Deadfall: Agent 21 (12 page)

Zak was glad of the hip-flask full of petrol. By dribbling some of it over a nest of twigs he was able to get their fire kindled in next to no time. ‘Keep it small,’ Gabs told him. ‘It’ll be easier to control. We don’t need much.’ Zak nodded his agreement and
started laying slightly larger bits of wood over the little blaze in a wigwam formation. Minutes later, the fire was flickering thirty centimetres high.

‘Let’s have a look at that leech now, sweetie,’ Gabs said.

Zak raised his shirt again. The disgusting, slug-like creature was larger than a tennis ball now and its black-grey skin glistened unpleasantly. While Zak was looking at it, one of the smaller leeches suddenly fell off his skin, leaving an ugly red welt with a small pinprick in the centre where it had sucked at his blood.

Gabs took a thin twig and stabbed one end into the heart of the fire. Thirty seconds later she pulled it out. The tip was glowing red hot. ‘Stay still, sweetie,’ she murmured. Then she pressed the burning tip into the flesh of the bull leech. It squirmed suddenly. Zak winced as the pain suddenly grew worse, but Gabs kept the burning stick firmly against the leech. In a matter of seconds, it popped off Zak’s flesh and flopped to the ground. Instantly, Zak stamped his heel on it. The leech exploded in a squelch of innards and Zak’s own blood. Then Gabs removed the remaining leeches, which fell off at the slightest touch of the hot twig.

Malcolm had rolled up his trouser leg and was looking in disgust at his own leeches. They too had
doubled in size. Gabs walked over to him and, still using the same burning twig, popped them all off.

‘Better?’ Gabs asked him.

Malcolm nodded so fast that he had to stop his glasses falling off his face.

‘Do you want me to do you?’ Zak asked.

Gabs shook her head. ‘I think I got away with it,’ she said.

‘Where’s Raf?’

They looked around. There was no sign of him, but Gabs didn’t look worried. ‘He’s probably gone off to find some food for us all. Come here, Malcolm, I want to look at that wound of yours.’

Malcolm sat by the fire. He looked in a bad way; all the colour had drained from his already pale face, and he seemed to be trembling. He refused to look Gabs in the eye as she carefully undid the makeshift dressing to examine his wounded elbow.

The sight of it turned Zak’s stomach. The gash itself looked fairly clean, but the flesh was raw and glistening. Worst of all, it seemed to be moving. He took a closer look. He could see four – no, five – tiny maggots wriggling around in the gore.

‘Oh my . . .’

‘What is it?’ Malcolm demanded. ‘
What is it? What is it?
’ He wriggled his arm free of Gabs’s grip and held the elbow up at an awkward angle so he
could see it. His eyes bulged. ‘Get them off me,’ he screeched, looking at Zak in desperation. ‘
Get them off me!
’

‘No,’ Gabs said sharply. She grabbed Malcolm’s wrist again, holding it firm. ‘Listen carefully, Malcolm. I know it’s not very nice, but at the moment those maggots are your best friends. They only eat dead and decaying flesh. They’re keeping the wound nice and clean for you. I’m not saying it won’t get infected. It’s very likely, in this temperature and humidity. But removing the maggots will only make it worse.’

Malcolm stared at her like she was insane.

‘She’s right, mate,’ Zak said quietly. ‘We’ll clean it properly when we have medical supplies. But for now . . .’

Malcolm’s chin drooped to his chest in defeat. Looking sick, he said nothing, but allowed Gabs to bind the wound again.

She was just finishing up when Raf reappeared. He was carrying what looked like a big lump of tree bark. ‘Anyone hungry?’ he asked brightly.

Zak watched him suspiciously as he sauntered over, and joined them sitting round the fire. He rested the lump of bark on his crossed legs.

Zak peered in. He wished he hadn’t. It was a seething cauldron of bloated white grubs, not unlike
the maggots in Malcolm’s elbow, only ten times fatter.

‘Palm grubs,’ Raf said. ‘Fantastic source of protein. Actually, they’re a delicacy in some parts of the world. I was pretty lucky to find them.’

There was a stunned silence round the camp fire. Then Malcolm shot to his feet and stormed over to the edge of the clearing.

‘You don’t have to eat them raw,’ Raf shouted. ‘I’ll cook them if you like!’

Malcolm folded his arms and stared out into the jungle with his back to them.

