Taylor Five by Ann Halam
They stopped. Tay heard one of the men with rifles talking to Clint. The man asked, quite politely, where Clint was going. Clint said he was heading for the river crossing that lay about thirty kilometers further along the road. He was asked where he’d come from, and he gave the name of a village back toward Kandah City. Then he was asked why he hadn’t stayed at home. Didn’t he know the People’s Army had taken over this region and there was a state of emergency? He said he hadn’t known. They heard him switch the radio on and off. See, he said, my radio isn’t working. I’m sorry. I’ll turn back right now, I’ll go straight home again—
The other voice, not so polite now, told him to get out of the Land Rover.
Clint argued, quietly, that he didn’t want to get out of the Land Rover. He said it was an old Land Rover, and its brakes weren’t too good, and also if he took his foot off the gas, he wasn’t sure if it would start again. . . . But they made him get out.
Then the men with rifles saw how he was injured. Their voices changed a lot. Tay couldn’t follow all that they were saying, but they were asking him again, Where do you come from? They were saying he had a foreign accent. There was another voice, with more authority, asking Clint for his papers.
That’s it, she thought. We’re done for.
Clint’s identity card would show that he was Indonesian, and these were the rebels who hated all foreigners. We can’t run for it, she thought. We can’t leave Clint, and anyway there’s nowhere to run. But she got hold of the straps of her rucksack, which was on the floor between her and Donny, and started trying to open the offside door—
Too late. The nearside back door was opened so sharply that Uncle and Donny almost fell out. There were yells of astonishment. Men with rifles grabbed at the ape and the two children and hauled them out onto the track.
“It’s a man-of-the-forest!” they muttered to each other in Malay . . . an orangutan. “It’s from that crazy place! These are the English children from that orangutan place!”
The men were slim and small compared to Donny and Tay’s dad and the other Europeans on the refuge staff. They were dressed in camouflage; some of them had berets on their heads, but they didn’t have any badges on their uniform. They didn’t seem to know what to do with their new discovery. Tay’s heart leapt in relief. They’re not going to hurt us! But she was wrong, and her relief died at once. One of the rebels had Clint’s arms twisted up behind his back; another man had Clint’s identification papers and that old-fashioned pistol. A third man, who seemed to be in charge, came over.
He gave the children and the ape a long, cold stare.
“So!” he said in English. “All red monkeys together.”
The others laughed. Red monkey was a rude Malay term for white people; and Uncle was a red ape. Very funny . . . Tay looked into their faces and knew that these were some of the people who had attacked the refuge. It was in their eyes. These were the rebels who had killed her mother and father, and Lucia Fernandez. They had killed innocent people, they had set the forest on fire, and they couldn’t stop now. They had to go on, right or wrong. . . . These thoughts ran through her head—with a strange understanding of how hard it is to stop, once you’ve started doing terrible things—as she watched the officer (he seemed like an officer, though he had no badges of rank) reach to the shiny holster at his belt and take out his gun.
The men around the children backed off, suddenly completely silent.
“You’re the crazy ones,” said Clint in Kandahnese Malay, still polite but not groveling. “You don’t want to harm these children. They have done nothing. Let them go.”
The Man With No Name doesn’t ever say die.
But Tay saw the officer’s eyes, and she knew what was going to happen—
He’s going to shoot us. Right now.
Clint knew it too. He wrenched free from his captor and leapt at the officer with the gun. “Run, Tay!” he yelled in English. “Go, kids!”
No one was touching the children. Tay snatched Donny’s hand and swung her rucksack at one soldier who tried to grab her, thumping him in the belly. The children went pounding across the gray, hot, ash-covered ground, ducking and diving between the charred trees. Yelling and gunfire came after them, but Tay kept going, clutching Donny’s hand, until the gunfire faded and a gulf opened under her feet. She thought she was falling. Instead she found herself stumbling down a steep, earthy bank, tumbling and stumbling, crashing through undergrowth, down and down, still clinging on to Donny’s hand, into a deep gulley where the leaves were green and the ground cool underfoot, and there was the sound of water.
