Jungle of Bones

by Ben Mikaelsen

  Dylan had thought the food was bad in Swagup, but tonight they ate some kind of rat and more pads of cooked sago starch. It didn’t matter because Dylan had lost his appetite. It could have been pizza and he still wouldn’t have been hungry. Lying awake in the dark, listening to the monotonous wailing of insects, Dylan felt chilled. Loud, vicious grunts sounded from deep in the jungle. Dylan looked over and could make out Quentin sound asleep under his mosquito net, his breaths deep and regular.

  The next morning the group rose early again, this time hiking mostly among the trees. Huge roots poked out of the ground like big tentacles trying to trip them. Branches, vines, palms, and grasses swiped at their faces and arms.

  “What was that grunting sound last night?” Dylan asked.

  “Those were feral pigs,” Quentin said. “They’re wild, but they were once tame. Somehow they escaped or got lost, so now they’re considered feral. That’s what feral means; they were tame to begin with, but now they’re wild. If they had always been wild, the —”

  “Okay, okay!” Dylan said. “I get it!”

  Quentin frowned, his feelings hurt.

  A big cobweb snared Dylan’s face and arm as he passed. He swiped madly at it, as if at some invisible monster, only to trip on a gnarly root and sprawl headfirst onto the ground. The heavy cloud of mosquitoes swarmed over Dylan like a haze, always biting.

  Quentin moved to help him up, but Dylan grunted and waved him away. He stood slowly on his own.

  “I don’t need your help,” he snapped. “And I don’t need you explaining everything to me like I’m a kid.”

  “I’m just trying to be nice,” Quentin said.

  “No, you’re just trying to show off. I get it, Quentin. Everybody gets it. You’re the Einstein and I’m the screw-up. Go brag to someone else. I’m not interested.”

  “I don’t think —”

  “Yes, you do!” Dylan shouted. He jabbed his finger at Quentin’s chest. “You all do. I know Uncle Todd told you all why I’m here. I’m the dumb nephew who got in trouble. I’m the bad kid he has to scare straight with a hike through the jungle. Well if Uncle Todd thought this was going to fix me, he was wrong. This whole trip is a stupid idea.”

  Dylan stomped off, leaving Quentin behind. For some reason he felt like he was about to cry, and there was no way he’d let Quentin see that.

  Because of the thick canopy of trees, nobody noticed the dark, ominous clouds gathering over the jungle. It was mid-afternoon before they broke into a small opening and could look up and see the angry sky churning above them. Allen called a stop. “Everybody take a little break. Let’s see what this weather is up to.”

  Uncle Todd approached Dylan. “Stay close,” he ordered quietly.

  “You’re not my babysitter,” Dylan shot back.

  “Actually, I am,” Uncle Todd replied. “Don’t make me sit on you.”

  Dylan waited until Uncle Todd turned away, and then mouthed, “Whatever!”

  He had to go to the bathroom like everybody else, but before walking away from the group to relieve himself, Dylan reached into his backpack and pulled out his headphones. He didn’t need his backpack, because he was just going to the bathroom, but he was going to have a few moments of sanity alone.

  Dylan walked until the jungle hid the group from his sight, and then put on the headphones and cranked up the volume. The blast of heavy metal music carried him instantly away from where he was. After relieving himself, Dylan deliberately walked farther from the group. They would be mad if they knew what he was doing, but he didn’t feel good, and he was angry and tired. He really didn’t want to talk to Quentin anymore. Especially not after admitting he was a screw-up.

  The trees where Dylan walked were dense, with several small paths branching off. He looked down and could see his footprints clearly in the soft ground. It would be simple to follow the tracks back to the group. He kept walking, each step a deliberate act of defiance against the stupid adults who thought they knew what was best for him. His loud music kept Dylan from hearing the whistles and shouts from the group — already they were trying to locate him.

  Dylan decided he didn’t care what anybody thought anymore. If the group wanted to play Boy Scouts, that was okay. But he didn’t have to. He swayed and bobbed to the beat of his music, walking aimlessly down the twisting trail. He pushed his pants down some. He felt big drops of rain hit his arms but ignored them — every day it rained a little in the jungle. Not until the drops became heavier did Dylan take notice and finally turn around to head back. Suddenly, a sharp clap of thunder sounded over the music in his ears. At the same instant the sky burst open and dumped water, as if a swimming pool had been turned upside down.

