by Lee Murray
Ben let out a breath. The forest behind him was empty. It looked like he’d shaken it off. He listened again. Nothing. It must have gone. Given up. That big, it’d use a lot of energy just moving about. Thank God, he was safe, for the moment at least. But how was he going to get back to the others? One bit of this forest looked surprisingly like the next. And it was so dense. On his own, he could wander around for days and not find his way out. That was, if the creature didn’t find him first. Should he shout? No, no shouting. The Sphenodon might hear him. Well, he couldn’t just stand here, hoping the others would come for him. McKenna had said they’d pull out at 15:00 no matter what. Ben needed to get back.
He forced himself to think. They’d been heading south, and the road out was behind them, so he needed to go north, maybe north-east. Ben checked the trees for the side with the most moss, but this part of the forest was so dense that moss grew everywhere. Just as well his parents had sent him to Land Cadets. He took off his watch and laid it across his palm, angling it so twelve o’clock was pointed at the sun. Only with the light fading, and the canopy towering over him, the sun was difficult to locate. Ben took a step to one side. There. Now all he had to do was bisect the angle between the hour hand and 12 o’clock, and he should—
A twig snapped behind him.
Ben almost dropped the watch. His legs went warm. Urine seeped into his socks.
He forced himself to breathe.
It’s just my nerves overreacting. Listen. The forest is still quiet. I already looked behind me. There was nothing there.
He looked anyway.
The creature lunged, all teeth and claw. Ben stared in horror. The truth dawned. Upwind, it had stalked him.
Run!
But he could only gape as a talon sunk deep into his chest, pink froth bubbling around the nail. Skewered like a prawn on the barbie, he thought, tumbling backwards. Odd that it didn’t hurt. But his nerves weren’t dead yet. All at once, every cell flared in pain, searing pitiless pain, as if he’d been doused in petrol and set alight. Ben screamed. No sound emerged, but more foam billowed from his chest.
Ben was aware of being lifted off his feet before he plummeted into darkness.
Chapter 18
Taine crept away on the sides of his boots. Then, when he was far enough away for the sound not to carry, he sprinted, racing back to find the others.
Trigger and Coolie had them herded together, not far from where he had last seen them, Trigger with the rocket launcher on his shoulder, the civilians inside the huddle, and the rest of the soldiers facing outwards.
Seeing him coming, de Haas pushed through the soldiers. “You’re alone.”
Taine nodded as he caught his breath.
“Fogarty’s dead, I presume?” de Haas said.
“The Sphenodon took him. The dog, too.”
De Haas blanched. Jug fiddled with his watch, and Trigger closed his eyes for a second.
“But that can’t be right,” Jules said, shaking her head. “It’s daytime.”
“I’m sorry. I saw it take both of them,” Taine replied.
“It hunts during the day…” she said, and Taine recognised her response; faced with the enormity of what had happened, her brain has chosen to focus on the technicality.
“We’re leaving this area now,” he told his men. “Get ready to move out.”
“No!” Jules protested, pulling herself out of her stupor. “We can’t leave yet. You promised we’d look for Louise.”
Foster stepped towards her and snaked a hand around her waist. “Jules, we’ve looked for her. If she were here, we’d have found her.”
But she twisted out of his embrace, turning to Taine, her eyes flashing. “You said we’d search for her for two hours.”
“That was before it killed Ben,” Taine said.
“All the more reason for us to stay!” Jules said, her voice shrill. She stopped then, her eyes wide, and clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh God, listen to me. What must I sound like? I’m really sorry about Ben, I truly am, but don’t you see? Louise might still be alive. And if she is, we can’t just abandon her. We can’t let the Sphenodon get her too.”
Holding her close, Richard dropped his chin on her head. “I agree, it’s cruel,” he said. “But given a choice between you and her…”
Foster stepped back. Hands gripping Jules’ shoulders, he forced her to meet his gaze. “Jules,” he said, wiping a tear from her cheek with the back of his hand. “We need to get you to safety.”
Taine looked away. “We leave now,” he barked.
