Mungus: Book 1

by Chad Leito

  The next day, Saul and I woke up and began to walk without any sense of direction or plans, but with a wish in our hearts to find water. Saul carried the satchel around his shoulders and his white shirt was stained yellow from sweat. He was acting funny, giggling sometimes and nearly on the verge of crying others. He made me stop often so that he could check the canteens.

  “Wait,” he would tell me. “I think that there was actually a little water left in one of the canteens, remember? We saved that last bit after we finished the peach juice.”

  “No, Saul, we didn’t.”

  He opened all of the canteens anyway to find nothing but air. He would then pout and complain, accusing me of stealing his water. After some talking to and time, he came to his senses. This happened so often that eventually I carried the satchel so that Saul would not stop us every so often to see if a canteen magically filled up with water.

  When the second day without food or water was almost over and the light in the sky was dimming, Saul sat down and lay on his back under the shade of a bush.

  “Get up,” I croaked. “We have to keep moving.”

  Saul shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to lay here and die.”

  I grabbed his shirt and tried to tug him to his feet. “Please, get up, Saul! It’s hard for both of us!”

  “If you want to move, you’ll have to leave me. The only way that I’m getting up is if you find water.”

  I clenched my fists, stomped my feet, and continued beg him. Then I saw it, gleaming through the leaves of the bush. Blue and shining in the dying light. I dropped my satchel and walked around Saul’s body on the dirt. I didn’t want to get my hopes up yet, I had heard of mirages, but it sure did look like it.

  Saul sat up. “I didn’t mean it!” he said. “Don’t leave me!”

  Once I was around the bushes, I saw it and let out a shriek of joy. Water. Thousands of gallons of it sitting still in a hole in the dirt. It was a sizable lake, and in the middle, about a half a mile away from the shore, was a small island. The mouth leading to the lake was dammed up by giant wooden wheels that the weight of the running water pushed around in circles. I knew that I shouldn’t just go out to the water without looking around. If Salyers were there, and they likely were since someone had to watch the dam, I could be caught. But my thirst was too great for such concerns and I ran until the cool water was up to my hips, dipped my head down and took in huge gulps. The water was cold and my stomach was in ecstasy. Saul swam out beside me and did the same thing, gulping down water. I splashed him and he smiled back. “Trust me, next time,” I said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  He laughed and splashed me back. “Shut up, you got lucky.”

  When we were finished, we retreated back to our satchel, looking around the lake to see it deserted, and lay on our backs and rubbed our full bellies. My clothes were wet and water dripped from my body and into the dirt. The sun was setting and my stomach felt wonderful. I got up to fill the canteens and we sat sipping on our abundance of water as the day turned to night and the air grew cooler.

  “Can we stay here, Walt?” Saul asked.

  I shook my head. “For now, but not forever. We need to find somewhere else, like another lake, to make our home.”

  “Why?” he asked. He gave me an angry look.

  “Did you see those big wooden spinning circles at the top of the lake?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well someone had to have built those, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And if someone built those, then someone’s probably watching over them. We’ll get caught here.”

  I could see by Saul’s face that he understood, but he didn’t answer. He rolled over on his side, next to the bush, and pouted. I sipped on my water and after some time his breathing became gentle and then switched to snoring. I was still hungry, but nothing could be done about that. The sun went lower and lower until the sky was dark and the stars began to twinkle above. I felt vulnerable out in the open. I wished that there was a tree that we could climb up into, but there were no giant trees in that area of Mungus. Little thin trees rose up around us, but none with giant branches that could support our weight. I didn’t have the energy to build a shelter either and didn’t even know if I could. I leaned back onto the dirt and took a few last sips of water. My body was exhausted and as soon as I allowed my eyes to drift closed I fell asleep.

  Torches, chattering, screaming; all things that awoke my senses. Saul was struggling beside me. Strong hands grasped my forearms and turned me over. My face was in the dirt and I couldn’t see those who had captured me. Salyers, I thought, but I wasn’t sure. A rope was wound and tied in such a way to keep my hands together and behind me. My ankles were tied up as well.

  “Help me,” Saul cried, but there was nothing that I could do. A rope was put in between my teeth and tied to the back of my head to keep me quiet. And last, and most frightening, a cloth was tied around the upper part of my face, making me blind.

  I was tossed onto something like a stretcher and I was carried. I couldn’t see, but I guessed that Saul was being carried somewhere around me. My hands were tied tight and I was completely useless. We were carried for minutes. My mind reeled, condemning myself. ‘How could I have been so stupid? I should have made us move further away from the lake before going to sleep. Of course we’ve gotten caught.’ Images of the Theatre popped into my head. Saul screaming as wild dogs bring him down. I wanted to tell Saul that I was sorry, that I had broken my promise, but the rope in my mouth kept me silent.

  I remained quiet, but Saul was screaming through his rope. My stretcher was being jostled with each step that our captors took. Then, we started to ascend. Whoever had us as prisoners was walking us up a steep slope. I imagined us walking up a huge hill and rising high above the earth. The forest was mostly flatlands, and I had no idea where we were being taken. I heard grunting around me as we made the climb, and after expending much effort our captures stopped ascending and we began to move on even ground.