  At first Dylan walked slowly back toward the group, enjoying the cool drenching relief. Rain wouldn’t hurt him. But then he looked down and discovered his prints had disappeared, washed away by a small stream now covering the path. Dylan quickened his pace, but the first intersection he came to looked strange and unfamiliar. He turned and looked back, no longer sure which path had taken him away from the group — he hadn’t been paying attention. He pulled off the headphones and began to shout, but his voice was totally washed out by the drenching downpour and the deafening claps of thunder that echoed back and forth across the sky.

  Dylan tried to stay calm. He couldn’t be very far from the group. Stumbling, he began running down the trail, dodging the branches and tangled vines that hung over the narrow path. The rain stung his eyes. An exposed root tripped him, and he sprawled on the muddy trail. Picking himself up, he rubbed a bruised elbow and kept running. Where was the group?

  It had begun with nervousness and then grown into a nagging fear. Now blind panic gripped Dylan. He screamed desperately and kept plunging ahead into the downpour, searching frantically for anything that might look familiar.

  How long he ran he couldn’t even guess. Soon his lungs burned, and he sucked in hard to catch his breath. The wind and rain continued. The streams down the paths became small rivers, and with each step, Dylan’s feet sank deeper and deeper into the water and muck. Still, nothing looked familiar.

  Lightning flashed above the thick tree cover like madness in the sky, and the deafening thunder sounded almost constantly. Dylan gasped for air as he kept running. He stumbled wildly through the trees until the path disappeared and he found himself standing deep in the jungle, up to his ankles in water. Then, as suddenly as the rain started, it stopped.

  Dylan stood trembling. He screamed again, but for the first time he realized how many other noises there were in the jungle. These weren’t the noises he was used to back home: children screaming, doors slamming, lawn mowers running. Here there were weird, scary sounds, strange grunts and rustles in the undergrowth, the screeching and screaming of birds in the canopy overhead, and the ear-piercing chorusing of the insects.

  Probably nobody in the world could hear his puny, insignificant voice screaming. For the first time in his life, Dylan felt so very small. His cheeks had dried from the sweat and rain, but now they became wet again with desperate tears.

  At first, Dylan thought this whole thing was just a bad dream. A tiny mistake. A little screw-up. Anytime now, one of the guides would come running down the path calling out his name. They would find him and take him back to the rest of the group — that was their job. Allen Jackson would give him a lecture on survival. Uncle Todd would get mad in his typical drill sergeant way. And everybody would say, “We told you so.”

  But that wasn’t happening. Each long minute that passed, the knot in Dylan’s stomach tightened. If only he had just stopped running when the rain first started. Now he could be miles from the group. What should he do? Even as he stood debating, mosquitoes swarmed around his head and arms, biting. Rain and sweat had washed off any repellant he had put on that morning. Walking might help a little, but what if he was walking farther away from the group? While he was standing still, however, the mosquitoes kept chowing down.

  Dylan loo
ked around desperately for anything that looked familiar. Where was the big swamp they had walked along? Where was the long log where they had seen the python? What direction was the village of Balo? Or some other village? Any village! There had to be people somewhere.

  This was all Uncle Todd’s fault. It was his idea to come on this trip. Who did he think he was, some stupid explorer?

  But Dylan knew the truth. He had been a bonehead. If only he had taken his pack when he went to the bathroom — that was what everyone else had done. And it would have been so easy to stay near the group. Allen had warned all of them how dangerous the jungle could be. Already Dylan knew he was a big screw-up, but would this be his last mistake?

  To make things worse, Dylan felt the same nausea he had felt earlier, in the village. And his chills had grown worse. Something wasn’t right — it had to be almost 100 degrees out. After the rain, the jungle had become a steam bath, so why was he so cold? He shivered as if he were standing naked in a snowstorm. Dylan buttoned up his shirt all the way to the top, but it didn’t help.