Raf looked at Zak and Gabs, his eyes wide with innocence. Gabs’s expression was flinty. ‘Was it something I said?’ he asked.

When night falls in the jungle, it falls quickly. You need to be ready.

Zak was surprised by how suddenly the darkness surrounded them. One moment the sound of the insects was deafening as they struck up their evening chorus. The four of them huddled around their little fire, which Raf kept going with lumps of moss to create smoke. ‘It’ll keep some of the mosquitoes away,’ he’d said. Maybe, but Zak still felt like he was being eaten alive.

The next moment it was dark. The insects had
risen to the top of the jungle canopy. Everything was silent.

They fed the small fire from the pile of wood they’d collected. It was more welcome for its light than for its heat. Zak looked at the tired faces of his companions, and realized they all needed to sleep. Especially Malcolm, who nursed his wounded arm and was looking paler by the minute.

‘We’ll keep watch in two-hour sessions,’ Raf said when Zak suggested sleep to him. ‘I’ll go first, then Gabs, then you. I think we’ll have a good twelve hours of darkness, so that means two watches each.’ Nobody questioned why he hadn’t included Malcolm in the rota. He was staring into the heart of the fire, and didn’t look like he’d even heard them.

An animal screeched nearby. Zak started, then drew a deep breath. ‘How much further do you think we have to go?’ he asked.

‘Hard to say, without knowing our destination. But wherever Cruz was headed, it can’t be far. Nobody takes a vehicle a very long way off-road through primary jungle. It’s just too difficult. My guess is we’ll catch up with him tomorrow.’ Raf’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m looking forward to asking our young drug lord a few questions.’

Zak said nothing. The thought of seeing Cruz again knotted his stomach more than anything the
jungle could throw at him. And he didn’t share Raf’s calm eagerness. Cruz was clever.
Very
clever. Whatever the next day held, it was unlikely to be straightforward.

And very likely to be dangerous.

He felt Gabs’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Get some sleep, sweetie,’ she said. ‘You too, Malcolm. We’ll wake you when the time comes.’

Zak nodded. He pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the A-frame shelter, where he stretched himself out on the ground, his head at the fire end. Malcolm did the same, lying right next to him, uncomfortably close. Within minutes, Zak’s companion was asleep.

Zak, though, found it harder to nod off on this uncomfortable ground, with so many thoughts and worries whizzing through his head. He rolled onto his front. Beyond the fire, at the edge of the clearing, he saw Raf and Gabs standing apart, talking quietly. He wondered what was so secret that they had to say it out of earshot, and for a moment he resented them.

But then a wave of tiredness crashed unexpectedly over him. In seconds, he was asleep.

He woke with a start. Gabs was shaking him gently.

He sat up, half expecting to be back on St Peter’s
Crag, and not understanding where he really was. Then it all came flooding back, and his stomach knotted itself again.

‘What time is it?’ he breathed. The inside of his mouth was dry, and he felt caked in dried sweat.

‘Midnight,’ Gabs said.

Zak crawled out of the shelter. He noticed that Raf was sleeping soundly on the other side of Malcolm. He brushed himself down, then nodded at Gabs who took his place in the shelter. Then he stepped over to the fire and sat by it, cross-legged, glad of the warmth now, even though it was still humid in the jungle.

He couldn’t see the edges of the clearing, which freaked him out. Sitting by the glow of the flickering fire, he felt that a million eyes could be watching him, while he would never see anyone – or anything. He let the flickering blaze die down a little, and sat for twenty minutes by the glowing embers, lost in thought, trying to drive images of snarling leopards and gruesome warning dolls from his mind.

Then he shook himself back to reality. The fire was very low and he needed to feed it. He pushed himself back up to his feet and stepped five paces towards the pile of wood he and Gabs had collected. He bent down in the darkness to grab a piece.

He knew, as soon as his fingers came in contact with it, that he hadn’t touched a log. It was dry and smooth, and had a little give to it, like a piece of hard rubber.

And it hissed.

Zak snapped his hand away, just in time to hear a sudden slithering sound. He could just make out the shadow of a snake’s head rearing up.

He froze.

Time stood still.

The snake hissed again and Zak’s blood thumped harder through his veins.

Should he run? Get to the other side of the fire. No. He would startle the snake, make it more likely to strike. And he knew he couldn’t outrun it.

He was holding his breath, unwilling to make even the slightest sound or movement.

