by Chris Ryan
‘It was quite a long way away,’ said Li. But she sounded worried, not comforted.
Hex looked at the upturned cooking pot, the smashed bed. ‘I thought things kept away if you had a fire.’
‘So did I,’ said Li quietly.
Paulo made a notch in a tree so they could deviate off course and investigate.
Alex and Hex squatted down to get a closer look at the debris in the fire area. On the ground was a fresh skin from a tapir. A couple of older animal skins lay stiff as cardboard in the leaf litter. Cigarette butts were sprinkled everywhere. And the whole lot looked like something had been dragged through it. ‘Looks like someone was here for quite a while,’ said Hex.
‘Who’d be living out here?’ asked Amber.
Alex replied, ‘I suppose you always get someone living off the land, wherever you are.’ With his finger he traced the tracks on the ground.
Hex stood up and dusted down his hands. ‘But he had a visitor. What on earth did this? A jaguar?’
Li was inspecting the bed frame. ‘I don’t see any blood. It doesn’t look like he was dragged away. I think if it was a big cat there would have been some injuries – and claw marks on the wood.’
‘Anyway, think of the noises we heard,’ said Amber. ‘Big cats sound like – well – big cats. Growling and stuff.’
Paulo was looking at the smashed fire screen. Nearby there were long marks raked through the leaf litter into the dark earth. It was like looking at a fence after a bull had broken out. ‘Whatever it was, it was strong.’
The tracks went from the fire screen, past the bed frame and into the uncleared jungle, leaving a swathe of broken saplings and flattened vegetation.
‘We’ve got ourselves a trail,’ said Alex.
He and Paulo stepped into the undergrowth.
‘How far are you going to go?’ said Li.
Alex called back to her, ‘We’ll just take a quick look.’
Amber turned to Hex as she watched them follow the trail of wreckage. ‘What if they find a body?’
Hex grimaced. ‘What if they don’t? There might not be anything left.’
Amber shuddered.
It wasn’t long before Paulo’s voice came back through the trees. ‘Guys, come and look.’
Li led the way through the undergrowth. Paulo and Alex were standing looking at something on the ground. Alex was waving flies away from his face. An awful lot of flies.
‘Do I really want to see this?’ groaned Amber. ‘What have you found?’ She kept her eyes on Paulo and Alex until the last moment and then looked down.
‘A donkey!’ Li was incredulous.
It was lying on its side. Flies buzzed around its eye and nostril, packed into its ears like currants. They swarmed into various small wounds on its body.
‘Probably died last night, by the look of it,’ said Paulo.
‘What killed it?’ asked Hex. ‘What are all those cuts?’
‘It’s not those you need to look at,’ said Paulo. He touched his boot to the donkey’s knee. A cluster of flies rose, buzzing angrily. Underneath was a swelling and a small, sticky wound. ‘That’s not like the other wounds. It’s a snake bite. And look at this.’ Paulo touched its head gently with his boot. The flies lifted; underneath was a dirty halter. There were sweat marks on its coat where it had carried panniers. ‘It was probably tethered in the camp, got bitten, panicked and bolted.’
For a moment they looked down at the corpse. It looked so small and harmless. Big furry ears, its eyes and muzzle ringed with white fur. Poor thing, they thought, to die like that.
They retraced their steps back through the camp to the notch in the tree. Amber and Alex reorientated themselves with the map and they were soon back into their routine again.
‘A donkey,’ said Hex. He began to giggle. He tried not to but it quivered inside him like jelly. Next to him, he saw Amber’s eyes and mouth screw up.
That was it. The five friends roared helplessly, clutching each other, holding trees, letting out the tension.
Li was the first to recover. ‘It’s not funny.’ She dabbed her eyes, shaking her head. ‘It must have been horrible.’
‘We really scared ourselves there,’ gasped Amber. She caught Hex’s eye.
‘A donkey,’ he said severely.
Amber biffed him on the shoulder. ‘Oh, don’t make me laugh again – it hurts.’ But then she was off again, and so were the others.
She stopped laughing all of a sudden and froze.
‘Hey, Amber,’ said Hex, ‘why so serious?’
