Survival (11 page)

'Ten out of ten, code boy,' said Amber, softly, making Hex jump. 'I forgot, you're pretty good at puzzles, aren't you?' She moved into the circle of firelight and sat down on the bench, giving Hex a cool stare.

'So, I guessed right?' asked Hex.

'Yeah,' said Amber. 'You guessed right, code boy. But there is one thing you're wrong about.'

'What's that?' asked Hex.

'Back on the
Phoenix
you accused me of thinking money fixes everything.' Amber held out the golden Omega sign so that it glittered dully in the firelight. She looked at Hex with eyes full of a deep sadness. 'So, you tell me, Hex. How does money fix this?'

FOURTEEN

Paulo was deeply asleep, lying flat on his back, when his bed started shaking. He tried to ignore it, but the shaking persisted. Then something light and feathery stroked a ticklish path back and forth across his face. He groaned and opened his eyes. Li was bending over him, tickling him under the chin with a handful of her long, black hair.

'C'mon, sleepyhead,' she whispered. 'Time to get up. You're on breakfast duty.'

'Go 'way,' muttered Paulo and closed his eyes again. They had all gone to bed with the sunset, exhausted by the day's activities and subdued by Amber's sad face, but Paulo's sleep had been broken when Alex woke him in the middle of the night to take his turn on watch. Now, all he wanted to do was sleep for another ten hours.

'Wakey wakey,' persisted Li, moving the hank of hair round to Paulo's ear. He did not shift. 'OK,' warned Li, 'I'm going for the belly now, so you'd better move.'

She lifted the hem of Paulo's T-shirt, then froze, eyes wide, staring down at his stomach. 'Paulo,' she said, quietly. 'Don't move.'

'Move, do not move,' grumbled Paulo, starting to turn onto his side. 'Make up your mind--'

'I said, don't move!'

Li's voice was sharp with urgency and suddenly Paulo was fully awake. He could feel something lying heavily on his stomach. Slowly he raised his head to see what was there. Equally slowly, Li eased his T-shirt away from his stomach and folded it back onto his chest.

For two seconds, Paulo stared at the sleeping snake coiled on his belly. He wanted to jump up and knock it away from him, but he forced himself to stay calm while he tried to identify it. The snake was about the same length as his arm. The head was small and the body was ringed with thick, alternating, black and white bands.

Paulo closed his eyes and took a slow breath. He was almost sure the snake was a small krait. The only thing he had going for him was that kraits were rarely aggressive. They had no need to be. Their bite was fatal.

'Krait?' he breathed, looking up at Li.

She nodded, staring at the snake with big eyes. 'What shall I do?'

'Step back,' whispered Paulo. 'Then make some noise.'

Carefully, Li moved backwards, one step at a time. She reached the campfire and picked up the storage tin and a coconut shell.

'Sure?' she whispered, looking uncertainly at Paulo. He gave the faintest of nods and she started bashing the coconut shell against the side of the tin. The snake stirred. It reared its head and turned, focusing its beady, black eyes on Li.

The other three woke up, complaining about the noise as Li continued to bash the tin. Li pointed to Paulo and, one by one, they saw the snake and froze.

The krait uncoiled and darted its head back and forth. It was disturbed by the noise, but reluctant to abandon the warm spot it had found. It moved up onto Paulo's chest and looked down into his face. The forked tongue flickered in and out of its mouth as it tested the air. Paulo held his breath but he could not stop his heart from pounding and his chest jumped under the snake with every beat. Finally, the krait decided it was time to move on. With one fluid motion, it slid down onto the sand and slithered away into the forest.

'So, it's true,' drawled Hex, into the stunned silence. 'Paulo really doesn't care what he sleeps with.'

Ten minutes later, Alex, Li and Hex were threading their way single file along the game trail that led through the forest to the pool. They carried stout sticks and Hex and Alex had a rucksack each, full of empty containers. They were out of water and had no option but to return to the pool to stock up, leaving Amber and Paulo behind on watch and breakfast duty.

Moving quickly and quietly, the three of them checked from left to right as they hurried along the trail, but the early morning forest was quiet and they reached the pool without meeting anything.

Outside the cave, the insect cleaning squads had been at work. Every remaining scrap of the slaughtered deer had gone and the rock was smooth and clean. Warily, the three of them waded into the pool and began to fill up their water containers, scanning the cave mouth and the forest all the while. Nothing stirred and they began to relax.

