Excerpt from Amazon Swamp Victory Copyright © 2017 Gerard Doris.
TREASURE REBELS #3
AMAZON SWAMP VICTORY
SAMPLE
...Travis pointed at the machete.
“What about the snakes? You just said the wall is infested with them.”
“Your special dive suits should be thick enough to prevent a bite through.”
Travis slowly stood his face filled with uncertainty.
“But what about you?”
Maddox didn’t respond immediately. Instead he walked over to the olden dive suit and grabbed the two strange, unusually thick, algae covered brown gloves that hadn’t been worn in half a century.
“I’ll have to hope these are thick enough!”
He then grabbed the machete and tied it to the cord around his neck, then swung the cord around so the key and blade were resting against his back. He then turned to his friends. “You two ready?”
Travis nodded he was ready and grasping his dive mask he closed it back atop his head, pressing another button in the mask which opened multiple air vents and disconnected the special mask from his oxygen tank. With another push of a button the heavy oxygen tank then dropped into the dark sand.
Amber opened the radio case again and pulled the inside components apart. “They better not be able to track us.” She then reattached her mask and released her dive tank as Travis had, and together all three began climbing towards the green rainforest high above.
The first ten feet nothing happened. Then the next twenty passed without a sighting. Then suddenly it seemed as if all the snakes living in the rocky wall of stone had decided to slither out.
One snake recoiled then shot forward towards Travis’ head. The Treasure Rebel instinctively turned his head away and the creature’s fangs missed, biting into empty space beside his ear. Travis then grabbed the serpent with one hand and roughly pulled it out of its hiding place, tossing it down where it plopped with a small splash into the dark blue pool of water.
Amber had three strangely coloured snakes coil around her arm, then her mask. Unable to lose her grip she instead froze, unable to see anything through her mask lenses except for reptile skin. After ten anxiety filled seconds the three creatures slithered back into the wall crevice and she continued her climb upward.
Maddox was the least lucky. Four times he placed his hand into a crevice for support and felt the terrible pressure of a snake biting into the glove. Two more times when he placed his boot into a toehold, a pair of fangs leapt out and stabbed into the boots reinforced heel or toe. But never once did the snakes’ venom filled teeth reach his skin, and Maddox kept climbing as if the deadly serpents weren’t even there.
Five minutes later the Treasure Rebels reached the apex of the climb and with relief they clambered out of the cave and rolled onto the warm jungle grass.
Travis looked back down at the still empty pool of water. “No sign of Bragard’s men yet.”
He then sat upright and lifted his hand back to check that the chainsaw was still secure in the holster after the climb. But he froze as his fingers felt another snake slither around the chainsaw’s red trigger, onto his hand, then onto his arm, then to his horror it slowly began to slither into his helmet! With a yell he undid the dive mask and in one motion he tore it off his head and hurled it, along with the snake, down into the cave far below.
A moment passed as all three looked at one another without speaking. The only sounds to be heard were the shrieks of howler monkeys watching them from above in the trees, and the faint sound of gurgling, bubbling, moving water.
Amber pulled off her dive mask and wiping a strand of red hair away from her eyes looked towards the sound.
“Is that the Amazon River?”
(END OF SAMPLE)
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