by Justin D'Ath
‘No. There’s only room for one person.’
It was true. The only way to get to Mr Johnson was through the shattered windscreen. Provided I could fit. The front window was squashed into a narrow, jelly-bean shape. And half of it projected over the cliff.
Don’t look down, I told myself.
While the five uninjured members of the Gunggari Pack held the bus steady, I used a rock to bash away the remaining glass. Then I wormed headfirst into the crumpled driver’s compartment.
Mr Johnson lay on his back. His right leg was jammed between the dashboard and a black metal lump that had smashed down through the floor above him. The lump was covered with oil and looked like part of the engine.
‘Can you move, Mr Johnson?’
‘I think … my leg’s … broken,’ he said weakly.
Mr Johnson was wearing shorts. His thigh looked like a section of black-and-blue sausage caught in a giant rat trap. I put my feet against the upside-down dashboard and pushed with all my strength. But it wouldn’t budge.
‘Lever …’ gasped Mr Johnson, rolling his eyes sideways.
It took me a moment to understand. There was a thin iron bar poking out from behind Mr Johnson’s seat. I carefully wriggled it free. The bar was nearly a metre long, with two right-angle bends, like a wonky Z, at one end. I poked the straight end into the gap between the dashboard and the engine and tried to pry them apart. But the gap didn’t get any wider. Mr Johnson’s leg was still firmly stuck.
Suddenly there were noises outside – muffled exclamations and scuffling sounds. The bus wobbled.
‘Hey Guy, what’s going on?’ I called.
He didn’t answer.
‘Guy?’ I said, louder this time.
No answer. Just the scuffling sounds growing fainter. Like feet running away. The bus wobbled again.
‘GUY!’ I shouted.
I was wasting my breath. Guy and the others were no longer there. They’d run away. Left me and Mr Johnson teetering on the edge of the cliff.
Left us to die!
Then I heard Mum’s voice. ‘Sam,’ she called softly, ‘whatever you do, don’t come out of the bus.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘There’s a bear just outside.’
4
ATTACK
The bus shook. From behind us came snuffly breathing, like a baby with a cold. A very big baby.
‘I think it’s … inside … the bus,’ whispered Mr Johnson.
My skin prickled. Twisting my head around, I peered through the wreckage into the rear section of the overturned vehicle.
Shishkebab!
The bear was only two metres away. Its head and shoulders completely filled one of the broken windows. It was trying to push its way in. But the crumpled window frame wasn’t big enough. Every time the bear pushed, the bus tipped a few degrees further out over the fifty-metre drop that yawned below us.
‘It’s … black,’ wheezed Mr Johnson.
I gave him a blank look, wondering what difference the bear’s colour made.
‘… not grizzly.’
Now I understood. It wasn’t a grizzly, it was a black bear. They aren’t dangerous like grizzlies. They’re scared of humans!
I drew in my breath. And yelled at the bear at the top of my voice. ‘YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’
The bear looked right at me. It made a hoarse coughing sound, like the bark of a very old dog, then dragged its head out of the window frame.
‘Holy guacamole!’ I muttered, my heart pounding like a drum. ‘I thought we were cactus!’
‘Hasn’t … gone … away,’ Mr Johnson whispered.
The bus started wobbling again. The bear was back. It was trying to get in through one of the windows further down the bus.
‘YAAAAAAH!’ I yelled, waving my hands. ‘SHOO! SCRAM! BUZZ OFF!’
This time the bear took no notice. Wet nostrils twitching, it stretched its long pale snout further and further inside the bus. I heard tree roots creaking. The bus rocked like a boat.
I yelled and screamed at the bear to go away, but it seemed obsessed with getting into the bus.
‘Wants … cordial,’ Mr Johnson croaked.
A bear’s sense of smell is twenty times more powerful than a human’s. And they love sweet things. It must have smelled the spilled cordial and come to investigate. But the pool of sugary red liquid was just out of reach. To get to it, the bear would have to push itself all the way into the bus. The extra weight would tip us over the edge.
I had to stop the bear before it killed us. But shouting was no good – the smell of the raspberry cordial was too enticing. I’d have to use force.
