Tracks of the Tiger (4 page)

Nakula slowed to negotiate a pothole before he answered. Beck looked around. They had been driving for one hour of the three-hour journey and occasionally he recognized a landmark from their trip out that morning. The most recognizable one of all was Mount Lasa. When the road headed straight towards it, you could see the volcano looming large ahead, but mostly the trees hid it from view. Beck worked out from the direction they'd taken that morning that they would now be heading north, straight towards the volcano, before skirting its base and carrying on eastwards back to town.

‘She would have had a few favourite trees as her territory,' Nakula told him. ‘If the loggers took them, then she was homeless. No other female would let her into their territory, so . . .' He shrugged. ‘In the cities, the homeless can line the streets and beg. Here, no streets. They starve quickly.'

‘How bad is it?' Peter called. ‘The logging? You said the timber was in demand in the west.'

‘Oh, yes, very much. Hardwood in particular. It is sold through Malaysia and Singapore and sent on to Europe, to the United States, to Japan . . . It has many uses – furniture, picture frames, ornaments. It brings a lot of money, which is why it always springs up again, despite what the authorities may do to stop it.'

‘There's no sustainable way of doing it?'

‘Oh, of course there is. There are schemes, but sustainable wood costs more. Two thirds of the logging in Indonesia is still the illegal kind. It destroys hundreds of square miles, it wipes out ecosystems . . . and there is a human cost too. If the jungle dies, then the environment dies around it. The ground erodes and water flows in different ways. The paddy fields do not flood, the crops cannot be harvested. So communities can starve too. The only people who benefit are the ones doing the illegal logging. It takes a lot of money to buy an easy conscience, but they have a lot of money—'

The jeep swerved suddenly. Beck was flung against the side of the car and had to grab hold of the bar.

‘Whoa!' Peter had been jolted so hard his glasses were askew. He pushed them back onto his nose. ‘Did we hit something?'

‘I don't think so,' Nakula said grimly. He slowly brought the jeep to a halt. They sat with the engine ticking over, apparently waiting for something. Then the keeper jumped down from the vehicle and took a few paces along the road. It looked like he was picking his way with great care. He seemed to be testing the ground with the soles of his feet.

‘What—?' Peter asked, and suddenly the whole car shook. Nakula staggered and almost fell. The trees on either side shuddered as if a mighty wave was passing through them. The usual jungle background noise of cheeps and chirps erupted into screams of protest from a million birds.

‘What's happening?' Peter shouted over the racket.

‘Feels like an earthquake,' Beck yelled back.

‘A tremor,' Nakula corrected him. ‘A big one but not serious. This close to the volcano it is not unusual. Still, it would be best to get out of here.' He pulled himself into the driver's seat and revved the engine hard. The jeep shot forward. ‘Medan is well away from the volcanic area.'

Beck remembered what the tour guide had said about Indonesia and the Ring of Fire, and wondered if
anywhere
in the country was well away from volcanic activity. But he saw what Nakula meant. Right now they were practically on the flanks of a big volcano. Anywhere else would probably be safer at the moment.

The explosion felt like red-hot needles stabbing into their eardrums without warning. Beck and Peter both cried out and clapped their hands to their ears. The jeep swerved again but Nakula fought to control the steering wheel. He glanced back at the boys and Beck saw his lips move. He couldn't make out the words over the ringing in his ears.

The ringing slowly died away and Nakula's voice faded in, like someone turning up the volume control.

‘. . . more than just tremors. It may be an eruption.'

The jeep shot through a cleared patch of jungle, and just for a moment Beck had a glimpse of Lasa, towering over the trees. A thick column of solid black smoke belched up from the summit. It was already twice the height of the volcano. Then the trees hid it from view again.

‘Shouldn't there be warnings?' Peter asked.

‘Sometimes. Not always. It goes off every few years – always small explosions; nothing to worry about if you are a safe distance away. It is the volcanoes that sleep for centuries that cause real destruction.'

Nakula was driving much faster now, trying to find the happy compromise between getting as far away as possible and keeping control of the jeep. A puncture could trap them here. Peter opened his mouth to say something else, but Beck just put a finger to his lips and shook his head. Nakula needed to concentrate on the driving. There was nothing either of them could do to help except sit back and let him focus.

More bangs, more hidden rumblings. Beck wasn't sure if he was pleased or sorry that the volcano was hidden from sight. If an inescapable wave of molten lava was flowing his way right now, did he want to know?

But Nakula glanced round at them and smiled. A little. ‘I think we are leaving it behind,' he said. There hadn't been any more tremors now for a couple of minutes, and the bangs were getting quieter.

‘Look out!' Peter shouted suddenly. Nakula turned back, but too late.

There was high ground to the left side of the road, low on the right. Glowing red lava had poured down from the left and carved a trench across the road. It was about two metres across and they could feel the heat beating at their faces through the open window. The sides of the trench were scorched black.

Nakula was going too fast to stop. He did the only thing he could, which was turn the wheel hard. The vehicle swerved off the road and plunged down a sharp bank into the trees.

A branch punched through the windscreen and shattered it into a thousand pieces. Beck just had time to raise an arm and ward it off, but he felt a searing pain from his elbow up to his shoulder. Then he had a confused image of green leaves rushing towards him. He and Peter bent over double as trees and branches lashed past. Their ears were assaulted by a deafening barrage of torn metal and breaking wood. Finally the jeep crashed into a tree with a thud and stopped. Peter and Beck were flung forward and their seat belts tightened into a steel grip. Then the world was still again. Beck and Peter sat there for a moment, dazed. Their ears were ringing and there was a smell of petrol in the air.

