Anaconda Ambush

by Justin D'Ath

  And that’s not the worst bit. Vampire bats carry rabies, a truly gruesome disease. There’s a movie where the family dog gets rabies and turns into a howling, foamy-mouthed killer that infects everything it bites. Nature’s version of a zombie.

  I needed to sterilize the bites, then stop the bleeding somehow.

  There was a first-aid kit among Uncle Shaun’s gear. Keeping the crossbow aimed at the water, I knelt on the mossy shelf and used one hand to open the plastic box with the big red cross on its lid. The first thing I saw was an EpiPen. It nearly made me smile. Good old Mum! Uncle Shaun was her younger brother; she must have bullied him into bringing along an extra one for me, just in case. But it wasn’t an EpiPen I needed now, it was disinfectant to clean the vampire bat bites, and bandaids to stop the bleeding.

  I found what I needed and got to work. It was hard patching myself up using only one hand, but no way was I going to put the crossbow down. I knew the anaconda was watching me. A couple of times – when I was opening the antiseptic bottle, for example – it could have got me while I was distracted. But it stayed out of sight. Watching and waiting. Biding its time.

  Reptiles are patient. A snake only has to eat once a month. Sooner or later, I would have to sleep. Then the anaconda would make its move.

  And so would the vampire bats. There were lots of them in the cave. Now that I knew what they looked like, I could make out a big colony hanging in a dark recess in the rocky ceiling almost directly above me.

  I could see their beady black eyes watching me and their little pig-like snouts quivering.

  Stay put, bats, I thought, as I stuck the last bandaid in place.

  Then I had another thought. How did they get in here in the first place? Unlike the anaconda, bats don’t swim. And they were too small and fragile to come through the waterfall like I did. So there must be another entrance.

  My eyes darted to the crack in the rock where the three flying bats had disappeared. It looked about thirty centimetres wide – I might be able to squeeze through. Provided it didn’t get any narrower. And provided it actually led somewhere.

  But the crack was right down the far end of the cavern. To reach it, I would have to wade through the water.

  Yeah, right!

  But what choice did I have? I couldn’t just stay where I was and wait for the anaconda to make the first move. It might wait three weeks. I’d be dead by then. Either from starvation, rabies, or being sucked dry by the vampire bats.

  If I wanted to survive, I had to make the first move.

  But first I had to be sure that the crack wasn’t a dead end. Using the tomahawk, I chopped the stainless-steel point off one of the arrows. Then I loaded the crossbow, aimed up at the colony of bats dangling from the cave roof, and squeezed the trigger.

  Houston, we have lift-off!

  Bats went everywhere, zooming around the cavern like a mouse-plague with wings. One eye on the bats, I quickly reloaded the crossbow – with a steel-tipped arrow this time – and waited to see what would happen.

  Sure enough, after circling a few times, bat after bat disappeared into the crack at the other end of the lake. Soon every last one of them was gone. And not a single bat came back out.

  I’d found their secret exit.

  But was it big enough for me to go through? And could I even get to it without being taken by the giant anaconda?

  There was only one way to find out.

  8

  TWANG!

  My cargo shorts had four pockets. I filled them with stuff I’d unloaded from Uncle Shaun’s pack. The canoe and all our supplies were gone, so the more I took with me, the better my chances (and Uncle Shaun’s and Caesar’s chances – provided I found them soon) of making it back to civilisation alive.

  Most of what I took came from the first-aid kit: the EpiPen, some bandaids and adhesive dressings in a sealed plastic bag, the bottle of antiseptic, and Uncle Shaun’s anti-malaria pills. I also took the little folding scalpel that my uncle used to dissect leaves and plant specimens.

  Last of all, I squeezed in one of the lumps of gold. It was heavy and tugged at the waistband of my shorts, but if I didn’t have evidence, nobody would take me seriously when I said I wanted to come back to the Amazon and start a gold mine.

  But first I had to get out of the Amazon. Which meant getting out of the cavern. And that meant – my skin prickled at the thought – going back into the lake where the giant anaconda was lurking.

