Rumors of Savages

by Carrie Regan

  It was just as Liz remembered: warm, sensual, familiar. When their lips finally parted, he pulled her tightly against his chest.

  “Come back to camp. Come back with me,” he whispered. She nodded, allowing him to lead her back to the clearing.

  Worn out by the daylong march, the crew had turned in by the time they returned to camp. Buddy’s light was on, but judging by the snore emanating from his tent, even he was asleep.

  “I-” AJ began. Liz stood on her toes and boldly kissed him again. He hesitated, but after a brief moment, took her hand and led her to his tent.

  CHAPTER 23

  Several hours later, AJ gazed at Liz, fast asleep in his arms. Had he started something he couldn’t finish again? He pushed the hair back from her eyes. It won’t be like before, he told himself. He was ready this time. When they finally made it out of this jungle, he would prove it to her.

  He lay quietly, enjoying the jungle’s soothing nighttime soundtrack. Suddenly, a long call that sounded like a moaning man echoed through the trees above him. It’d scarcely passed when he thought he heard a pair of footsteps racing through the neighboring brush. The footsteps raced back, and AJ wondered if Liz could feel his heart beating hard and fast in his chest. Monkeys, he tried to tell himself, checking his watch. It glowed 2:20 AM. Four long hours to go until sunrise.

  Someone’s out there, he thought. He strained to hear the footsteps again and tried to recall what provisions they’d left outside. The camera, batteries, and tapes were in his tent. Max had whatever food was left. Just a few personal items remained in the clearing. They could do without them. After several minutes, he finally started to relax and drift off to sleep, only to jolt awake again when the small, still cognizant corner of his brain detected another anomaly in the night rhythm of the jungle. It was distant at first: an apparently large – make that extremely large – something moving through the brush, snapping branches in its path and sending them crashing to the jungle floor.

  AJ’s heart raced. He considered waking Liz, but she seemed so peaceful, and needed the rest. Then…

  A crash sounded just yards from camp this time, and AJ sprang up. This time, Liz woke up.

  “Hey,” she said dreamily.

  “Hey,” he whispered.

  No, no, no, she thought to herself, recognizing his frightened look. How did she let herself get dragged into this? He was panicking already, and it wasn’t even dawn. If they were back in the States, he’d be buckling his belt, making some excuse about an early morning meeting. “What is it?”

  “I heard something outside the tent.”

  “That’s it?” she asked, relieved.

  “It sounded big.”

  She saw he was serious, and sat up, listening intently. “I don’t hear anything,” she said after a few moments.

  “Thought it was an animal going through our stuff.” He relaxed, feeling somewhat ridiculous.

  Liz snuggled up to him, tracing the lines of his neck with her lips. “Is somebody afraid?” she teased.

  “No, just…”

  She closed the sleeping bag around them tightly, protecting them from the night’s chill. Closed off from the rest of the world, she attempted to distract him from whatever he thought was out there.

  AJ let her believe that she was successful, and she was, about 50%. But the remaining 50% of his brain remained on guard, listening for the slightest disturbance, if only to make Liz aware of it and confirm that he wasn’t imagining things, confirm that this jungle wasn’t slowly driving him crazy.

  ***

  At the first hint of morning light, AJ slipped out of the tent without waking Liz. The camp was just as they’d left it the night before. Like every other morning, he started a fire and washed up at a nearby stream. When he took off his shirt, he noticed that he’d dropped a lot of weight, the result of doubling his daily physical activity and consuming half as much. His stomach growled at the realization.

  During the brief walk back to camp, he considered how he could sneak an energy bar from the food bag in Max’s tent. He deserved it: he’d exerted a lot more energy than the others while hacking out a path at the head of the pack.

  Max was, in fact, up, warming himself around the fire with Troy and Buddy. And Liz? Shit, AJ thought, she was still in his tent. And when she came out…

  AJ didn’t have to imagine what the reaction would be, because at that very moment the zipper began working its way around the mesh tent door. The three men turned in unison, trying to figure out how AJ could simultaneously approach his tent from the outside and open it from the inside.

