400 Minutes of Danger Read online

  10 Stories. 10 Dangerous Situations. 10 Brave Kids. 40 Minutes to Escape.

  Brad has fallen into the lion enclosure, and the big cats are hungry.

  Charith takes the wheel of an out-of control bus after an explosion, to find there are no brakes.

  Tak’s class is on an excursion to an army base when an experimental military robot begins hunting them …

  For all the wonderful teachers I’ve had–thank you for your patience.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Blurb

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Glacier

  Terminal Velocity

  Sinking

  Mosquito

  Enclosure

  Iron-Willed

  Crusher

  Kill All Humans

  Nightmare

  The Island

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  GLACIER

  40:00 The lump of ice slipped from beneath Nika’s fingers, and suddenly she was falling.

  The climbing rope wouldn’t save her. The nearest anchor point was too far below. She would fall until the rope went taut, and then she would slam sideways into the wall of ice. Even if she survived the impact, she wouldn’t be able to clamber back down with broken arms and legs.

  She flung out a desperate hand—

  39:50 And caught a narrow crack in the glacier.

  ‘Oomph!’ Her shoulder jerked painfully, but her grip held. She dangled from one hand, hundreds of metres above the ground.

  Nika grabbed the crevice with her other hand and exhaled. Her breath came out in a thin fog.

  She had been careless. She had climbed too far between anchor points. It wouldn’t happen again.

  Pulling another anchor off her carabiner, she pushed it into the crack and released the catch. Three prongs sprang out, digging into the ice. Nika tugged on the anchor to test its stability, then hooked her climbing rope on. She tightened it, then let go.

  The rope and anchor held. She didn’t fall to her death. She stood with both feet planted against the glacier, stretching her arms as she looked out at the landscape beyond.

  38:00 She was in northern Pakistan. The village below was tiny—there were more goats than people. She had expected to meet other tourists, other climbers, but there had been no-one. The nearest town was almost a hundred kilometres away. Her parents were stationed there. They worked for Doctors Without Borders, trying to control a nasty bacterial epidemic.

  The village was about an hour’s walk from the base of the enormous wall of ice, which was moving at a rate of about three centimetres per year. In a million years the glacier would roll right over it.

  At first she had been unnerved by the village, which didn’t even have a name. There were too many rickety structures and missing teeth. But after a few nights, she had grown to like the silence and the tasteless air—no petrol fumes, no garbage bags, no disinfectant. She thought the city might feel crowded and stifling when she returned.

  37:45 Her toes were cold. Looking down, she saw that her shoes were damp. Had it started to rain?

  No. She touched the glacier and rubbed her gloved fingers together. The ice was wet.

  That made no sense. It was a cold cloudy day in early winter. Why should the ice be melting?

  37:30 Nika touched the ice above the crack, and found it powdery and dry. The ice wasn’t melting. Water was trickling from inside the fissure.

  She gasped. If the ice inside the glacier had thawed, and the crust was thin enough to let it through …

  Nika was climbing a gigantic eggshell. At any moment the ice could crack under the pressure, and then shatter. She would fall to her death, and her body would be washed away by millions of litres of water.

  And it was even worse than that. The village was downhill from the base of the glacier. If the ice broke, the water would smash into the village, washing the ramshackle buildings away. The kids she’d played soccer with, the sun-hardened parents who had welcomed her into their homes—they would all die.

  37:20 Don’t panic, Nika told herself. This glacier had stood strong for eons. What were the odds that it would collapse today?

  37:00 But now that she was listening for it, she could hear a creaking behind the ice. She had to get back down. Right now.

  She peered down at the ground. She was a long way up. Her original plan had been to climb to the top of the glacier and then BASE-jump back down—there was a parachute in her backpack. But it would take another couple of hours to reach the top.

  It would be faster to abseil down. Abseiling meant walking backwards down the glacier, holding the rope. It was easier and quicker than climbing.

