Fault Line Read Online Free Page B

crumpled up the empty foil bags the darkness behind the trees was total and the only light was from the flickering fire.
    Hex reached for his bergen and drew out a dark leather case. It contained a leather harness with straps and a device that looked like a pair of binoculars.
    ‘Ah,’ said Amber, making tea with the hot water she’d heated her rations pack in. ‘Our homework.’ It was a set of infra-red goggles for seeing in the dark – and the second element of their mission. The manufacturer, who knew her uncle, needed them tested to see how they stood up to the jungle humidity.
    Hex slipped the harness plus goggles over his head.
    Li, sipping a cup of tea, spluttered. He looked like someone with a couple of tubes strapped to his head, trying to be an alien. His dark hair stuck up in tufts between the straps of the headpiece.
    ‘Dios ,’ said Paulo, ‘you look like a bounty hunter from Star Wars .’
    ‘It’s not a good look without a helmet,’ giggled Amber.
    ‘I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous,’ said Alex.
    Hex hardly heard their remarks; he was far too intent on seeing what would happen when he switched on. And it certainly was different.
    The darkness suddenly became see-through like gauze. The jungle was vast – greyish green and full of glowing white moving things. Small creatures scurried through the trees like mice; larger ones slunk after them, flashing in and out of view like lights as they passed behind grey foliage. Sleeping birds roosted next to dozing lizards. Snakes coiled like shadows around branches, their images dim and sinister as they watched the brighter warm-blooded creatures around them.
    Hex looked at his four friends sitting in their hammocks. Their hands and faces were bright white, their bodies more shadowy where they were covered with clothes. There was Paulo’s hair, wild, curly and white as though someone had unpinned the curls of a judge’s wig. Amber’s ebony skin was the same intense white as everyone else’s. It made her look like a different person. Li’s long plait faded into her clothes and looked like a scarf. Only Alex looked about the same as always.
    Hex looked at the fire and the image flared with the intense heat. The jungle floor was teeming with life. Hex pulled his legs up sharply onto the hammock. Spiders scuttled across the ground, fat white blobs on spindly legs. Centipedes and millipedes were everywhere. He lifted the goggles away from his eyes. Everything was black and the ground next to the flickering fire looked as clear as if it had been swept. He put them on again. It was like an alternate universe. All those long spiky centipedes moving with a strange flowing motion, the tiny dots of smaller insects darting around.
    ‘Hex,’ said a voice sternly. An American voice. ‘It’s someone else’s turn.’
    ‘There’s a centipede going up your trouser leg,’ replied Hex.
    In a millisecond Amber was out of her hammock, stamping furiously. ‘Which leg?’
    Hex grinned. There wasn’t actually anything there but she didn’t know that. ‘Left.’
    Amber shook her left foot vigorously, her mouth and eyes wide and worried. ‘Has it gone?’
    ‘I mean your right. I forgot, I’m looking at you.’
    Amber stopped shaking her leg. Hex didn’t make mistakes like that. He was having her on.
    Hex saw Amber’s head tilt to one side in an expression that was so familiar. Her baleful glare looked particularly malevolent through the goggles. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘you’re as white as a sheet.’ He handed the goggles to her with a grin.
    Amber took them and put them on. She saw the alternate universe of busy insects and wished she hadn’t. She took them off. ‘Anyone else?’
    Li stretched her hand out. ‘Yes please. I want to know what I’m sharing my bedroom with.’
    Paulo ran his fingers through his hair and gave her a macho look. ‘Tell me, do I look as handsome in infra red?’
    Li looked at Paulo through the goggles. ‘Just big