Stripes of Gehenna

by Lara Hues

  "What happened?" Shar asked. The man coughed, wheezing as he tried to speak.

  "Shot," he said.

  "Yes, but why? By whom?" Shar’s voice took on a new urgency.

  "Another hunter." He coughed again and his voice was hard to understand. "We all wanted to go home." He looked to me, and a few tears trickled down his face. Even though I imagined what horrific pain he was in, I didn’t expect to see him cry. "Only the one that brought her back would go home. Her name card is the only one that will open the back door. He programmed it that way." Then he repeated himself. "We all wanted to go home, but only one will." His chest rose and fell with great difficulty. "I guess it won’t be me." I reached for my back pocket. Beneath the thin cotton I felt the rectangular plastic card. The key to the exit. Anyone's hope at safety rested in my back pocket.

  I knew it wasn’t my fault that this man was shot. I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t order the hunt. I didn’t shoot down the car. Regardless of what guilt was justified or reasonable, I couldn’t watch him die.

  I ran, my feet splashing in the mud and spraying dark water all over my legs and arms. The root-cave was not a home, but it was the only place I had felt the semblance of peace or safety since I had left home and I clambered between the convoluted entrances fighting the urge to sob.

  Richy had not only kidnapped these men, but now he forced them to hunt for me. He had offered the incentive of a one-way ticket home to the man who could bring me in safely, and as a result, he had made them all into manhunters. They were, or at least some of them were, killing off the competition. Desperation was no man’s destination, and yet, dozens of men found themselves doing things they would likely never have done before. Maybe some of them had wives or children. All of them had mothers.

  I pulled the thin plastic card from my pocket. ALL ACCESS PASS. It was my key card with my name, but it was the only key that would unlock the back door to the compound.

  I sobbed, attempting to keep my sound muffled in my arms, and battling my brain which told me that none of this was my responsibility or a result of my personal mistakes. It was hard to feel like a victim when everyone around me was dying. I felt much more like the cause of all the death and sorrow. I didn’t care about the physical aches anymore--not even the pangs of hunger which came much more frequently now. I was exhausted physically and emotionally, but what bothered me was that my death seemed so imminent, and yet it would mean that no one, not even Shar, was very likely to get home.

  I’d die here. I cried, mourning the men and Shar and myself. My hopes, my dreams, my future.

  ***

  "Kathryn?" Shar whispered as I heard his footsteps in the mud drawing near. It was pitch black out now; darker than any sheet of black velvet could ever be.

  "Yeah," I spoke softly, and he used my voice to find the space in the roots.

  "We must not talk or be too loud. I tried to push him into the river but he was too heavy. His scent will draw the tigers, so we must be very still."

  I nodded, even though I knew that he couldn’t see the gesture in the darkness. I felt his hand on my shoulder. "It'll be okay," he said, and pulled me onto his chest.

  The smell of his cologne was nearly gone, suffocated by the reek of mud and plants, but I could still smell it. I buried my face into him, careful to avoid the small plastic buttons, and breathed him in. His heartbeat pounded, steady and sure into my ears, drowning out the sounds of the world around me. I let him become my world.

  Exhaustion overtook me and I slept deeply for a while. Whether it was the crunch of branches or the splash of the river that woke me, I wasn’t sure. I tried to sit up straight but Shar pinned me against his beating chest. Holding completely still, I looked out into the darkness hoping to see nothing, but needing to look regardless.

  The thump, thump of the body being rolled across the ground quickened my heartbeat to unhealthy levels. With nothing else to picture, all I could see was the man being turned over and prodded by the tiger. Wide-eyed I stared at the darkness, imagining shapes and shadows until I knew for certain that the giant steps in the mud were getting closer.

  I couldn’t see the tiger. I couldn’t see his ears or his stripes. I couldn’t see the giant jaw and huge teeth. I couldn’t see the paws that ever so silently stepped through the water, but suddenly, as the light of the moon caught them, I saw two huge orange orbs, glowing like ghostly pearls. If I hadn’t already been holding my breath, I would have gasped. I stared at the eyes, feeling like they were staring at me, until just as suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone.