  But her rope was still anchored near the bottom of the glacier. If Nika abseiled down from here, she would run out of rope before she reached the ground. She would have to climb down the slippery ice to the next anchor before she started abseiling.

  She should have brought more rope. She should have brought someone from the village with her, for safety. ‘Stupid,’ she muttered.

  36:45 Nika unhooked her rope from the anchor point wedged into the crack. Usually she would take the anchor with her—she didn’t like wasting equipment, nor leaving traces of her presence in nature. But what if detaching it destabilised the ice even more? She didn’t want to risk it.

  36:30 Nika reached down with one leg, searching for a foothold. Climbing down the glacier was actually harder than climbing up, because she couldn’t see where she was going. And there were places on the way up where she’d had to leap from a platform to a handhold. Dropping down was much more dangerous than jumping up, but she hadn’t worried about it.

  ‘Just stay focused,’ she said to herself.

  35:30 The ice creaked again.

  She found a foothold, settled into it, and started working her way down the glacier. Several times her hands and feet slipped, and she had to spend a few moments clinging to the ice, heart racing. The trickle of water made the grippy soles of her shoes slide on the ice, and it felt like her gloves were covered in oil.

  31:20 By the time she reached the second anchor point, she had plenty of rope. She pulled it through the carabiner until it was taut, and planted her feet against the ice. She was ready to abseil.

  Nika started walking backwards down the slick surface of the glacier, holding the rope with both hands. She kept one hand in front of her and one behind her back, which made her stable.

  29:10 She was still a few hundred metres up, but she wasn’t scared. She knew there wasn’t much difference between falling off a glacier and falling down a long flight of stairs. She would probably die either way, and she wasn’t frightened of stairs. So why be frightened of glaciers?

  Her friends didn’t get it. ‘Why do you do this?’ they asked. ‘Why take up a hobby that could kill you?’

  ‘I’m a thousand times more likely to be killed in a car crash,’ she said. ‘And riding in cars isn’t as much fun as climbing mountains.’

  Water frightened her, though. She sometimes had nightmares about drowning—sinking to the bottom of a deep, dark ocean, cold seawater filling her lungs.

  She sometimes thought she liked mountains because they were so far from the sea. Now the water had come to her.

  29:00 The trickle had become a flow. She could hear the drips splashing against the ice. The glacier was becoming more unstable. She had to move faster.

  Instead of walking backwards she jumped, launching herself away from the ice wall and letting the rope slide through her fingers. She grunted as she landed a couple of metres down.

  She kicked off again. The rope whizzed through her grip. Cold wind tore at her hair and stung her cheeks.

/>   28:45 The ground was still at least a hundred metres below. But the grinding within the glacier was getting louder. The ice might shatter at any second. Could she really abseil to the bottom, run all the way to the village and get it evacuated before the water broke through and swept the village away?

  28:30 A droning filled the air. Nika scanned the horizon, looking for the source.

  A dented ute puttered along a narrow road in the distance. Nika recognised the vehicle—it was the only one in the village. The driver was probably Adnan, a thirteen-year-old boy who shared the car with his two brothers and who did most of the supply runs.

  28:10 If she could get his attention, he could drive her to the village. That might give them just enough time to evacuate.

  She waved her arms. ‘Hey!’ she screamed. ‘Adnan!’

  The ute didn’t slow down. It was driving perpendicular to the glacier, heading for the village. Adnan probably wasn’t looking out his side windows, and there was no way he would hear her.

  He would be long gone by the time she abseiled all the way to the ground. Nika looked around for something she could use to get his attention. But there was nothing. She was too far away.

  So she had to get closer.

  27:40 She pulled the knife off her belt. All climbers carried one, in case their ropes got snagged on something. Holding the rope still with one hand, she sawed through it with the other.

  The rope was strengthened by several layers. She hacked each one away, wondering if she was insane.

