Monkey Mountain Read online

  It wasn’t final. If Mr Griffin had ordered me one more time to leave him, I might have obeyed. I was only fourteen – too young to die. Mr Griffin was old. In a few years he’d probably be dead anyway.

  But he’d helped me out of the crater; he’d saved my life. Now it was my turn to save his.

  If I could.

  ‘Let’s get a move on,’ I said, dragging the slow, stumbling, half-blind teacher down the steep, windy track from the volcano’s summit. ‘We’ve got a bus to catch!’

  But would it wait for us? The car park was halfway down the mountain, right in the danger zone. As soon as the others reached it, the driver would take off. He wouldn’t risk everyone’s lives waiting for one boy and one teacher, last seen on the lip of the volcano moments before it erupted. He’d presume we were dead.

  And he’ll probably be right, said a little voice in my head.

  Our chances of survival weren’t good. Even though we’d descended several hundred metres from the summit, the jungle offered little protection from the awesome power of the volcano. Marble-sized bits of lava rained down through the trees like flaming hailstones. They looked hot enough to burn a hole in your skull. A direct hit and we’d be dead.

  Something big crashed through the jungle canopy high overhead.

  ‘Look out!’ I yelled, shoving Mr Griffin to the side of the track.

  But all that came down was a shower of leaves.

  There were more crashes. Vines jiggled. Branches whipped back and forth. Looking up, I glimpsed a large ginger-brown monkey, twice the size of a macaque, flying through the treetops away from the eruption. Three more followed – big, vaguely human shapes with long pale arms and even longer white tails. They swung through the branches at breakneck speed. I wished we could travel even half that fast. Mr Griffin was really slow.

  We’d come to a section of track I remembered from the way up. It was so steep that stairs had been hacked into the jungle floor. They were giants’ stairs – some were nearly a metre tall. Going up had been hard, but getting Mr Griffin down them was harder. Without his glasses, he was nearly blind. I had to warn him how high each step was, otherwise he’d stack it.

  And I had to shout to make myself heard – the eruption seemed to be growing louder.

  There was another sound, too – a crackling, hissing sound, like eggs frying, except much louder.

  Despite my best efforts, Mr Griffin fell three times on the giants’ stairs. The third time, he landed heavily. When I helped him up, Mr Griffin pulled a face and clutched his left shoulder.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  He nodded, but I could see he was lying. I saw something else, too – Stephanie’s backpack hung crookedly across Mr Griffin’s shoulders. I hadn’t noticed it until now – too much had been going on.

  ‘Let me carry that,’ I said, helping him take it off.

  Poor Mr Griffin, he could hardly lift his hurt left arm. But now wasn’t the time for first aid.

  A big piece of lava smashed into the crown of a nearby palm tree and the fronds exploded into flame.

  ‘Lead on, McDuff!’ Mr Griffin said through clenched teeth.

  There were two more stairs, then the track levelled off. I half-led, half-dragged Mr Griffin through the hot, smoky jungle. He stumbled blindly along behind me, puffing and gasping. Sweat dribbled into our eyes, leaves slapped our faces. I tripped on an exposed root and went sprawling. Mr Griffin landed on top of me. He grunted in pain as I rolled him off me. I jumped up, hauling him roughly to his feet. Then we were running again. Running for our lives. Lava hailstones fizzed to earth all around us. Fires were breaking out everywhere.

  And the frying-egg sound grew steadily louder. It seemed to be following us down the mountain.

  We came to a fork in the track. A smaller track branched off to our right. There was a sign written in English:

  CROCODILE BEACH 600 m

  I remembered seeing it on the way up – how could you forget a name like that? We’d passed it right at the start of our walk, just after we left the bus.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ I said, dragging Mr Griffin forward.

  There was just one corner to go, then a rickety wooden suspension bridge that crossed a small river. The car park was on the other side.

  Would the bus still be there?

  The sizzling sound grew really loud as we approached the corner. Now it seemed to come from everywhere – not just from behind us, but from in front of us, as well. And I smelt fireworks again. The pungent odour burned my nostrils. There was so much smoke we had to slow to a shuffle. But the smoke wasn’t thick enough to hide what lay ahead.

