The Ritual

asked, breaking Luke’s absorption that made his thoughts sluggish.
    ‘More of the same,’ he said.
    Hutch moaned and rubbed his hands over his face. ‘We’re not making great progress guys.’
    ‘Piss off,’ Dom said. Bent double, he pushed at the sides of his injured knee with both filthy hands. Raising the foot off the ground like a lame horse, he grimaced. Phil said
nothing, but stood and stared in the direction of the abandoned buildings.
    Luke took a deep breath and then exhaled. ‘Why don’t you guys take a breather. I’ll scoot ahead and see what’s what further down. It might open up.’
    ‘And try and clear some of this shit off the path before I get down there. On me hands and knees at this rate,’ Dom said.
    Luke smiled. ‘With what, a camping spoon?’
    Hutch cackled. ‘Make sure you keep the edges neat.’
    Luke moved ahead, more quickly than he had walked all morning. The slow pace set by Dom was reviving his backache and his impatience was fast turning to irritation and a total
flattening of his spirits. At times it seemed as if the path had actually come to an end. When he met a blockage now, of which there were many, at least he could turn about and just force his way
through backwards, with his arms held across his face to protect his eyes against the whipping branches that scored his cheeks and forehead. It was all difficult ground, and one of his ears was
bleeding, but he didn’t have to keep stopping while Hutch held the branches up for Dom and Phil to shuffle through; nor was he subjected to Dom’s constant moaning.
    Phil still hadn’t said much. He was either mute from the pain in his blistered heels, or so dead on his feet he couldn’t think straight enough to form a sentence. Or he was still in
shock from the night before. Maybe all three.
    Twenty minutes out of earshot of the others and the path stopped moving in a straight line; it began twisting about the ancient trunks, sometimes rising and sometimes falling away.
    It became exhausting and hard on the joints to haul himself up a tangled incline, festooned with slippery tree roots, to then suddenly descend over uneven ground on the other side. A tree seemed
to have fallen about every twenty feet.
    He couldn’t believe how much his chest hurt. He thought he was fit. Despite the smoking he worked out three times a week and ran at the weekend, but it was no preparation for this kind of
exertion. He tried not to imagine how Dom and Phil felt.
    They were all pathetic; getting lost like a bunch of amateurs. The kind of idiots who attempted to climb a mountain without proper training or the right gear; or those wankers who tried
crossings of treacherous water and ended up diverting the ocean’s shipping in a search and rescue. People who were lauded as heroes of survival upon rescue. Why? They were nuisances. He could
not believe they were fast becoming one and the same.
    He put his head down and smashed through the bracken. Gritted his teeth and forced through the pain barrier in his chest and thighs. Refused to be defeated. Enough now. Some sky;
that’s what he wanted. A bit of sky and some open ground, soft with leaves, so they could weave effortlessly through the trees.
    A branch dug into the loose cloth under his arm and propelled him backwards and onto his backside. He snatched at the branch and tried to snap it, but the supple strength of the wood resisted
and made his arms feel like water.
    He remained seated, and panted to get his breath back. Hutch insisted they were beginning to angle south west, ‘more or less’. But Luke had instinctively felt himself being led back
north west on this trail, and no nearer to the edge of the forest than they were the previous night when they made camp.
    He could not stand much more of the suffocating wet wood, forcing him into a crouch, knocking him about, tearing his skin. His throat burned. Dried sweat was producing salt on his skin and
chafing the inside of his thighs and beneath his belt all the way around his waist. He wanted to tear his clothes off.
    Thick with pain, the muscles in his legs began to cramp. They had to get out of the heavy stuff. If the undergrowth didn’t clear very soon, he would walk back and find the others. Then he
would retrace their steps back to where they had come onto the trail the day before. Alone if necessary. And he’d go for help. Whether Hutch agreed or not, his instincts were telling him they
were approaching that time.