles below. They would have had a hard time on a raft.
But walking along the river wasn’t easy either. The bank was the only really clear and flat stretch of ground, but it wasn’t always smooth. It was eaten into by streams that came down from the hills, or chunks taken out by erosion. This close to the water, the ground often became boggy or was blocked by huge boulders, so the boys had to keep navigating their way round obstacles.
The sides of the valley were steep and rocky. There was a thin line of trees further up, but no larger plants between them and the water. And that only meant one thing: the river often flooded and swept anything else away. Fortunately, there was no sign of it doing that at the moment. But there was no footpath, no beaten track – a sure sign that not many people came this way.
And it was Mosquito City Central. The little creatures were drawn by the moisture in the heavy, humid air and they hummed past Beck’s ears with a sound like a tiny electric saw. They flew into his hair and made it itch like crazy. Their bites were sharp jabs in his skin; they slowly swelled up, big and red and juicy.
James suffered just as much. It was quite entertaining listening to him as they trudged along.
‘Ow!’ – slap – ‘Ow!’ – slap . . .
Beck had resolved to ignore them as much as he could and let them feast upon his blood. He and James were just two boys, and the total mosquito population of Nepal was probably several billion. He knew when they were outnumbered.
They walked in single file with Beck in the lead. And then, suddenly, hearing James’s shout of surprise and fright, followed by the hiss of an angry animal, Beck whirled round.
Chapter 23
James was rooted to the spot. An animal the size of a large cat sat on top of a boulder. It stared hard at them out of two round, pebble-like eyes. Beck took a step forward and it immediately reared up on its hind legs, hissing from a mouth lined with needle-sharp teeth.
The creature’s hair was thick and gingery, like a cross between a fox and a bear. It had four stubby, powerful legs, a shaggy striped tail as long as its body, white nose and pointed ears, and a white mask around its eyes.
All in all it was like someone had mixed a bear, a panda and a fox together, and boiled it down to house-cat size.
‘It was curled up under that rock . . .’ James paused. ‘What the heck is it?’
Beck had to bite back a laugh. ‘It’s a red panda. They’re rare but there’s enough of them, away from humans.’
‘A panda?’ James said in disbelief.
‘It’s only distantly related to the black-and-white kind. They’re not fierce – well, not if they don’t get upset. C’mon, let’s keep going.’
‘OK . . .’ James gave the red panda a wide berth as he circled round its rock.
It eyed him suspiciously in return. Like a cat, it kept its eyes on them as they walked away, poised to make a break for it if they suddenly decided to come back.
Then everything was back to normal.
‘Ow’ – slap – ‘I hate these mosquitoes! Is it just me or are they getting worse?’
‘I know. I hate them too. We’ll get used to them though.’
Sometimes Beck wondered whether James and the great outdoors were made for each other. Then he would remember that James had spent a couple of months living alone on a desert island. He had survived, and he had done it the hard way. That was the point when he had resolved t
o turn his back on Lumos. The hardship and the wild had changed him.
‘I’ll never get used to them’ – slap – ‘and we’ve lost all our repellent. This is going to be a lo-n-n-g walk.’
‘Yeah. It is.’
Beck stopped with his hands on his hips and looked down the valley, frowning. Its rocky slopes twisted and turned before they disappeared into the haze. There was no obvious sign of a way out – not in the direction they were heading. Would they ever get out of this stupid place?
And – Beck had to admit it – James was actually right. The mosquitoes hadn’t been this bad twenty-four hours earlier.
He cocked an eye up at the trees above them, and slowly broke into a smile. ‘OK, I can’t get us out of here but I can do something . . .’ He started up the slope.
‘You know, you’re definitely limping,’ James commented as they reached the trees.
Beck waved it away – though James was right (again). His leg really was throbbing. He could feel it swelling against the bandage. He knew that if he looked, the wound would be angry and red. No doubt some infection had got in. Unfortunately there was nothing to be done about that.
The trees were evergreen pines, like Christmas trees on steroids. The piney smell was strong in the air and the ground was a thick carpet of brown, dead needles. Beck wrapped his fingers around the nearest branch and pulled. A handful of fresh needles accumulated in his palm. Like the thick and scaly wood beneath them, they were sticky with resin. He repeated the trick on another branch.
‘Get as many as you can hold,’ he said. ‘Then crush ’em’ – he ground his palms together, mashing the needles into a pulp that clung to his skin like glue – ‘and do this.’
He rubbed his palms over his face, over the back of his neck, behind his ears and up his bare arms.
‘It’s natural mosquito repellent. You smell like a furniture store but it keeps them away.’
‘Now you’re talking!’ James eagerly followed suit.
‘We’ll have to do this every hour.’ Beck studied the tree more closely, checking out the pine cones. They looked like little wooden hand grenades, sealed tight against the air and any marauding elements, such as hungry fourteen-year-old boys. He began to search the ground for one that had fallen recently; one where the chips had opened up but the seeds hadn’t yet fallen out. He picked up a likely candidate and tapped it into his hand. Up close you could see the wonder of its design. Layer upon layer of curved wooden blocks arranged in spirals, as if a master carpenter had designed them. Each one sheltered a seed. With each tap, some seeds dropped into his hand.
‘Pines are great,’ he said conversationally. ‘You can eat the seeds.’ He matched actions to words and tipped the little pile into his mouth. They crunched between his teeth. ‘You can eat the inner bark raw. You can brew the needles into a tea. They’re both full of vitamins. The sap makes a great glue if you heat it. Or you can even use it as an emergency tooth filling. Cool, eh?’
‘Like nature’s pharmacy . . .’ James said as he picked up a cone of his own and began to follow Beck’s example.