  The bridge was on fire!

  And so was the river!

  Finally, I saw what was making the frying-egg sound. The river water had been replaced by a hissing, spluttering flow of molten lava. At over one thousand degrees Celsius, it was the world’s hottest deep-fryer. The heat was unbelievable. I could feel it giving me a volcanic sunburn.

  No way were Mr Griffin and I going to get across that.

  I couldn’t see the car park – there was too much smoke – but I knew the bus would be gone. The others must have crossed the bridge before the river turned to lava. They must have reached the bus safely and were probably halfway back down the peninsula now, driving flat-out to escape the erupting volcano.

  Mr Griffin and I weren’t so lucky. We were trapped on the wrong side of the lava flow. And there was more lava behind us. I could hear it hissing and crackling as it flowed down the mountain towards us. Looking back through the smoke, I saw a wall of flames rising forty or fifty metres above the burning jungle as the advancing lava turning everything in its path to ashes.

  And Mr Griffin and I were next.

  4

  HEART ATTACK

  I didn’t know what to do. It was hard to think clearly. Mr Griffin wasn’t any help. He just stood there breathing heavily and staring into the smoke with watery, unfocused eyes.

  I guess we were both in shock.

  Suddenly, there was movement in the smoke. A gang of macaques came charging around the corner. They raced down the track towards us. There were about fifteen of them. One had a small black-furred baby clinging to its belly. The monkeys shot past us on both sides. The leader shrieked in alarm when it saw the burning bridge. It skidded to a halt. The others stopped, too. All except a young monkey that kept going. It got halfway to the river of lava, then screamed and sat down in the middle of the track, covering its head to protect itself from the terrible heat. An adult rushed forward, keeping low to the ground and making a chittering noise. Taking the young one by the hand, the adult monkey led it back to the rest of the troupe. All the animals milled around, looking scared and confused. They completely ignored Mr Griffin and me. Then the leader let out a shrill call and came rushing back past us. The other macaques followed. Clucking and shrieking, they disappeared back around the corner.

  ‘Let’s follow them,’ I said.

  By the time Mr Griffin and I reached the corner, the macaques had disappeared. But I could hear their excited shrieks in the distance. They’d taken the side track to Crocodile Beach. Clever monkeys, I thought. Crocodile Beach, here we come!

  The sign said it was 600 metres to the beach. That didn’t sound far. We’d be there in a jiffy.

  I was wrong. The track was steep. And very slippery. We had to go slowly. I didn’t want Mr Griffin to take another tumble. He clutched his sore shoulder and shuffled along like a zombie. We came to another series of knee-high stairs carved out of tree roots and mud as the path zigzagged down between spiky stemmed palms and enormous, vine-entangled trees. Every step of the way, I could hear the rumble of the volcano above us, and the spit and hiss of lava, and the roar of flames. It was hard not to panic and leave Mr Griffin behind.

  Those 600 metres seemed more like six kilometres. But we got there in the end. It was great to come out of the jungle and be greeted by the wide brownish-green expanse of the South China Sea.


  That wasn’t the only thing we saw.

  There were animals all along the beach – deer, wild pigs, porcupines, otters, squirrels, a little spotted cat like a miniature leopard, and at least three kinds of monkey. Like us, all the animals were trying to escape from the erupting volcano. But this was the end of the road. We were on a small headland jutting out into the sea at the foot of the mountain. The sea stretched all the way to the horizon. There was nowhere to go except into the water below us.

  The animals scattered as Mr Griffin and I stumbled down the beach. Both of us were boiling hot. So hot we didn’t even bother taking our shoes off before we ploughed into the water. We waded out until the small waves lapped around our waists.

  The sea was a strange colour – reddish brown – but at least it was cool. Mr Griffin lay down fully clothed and floated on his back. I stayed on my feet – partly because I was wearing Stephanie’s backpack, and partly to keep a look-out for crocodiles. They wouldn’t name a place Crocodile Beach for no reason.