  With the loaded crossbow in one hand and the two remaining arrows in the other, I stepped down into the knee-deep water. It was the worst feeling. I had no idea where the snake was, but I did know one thing: it knew where I was.

  Swinging the crossbow back and forth, I started wading around the edge of the lake. I stayed as close to the wall as I could. It protected my left flank, narrowing the anaconda’s options.

  Halfway to my destination, I began to get a really strong feeling that the anaconda was behind me. In my mind’s eye, I saw it weaving along the bottom of the lake, invisible in the dark water as it stealthily closed in on my heels. Hair standing on end, I slowly turned around.

  It was lucky I did. Because suddenly the lake’s surface burst open and a huge, pink mouth exploded out of the water.

  There was just enough time to swing the crossbow around and loose off an arrow.

  Twang!

  9

  DEAD END

  All hell broke loose. The anaconda rolled into a knot the size of a hatchback car and began turning over and over like a water turbine. It sent clouds of spray as high as the rocky ceiling. It sent foaming waves right across the lake to the waterfall on the other side. It drenched me with flying water.

  I backed away for a couple of metres, then turned and waded flat out the rest of the way to the crack in the wall. It did look like the mouth of tunnel, and it was wide enough for me to squeeze through. But I hesitated. It was completely dark inside. What if it was just the entrance to another underground chamber, and the vampire bats were all crowded inside, waiting for me to come and join them? I wished I had a torch. There was one back on the ledge with the rest of Uncle Shaun’s things, but it was too big to fit in my pockets so I hadn’t brought it with me. Bad decision. I glanced over my shoulder.

  The anaconda was gone.

  It’s probably dead, I thought. Maybe my arrow had hit it in the throat. It was safe to go back for the torch.

  I turned to retrace my steps, but something caught my eye. Orange feathers. A crossbow arrow was embedded in the moss a few metres past where I’d last seen the anaconda. It must have glanced off the reptile’s leathery scales and ricocheted into the wall.

  So the anaconda wasn’t dead. I’d only nicked it. Hurt it enough to make it lose its cool, but not enough to kill it.

  Then I saw something that made me freeze. Ripples. Not ripples that moved out in concentric circles, but ripples that moved in lines. Lines that joined in a V. And the point of the V was moving. Straight towards me.

  Get out of the lake! screamed the little voice in my head.

  I did fit into the tunnel. Just. It was a tight squeeze. I pushed the crossbow and arrows in ahead of me, then hauled myself out of the water and wriggled in after them.

  The tunnel sloped upwards. It was a good sign. When you’re underground and want to get out, up is the best direction. But I could see nothing ahead of me. No sign of daylight. No sign of anything. I needed Uncle Shaun’s torch. Praying that the tunnel really was an escape route, I wormed my way blindly through the inky darkness. Despite all the evidence that told me I was climbing, in my imagination it felt like I was going down, burrowing steadily towards the centre of the earth. Towards my doom.

  I started to regret filling my pockets. It made me really fat around my thighs. It was slowing me down. None of the first-aid gear (or the gold) would be any good to me if I got stuck.

  Or if something worse happened.

  I could hear a dry scuffling noise behind me, like scales sliding acros
s rock. Holy guacamole, the anaconda was coming after me!

  I couldn’t use the crossbow. There wasn’t room to twist around and shoot my two arrows back down the tunnel. My only chance was to keep going. To try to outrun the anaconda. Or outwriggle it, because wriggling along on my belly was the only way to move through the increasingly narrow tunnel. But snakes have it over humans when it comes to wriggling.

  One thing gave me hope. The anaconda was huge. Not just long, but fat. It was bigger around the middle than me. Maybe it couldn’t fit all the way up the tunnel. It might get stuck.

  There was a danger I might get stuck, too. A very real danger. The tunnel was getting smaller. I reached a point where the ceiling came down so low, I had to turn my head sideways to fit through. There was barely room for my body to follow. It felt like I was wriggling into a grave. But anything was better than being eaten by a giant anaconda. I could still hear a faint scuffling noise behind me. Blindly I pushed forward, feeling my way ahead with the crossbow.

  Clunk!