They didn’t hang around. The main point of this had been to get the natural repellent on their skin. Then they set off again in a much more positive frame of mind. There were plenty more pines around for them to leave the bark-eating and tea-brewing for later.
They made their way back down to the river. It was still the easiest way along the valley. The resin seemed to do the trick. Mosquitoes buzzed past their ears and hung around in small clouds, but they mostly parted to let the boys through.
The valley grew narrow again. No more trees for the time being, just steep rock faces to their left and right. The sounds of the running water and their boots on rock were clear in the still air. Every noise was magnified back by the stone walls on either side.
That included the sudden high-pitched ‘Eek!’ from James.
Beck looked round and frowned. ‘What?’
James looked abashed and pointed between two rocks. ‘Spider.’
‘Spider?’ Beck said in disbelief. He had once seen James happily pick up a thirty-centimetre-long centipede – shortly before it bit him, of course. He hadn’t expected him to react like this to creepy crawlies.
‘I was about to walk that way. The web would have gone in my face – that’s all.’
Beck grinned and peered closely at the web. It was beautifully made. The strands were short and tight, as if the spider had taken a winch and wound each one up to maximum tautness. The spider itself sat in the middle with its legs wrapped around itself. It was big – maybe the size of a golf ball – but he didn’t think it was dangerous.
‘Yeah, well, she wouldn’t have minded. Look at her, just watching nature go by . . .’
Beck’s own words seemed to come back to him from a distance, like someone was repeating them. Repeating them as a lesson: things to look out for . . .
‘Oh, crudy . . .’ he murmured. He looked up and back the way they had come. The sky was dark and overcast.
He could have kicked himself. For a moment he thought of asking James to do the kicking for him. He deserved it. How many signs had he missed?
That fantastic rainbow James had pointed out earlier.
The swarming mosquitoes.
He breathed in through his nose, savouring what he could smell. An extra-strong scent from the trees, as nature opened itself up, ready to receive what was coming.
All things that happened in the couple of hours before a storm.
‘There’s rain coming,’ he said.
Beck quickly glanced up and down the valley. Where they stood, there were no trees and very few plants. And he knew why. Nothing grew very big when the river was constantly washing it away.
‘And when it does, this place is going to fill up. We need to get out of here. Now.’
Chapter 24
The first drops began to fall even as he spoke. Swollen, heavy, warm. The full monsoon, Beck thought with a sinking feeling.
It wasn’t just going to rain, it was going to rain a lot. And it had already started, further south. Those dark clouds would already have been dumping their load into the river for hours, and it was all going to come downstream at them.
‘Make for the high ground.’ He matched actions to words by turning away from the river and walking as fast as his injured leg would allow.
James strolled casually beside him. ‘It won’t fill up that quickly, will it?’
‘Yes,’ Beck said through teeth that were clamped together against the pain in his thigh. He kept walking. ‘It will. I’ve seen flash floods that were like walls of water five metres high and they just come at you. Or, sure, they can just build up slowly . . . But have you ever seen one of those videos of a town being flooded and cars being swept away?’
‘Sure.’
‘How high do you think water has to get to do that?’
‘Mmm . . . dunno. A couple of metres?’
Beck shook his head. ‘Half a metre of fast-moving water will shift a car. And that’s why humans who want to stay alive stay out of the way of fast-moving water.’
James glanced back the way they had come. ‘Well, no walls of water yet— Oh.’
‘What?’
‘That rock where the spider was . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s underwater.’
Beck looked back. James was right. The rock, and the flat stretch of bank where they had been walking, was already submerged under fast, frothing water. It was simply unstoppable; nothing got in its way. It would spread out until it could spread no more – which meant until it reached the rock walls on either side of the valley. And then it would just keep rising, leaving them with nowhere to go.
The rain struck with full force. There was no time to stop and put on cagoules, and after about thirty seconds the two boys were drenched through. Beck blinked and wiped water off his face. His longer-than-usual hair hung dripping in front of his eyes and he slicked it back to clear his vi
sion. They couldn’t see more than twenty or thirty metres along the valley. Everything just dissolved into the grey blur of the downpour.
A cliff loomed out of the rain ahead of them. They were at the top of the valley slope. Beck could hear the river behind them – the sound of the rain hitting the surface, and the water racing over the rocks. He tried not to think that it sounded like an animal coming after them . . .
Chapter 25
Beck tilted his head back to look up the cliff. Warm rain splashed into his face. It blurred his vision and he couldn’t see how high the cliff might be. He was prepared to bet it was a good hundred metres or more.
Something red shot past in the corner of his vision. A red panda – maybe the one they had seen earlier. It reached the cliff and ran up it without a pause. It moved like a cross between a cat and a monkey.
‘He’s got the right idea. We’ve got to climb— Aargh!’ Beck had put all his weight on his bad leg as he tried to lever himself up.
James caught him as he toppled. ‘You can’t climb if that’s going to keep happening!’
‘Got to,’ Beck muttered. This time he used his good leg to push himself up off the ground. Then he brought his bad leg up beside it. Then his good leg again . . .
And so they climbed. Beck just had to go up one step at a time, never relying on his bad leg to hold his weight.
James swarmed easily up alongside him, with four gangly and perfectly healthy limbs. He reminded Beck of a spider, with half the number of legs. Beck remembered James’s fear as they climbed out over the abyss that had claimed Ian’s life. Maybe he was getting used to heights now, he thought, impressed by his friend’s resilience.
‘Remember, keep—’
‘Keep three points of contact – only move one – got it.’ James casually repeated the climbing advice Beck had given him the day before. He seemed to have learned the lesson well.
Beck looked down and saw that the valley had disappeared. The cliff went straight down into water that surged beneath him. He looked away and kept climbing.