Alex and Li were washing themselves under the waterfall when a deep growl issued from the cave in the cliff. Their heads came up and they began to back slowly out of the pool. Alex turned, looking for Hex, but Hex had disappeared. He turned back to stare into the cave mouth, feeling his neck prickle with fear. Had something come out of the cave, grabbed Hex and dragged him inside without either of them noticing? If so, they were facing a deadly hunter.

The growl came again, echoing from inside the cave. Alex moved in front of Li, gripping his stick tightly. Then Hex popped his head out of the cave mouth and grinned at them. 'Admit it,' he said. 'I had you going then.'

'Hex! Get out of there!' yelled Alex.

'But there's nothing in here. It only goes back a little way, then it's blocked by a rock fall.' He turned and looked back into the cave. 'Hang on a minute, there's something sticking out of the bottom of the rock fall. I wonder what it is? I'll just go back in and have a look.'

Hex started to head back into the cave but Alex bounded out of the water and shoved him hard in the chest.

'You will not go back in there!'

'What?' said Hex, looking into Alex's furious face with genuine surprise.

'Grow up, Hex! This is real life, not some computer game! You can't just say "game over" and start again if you get eaten by something or buried under a rock fall! You'll just be dead!'

Hex raised his hands, palm up. 'OK,' he said, backing off. 'I'll leave it.'

Alex slammed an empty bottle into Hex's chest. 'Fill that,' he grated. 'And stay where I can see you.'

Alex led the way on the return journey. He was still angry with Hex and stalked on ahead without looking back.

Hex marched along after Alex, the heavy rucksack dragging on his shoulders and the bottles of water bumping against his back. It sucked, being a castaway. The physical work was no problem - his body was toned and fit from regular work-outs at his local gym - but Hex felt completely out of place in this environment. He could surf the wilder regions of the Net with the ease of a total expert but he knew nothing about how to survive in this sort of wilderness. Over the past thirty-six hours, he had spent most of his time blundering about like a complete idiot and having to be told what to do by some Northerner who probably thought a megabyte was someone who could eat three Weetabix in one go. Hex glared at Alex's retreating back and quickened his pace to catch up.

Li brought up the rear, also wrapped in her own thoughts. She was going through a mental list of the larger carnivores to be found in this part of the world, but still she could not put a name to the creatures they had heard in the rainforest. She was thinking so hard that she did not notice that Alex and Hex were leaving her further and further behind. A twig snapped over to her right, bringing her out of her thoughts. Li lifted her head, saw the distance between her and the boys and was about to break into a jog to catch up when she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye.

She came to a halt and stared closely at the large bush to the right of the trail just in front of her. She frowned. She was almost certain she had caught a movement from the far side of the bush, but now everything was still. In fact, everything was very still and absolutely silent. Li felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck as she realized that there was no bird noise in this part of the forest. Even the crickets had stopped their two-note song.

Li swallowed and took a deep breath. As she did so, she caught a hint of a smell. A bad smell, like rotting meat. She hesitated, then cautiously took one step forward and bent to peer through the leafy branches.

The smell was stronger nearer the bush and Li wrinkled her nose. There was definitely something there, behind the branches, but the rustling leaves were good camouflage and, at first, Li could not make sense of what she was seeing. Then a single, reptilian eye jumped into focus.

It was looking right at her.

FIFTEEN

Li leapt straight into the air from a standing start as a huge, dragon-like creature burst out of the undergrowth. It pounced onto the exact spot on the trail where Li had been standing a split second earlier, but she had already grabbed a tree branch and was swinging her legs up out of harm's way. She nearly didn't make it. The reptile reared up with amazing speed and she heard its razor-sharp claws scrabbling up the tree trunk towards her.

Li screamed as she scrambled to reach the safety of the higher branches. For one awful moment, she thought the creature could climb trees. She looked down, and relief flooded through her as she saw that its hind legs were still on the ground. It was using its tail to balance as it reached up the tree trunk towards her and it stood taller than a man. Suddenly it lashed out with a powerful foreleg and Li screamed again as a three-inch-long, razor-sharp claw hooked through the hem of her shorts.

There was a yell from further up the trail and Li nearly lost her grip on the branch as the creature dropped back to the ground, ripping its claw through her shorts as though the material was tissue paper.

Alex and Hex were running back to Li and, for a second, the huge reptile stood still, looking up at her then back along the trail, as though it was choosing from a dinner menu. Its eyes were sunk into each side of its long, spade-shaped head. Thick, white ropes of saliva dripped from its jaws and a long, pink forked tongue slid in and out of its mouth. It had a mottled, brown scaly hide, which thickened into ridges at its neck and around the tops of its powerfully squat legs.