Amber spoke through gritted teeth. ‘There’s something under my foot.’ Slowly she looked down.
The others followed her gaze.
The last embers of their laughter dwindled away when they saw what it was.
Just beyond the black toe of Amber’s boot something in the shape of an arrowhead was swaying from side to side.
A snake.
5 SNAKE
Li moved away. ‘Whatever you do, Amber, don’t move. Your foot is stopping it biting. Alex, you’re too close.’
Alex shifted backwards, never taking his eyes off the thing Amber was standing on. She had her boot on it, just behind its head. The rest of its body lay in a coil behind her. It blended so well with the dark brown leaf litter that until it moved it was invisible.
Amber stared down. She felt it shift under her boot and froze. Her stomach did a somersault. ‘Um . . . the way you’re all looking at it tells me it might be a bit . . . poisonous?’
‘It’s a fer-de-lance,’ said Paulo quietly. ‘A kind of viper. Very, very poisonous.’
The snake’s body uncurled. Two metres of zigzagged tail thrashed against a tree, cracking like a whip. Amber flinched. One thought was in her head – keep her foot where it was, at all costs.
The snake thrashed again. It was angry. Hex felt its tail touch his foot and crashed into Li as he darted away.
Amber took deep breaths. It was like standing on a mine – one false move and someone could die.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Now what?’
‘We all run away and you stay standing there,’ said Hex. ‘Only joking.’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘How does she get her foot off the snake?’ asked Alex. ‘Should she just take it off and run?’
Li shook her head. ‘They can move lightning fast. She might outrun it, but if she doesn’t we’re a hell of a long way from a hospital.’
Amber had a flashback to the night before: the donkey’s screams. It had gone on for hours. That was how long it had taken to die.
‘We’ll have to kill it,’ said Hex. ‘Paulo, you’ve got a machete. Cut its head off.’
‘I might chop Amber’s foot off at the same time,’ said Paulo.
‘We could club it to death,’ said Alex.
Paulo was shaking his head. ‘We don’t have to kill it.’
Amber snorted. ‘Thanks. You can afford to be all fluffy. You haven’t got your foot on it.’
‘On the ranch we’d kill it,’ replied Paulo, ‘but that’s domesticated land. This is wild. We shouldn’t try to turn it into our backyard.’ He hefted the machete. The snake registered his movement and lifted its head, giving him a flash of yellow throat.
‘Careful,’ snapped Amber. A shaft of sunlight filtering through the trees glinted off Paulo’s blade. Her eyes widened even further. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Give us a head start.’ Paulo sliced a thin branch off a nearby tree and chopped it so that it ended in a fork, three centimetres across.
‘He’s got a plan,’ said Li. ‘He’s got that look on his face.’ The Argentinian loved tinkering with machines – or making them out of whatever materials he had to hand.
Paulo passed the branch to Amber. ‘Do you think this will go over the neck of the snake?’
She lowered the branch until it was near the snake. It reared its head up and tried to strike. The movement was so violent it actually made her ankle wobble. �
�Vicious little beggar,’ muttered Amber and pulled the stick back sharply. She passed it to Paulo. ‘It’ll probably fit.’
Paulo gave the stick to Alex. ‘Can you sharpen the ends so they’ll stick into the ground, first go?’
Alex took the stick and began to pare it with his hunting knife. ‘Spill the beans, Paulo, what are you making?’
‘I think I know,’ said Hex. ‘Amber will put that stick over the snake’s head, where her foot is. It will be stuck and we can go.’
‘With one modification,’ said Paulo. ‘We’ll have to let it go. Otherwise we’re just leaving it in a trap.’
‘It we let it go it’ll chase us,’ said Hex.
‘But we can get a head start, then pull the stake out with a length of vine.’ Paulo handed the machete to Li. ‘I need it as long as you can get.’
She cut a piece of vine and began to pull out a length of it. It was strong, like cord. She began to make a coil of it around her arm like a cable.
Amber realized her legs were burning. The wait-a-while cuts had chosen this moment to flare up. She looked down at them, longing to dig her nails in and give them a good scratch. ‘You just take your time, guys,’ she said. ‘I’ve got these cuts that are itching like hell, but I can hang on.’
