by Chris Ryan
Hex was just as impressed, but he definitely liked to keep dangerous creatures safely on the other side of a computer screen. Not that he spent much time playing games; particularly not since Alpha Force had brought him more real-life adventure than he ever thought he’d see. Hex’s real element was cyberspace, at the keyboard of his state-of-the-art palmtop. When Hex surfed, he had a magic touch. He could go wherever he wanted. There wasn’t a code he couldn’t break, a firewall he couldn’t breach, a file he couldn’t tease open.
Amber thought that if someone had described to her what she was seeing now, she simply wouldn’t have believed them. All the villagers were so calm, as though it never occurred to them that the snake could harm them. And the cobra was serenely accepting its due. Amber was an experienced horse rider, and understood how deeply the handler’s attitude affected the animal. Could it simply be this belief that was winning through? It was a humbling lesson.
Humbling; Amber smiled to herself as she thought it. Brought up by billionaire parents in the USA and used to the high life, she realized that humble wasn’t a word her friends would have thought was even in her vocabulary. But life had changed Amber over the past few years: her parents had died, and then she had discovered that they were working undercover to help disadvantaged people. She had been marooned on a desert island with the four friends who stood beside her now. What they went through there – their battle to survive – had forged a bond as unbreakable as Hex’s claw-like grip on her shoulder. Each of them, Amber, Li, Paulo, Hex and Alex, discovered they had remarkable potential. They came away fired with a desire to make a difference in the world, and to carry on the work started by Amber’s parents. Alpha Force would look for injustice and try to help people.
They were in Nayla, in southern India, on an aid project, helping to build a school. It had all started when Alex, at home in Northumberland and grappling with maths homework, saw a TV programme about poverty in the tiny villages all over India. Aid projects had brought clean water, electricity and communal telephones; but the villagers couldn’t make further progress into the twenty-first century because they had no schools. A reporter had gone to a village and learned that if the children wanted to go to school they had to walk eight kilometres and miss a day’s work in the paddy fields – which the community couldn’t afford. Alex had scribbled down the web link to the aid organization and e-mailed the others: You remember that money we raised last summer in the adventure race? How about if we helped to build a school in India?
After months of preparation, they were here in Nayla. The village was exactly as he had seen it on the TV: the clutch of houses made of earth and stone, with whitewashed walls and grey tiled roofs, surrounded by fertile rice fields; the standpipe providing the water supply; the sun that beat down despite the dramatic clouds; the shrine where they were now all gathered – a termite mound surrounded by a low wall of red-painted bricks and crowned with marigolds. Except the emerald paddy fields were now parched like straw, waiting for the rains.
And now a small building site stood a hundred metres from the shrine. Four pallets of plastic-wrapped breeze blocks surrounded a concrete slab they had laid that morning to become the foundations. A small wooden hut like a garden shed formed a tool store. Scaffolding poles lay ready to be assembled.
Alex felt pleased as he looked at it: their efforts in the adventure race had bought building materials and plans and paid for a foreman. Alpha Force would provide most of the labour and the villagers would join in when they could. Originally they’d had two other workers, including a builder, from an aid organization, but they had both come down with severe food poisoning a week ago and an ambulance had taken them back to Chennai. The project was now behind schedule. Fortunately the hard work of planning and laying the foundations was done. Now Alpha Force just had to get the walls up and the roof on before the rains hit.
Hex had said that the monsoon would start within days. He’d checked it on the government weather database. Not the ordinary website that everybody consulted – that one was a few days out of date. The site Hex had found was the secret one that used military satellites. The monsoon was visible as a vast black shadow advancing across the subcontinent. They didn’t have long. And that was if they survived the snake ceremony . . .
2
BUSINESS AS USUAL
The ceremony was finishing. The man in straw-coloured shorts and tunic squatted on the ground, grasped the cobra by the tail and lifted it. The cobra writhed as it found itself in mid-air, its graceful head swaying as though held on a wire. In the blink of an eye the man lowered the snake inside the earthenware pot and put the lid on.
