The Power of Five Oblivion

for more than five or ten minutes and he had no food or water. A movement caught his eye and he weaved sideways as a huge spider with a red and furry back scuttled down the trunk of the tree. If he hadn’t moved, it would have bitten him. And what then? A fast, painful death for him. Matt left on his own. The rainforest would cover them over and neither of them would ever be found again.
    He continued forward as far as he could, then set Matt down on his own feet. “Can you stand?” he asked.
    Matt opened his eyes and nodded.
    “We have to find the landing strip. And when we get there, I’m going to need your help. Do you understand me? You have to open the gates … like you did at the mine. And get rid of the guards.”
    Matt nodded a second time. “I can do that.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “Don’t leave me, Lohan.”
    “I won’t do that.”
    How had he known? Even as they had stumbled through the rainforest, Lohan had thought about dropping Matt and continuing on his own. Why not? It was how he had always been trained. His first responsibility was to look after himself and Matt was slowing him down. He had only kept faith with Matt because he needed his powers – but if Matt lost consciousness a second time, Lohan had already made up his mind. The two of them weren’t friends. They had been thrown together by chance. At the end of the day, it was each to his own.
    They pressed forward, Matt somehow managing to keep going. Lohan was certain that the airstrip was somewhere over to the left but the vegetation kept forcing him to go in the opposite direction and he knew it would only waste his strength to push his way through. He wished more than anything that he could have equipped himself with a machete. A bird hooted overhead. During all the time they had worked at the pit, they had never seen a bird in flight but the rainforest was full of them. Something moved in the undergrowth and Lohan remembered the spider. He thought of the snakes, of the screams he had heard in the night. They were still going the wrong way. The rainforest was playing tricks on them, leading them ever further into its embrace. The path behind had gone. It was as if the trees and the vegetation had closed in on them, deliberately preventing them from finding their way back.
    And then came the sound they had both dreaded most. Somebody shouted. The soldiers hadn’t seen them yet but they were close. How many of them were there? It was impossible to say in the green nightmare in which they found themselves, but one thing was certain. The soldiers would know the rainforest better than they did. They might have dogs with them. It wouldn’t take them long to track the two prisoners down.
    Matt was stumbling again, his legs tying themselves in knots, and Lohan put an arm around him, not just propping him up but urging him forward, forcing him to keep up the pace. Once again he thought of abandoning him. At least the vegetation was screening them from their pursuers, deadening any noise they made. They needed somewhere to hide … a tree to climb or a burrow to crawl into. But they couldn’t go on much further, not together. He would have a better chance on his own.
    He pushed a veil of leaves aside and stopped.
    It was impossible.
    He couldn’t believe what was in front of him.
    The rainforest simply ended, like a chapter in a book. In front, the landscape was blank. As far as he could see, and he could see for miles, the ground was empty and flat with just a few stumps of old trees sticking out of the dirt. It was as if a gigantic wind had somehow swept the rainforest away, leaving nothing behind, but even as Lohan stared at this lifeless, empty desert, he knew the truth. This had been done on purpose. Men had come here. They had cut down the rainforest for cattle ranches and farms. Slash-and-burn agriculture. They had grown bananas, maize and soyabean until the soil had refused to yield any more and then they had left.
    They say that the rainforests are the lungs of the world. But there was nothing breathing here. The Serra Morte mine had cleared away a few hectares of rainforest. But this destruction continued all the way to the horizon and it would be hundreds of years before it was repaired. Lohan gazed with a certain wonderment. Who needed the Old Ones to destroy the planet when mankind was doing such a good job of it already?
    “Lá săo!”
    The shout came from behind then and it was close enough for