Infested by Mark R Faulkner Page A

air was still cool and fresh. I held it in my lungs for as
long as I could before slowly letting it out again. For a brief time the mist
thickened as the morning warmed the river. The sky greyed and the sun shone
through the fog as a pale white disk, but its heat soon won out and the mist
quickly evaporated to leave the day bright and brimming with vivid colours.
     
    As the morning drew on, the heat of the sun grew more intense and so,
rummaging behind me in the dry-bag, I fetched out my old battered and trusted,
wide brimmed hat. It had been many years since I’d suffered sunstroke but it was
not an experience I cared to repeat. Just in front of my knees, I’d put a big
square water carrier and I drank straight from it, spilling a good mouthful
down the front of my vest. After the initial shock, the coolness was welcome.
    For the next couple of hours, at a guess, I travelled lazily down the
river, occasionally having to steer around sunken trees or rocks. Every now
and again, the water sped up as it flowed over and around such obstacles, creating
choppy riffles which accelerated me downstream before spitting me out into calmer
waters below. In these places the sunlight danced on the tousled water, at
times dazzling and full of colour, and then the surface was flat again and the
dancing golden light became replaced with deep reflections of trees and reeds.
     
    When the time seemed fitting, I spied a place to pull over for a while,
where the bank was not too steep, nor too muddy and I could easily disembark
with minimal chance of falling into the river. After coaxing the life back
into my legs - they’d been folded beneath the seat for too long - I scrambled
up the bank to take a look at my surroundings. In a canoe you are often afforded
the view of the river, its banks and the immediate landscape, but nothing of
the wider country though which you are passing.
    Now I straightened and looked around, breathing a deep sigh of
contentment. For as far as the eye could see there were only fields; yellow,
green and brown, stretching to the horizon in all directions. A church steeple
rose from behind a copse of trees and the sound of its bells, summoning folk to
worship, carried softly to my ears. Other than that, there were no signs of
human habitation; there were no roads and no people.
    I lunched on cheese and onion sandwiches, which were a little squashed
but hadn’t fared too badly from being stuffed into the bottom of the bag. When
I’d finished eating, and taken another few mouthfuls of water, I lay back on
the edge of the cornfield I’d found myself in and gazed up at the sky. For a
while I did nothing but watch rare clouds drift slowly across an expanse of
blue, too insubstantial to diminish the sun’s rays. At the edge of the field a
kestrel hovered for a few minutes before diving out of sight, taking back to
the air some time later, presumably after also finishing its lunch.
     
    When it felt like I should, I headed back out onto the river. The
afternoon sun was hot and despite the protection afforded me by factor thirty
sun-cream and my hat, I could feel the skin on my arms and legs beginning to
burn. Although the sensation wasn’t an unpleasant one, I feared it would be
later that evening and so, as much as possible, I paddled close to the bank and
in the shade of the trees which hung out over the river.
    At length I came across a place where a narrow, wooden footbridge
arched overhead. The banks were high and I could see no road or dwellings but
nonetheless, a dozen or more teenagers were gathered on the bridge – boys bare
chested, wearing knee length shorts while the girls wore bikinis. All of them
had their attention on the downstream side of the bridge, watching, egging each
other on and laughing as one by one they climbed onto the balustrade and threw
themselves into the water.
    “Coming through,” I shouted up to them, bringing the boat to a stop and
holding it steady in the water. None of them had seen