The Amber Trail (24 page)

“
How dare you!” Dig
shouted, breathing rapidly with his feet wide apart. Blood pounded
in his ears.

Jules clambered across the toe of
the ballast, heading toward the tunnel, then climbed it again and
stood beside the bike. “Listen,” she said, holding her palms out in
front of her. “It's our back up plan...if things go bad we can try
to trade it for our lives. Get things back to how they were. I can
make it up with Shiv if I want, I know it.”

“
And what happens to
me in that scenario? You offer me up as a sacrifice?”

“
No.” Jules’ eyebrows
drew together. “You can...join the business too.”

“
Are you crazy? Are
you ever going to face reality? Your time is
over
out here.
You need to ditch the drugs, find Chook, and go home.”

Jules blinked rapidly and looked
down to her feet—where Dig’s bag lay on the ground beside the bike.
Her lips pursed.

Dig stepped toward her. “Don’t
you da—”

But it was too late. Jules
snatched up Dig’s pack, then turned to mount the motorbike. She
started it up and threw the bike into gear.

Dig ran at her, pumping his arms
and legs and sprinting down the centre of the track. When he was
within arm’s reach he grabbed for the back of the bike, but she
pulled back the throttle and it shot away toward the tunnel,
wavering back and forth between the rails.

“
Stop!” Dig shouted.
“Just wait!” He chased her down the line. “There are hornets in
there!
Hornets!
” But the bike zipped away into the gaping
hole of the tunnel, and Dig jogged to a stop outside the
opening.

He watched the rear lights of the
motorbike disappear into the depths of the hill until he was left
only with the dissipating buzz of the engine as it echoed back
toward him. Dig laced his hands on the top of his head and stared
into the darkness.

As he stood, the echo suddenly
changed pitch, then hitched and caught, and for an awful second
there was a zinging pause before an almighty crash of broken
plastic and metal echoed down the passage.

Then a puttering hiss.

Then silence.

Dig took two running steps into
the tunnel opening before spotting a couple of roaming insects
zipping through the shadows.

He looked down at his bare arms
and legs and stopped, frozen. All his spare clothes had been taken
with the stolen pack. All his medicines had gone with it too. He
could go no further.

A familiar sound began to ramp up
ahead of him—like the vibrant hum of an electrical substation,
cranking up through the gears, emitting an unnerving pulsation that
reverberated in his chest. Dig knew what it was; it was the sound
of the hive coming to life, ready to attack. Ready to inflict
pain.

A primal, high-pitched scream
echoed back from the tunnel, making the hairs on the back of Dig’s
neck stand to attention.

“
Get them off me!”
Jules’ voice echoed, whimpering.

Dig’s breathing increased, and he
paced back and forth at the tunnel mouth. “Run Jules!” he shouted
into the tunnel. “Run!”

“
They’re everywhere,”
she squealed. “Help me!”

“
I can’t! You need to
get out!”

There was a guttural moan, and a
slapping, followed by a series of sobs.

“
Stop them!” she
screamed
.
“Just…stop…!”

He continued to pace. “Get out of
there!” he screamed into the darkness.

“
I…can’t!
Oh...please!...Help meee!”

“
Run to my
voice!”

But there was no answer. All he
could hear was the humming ferocity of the hive, churning at full
intensity somewhere around the corner in the darkness. His legs
felt weak, and he dropped to a squatting position just outside the
tunnel opening, eyes screwed shut and full of moisture. He shook
his head.

A final word screamed out of the
tunnel mouth in an ear splitting shriek, echoing off the tunnel
walls and drilling into his brain.

“
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…”

Dig crammed his thumbs into his
ear canals and squashed his palms hard against his temples until
his head throbbed. His eyes screwed shut and nausea churned in his
stomach.

“
...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...”

He willed the sound to stop, but
it continued on and on, for a near implausible length of time,
piercing through his head and jamming his thoughts until finally it
trailed away, and he was left with nothing but the humming echo of
the hive.

He dropped backwards to lie on
his back, with the twin metal strips of the train line running past
each shoulder. The timber sleepers were warm below his shoulder
blades, and he stared blankly at the clouds floating past the arch
of the tunnel opening. Tears tracked over his cheekbones and pooled
at his earlobes.

He felt spent, like all his
willpower had been depleted.

His mind was blank, and he didn’t
have the energy to start it again.

As he stared at the sky, his
vision caught on a small, colourful shape moving through the air,
turning circles in the breeze. It ducked and dived, then glided
toward him and landed cleanly on the top of the tunnel arch above
his head. It was a bird, and Dig felt no surprise when he
recognised it as a Rainbow Bee Eater. It lifted its wing and
preened its undercarriage, then looked sideways at him.

Dig watched the bird with a
trembling chin, then closed his eyes and pressed his lips thinly
together.

“
Why?” he whispered,
as another tear tracked down his cheek. “Why did you have to go and
die Dad? And leave us this shitfight to deal with?”

He sniffed. “Well I give up. I’m
going home. The brewery can go to shit. And if they come after us,
then so be it.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t get through that
tunnel. I’ll be eaten alive.” He looked up at the bird. It remained
on the top of the arch, unmoved.

“
So that’s it,” he
said. “No more.”

The bird cocked its head, then
launched into the air and flew toward Hampi. Dig sat up and watched
it leave, his eyebrows knitting together.

He waited, listening to the howl
of the wind in the tunnel. But the bird didn’t return.

“
Fine.” Dig pushed
himself to his feet. He wiped at his cheeks and walked down the
tracks, away from the tunnel, away from the brewery.