They had landed on the bank of a stream. Thick vines and bushes closed off the slopes above them. There was no sign of the fire, except for a few charred twigs drifting on the clear brown water. They listened for pursuit. Nothing happened.
“We can’t leave Clint!” cried Donny. “Why did you make us run away?”
“Because we were about to be killed,” said Tay. “I’ll go and see what happened.”
It was much harder climbing up than coming down. Her arms and legs were trembling, and all her muscles felt weak. When she reached the top of the slope and peered through the trees she could see, through the murk, the old orangutan refuge Land Rover, standing alone on the track.
“I need to have a closer look,” she whispered—as if Donny could still hear her. “I’ve got to find out what happened to him.”
She crept up, sneaking from one burned-out tree to the next. I can drive, she was thinking. We can still get out of here and find help. . . . When she was near enough to see that the rebels had shot out the tires, she stopped. They’d shot holes in the petrol tank too. It hadn’t caught fire, but it was leaking. There was a dark pool on the track. It reminded her of the pool of Clint’s blood on the floor of the kitchen loft. She could smell petrol mingling with the ugly incinerator stink of the burned-out forest.
The rebels’ jeep was gone. There was no body on the ground.
They had taken Clint away.
She wiped her eyes. She hadn’t realized that she was crying again.
When she got back to the bank of the stream, Donny was huddled up under one of the animal blankets. He must have been clutching it when they were dragged out of the Land Rover, and he hadn’t let go. He had pulled it over his head, as if he was in bed, hiding from a nightmare; and he was shaking. She tugged it aside. Donny looked up and pushed the blanket away, embarrassed. “Did they kill him?” he whispered. “Did they shoot him?”
“There’s no body. They just took him away. Like everyone from the refuge.”
“Oh . . . oh, that’s good. At least he’ll be with Mum and Dad.”
Tay put her arms round him. “We’re on our own, Donny. You and me. We’ll have to look out for each other, and behave so Clint, and Mum, and Dad, and everyone, would be . . . will be proud of us, when this is all over. Do you agree to that?”
“Yes . . . I agree to that. Where’s Uncle?”
“I don’t know.” She hadn’t noticed what had happened to Uncle. “He’s gone. He’s a wild animal. I suppose he’s doing whatever seems best to him. Remember what Clint said, the apes are free now. They have a chance, they might survive.”
Donny nodded. Tay started thinking over the contents of her rucksack. Matches, pocketknife, compass, first aid kit. Some water and food. It was a pity they’d lost the bigger rucksack, with most of the supplies they’d collected in the kitchen. Was there a map? She hoped there was a map. Donny has a blanket. And we’re children, she thought. We can avoid the rebels and find ordinary people who will help us. We will make it. . . . It was sad and peaceful in this hidden green valley. This is what Clint told me, she thought. The fire doesn’t take everything. What survives will grow stronger.
“Tay,” said Donny, “could you look at my back? I think something hit me when we were running. It doesn’t hurt a lot, but it feels strange.”
She looked at his back. There was a red stain on his T-shirt. When she pu
“You’ve been hit by a spent bullet,” she told him. “I’ll put antibiotic powder on it, and a dressing, and you’ll be fine until we get to a hospital.”
“A spent bullet? That’s what Clint had too. What does it mean, exactly?”
“A bullet at the end of its flight, with no strength left. It can’t have hurt you much.”
She hoped she was right. She cleaned the wound, her second bullet wound of the day, and used the tweezers from the first aid kit to try to reach the bullet, if it was lodged inside. She couldn’t find anything. Donny hardly whimpered. She didn’t know if he was being incredibly brave or if he was too shocked and exhausted to react.
They ate biscuits and drank some water, and rested through the heat of the day.
The afternoon grew cooler. Dusk began to fall; and Tay realized they were here for the night. No harm in that, she decided. They needed recovery time. She lay with her brother’s head cuddled into her shoulder and her arm around him. They talked about Clint, and how brave he had been. If he was still alive, they would see him again, and he’d get a medal for bravery. They didn’t talk about Mum and Dad, only about their friend Clint. That was all they could cope with for the moment.
