Tracks of the Tiger Read online

  While Peter did that, Beck cut the lizard open with the knife, being careful not to puncture any internal organs. If he cut into the stomach or the intestines, the acid would leak out and ruin the good meat. It wasn’t hard to avoid them, though. The lizard’s body wasn’t tightly packed, like a mammal’s. It felt like a leather bag of innards, and you could tell what was where just by feel.

  Beck was only after one thing here, and that was the liver, three quarters of the way down the body. It was the size of his fist, clammy and dark rusty brown. When he pulled it out of the lizard’s abdomen, it glistened in the firelight. The bile sac clung to it and looked like an abnormal green growth. Bile was disgustingly bitter, not something Beck wanted to eat. The rest of the liver, though, would be rich in iron and nutrients, and pretty tasty once cooked. Beck carefully cut the bile sac away and set the liver aside. He threw the sac into the undergrowth.

  Finally he sliced off the lizard’s tail. There would be nothing else in the body worth eating, but the tail was almost solid meat. The skin was tough and almost fireproof, so he left it on. They could cook the meat in the skin and remove the outer layer when it was done. He threw the body well away from the camp. It would attract armies of ants, and he didn’t want to lead them to where he and Peter would be sleeping.

  Meanwhile Peter had set up the spit. Beck skewered the tail and the liver on a long stick and propped it up over the flames. The two friends then used more sticks to sweep the ground clear of leaves and anything else that might be lurking; finally they sat on either side of the fire and watched the meat cook.

  ‘End of the first day,’ Beck said cheerfully. ‘Nothing’s eaten us yet.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Peter sat and hugged his knees, and looked thoughtfully into the flames.

  Beck sensed his friend wasn’t quite as cheerful as he was. ‘We’re going to be all right, buddy – you know that?’

  Peter looked up, his expression serious. ‘Yeah. I know.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Beck asked gently.

  Peter sighed. ‘Just remembering Nakula. And wondering about Mum and Dad. We were meant to be getting back to Medan about now, so they’ll soon work out we’re late. And if they haven’t already heard about the volcano, they soon will. And then they’ll be going out of their minds with worry. OK, they know about you – they know you can survive just about anywhere, and if I’m with you they’ll know I’ll probably be OK . . . but what about Nakula’s family? If he had one. They said goodbye to him this morning like normal and now they’re . . . they’re never going to see him again . . . It’s too awful . . .’

  Beck thought of his own parents. He had waved them off at the start of a perfectly normal trip – and never seen them again either. ‘Awful’ didn’t even begin to describe it.

  ‘I see my mum and dad every day,’ Beck whispered gently. Peter looked up at him in surprise. ‘Every time I do something they taught me or I see some difference they made in my life. I always feel Mum around me. I bet you, in time, Nakula’s family will find that too. I mean, hearing someone you love has died is the worst thing ever, and that never goes away, but think of the difference he made. Think of the sanctuary.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about your mum and dad, Beck. I never really said that properly before.’

  Beck smiled at Peter warmly. Until someone close to you actually died it was impossible to know what it was like. Beck prayed his friend wouldn’t have to find out for many years.

  ‘Hey, Peter, your parents are going to be so proud of us,’ he told him, lightening the tone. ‘They’ll realize we had no option but to head into the jungle. And we are going to get through this. Sure, it’s not going to be like a walk in the park back home, but if we stick together and work together, we’ll survive. Just like in the Sahara. What’s important is that we focus on getting through this alive.’

  Peter’s smile in the firelight was warm and genuine. ‘Yeah, we’ll do that,’ he said confidently.

  Beck felt his own heart lift as well. ‘But we should get some sleep,’ he added.

  Climbing onto the sleeping frame took some careful manoeuvring. It creaked and groaned with their weight, but it held together. The boys lay head to toe and back to back on a thin mattress of palm leaves.

  ‘Beck?’ Peter murmured after a few minutes.

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘What about tigers? This thing isn’t exactly a cage, is it?’

  Beck had mentioned earlier that they were in tiger territory. They hadn’t discussed this since. There hadn’t seemed much point. It wouldn’t change anything.

