“Team Overlook to base, Team Overlook to base.  We have eyeballs on target.  We can see the children on a highpoint at coordinates …” The crackling voice over the radio headset rattled off a six figure number that Dusty and Pincher checked against their own satellite map.  It seemed that the sniper team on the west of Solitude were doing more than just picking their noses and scratching their a…

“Base to Delta Team, Base to Delta Team, did you get that sitrep?”  Winthrop-Smythe’s voice queried querulously over the same channel.

“Delta Team to Base, Delta Team to Base.  Sitrep received, moving in on those coordinates now,” Pincher confirmed. 

“Acknowledged.  Report in when you have your objective in sight.  Base out,”  said Winthrop-Smythe.  He was not happy.  Reports with good news had been pretty much absent through the hot, sticky day and his mood had not been improved by J J Jones blathering on about mint condition wartime equipment.  They were not here to set up a museum for goodness sake.  He could only wonder what Savanrolova was doing and where she was.  The fact that she wasn’t with him was the only highpoint of the day.  He just hoped that those two clowns Pincher and Dusty, would have the children in the bag before too long.  He needed to reduce the length of his things to do list.

“We must be pretty close,” Pincher said to Dusty as he checked his map against his satnav.  “It looks like they’re only just up ahead.”

They shouldered their way through the undergrowth, leaves dragging against their damp clothes, their boots holding firm in the glutinous mud that slathered the steep slopes of the jungle.  It seemed like it took only a couple of steps for them to arrive at the foot of a rocky outcrop, suddenly clawing free from of the gloom and thick plant life.

It was as they paused here, breathing heavily, encumbered as they were with their equipment that a trickle of pebbles, dislodged by Carmen’s original castaway, rained down upon them, bouncing off the cliff into the mud.

Pincher grinned at Dusty and whispered, “Looks like we’re here.” 

Charlie scrabbled the contents back into the survival kit.  “We have to move now!” he insisted.  “They could have seen us.  There might be people here any minute!”

They dashed off the crag back into the forest, back the way they came through the confused maze of brush that they had forced their way through to the promontory in the first place.  Their clothes, hair and skin caught on thorns and snags and as they ran unheeding through the mass of low branches and whippy saplings, intertwined with coils of creeper and vine.  Panting, panicking, the peace of their brief pause left far behind, they tried to put as much distance between them and the crag in as short a time as possible.

They burst from the bush into an area of bigger trees and palms.  Uphill from them, the volcano rose, its great cone gaining in increasing steepness, shrouded by the thick greenery of the jungle.  Downhill, the jungle fell away, thick, sticky and steamy.  Unsure of which way to go, the children dithered. 

From behind them, way back in the brush, harsh voices suddenly barked out commands, “Freeze!  Don’t try to get away, we’ve got you surrounded!  Get on the ground and put your hands behind your heads!”

Charlie and Carmen looked at each other in despair.  Despite all their best efforts, the ‘TV people’ had caught up with them.   Charlie could see Carmen’s shoulders sag and tears flooded into her eyes. 

He had to blink back his own.  In frustration, he threw the survival kit onto the ground and kicked at a stick that lay in the glutinous mud.

“Never mind, Charlie,” Carmen whispered softly, her voice breaking with distress, “We tried our best.  What did we expect really? After all, we’re just kids”

“Yeah, Carmen,” he replied, bitter with resentment, hating her for the words she’d said that he knew were all too true, “It’s just our best wasn’t good enough!”

They went to their knees on the wet earth and then lay down with their hands on their heads, facing the brush thicket that they had only just escaped from.  It occurred to Charlie that as soon as they were prone, they were almost invisible, covered in mud and filth as they were.

“Keep down!”  the voice barked.  It sounded a bit like Pincher Martin.  His voice was a harsh contrast to the cheerful man who had entertained them with stories about filming wildlife a couple of days ago.  Come to think of it, he hadn’t actually mentioned filming, he’d actually talked about shooting wildlife, Charlie thought morosely.

Carmen whimpered and reached out to hold his hand.  Her grip quivered with tension in his fingers.  He turned his face in the mud and looked at her.  She was looking at him with wide, staring eyes.  He could only see his own reflected fear.  Guilt for his earlier anger seeped into him with twisting fingers that clawed at his stomach.  He gave Carmen a sickly grin in an attempt to reassure her but the effect was negligible judging by her response.

“Charlie, what are you doing down there in the mud?” a familiar voice seemed to say in his head.  Charlie twisted around to see who was speaking just as Trev arrived.  Sat under a palm, looking worse than before – he was more gaunt and an awful lot more pale - Trev simply materialised from nowhere.  It was almost as if his form bled in to the air like liquid smoke.  “Why are you grovelling around in the mud?  Those two pratts will be here in a minute and if you hang around they’re gonna find you!”

“Trev!”  Charlie almost shouted. At the last moment he realised what he was about to do and let his friends name out as a kind of strangulated cough.