  Liz stretched her arms above her head languidly in the tent doorway as Buddy spoke up, catching her off guard. “Isn’t that AJ’s tent?”

  Liz froze, but AJ piped up. “Yeah. We switched last night.”

  Buddy smiled at Troy and Max. “Why’d you do that?” he asked, obviously baiting him.

  “Liz saw a spider in hers and was afraid.”

  “I did not!” she replied indignantly, a knee-jerk reaction. AJ gave her a look that said “Could you help me out here?”

  “I mean,” she continued weakly, realizing that she’d blown their cover, “I wasn’t exactly afraid of the spider. I left the tent door open by accident and a bunch of mosquitoes got in as well.” She gained confidence as her lie sounded more plausible, at least to her. “I was being eaten alive, and was keeping AJ awake with all the slapping sounds,” she finished, satisfied. She looked at AJ, and he nodded in agreement.

  “Yeah, come to think of it, I heard some sounds last night that kept me up as well,” Troy said. Buddy and Max snickered.

  Liz’s face grew crimson, and AJ immediately changed gears.

  “We have a lot to do today. I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t maintain yesterday’s pace while hauling this load.”

  “Well, we know at least one tent we can leave behind,” Troy said.

  AJ ignored him. “I suggest that we leave everything behind. Hack twice as far today, return to camp tonight, then plow through with everything tomorrow. I’ll bring the camera, and Buddy can bring the sound gear so that we can shoot along the way.”

  “We should probably bring the food with us, just in case. If we divide it up, it shouldn’t be much,” Max said, with Buddy nodding in full agreement.

  “We should take the tapes too,” Liz said. All their work would be wasted if anything happened to the precious tapes they’d already shot.

  “Don’t worry. They never leave my sight. Let’s leave in half an hour. We’ve got twice as many miles to put under our feet today.”

  The team let out a collective groan, then separated to wash up and prepare their packs for the long day ahead.

  “You know, Liz, if you have a problem with spiders again,” Troy said, passing her on the way to the stream, “feel free to give me a shout.”

  AJ overheard him. “What an ass,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Tell me about it,” she said self-consciously, wondering if AJ would freeze her out again now that they’d been exposed.

  “Well, I should get the camera ready for today.” Awkwardly, AJ started to leave, then turned and pressed his lips to hers in a quick, warm kiss. “See you in a bit,” he said, giving her hand a brief squeeze.

  “Yeah,” she said, unable to resist a smile.

  ***

  The team moved quickly, and Lawrence Julian Thompson’s pace, previously considered superhuman, became far more manageable without all their gear. AJ hacked out a path, at times surrendering the machete to Troy (who proved surprisingly skillful at it, which he attributed to years of tennis lessons). Even though they stopped to shoot along the way – including a sequence with an eight-foot boa – they still made it to Thompson’s next camp by noon.

  Satisfied with the morning’s efforts, they drank in clean, cool water filtered from a nearby stream and relaxed for a moment. Troy stretched his machete arm, and Buddy relieved himself in a section of the jungle that was scarcely priva
te enough and well within earshot.

  “It’s only a fraction of the distance we just covered. I think we can easily make it there and still return to camp by tonight,” AJ said, studying the next point on the map and GPS.

  “We can haul the gear in tomorrow and still be on schedule,” Liz said.

  Max nodded. “Sounds good to me. If it will get us out of here sooner, I’m all for it.”

  As they stood, a light breeze shook branches overhead, showering them with dried, dead leaves.

  “Rain,” Liz said, spying dark clouds rolling in.

  “Damn. That’s the last thing we need,” Max grunted.

  “The tree cover in the jungle is pretty thick,” AJ said, gazing skyward. “I bet we’ll barely feel it. And some action shots of you in the rain would add a nice variety.”

  “What about camp?” Buddy asked. “My tent’s not covered, and I left everything in there. It’ll be flooded in no time.” He pulled his cap down as though to protect himself from impending rain.