  ‘Tigers are very solitary,’ Beck told his friend. ‘The chances of one wandering past us in the night are pretty slim.’

  ‘Oh.’ Peter was quiet for a moment or two. ‘And anyway, I guess they’ll be asleep soon, like us?’

  ‘They’re nocturnal—’ Beck started to correct him, but stopped when he realized what he was saying.

  Peter sighed. ‘You know, that’s really not comforting!’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Despite his worries (and the fact that the creepers did dig in, leaves or no leaves), Peter had dropped off almost immediately. He was worn out in body and mind, and he had a good meal of lizard inside him to digest. Beck lay awake for a little while longer, listening to the jungle. It was like a living creature all around them. Crackles and crunches, whoops and whistles – a million life forms getting on with the business of living and dying. But at some point sleep took him too.

  It was a rumble of thunder that woke him up, briefly. The fire had gone out and it was pitch dark. Rain drummed down relentlessly all around them. It pattered on the roof of palm leaves above, and he could hear streams of water pouring into his bamboo water collectors. Drops of it inevitably got through and landed on him, but he could live with that. Beyond the roof of the A-frame he could hear it hammering down. It washed the air clean, and made it fresh and cool once more. It was like being surrounded by an invisible waterfall.

  The sound of the rain finally sent him back to sleep again.

  They woke up early the next day, their second day in the jungle. The moment he was awake, Beck felt an extra layer of slick sweat clinging to his body. The freshness of the night’s rain was already a memory. The sun had come up as quickly as it went down, and the moisture left by the rain was now turning to steam.

  Beck swung his legs down and reached for his shoes beneath the sleeping frame. They had left their shoes propped upside down on sticks, to keep them dry. He gave each one a shake and looked carefully inside before putting it on. When he shook the second one, a scorpion as long as his middle finger fell out. Beck watched it scuttle away as he laced up his shoes. He smiled, grateful for the advice his father had given him about always checking inside your shoes first thing in the morning.

  He bent over to touch his toes, then stood up straight and rotated his arms like a windmill for a few seconds. A stab of pain reminded him of his cut: he needed to change the bandage. Meanwhile he felt the blood and energy start to flow back into his sleepy muscles.

  Beck was pleased to see the water collectors were brimming with clear, fresh water.

  Peter twitched and stirred. ‘Ugh.’ His mouth was dry and sticky; he had to swallow a couple of times just to be able to speak. ‘Aching. And thirsty.’

  ‘Better get up, then. There’s plenty of water.’

  While Peter got up, Beck filled the bottles from the collectors. As he carefully poured out the half-bamboos’ contents, he savoured the glug-glug sound.

  Beck passed a bottle to Peter, who drank almost half of it in a couple of swallows.

  ‘I could just keep drinking and never stop.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ Beck replied. ‘We need to drink whenever we can. The humidity means we’re going to sweat a lot. It’s like a steam bath already and it’s only going to get worse. You only need two and a half per cent less water in your body to make it twenty-five per cent less efficient, and we’re going to need all our strengt
h today.’

  ‘So . . .’ Peter quickly did the sums in his head. ‘Ten per cent less water and you just grind to a halt.’

  ‘I think you’d be dead before then.’

  ‘Yeah, but think of the advantages. If you had ten per cent less water – or even less than that – you could be sort of freeze-dried. Then someone else carries you through the jungle and they just add water at the end of the trip to restore you.’

  ‘Keep having good ideas like that,’ Beck promised with a straight face, ‘and you’ll be a millionaire before you’re twenty.’

  ‘I’ll cut you in on the deal,’ Peter assured him. ‘I’m also going to launch a new range of jungle survival food. Lizard tails, still in their own skin, available at your local supermarket. I’ll grow them in vats.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Beck rummaged in his pack for the crowbar. ‘Don’t forget the new, healthy jungle breakfast range. More protein per ounce than beef.’

  Beck’s smile widened as his friend’s froze. Reality crowded in on Peter’s fantasy.

  ‘And that would be . . . ?’ he asked reluctantly.