  Soon it was too late to change her mind. The last of the fibres unravelled. She held the frayed end with one hand and let the rest fall. The rope puddled on the distant ground below.

  Nika looked back at the ute. It was still trundling along towards the village. If she didn’t act now it would be too late.

  27:15 She kicked off the wall and let go of the rope, launching herself into the void.

  For a terrifying second she hovered in the air, far above the deadly rocks at the bottom, not attached to anything.

  Then, as she started to fall, she pulled the ripcord of her parachute.

  The flaps in her pack pulled open, but nothing came out. She started to plummet towards the earth, faster and faster.

  27:05 As her speed increased, the wind resistance tugged the chute out of her pack. It snapped into shape above her. The shoulder and chest straps cut into her as the chute slowed her descent.

  There was no sign that Adnan had seen her, but the breeze was flowing in the right direction. Nika tugged on the nylon ropes, steering herself towards the ute as she sailed on the wind, heart pounding.

  26:55 She was still about ten metres above the ground when Adnan saw her through the dirty glass. His eyes almost popped out of his head.

  Too late she realised that she was about to fly right into his path.

  ‘Stop!’ she yelled.

  Adnan slammed on the brakes. The tyres slid across the dirt road and the ute skidded to a halt as Nika landed on the bonnet.

  26:40 Adnan wound down the window. ‘Nika,’ he yelled. ‘What happen?’

  Nika scrambled down off the ute and slashed through the straps on her parachute. It was a relief to be standing on solid ground again.

  ‘The ice is going to break,’ she yelled. ‘We have to evacuate the village!’

  Adnan looked at her blankly. English was one of the official languages of Pakistan, but like most of the villagers, he only knew a few words.

  ‘Water!’ Nika said in a dialect of Punjabi, the language spoken by the villagers. She didn’t know the word for flood. She pointed at the glacier.

  26:20 Adnan stared at her, confused.

  ‘Ice break,’ Nika insisted. ‘Water village!’ She made a sweeping motion with her hands.

  Now Adnan got it. He looked up at the glacier fearfully.

  Nika jumped into the passenger seat and put on her seatbelt. ‘People leave village,’ she said.

  ‘Sick!’ Adnan said, in English.

  Nika wasn’t sure what he meant.

  ‘Sunny sick,’ Adnan said. ‘Ammad sick. Many sick.’

  26:00 He pulled a couple of bottles of pills out of the glove box. Nika checked the label. Penicillin.

  When Nika left to climb the glacier, one of the villagers had been bedridden with flu-like symptoms. Several of the others had been coughing.

  If Adnan had been sent to town for medicine, the symptoms must have gotten worse. And if the doctors had given Adnan penicillin to take to the village, they must not think it was the flu. It could be the same bacterial outbreak Nika’s parents had been sent to treat.

  Several of the villagers would be in no condition to leave their huts, let alone walk a hundred kilometres to the nearest town. That would kill them just as surely as a flood.

  Nika couldn’t make the glove box close. The latch seemed to be broken. She stuffed the pill bottles into her climbing pouch instead. Adnan turned the car around and started driving back the other way.

  25:05 ‘Where?’ Nika asked.

  Adnan said the name of the nearby town, which Nika had never managed to pronounce. ‘Get help,’ he explained. ‘More car.’ Enough cars to transport all the sick people out of harm’s way. It made sense.

  24:20 Nika looked back up at the glacier. The flow of water had become stronger. Even at this distance she could see it pouring from a crack near the top.

  ‘Time,’ Nika said urgently. It would take Adnan at least three hours to come back with help. At the rate the water was wearing the ice away, the glacier wouldn’t last that long.

  Adnan shrugged helplessly. He didn’t know what else to do.

  Nor did Nika. Soon the ice would break and the water would come. There was nothing they could do to stop it—

  23:55 But maybe they could redirect it.