  A splash and the crunch of branches followed by silence told me that the tiger had left, but I couldn’t close my eyes, and I couldn’t relax.

  "Shh," Shar whispered, holding me closer. "Sleep." His voice was quiet and soothing but the command didn’t help. I shook my head.

  "Shh," he repeated and gently pushed my head down. Relaxing my neck I must have eventually shut my eyes, and by morning, my pulse had returned again to normal.

  ***

  The sunlight revealed deep sinkholes of tracks along the river, many of which had filled with water. Down the bank, near the spot I had last seen him, lay the man.

  "Why didn’t they…." I began my question but didn’t finish.

  "I don’t think he was hungry." Shar explained, and I noticed for the first time the gun he was pulling from the roots.

  "Was that his?"

  "Yes,"

  "Will it help us?" I’d never touched a real gun before.

  "Potentially."

  "You know how to use it?" I asked.

  Shar’s eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips in obvious annoyance. "Yes. Very well." He hadn’t seemed the type to me, but I hadn’t meant to insult him.

  "Oh, I just wouldn’t know-" I said.

  "It’s fine," he proceeded. "Let’s get moving towards the back door." He took a few steps towards the river and then looked at me. "How hungry are you?"

  Hungry didn’t even being to describe it. "Very." I had hoped he hadn’t forgotten how loudly my stomach had been growing the previous night.

  "Let’s get some fish and then we can go," he said. Then, pulling a knife from his pocket he cut a thorn from the branch of a tree. "I, um, need some hair," he said shyly.

  "Some hair?" I repeated.

  "Yeah, to tie together for fish line. The fish won’t be able to see it, and it will be the fastest way to get some fish before getting on the move again."

  I fingered my hair, mud matted and tangled as never before. "How much?" I didn’t mean to be selfish at the moment, but my hair was, well, mine. He blinked at me, as if questioning whether my hair was more important than my starvation. "It’s fine, take whatever you need." I shut my eyes and turned my back to him.

  I felt his hands delicately on my head, and I imagined he was playing with my hair rather than cutting it off.

  "Done," he said, and I resisted the urge to reach up and touch what I feared would be a real hack job.

  "I was just teasing you." He showed me empty hands. "Can you imagine how long it would take to make a fishing line out of hair?" He chuckled and started pulling at some threads in the bottom of his shirt.

  "You didn't cut my hair?"

  "You have a strange definition of trust," he commented as he tied a few threads from his shirt together.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You trust me with tigers and crocodiles. You trust me with your life and you trust me enough to sleep in my arms, but you don't trust me with your hair," he mused.

  "I know, I just…I don’t know."

  "You don’t seem incredibly vain, so I'm confused by your attachment to it in such a time as this."

  My face got warm. "I’m not really…I just….I guess I felt like that’s something I had control over."

  "It’s fine. I just sometimes think aloud." He fastened the thorn to the end of the thread and dipped it into the river. I tried to deny it to myself, but I very much hoped that the line wouldn
’t break with a fish.

  "The tigers must not like the way people taste. They must enjoy hunting us for the game of it. What is that saying? A game of cat and mouse?"

  "Yeah, something like that." I had seen cats play with their food, injuring it and watching it try to crawl away before pouncing on it again.

  "It sounded like he tried to play last night, but since he got no response, he got bored and left," Shar said just as the line drew tight and with a fast jerk he pulled the line, the thorn and the fish out of the water.

  It flopped and gasped for a few seconds before Shar made quick work of gutting it, cutting off the head and handing me some pieces that looked much more like the sushi from my parents’ date night than a living, breathing creature from the river. Though the texture triggered a bit of a gag reflex, my hunger was intense, and I barely chewed before swallowing. I didn’t think twice about eating the whole fish until after it was done, and Shar had his line back in the water.

  "Sorry," I said. "The next one is all yours."

