Next, she tried a few backstrokes. At first it was frustrating, making no difference, but gradually, as she got into a rhythm with the water, she made progress: she had managed to reduce her speed. She was moving more slowly, giving herself time to look at what was around her and see if she could use any of it to get herself out of the water.
Come on, Naya. You can do this.
And then she saw it. Stretching her neck higher out of the water, Naya caught sight of a large rock coming up on her right-hand side – large enough to grab onto, if she could just slow down enough as she got nearer. Just past the rock, the stream looked as though it forked into two distinct paths. If she could grab hold of it, though, then from there, it was onlya jump or a long step onto some smaller rocks that led all the way out of the stream.
Slow and steady. Slow and steady.
As she got closer, she pushed against the water with everything she had left to slow herself as much as she could; her hands made contact with the edges of the stone, grabbed hold – her left hand kept slipping off, leaving her flailing wildly, trying to find something to catch onto. She tried again, felt a ledge, small but it was something, and grabbed at it with her fingers. Now both of her hands were holding tight; carefully, inch by inch, she lowered her legs, then curled them around the edges of the rock as tightly as she could.
Gasping, retching, she clung on, waves of nausea racking her body now that she’d come to a standstill within the dizzying motions of the currents. Once she’d caught her breath, she began to slowly pull herself around the rock, clinging on with all four limbs and shifting along its slippery edge. She could not afford to let go; could not afford to fall back into the water. She had no strength left to fight the currents again.
As she approached the other side of the rock, her feet jarred suddenly against something; and again. A solid surface. There was ground underneath her feet; the stream became abruptly shallower here, on the other side of the rock, just as she’d hoped it would. She could stand; she could walk.
Naya pushed her legs forward, stumbled out of the water, then collapsed onto the stony ground at the edge of the stream.
I’ve made it.
By some miracle, Naya wasn’t dead. But her whole body hurt – everything, from head to toe, now starting to register the knocks, bumps and hits she’d taken. By the state of herbreathing, the numbness that was creeping across her body, the way she needed to fight against a desperate urge to close her eyes, and the throbbing, stinging pain that was starting to ramp up on her mid-thigh – she knew she was not in a good way.
First things first, she needed to get out of her wet clothes. Despite the muggy warmth of the afternoon, she was soaking and cold; she’d take an age to warm up if she left these things on. She felt for her waterproof –waterproof, what a joke, the thing is sodden– jacket, its arms still miraculously wrapped around her waist in a firm knot, untied it and lifted up her hips to wriggle it out from beneath her. The motion took a surprising amount of energy; after she’d pulled it free, she lay back down on her back, gasping for breath, gathering her strength. The pain in her leg was screaming at her now that the shock was starting to wear off; she was afraid to look at it.
One step at a time.
Hauling the top half of her body up to sitting, she began to peel off her T-shirt; the fabric clung to her arms, resisting her every move. Once she’d managed to take it off and lain back down again to catch her breath, her hands reached instinct-ively towards her belly; she clasped her shaking fingers together and laid them over her stomach for a moment. She breathed.
Unzipping her shorts next, she shuffled them a little way down her hips, but the pain and thought of the nasty gash in her thigh stopped her from taking them all the way down.
One step at a time.
Forcing herself to sit up again, her whole body now shaking violently, she rubbed her arms briskly, then set about wringing as much water from her clothes as she could. The waterproof outside of her jacket had dried off now; she turned it insideout and put it on, dry side against her body. Glancing down at her right leg, she could see blood seeping through her shorts and into the ground beneath her.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.She needed to pack the wound to stop the bleeding, but wrapping a compress on top of sopping wet shorts would stop her warming up, and mean she couldn’t examine the wound, or clean it. As much as it would hurt, she needed to get her legs free and take a closer look.
Steeling herself with a deep breath, she yanked the shorts down her left leg first, then, an inch at a time, started to pull the right side down, the pain intensifying as she got closer to her wound. She realized with a sickening lurch that as the tightness of her wet shorts was pushed down closer to the injury, it was forcing out more blood – she could see the spurts trickling down her thigh, her calf; pooling at her ankle, into her shoe.
She needed to wrap it tight – and fast.
Pushing through the searing pain and the increasing flow of blood, Naya wrung as much of the water from her T-shirt as she could, then pulled her shorts the rest of the way off her leg, rolled up her top and tied it around her thigh as a tourniquet. Immediately it became soaked red with blood – it was far from ideal, but it was all she had for now. She held the makeshift bandage around her thigh as tightly as she could, waiting for the bleeding to stop, or at least slow down, which it did after a few moments.
But how much blood have I lost?
And how far away from the others have I travelled?
She had lost all concept of time, of distance, when she was in the water. For all she knew, she could have been hauleddownstream for hundreds of metres. Peering through the trees and foliage that led back into the jungle’s dark undergrowth, she saw nothing she recognized. And she certainly couldn’t see, or hear, anyone else.
‘Guys? Hello – can you hear me? Is anyone there?’
Her voice was barely a whisper. She was too hoarse, throaty, from all her coughing and retching in the water, no doubt. She sounded weak – about as weak as she felt. She wished she had something to drink, and her first aid kit.
She turned to face the water, edged a tiny bit closer. Maybe her bag was floating somewhere nearby? If she had it, she could do a rough job of patching up her thigh – clean it up a bit, at least, if anything from her kit had survived. The bag it lived in was supposed to be waterproof – finding it had to be worth a shot.
But she spotted nothing; and now that she thought back, she remembered feeling the bag being tugged off her back only seconds after she’d fallen in the stream, snagged by the branch of a fallen tree, perhaps.
It was long gone, and it looked like anyone who might be able to help her was long gone too. Instead, she was trapped in a jungle, most likely with a murderer on the loose.I’m defenceless.I’m going to die out here, alone.
And then a new thought, a soft whisper at the edge of her consciousness, as if it was coming from somewhere outside of herself:follow the water.
Naya’s knowledge of wilderness survival was, admittedly, not the greatest – she’d barely even watched any of those endurance reality shows on TV – but there was one thing she did know. If you got lost in a jungle – in any kind of wilderness – waterwould help you navigate. Isn’t that what Carly had said too? And she seemed to know about surviving in the rainforest. Streams would lead to rivers, which would lead eventually to the sea – and almost always, long before that, they led to people – to villages, small towns, cities even. To civilization – to hope.