  It hit rock. I’d reached a dead end. I was trapped.

  ‘HELP!’ I yelled, finally giving way to panic. ‘UNCLE SHAUN! CAESAR! HELP!’

  There was no echo this time. Just a fluttering sound and a tiny movement of air that tickled the hairs of my right forearm.

  Vampire bat! I thought, and lashed out blindly with the crossbow.

  Crack! My arm smacked into the tunnel wall, right on the funny bone. Oooow! I dropped the crossbow and clutched my tingling elbow.

  Bang … clatter … slide … scrape!

  What was that? I froze and listened, but the noises had stopped. They had come from just in front of me, where I’d dropped the crossbow. I reached forward into the darkness, but nothing was there. Literally nothing. My hand dangled in empty space.

  There was a hole in the floor right in front of me. A hole big enough for the crossbow to fall through.

  It wasn’t a dead end!

  I wormed forward and found myself looking down a narrow rocky chute. Yes, looking! A wash of pale light gleamed up from below. I couldn’t see where it was coming from because two metres below me the chute curved out of sight like a water slide. It was wet like a water slide, too. Water seeped out of a crack in the wall near my shoulder and trickled down the chute, making it green with slime. It looked slippery.

  I dropped the two arrows, one at a time, and watched them zip down the chute and disappear around the curve.

  Hooley dooley! I thought, chewing my lower lip and trying to build up my courage.

  I had no idea what was at the bottom, nor how steep it was around the curve, nor whether the natural water slide would stay wide enough all the way down. But there was one way to find out.

  I wriggled out over the rocky lip of the chute. There wasn’t room to turn around and go down feet first. I took a deep breath, then launched myself headlong into the abyss.

  10

  TWO MINUTES TO LIVE

  I must have closed my eyes. Because I have no visual memories of what happened next. Just a sensation of speed. And of a wet, super-slippery surface swishing past underneath me.

  Then – for about half a second – nothing was underneath me.

  SPLOSH!

  I opened my eyes and saw sky. I was out.

  Out of the cave that is, but not out of trouble. My legs and lower body felt strange – sort of cool and wet and … stuck! I’d landed in a mud hole. It was about three metres across and surrounded by reeds. Looming overhead, a tall rocky escarpment blocked out half the sky. Partway up the craggy cliff face was a small round hole with water trickling out of it. That’s where I’d come from. I would have been seriously injured if not for my muddy splash-down.

  But now I wanted to get out and I was having trouble. The mud was really thick. It was hard to move my legs. When I tried to make for the nearest reeds – half-wading, half-swimming – I wasn’t getting anywhere. The only direction I was going was down.

  Shishkebab! I’d landed in quicksand!

  I could hardly believe my bad luck. I’d survived so much – fire ants, the peke-peke’s propeller, the Big Beast, vampire bats, claustrophobia, near suffocation, and being ambushed by the BIGGEST SNAKE IN THE WORLD – yet I was still going to die. I would never see my family again. Never get to tell anyone about the gold I’d discovered. Never be a millionaire.

  But I wasn’t dead yet. And I was back in the outside world, no longer trapped in a cave.

  ‘HEEEEEEEEEELP!’ I yelled at the absolute top of my voice. ‘UNCLE SHAUN! CAESAR!’

  This time they might be able to hear me. But they would have to be really close, because the roar of the Big Beast was even louder out here than it had been in the cave. I couldn’t see the waterfall because the reeds blocked my view, but I could see a fine mist of spray coming around the edge of the rocky escarpment.

  Hang on a minute! said the little voice in my head. Shouldn’t the waterfall be in the other direction?

  I thought about being swept over the Big Beast, and made a map in my head of the secret lake and the ledge and the position of the tunnel. Suddenly it made sense – I’d crossed behind the waterfall and come out on the other side of the river!

  Even if Uncle Shaun and Caesar did hear me, they wouldn’t be able to come to my rescue.

