Bastian turned around and looked at the jungle, unwilling to let anyone see a tear in his eye.
‘The posse will be missing me so listen carefully, here’s what you need to do,’ and soon after, Holroyd was gone, leaving them with a cutlass each.
‘There’ll be a cordon around the village,’ said Jambit, ‘to stop us getting out.’
The village drums were banging every four hours for fifteen minutes, alerting the citizens of the runaways. This would continue for two days unless they were apprehended or their body parts were found in the river. Bastian looked through the telescope.
‘That’s our ticket out of here,’ said Bastian. ‘The actors’ wagons.’
They could travel along the coast before heading inland to the Dartmoor desert.
‘Won’t they be searched?’ asked Jambit.
Bastian sighed from the heart, the groan of a desperate man.
‘Trust me, I’ll get us to Holroyd’s stage-post,’ he said.
Bastian returned his gaze to the telescope and the auditorium. The play was about to begin with every seat taken.
The Party’s favourite actors began their performance of ‘The Zebra Has No Stripes’. The actors, dressed as sundry jungle favourites, told the tail of the vain consumerist zebra whose life revolved around the latest fashion. Many an animal was killed to provide her latest coat, until eventually the zebra had bought every make and colour of cloth bar one; it was black with splits. When the zebra finally persuaded the monkeys into making her this coat, she roamed the jungle as proud as any lion. Until she was captured by a human and sent to work carrying rocks from the quarry as a jackass. For the coat covered her white stripes and now she was an ordinary pack animal, resplendent only in foolishness.
* * *
‘Now might be a good time to prepare our escape,’ said Bastian.
Half the village were at the auditorium watching the matinee performance, the other patrolling the outskirts including the beaches should any fugitive try and swim further up the coast. The drums had just stopped beating.
‘We’ll hide in the carts as the show leaves town,’ said Bastian.
‘It’s suicide’ said Jambit.
‘They’d never look underneath.’
‘I wouldn’t be certain. Besides, you think you can hang on?’
‘So, what do you suggest?’ asked Bastian.
‘They won’t come in the jungle with the light fading. We follow the river further up until we get to the big rock, there’s less crocs after that. Then we go for a moonlight swim until we reach the town and the abandoned railway track.’
But Bastian was concerned about there being less crocs after the big rock rather than the ideal number of zero.
He picked up Holroyd’s cutlasses and handed one to Jambit, who immediately sliced a coconut shell in half before each man drank to success.
‘Okay,’ said Bastian, ‘I guess I owe you this one.’
They waited until the shadows around them looked scarier than the noises underneath sounded, and climbed down into the bush beneath. Each carried a backpack of dried bush tucker courtesy of Holroyd’s treehouse supplies and two leather flagons of coconut milk taken from the trees around them.
Chapter Thirty-Three
In single file under the stars, with the sounds of beasts of all manner and description breaking the silence, they made it along the side of river to the big rock. In front, Bastian chopped a path with his cutlass ready to strike at any predator whilst Jambit guarded the rear.
Bastian, his arms aching and weary, threw the pile of branches together with Jambit grabbing the rope from tree vines. In under an hour they had a raft and paddles and it was time to see how far the crocs really travelled inland. They were both nervous and hoped if a beast did strike, it would be the other bitten giving them the chance to scramble ashore. They began to paddle with two miles to go but the raft would carry them under the bridge into the centre of town. They hoped to make it before sunrise.
* * *
They were running late and behind schedule. The town was waking up and the disused railway tracks were on the other side. But they weren’t caught yet and they couldn’t deny the excitement they felt at being on the run and hunted. Subversion, to question and challenge authority, was a natural instinct that could never be truly extinguished, an evolutionary trait that caused some to leave their tribe and spread humanity across the globe. But now the world was much smaller.
‘Now what?’ asked Jambit turning to Bastian, but they were interrupted before he could answer.
‘I see you’ve beaten us to it this morning,’ said the pre-retiree woman.
‘What’s the water like?’ asked her equally old partner.
‘Not as warm as it gets but pleasant,’ replied Bastian.
‘You seen any crocs?’ asked the old man.
‘No. Just a boa constrictor.’
The old woman pointed to the road at the top of the embankment.
‘There’s a chill in the air,’ she said. ‘If I was you, I’d take a left turn out of town unless you want to catch your death.’
She followed her partner into the water for their early morning bathe.
‘Oh, by the way, that candelabra shop on the other side of the street is mine,’ she shouted after them.
They grabbed some bananas from a tree, scrambled up the hill, and looked at the shop directly across the street, a candelabra boutique. Pasted on the window was a wanted poster for two subversives on the run. The faces, though not the best of likenesses, did bear a resemblance to their own.
‘Well,’ said Bastian. ‘Do we take her advice or not?’
Once a frenetic hub of rat-racers, the town had turned down the dial on the pace of life. And after a siesta and a late night there weren’t that many early risers, especially from the younger generation used to starting school in the afternoons.
‘Let’s take the quickest route,’ said Jambit, ‘through the centre.’
‘Okay, but follow me, and
