CHAPTER FIVE #2
“Where is Elam?” he croaked.
“Your friend? I sent him on after he brought you in. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Hundi,” he said, his eyes focused on a point in the ceiling. “They weren’t there…and then…they were everywhere…the arrows and the fire…” he trailed off, reaching down to probe the bandage on his belly.
“Don’t touch that,” I said. I grabbed his hand and placed it across his chest—he didn’t let mine go, but pulled me close—his black eyes cut with anger.
“Hundi fight unfair. They fight for revenge,” his grip on my hand tightened until my fingers crushed together. “They will not stop!”
“You’re hurting me,” I seized his wrist and yanked my hand free, as I stepped back out of his reach.
“They are ghosts!” he yelled, “Shadow Warriors…” I backed out of the room. “They won’t stop until we are all dead!” The young man kept yelling, clearly hallucinating from the morphine—better to let him sleep it off.
I grasped the walkie-talkie and stepped back out to the porch as the young man’s words faded into the noise of the jungle around me.
I needed to do something or I would go mad. This waiting without knowing crept up my spine and ate away at the last reserves of my patience.
I rounded the corner where the cook fire was kept near the back of the hut. I stirred the ebbing coals, and found a few still aglow with life. Afterwards, I stoked the fire, added fuel and coaxed it back to flame. For what?—for something to do.
Where was the pot? Ah, there it was—but no water—of course, Rachel had gone to fetch more. I sighed.
As a group of children ran past me, half dressed, laughing, screaming, calling to me in their native tongue—an ache pulled on my chest.
They always come back, Rachel’s words echoed through my mind as I checked for the hundredth time if the walkie was on and working. Surely they were on the same channel and weren’t trying to call. Greg would’ve made sure.
“Greg? Tom? Dameon? Anyone there?” I spoke into the black box, the silence on the other end lengthening for several minutes.
I’d used all the mental energy I’d had to push back the thoughts that wanted to force their way into my mind since this morning. I gave into them now—to be prepared. To run scenarios of the possible futures I could be facing. To plan ahead and be ready.
If Greg didn’t call before dark, would I go to the field hospital to offer aid?
Should I wait for Rachel to get back? Would I need the help?
I knew the way. Greg had told me it was right off the primitive road that led into the hills, just a few miles in.
If I went and found them wounded from another attack, or even worse, dead…
I swallowed that thought, but allowed a moment of detached observation at this unlikely, but also not impossible, scenario—what would I do?
“You catastrophize everything,” Greg would often say when I ran through my list of possible scenarios with him back home.
“It’s not catastrophizing. It’s planning for all possible outcomes. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”
“Sid, there’s preparation, and then there’s an obsessive compulsion to try and control everything. Sometimes you just gotta see what happens.”
See, that was his problem. Why see what happens when you could make something happen?
With my decision made, I ran back into the hut where, thankfully, my patient was snoozing peacefully. A quick check showed no sign of fever.
I threw what few supplies they hadn’t taken this morning into one of the empty bins, scrawled a hasty note to Rachel, and sprang outside.
Another ten infuriating minutes searching for the spare Rover keys, which I found in a cubby hole near the satellite phone inside the hut, and I started up the old dusty hunk-of-junk that looked like it hadn’t been used in months.
The engine turned—damn, a stick. I revved the gas, mistaking it for the clutch and said another colorful word.
Greg had tried to teach me to drive his manual Porsche for months in an empty parking lot where I’d finally learned how to not stall the engine.
But driving among traffic while trying to think of when to push the clutch, let off the gas, and move the gears was more than I wanted to handle at the time.
Now, I silently berated myself for not learning.
I jammed the transmission into reverse, jerked the gears into first, and chugged over the hills that led out of the village.
After about a mile I passed a small group of women harvesting in a field of what looked like pineapples—I could smell the sugary sweetness in the wind. We exchanged waves as I continued to crawl along at a snail’s pace.
Must go faster, I thought, as I depressed the clutch and ground into second.
The Rover bounced over the road and lead into a canopy of palms, which finally offered relief from the blinding sun.