He followed the tracks around the
bend, stepping slowly from one sleeper to the next. His head
throbbed. Out of habit, he reached for his water bottle, but of
course it was gone too, sitting inside his pack that was now likely
somewhere in the depths of hornet hill. He shuffled along the
sleepers with his head down, sweat dripping from his eyebrows, his
mouth dry and tasting of dirt. He considered how far he had left to
walk, and he realised he would probably be close to dehydration by
the time he got back to town.

And what else was in the pack?
His passport for one, his money and credit card. How would he get
out of the country? He frowned and stopped.

The track dipped down to the
right, heading for the bridge over the river. Flanking the bend was
the pocket of broken palms where he had lost control of the
motorbike days before. The motorbike would still be in there
somewhere, mangled and lifeless against the trunk of the
palm.

He narrowed his eyes, then
glanced at the towering hill of rock behind him. Its base was steep
and slippery, and would be impossible to climb. The breeze from the
tunnel still whined in his face.

After a moment, Dig stepped
carefully down the ballast shoulder to the tree line. When he
reached the palms, he found the broken branches that marked his
crash entry point, and stuck his head through the gap into the
shadows beyond.

After his eyes adjusted, he saw
it—the mangled wreck of metal that was the motorbike, already
tangled in spider webs and surrounded by a dark ring of dirt that
was likely motor oil from a fractured engine. Dig ducked his head,
stepped through the branches, and pushed his way through the
foliage toward the bike.

He walked around to the rear of
the bike and spotted what he was looking for—the open storage
compartment under the bike seat—and the pair of worn overalls and
scuffed helmet that had spilt out of it during the crash a couple
of days earlier.  

He grabbed a cuff of the overalls
and pulled them toward him, but they stuck fast, hooked somewhere
underneath the main body of the bike. He crouched to the forest
floor, levered his shoulder below the main frame, and pushed up.
The bike protested with a squeal of metal-on-metal, but lifted, and
Dig yanked the overalls free. He lowered the bike to the ground and
held the garment up to the light. It was dirty and worn, but seemed
intact.

He picked up the helmet. The
paint was chipped and the visor cracked, but it was still in one
piece. He rubbed at the visor with his shirt, then tried it on for
size. It pressed hard against his ears, but he managed to squeeze
it on before removing it again.

He stared at the two items for
another long moment, then took a deep breath and pressed his lips
together before he lifted his T-shirt over his head and dropped it
in a pile beside him. He stepped into the overalls, inserted his
arms, and drew the front zipper up tightly to the underside of his
chin, then tucked the bottom of the overalls into his socks. The
garment was a couple of sizes too small and pulled down at the top
of his shoulders—but it covered him from his ankles to his wrists
to his chin.

From the ground, he lifted a
solid branch that was the length of his arm, then collected a
litter of dry palm fronds and began tying them to the stick. When
he was finished, he had a thick wrapping of dried leaf tied around
the top half.

He lifted the helmet and shirt
from the ground and pushed his way out of the foliage to climb back
up the embankment. When he reached the railway line he put his head
down and trudged toward the hill, stick in one hand, helmet and
shirt in the other.

The track turned a now familiar
bend back into the hill, and the rocky outcroppings again rose up
on both sides of the track. Dig gritted his teeth as the semicircle
of darkness appeared around the bend.

As he neared the tunnel entrance
the breeze increased in intensity, blowing a hot, rotten blast that
flapped his hair across his face and smelled of stagnant water and
decomposition.

He stopped and stared into the
dark. A wave of goose bumps broke out across his arms and his
stomach churned. He placed the stick carefully on the ground with a
shaking hand, and lifted his T- shirt up to wrap it tightly around
the base of his neck. He held the helmet out, swallowed, then
squashed it down onto his head. The interior stank of sweat and
motor oil.

Scratches in the visor blurred
his vision, and the thick crack ran diagonally across his line of
sight—but he could see enough to keep himself orientated. He traced
his fingers along the joints of the helmet, searching for exposed
sections of skin around his neck, until he convinced himself that
he was as ready as he could be.

He crouched and searched amongst
the rails. Eventually he found what he was looking for—a small
green lighter wedged beside a battered railway sleeper, the same
lighter that Jules had dropped minutes earlier. He stood at the
tunnel entrance, breathing shallowly and already sweating profusely
inside the clothing—then flicked the lighter to life and brought it
to the top of the stick.

The closest of the dried palm
fronds flickered into flame, and it spread quickly across the top
of the stick, creating a burning, crackling fire that billowed
smoke in a plume above his head.

The rank breeze upped another
notch and blew into his face, howling from somewhere deep within
the hill. Embers flew from his makeshift torch and lodged into his
clothing. Dig flicked them away, then tucked both hands into the
arms of his overalls and walked into the darkness.

As the walls closed in around him
the torch glowed orange with a new intensity, fuelled by the
headwind,
throwing
flames and smoke back
towards him. He held the torch out in front, trying to direct the
glowing cinders away from his head.

Shadows danced across the walls
and his eyes darted left and right, trying to make sense of the
shapes through the tint of the scratched visor. But he kept walking
forward, down the centre of the tracks, into the heart of the
mountain.

As he turned the first bend, the
unsettling hum increased, and a shiver tracked down between his
shoulder blades. The first hornets appeared in the air, orbiting
frantic circles around the torch. One landed in the centre of his
visor, and he flinched. From this angle he could see its gruesome
body up close—a writhing hairy mass of gold and black stripes with
stinger prodding into the lens.

Dig breathed shallowly and his
heart raced. His breath spread semicircles of moisture across his
visor, blocking his vision. He waved his makeshift torch at his
face and the hornet disappeared into the smoke, only to be replaced
by three more crawling across the lens.