Recoil

9

We moved into cover and I laid her down against a buttress tree. I leaned against it too, my lungs sucking in air greedily as I looked about and listened.

There was no gunfire above the roar of the river, no shouting. Yin and Yang crossed my mind, but not for long.

‘Can you feel your toes? Give them a wiggle, see if you can feel them. Push them up against your boots.’

‘Nick, I’m a doctor, remember?’ She tried anyway, and winced. That was a good thing: if she could feel the pain, there was still circulation in her foot. Her ankle was blowing up like a football.

The heat and humidity hit me with a vengeance. I thought out loud as I dipped into my pocket and pulled out the sat nav: ‘Let’s see if this thing’s waterproof or not.’ I didn’t know whether I was trying to make her feel at ease, or myself.

The display was cracked and water had flooded in. It was fucked. I shoved it back in my pocket. I might be able to take it apart and dry it out, but not until we got back to the airstrip. But even if we took a chance on the tree-trunk and the last five metres of water, the airstrip was too far for me to travel with a body to carry and nothing but an old prismatic compass to show me east.

Silky bent forward, inspecting her boot, as if she had X-ray vision.

I reached out a hand and touched her shoulder. ‘Change of plan.’