  There was a dried-up river further along from the glacier mouth. It had left a deep channel which curved past the village and led to an empty valley, that could once have been a lake, hundreds of years ago. If the glacier broke near the dry river instead of where Nika had been climbing, maybe the water would flow into the channel and miss the village completely.

  Nika’s heart raced. Would it work? Was there enough time?

  23:30 ‘Turn,’ she said in Adnan’s language. She pointed at a goat trail that came off the main road. ‘Turn!’

  Adnan looked baffled, but he swung the wheel. The ute bumped off the road and onto the narrow trail, heading towards the glacier.

  ‘What?’ Adnan asked.

  Nika tried to work out how to explain her plan, but there were too many words she didn’t know. Instead, she pointed at the dried-out river in front of them.

  ‘Drive,’ she said.

  22:55 Adnan drove down the riverbank and then across the hard dirt. Nika leaned over and checked the petrol gauge—now would be a terrible time to run out of fuel. But no, the tank was still two-thirds full.

  They jolted up the dry river towards the glacier. Adnan clung to the wheel as desperately as she had ever held a climbing rope. She was leading him closer and closer to the ice, and he didn’t know what she was trying to do.

  20:50 Poor kid. He was only thirteen. The fate of his village shouldn’t rest on his shoulders. But there was no-one else to do it. They were in this together.

  The village wasn’t visible any more. They were around the other side of the glacier, where there was nothing but desert and dead, frozen plants.

  The glacier was right up ahead. Nika started rummaging around the cabin for something heavy. She had hoped for a brick, or even a phone book, but there was nothing except a roll of duct tape.

  Her water bottle! That would do. Nika grabbed it out of her backpack and held it up. ‘Car crash ice,’ she said.

  19:35 Adnan stopped the car, confused and alarmed.

  Nika switched to English, hoping he would be able to figure out what she was saying. ‘The water bottle will hold down the accelerator,’ she said, with lots of gesturing. ‘We can jump out of the car.
The car will ram the glacier. Hopefully that will break the ice. Then the water will flow this way, towards the valley and away from the village. Crash car, break ice, save village.’

  Adnan’s eyes widened. He understood, but he thought she had lost her mind.

  ‘Help Sunny,’ Nika said in Punjabi. ‘Help Ammad.’

  19:20 Adnan pointed at himself. ‘No swim,’ he said.

  It was a good point. Nika hadn’t given any thought to what would happen after the ute hit the glacier. If they didn’t break the ice, the village would be washed away—but if they did, the flood could kill them both.

  ‘We run,’ she said.

  19:00 Adnan took a deep breath, and nodded.

  They both scrambled out of the car. Nika balanced her bottle on top of the accelerator, and secured it in place with the duct tape. Then she pushed the pedal down.

  The car lurched forward like a bird with a broken wing, the driver’s door flapping, and then trundled towards the glacier.

  ‘Go, go!’ Nika shouted. She and Adnan sprinted up the dry river away from the car. Nika’s feet pounded the hard dirt. They were scrambling up the edge of the channel when the ute smashed into the glacier.

  16:25 The bonnet crumpled against the ice. The horn blared unstoppably.

  The ice didn’t break.

  Nika and Adnan were poised on the edge of the bank, watching the car. Nothing happened. The horn kept blasting.

  ‘Ice not break,’ Adnan said. A nervous laugh escaped his lips. Nika almost felt like joining him. There did seem to be something funny about driving directly into a wall of ice, without the wall even seeming to notice.

  15:50 Steam was pouring out from under the crushed bonnet. The horn was still going. Nika wondered if they could hear it at the village.

  ‘Again,’ she said.

  ‘Again?’ Adnan asked incredulously.

  ‘Again.’ She scrambled down the riverbank and jogged towards the ute. Adnan followed. They would have to reverse it and ram the glacier again, possibly with a longer run-up. Hopefully it was still intact enough to drive.

  12:20 When they reached the ute, Nika heard something gurgling. At first she thought it might be her stomach. But it was louder. Deeper.