She shakes her head, mouth crushed with sadness.
Marc gestures around at the black and white world. Rain falls thick and hard, the trees whip back and forth like grass in the wind. He is so cold he has to lock his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering. Marc looks at Riley, pleading.
After a moment, Riley closes her eyes and nods. Marc puts his arm around her and half lifts, half pushes her on. They will both get out of here alive. There is no other answer.
A dark shape rears out of the undergrowth to their left and leaps away, racing the hurtling current. Marc glimpses antlers, slender legs. More deer flee down the mountain, ghosts in the rain, legs flying.
Marc peers through the thick grey air. He has studied the maps of this place until he knows every peak, every gully. But the storm is a pelting veil, they can hardly see a foot in front of them. A fresh wave of silty water hits their ankles like a blow. Riley staggers. Marc decides that any direction will do. Riley says something he can’t hear over the crashing of rock and earth and water. The storm is rising. Thunder shakes everything.
‘What?’
Riley shouts, gesturing at the torrent that rushes down through the scrub. He leans in, trying to catch her words, but they are drowned out. It sounds like, ‘Did you see the inky hell?’ Marc shakes his head, pointing to his ear.
Together they slide and stumble downwards, blinded and gasping with cold. Every so often the world goes white and crackling and thunder rolls through, shaking their very bones. They are in the heart of the storm. Plants are uprooted as the water gathers force; rivulets from across the incline join together and feed into the torrent,strengthening the current. Riley slips and he lunges for her, catches her hand. Her weight pulls him earthwards – they both roll and slide down the slick incline into a narrow gully where the water rushes fast through its deep channel. Marc fights his way to his feet, spitting frozen mud. He pulls Riley up. The sides of the gully are steep and almost liquid. Even as Marc watches, the earth lip dissolves and slides down towards them. They can’t get out without bringing the slope down too.
Riley points downstream and Marc nods. They turn and wade, panting. Above them, the solid banks dissolve and crash down into the racing current. The water level rises above their knees, the torrent pushes them forward, harder and harder.
Maybe they will drown like this, Marc thinks. If not they’ll die of exposure on the mountain. He doesn’t know how far the road is, or if they’re going in the right direction. Maybe the road is gone. Maybe the van got washed away and Kimble is dead.
At last the gully grows shallower and begins to level out. Around them, the trees are thinning. The thunder falls behind. When Marc shouts, ‘Are you ok?’ he can hear Riley when she yells, ‘Yes!’
A scree of boulders looms to their left.
‘Climb out that way,’ Marc shouts. ‘You first.’
Riley nods. He lifts her out of the water onto the rock. Marc reaches, searching for purchase. He’s trying to pull himself up when he hears it. ‘What’s that?’ he shouts at Riley.
‘What’s what?’ she shouts back.
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he yells. ‘A kind of squeak.’
Riley’s eyes widen and she lunges down, grabbing for his arm, trying to pull him up. His wet flesh slips through her fingers.
It hits Marc like an avalanche, the vast thing in the water. He glimpses hooked teeth, a yellow hooded eye. The crack of its old jawsis horrifying as they close on his leg like a vice. The crocodile yanks and drags with terrible strength. Marc is plunged into the brown icy roar, face up to the pelting sky. He splutters as earthy water fills his mouth and nose.
Marc doesn’t know how long the crocodile pulls him through the water. Eventually it slows. It drags Marc into the shallows, hauls him up in jerks, tussles him onto the mudshore.
Now or never, Marc thinks. He reaches for his prosthetic leg and pulls down hard. His limb comes out of the socket. Marc flips over and crawls away down the current, leaving the prosthetic behind. Water batters his face and body. He looks over his shoulder for an instant. The crocodile stands on the muddy spit like a stone, titanium protruding from its jaws. Marc scrambles up the shallow bank on the other side and crawls fast across the forest floor. When he looks behind again he sees the prosthetic in the mud, abandoned in the rain. It is warped and bent, marked by great teeth. The crocodile is gone.
Marc gasps and crawls to the base of a pine tree. He grasps the lower branches and pulls himself upright. Maybe he can support himself on branches, pass from tree to tree. He makes it two steps before the next branch is just out of reach. His fingertips graze its leaves as he falls. Marc’s face hits the mulch. The sound of the storm and the water in the gully roar in his ears.
Marc turns his head.
The crocodile is fifteen feet away. His yellow eye glows in the downpour. The slit pupil is fixed on Marc. It holds the memory of millennia. The crocodile is like the mountains. Marc is a tiny speck meaning nothing.
I’ve been waiting for you, Marc thinks. He knows the crocodile can hear him.I just didn’t realise it.
‘All right,’ he says, spitting rain. He hopes he did what he could with his life. Maybe he was a good man at times. He hopes Silvie will forgive him. He hopes that they will meet as gnats or planets ormeteor dust one day, out there in the black expanse. Marc doesn’t mind dying so much. But he wanted his daughter to live.
The crocodile’s eye explodes in a mist of red. It judders in agony.
Marc turns his head. Riley looks back at him. The barrel of the old revolver steams a little in the cold. Riley blinks rain from her eyes and sights again. It’s best to make sure. She pulls the trigger and it clicks. ‘Gun’s wet,’ she shouts, eyes wide. She pulls the trigger over and over and it clicks uselessly. Marc and Riley keep their eyes on the still form of the crocodile as blood pours from its eye socket. ‘Is it dead?’ Riley shouts.
The crocodile stirs and Marc catches his breath. A sound comes from its vast depths like a sigh or a low growl. The crocodile backs away, turns its great weight slowly uphill, back into the storm. Its thick black tail drags behind, clearing a swathe on the forest floor. Marc hears a faint squeaking as it retreats into the distance.
Riley helps Marc slowly upright. ‘Here.’ She puts his arm over her shoulders. ‘Put all your weight on me.’
‘We’re lost,’ he says. ‘Riley, we lost the way so long ago …’