His pumping blood was ice cold. It was going to strike any second. Surely . . .

Movement. The snake was lowering its body.

Zak heard the soft shimmer of scales rubbing together. The dark, reptilian shadow moved like oozing treacle. It slid away from the log pile, towards Zak himself. With a sound like a knife being sharpened on a steel, it slid between Zak’s feet. He felt it brush his shoe. Very slowly, he looked over his
shoulder. The snake was a good metre and a half long and no thicker than a Smarties tube. Now it was edging round the remains of the fire and off out into the clearing.

Zak exhaled very slowly. Every limb was trembling. He stood there for a full minute before he even dared to move. Now he could hardly bring himself to take another log from the woodpile. Not without knowing
exactly
what he was touching.

What was it Gabs had said before they set out from the landing strip?
You need to think before you do anything
.

Good advice for life. But excellent advice, he now realized, in the jungle.

He looked around. The AK-47 with the Maglite taped to the body was lying a couple of metres from the fire. He picked it up, then shone the torch’s beam in the direction of the wood pile. By the bright light he satisfied himself that there were no more unwanted guests. Then he grabbed a couple more bits of wood and set them back on the fire.

He settled down again, still shaking. Morning couldn’t come quickly enough.

The mosquitoes, hovering above the canopy, announced the arrival of dawn minutes before the sunlight reached the forest floor. But Zak was still awake, his head filled with thoughts of long, thin snakes and short, fat leeches.

Raf was stoking more moss on the fire to make smoke.

Zak decided not to mention the snake. Both Raf and Gabs seemed edgy, and he didn’t see the sense in giving them anything more to worry about.

‘At least we made it till morning without any more rain,’ he said.

Raf grunted.

‘Does that
really
keep insects away?’ Zak asked, pointing at the moss. He showed Raf his arm, which
was covered with angry, purple welts. ‘They’ve had a pretty good go at me.’

‘It would be worse without the smoke,’ Raf said quietly as the fire began to billow. ‘Probably.’ He looked over to where Gabs and Malcolm were still asleep in the shelter. ‘I meant what I said last night,’ Raf continued. ‘I think there’s a good chance we’ll catch up with Cruz today. If we do, make sure you don’t act without thinking. I know you two have a history, but just keep your wits about you, OK?’

Zak nodded.

‘And I’m still worried about Malcolm. If that wound gets infected, he’ll go downhill fast.’ He swore under his breath. ‘I don’t know how we ended up babysitting him in the jungle. Something’s not right about him.’

Zak gave him a half smile. It was true that Malcolm was rude. True that he was hardly the kind of kid you wanted hanging around when the going got tough. But Raf and Gabs had taken a dislike to him from the get-go. Malcolm was OK when you got to know him. Kind of. Back in London, he’d shown that he had guts. And he was no doubt cursing his bad luck at being here just as much as Raf and Gabs were cursing their bad luck at having him along.

‘I’ll look out for him—’ Zak said, but he was
interrupted by another sound. An excited babbling. He had heard the same sound yesterday, and Gabs had said it was chimpanzees. Now it was much closer. Zak looked up. In the half light of the dawn, he could just make out dark shapes in the treetops above. Four of them? Maybe five? It was difficult to tell.

He heard Raf curse under his breath. ‘Wake the others,’ he instructed. ‘We need to get moving.’

As he spoke, something came crashing out of the trees. It landed directly on the smouldering fire, kicking up a cloud of ash and sparks and forcing Zak to jump away. He just had time to see that it was an old branch, about the length of a man’s forearm, before a second branch – twice as long as the first – came hurtling through the air. It whacked Zak on his right shoulder.

‘
Ow!
’ he shouted. ‘What the . . .?’

Suddenly the noise of the chimpanzees was twice as loud. It was like mad, hysterical laughter. Sticks and branches were raining from the canopy, thudding down on the forest floor.

Zak ran to the shelter, where Gabs and Malcolm were already waking up to the noise.

‘What is it?’ Gabs asked, her eyes keen.

‘Chimps,’ said Zak in disgust.

Gabs’s lips thinned. She looked like she wanted to
tell somebody off. But then a branch flew straight into the shelter, missing her head by inches. She grabbed Malcolm and pulled him towards one edge of the clearing, just as some kind of fruit, the size of a small melon, splatted onto the ground half a metre from where Zak was standing.