  Beck led the way over to a fallen log near their camp. The outer layers of bark were rotten and loose. He dug the crowbar in and levered them off. A few dozen insects and grubs scuttled and writhed around in protest.

  ‘Insects. Of course.’

  ‘You’ve eaten them before,’ Beck pointed out. In the Sahara they had eaten spiders, grubs, scorpions . . .

  ‘Well, yeah, I’ve also fallen off my bike and broken my arm before. Doesn’t mean I want to make a habit of it,’ Peter replied, quick as a flash.

  He came over and looked down at the breakfast spread without enthusiasm. Then he sighed and picked up a large grub between thumb and forefinger. ‘What’s this one?’

  Beck studied it. It was as thick as a finger, a translucent blue-white, and curled like a prawn. ‘Beetle larva, I think. Don’t eat the head. Hold it there and bite the rest of it off.’

  ‘OK, here goes . . .’ Peter screwed his eyes shut and bit into the larva. He chewed it and swallowed, eyes still closed.

  Beck remembered the very first time he had tried eating grubs. It had been in Australia – how could he ever forget the feeling in his mouth – the slight resistance of the flesh before it burst between his teeth, the explosion of goo, like rotting fish. And of course, Beck’s father had been there, reminding him just as he was about to remind Peter.

  ‘Good on you, buddy. We need all the nourishment we can get,’ he said. ‘And we definitely can’t afford to be squeamish in a survival situation.’

  ‘Yeah, I know . . .’ Peter opened his eyes thoughtfully. ‘Y’know . . . it’s not actually that bad.’ He scooped up three or four more in his cupped hand and ate them one at a time.

  ‘Hey, don’t take the lot!’

  When they had eaten as many as they could find, Beck poured water on his bandaged arm, gently moistening the wound. Then he slowly peeled off the bandage, wincing as it ripped at the congealed blood. The cut was still open, glistening, and the flesh on either side of it was red and tender.

  ‘I think a doctor would want to put a stitch in that,’ said Peter, peering at it.

  ‘That’s beyond our resources,’ Beck muttered. ‘Though I’ve heard of jungle tribes using soldier ants . . .’

  ‘Huh?’ Peter was cutting another strip off the spare T-shirt for a bandage. ‘How?’

  ‘Soldier ants have jaws a centimetre wide. You hold them over the cut so that when they bite you, they actually pull the edges of the cut together. Then you twist their bodies off and the heads stay in.’

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Exactly. But we might not have any choice if this gets any worse . . .’

  Peter wrapped the new bandage round the cut and Beck pulled his sleeve down over it.

  ‘And I suppose,’ Peter pointed out as they set off into the jungle again, ‘you could always eat the ant bodies . . .’

  ‘We’re gonna make a jungle guide of you soon at this rate, Peter!’

  Beck’s plan was to eat and drink as they went. If they stopped at all, it would only be briefly. Eating on the move meant they covered more ground, and it suited the ‘little and often’ philosophy. They would take in enough energy to keep them going but not so much that their bodies would start to divert the precious water and energy needed to digest a large meal. And eating on the move gave them something to focus on beyond their immediate predicament.

  Sometimes food just presented itself, like a cluster of low-hanging figs. Fig trees in the jungle are distinctive: straggly, with aerial roots – knobbly protrusions just like the roots you find below ground, but taking moisture in from the damp air. The leaves are leathery and evergreen, with rounded bases. The figs look like green balls growing straight out of the plant and can be eaten raw.

  There was plenty of fallen, rotting wood around, and that meant plenty more insects. Peter seemed to be getting quite into insects, which surprised Beck. He secretly hated them, eating them purely out of necessity.

  Beck couldn’t help noticing that his friend seemed to have more of a spring in his step today. He was looking around, taking an interest in his surroundings, even if his glasses were fogged up with steam most of the time. Everything that had happened yesterday – the volcano, the crash, Nakula being killed – had been a shock. In their hurry to get away from the volcano and set up a camp for the night they’d had very little time to come to terms with their situation.

  Beck remembered Peter’s attack of claustrophobia. Yesterday, the jungle had been an oppressive, threatening place. Today it still wasn’t exactly safe – if they ever made the mistake of thinking that, it could be fatal – but Peter seemed to have accepted it.