Jules looked around for support. No one was keen to hang around. Within minutes they headed out, back the way they’d come. Taine pushed them, forcing the group to run as hard as they could. It didn’t take long before they arrived at their original campsite.
Not far enough away. They can’t stop yet.
“Leave the science equipment,” he said. “Weapons and survival gear only.”
“What about Winters?” Singh asked.
Taine shook his head. “We leave him.”
“We can’t just leave him,” Lefty protested.
Singh didn’t look too chuffed about it either. Taine understood. It went against the grain for a soldier to leave a mate behind, even a dead one, and the pair had witnessed Winters’ death.
You don’t always get what you want. They’d left Louise Hemphill.
“We can’t carry a body bag out of here. It’ll slow us down,” Coolie said.
Taine had another thought. What if the Sphenodon used the scent of death to track them? He couldn’t take the risk. “We’ll weigh the bag down with stones, and leave it in the stream,” he said. “The cold should preserve the body until we can come back for it.”
He didn’t say the water would also cover the smell of decay.
While Lefty and Singh submerged the body, Taine pulled Nathan aside, aware the guide had had precious little time to recover from his concussion. There was nothing else Taine could do. They needed his expertise.
“You know this land. What do you think? What’s the best way out?” he asked, pulling out his map.
“There’s this trail here,” Nathan said, pointing out a route on Taine’s map. “It’ll take us a bit longer, but it might be safer. Keeps us out of the area Ira warned us about, where he said weird things were happening.”
“You think that’s where the creature lives?”
Nathan shrugged. “Just a guess.”
“Coolie’s pretty sure it can track us, Nathan. I’d just as soon get us out quicker if we can.”
Nathan rubbed his nose between his finger and thumb. “So, we take the more direct route? Risk running into it?”
Taine gave him a terse nod. Their eyes met in unspoken understanding; maybe Ben and the dog had bought them some time. Folding the map, Taine returned it to his pocket. “Let’s move!”
An hour later the group were sandwiched in a narrow fissure between two banks. Taine needed to get them out of this gully. If the creature were to corner them here, they’d be exposed. It could sit over the cleft and scoop them out with its talons, like popcorn from a box.
Nathan clambered up the slope, followed by Trigger, while behind them, de Haas took advantage of the bottleneck to rest. Hands on his knees, puffing, his bald head like a pink bowling ball, he waited his turn.
Uneasy, Taine looked back over his shoulder at the trees, squinting into the shadows, which were deepening to purple in the fading afternoon light. For the umpteenth time, he flared his nose for the musky metallic smell of the creature, relieved to detect only the fresh scent of leaf rot.
“Keep moving,” he said, facing the group again.
When de Haas had reached the top, Foster used a branch to hoist himself up the slippery grade and out of the funnel. Read went next, darting up, making it look easy. Then Coolie. When it was Eriksen’s turn to haul himself up, Taine stole a glance at Jules. Her hair had worked itself loose from its pony tail and fell about her face in wi
sps. Her face, though, was grim, lips tight.
“Thanks,” she said, as Eriksen turned, bracing his back against a tree, and extended a hand to Jules. Taine picked up the weariness in her voice. She was tired. They were all tired. But Taine couldn’t let them stop. Not yet. Tired was better than dead. Another hour, and hopefully they’d be out of the Sphenodon’s hunting grounds. Another hour of travelling up and down the line checking on each party member, doubling the distance of everyone else and straining his senses for signs of the creature. Punishing himself for Ben’s death, and for failing to find Louise.
The last to climb out of the gorge, Taine grabbed at a tree trunk and heaved his body over the lip. At least that way he could keep the group close.
* * *
Te Urewera Forest, East of the Cell HQ
Mist cooling at his neck, Jason hugged his knees. He pulled his jacket around his shoulders and leaned closer to the rock out of the wind. Beside him, Danny did the same.