At last they slept.
tay slept very lightly and woke to the sound of birdcalls. She left Donny sleeping, found a place to get down to the water and washed her face and hands: cleaned her teeth with her finger, and took off her boots and socks to wash her feet. She felt much better after that. When she’d put her boots on again she looked in the rucksack, and thank God she’d not been imagining that she’d packed a map. A map of your area was basic survival kit, even though she and Donny had only been going to the caves. It was still there.
She spread it on the grass and searched until she found a thin blue line flanked by tight contour lines, running roughly parallel to the backcountry road to the coast. That had to be this stream, in its steep narrow valley—and they were in luck. The stream went on running parallel to the road, all the way, until it ran down to join the Waruk, one of Kandah River Region’s biggest rivers—
“What are you doing?” said Donny’s voice. He was beside her, still wrapped in that grubby yellow blanket.
“Finding where we are. Look, it’s going to be easy. We can stay off the road and follow this stream until it joins the big river, and we’ll be at Aru Batur. You know, the river crossing with the floating-bridge ferry. We might find people to help us there.”
Three summers ago, before Donny went to boarding school, the Marine and Shore Station had been moored on the same coast. Pam Taylor had been there and the Walkers had gone to visit her, making an overland trek and camping out. It had been fun crossing the river at Aru Batur, on the giant raft they called their “floating bridge.”
“What if we don’t?” said Donny. “What’ll we do then?”
Aru Batur was the only settlement on the way to the coast, as far as Tay knew. She turned the map over. There was a smaller scale map of the whole of Kandah on the other side: it didn’t tell her much. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “We’ll head for the river crossing. If we can’t get help there, well, we’ll carry on. We have a compass. It’ll take us a few days, but we’ll reach the Marine and Shore—”
“And then Pam will negotiate with the rebels, so Mum and Dad and everyone will be rescued? She can get Lifeforce to give them masses of money, can’t she?”
“Yes,” said Tay, biting her lip and trying to sound cheerful. “That’s what she’ll do, right away.” She folded up the map: and then she jumped, startled. A shaggy rust-red shape had suddenly appeared beside them, completely silently.
“Uncle!” cried Donny. “Uncle! You came back! Oh, great!”
The ape sat with his long arms trailing as if they were broken. He looked at Tay and made his Clint noise, in a questioning way: but without much hope.
Donny is a child, thought Tay. Uncle knows. She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.
It was hard not to believe that the ape understood her.
“They took him away,” explained Donny. “The rebels kidnapped him.”
Uncle put his shaggy hands over his jowly face: looking so human in his grief, it gave Tay a strange feeling. Then he raised his fingers to his mouth, several times, the way he’d done when he meant the ground was too hot to walk on. Ouch, ouch ouch—
“Ouch, ouch, ouch,” said Tay. “Me too, Uncle.”
Donny reached behind him. “My back hurts,” he complained, but then he cheered up again. “Hey, I just realized, now it doesn’t matter that you don’t know the way after the Waruk! Uncle will look after us. He’ll be our trusty native guide.”
The ape was a wise and faithful friend, but he wouldn’t make much of a guide. He’d hardly ever left the refuge clearing. Tay was going to say this . . . but she changed her mind. She must not say negative things. They had to think positively. “You’re right. He’ll be very useful. But now the native guide and the fugitives need some breakfast. Look in the pack, Donny, and choose something.”
“We can take turns to choose. It’ll make eating more interesting.”
The three of them shared a tin of peaches and a packet of chocolate biscuits and drank bottled water. They had water-purifying tablets, but they’d save them until their water bottles were empty.
“We’ll try to walk fifteen kilometers today,” Tay said as they packed up. “We might not make that much, but it will be our goal, our personal best. That makes two days to the river. After the river crossing we can get back on the road, and we’ll meet the Lifeforce people like Clint said. They’ll be on their way to look for us.”
“Hey. You said we’d find help at Aru Batur.”
