Then as if on cue he thought he saw movement, some dark shape leaping through the undergrowth, moving from one hiding place to the next. Getting closer, but not quite ready to commit to leaping out into the open.
‘What is it?’ he grunted under his breath. ‘You scared of me? Is that it?’
That sounded good to him, fighting talk. For a fleeting moment there he almost didn’t feel completely terrified. But that soon passed as his eyes assured him something else had just shifted position one tree closer to him.
He finally felt the trunk under his foot wobble as Leonard presumably jumped off at the far side. He heard Whitmore’s voice over the din of tumbling water calling him over.
‘Coming!’ Liam shouted over his shoulder. Keeping his eyes on the jungle, he reversed on to the log, still not daring to turn his back on what he knew was in there and waiting for him to do just that.
Pull yourself together, Liam.
He dropped down to his hands and knees. Unwilling to turn his back on the jungle, he began bum-shuffling backwards, one hand still holding the spear half ready, in case he needed to defend himself at a moment’s notice.
After a minute’s slow progress, he finally felt a sharp splinter of wood scrape the inside of his thigh and realized he was now just before the fractured halfway point. Cool water rode up his dangling legs, soaking him to his thighs. As he shuffled to get past the jagged shards of the fractured trunk, he heard it crack and felt it lurch as it sagged lower into the river. Water suddenly rode up over his knees and over his lap, pummelling his gut and chest like an enraged boxer sensing the faltering resolve of an opponent.
Oh no… please, no.
Water. Drowning. Suddenly the fear of being snatched and torn apart by some vicious predator was matched by the idea of being snatched away by the river.
‘It’s going to break!’ shouted someone.
Liam could feel the trunk being buffeted and kicked by the strong current. It flexed, creaked and twisted under the punishing weight of energy slamming into it. He realized it wasn’t going to hold out much longer and a rising tide of panic compelled him to get off his backside and crawl. He struggled on to his hands and knees, now, finally, turning his back on the jungle he’d moments ago thought was hiding the most frightening thing in this world.
No… the most bloody frightening thing right now was this churning white monster roaring hungrily at him, doing its best to pull him off. He could see the others waiting for him at the far end of the bowing log, all frantically waving at him to get a move on.
‘All right… all right, I’m coming!’ he yelped. He began to crawl forward on hands and knees. One hand carefully placed after the other on the treacherously wet bark.
Come on, Liam, come on. You’re nearly there. He managed to make his way a yard closer to the bank, and even managed to flash the others a cavalier I’m gonna be just fine grin, when his hand found a slick patch of moss.
‘Uhh…’ was all he managed to gasp before his hand slipped round the side of the trunk and the unsupported weight of his body carried him over.
CHAPTER 63
65 million years BC, jungle
Suddenly he found himself spinning amid a roaring chaotic swirl of swiftly moving water. Instinctively he’d snatched a lungful of air as he’d gone under, his body doing the thinking for him while his mind shrieked uselessly with blind panic.
Drown! I’m gonna drown!
He knew it. His lungs were only going to buy him a half minute of life. His mind was all of a sudden back in the narrow confines of a corridor groaning with the sound of stressed bulkheads, flickering wall lamps and the distant roar of ice-cold seawater finding its way up from the deck below. The certain promise of death a mile down in the cold dark embrace of the ocean.
Oh no, no, no, no, not this! Not like this!
Then his head suddenly broke the surface. He flailed in the foam, still holding on to the stale breath in his lungs. He caught sight of their log bridge thirty or forty yards behind him already and fast disappearing as the swift current carried him away.
His legs thumped heavily against a boulder and he found himself being rolled over its hard rounded surface. His head again under the water, his ears filled with the pounding roar of the river, he felt himself being sucked down deep by a spiralling current, pressure compressing his chest.
Panic. Sheer, blinding panic robbed his mind of any useful conscious thought and left him with a curdling mental scream, knowing this dark roaring depth was where it was all going to come to an end for him.
But the river’s mischievous current decided to play one more game with him and shot him to the surface to say goodbye to life and air and trees and the crimson sky of later afternoon once more. Liam gasped for another lungful of air, half aware that perhaps the kindest thing he could do was simply breathe out and prepare his mouth, his throat, his lungs for an invasion of water.
But then his shoulder thudded hard against something. Something he could grasp hold of and fight the incredible pull of the river. He opened his eyes and realized it was a fallen tree. For a moment he wondered if the river had carried him right the way round their island in some logic-defying loop-the-loop and he was right back where their crudely constructed bridge was.
He desperately grappled with the rough bark and the small leafy branches that sprouted from it, merciful handholds that their smooth and straight trunk had lacked. From branch to branch he managed to pull himself out of the strong current in the middle of the river to some calmer eddies of swirling water.
Finally his foot brushed against the river bottom, scattering pebbles, and his feet desperately fumbled for firmer footing that promised to stay beneath him. His hands followed the fallen tree, pulling on thicker, more reliable branches until he found himself wading out of the river, finally collapsing on hands and knees on wet shingle that shifted and clattered noisily beneath him.
‘Urgh,’ he spluttered, between ragged gasps of breath.
His breath was still pounding in and out as he finally pulled himself, exhausted, to his feet. He turned to look at the fallen tree, trying to get his bearings and work out which side of the river he was now standing on. The base of the tree was on the far side; he could see a frayed and splintered stump that looked like it had been hacked at by a team of inept carpenters armed with blunt chisels… or beavers even.
Not beavers, obviously. Perhaps some species of termite had cannibalized the tree, or it had simply rotted and split. Either way, he thanked it for saving his life. He noticed a mess of disturbed shingle and footprints around him among the leaves and branches of the felled tree and realized that perhaps Lam and the others must have felled the tree for wood, but foolishly allowed it to fall across the river and just left it.
Idiots.
The first thing he’d do once he found them was get them to heave the tree back into the water and let it be carried away. He turned round and squinted up the riverbank. Through a hundred yards of jungle he could just about make out crimson slivers of waning sunlight, the trees thinning, the clearing beyond… and their camp.
He’d lost his spear in the river. No matter, he was on the safe side now. He made his way up the shingle and into the narrow apron of jungle. Up ahead through the dangling loops of vine he could see the sun casting long shadows across the leafy hummocks of their shelters and the wooden wall of their small palisade as it began to make a bed on the horizon. But, as yet, he couldn’t make out Lam and the other three kids they’d left behind.
Where are they?
‘Hello-o-o-o!!’ he called out again, his voice ricocheting through the jungle.
A few moments later he was stepping out from beneath the dark canopy of foliage and into the clearing. On the very far side, he could see Becks and the others emerging.
He waved at them. ‘Hey!’
He saw their heads turn his way and their mouths form sudden dark ovals of surprise and relief.