  Again and again Dylan waved at the mosquitoes, but it was wasted motion. Instantly the hungry little vampires returned, attacking his face and neck. Dylan tried pulling the shirt up over his head, but then the blood suckers feasted on his back and stomach. Dylan turned and kept going — he couldn’t just stand there. If he walked fast, surely he would come to someone or someplace soon.

  Overhead, clouds hid the sun. Dylan realized that even if he could see the sun, he hadn’t made a mental note of where it was earlier when they were walking. That was the guides’ job — to keep them from getting lost. With blind determination, Dylan plunged deeper into the jungle, searching for anything familiar. But everything looked the same. Overhead, trees formed a solid canopy of jumbled, twisted branches. Now he couldn’t even see the sky.

  Still Dylan continued walking.

  For the first time he really noticed the strange world in which he was lost. Heavy beards of some kind of moss hung from the branches and vines. Flowers with blazing colors and strange shapes blossomed among the deadfall. Everywhere new growth sprouted, green buds, things alive and fresh, shoots and vines beginning life. But there were also decay and rot, things dead or dying. With the heat and moisture, trees probably decayed in weeks. That was the cycle of life. What bothered Dylan was the thought that he might soon be part of the dead-or-dying segment of the cycle.

  For Dylan, time disappeared. How long had it been since the rainstorm when he became lost? Two hours? Ten hours? Had he walked one mile or five miles? He existed in a daze, simply here at this moment, chilled and nauseated, mouth as dry as dust and muck up to his shins. He could barely even feel his feet.

  When Dylan’s chills ended, he began to sweat. He imagined Quentin’s voice back in the group. “Why didn’t Dylan listen? Why didn’t Dylan think? What was dumb Dylan thinking?”

  Dylan envied Quentin right now. Himself, he didn’t know a single plant or bird. He had no idea what he could touch or eat. Every noise was weird and new. Strange and scary sounds came from the underbrush, sometimes moving away as if scared, but sometimes coming closer — those sounds raised the hair on his neck. Dylan had no choice but to keep going. For the next few hours he trudged down narrow paths, no longer looking for something familiar, no longer waving the mosquitoes away. Just moving.

  Finally he had to stop. Dylan touched his cheeks, puffy from all the mosquito bites. His mouth had become chalk-dry but he dared not drink water from the puddles all around him — the murky fluid smelled stagnant and putrid. Dylan tried to swallow, but his tongue was dry and swollen, like a big rock in his mouth. He looked for a coconut tree but couldn’t find one. There had been dozens of coconut trees near Balo and Swagup. Allen had said something about them being planted by villagers.

  Somehow Dylan knew he had to find fluid. Finally he came across a single coconut tree. Dylan tried to climb the thin tree but gave up — his body could barely stand. Reluctantly he picked a coconut off the ground that looked fresh and examined it. It wasn’t like the ones in the market. This one still had a tough husk covering the shell. In any case, it couldn’t be too old. Allen Jackson had said something to the group about not drinking from a coconut on the ground, but what choice did he have? Allen was probably talking about coconuts that had fallen a while ago. This one looked fresh — probably just fell off the tree today.

  Dylan began ripping at the husk. If only he had his knife from his survival kit. Even after much ripping, most of the husk clung stubbornly to the shell. Finally, Dylan gave up and began striking the husk against a sharp edge of a rock until a small crack appeared in the shell. He held the coconut up and sipped the wet juice leaking from the crack. The coconut water ran down the sides of his cheeks as he drank. When the shell was empty, Dylan picked up another and ripped at the husk again. Once more he gave up and pounded the shell on the rock. It took great effort for the small amount of coconut water he was able to drink. It tasted gross but was wet.

  Finally able to swallow again, Dylan looked down. His ripped and muddy shirt hung open, and clinging to his stomach like small sausages were three big leeches, their black bodies stark against his white skin. Dylan freaked, raising his hands up and jumping around in circles. In desperation, he reached down and one by one he ripped them off, throwing them into the jungle like tiny grenades.

  Dylan examined his stomach. Each leech had left a welt that now leaked blood from the center. It was at that moment that Dylan remembered Allen Jackson saying, “If you don’t have alcohol, simply leave leeches alone. Once they’re full of blood, they just fall off. Don’t pull them off!”