  That explained why none of the animals – not even the otters – had come down to cool themselves in the water, I thought.

  Wrong again. It wasn’t crocodiles keeping the animals out of the sea. Twenty metres away, a sleek triangular fin rose above the surface and came knifing through the water towards me.

  ‘Shark!’ I yelled.

  I could have yelled ‘Sharks!’ – there were more than one – but saying it without the extra ‘s’ was quicker. And just as effective. Mr Griffin bounced to his feet like someone half his age and ploughed towards shore. He didn’t even check to see where the danger was coming from.

  It came from several directions.

  The sharks weren’t big – somewhere between one and one-and-a-half metres long – but there were lots of them. And because the water was cloudy, they seemed to have come out of nowhere.

  We’d walked into an ambush.

  I whipped off Stephanie’s backpack and swung it at the nearest shark. It hit the water with a loud thwack, just above the shark’s head. The fish rolled onto its side and disappeared in a boil of sandy water. I felt its tail brush past my leg. Another shark came at me from the other side. I swung the backpack wildy – thwack! – sending it zigzagging away. More sharks were closing in. But they were wary now, nervous of the swinging backpack. They would come darting towards me, then turn at the last moment and go shooting away. I backed towards the beach, hitting the surface again and again. The water was getting shallow. It was clouded with churned-up sand. I heard Mr Griffin splashing ashore. A shark made a rush at me. This one didn’t veer off like the others – it kept coming. All I could see was a fin slicing through the murky water. I aimed a blind kick where I estimated its head was, and got the shark on the point of its nose. It was a lucky shot – a few centimetres lower, and my foot would have gone into its mouth. I don’t know if I hurt the shark, but I gave it a fright. It leapt completely out of the water like a trout on a hook. But as it came down, its open mouth brushed against my leg, leaving two jagged red lines down my shin. The blood turned reddish brown in the water.

  ‘There’s one behind you!’ yelled Mr Griffin.

  I spun around. Another shark had circled behind me on an incoming wave. But it must have become disoriented in the cloudy water. When the wave retreated back into the sea, the shark was left stranded, flopping helplessly on the wet sand. Something was caught in its teeth – it looked like a pink and brown rag.

  I jumped over the stranded shark and raced up the beach to safety. But not before I’d had a clear view of what was in its mouth. It wasn’t a rag; it was a strip of furry skin.

  No wonder the rest of the animals were keeping away from the sea. The first ones to come out of the jungle must have gone straight into the water like Mr Griffin and me, only to be taken by sharks. It was blood that gave the water its strange reddish-brown tinge. And blood that had brought even more sharks to feast on anything foolish enough to go into the water.

  Mr Griffin and I were lucky to be alive.

  I ran up the sand to where Mr Griffin had sat down. He was clutching his left shoulder – the one he’d hurt when he fell down the giants’ stairs.

  ‘Sam,’ he said softly. ‘I think I’m having a heart attack.’

  5

  PANIC

  I tried not to panic. Heart attacks were bad. Didn’t you die from them?

  ‘Should I go for help?’ I gasped.

  Mr Griffin – who was actually having the heart attack – was calmer than me. ‘I think we’ll have to manage on our own,’ he said.

  I felt stupid. How could I go for help? We were trapped by the volcano. Then I had an idea. In a special pouch clipped to my belt was the EpiPen I always carried with me in case of bee or wasp stings. I showed it to Mr Griffin.

  ‘Is this any good for a heart attack?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. It might even make it worse.’

  There was an extra loud rumble and the ground shook. I looked up the mountain. A wall of flames rolled towards us like a tsunami of fire. The flames would stop at the jungle’s edge, but the lava would keep coming. We had to get out of there.

  ‘Can you walk?’ I asked.

  Mr Griffin squinted his half-blind eyes at the flames. ‘I’ll have to,’ he said. ‘Could you help me up?’

