Fault Line (10 page)
Authors: Chris Ryan
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Science & Nature, #Environmental Conservation & Protection
Alex shook his head. ‘It’s not like felling the tree where you can tell which way it’ll go. God knows what would happen.’ He expected another ratty remark in return, but they all looked too tired to muster the energy.
Hex picked up the chain mail and spread it out on some branches. He wouldn’t be surprised if it had rusted by morning.
They dug into the three bergens for stoves, rations, hammocks and dry kit, and began to prepare the camp.
Night in the open came a little later than it came in the tree canopy. Without the covering of leaves they saw the sun set in an orange glow, the shadows of trees all around. Once the sun had gone down, the sky was filled with stars.
Amber and Li lay head to foot in one of the hammocks. Li wore Paulo’s dry kit and Amber wore Alex’s.
Li peered out from under the poncho. ‘Hey, look at those stars.’
Amber, at her feet, looked out the other side. ‘At last. The great outdoors.’ She felt a fierce stabbing pain in her leg. ‘Ow,’ she shrieked. ‘Li, did you bite me?’
‘No, I did not bite you,’ retorted Li from the other end of the hammock.
‘Is there an insect on me?’
‘No,’ said Li. ‘You’ve put on so much repellent and antiseptic you’re asphyxiating me.’
Paulo checked on the injured man for the last time and climbed into a hammock with Alex, moving so that he was lying head to foot like the girls. ‘Alex, move over, you’re taking up the whole thing.’
‘Sorry,’ said Alex. He was shivering in his wet kit. When Paulo got in his body warmth was like a radiator.
‘Hex,’ called Paulo, ‘how did you manage to get a hammock to yourself?’
‘I’ll swap with you at half time,’ called Hex sleepily. He hoped they wouldn’t bother. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a partner,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the mask.’
‘You can swap with me, mask or not,’ growled Li. ‘Amber’s driving me mad with her scratching.’
But within seconds they were all asleep.
10 M
R
U
NPOPULAR
R
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NPOPULAR
The next morning the light woke them, just as the dawn chorus began like a shrill alarm clock. The first thing Alex saw was the big tree. It looked like there were acres of it. And they had ten hours to clear it all before the helicopter came or they’d be stuck there for another night. He tipped out of the hammock, cold to the bone, his clothes still soaking wet. Paulo got up and hobbled like an old crone to check the patient. The robber was still asleep, snoring happily. He seemed to be having the most comfortable time of all of them in his hammock-stretcher.
Amber took the first shift with the chainsaw. Now they were working on thicker wood she discovered it was a hideous job. If you didn’t keep it cutting straight it would glance off a log and dive into the mud, blunting the blades. Either that or it would land on your chain-mailed leg and gnaw it like a piranha. It spat sawdust and sharp chips of wood the whole time. It vibrated until your eyeballs rattled. Wearing the protective gear was like being swaddled in chains.
This trip just got better and better. Amber had missed the sun while they were under the tree canopy, but now the heat beat down mercilessly, wringing even more sweat from her pores. The chain-mail clothes were like torture, but at least she was covered. The others were shrivelling before her eyes. They were tanned but it was completely inadequate for this level of sun exposure.
Alex stopped what he was doing and smeared mud on his face, the back of his neck and his arms. Hex, Paulo and Li followed suit. Without sunscreen, that was the best they could do. But it wasn’t ideal.
On and on it went. There seemed no end to it. They rotated duties after an hour. Amber surrendered the chainsaw and Li took over. Then Amber had to fetch water for everyone, filling their water bottles, taking empty containers down a steep slope to a stream, bringing them back full and dropping sterilizing tablets in. If they didn’t drink continuously they would get disorientated, make dangerous mistakes – not a good idea with a chainsaw. Fetching water was heavy work but it was blissful after the chainsaw. Then it was Li’s turn for water duty and Amber moved on to shifting debris.
They broke for cold rations at midday. By then they had been shifting wood for nearly six hours.
Paulo gave out more rations packs. They were running low. Sweat had washed away most of his muddy attempt at sunscreen. ‘We’ve got three,’ he said. ‘One between two.’
