Jungle of Bones by Ben Mikaelsen

Author:Ben Mikaelsen [Mikaelsen, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

All morning they had been walking out in the hot sun. By midday, the swamp felt like a steam bath. Dylan’s clothes dripped with sweat and clung to his body as if he had been swimming. Allen kept pointing out poisonous plants or insects. Soon, Dylan was afraid of what he could touch and not touch, where he should step and not step.

In some places the trail passed through swampy meadows of tall kunai grass with sharp edges that cut at their arms like little knives. Dylan’s boots grew soggy and filled with ooze. With each step, his feet squished. He wished he had taken Uncle Todd’s suggestion of coating the boots with oil. Sitting in a cozy dry condo in Oregon, he never really thought he would end up in this weird place. Now, Dylan wanted to stop and dry his feet. “How much farther are we going today?” he complained.

“We have another four hours of hiking to a small village called Balo, where we’ll stay tonight,” Uncle Todd said. “From there we begin asking locals if they know of any wrecks.”

Dylan was thankful when the trail finally angled into the jungle. The intense sun disappeared, but the foliage became dense and thick. This wasn’t a jungle where Tarzan could swing from tree to tree. If you left the trail some places, you couldn’t crawl on your hands and knees. It was a solid wall of vegetation from the ground up. Ferns and palms grew everywhere in the moist, steamy air. The only way to leave the trail here was with a machete. Decaying moss and rotting foliage left the air ripe and pungent.

Sago palms had thorns that ripped at Dylan’s arms, but he had to walk with his arms out in front to protect his face from the twisted vines. They curved everywhere, like the intestines of some huge monster that had swallowed him. Now other new things appeared: frogs as big as his boot, little swift birds that darted here and there catching insects, and plenty of slithering salamanders, lizards, and snakes.

“Be careful,” Allen warned. “The more colorful a critter is, the better chance that it’s poisonous.”

“Look!” Quentin exclaimed, pointing to where a huge fifteen-foot python lay stretched across a fallen log.

“We ain’t in Kansas no more, Toto,” Dylan mumbled. That had been his father’s favorite saying.

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