“I didn’t say that, stupid! How could I know? I said I hoped we’d find help—”
The children looked at each other, and the beginnings of a squabble died. “We mustn’t get into arguments,” said Donny, very seriously.
“No. We mustn’t. We’ll stick it out, and be nice to each other, and behave so everyone would be proud, if we have to walk all the way to the Marine and Shore.”
“Let’s shake on it,” said her brother.
They gripped hands, did the special Tay and Donny twist, broke the grip and knocked knuckles. “We should do it with Uncle too,” said Donny. “He’s part of the team.”
Uncle had gone to sit at the edge of the stream, but he was watching them.
He made his Clint noise again, very sadly.
For a moment a picture of Dr. Clint Suritobo flashed into Tay’s mind. His laughing face, his glossy black hair. How he’d been such fun to be with, always. And he was gone. It was all gone, everything. . . . It hurt so much she was shocked. How could she keep going with such pain inside? But she must.
“He mightn’t want to do our handshake.” She didn’t want Donny to be disappointed. “He might think it’s only for children, or only for humans.”
“Yes, he will do it. I’ll teach him. It’s the team sign. Come here, Uncle.”
The ape rose to his feet. Standing, he was about the same height as Donny, though broader across his shaggy chest and shoulders. He came up to the children, cocked his head and made a face that was like the sad ghost of his old funny lip. Then he gravely took Donny’s hand, shook it and did the Donny and Tay twist—
“Hey!” cried Donny, delighted. “Look at that! He knows it already!”
“He must have watched us, lots of times,” said Tay.
But it seemed a good omen.
All three of them, in sequence, did the handshake, the twist, the rapped knuckles. The grip of Uncle’s leathery hand was very strong. His wise and sorrowful eyes looked into hers. Uncle knows, she thought. He’s hurting, just the way I am, and he may be an animal but he’s not a kid, he’s a grown-up: and she felt stronger. Maybe it was stupid, but she felt she had someone she could depend o
There was a pedometer on their compass, which Tay was wearing on her wrist. It let them keep track of their progress. They made good time through the morning. The grassy bank of the stream was as good as a smooth path, and it was a big improvement to be away from the smoke and ash. Tay carried the rucksack. Donny offered to take turns, but Tay thought he’d better not carry anything because of the wound in his back. Donny wanted Uncle to take his turn, but Tay had visions of the ape vanishing into the forest with all their possessions. No matter how wise he was, he was still an animal, and he might decide to go off and survive on his own. She explained that orangutans aren’t built for carrying things on their backs.
Uncle wasn’t built for walking, either, but that didn’t matter. He took to the trees that closed off their gulley from the sky and swung along overhead: sometimes completely silent, sometimes crashing through the branches as if he was making a noise deliberately, to cheer himself up. But every few minutes he would came plunging down again, landing on the grass and bouncing along beside the children for a few steps. “To make sure we’re okay,” said Donny. “He’s our baby-sitter, remember.”
The heat didn’t bother them too much. The valley was shady and they were used to these temperatures. The pedometer counted the meters, and then the kilometers. Tay became obsessed with watching them mount up. When she noticed that Donny was lagging behind, she could hardly bear to stop, but she made herself be sensible and declared a lunch break. They sat on on some roots and opened a tin of pears while a butterfly with huge, lacy white wings drifted around them, as if curious to know what two children and an ape were doing here all alone.
Uncle refused the pears. Donny didn’t finish his share. He said he wasn’t hungry.
By midafternoon they’d covered ten kilometers, sometimes on smooth ground, sometimes clambering over roots and rocks; but always keeping close beside the stream. But Donny was tired. Tay was coaxing, nagging, praising and teasing him to keep him going. At twelve kilometers there was a change. The stream had grown to a small river, and the bank ahead was suddenly much rockier and steeper. Their path led over loose boulders, treacherously covered in big ferns and thorny creepers. Tay motored on, as fast as she could go without falling. She was worried about Uncle. She hoped he’d be able to feed himself, because they were going to run out of tins soon at this rate. She was very worried about the river crossing. What if they got to Aru Batur and it was in the hands of the rebels? How would they get across the river then? There were no bridges—