“Charlie?”  Carmen asked, puzzled.

“It’s Trev!  My friend Trev!”  Charlie hissed back.  “He’s here!”

“Trev?  Your friend, Trev?  Your dead friend, Trev?”  Carmen asked again.

“Yes, it’s Trev!  It’s not the flipping Queen!”  said Trev sarcastically, “Can you ask her to stop saying my name in case she wears it out!”

“Yes, it’s Trev!”  said Charlie. “Can’t you see him?  Over there, under that tree?”  He pointed in Trev’s general direction.

“No, I can’t see him and I don’t think it’s funny that you’re mucking about like this now!”  Carmen whispered furiously.  Her eyes blazed with fire behind her mask of dirt, sweat and tears.

“No, she can’t see me, Charlie.  She just thinks you’re bonkers,” said Trev.  “Come to think of it she probably has a point there.”

“We’re kind of busy right now, Trev,” Charlie said quietly with a flippancy that he certainly did not feel.  A drum began to pound behind his eyes and he felt sick to his stomach.   “In case you hadn’t noticed we’re about to be captured by a couple of thugs.”

“Sorreee!  I hadn’t realised!  What am I thinking of?  How thoughtless of me!  Well, I really shouldn’t bother you!”  Trev continued, behaving somewhat like a vicar’s wife at a garden fete.  “I mustn’t be forgetting my manners now that I’m dead!”

Charlie slumped into the mud, feeling the cool slime coat his forehead, soothing him.  “It’s nice to see you, Trev, but having a long conversation right now is probably not going to happen.”  That mud really was soothing.  He could feel the pulse beating in his temple ebbing away and the fear in the pit of his stomach, that knotted it into a tight ball, slowly unravelled.  A feeling of peace trickled into him.  Why not just give up?  At least I won’t have to climb up this volcano, in this sauna of a jungle anymore, he thought, closing his eyes.

“Oh well then, if that’s how it is then you wouldn’t be interested in the lovely hiding place I have for you, not ten paces from where you are now?”  Trev said, grinning sickly, leaning back against the palm and folding his arms with forced nonchalance.

“Charlie?”  Carmen asked carefully.  “Are you all right?”

His eyes snapped open.  Twisting in the mud like a snake he looked at Trev, who pointed at a stand of weird looking tress whose trunks were almost completely enclosed in cages of pendulous prop roots.  Thick clusters of stiff spiked leaves cast the area beneath the standing roots into a night-dark shade. 

“Just squeeze in there and you’ll find something totally brilliant!”  Trev said eagerly.  “Don’t worry about those two morons.  They don’t actually know you’re here.”  He paused for a moment, and straightened up, as if looking far way into the distance.  “They still think you’re on the top of those rocks.  They’re just giving a bit of the old yada, yada, yada!” He mimed the two mercenaries talking with both of his hands held up like a crab.  “You better hurry though!  I don’t think your absence from where they think you are is going to stop ‘em for long!”

Charlie leaped up from the wet earth as if electrified.  He crouched, trying to keep as low as possible.  He bent low over Carmen and brought his mouth close to her ear. “Carmen, they don’t know we’re here.  Get up and come with me!”  His tone brooked now delay.

Somehow Carmen understood.  Without complaint, or questioning him on how he could possibly know that they had not been spotted, she clambered up onto her knees too, the mud squelching wetly beneath her.

“We’re going in there!” He pointed at the trees.

“In the pandanus?” she asked.  Charlie looked at her quizzically. “The trees.”

They both rushed over.  In only a matter of moments they found themselves in front of the pandanus trees, roots delving down from halfway up the trunk, like many, wizened, corpse-white fingers.  The roots grew so thickly there was almost no room for the children to squeeze into them but that problem soon resolved itself because with a muffled cry, Charlie fell into darkness only a step or two within the woody cage. 

“Charlie!”  Carmen called, horrified at the sudden disappearance of the boy.

“It’s all right Carmen, I just tripped,” Charlie answered slowly, a little shocked by his sudden fall.  “Just be careful there’s a bit of a drop…”

Carmen had heard rustling in the brush that separated the children from the ‘TV men’.  She decided that speed was of the essence rather than caution and she forced her way into the darkness beneath the roots frantically.  She fell into space and thumped down onto Charlie.

“Oof!”  he gurgled.  “Gerroff me!”  He pushed her off in the pitch black and looked up the patch of light, slatted with the silhouettes of the pandanus roots.  Scrambling up, he found that he appeared to be within a space beneath the tree that allowed him to look out at ground level.  He could see the appalling mess of the disturbed ground in front of him.  Even he - a city boy - would have been able to follow his and Carmen’s tracks to their hiding place!