  I was on my own. Stuck in quicksand. And sinking. The more I struggled, the faster I went down. The bubbling brown mud was up to my rib cage. I couldn’t reach the reeds. I searched desperately for something – anything! – to grab onto. That was when I noticed a small, muddy prong poking out of the quicksand to my right. It was the tip of the crossbow. I dragged it out of the mud, hooked it around five or six of the nearest reeds and started pulling them towards me. They bent like giant grass stalks. I grabbed them with my free hand and dropped the crossbow. Bunching them in both hands, I tried to pull myself out of the quicksand.

  Slurp!

  The reeds came out by the roots. Shishkebab! I was going to die!

  Keep a cool head, I remembered.

  But it was hard to keep cool. I was sinking. Slowly and steadily, the quicksand was dragging me down. It already reached my armpits. In another two minutes, it would be up to my head.

  I had two minutes to live. All I could do was call for help – ‘UNCLE SHAUN! CAESAR!’ – even though I knew it was hopeless.

  The quicksand closed around my neck like cold, sticky porridge.

  ‘HEEEEEEEELP!’

  There was a rustling sound, then the slop, slop, slop of feet walking in mud.

  I twisted my head around. An Indian stood at the edge of the reeds. He wasn’t dressed in European clothes like the Indians further down the river. All he wore was a kind of loincloth made of woven fibre, and two red feathers that dangled from his earlobes. His straight black hair was cut flat around the bottom like a helmet. In one hand he held a long, skinny blowgun. In the other, he clutched a black-tipped poison dart.

  ‘Can you help me out of here?’ I said.

  The Indian scowled and said something in the strange, whispery language of the Yanomami people we’d met on our way upriver.

  Then he pointed the blowgun straight at my head.

  11

  THOUSANDS OF TEETH

  ‘He say to take hold,’ a voice said in English.

  A second Indian had appeared from behind the reeds, a boy of about seven or eight. He wasn’t wearing anything. Just a smile.

  ‘Father pull you out,’ he said.

  Hoping there wasn’t a poison dart in the blowgun, I grabbed hold with both hands and the boy’s father slowly hauled me up onto the mat of spongy reeds where the two Indians were standing. I lost one of Uncle Shaun’s boots in the gluey quicksand, but the boy fished it out with a stick. After tipping the mud out of it, I pulled it back on.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You welcome,’ the boy said shyly.

  I must have looked terrible – plastered from head to foot in sticky brown gloop. Using a clump of reeds, I wiped the m
ud off my face and arms. The man watched me with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Garimpeiro?’ he grunted. It didn’t sound like the soft Yanomami language he’d been speaking before, it sounded like a swear word.

  ‘He say are you prospector?’ the boy translated.

  I nervously touched the heavy lump of gold in my pocket. The tone of the question – and the way both Indians frowned as they waited for my reply – told me that they didn’t like prospectors. I shook my head. ‘I’m here with my uncle. He’s a scientist who studies trees.’

  Again there were frowns. ‘For cut them down?’ the boy asked.

  ‘No, my uncle loves trees,’ I said quickly. ‘He wants to stop people cutting them down.’

  The man nodded when his son translated. As if he loved trees, too.

  ‘Where is uncle?’

  ‘On the other side of the river. We got separated and I was swept over the waterfall.’

  When the man heard this, he looked impressed. He spoke rapidly to his son.

  ‘Father say you welcome in our forest. Big Beast give you respect.’

  I decided not to say anything about what had happened after I was swept over the waterfall. I didn’t want them to know about the secret cave, and I especially didn’t want them to know about the gold.

  The man used his blowgun to lift the crossbow out of the quicksand. The boy found both arrows in the reeds around the other side. They had never seen a crossbow before so I showed them how it worked. I used a reed stalk instead of an arrow because there were only two left. The man asked if he could have a turn, but he wanted a real arrow, not a reed stalk. He’d just saved my life, so I couldn’t refuse. He aimed the crossbow up at the escarpment. Only then did I see a small, rat-like animal crouched on a rocky ledge about five metres from the top. Twang! The arrow missed by miles and disappeared over the escarpment. Grinning, the Indian handed the crossbow back. Then he offered me his blowgun and pointed at the rat. I shook my head – I didn’t want to shoot the rat or waste one of his poison darts.