Li watched with alarm. ‘What will they do with that snake?’
A girl answered, ‘My father will set it free in the fields.’
Alex recognized the girl, and her father beside her. He had seen them on the documentary. Naresh, the father, had been pictured on a tractor, clearing irrigation ditches; Bina, twelve years old, was filmed in a turquoise sari stepping like an exotic bird through the deep green paddy fields, tending the plants. She talked about how she longed to learn to use computers. She was wearing that same turquoise sari today. It was strange to recognize them from a TV programme aired months ago and half a world away.
‘How do you avoid being bitten?’ said Li.
‘When the god is there we can worship without fear,’ said Bina. ‘That is the ceremony.’
‘But now,’ smiled Naresh, ‘we are very, very careful.’
Around them, the women who had been bowing before the snake were now on their feet, dusting down their clothes. Alex quietly pointed out to the others someone else he recognized from the programme: Bina’s mother, Mootama, in a green sari.
Like a flock of birds on the move, the women hitched up their skirts and turned towards the fields, their bangles jangling like wind chimes. Time to go back to work.
‘Come on, guys,’ said Alex. ‘Let’s see how much of the walls we can get done before Pradesh gets back.’ Pradesh was the foreman. Normally he would be there but he had bad toothache and was seeing the dentist in Chennai.
‘I’ll mix the mortar,’ said Li, and hurried over to the hut to fetch tools and materials.
‘I’ll get water for you,’ said Amber. She grabbed a bucket and went to a water container they had filled earlier in the day.
‘Paulo,’ said Alex, ‘you find the plans and work out where the first wall goes; Hex and I can be a human chain passing you breeze blocks.’
Hex tried to tear the plastic wrapping off the concrete blocks, but it was too tough. Alex saw him in difficulties and passed him the knife he wore at his belt. The five worked seamlessly as a team. Their experience of building camps in terrain as varied as the rainforest and the desert, and of generally looking after each other on missions, meant they could anticipate each other’s needs perfectly.
Paulo, the plans in one hand and a water bottle in the other, was pacing out the distance from the front wall to the corridor partition. A small black dog was following him. Its bones were clearly visible through its skin – it looked in terrible condition, but it seemed docile enough. Li, measuring out mortar, watched, amused. Animals always loved Paulo. Here was a wild dog, trotting up to him as meekly as though he had trained it from birth. Paulo could probably charm cobras out of the fields and persuade them to climb into pots all by themselves, she thought, although she would never have said anything of the sort to his face.
Hex’s mind was on the snake. To his logical brain, Bina’s explanation did not compute. ‘What do you reckon, Alex? How did they make that snake stay there? Was it hypnotized by the chanting?’
It was Amber, carrying a water bucket, who answered. ‘Snakes don’t have ears, dumb-ass.’ She tweaked his ear with her free hand.
‘I wasn’t asking you,’ said Hex, and poked her with a stick.
‘Well, it must be like what snake charmers do,’ said Amber. She twirled her fingers in front of Hex’s face like a stage magicia
n. ‘Trust in me,’ she began to sing softly.
Hex pulled a face. ‘If I was your snake and I saw you doing that, I’d stay in my basket and never come out.’
‘You wouldn’t like to be my snake?’ teased Amber.
Hex hissed back at her. ‘Could you handle my venom?’
Li joined in. ‘I think she’d take out your fangs and starve you,’ she said. ‘That’s what real snake charmers do.’
Amber gave a yowl of laughter. ‘Good idea!’ She took the water to Li and mixed it into the dry mortar while Li sealed the remaining mortar in its bag.
The black dog was trotting along at Paulo’s heels as he paced. ‘Do you want some water?’ he grinned. He poured a little puddle from his water bottle onto the concrete.
The dog went rigid, as though its whole body was electrified. Saliva poured from its mouth.
Li had spotted it. ‘Paulo, get away,’ she shrieked. ‘It’s got rabies!’
