'We're going to have to swim!' Ben shouted.
'I cannot!' Halima cried.
Ben sized her up. She was about his height, but slighter of frame. It was perhaps fifteen metres to the shore; he was going to have to carry her. It was that or let her drown.
Quickly he pulled his saturated shoes from his feet, and with all his strength threw them to the shore. 'Give me yours,' he told Halima; when she did so he threw them ashore too.
They had less than a minute before the boat was completely submerged. A sudden calm fell over Ben; he knew exactly what he had to do. He crouched down. 'Climb on my back and hold onto my shoulders,' he instructed Halima, whose eyes were now wide with fear like he had never seen. She did as she was told. 'Not so tight round the neck,' Ben said. Halima loosened her grip, but only slightly. Neither of them said what they were both thinking: that there could be anything between them and the shore. They were just going to have to trust to chance.
Ben had intended to hurl himself from the boat – that would have given him an extra couple of metres' start; but suddenly he became aware that the bottom of the hull had disappeared from beneath his feet. Halima's weight sent him under, and he kicked as hard as he could to bring them back up into the air, where they both spluttered. Then he started to swim.
The current was stronger than he had anticipated now that he was in the water, so he had to head on a diagonal towards the bank. The strain of going against the flow, together with the weight of Halima behind him, meant that soon the muscles in his arms, along his back and into his legs were burning with exhaustion. Every few strokes he would find himself going under, and he had to gather all his remaining strength to push the two of them back up to the surface of the water.
Ten metres to go.
Five metres.
The pain in his arms was too much. He was sinking. He did his best to gather his energy for one final surge up above the water, but it simply wasn't there. He was going down. He closed his eyes and held his breath.
And then his foot hit the bottom of the river. It felt hard, stony and slippery beneath him. Halima was wriggling and struggling on his back, but she kept holding on tight – too tight, around his neck. Ben looked up and opened his eyes to see sunlight streaming through the surface of the water. It was close. They couldn't be far from the edge now. Battling against the current, he took a step through the water. It was like wading through treacle, but somehow he managed it. And then another step. And then, if he stood on tiptoes, he could just get his head above the water. He gasped loudly, filling his air-starved lungs with a deathly rasp.
Halima was still on his back, so her head was already above water. 'Put me down,' she ordered. 'I can walk from here.'
Ben did as she said. And then he made the mistake of looking behind him. His eyes just above the level of the water, he could see the telltale mounds of crocodiles in the middle of the river, like floating logs. 'Hurry up,' he gasped. 'We have to get out of the water.' They waded towards the shore, urgently trying to get there as quickly as possible, but frustrated by the resistance of the water. It seemed to take for ever.
Gradually, though, the water became suddenly less deep, and they were able to run out, desperate to put distance between themselves and the circling crocs, despite the fact that the stones were cutting into their bare feet. Quickly Ben gathered their shoes; but once he had done so, he felt his legs collapse, jelly-like, beneath him. He was dizzy with exhaustion.
But Halima would not let him sit down. She started pulling at his arm: 'We have to get away from the river, Ben. The crocodiles are coming!' Ben looked out over the water to see she was right; the mounds were not so far away now, and getting closer. He forced himself to stand up, and then the two of them ran, still holding their wet shoes, behind the trees that lined the river.
The forest was less thick here, and if Ben's body had not been so desperately tired they could have run faster. But after a couple of minutes he could go no further. 'Stop!' he tried to say; but all that came out was a hoarse, high-pitched wheeze. Then he bent over and, unable to help himself, started to retch.
He would have been sick, but there was nothing in his stomach to come up.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It took Ben a good fifteen minutes to recover. He sat on the stump of a felled tree, struggling for breath and bent double with pain. Halima sat on a stump too, her wet hair sticking to the side of her face as she gazed at him with a kind of wonder.
Eventually Ben found his voice. 'You OK?' he asked weakly.
Halima nodded with a mysterious smile. 'Yes,' she said. 'I am OK. Thanks to you.' Her eyes seemed to bore straight into him.
Ben found his face reddening, and he was suddenly overcome with the urge to change the subject. 'I wish we could find some dry clothes,' he said, looking down at himself so as to avoid Halima's gaze. The sunlight beneath the trees was too dappled, and the humidity was too intense, for them to dry off.
Halima smiled. 'It will rain soon. Then we will be even wetter, if we do not reach the village beforehand.'
'We'd better go then,' Ben agreed. He forced himself onto his feet, and was alarmed by how stiff his muscles were. Best to keep moving, he thought to himself. If I sit here for too long, I'll never get up.
There was no road as such leading to the village, but Halima led the way confidently enough. Ben tried to ignore the wetness of his shoes, which were causing blisters on his skin as he walked, and it was with a certain sense of satisfaction that he saw the trees thinning out even more. 'Here,' Halima said finally. She sounded subdued.
Ahead of them was a clearing. It was deserted, but it was obvious that there had recently been activity here. It was surrounded on three sides by trees, although on one of those sides the greenery had been crudely hacked away to make room for a rough dirt track. A long pile of earth was mounded up alongside a wide trench; parallel to these were other trenches that had clearly been recently filled in. Ben felt sick as a realization gradually dawned on him – a realization that was confirmed when Halima spoke. 'My mother and father lie here,' she whispered.
Ben looked at her in horror. 'Is this a mass grave?'
Halima nodded mutely, her jaw clenched.
'Why?' Ben breathed.
'I told you, the people from my village are dying quickly. There is not the time or resources to make separate graves for them all.'
Suddenly there was a noise beyond the trees: a vehicle. Ben and Halima scurried to hide behind a bush, and from their hiding place they looked out on to the grave. An old truck trundled up the path, coming to a halt at the top of the trench. As he watched, Ben felt a horrible premonition of what was to come, but somehow he couldn't turn his eyes away. Two men climbed out of the truck, opened up the back and strained as they pulled off a body, one holding the shoulders, the other holding the feet. From this distance Ben couldn't tell if the corpse was male or female; but he could see the skin was black. He felt a sense of guilty relief: it wasn't his dad.
The two men returned to the back of the truck and pulled off another body. Ben blinked, and a shudder passed through him.
It was a body of a child.
The tiny corpse was given no more ceremony than the one that went before; it too was slung into the deep grave, before the men pulled a pair of shovels out of the back of the truck and started to cover the latest occupants in loose dirt. It looked like back-breaking work – clearly the bodies needed to be well covered in order to stop wild animals from digging them up. Soon, though, their work was done and they drove off.
When Ben turned to look at Halima, her face was grim. She muttered something to herself in Kikongo.
'What did you say?' Ben asked.