'Komodo,' breathed Li and the dragon lifted its head to look at her, as though it recognized its own name. It opened its jaws wide, showing jagged teeth with shreds of meat hanging from them, and gave a hissing roar. A foul stench of rotting flesh rose through the humid air.

Then the creature made its decision. It lowered its head and charged towards Alex and Hex, slinging its legs forward with a rolling gait and raking up the earth of the trail as its claws dug in. The boys came to a halt, then turned back, looking behind them as they ran.

'Don't run! Climb!' shrieked Li. She knew that a large komodo dragon could outrun a human over short distances, and this giant was gaining on them fast. 'Climb a tree!' she shrieked again.

Alex and Hex raced along the trail, trying to spot the branch or vine that would save their lives, but the trees and bushes were whizzing past too quickly. By the time their eyes had registered a likely branch, it was already gone. The komodo roared again as it thundered towards them, its powerful tail threshing from side to side.

'That one!' yelled Alex, pointing to an overhanging branch a few metres ahead. Hex nodded. They jumped for the branch together. Hex swung out of the way of the snapping jaws just in time. Alex was a second behind. With one last, desperate lunge, he grabbed the branch and swung himself up as the huge lizard launched itself at him. He thought he was clear. He should have been clear.

But he had forgotten about the rucksack.

Hex reached down and grasped Alex by the wrist as the komodo clamped its jaws around the dangling rucksack. It roared through its teeth and began to pull. Alex dug his nails into the bark of the branch and Hex held onto his wrist until he thought his fingers would break, but it was no use. Slowly but surely, Alex was being ripped away from the branch. He looked up into Hex's face as he began to lose his grip and his eyes were full of a hopeless fear.

Then Li's stick thudded solidly across the back of the komodo. It hissed as it let go of the rucksack and swung round to face her. Alex fell and flattened himself into the ground as the komodo's tail swung across the trail, narrowly missing his head. Hex jumped down, pulled him out of the way and helped him to his feet.

'Come on, then, stinky!' yelled Li, dancing away, then moving into a fighting stance. The giant lizard charged and she watched with narrowed eyes, judging her moment. It was nearly upon her and opening its jaws wide when she drew back the stick and rammed it straight down the beast's throat. The stick was wrenched from her hands so quickly, the friction took the skin from her palms. Quick as lightning, she twisted away into the bushes to avoid the headlong charge, then she was up on her feet again and running towards the boys, her long black hair flying out behind her like a flag.

'Ruuuunnn!' she howled, her eyes wild. They needed no second telling. The three of them turned and ran for their lives without looking back.

Li was still shivering with shock nearly half an hour later, as they sat on the benches around the fire, trying to decide what to do. Her normally rosy cheeks were paper pale and her high cheekbones stood out sharply.

'It tried to ambush me,' she said, with a shudder. 'I've read about that. They lie in wait until a deer comes along, then they smash it to the ground and disembowel it.' She shuddered again. 'I was the deer.'

'Yeah, well that one won't feel like swallowing anything much for a while,' said Hex, attempting to raise a smile from Li.

'Swallowing,' she said, her face pale and serious. 'That's what they do. They don't chew the meat, they just tear off huge chunks and swallow it down. They have moveable joints in their skulls so they can open their jaws wide to stuff more food in.'

'That's interesting,' said Amber, trying to stop the flow of words, but Li kept talking.

'They can eat eighty per cent of their own body weight in one go. My dad once watched a komodo dragon eat a whole wild boar in seventeen minutes flat. And I mean
all
of it. I would've been gone in less than ten minutes.'

Alex remembered that single, dainty hoof outside the cave. He closed his eyes, trying to block out an image of a komodo dragon with a blood-soaked clump of Li's long, black hair trailing from its mouth.

'The funny thing is,' continued Li, 'they're not even supposed to be here! Everyone thinks they only live on Komodo and a couple of other islands. How did they get here?'

'Well they are here,' said Alex firmly, wrapping a blanket around Li's shoulders. 'And we have a problem. That game trail is probably a favourite komodo ambush spot. Every time we walk along it, we're risking our lives. But our only source of fresh water is at the other end. Any ideas?'

There was silence while they all racked their brains, but there seemed to be no solution. Then Paulo ran his hand thoughtfully over the bench he was sitting on. Alex had split the bamboo poles in half lengthways to make the seat. Paulo studied the split poles and his eyes lit up as an idea hit him. 'I have it!' he cried. 'We build an aqueduct!'