Alex handed the sharpened stick back to Paulo. ‘You shouldn’t scratch anyway. You’ll make them worse.’
‘Yes, thanks for the sermon,’ grumbled Amber.
Li handed Paulo the vine. He looked at it and did a rough calculation of how much there was.
Hex watched him. ‘Paulo, when this contraption of yours is all in place, are we going to stroll away or run like hell?’
‘We’ve got about four metres of vine. That’s not a huge head start. We’ll still have to run.’
‘In that case,’ said Hex, ‘a few of us should get ahead now and mark the way. Then you wait a bit before releasing the snake and—’
Amber glared at him. ‘Are you trying to wind me up? You want me to wait like this even longer?’
Hex shrugged. ‘We’ve spent all this time trying not to get lost. Pity to throw it all away.’
‘Hex is right,’ said Alex. ‘I don’t mind staying behind.’
Paulo tied one end of the vine onto the forked stick. ‘No, I’ll stay.’ He pulled the knots to test them. ‘After all, this is my contraption.’ He handed Alex the machete. ‘We’ll catch you up.’
Alex got his map out of his belt kit. It took just moments to reorientate himself. He looked at Hex and Li. ‘Ready?’
They nodded. Hex looked back at Amber. ‘Make sure you nail the squirmy little beggar firmly into the ground.’
‘I’ll get him, don’t you worry,’ said Amber. She wished she felt as confident as she sounded.
Hex and Li headed off after Alex, counting paces. Amber’s heart thudded in time with their feet crunching on the leaf litter. Hex trod on a branch and the crack flooded her brain with images: the crashes and the screams in the night, the trail of destruction as the poor, panicking donkey tried to escape the pain of the snake bite.
Paulo coiled up the free end of the vine and stood behind her. He handed her the stick. ‘Just slide it into the ground, in front of where you’ve got your foot. Make sure it’s firm.’
Amber took the stick. ‘If it doesn’t work, do I get my money back?’ She positioned it behind the snake’s head. It reared back, eyes watching her like black sequins. She rammed the stick into the ground hard and it slid in like a garden fork.
Paulo gave a tug on the vine.
‘Don’t do that!’ hissed Amber.
‘Just testing. Now take your foot away.’
‘Are you sure?’
Paulo nodded. ‘It’s held securely.’
Very slowly, Amber raised her foot a millimetre. The snake felt the pressure release and humped its back. Amber froze.
‘Keep going,’ said Paulo. ‘Its head is still pinned.’
Sweat was running down Amber’s face. She held onto Paulo and slowly lifted her foot. She looked down. The snake was held firmly by the stick, as though it had been stapled into the ground.
Paulo took her arm and moved her away. ‘Now we follow the others.’
The snake hissed at them, showing pale fangs. It knew they were moving.
Amber couldn’t take her eyes off it. ‘What if it slides out?’
‘It can’t. It’s a close fit.’
Amber turned round. The others had vanished but they were easy to follow thanks to the path Alex had cut with the machete. Behind her, Paulo paid out the vine, looking backwards all the time. If it got caught, it might release the snake before they had got far enough away.
Li’s voice sang through the trees. ‘Are you there?’
Amber called back. ‘We’re coming. Go on ahead.’
Paulo continued to pay out the line. ‘We’re nearly at the end. Ready to run?’
‘Sure.’
‘Go!’ As Paulo started to run he felt the vine snag and pull free. The snake was released.
‘Go go go!’ he yelled.
Amber ran. Demons pursued her, images of what would happen if she didn’t run fast enough. Her bergen thumped on her back, pushing her on. Eventually, Paulo, Hex, Li and Alex closed in around her, pulling her back, telling her she could stop.
She collapsed in a heap on the jungle floor, getting her breath. ‘Has it gone?’ she gasped.
Paulo was nodding. ‘Yes. It’s gone.’
Amber pulled herself up onto all fours, still breathing heavily. She looked up at Alex. ‘Can we just do some boring navigation for a while now? After all, that’s what we came for.’