Leaves clung to Beck's head and upper body. He instinctively lifted his hand to brush them away, and gasped as pain stabbed through his right arm. He gingerly held it up to check. Blood was welling up and staining the material of his shirt. The branch had gouged a nasty gash in him.

‘Pete? You OK?'

Peter stared at him vacantly, but he was sitting up, and he didn't seem to be bleeding from anywhere.

‘Nakula? Uh . . . Nakula . . . ?'

Nakula was slumped forward over the steering wheel, not moving. Red, sticky blood plastered one side of his head. Something had caught him a very nasty crack. Beck gingerly released his seat belt, steeled himself and leaned forward, wincing again as his arm reminded him of the gash. He felt gently for the keeper's neck, putting his index and middle finger next to Nakula's Adam's apple. If there was a pulse, that was one place it would show, where the carotid artery beat next to the windpipe.

But there was nothing, and Beck knew with a sinking, hollow feeling that Nakula was dead.

He had a sudden flashback to the plane crash in Alaska a few months earlier. A very similar situation, in fact. Pilot killed outright, friend Tikaani possibly injured . . . Beck felt a surge of adrenalin shoot round his body, bringing with it an urge to survive.

As a wise man once said, let the dead bury the dead.
That had been his first-aid instructor's harsh, uncompromising advice, back in his cadet days.
Your first priority is to the living.

And that meant Peter.

The smell of petrol was very strong indeed. Beck had an uncomfortable vision of it trickling onto a hot piece of metal and the jeep turning into a fireball. He jabbed at Peter's seat belt, grabbed both their daysacks and kicked open the passenger door.

‘C'mon, we're leaving.'

Peter had to be half dragged out of the jeep, but they staggered a safe distance away and collapsed at the base of a giant clump of vine-shrouded bamboo. Peter could clearly walk OK, so Beck guessed nothing was broken. Possible concussion was another matter. His friend was blinking, showing a bit more awareness than before, but he still seemed dazed.

There were four tests for concussion. Beck had used them on Tikaani that time in Alaska. Confusion, Concentration, Neurological and . . . what was the last one? Oh, yes, Memory . . . Beck smiled at the irony. Time to get to work.

‘Pete . . . Pete?' Peter's gaze swam around a little but eventually it settled on Beck. ‘What's your name?'

Peter sighed. ‘Peter William Grey. That's the Confusion test, right? I can also do this' – he shut his eyes and touched his nose with both hands, one at a time; that was the Neurological test – ‘and I can count the months of the year backwards. December, November, October, September, August—'

‘OK, OK.' Beck grinned, relieved. ‘You're not concussed. Though I haven't done the Memory test yet.'

‘Memory test? I remember you telling me all about how you had to do this test on Tikaani. Does that count?'

‘Yeah, it counts. Let's get out of here.'

‘You're, uh, hurt . . .'

Peter was looking at his arm. Beck studied it again, more carefully this time. The flow of blood seemed to be slowing down. The material of his shirt was sticking to the wound and helping the blood to clot. It wasn't an ideal bandage but it was better than nothing.

‘Yeah, I am.'

Then Peter went white. His gaze was fixed on Nakula. ‘What about . . . ? Is he . . . ?'

‘He's dead,' Beck said gently. ‘There's nothing we can do.'

‘I . . . I've never seen a . . .'

Most of you will never have seen a dead body before.
Beck's instructor's voice was back. The man had been frank and unsympathetic but Beck had always been glad of the training.
If you ever do, you will find they all have one very distinct characteristic. They are
dead
, and that means, except in very bad movies, that they're not going anywhere.

There was a cracking sound through the trees and Beck remembered how they had got into this in the first place. They had swerved to avoid a stream of lava. The lava was on the move.

It came flowing very slowly down the bank towards them. It didn't look immediately life-threatening, but it ate up the ground remorselessly and there was no stopping it – glowing red sludge, four metres wide and half a metre deep. The front end was charred black, and a dark crust floated on top of it. The red shone out through cracks in the crust. Whenever a leaf or a branch was touched by the flow, it flared up into flame and was consumed in seconds.

The jungle air was hot and humid. Beck could already feel a sheen of sweat clinging to his body. But the lava radiated a hot, dry heat, like an electric fire turned up way too high. If the jungle hadn't been so damp, Beck guessed it could have started a fire that would have killed them already.

He suddenly remembered the petrol. They probably had only minutes left to escape. ‘We really need to get out of here,' he said.

Peter visibly pulled himself together. ‘Yeah, we do.'

They scrambled to their feet and looked at the jeep.

It clearly wasn't going anywhere, the wheels twisted and the engine smoking. So, Beck thought, they were on foot in the middle of the jungle . . .

His mind ran through what they had brought with them. They were dressed in reasonably good clothes for the jungle. They had bottles of water in their packs. He felt for the comforting weight at his neck, where his fire steel hung. It was a useful gadget for making fire and he (almost) never went anywhere without it.

On the other hand, they didn't have a knife, they didn't have supplies of food, they didn't have any wire or rope . . . Beck bit his lip. Peter's parents might have raised an eyebrow if he'd said he wanted to take some rope with him on the trip – but he should have brought along his pocket knife, at least.

He leaned into the back of the jeep and rummaged around with his one good hand.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Looking for stuff . . . anything we can use . . .'

‘Like on the plane?'