  Dylan wanted to scream. He knew what he should have done, but he had already ripped them off. Why did he always have to do things without thinking? He believed that everything and everybody in the world was stupid except him. But maybe that was all a big lie. Everything that had happened at home — stealing, fights, skipping school, breaking into the junkyard — it had all been his fault. And here — thinking mosquito spray was for wimps, wandering away from the group without his survival kit, pulling off the leeches — that had all been his fault, too. He was the stupid one.

  Dylan stared down into a smelly pool of water and saw his reflection. He hardly recognized the dirty ghost he saw. He spit angrily at the puddle and kept walking. He had no idea what to do or where to go, but he had to keep moving. That meant he was still alive. Walking made a moving target for the mosquitoes. But walking had become hard. His wet boots rubbed on his heels, causing big blisters that burned with every step and made him limp. His legs felt like rubber posts. His mud-caked boots felt like big anchors on his feet. Dylan had the haunting feeling that if he stopped too long, he would die.

  Finally, Dylan stopped again. He could ignore the stinging of his leech wounds and the painful hurt from his blisters, but the itching of mosquito bites made his skin feel like it was on fire. He reached down and cupped handfuls of mud in his hand and smeared them over his face and body to ward off the vicious small insects that kept attacking him. Then he continued limping down the trail.

  Sometime later, he glanced up, fearing it would soon be getting dark. And then what? How could he survive a night in the jungle? There were probably animals that came out at night that would like nothing better than to eat a bonehead boy from Wisconsin.

  Suddenly, Dylan’s stomach began cramping. He stopped and bent over until the big knot relaxed. Then again he walked and again he cramped. This time the pain felt like a knife stabbing him in the belly. The third time he bent over, he couldn’t stand again. Falling to his knees, he started throwing up. Again and again, he heaved up the food he had eaten that morning. Then what came up was bile that stung his throat and tasted like battery acid.

  Finally, weak and unable to throw up anything more, Dylan stood. Loud growls sounded from his bowels and stomach. Before he could start down the trail, diarrhea began. Almost too late, he pulled his pants down and sprayed the ground. When he thought
he was finished, his stomach cramped again. The stabs of pain left him nauseous, sweating, and chilled all at once. Then he gagged up more bile.

  For the next hour, Dylan kept moving, taking a few steps and then stopping with diarrhea or more retching. Without toilet paper, he used leaves, which left his bottom more raw with each new bout. One big leaf left a stinging rash. Dylan screamed in anger. Whatever was happening to him was no joke. But being angry didn’t help. A swamp didn’t care about blame or anger. This was real. The world was trying to kill him.

  Once again Dylan hobbled down the trail. The sky had begun to darken with nightfall when he broke out into a small opening where an outcropping of rocks had kept trees from growing, all except for a single brown tree beside the rocks that had twisted upward in a giant spiral. The weird tree looked like a big screw piercing the sky. Dylan walked over to the base and looked up for a few minutes. This would be where he would try to spend the night. But how did one prepare for a night in a jungle? Whatever he did, it had to be quick.

  With a survival kit, he could have started a fire. That alone would have been a comfort, driving away the mosquitoes and keeping wild animals at a distance. But that wasn’t a choice. Dylan had no idea how to make a fire without matches. He also needed something to protect him from the mosquitoes and someplace for shelter in case it rained again. And he needed food.

  The only thing he could think of for shelter was to gather a pile of the bearded moss that hung from the trees. He would have given anything to have Zipper here by his side, cuddling close and growling if anything approached. Why had he ever complained about sleeping overnight in Balo? Tonight he would have loved to smell smoke and hear people snore. It wouldn’t bother him to hear pigs snort, dogs bark, and chickens scratch.

  Armful after armful, Dylan pulled down the clammy moss and piled it next to the big screw tree. Hopefully the pile would allow him some protection. Feeling the chills coming on again and with darkness fully settled over the jungle, Dylan pulled off his boots, hung up his socks and crawled under the moss. The pungent wet smell threatened to suffocate him, but still Dylan gathered the musty green vegetation closer to his body to ward off the mosquitoes.