My hands ran along the peeling rubber on the steering wheel to touch the hot steel underneath, wondering briefly when was the last time anyone had driven the thing.
It was cooler here in the interior of the jungle and I could smell the moist earth of the peat forest. The road was less bumpy, but I had only traveled a mile. I grabbed for the walkie, “Greg, I’m coming to the field hospital…I haven’t heard from you so…I’m coming.” There was no answer.
Green and gold. I was bathed in the warmth emanating from the cascading palms all the way down to the burgeoning grasses and ferns that covered the jungle floor.
Birds squawked even above the rumble of the very old engine and the beauty all around was mesmerizing—and I granted myself a brief moment of awe at the vibrant tropical surroundings.
It was the rhythmic screech of birds that awakened me to a piercing pain on my forehead.
Pit prrr, pit pit prrr I blinked, but my eyes wouldn’t focus.
I closed them again, listening. What was that noise?
A low rumbling, coming from beneath me. I opened my eyes again, seeing my pants, my Chacos on a dusty floor board, three black pedals caked with dirt. I was in a vehicle—what happened?
Moaning, I lifted my head, crying out in pain as I raised it off the metal of the steering wheel. Something warm and liquid began to flow past my eyebrows into my eyes. “Ahh,” the noise escaped me but sounded foreign to my ears.
I looked around frantically, wiping blood on my khaki pants. There. A plastic bin sat on the passenger seat. How convenient, I thought, as I opened it to find a medicinal treasure trove. I pressed gauze to my forehead, and attempted to regain cerebral stability.
The engine reverberated beneath me. I looked ahead, seeing the front of the Rover sunk into a bog.
I gave it gas, the tires spun and sent mud splatters all around me.
Now sufficiently caked in both blood and mud, I sat for a moment trying to think.
What was I doing out here? I pushed past the fog in my brain, and attempted to grasp at any clue that would remind me.
There!—a face I recognized—the memory of it filling me with warmth…Greg.
I remembered.
I was taking supplies.
There had been an attack.
I had to get to him.
With shaky hands, I taped up a crude bandage to my forehead and picked up the bin. I killed the engine, exited the Rover, and sank down several inches into mud.
I closed my eyes against the dizziness that swept over me, and vomited—my head was swimming in a fish bowl. I was definitely concussed, and stood a moment until the vertigo diminished.
Determined, I grabbed up the bin and trudged toward the path.
Had I gotten off track somehow? Where was the road?
The field hospital where Greg and the others were should be just up the path…
a mile? Two? Could I walk that far? I had to.
There was no other choice. Why hadn’t I brought water, I silently chastised.
I swallowed the cotton in my throat and began walking.
I’d walked for ten minutes that felt much longer when I heard a faint roar.
A cool breeze swept past me, tickling the hairs on the back of my neck.
I saw a break in the forest where the light shone brighter, like a clearing in the trees that sat on the other side.
The sound was coming from there. I set down the bin, walked a few feet, and swept past bushes wet from the damp air.
Here, the expanse widened where the roaring got louder, and revealed the white rippling sheet of a small waterfall.
The mist billowed around the moss-covered rocks and emptied into a small alcove of the clearest water I had ever seen.
An oasis. It flowed slowly into a creek that snaked its way back into the forest on the other side.
The sight took my breath away, all green and blue and sparkling in the sun.
I circumvented the slippery rocks and bank, using the cool, rock wall to steady myself.
I cupped my hand against the thunderous cascade, and brought the cool water to my lips.
It was cold and tasted sweet, slaking my overwhelming thirst. I drank even more and splashed some on my face and neck, actually reveling in the moment of unexpected pleasure, despite my current bleak circumstance.
Then movement caught my eye.
He was crouched near the pool, sipping water from his hands, but he’d seen me.
We stared for what felt like an eternity.
He was clad only in a long loincloth, sweeping the ground.
His dark skin was covered in a thick, gray substance from face to feet, giving him an ashy, almost zombie-like appearance.
Hundi?—my mind questioned—definitely not Makian. At least, I didn’t think he was. The hill-dwellers knew the Americans had come and had been here for a while. I noticed a bow and quiver of arrows close by, awaiting his retrieval.