  "It's fine," he said, "I can be very patient, but the idea of humans hunting us makes me very uneasy. I know tigers--it's people that I don’t know. I can’t predict them in the same way."

  The second fish took a little longer to catch than the first, but the worms and slugs which had previously pestered us in our den of roots proved useful as bait.

  Shar cut the fish adeptly, ate quickly, and tucked the thread-fishing line into his pocket. "Wouldn’t want to cut any hair, would we?" he teased before picking up the gun and walking away.

  "Should we be careful not to talk? We have been trying to whisper for so long, and now it seems less important to you," I noticed.

  "I don’t think it matters too much at this point. The tigers can smell the others much better than us. Their smell and noise will be more attractive and we aren’t looking for the tigers whereas they are."

  "So, we can talk," I verified.

  "Sure," he said. I never thought I'd want to hold a hand that reeked of fish guts, but when he offered, my heart leaped. Hands locked together, we re-entered the jungle and headed toward what I had full faith was the back door to Richy’s.

  Chapter Fifteen: More Gunshots

  For the first time, Shar and I just talked. We talked about tigers and school and my parents. We talked about his uncertainties regarding where he would attend school, as if he wasn’t a prisoner. We talked about movies and books and science fair. No matter what we discussed, the conversation flowed easily and I was able to mostly forget the horrid situation in which we found ourselves. I realized it was because my vanity was gone. My pride had drowned in the river, and now, without it, Shar was my friend.

  We didn’t talk about the deaths of the men or the cable car. We didn’t even talk about Richy anymore, which made my mind more at ease because although Richy was certainly nothing of a father to me, he was my blood relative, and learning about his subversive plans and the ways he had exploited everyone else on the island made me disgusted.

  It was hard not to turn and gasp at every crackle of leaves or movement in nearby bushes as birds flew away or small, unseen creatures scurried through the brush. However, it became exhausting both physically and emotionally to continually whip my head towards the sound and strain to figure out what it was.

  Despite feeling tired from being so alert, my head swung to the right as I heard something coming. There was something different about the crunch, and I swallowed hard fearing that it was another hunter.

  The BAM from the gun echoed through my entire body, and while nothing hurt, I wondered if I’d been shot.

  Then I looked over and saw Shar, lying among the ferns, blood gushing from his thigh.

  "No!" I shouted. "No, no, no, no." I ran over to him and ripped part of my green cargo pants for a tourniquet.

  A man had somehow managed to conceal himself in the bushes not ten feet from us. "Come on," the man demanded. He grabbed my arm roughly and tore me from Shardul.

  "Stop it!" I shrieked, batting at him in futility. "He needs me!" I reached for the gun which Shardul had dropped. It was between him and me. Just lying on the ground. This man must not have seen what I was reaching for.

  The gunman tightened his grip on me, and shrugged with one shoulder. "He probably does. He’s going to bleed to death, or get an infection, or else the scent will draw the tigers this direction. He needs help, that’s for sure. But you aren’t going to be able to give it to him." The man looked at Shardul and gloated. "Bet you wish you had some of that GH10 in your system now, don’t ya? You’d be able to fight through the pain and use the gun. You’d be able to take this precious reward to the back door and get home. You’re such a fool, and now you’re a dead man." The man turned to go. He tugged at my arm and I fell to my knees. "I’m taking you to Richy. We aren’t far from the door now. Once I give you back to your father, I get my freedom. I get my life back."

  "You take a life to get your life back?" I shouted.

  "John!" Shar shouted, and I could hear the pain in his voice. It made him sound squeaky, but his words were brave. "Let no human being be despised, for who can tell how soon even the lowest may be raised, and how the arrogant fall."

  "That’s it then? That’s your final word? You should have taken the drug Shar. It might have saved your life. You’re the arrogant one here." John pointed his gun to me and pushed me forward. Shar spoke again as he tied the cloth I had left around his wound. The blood dripped down his leg and drenched his fingers while he worked. Fingers I'd held so recently.