Paulo in front, Alex and Amber next, Hex and Li at the back. Every ten metres, stop and check. They felt they were getting better at this. They slipped into the routine more easily, each playing their part like components in a machine. It was repetitive, but now they were all working so well together there was something satisfying about it.
‘Hey,’ said Paulo, ‘there are some more of these drystone walls.’
Alex bent down and brushed aside some of the vines. The stones formed a mound, sloping away from him into the undergrowth. ‘No, they’re different. Look.’
The others stopped and looked. The mound was at least as tall as Alex was.
Alex knew what it was. His dad had described them. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a pyramid. A tomb.’
6 TOMB
‘A genuine Maya tomb . . .’ said Alex.
‘It’s almost completely hidden,’ said Hex. ‘We could be the first to find it.’
While Paulo marked a notch on a tree, Amber started to trace the perimeter, stepping high to avoid the brambles and wait-a-while. ‘It’s quite big.’ She walked further along and then stopped. ‘I can see the corner.’
‘Hang on,’ said Alex. ‘Don’t go out of sight.’
‘Let’s look at the other side,’ said Li. ‘Come on, guys.’
Alex had got to the corner. ‘It’s about twenty metres square,’ he called.
Paulo, Li and Hex clambered over tree roots, leaning on the dark weathered stones.
‘Did the Maya bury their dead with a lot of grave goods, like the ancient Egyptians?’ asked Li.
‘I think so,’ said Paulo.
Hex traced his fingers along the stones. One row had been carved, like a stripe of patterned tiles in a bathroom. They were weathered back to shadows but were deliberate markings: ovals, dots, circles; strange bubble shapes like the writing of aliens.
They heard Amber’s voice. ‘Hey, guys. This is the entrance.’
They hurried along to the end of the wall. Alex and Amber were standing by a tall black opening, tapered at the top, made of big stone slabs. It faced into a wooded valley.
Hex looked at Amber. ‘OK, we’ve finished here. Let’s be respectful and leave the tomb in peace.’
Amber was too excited to rise to his sarcasm. ‘I don’t think it’s disrespectful to investigate,’ she smiled. ‘After all, this could be preserve
d for the nation.’ She got out her torch and flashed it into the opening. The light bounced off mud-coloured stones.
The others got their torches out too. Hex angled his downwards. ‘Hey, guys, there are steps.’
Four torch beams converged on Hex’s. They revealed a perfectly preserved set of stone steps going down into the darkness.
Paulo swept his torch over the walls. ‘I can’t see the bottom. Looks like it goes down for quite a way.’
Alex slipped off his bergen and propped it against the tomb wall. ‘Who’s coming exploring?’
‘Doesn’t look like there’s room for more than one at a time,’ said Li. ‘Why don’t you go down and see what’s there? It might be blocked.’
‘Hey,’ said Hex. He took off his bergen and pulled out the night vision goggles. ‘Take these. You’ll get a better view.’
Alex put the strap over his shoulder. ‘Thanks.’ He stepped into the opening.
Paulo played a torch on Alex’s back to keep an eye on him. The steps went down sharply and soon all they could see was the top of his blond head.
Paulo looked at the others and grinned. ‘Following in Dad’s footsteps.’
Hex shuddered as he watched Alex descend. The tunnel came to a blunt point at the top, like a coffin. Alex seemed to be heading into inky blackness. Rather him than me, thought Hex.
Alex took it slowly. The steps were steep, as though they were made by a race of people with longer legs than normal. It was hot; the rocks caught the sweat coming off him and held it. It was damp and smelled of animal droppings, like a cave.
A few more steps and he would be at the bottom. Alex stopped and listened. It sounded as though something was moving down there. A noise like something crunching around on gravel. Was it an animal? Certainly enough wildlife had been in and out recently. There could be something living down there. He turned the torch downwards.
Something threw him against the wall of the tunnel. He gasped and the sound was magnified by the close walls. He steadied himself. He was sure he hadn’t tripped. It was like he’d been hit but he hadn’t felt a blow – anyway there was no one else there. Yet his shoulder was singing with pain where a bruise was forming.