Poking the iron bar through the narrow gap beneath Mr Johnson’s seat back, I tried to prod the bear. But even at full stretch, I couldn’t quite reach it.
Time for Plan B.
‘Wait here, Mr Johnson,’ I said. Which was a pretty dumb thing to say, because what else could he do?
Pushing the iron bar ahead of me, I wriggled out through the broken windscreen onto the cliff top. I stood up and took a deep breath to steady my nerves. Then I walked around the side of the bus.
The bear didn’t see me coming. Its head was inside the bus. I walked up beside it and tapped it with the iron bar.
Black bears, like most wild animals, avoid humans when they can. But if you corner them or give them a fright, they can turn nasty.
As quick as a startled snake, the bear reversed out of the bus and whirled around.
‘Whuuuuuff!’ it barked, showering me with spit.
I took off in the other direction.
Bears are noisy when they run. They huff and puff like steam trains. Their feet thump like horses’ hooves. So I didn’t need to look over my shoulder to know that the bear was right behind me. Closing in fast.
I was dimly aware of voices shouting advice at me: Look out! Drop to the ground and cover your head! Climb a tree!
But the loudest voice came from inside my head. It was my karate instructor, Mr Habarty, talking to me before my first inter-club competition five years earlier. ‘Remember, Sam – attack is the best means of defence.’
I wondered if Mr Habarty had ever been attacked by a two-hundred-kilogram bear?
But this was a black bear, not a grizzly. They were supposed to be afraid of humans. I spun around and whacked it with the iron bar.
Or tried to. There wasn’t time to take aim. Instead of connecting with the bear’s head, the crooked end of the bar got tangled in its legs. The bear tripped and steamrolled right over the top of me.
OOOFF!
The animal was thickly padded with fur and autumn fat. Even though it was huge, I wasn’t hurt. Just a bit winded and bruised. I staggered to my feet. The bear was three metres away, staggering to its feet. It made an angry blowing sound through its rubbery lips and rose up on its hind legs. It was taller than me.
Attack is the best means of defence. Thanks to Mr Habarty’s advice, I made it to the semifinals at my first inter-club karate competition. But the iron bar lay on the ground behind the bear. My only weapons were my bare hands.
I raised them in front of me.
‘YAAAAAAH!’ I yelled.
And walked straight towards the bear.
5
CLIMB, BALOO!
The bear watched me walk towards it. I took one … two … three small, shaky steps.
It didn’t move.
Please run away, bear! I begged it in my mind.
Four steps, five steps.
The closer I got, the bigger the bear looked.
Six … seven …
Finally, when we were almost close enough to shake hands, the bear made a huffing sound, dropped onto all fours, turned and went shambling away along the cliff top.
Phew!
‘That was the bravest – hic! – thing I’ve ever seen!’ Sally said from three-quarters of the way up a fir tree.
Guy clung to the branch above her. ‘Baloo rules!’ he cried.
A chorus of cubs’ voices echoed him from the nearby trees: ‘Baloo rules! Baloo rules! Baloo rules!’
Only Mum and Will were still on the ground. They’d hidden behind a large rock, which was probably just as safe as the trees because black bears are excellent climbers.
‘Did it hurt you?’ Mum asked.
‘I’m okay,’ I said, even though my insides felt like jelly and my legs were so wobbly I could barely walk in a straight line.
There was the loud bang of a tree root breaking. We all looked at the bus. It shuddered, then tipped further towards the river below.
‘DAAAAAAAAD!’ yelled E.J.
‘Everybody down from the trees!’ I ordered, scooping up the iron bar and hurrying towards the bus as fast as my wobbly legs would take me. ‘We have to get Mr Johnson out now!’
Even Mum and E.J. helped this time. Everyone held the bus steady while I crawled in with the iron bar to free Mr Johnson.
‘Where’s the jack?’ I asked him.
While I was fighting the bear, I’d realised what the bar was for. It was the handle for cranking up the jack when the bus had a flat tyre.
‘Under … my seat,’ Mr Johnson said weakly.