  "A person of excellent qualities is like a flower, which, whether found amongst weeds or worn on the head, still preserves its fragrance."

  "Still quoting others, huh? Well, at least you’ll die happy. Even if you have nothing to say for yourself."

  "Happiness consists in the absence of anxiety." Shar clenched his teeth together as he spoke. My heart sank as I watched him try to get up and fall, involuntarily shrieking in pain. I tried relentlessly to break away from John.

  "Well you certainly seem to be void of anxiety," John mocked. "You think you’re so wise."

  "Wisdom assists more than strength." Shar wouldn’t stop saying proverbs. He sounded like a motivational record more than a dying man. How I wished I could either run to him and help or be taken far away where I wouldn’t have to watch his blood soak the jungle floor.

  "You’re making me mad now. I’m gonna shoot you again if you don’t stop talking!" John raised his gun. "This time I'll aim for your big head!"

  "Advice to the stupid produces anger." He said it and it seemed familiar. I think he’d said it to me back in high school.

  "Shar, stop!" I begged him. Nothing would be worse than watching him die. "Please, don’t say any more."

  "One more. This is one of my own," he said, and he winced as he rested his head back on the ground. "True strength is integrity and strength of mind and soul. All other strength is feigned."

  John stepped toward Shar again and I knew he was going to shoot him. Probably in the head. John’s fat fingers released my arm as he lifted his gun. Free from his grasp, I had only a second to act. I reached for the barrel of the gun and pulled it to the side, angling it only slightly away from Shar.

  But it was enough. Shar leapt with amazing speed to the gun that rested on the ground unnoticed. He lifted it, fired it, and exhaled while John’s enormous body fell to the ground like a rockslide.

  I gasped and ran to Shar.

  Not daring to look at John, I re-tied Shar’s wound and added cloth to it.

  "Kathryn," he said, blinking back tears. "It’s not so bad. I won’t die. I was faking more pain than I feel."

  "Feigning pain?" I asked.

  "Something like that," he said, but I didn’t believe him.

  "I can find an antiseptic plant. I can get the wound clean." I promised, standing and looking all around. I knew dozens of antiseptic plants back home. Tea tree, cedar, thyme, St. John’s Wort, or even a rose petal would do it.
<
br />   Another rustle in the leaves made me hold my breath.

  Shar stood and stepped in front of me, raising and leveling his weapon.

  "I have you in my scope. I just killed a man. Do not move or I will shoot." Shar nearly shouted the command, and he was clearly under the same impression that I was; it was a man. His voice was assertive and bold.

  "Shar, it’s me," the man said slowly. The crackle of dried ferns underfoot drew nearer, and I can’t say I was relieved to see Bryce stumble from the branches. His lab coat was missing. His own button-down shirt that had originally been yellow was now stained with splotches of blood and dyed brown from mud. Shar lowered the gun slowly.

  "What are you doing here?" Shar, fortunately, didn’t set the gun down completely. His body language and tone were still very defensive.

  Bryce’s body shook, almost like he had the chills. "You said you were headed to the back door, so I came looking for you." He kept shaking.

  "Where are the others who were with you?"

  Bryce placed his hands over his mouth for a second, then turned and threw up all over the ground. "One was injured, and he fell behind as the tigers hunted us." Bryce looked at me before continuing. "The others were shot."

  “What’s wrong with you?" Shar asked.

  “Uh, withdrawals,” Bryce said, rubbing his arms. I almost felt bad for him. Shaking, speaking slowly, throwing up. I’d bet his few days had been even worse than ours.

  "At least I’m not shot." Bryce eyed the gun in Shar’s hands. "Not yet anyway."

  "I only plan to shoot threats." Shar maintained his rough attitude.

  "I’m not a threat." Bryce opened his hands as though their vacancy would merit trust between us. They shook like leaves in the wind. He looked at John and I did too. Shar had hit him in the head. The pain for John was probably minimal, but the blood was everywhere. I tried to think of him as a cadaver rather than a dead man I’d recently spoken to; a man who was desperate to get home.