Well, this sucks! At first, becoming part of the new Tūhoe revolution had been great, an adventure worth dropping out of his economics degree for. What was the point of squinting over textbooks reading about scarcity, externalities and output gaps when you could actually do something about it, make a difference, standing up for what was important? Jason hadn’t needed much convincing. And mostly, the past four months had been awesome, making him feel like a real-life Che Guevara, waging protests against government theft, its collusion with big business in order to oppress the poor, and especially the white patriarchal gits lording it over his Māori brothers. But no one had told him he’d be sitting in the middle of the forest freezing his balls off for days at a time. And the group’s leader, Te Kooti – not his real name – had insisted they be armed.
“You can’t have a revolution without guns,” Te Kooti had said. “What this country needs is a strategic show of force. They need to know we mean business.”
The new Te Kooti divined that, like before, the Tūhoe would lead the way, rejecting injustices against the people, just as the tribe’s elders had rejected the Treaty of Waitangi nearly two centuries earlier.
“Patriarchal document!” Te Kooti had spat. “Common thievery. Not worth the paper it was written on.” It was parchment, but Jason liked Te Kooti’s vision. A return to simpler things. Creating a self-sustaining nation on traditional Tūhoe tribal lands. Giving their people a share in the wealth. But hunkered here in the bush, his toes cramped, cold seeping through his clothes, and holding a gun, Te Kooti’s strategy felt more of a hark back to the musket wars, than a step toward the future.
“You okay?” Danny murmured.
“Yeah. Bit cold.”
“Yeah, it was better when we were moving. How long you reckon we’ve been holed up here?”
Jason checked his watch. “A few hours.”
“Do you think they’ll even come this way? It’s a big forest. We could wait a year and never see them.”
Jason shrugged. “Te Kooti and the others must know something.” Using the sawn-off shotgun as a support, he stood, his jacket scraping on the rock, and stretched his muscles.
Danny stood too, dancing on his toes like a boxer, and blowing on his hands. “How many of them are there, you reckon?” he whispered.
“Dunno.”
Danny had already asked him those questions. Jason didn’t know the answers any more than the last time, but he did his best to tolerate Danny’s chatter. Everyone knew Danny wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box.
“That Nathan Kerei, though,” Danny said. “He takes the cake, doesn’t he? Betraying his own people, bringing the army in here. I’d like to bring that guy down a notch or two.”
“He probably needs the money, Danny. It’s how they do it, keeping a brother poor so he’s got no choice but to take on the government’s dirty work so he can support his family.”
Danny blew on his hands again. “Yeah. Fucking government.”
“Shh,” came the whispers down the line. “They’re coming.”
* * *
“Stop right there.”
Startled, Nathan pulled up. A gun, its barrel like an upturned nostril, was pointed at his face. “What’s going on?”
Behind the rifle, a wild-eyed man, flanked by two other men, stepped into view. Flashes of colour to their rear told Nathan there were more hovering in the trees.
“I could ask you the same thing, Nathan Kerei. You’ve got a nerve, bringing the army in here. What for, aye? What are they up to on our land?” the wild-eyed man said.
“You know my name? Who are you?” Nathan said. The voice was familiar, but the man’s face was obscured behind a woollen scarf. Someone he knew? Would someone he knew take a shot at him? Unsure, Nathan shifted to one side to be out of the line of fire, but the other two, the fellow’s right hands, trained their guns on him instead.
Reaching up, the leader pushed the scarf further up his face. “You can call me Te Kooti,” he said from behind the weave.
“Te Kooti, huh. Nice alias. What’s your real name?” Nathan said with a boldness he didn’t feel. The guy was probably high. Who knew what he might do?
McKenna pushed to the front, Nathan almost missing the slight lift of his chin as he strode through the group, and came to a stop in front of Jules Asher.
“Why have we stopped?” he demanded as Trigger and Coolie slipped quietly into the forest on either side of the track.
Nathan waved his hand at the newcomers. “We’ve got company.”
McKenna turned. Te Kooti and his men trained their guns on him.
“Do you have a radio?” McKenna demanded.
“No, we don’t,” one of the flankers said.
“Shut up, Eldridge,” said Te Kooti.