  A crumbling, thirty-metre-long tree trunk lay across their path. It was another type of palm, with long thin leaves neatly spaced along its branches.

  ‘Hey, more food?’ Peter asked hopefully.

  Beck laughed. ‘Could be . . . In fact, definitely. I think this is a sago palm. And that means palm grubs.’

  He used the crowbar to lever away the rotten bark, as before, then hacked into the wood. He prised out a chunk of the tree’s heartwood and spotted something trying to wriggle out of sight. Beck dug it out and held it up. It looked like a giant maggot, three or four centimetres long.

  ‘Definitely palm grubs,’ he confirmed. ‘You can eat ’em raw or cooked, depending. We’ll gather some up for later when we’ve got a fire.’

  And so they dug out a handful more, putting them into one of the pockets of Peter’s pack for safekeeping. Then something else caught Beck’s eye.

  He strolled over to what seemed to be a giant brown growth on the side of a tree. It obviously wasn’t part of the tree itself. It looked like an enormous mole or scab.

  ‘Termite nest,’ he called over his shoulder to Peter, who was still gathering insects. Beck dug the knife into the brown mass, and a clump of wriggling, translucent creatures fell out onto his hand and arm. He quickly brushed them away.

  ‘Don’t let them get onto you or they’ll infest you – hair, privates, everything. But they’re good eating.’ He popped a couple straight into his mouth and chewed. There was definite zing to termites – a bit like slightly off citrus fruit; something in the region of old orange or lemon. But it was still nicer than the grubs they had eaten earlier. ‘One good thing about them – you’ll never run short. There’s thousands in this one nest. They’re a vital part of the jungle – they digest all that rotting wood, and then recycle it!’

  ‘There’s some interesting-looking ones here too,’ Peter added.

  Beck popped another couple of termites into his mouth; there was no point wasting the opportunity. Then, from behind him, he heard:

  ‘Mm, smells like marzipan!’

  An alarm bell rang in Beck’s head. Before he even knew it, he was running back to Peter – who was holding up a very long, black and red millipede, as thick as a finger and as long as a hand. Its thousands of
segments made it look like an evil armour-plated CGI war robot from a trashy science fiction movie. It writhed and twisted in Peter’s grip, and what looked like thousands of little legs waved impotently. It might have been the legs that had stopped Peter trying to swallow it. He was about to bite it in half instead.

  ‘Stop!’ Beck swatted his friend’s hand and the millipede flew away.

  Peter stared at him as if he had gone mad. ‘What?’

  ‘Did any of it get into your mouth? Anything at all?’

  ‘No, nothing. Why?’

  The millipede hadn’t got far. It was heading slowly and steadily back into the undergrowth. Beck picked it up again and sniffed it. Peter was right – there was a distinct smell of marzipan.

  ‘That’s not marzipan . . .’ Beck’s voice was a little shaky. He didn’t like near misses. ‘This kind of bug secretes cyanide as a defence mechanism. Cyanide smells like almonds. Like marzipan.’

  The symptoms of cyanide poisoning. His medical instructor marched through his memories again. Seizures. Cardiac arrest. Coma. Death . . .

  Beck added quietly, ‘Definitely not edible!’

  Peter was pale. ‘Wow. I almost ate it . . .’

  Beck remembered his friend’s new-found confidence. He didn’t want Peter losing that again. ‘Yeah, well, you’re still alive!’ He chucked the millipede as far away as he could and wiped his hand on his trousers. ‘Hey, fancy some citrus . . . ?’

  A couple of minutes later Peter admitted, between mouthfuls, that he much preferred lemony termites to cyanide-emitting armour-plated millipedes.

  ‘And there’s another thing . . .’ Beck passed his pack to Peter. ‘Hold this open for me, under the nest . . .’

  Peter did so, and Beck cut away a section of nest so that it fell straight into the pack.

  ‘The nest burns nicely and the smoke keeps mosquitoes away,’ he explained. ‘We can use this wherever we end up this evening.’

  ‘I think I read somewhere that termites make their nests out of their own excretions?’