The dog sprang towards Paulo, its dripping jaws open. Rabies. The word rang in his mind like a shrill alarm. If the dog bit him – and if he couldn’t get to a hospital quickly enough – he would die a horrible, painful death. The jaws snapped at him. He thrust the plastic water bottle in their way. The teeth clamped down hard and crushed it. Paulo ran.
Although his tactic had saved him from a bite, the water made the dog’s throat and chest go into agonizing spasms. It let out a vicious snarl, fixed its eyes on Paulo and streaked after him.
There was no chance that Paulo could outrun the dog: four legs always win against two. Li scooped up the heavy wooden board holding the mortar and hurled it at the dog, knocking the animal over. It soon scrambled upright, paws slipping in the mortar, but Paulo had time to duck round the pallet of breeze blocks where Hex and Alex were standing. Which meant it would go for one of the others.
Li vaulted up onto the other pallet and crouched like a cat waiting to pounce. Amber was the nearest to the dog now. Its dark eyes fixed on her as it scrabbled off the wet mortar. As Amber raced towards the breeze blocks, Li put her hand down to help her up. She was much smaller than the black American girl. Could she stay upright as Amber took hold? The dog was now a mere stride behind. If Amber failed to jump up first time, the dog would get her. Amber put her hand in Li’s and sprang for the top of the pile of blocks, and like a pair of circus performers they did it in one smooth move. The dog cannoned into the pile and Li backed away from the edge, pulling Amber with her.
On the other side of the site, Alex, Hex and Paulo crouched behind another pallet. For the moment it seemed the girls were safe. Paulo called out to them: ‘Don’t get any of that saliva on you. It’s full of viruses.’
‘Brilliant,’ Amber hissed under her breath. ‘Thanks a lot.’
The dog stood on its back legs, baying for its quarry and spraying saliva every time it moved its head.
Amber looked at Li. ‘It can’t climb, can it?’
Before she could answer, the dog sprang up, front claws outstretched. The two girls huddled tightly, making themselves as small as possible. The dog’s claws met slippery plastic and it slid down again.
‘I was going to say it can’t,’ gasped Li. ‘But it’s angry. It might do anything.’
Amber dug her nail into the plastic wrapping by her feet. It seemed pretty strong. ‘Thank heavens for packaging that ruins your fingernails. I always knew there was some point to it.’
The dog sprang up again. There was a ripping sound as the plastic gave way.
‘Next time it will be up here,’ said Li. ‘Quick.’
They dropped off the other side. The dog scrambled up on top of the blocks just as the girls hit the ground and ran.
Meanwhile Alex looked for a weapon. What did they have? A big pile of breeze blocks. They were too heavy to throw over any distance. There were some long metal scaffolding poles piled near the foundation slab. To his left was the tool shed. ‘We’ll herd it into there,’ he said to the others.
Paulo touched Hex’s arm. ‘Let’s get some scaffolding poles.’ The two boys sprinted towards the pile of metal poles.
Li and Amber heard the dog land. It must have taken an enormous leap from the breeze blocks, because it was now barely centimetres behind them. Their lungs were bursting as they dragged in hot, dusty air, pumping their legs hard and fast to stay ahead.
Alex pulled open the door to the hut. Li and Amber understood. They headed for it, the dog at their heels. At the last minute they dodged behind the door. The dog stopped, confused.
Then it focused on Alex, standing beside the door. It started towards him.
Alex retreated behind the door. The dog drew back; its quarry had vanished. But Alex didn’t let that lull him into a sense of false security. It was still dangerous. He moved the door to keep its attention.
Behind the dog, Hex and Paulo moved stealthily in, their scaffold poles pointing at the dog like spears.
The dog sensed the movement behind. It whirled round and saw Hex and Paulo. It was surrounded.
‘Now!’ called Alex. ‘Get it in the shed.’
Hex and Paulo lunged towards the dog. Paulo’s feet met the bag of mortar lying on the ground were Li had tied it. Normally he would have stayed upright but the pole unbalanced him. He crashed to the ground.
The dog spotted the circle’s weakest member. It leaped in for the kill.