The bus was upside down. So the jack was no longer under Mr Johnson’s seat, it was above it. I reached up and carefully wriggled it free. It was almost identical to the one in my big brother’s four-wheel drive. I positioned it next to Mr Johnson’s trapped leg in the gap between the dashboard and the engine. Then I fitted the square end of the bar into the socket that operated the jack, and started turning the handle.
CRE-E-E-E-E-A-AK!
Mr Johnson let out a groan.
I stopped cranking. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ he gasped. ‘It’s … coming … loose! Keep … winding!’
I got back to work, cranking the jack handle as fast as I could. Slowly the gap came open, like a wide, smiling mouth.
CRE-E-E-E-E-A-AK!
Then there was another sound – a loud, splintering snap – followed by a series of thumps, bumps and crashes that ended with a distant splash.
A tremor ran through the bus.
‘Sam, hurry!’ Mum shouted from outside. ‘One of the trees just fell over the cliff. There’s almost nothing holding the bus now!’
I gave the handle a final three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, then tossed it to one side. Mr Johnson’s leg was free. But it looked a mess. It was black and blue. There was a big lump just above the knee, a sure sign that it was broken. It needed a splint, but there wasn’t time for first aid. I gripped Mr Johnson around the waist.
‘I’m going to pull you out,’ I said.
He nodded and gritted his teeth.
But before I could start pulling, the bus gave a big lurch and started to tip. Mr Johnson rolled sideways, pinning me against the crumpled ceiling. There were shouts from outside. They couldn’t hold the bus. It was going over the edge!
A stream of red liquid trickled past my ear. For a second I thought it was blood, then I smelt raspberry cordial. The cubs and Mum were yelling advice, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I was too busy wriggling out from under Mr Johnson. His body had gone limp. I wrapped my arms around his chest and wriggled towards the narrow strip of light shining in through the bus’s flattened windscreen. Broken glass crunched under my shoulder. I bumped my head on something. The bus felt like a capsizing ship. I didn’t know which way was up and which was down.
Outside, tree roots snapped like gunshots. Someone screamed my name. Focusing on the strip of light, I hauled Mr Johnson after me. He was so heavy! Hands appeared in the gap. Lots of hands. With a final, desperate heave, I shoved Mr Johnson towards the hands. They grabbed him. His big, floppy body squeezed through the gap and disappeared.
I tried to follow, but something was holding me back. My jeans were snagged. I couldn’t get out! I was trapped in the bus and it was tipping, tipping, tipping … Going over the edge. Taking me with it!
There was a loud bang, then a tearing sound, and the bus broke free. Time seemed to stand still. I felt weightless, like at the top of a roller-coaster ride.
There wasn’t time to think. Just to act. Aiming my head and shoulders at the windscreen gap, I kicked with my legs, propelling my body towards the light.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIP! went my jeans.
I was out of the bus. I was flying. A branch flashed past. I grabbed hold with both hands. It nearly tore my arms out of their sockets, but I held on. Held on for my life.
Don’t look down, I told myself. But I looked down anyway.
A toy bus was below me. It was in free fall. I watched it getting smaller and smaller and smaller, until it hit the toy river and exploded.
There was nothing ‘toy’ about the explosion.
BOOOOOOOM!
The shock wave was like a blast of hot air from a furnace. It took my breath away.
‘Sam!’
I looked up. Mum and a line of cub scouts stood silhouetted against the sky at the top of the cliff. I was ten metres below them, dangling from an upside-down tree. It was one of the two fir trees that had been supporting the bus. The other one had fallen down the cliff. All that was keeping mine from following it was a single, splintered root not much thicker than my wrist. I could see it through a gap in the branches. And I could see the root fibres snapping one by one, like the strands of a badly frayed rope that was about to break.
‘CLIMB, BALOO!’ yelled the cubs.
6
GRAND HOWL
The tree bounced off the cliff face four times on the way down, then smashed into wood chips on the rocks beside the flaming wreck of the bus.
‘Lucky you weren’t still holding on to it, Baloo,’ said Sally. Her hiccups had stopped.
