The Devil’s Breath by David Gilman

Author:David Gilman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2007-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Max was totally unprepared for the sudden onslaught when it came.

They had travelled all that day, rested through the night and set off again before dawn. !Koga kept checking the ground, and every few hours he told Max that the vehicle tracks definitely went towards the mountains. They reached the furthermost edge of the rising ground while it was still light. A dry river bed gave them easy access to the foothills. Max could see the sparse forest of trees in the distance but !Koga kept warning him about the cloud that suffocated the mountain top. It was now so black, it growled like a bear and the first few stinging raindrops raked them. A bitterly cold storm suddenly roared down the mountainside, as if angered by their presence. The wind hit them first, buffeting them so hard they almost fell, then a line of water, not deep enough even to cover their ankles, trickled towards them across the breadth of the river bed.

“Let’s make for those rocks, in case this is a flash flood,” Max yelled, because now the wind howled venomously. Splashing through the shallow water, Max saw exactly where they should head for – the boulder was a slab of rock that stuck out like a massive diving board above the river. Within a couple of minutes they were clambering on to its broad back. Max looked behind him; where he had stood moments earlier, the water was now knee deep. Before he clambered any higher it was waist deep, and it surged around the bend, hitting the far bank, where boulders pushed it back directly towards him and !Koga. Max could see immediately what was going to happen. The water was already higher than a man, and the surge at the bend gave it a turbulent power that formed a wall of water which would strike their side of the bank, engulf the flat-bedded boulder and sweep them off.

He yelled at !Koga to run for it, but he was downwind and the boy could not hear him. !Koga was already trying to stand on the boulder, his knees bent, a hand touching the rock face for support. The water roared and, combined with the increasing velocity of the wind, it became a maelstrom of swirling rain, competing with the wind and the river as to which would destroy them first.

Max surged up the rock face, desperation fuelling his legs. He reached !Koga in time to see what was happening in the gully that channelled the water down from the mountain, above the rock they stood on. The ever-increasing volume of water churned mud and boulders in a helter-skelter ride. The bottleneck at the foot of the mountain, where it swirled around the corner to the opposite bank, increased its own resistance. As the water buffeted the bank below them, the water from that gully would take the line of least resistance. It would smash mercilessly across where they stood.

Max grabbed !Koga’s arm and pulled him, but the boy resisted.

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