Trev’s face suddenly popped into view beyond the roots.  Up close Charlie could see how ill he looked.  Fevered eyes stared back at him from the deep black circles that surrounded them and veins stood out as dark threads across his pale, stiff skin.  In fact it was almost as if there was no flesh on his face, save the skin itself.  He grinned again, “I know what you’re thinking!”  He must have seen the look on Charlie’s face because he added, “No, I really do!  I’ll deal with your tracks.” 

Puzzled by Trev’s last statement, he watched, fascinated as Trev smoothed away sign of his and Carmen’s presence.  It was as if the ground simply flowed back into an undisturbed state, leaves fluttering into place as if caught by some passing zephyr.  Wherever Trev walked, so the slope before the pandanus tree returned to an untouched appearance.  The dead boy stopped and looked over at Charlie’s hiding place, “You know, that is a pretty neat trick!”  He went back to his former place under the palm and sat down.

Carmen clambered up beside Charlie, muttering a mild curse when she banged her head on one of the roots. “What?”  she began, just as Charlie hushed her to be quiet and pointed at the thicket of brush.

From the exact place the children had emerged from the shrubs, two men glided silently like ghosts, barely disturbing the foliage around them.  Both wore camouflaged uniforms and carried ugly, black rifles that were clutched across their chests ready to use.  Their faces were covered in streaks of black and green that made Charlie think that they had been to some school’s face painting workshop for toddlers.  He would have sniggered had he not been holding his breath, afraid that even the sound of breathing would alert the men to their presence.  They spread across the open space in front of the pandanus trees, stepping carefully and inspecting the ground beneath them with their fingers, gently moving leaves out of the way to uncover the earth beneath.

As the men paused and looked around, Charlie recognised them.  So it was Pincher who shouted.   Is that Dusty?

Eventually one of the men shrugged, the one that Charlie thought was Dusty.  “It can’t be helped, Pincher, you’ll have to call it in.  We’ve lost them,” he said, his voice curiously gentle in the quiet of the forest.

Charlie’s thoughts were a raging storm of doubt and uncertainty.  His dead friend, Trev, had returned.  He hadn’t imagined it, regardless of what Carmen could see.  There he was, as casual as you like, sitting beneath the shade of the canopy, staring at the two soldiers, making faces at them and he had just saved Carmen and himself from capture.  He could not explain it any other way.  Yet he knew it was impossible.  Dead people did not come back for cosy chats, or for timely rescues in pursuits.  Why could he see Trev?  Why couldn’t anyone else?  Why was Trev here?  What was going on?

Very slowly, so as not to draw attention with any sudden movement, he turned his head to face Carmen.  Now his eyes were accustomed to the darkness beneath the tree he could make out the faint shape of Carmen’s face.  She too was staring out at the scene before her, framed as it was by the tree roots.   Her eyes were wide and unblinking.  She was shivering.

“Delta Team to Base, Delta Team to base.  Targets not secured.  Repeat, targets not secured.  Continuing pursuit.  Out!”  Pincher’s voice interrupted the silence harshly.  “I am not listening to that posh twerp tear me off a strip for losing them,” he justified to Dusty as he secured his headset, obviously unwilling to continue radio communications.

“Well, they’re not here, Pincher.  You can see that,”  Dusty said as he continued to scan the forest and slopes around them.

“How could they have got away? I just don’t understand it.  We had them!”

“Yeah, but maybe you shouldn’t have let your mouth run away with you before we had ‘em in our sights!”  Dusty argued.  “You just spooked ‘em!”

“Maybe, but we moved faster than them.  They should still be here.  We’ve followed their tracks all day and now they’ve just disappeared.  It’s like they’ve flown away.”  Angrily, he pointed back into the brush, “It’s like a herd of elephants stampeded through there.  A blind man could follow that trail.  Where is it now?”

Dusty shrugged, unwilling to contribute any suggestion of his own.  He was damn sick of Pincher Martin.  He’d spent all day in his unpleasant company and he was pretty miserable about the prospect of continuing to do so.  The pursuit had to continue.  They’d have to start the long and laborious process of casting about in a circle to try and find any new sign of the children.  The only positive about that was that he would at least have a short break from Pincher’s unrelenting stream of misanthropy and invective.

Something tugged at him though.  He found his attention was drawn to two spots: a mossy boulder beneath a nearby palm, and the shaded roots of a stand of pandanus.  Whilst Pincher swigged from his water bottle and broke out an energy bar to chew on, Dusty ambled over to the boulder.  It was odd, but it just didn’t seem right.  It was almost out of focus, as if a plate of greasy glass had been placed between him and it.  Shaking his head, probably just dizziness, after all we’ve been out in this heat all day, he thought as he walked away towards the pandanus.  For some reason he felt the need to kneel down and peer in through the curtain of roots to the darkness beyond.

“What you looking for?  You couldn’t get those kids in there?  Not enough space,”  he heard Pincher say.

Stuff you, Pincher, I’ll look where I please, Dusty thought. 

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