Paulo ate half his share and gave the rest to the robber. Alex shared with Li. Hex went to share with Amber. He saw her mouth had an unhealthy grey tinge – she was getting low on blood sugar. He made her eat first, then insisted she finished the entire thing. She hated accepting help but knew he was right, and they couldn’t afford to have her go into a coma. She gave him a pack of glucose tablets from her insulin kit.
By early afternoon they had reached the main sections of the trunk. They were super fit, but the relentless heat, the constant heavy lifting, were taking their toll. Now Hex had the chainsaw again. It was harder to keep it steady; Amber, Li, Paulo and Alex were finding it more difficult to drag the logs away too. Sawdust clung to the sweat on their faces, coated their clothes, inched down their throats with every breath. But they had to be finished by the time the heli flew over.
Hex cut another piece of wood. It was the first of the slices through the thickest part of the trunk. Alex rolled it away like a giant wheel. It wobbled and fell over. Alex looked at it, fed up. For a moment he couldn’t face picking it up. Li came to help. She got her fingers under it and heaved it upright again. Alex caught the other side. Together they wheeled it away like a giant hoop.
It caught on a hummock and capsized again. Alex tried to catch it. His fingers scrabbled on the splintery sides. It crashed to the ground, pulling him down.
Alex stayed still for a moment on his hands and knees. His right hand was exquisitely painful. A few metres away, the chainsaw droned on.
‘Are you OK?’ said Li.
‘Yes,’ gasped Alex. His face was white.
‘No you’re not,’ said Li. She went round to his side and heaved the great disc of wood off his hand.
As soon as the pressure was released, Alex pulled away, grasping his hand. It throbbed so hard it felt as if it was exploding.
‘Medic,’ yelled Li above the wail of the chainsaw. ‘We’ve got a man down.’
Paulo came over. Alex stood up and offered him the hand. He expected it to be huge and red, like in a cartoon. But it looked squashed and boneless, like a pack of sausages.
‘Can you move the fingers?’
Alex tried to move them. The pain flashed as though he’d burned them.
Paulo looked at the hand. The index and second fingers were pointing gruesomely upwards as though they had been put on back to front. Possibly broken, possibly just dislocated. Normally he’d talk a bit to a patient, but the chainsaw was wailing in the background and he felt too knackered to shout over it. He took hold of Alex’s right arm at the elbow, grabbed his fingers and pulled hard. The crack drowned out even the chainsaw. Alex’s yell matched it in volume. Paulo let go.
Alex snatched the hand towards his chest and bent over it, protecting it from further assault.
‘Sorry,’ said Paulo. ‘But now they’re straight I can splint them.’
He used Alex’s knife to cut a splint from the debris of wood and bound it with strips of Alex’s dry T-shirt. Then he cut a sling.
‘I can’t wear that,’ said Alex. It seemed like a final badge of uselessness. The bandage and the splint he could hide under his sleeve while he got on with things, but not a great big sling.
‘You should,’ said Paulo.
‘But I won’t be able to do anything. It’ll get in the way.’
Paulo tied the sling on. ‘You won’t be able to do anything anyway. You can’t pick anything up with those fingers.’
Alex grabbed the water container in his left hand. ‘I’ll do water duty, then,’ he said angrily. He stumped off towards the stream. This was all he needed. They had only three or four hours before the helicopter was due. Now it would be down to the others to clear all the wood. He wouldn’t be surprised if he was very, very unpopular by now.
Even fetching the water was a challenge. When he struggled back up the hill with the full container he could only use his left arm and the muscles felt like they were on fire. He dunked a couple of Puritabs in and looked for the row of empty water bottles lined up beside the bergens. But he realized he couldn’t fill them – it took two hands to lift the container and tilt it.
Amber came up to deposit her other bottle, also empty. ‘So what is this? Self service?’
Alex nodded. ‘’Fraid so.’
She didn’t look amused.
Paulo came up to refill his water. ‘Alex, you could take over looking after the patient.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ said Alex. He was glad there was something he could do.