  “The satellite phone is in my tent,” Liz said. “It’ll be destroyed.”

  “Shit. All the tents are uncovered. And there’s no tree cover at camp. We’ll have to go back,” AJ said.

  “Great. We’re back to being a day behind,” Max said, obviously annoyed.

  “You know, it wouldn’t take the whole crew to put the rain covers on the tents. I need to stay and shoot, as does Max, and I need Buddy for sound…”

  “I am NOT going back with him,” Liz said, pointing at Troy.

  “I wasn’t suggesting that. I need another person with me to keep the camera covered and help us carry the camera gear. So what do you say, Troy? You don’t mind going back, do you?”

  Troy shifted his gaze among the members of the team. He feared it would come to this – a moment when his courage would be put to the test and he would inevitably fail. Go off into the jungle alone? Walk for hours, with flesh hunters lurking about? Hell, he couldn’t even bring himself to shit in the jungle alone at night, let alone walk all the way back to camp. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t let them see any sign of weakness. So instead, he straightened, looked each of them in the eye, and pulled rank.

  “I can’t go back. I’m the producer. We’ll send the AP,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Let Liz go, he thought. See how AJ liked that.

  “Why, you little-“ AJ began, lunging at him. “You little chickenshit. Afraid to go on your own, and not man enough to admit it.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Liz said, silencing them. “I’ll go. Alone. I’m not afraid. I know you all think I got us into this mess. I mean, if the porters were still here, we wouldn’t have this problem, right? The tents would be on their backs and we’d be days ahead by now.”

  Max caught himself nodding in agreement, then stopped. AJ quickly forgot about Troy and walked over to her.

  “It’s not like that. You don’t need to go. Who cares if the tents get flooded?”

  “So it’s fine to send me off on my own, but when it’s your girlfriend, it’s ‘who cares if the tents get flooded’?”

  “Can it, Troy.”

  “I want to go,” she said, trying to sound convincing. “To be honest, I could use the time alone. And you guys won’t be far behind me, right? I’ll see you by nightfall.”

  Buddy handed her a walkie-talkie. “Take this. If the batteries run down, there are spares in my tent. I’ll make sure we have ours on at all times.”

  Liz nodded as the skies nudged her along with a low rumble. “I better get going or I won’t make it in time. Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you soon.” She hoisted her bag onto her shoulders and set off on the path they’d just cleared.

  AJ watched her disappear into the jungle, his heart aching. It was foolish of her to go into the jungle alone, but she was so stubborn that he knew it was useless to object. When he could no longer spot the red patch of color from her backpack bobbing among the foliage, he turned back to the rest of the crew.

  “Let’s go, and let’s make it fast. I don’t want Liz out there alone any longer than she has to be.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Liz was afraid – terrified, even – of heading back to camp alone. But someone had to go, and it would help erase some of the guilt she felt about letting the porters leave. Perhaps she’d regain the crew’s respect as well. She just had to set her fears aside and put one foot in front of the other.

  The image of thick skins drying on wooden racks flashed in front of her, but she pushed it out of her consciousness. “They’re animal skins, left by poachers,” she reminded herself, shifting her focus to the path.

  It was easier to follow than she expected, and walking at her own pace, without the chatter of the men, was a welcome change. She suddenly realized that it was the first time she’d been alone in weeks, and almost started to find comfort in the peace and solitude.

  ***

  Liz trekked on, unaware that behind her, a gentle wind skirted through the jungle, stirring branches and vines and depositing a fresh layer of drying, dying leaves on her path.

  Just a few hundred footsteps away, beneath a canopy of vegetation stirred by the same gust, the caravan of men carved their way further into the mythical jungle. The jungle cursed them by swallowing their path only moments after they passed, the slash marks in its thick lianas healing, vines knitting themselves back together just as swiftly as they’d been sliced. One gnarled vine snared the cherished hat from the head of one man, and held the prize aloft in its thorny claw while they continued, unaware, deeper into the Nburu.

