The python gathered speed. Ruslan realized that in his squatting position he looked like something tasty and easy to swallow. He scrambled to his feet, backing up to the trail bike, but too late. The python sprang, its jaws missing Ruslan’s leg but biting the cuff of his jeans. The rest of the giant snake whipped up to coil around him. Ruslan spun and pressed the snake’s blunt head against the bike’s hot exhaust pipe. At once the python let go and writhed away into the water.
Ruslan got back on the trail bike and rode for another hour into the night, his world condensed down to the beam of his headlight. The bog finally dried up and the trail climbed to scrubby dry ground. He braked to a halt on a level patch of rock and scree and turned the bike handle left and right, using the headlight as a search beam. All he could see was ordinary brush.
After he swung off the bike, the delayed reaction to the python attack finally set in. Drowning was one thing, but being eaten was another. He trembled violently for at least a minute before he could say his evening prayers. When they were finished, he spread out on the ground as close as he could to the bike, tucking his head into the gap between the front wheel and engine, using the knapsack as a pillow. He fell sound asleep, too bone tired for any dreams or nightmares. When he woke, stiff as the flat rock he had slept on, it was already dawn. He peed into a bush and with a groan swung his sore body onto the trail bike. How much farther did he have to go? If he remembered correctly, the logging track would at some point turn back down to the coast and end at Teunom, a village beside a river mouth. There he could get something to eat and drink before continuing on to Calang and Ie Mameh. He didn’t have any money, but by now the people at Teunom surely knew of the disaster that had befallen Meulaboh and would help him.
The trail was a jarring path of ridges and ruts. Eventually the path widened into a potholed road that wound along the side of the lowest foothill. He came to an intersection. The right-hand fork led back up into the hills. To where, Ruslan didn’t know. He chose the fork that descended through oil palms to the flat coastal plains and the main road to Calang.
At the bottom of the hill a spring burbled out of the rocks, forming a small pool. Ruslan stopped. He waded out into the pool and cupped his hands at the spring to drink. His thirst at last slaked, he turned and sank into the waist-high water for a good soak.
He froze. In the wattle brush lining the far end of the pool, a man stared at him with wide and bulging eyes.
Unblinking eyes, rigid with death.
Around him were several more corpses, caught in the brush like debris.
The flood had struck here, too.
Ruslan drove on. Fallen trees and mounds of swamp muck made the driving difficult, and then, after half a mile, impossible. He pushed the trail bike into the crown of a downed oil palm, camouflaging it as best he could with the leaves.
A shadow of a man holding a rifle fell before him. Another shadow appeared, and then a third. Ruslan spun around.
A band of five armed men in civilian clothes had materialized out of the destroyed land. Lurking in the backs of their eyes was something as hard and hollow as the barrels of their well-oiled rifles.
Rebels.
One of the men had a dead eye, nothing but a white swirl. He didn’t speak. A man with a livid scar on his forearm nodded at the hidden bike. “What you doing with that motorbike, boy?”
“Trying to keep it safe,” Ruslan said. “I borrowed it. It’s not mine.”
“That’s right. It’s ours now. Give me your bag.”
Ruslan handed him the knapsack, which the man checked and returned. “Where you come from?”
“Meulaboh. It’s been destroyed by the flood. I came along the old logging trail.”
“We saw your headlights last night. The military let you pass their checkpoints?”
The question sounded idle, but Ruslan sensed a trap. The rebels trusted no one they did not know. The military employed all sorts of agents and informants, from grandmothers to fresh-faced schoolkids.
“My father is Yusuf the mechanic,” he said. “He’s gone to Ie Mameh. That’s where I’m going, to find him. Meulaboh’s destroyed.” He gestured at the ruined land around them. “Just like here. A monster sea wave.”
The man glanced at the white-eyed man. “Ie Mameh, is that right? Now, why would a mechanic from Meulaboh be going to Ie Mameh? They have their own mechanics there.”
“That’s where my mother’s from. Her relatives asked him to come.”
“Let’s see your ID.”
Ruslan thought of his ID card, tucked away in the officer’s pocket. “I lost it.”
“What’s that in your back pocket?” Ruslan handed him his wallet. The man inspected its contents. “Why would you have your wallet and not your ID?”
Ruslan opened his mouth to lie that the ID card had been in his shirt pocket, but instead other words rose to his tongue before he could stop them. “You’re worried about my ID? Look around you! Look what’s happened!”
Another man spat. “We don’t have time for this. Let’s just shoot him.” He aimed his rifle at Ruslan’s chest, his finger tightening on the trigger.