Up ahead, Saqueo yelped in surprise as a small striped pig belted from the undergrowth, shot between his legs, then slipped back through the vines and fern fronds. Chaco leapt after it, pulling a small blade from his belt and shouting excitedly to Saqueo who yelled something angrily in response. After a second of indecision, the older boy ran off in pursuit of his brother, leaving Alex and the team stranded on the narrow trail.
Alex heard the boars before they broke from the jungle.
Maria pulled Michael behind the HAWCs, whose hands immediately went to their sidearms. Time seemed to stop for a few seconds as the elite soldiers and two wild animals contemplated their next moves.
A squeal from deeper in the jungle pulled the massive animals’ heads in the direction the baby boar had bolted. Both leapt into the forest, bulldozing a path in their haste to reach their off-spring. Alex dropped his pack and sprinted after them. He knew the damage these beasts could do to a man, let alone to the two boys in their path.
He caught up to the female quickly, his long powerful legs easily keeping pace with her. Her head reached the top of his thigh and Alex watched her powerful shoulder and neck muscles bunch as she knocked undergrowth out of her way. The male was still hundreds of feet in front, and the more dangerous of the two, but Alex decided he could reduce the threat by dealing with them one at a time.
He really didn’t want to kill either animal for protecting its young, so he lifted his arm up high and brought his armoured fist down on the flat forehead of the charging animal. The ceramic plates of his gloves, coupled with his enormous power, felled the animal immediately. Its 340-pound body brought down a small tree before it slid to a halt.
As Alex increased his speed, he heard Saqueo’s voice yelling frantically and saw the boy sitting high in a tree. He slowed long enough to guess at Saqueo’s meaning — he was screaming and pointing down the path. Alex could hear the massive male boar smashing the undergrowth out if its way up ahead — it must have been almost upon the smaller boy.
Alex leapt forward as he heard a shrill scream.
In another few paces he broke into a clearing that was totally free of any vegetation. The sunlight boiled through to the ground, creating a low mist over the bare, and strangely dry, earth. He spotted the boy — Chaco stood at the centre of the clearing — and the boar had already commenced its charge. The outcome was going to be catastrophic for the youth.
Alex knew he couldn’t make it to Chaco, but he could make it to the animal. He lowered his shoulder, increased his speed and headed on a collision course with a creature made of material a lot tougher than human flesh. Chaco screamed, and Alex heard another yell that he realised came from his own throat as he collided with the boar. The thud of the impact and its shock wave made the boy sit down hard. The boar must have sensed Alex’s approach for it had managed to turn its head just enough to get a tusk into his upper arm; blood spurted onto the ground at Chaco’s feet. But the beast had taken the full force of Alex’s weight, which, combined with his velocity, was sufficient to roll it into the thick ferns, where it lay still.
Alex got to one knee and placed his hand over his torn arm. It hurt like hell, but nothing was broken. It was the pain returning to his head that concerned him more.
He lifted the boy to his feet. ‘Are you all right?’
Chaco quickly wiped tears from his dirty face, and looked from Alex to the still hindquarters of the giant boar, then back at Alex. His eyes were wide in disbelief and his face broke into a smile. Saqueo was yelling to them from the edge of the clearing, his jubilant chant blocking out the sounds of the jungle all around them. ‘
The boy’s words turned to a scream. Alex felt the ground tremble and turned quickly, but there was no time to avoid the boar’s charge. Recovered, it raced towards them, its small red eyes filled with a murderous rage.
Alex only had time to pull Chaco behind him and hold up an arm, hand out flat.
The impact was like an explosion — then the ground gave way and they were falling — Alex, Chaco and 600 pounds of furious mammal plunging through a thin crust of limestone into a shallow pool of water thirty feet below.
As Alex hit the water, he remembered Garmadia’s warning about the caves:
Unfortunately, Alex wasn’t the first to his feet. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs and tossed him through the air to smash against the slick wall of the large, bowl-shaped crater. He heard the boar squeal in rage, the sound eardrumshattering within the small cave, then came Chaco’s voice calling his name.
Alex groaned in pain. A melon-sized piece of stone fell from the ceiling to splash into the water beside him, and he glanced up at the hole above. They had come through at a weak point, but the whole canopy could only have been a few feet thick. He knew the entire roof of the cave was in danger of shaking loose, and any loud noises could result in them being buried alive under tons of stone.
The boar was gouging the shallow water with its head, throwing up plumes of liquid as it worked itself into an even greater rage.
Chaco had climbed onto the base of a stalagmite and was trying to shinny up the slippery stone as he would a tree trunk. For every foot of the water-smoothed stone he climbed, he slid back down the same amount. He yelped in frustration and the beast turned its head, trying to locate the sound. When it found Chaco, it charged.
Alex reached into the water and retrieved a fist-sized rock to throw at the maddened creature. It bounced off its shoulder and thudded into the wall, where it exploded, causing dust and smaller fragments of stone to rain down on them from the ceiling. Alex reached for his gun, then had second thoughts. He couldn’t chance the discharge echo bringing down the entire roof. Instead, he pulled out his longest Ka-Bar blade; the lasersharpened black steel a deadly tusk of his own.
By now Chaco had managed to climb about six feet above the water and was hanging on grimly. The boar tried to climb the base of the stalagmite, its blunt mouth open and showing rows of dog-like canines at the front and flattened yellow crushing molars deeper in. Alex knew what it wanted: wild boars were omnivores and meat made up a large part of their diet.
The sharpened hooves skidded again and again on the slick stone, unable to get purchase. Chaco slipped down a few inches and yelped. The beast opened its mouth wider. Alex needed to act.
The boar heard him running towards it and turned its head, uttering an ear-blasting squeal that would have frozen any normal man. Alex heard Chaco’s wail as he and the beast came together in a thud of flesh and bone that echoed around the small cave. Alex had enormous strength, but he was easily outweighed by the boar, and its thick neck and shoulders gave it immense power. He drove his blade deep into the band of muscle across the beast’s shoulders, but, as the animal tossed its head in pain and surprise, he lost his grip on the knife.
He grabbed the creature by its two, foot-long curved tusks and tried to keep its jaws away from any soft tissue on his body. Its crushing maw was easily capable of pulverising bone or tearing free large chunks of flesh. Though Alex planted his legs and strained with all his energy, the creature’s huge bulk pushed him back again. He skidded a foot as the boar started to gain traction, and remembered something his father used to say when he was a boy:
The blade wasn’t far from his grip, but he would need to release one hand to reach up for it. He knew he was quick enough — then he could aim for a more vital area of the boar.
Just as he was coiling his muscles to act, there was an explosive splash behind him.
‘
Chaco’s high-pitched voice was frantic, but Alex was locked in a death struggle and couldn’t chance looking at the boy to try to work out what he meant.