Alex noticed that as they got more tired, they had more bumps and scrapes. When they came for water they had more and more rips in their clothes, bleeding knuckles, grazed arms. Li cut away a section and the lost bergens came to light, like archaeological remains. The metal frames were squashed and twisted.
Amber, clearing wood, picked them up and tossed them to Alex. ‘See if there’s anything in there that isn’t as flat as a pancake.’
Alex opened a bergen and caught a strong whiff of camping gas. The stoves had been crushed and the gas cylinders had burst. He remembered how they’d considered using explosives on the tree remains. He’d been very tempted. Thank goodness he hadn’t – he’d have blown them sky high. He carried the bergens off to dump them.
Paulo and Amber came towards him, wheeling another circle of tree between them. Paulo saw the bergens. ‘Alex, are there any rations in there? I’m starving.’
Amber’s face lit up. ‘Rations!’
‘Contaminated,’ said Alex. ‘I wouldn’t touch them if I were you. I’m just getting them out of the way.’
They looked so disappointed that for a moment Alex thought they might run him down and snatch them.
Finally, the area was clear. A pile of wood remained in the middle for the fire, laid out in the shape of a giant letter H, for signalling to the heli as it went over. Alex went round touching a flaming torch to it. The others sat at the edge on the three packed bergens, exhausted.
‘What if one bit of it goes out?’ said Li. ‘Then it won’t say H, it’ll look like a chair.’
‘Or a swastika,’ said Hex. ‘Hope the pilot won’t get the wrong idea about us.’
When the H was fully ablaze, Alex came back and joined them.
‘
Hombre
,’ said Paulo, ‘I have to hand it to you. You don’t mess up very often, but when you do, you do it in style.’
Hombre
,’ said Paulo, ‘I have to hand it to you. You don’t mess up very often, but when you do, you do it in style.’
‘I’m sorry, guys,’ said Alex. ‘Really sorry.’
The heli sounded different without the canopy. The first they heard was drumming in the air, then a high-pitched whine that increased imperceptibly, as though it had always been there. Then they saw it, a black torpedo in the sky with a circular blur of rotor blades like a halo. It circled away and came back.
Alex looked up. The pilot was waving.
Alex understood. He jumped up. ‘He’s seen us. Let’s put the fire out, then he can come back.’
The heli circled away.
They seized the water still purifying in the containers. Alex started sloshing it on the fire. They’d spent so long fetching and carrying it and trying to conserve it that pouring it on the ground felt ridiculously naughty. He looked round and realized there were four containers aiming towards him, caps off. He only had time to yell as Li, Amber, Hex and Paulo gave him a good soaking. His energy levels soared like a sugar rush and he retaliated. Soon the five friends were all haring around the H as it sizzled and died, joyfully dousing it and each other with water.
Still laughing, they kicked the ashy debris out of the way so the heli could land.
11 B
ELIZE
C
ITY
ELIZE
C
ITY
Airborne at last, the five friends strapped themselves in and relaxed. As the heli pulled away over the vast expanse of green, Amber put on the noise cancel headphones and used the satellite phone to call her uncle.
‘Hi, Uncle . . . Yeah, yeah, we’re all right. Sorry I couldn’t send a postcard. Had a great time though.’ A pause. ‘Oh you know, we were just trekking and stuff. Now listen, we’ve got this mask. Great big gold thing; bit like Tutankhamen but Mayan – you know what I mean? Looks quite valuable.’ Another pause. ‘Oh no, how we got it was quite boring really. A local gave it to us for saving his life. Anyway, we wondered if you know anywhere safe to drop it off because it’s probably a national treasure.’ Another pause. ‘Oh. Right. Can you call someone?’ Another pause. ‘OK, great. Bye.’
She ended the call and took the headphones off. Immediately she was deafened by the noise of the heli – the high-pitched whine and heavy rhythm of the rotors. Li and Alex were looking out of the window at the jungle receding below. Paulo was checking on the patient. Hex was also wearing noise cancel headphones and checking his e-mail on his palmtop. He was completely absorbed, the blue glow of the screen the whole extent of his world. Amber reached over and pulled one of the headphone cups aside.
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