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She swung the paddle in an arc for the five-millionth time to plough it into the sluggish river. Luke’s paddle dug in ahead of hers. But then he held it in the water, swinging the boat across the current towards the opposite bank.
‘What are you doing?’ Halle said, alarmed. Maybe they wouldn’t capsize, but after five hours, she didn’t want to test the theory.
‘See those peaks over there?’
She nodded, noticing the frothing whitecaps chopping up the glassy surface of the water. ‘What about them?’
‘It’s a faster current. If we get into it, we can relax for a bit and just steer.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ she shouted above the rumble of the approaching rapids as he navigated towards the rocky outcrops. The far bank looked a lot less benign, made up of sheer slabs of granite that rose out of the water in a jagged wall of death.
‘Wait!’ she yelled as the kayak got sucked into the stream and jolted over the swell. The scrape of rock on the hull jarred her feet.
‘Too late.’ Luke’s cry got lost in her shriek and the rush of water as she noticed the escarpment ahead. The fork in the river Chad had told them to look out for. The calm sedentary stream they had been in before veered to the right of the island.
Luke shouldered his paddle to steer the boat to the left of the island. The kayak shot forward, fully engaged in the surging waves slapping at the boat.
He whooped as they gathered speed. And Halle yelped, the shot of terror accompanied by the shimmer of exhilaration.
Water sprayed her sun-stung cheeks and lapped into the cockpit, drenching her shorts. Her cap flipped backwards off her head. Wind lifted the ponytail that had stuck to her neck with sweat, shooting tingles of excitement into her stomach.
Terrific, I’m going to die.
Even so, her next shriek sounded suspiciously like a whoop.
They barrelled down the river together whooping and shouting and going at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. She followed Luke’s lead, the muscles of her upper arms screaming as she clung to her paddle and dunked it in the water to counteract the flow and keep the boat on course. Her life vest bumped her chin, but the smile split her face. All the pain, the stress, the strain, even the boredom sped away, until all that was left was an intoxicating rush of adrenaline …
The next delighted whoop cut off in her throat, though, as she spotted the fallen tree, its gnarled trunk hanging over the bank, its branches spearing up through the fast-moving water. Ready to capture and devour them in its clutches.
‘Luke, watch out.’
‘Fuuuck!’ His shout reached her ears just before an angry crunch, as the boat slammed into the thicket of grasping wooden fingers and spun round on its tip.
Suddenly, they were racing down the river at a hundred miles an hour, backwards.
Her next shriek sounded nothing like a whoop.
Another crunch as the kayak caught fast in the branches of another felled tree. Water flowed over the bow. Luke swore copiously in front of her. And Halle’s life flashed before her in terrifying Technicolor as the unflippable kayak threatened to flip over and drown them both.
‘Right,’ Luke shouted over his shoulder. ‘Paddle on the right.’
She did as he ordered, but her paddle lifted out of the water. Rocks smashed against the bow as they shot free, then lurched into the bank. Dipping branches scratched at her face, tangled in her hair, wrenching it out at the roots. Luke ducked to escape losing an eye. The boat listed and began to tilt, surging sideways against the current. Luke dumped the paddle and grabbed an overhanging branch to yank himself out of the cockpit.
‘Where are you going?’ Was he planning to jump? And leave her to die on the boat alone? ‘You can’t leave me here!’
He didn’t reply, but he kicked the bow hard, spinning the kayak round into the right direction, then dropped down, straddling the hull behind her. Suddenly, his arms banded around her waist, the kayak’s bow lifted out of the water and she had visions of them tipping over backwards. But the weight of their gear in the front compartment counterbalanced Luke’s weight on the hull and they skimmed along. Sinking low at the back, but not going over.
Whisking the paddle out of her numbed fingers, his knees digging into her sides and his feet dragging in the water, he steered them out of the thicket of roots and branches, and back into the main current.
‘Climb up front,’ he shouted.
She scrambled out of her cockpit and crawled to land knees first in the seat Luke had vacated. Throwing herself into a crouch, she bumped her chin with a loud thud, which zinged into her temples, then flattened herself on the hull, using her hands to paddle.
‘There it is. Head to your right,’ came Luke’s shout.
She lifted her head with an effort to see a clearing on the far bank, across what looked like about ten miles of fast-flowing river.
After five hours of work, they were going to miss the bloody campsite entirely if they didn’t get across the cu