  ***

  After nearly two hours, Liz had begun to question the wisdom of her decision to return to camp alone. She believed she was on the right path, but who could tell? Every corner of the jungle looked the same to her. She considered the walkie-talkie, and thought how foolish she’d been to derive any sense of security from it. If she were lost, what would she tell the team? How would she describe her location? “Take a left at the big tree with the twisted roots”? She’d be lost for good, really lost, she realized in a panic.

  She quickened her pace and was on the verge of running when the vibrant, comforting colors of the team’s tents came into view. Immediately, she felt foolish for nearly succumbing to her anxiety.

  The camp was just as they’d left it. Liz looked up at the clear blue skies: no sign of rain. She’d done it for nothing. No, not true, she told herself. She’d proven to herself, and to the men, that she was capable, and wasn’t afraid.

  The combination of lack of sleep from her tryst with AJ and the sudden burst of adrenaline left her exhausted. With her last reserves of energy, she pulled the covers over the tents, just in case the rain clouds returned, then crawled into her own and collapsed on her sleeping bag. As she drifted off, she wondered if she should have radioed the men to tell them she’d made it, then thought better of it. They might be in the middle of a take. Besides, they’d be back soon enough. If they were worried, they’d radio her.

  ***

  Ironically, at that very moment, deep in the jungle, the men were trying to radio her.

  “Liz, Liz, can you hear me, over,” Buddy called. He released the transmission button of the walkie-talkie and waited. “Liz, can you hear me?”

  AJ grabbed the radio. “LIZ, LIZ, ARE YOU THERE?” Nothing followed. “Fuck,” he cursed, shoving the radio back at Buddy.

  They’d trekked for an hour, following the steady signal from the GPS, when suddenly the electronic guide failed them. “Insufficient data,” it blinked, a sign they’d lost contact with at least one of the three satellites needed to pinpoint their location. They’d tried to retrace their steps, to retreat to a location where the GPS functioned, but after just a few yards, they couldn’t find any signs of their passage – not a single footprint, not even a broken branch. Their path, it seemed, had simply evaporated. And now they couldn’t reach Liz. They didn’t need to remind each other that she’d walked off alone, without a GPS, expecting to
follow a path as clearly marked as the one they’d been unable to keep for more than fifty yards.

  So the men advanced carefully, under low-hanging vines, over toppled trees, AJ in the lead, scanning the ground for signs of their path. He checked the GPS once again. Still, no reading. Perhaps this is what happened to Thompson, he thought, then regretted it, remembering that Thompson hadn’t been heard from since. He pressed on in what he judged was the direction of camp, but found himself guiding the team in circles, always back to the same spot.

  The sun was fading when, at long last, they surrendered. Stumbling into the same clearing for what must have been the fourth time, its soft, dry bed of leaves looked too irresistible to pass up. Max fell to his knees, placed his hands on his lower back, and stretched. Troy lifted AJ’s tripod from his shoulders and dropped it to the ground with a clatter, and AJ was too exhausted to complain. Buddy raised his arms above his head in a big stretch—but when he tried to adjust his cap, he realized there was no cap to adjust.

  “Aw, shit. I lost my lucky cap,” he groaned, kicking a nearby tree stump.

  AJ surveyed the site and his crew. “So what do you think?”

  “I think my back won’t let me walk another step tonight.”

  “We can’t leave Liz at camp alone,” Buddy protested.

  AJ held the GPS out to him. “Lead the way,” he said bitterly. Buddy looked away, wounded.

  “Assuming she’s made it to camp,” Max mumbled. “She could be worse off than us right now. At least we’re not alone.”

  “It’s her fault. We wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place if she hadn’t sent the porters packing,” Troy said.

  “Don’t start. We agreed that they could go at any time.”

  “All she needed to do was flash a little more cash. Dumb bitch.”

  “Shut your mouth. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” AJ snapped, launching himself at Troy.