Paulo landed on his back. Instinct made him protect his inner organs and he squirmed around like a swimmer doing a tumble turn. The dog’s feet missed him as he rolled, but he smelled fetid breath, glimpsed yellowed teeth and a red, curling tongue swimming in saliva.
Paulo seized the bag of mortar and held it to his chest like a solid pillow. The dog landed on him, squashing all the air from his lungs. He heard muffled sounds as it sank its teeth into the mortar bag. Had he been unprotected, the bite would have ripped out his throat. But he was still trapped, pinned by the weight of the dog and the heavy bag. He jerked to try to dislodge the dog, but the jaws were digging into the bag. All Paulo could do was shield as much of himself as possible. The dog dug furiously, ripping through the bag, the deadly saliva soaking into the mortar. Very soon, it would bite through.
Then Paulo felt a harder blow. And another. This is it, he thought. Another.
The dog stopped its terrible snarling and lay still.
Someone pushed the dog and the bag off him and dragged him to his feet. Alex. He had a spade in his hand which he’d used to lever the dog off without touching it.
‘Are you all right?’
Paulo was breathing hard. ‘Think so. What happened?’
Hex was picking up two halves of a broken concrete block. ‘The dog got in the way of a breeze block.’
Paulo looked at the dog. It lay awkwardly, its head gashed, blood welling up through the patchy black fur. The saliva continued to pour from its jaws like water bubbling from a spring. It mixed with the mortar from the split bag to make a grey mud. ‘Is it dead?’
‘I wouldn’t guarantee it,’ said Li. ‘Probably stunned. Come on, let’s get away.’
Paulo looked around in confusion. ‘Aren’t we going to do something with it? Should we put it in the shed?’
‘No,’ said Li sharply. She pulled him away. ‘We mustn’t touch it.’
Then Paulo noticed the crowd that had gathered. But unlike before, this was just the men of the village. They advanced on the little party. ‘Are you all right?’ called Naresh. ‘Did it bite you?’
Paulo looked at his hands, his arms, his feet as if to check. He shook his head. ‘No, no, it didn’t.’ He glanced at the dog. It was starting to twitch, as though coming to.
Amber saw that Naresh had a rock in his hand. She looked at the other earnest faces around him. They also held rocks and their eyes were narrowed with purpose.
‘Come on,’ she said to the others. ‘I think they’ve got this under control.’
They walked away down the road. As they went, the crowd closed on the dog and pelted it with stones.
> Amber winced and looked away. She was upset.
‘It’s the best thing for it,’ said Li. ‘A quick death rather than a slow, agonized one. Rabies is a horrific way to die.’
Alex put his arm around Amber. ‘And Hex stunned it so it won’t feel anything.’
‘But I can’t understand it,’ said Paulo. ‘I thought dogs with rabies were always aggressive. This one looked as gentle as a lamb.’
‘Rabies can look like that,’ said Li. ‘You should be careful of any wild animal that’s more docile than you’d expect. It’s because the virus makes them run down and ill.’ She raised her eyes and cursed herself. ‘Damn,’ she said quietly. ‘I should have remembered.’ But there was no time for recriminations; something more urgent had to be done. ‘Guys, I don’t want to alarm you but we’d better check ourselves very carefully for injuries. And nobody touch your eyes, nose or mouth, just in case you’ve got some of that dog’s saliva on your hands.’
‘Oh that’s brilliant,’ said Amber. ‘There was so much of it flying about we’ve probably got it everywhere.’
3
BRIDE BURNING
Back in their quarters, a simple house rented by the aid project, Paulo peeled off his clothes, making sure he didn’t touch the outside. His white shirt and pale shorts bore mud-coloured smears. It was all over his arms and legs. Was it infected mortar or just plain old-fashioned mud?
In the girls’ room, Li and Amber got undressed too. Amber looked down at her navy blue long-sleeved shirt and Capri pants. ‘You’d better not tell me we have to burn these. That’s half my wardrobe for this trip.’