“Fine,” I say.
“Indeed.” He zips up his pack, the vines shoved deep inside.
“Good talk.” I take the volcanic rock steps down the side of the hill faster than a mountain goat I hope I never run into again.
I’m down the other side of the mountain and into the field of bamboo when Calvin screams, “Fucking hell!”
Chapter 19
Mudflats
Calvin
My legs are sinking into the mud. Not sinking—disappearing. The bamboo next to me is thick, so I reach for a stem, but the damn thing snaps off in my hand. I reach with my other hand, but of fucking course that hand’s got the machete and it goes tumbling out. It lands point-down in the mud six feet away, vibrating like some damn sword in the stone that only the righteous can pull out.
I’m certainly fucked. The more I try to pull my left leg out, the more I sink. It’s down to my knee. Like thick paste. My right isn’t down that far yet. I can still see the laces of my shoes.
Rockwell’s thundering through the jungle.
“Stop!” I yell. “Don’t come any closer.”
“What is it, a goat?” Rockwell’s voice shakes.
“A goat? Fuck no. It’s some sort of soul-sucking mud. Don’t come any—” I close my eyes because the damn fool is standing right behind me.
“It’s mud.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Damn. I can’t pull my foot up,” Rockwell says. But there’s hard ground right behind him.
“That would be why I told you not to come any fucking closer.”
“Right. Okay. It’s like a mud bath the dinosaurs would get stuck in.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know all the fossils they’ve found of dinosaurs being trapped in mud?”
I want to stab him and every wannabe-paleontologist in their damn dinosaur-obsessed heart. An archeologist trapped in fucking mud doesn’t want to hear about shitty cold-blooded reptiles.
I look back at him, and he’s almost smiling. No, it’s just him. I want to stab him. But my machete is having its own King Arthur moment right now. I narrow my eyes at him. Because moving will only sink me deeper into this muck.
“Right. Well, cut some bamboo and use it to disperse our weight and inch out of here.”
I point like a hunting dog at the flap of the blade that is slowly sinking down.
“Damn. Okay, can you reach that cluster of bamboo?”
I hold up the snapped-off bit in my hand to show him. Because I’m gripping it. At least it’s keeping me from forming a fist and risking sinking even deeper.
“Right, can you grab a bunch at one time?”
“No. And shut the hell up so I can think.” There’s a thud and then a splatter behind me. I crane my neck around. Rockwell’s lying on the ground on his back. His arms are splayed out at his side. He’s moving like a snow angel, swimming backwards a millimeter at a time.
“You need to drop and disperse your mammoth size, or you’re going to end up like, well, a mammoth.” Rockwell’s closeenough to the edge of the dry jungle that he rolls to his side and shimmies up into the dried leaves. He spits mud out of his mouth when he stands and opens his pack. “You’re farther in. But lie down and I’ll help pull you out.”
“We need to get the machete.” My eyes are focused on it. It hasn’t sunk any deeper, so at least there’s that.