  I had to help him walk, too. We hobbled slowly along the beach, parallel to the approaching fire front. We seemed to have outrun the hail of falling lava, but escaping the flowing lava was another story. We could hear it bubbling and hissing as it burned its way through the jungle. An onshore breeze had sprung up, driving the smoke back up the mountain. If it had been an ordinary bush fire, the breeze would have slowed the flames – it might even have stopped them – but not even a force-ten gale could affect a lava flow. In five minutes maximum, a tide of molten lava would come rolling down to the sea.

  Mr Griffin and I would be burnt to a crisp.

  We had to get off the beach. It curved out to a rocky point that ended with a cliff. There might be a cave where Mr Griffin and I could take cover.

  All the animals seemed to have the same idea. We followed their tracks in the sand. There were hoof prints, paw prints, monkey hand prints – it looked like an entire zoo had passed this way.

  When Mr Griffin and I finally hobbled into the shadow of the tall cliff at the end of the point, another beach came into view. It was almost identical to the one behind us, except that halfway along it was split by a river – a fiery red river of molten lava that poured down across the sand and flowed, sizzling and steaming, into the sea.

  We were trapped.

  So were all the animals, birds and reptiles that had got to the point before us. Everywhere I looked, frightened eyes looked back at me.

  Actually, not all of them were frightened.

  ‘Look out!’ I yelped, tugging Mr Griffin sideways.

  He’d nearly stepped on a snake. It was about a metre long, bright green, with a wide triangular head like a death adder. And it looked ready to strike.

  Mr Griffin let out a gasp. His short-range vision was obviously better than his long-range vision.

  ‘It’s a pit viper,’ he said. ‘They’re the most dangerous snakes in Borneo.’

  As we backed away from the hissing pit viper, there was a loud grunt behind us. We wheeled around. An enormous, hairy-faced wild boar lurked beneath the overhang of a sandstone boulder. It shook its big ugly head, like a bull that’s about to charge, and ground its tusks together.

  ‘Take it easy, pig,’ I said, dragging Mr Griffin away.

  The wild boar didn’t follow us, but something else did. I’d noticed a group of macaques on a ledge halfway up the cliff. One came scampering down the rock face like a giant hairy spider. It stopped just in front of us, sat down on the sand and locked its eyes with mine.

  ‘Go away!’ I growled, and kicked sand at it.

  The macaque retreated to the base of the cliff, then sat down again, still watching me.
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  Stupid monkey, I thought. Didn’t it have better things to do than bother humans? A volcano was erupting. If it and its companions didn’t find somewhere to shelter from the approaching lava flow, they were all going to die.

  Just like Mr Griffin and me.

  A little way along from where the macaque was sitting, an ancient rock fall had formed a shallow cave at the base of the cliff. It wasn’t much of a shelter, but it was better than nothing. A tiny furry creature with big eyes was already in there. It looked a bit like a miniature possum, except its head resembled a monkey’s and it had no tail. It scuttled to one side as I made Mr Griffin comfortable on a low rock ledge at the back. He didn’t look good. His skin was the same colour as the pitted sandstone above our heads – grey – and his eyes were glazed and unfocused.

  ‘How are you feeling, Mr Griffin?’

  ‘I’d kill for a drink,’ he murmured.

  Something clicked in my brain. I was wearing Stephanie’s backpack. It was quite heavy. On a sudden hunch, I slipped it off my shoulders and opened the zip. Yay, Steph! There was a pink plastic water bottle inside.

  Unscrewing the lid, I lifted the bottle to Mr Griffin’s lips.

  That’s when the macaque made its move. I didn’t see or hear it coming. Before I had time to react, a small black hand reached past my elbow and snatched the bottle out of my grasp.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled, backing out of the hollow as fast as I could.

  But I was way too slow. By the time I got to my feet, the monkey was twenty metres away, galloping down the beach on two legs and one arm, drinking from the bottle as it ran.

  I knew I had no chance of catching it – and even if I did, we couldn’t drink the water now – but I was so mad I went charging after the fleeing monkey.

  It would have been funny if it had been on Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, but it wasn’t funny in real life. We were trapped at the base of an erupting volcano, Mr Griffin had had a heart attack, and now a macaque had stolen the last of our water. It was totally unfunny.

  If I caught up with that monkey, look out!