“Fuck, don’t tell them my name!”
“What about phones?” McKenna goes on, ignoring their squabbling. “Do you know where there’s coverage?”
“In here? You’re kidding, right?” Eldridge said.
“Eldridge, shut your damned pie hole!”
Taine turned to Nathan. “You didn’t tell them what’s going on?”
“Not yet. So far, this one in the middle – calls himself Te Kooti – has been doing all the talking.”
“Tell me what? I’m listening now. What’s going on?” Te Kooti demanded.
“We have to get out of here,” McKenna said, cool as a cucumber, although the barrel of the gun was just inches from face.
“Why have we stopped? We need to move,” de Haas said, at Nathan’s shoulder.
“That’s where we agree,” Te Kooti said. “You have to move. These are our lands. Tūhoe lands. You people have no right to be here.”
“Good, we’re all in agreement, then,” said McKenna briskly. “It’s our intention to leave the area immediately. If you and your boys could stand aside, we’ll do just that.”
“Now hang on a minute, McKenna,” said de Haas.
Nathan groaned inwardly. The geologist was a complete pill. Did he want to start a fight with Te Kooti and his guerrillas? The other day he’d gotten Rawiri Temera so riled up he’d taken a swing. Temera was as old as Methuselah and could hardly hurt a fly, but these guys were another story.
“These men have no right to tell us where we should and should not go,” de Haas went on in that pompous South African twang of his. Nathan cringed. “I’ll have you know that the minister himself appointed this team. We have every right to be here.”
Who cares? Nathan wanted to shout. There’s a dinosaur behind us and you’re arguing about who has the right of way?
Smirking, Te Kooti glanced left and then right at his henchmen. “Government minions,” he said. “I thought as much. What have you come to steal?”
“Steal? We didn’t come to steal anything!” De Haas was indignant. Another time, Nathan might have been tempted to say ‘yeah right’. “I’ll have you know that this is an official mineral exploration. We’ve been tasked with investigating the prevalence of gold in the park,” de Haas expound
ed.
“That mission has been aborted. We’re leaving the forest now,” McKenna said, cutting across de Haas, and gesturing to Nathan to move on.
But Te Kooti, his eyes gleaming, pressed his gun to McKenna’s chest. “Hang on.” Turning to de Haas, he missed the tiny movement of McKenna’s head. “Gold, huh? I reckon you’re lying. There’s no gold. There can’t be. If there was, the government would’ve already confiscated the land.”
“There is…” de Haas trailed off.
“There is what?” Te Kooti’s eyes flashed.
“Nothing,” de Haas replied. “We didn’t find anything.” He slipped a hand into his coat pocket.
Te Kooti frowned. “Eldridge, take a look in that pocket,” he ordered, his gun still trained on McKenna.
Nathan caught sight of the sergeant, who shook his head.
Eldridge thrust his hand inside de Haas’ pocket, pulling out the nugget he and Fogarty had found in the stream bed yesterday. The henchman held it up.
“Let me see that,” Te Kooti said, his rifle held wide while he snatched at the nugget.
“Give that back. It’s not yours,” de Haas whined.
“It’s not yours either,” Te Kooti retorted. “Not if you found it on our land.”
“Let him keep it,” McKenna said, putting an end to it by grabbing de Haas by the shoulder. “We’re leaving this area now.” He looked at Te Kooti. “You and your men would be well advised to join us.”
“Join you? You’re joking, right? Why would we want to join you? You think we don’t have our own guides?” He stared pointedly at Nathan. “Men who aren’t traitors to their people.”
Nathan glanced at McKenna. Raised an eyebrow. Should they tell them? The sergeant only shrugged. Te Kooti and his men weren’t likely to believe their story, but to run right past them and not warn them? Nathan didn’t want that on his conscience. “Look, this is going to be hard to believe,” Nathan said, his palms open, “but there’s a taniwha in the forest.”
“A taniwha?” Te Kooti laughed, the men on either side of him following suit, like the canned laughter from one of Paula’s sitcoms.