My hands shook as I dusted twigs and bits of bark off my scout leader’s uniform. There was raspberry cordial all over my shirt, and the back pocket of my jeans had been ripped off. ‘Yeah, lucky,’ I said.
But I had a bad feeling that we weren’t out of danger yet.
Mum must have had the same feeling. ‘Pack meeting!’ she called from the grassy slope, where Joel was helping E.J. make two tree-branch splints for Mr Johnson’s broken leg. We gathered around her in a semicircle.
‘First, I want to congratulate everyone for the way you’ve behaved today,’ Mum said. ‘You’ve all been very brave and looked out for each other the way cubs are supposed to.’
‘Wasn’t it cool how Baloo chased away the bear?’ Sally interrupted. ‘He should get a bravery award.’
Mum smiled in my direction. With the scarf around her head and streaks of dried blood on her face, she looked like a pirate. ‘I’m very proud of Baloo,’ she said. ‘I’m proud of everyone. You all deserve bravery awards.’
‘Emma should get a first aid award, too,’ said Will, whose injured arm was supported in a sling made from a pink sweatshirt.
‘Definitely,’ said Mum. ‘But let’s not worry about awards right now. Does anyone have a mobile phone?’
There were head shakes all round.
‘What about food?’ Mum asked. ‘Has anyone got any scroggin, lollies, chocolate bars?’
More headshakes.
‘Or drinks?’ Mum’s eyes travelled hopefully around the group of silent cubs. ‘I don’t suppose anyone brought their water bottles when they got out of the bus?’
Same result. Just a semicircle of shaking heads. Nobody had drink, nobody had food, nobody had a mobile phone. All our gear had gone over the cliff with the bus.
‘Are we lost, Akela?’ asked Matt beside me.
‘No, Matt, we aren’t lost,’ Mum said. She pointed up the hill. ‘The road’s just up there. But Mr Johnson can’t walk and it’s much too steep to carry him.’
‘I’ll go up and stop a car,’ I volunteered. ‘I’ll get them to call an ambulance.’
Mum nodded. ‘That’s a good idea, Baloo. Take someone with you.’
‘Who wants to come?’ I asked.
Several
hands shot up. I chose Guy.
‘Awwww!’ said Sally, who’d had both hands up.
‘I’ll pick you next time,’ I promised.
‘When a car stops,’ Mum said to me, ‘see if they’ve got any water to spare.’
I gave her the scout salute, then Guy and I set off up the side of the canyon. We followed the avenue of broken saplings and flattened undergrowth carved through the forest by the bus when it had come crashing down from the road. It was only fifty or sixty metres, but the slope was so steep that it took us nearly five minutes to make the short climb.
The condition of the road surprised me. I hadn’t taken much notice when we’d been driving along it in the bus – I’d been too busy looking for grizzly bears. But now, standing on its dusty, pot-holed surface, I discovered it was little more than a logging trail. And a disused logging trail, at that. Apart from the zigzag tread pattern of the bus’s tyres, which veered suddenly and disappeared over the edge, and the huge hoof prints of the moose that had caused the accident, there were no other marks in the dust.
‘No one’s driven along here for ages,’ I said.
‘Except Mr Johnson,’ said Guy.
And look what happened to Mr Johnson, I thought.
We waited for nearly an hour, but both of us knew it was a waste of time. No cars were going to come. It was an unused road.
‘What’ll we do?’ Guy asked finally.
I shrugged. ‘I guess we’d better go back and give Akela and the others the bad news.’
At least we wouldn’t have to go back empty-handed. Thirty metres from where we’d been waiting, a slow trickle of water seeped out of a clay embankment and formed a small pool at the road’s edge. The water looked clear. I sniffed it, then tasted it – it seemed okay. Guy found a dusty hub cap that had fallen off the bus when it went over the edge. We gave it a rinse, then filled it with water to take back for the others.
Mum was pleased we’d found water, but disappointed when we told her about the road.
‘My fault,’ said Mr Johnson, taking slow sips from the hub cap as I held it to his lips. ‘I was taking … a short cut. No traffic … comes this way. You’ll have to … walk back … to the main highway.’