  Then, the whole company grew still. A fine layer of sweat covered my nervous body. My eyes couldn’t see, but my ears could still hear. All around me, people were talking, chattering. One would say something, then the other, but I had no idea what they were saying. It wasn’t how the Salyers talked, the Beardsleys talked, or the Grecos. It was something else. Some other way of talking.

  My stomach dropped and we began to descend, fast, straight down. Saul yelled, and even though I didn’t want to hear him so scared, it comforted me to know that he was nearby. It sounded like a rope was being pulled down a pulley at a hundred miles an hour. I closed my eyes hard as we fell. It was an awful sensation. Then, the rope noise quieted, we slowed down, and then stopped.

  Wherever I was, it was much cooler than outside, and there were much more of the unidentified people down there. Chattering echoed all around me from hundreds of mouths and from every direction came a language that I couldn’t understand. The people carrying my stretcher began to walk and I lay still, trying to think.

  I pulled up all of the knowledge that I could about Mungus. ‘Who would have gotten us? Why? Did they find the Wanted posters? If so, then why are they taking us down here? Why not to town? And what is ‘down here?’ Did we go down some kind of elevator? I feel like we dropped hundreds of feet. And the chattering. What is that language? The hard consonants that click off the soft vowels. Could the Salyers know another language?’

  We continued to move and we snaked throughout whatever place that we were in. Lefts, rights, long passages of straight-aways, and sometimes I felt like we were turning all the way around. After a few minutes I had no guess as to the direction that we came from.

  I had begun to think that we would be walking forever when we stopped. My stretcher was placed down on the floor and my hands were cut free from behind me. Then, I heard the people who had brought me there retreat and something shut. I twisted and turned so that I was sitting up. Saul was still yelli
ng through his rope beside me. My hands went to my face first and took off my blindfold.

  My eyes danced around. I was in a place completely surrounded in dirt. The walls were dirt, the ceiling was dirt and the floor was dirt. Rounded hallways led every way possible. Naked light bulbs swung back and forth from the ceiling sending jagged moving shadows across the dirt walls. Saul and I were in a cage about the same size as the Cell on the farm, but it was completely constructed of bamboo. I looked at the things looking in at me for some time before I was able to understand. I looked them all over, from head to toe, from tail to nose, looking for the costume, the zipper, the mask, but I found none. Salyers hadn’t captured me. These things weren’t even human. They were bizarre. Standing 3 to 4 feet tall, the creatures were covered in gray and black fur, except for their hands, feet, and faces. They all wore shorts that fit their hind legs in weird angles. They looked to be human shorts, probably stolen from a closet in town. Some of them had old t shirts on, ripped and stained, but most of them were shirtless. Their legs were squatted down like the legs of a baseball catcher and their tails stood erect behind them. Their bare feet were long and their long toes held them up on the dirt. Their hands were huge, pink, and wrapped around the bamboo bars as they looked in at their new find, their new pet. Their eyes locked onto mine, staring at me just as I was staring at them. When they opened their mouths to chatter back and forth long canine teeth showed under their lips. Their skin was pink and crusted with white dandruff. Their teeth, body shape, and fur all looked similar to a chimp’s or a baboon’s, but the most startling thing, the thing that made my mouth go dry, was how much they resembled a certain, more developed, primate . Their noses, their lips, their jaws, their foreheads, their eyebrows, and especially their eyes all looked exactly human. What looked even more human than that were their facial expressions. I could read them. Some thought that we were interesting, some thought that we were funny as they chattered back and forth among friends, and one little girl looked in at me from the bars and seemed to feel sorry for me. Her eyebrows came up together on the inside above her nose: it was classic sorrow. I wondered if they were some kind of genetic experiment.

  They had untied my hands and left Saul tied up beside me. They probably didn’t want to risk a fight with something of his size. I scooted over on my bottom and heels, my ankles were still tied together, and untied the knot above his thick wrists. After the rope was untied, he turned over, just like I had, and took off his blindfold. When he saw the creatures looking in at us he tried to say something, but because of the rope in his mouth it just turned into a muffled scream. He reached his hands up and untied the rope in his mouth and I did the same.

  “Huboons,” he said. Saul didn’t take his eyes off of the creatures.

  “What?”

  “Huboons. That’s what they are.”

  “What are Huboons?”

  “They are,” Saul said, pointing at them. Pink hands wrapped tight around the bars of our bamboo cell. The things looked at us. Some chatted and pointed right back at Saul.

  “I’ve never heard of Huboons. What are they?”

  “I don’t know for sure. People sometimes talked about them on the farm and I would ask questions and get confused. They live on Mungus and they’re like monkeys. The Salyers killed a lot to get them away from town. And they make these giant homes out of the dirt. They’re like big ant hills.”

  I looked around at the smooth dirt walls. I was in a giant ant hill. There were probably tons of dirt above my head. The thought gave me chills.

  “They’re supposed to be really good at building stuff too.”

  I remembered how far I dropped down when we entered the place. They must have made some kind of an elevator for that. And the cell that we were in. Although there was not a metal lock, there was a wooden contraption that would serve the same purpose. On the outside of the door, opposite the hinges, and on the walls of the cell, were six wooden holes. Inside of each of the holes, going from the door to the cell wall, were long pieces of bamboo keeping the door shut; you would have to pull each piece of bamboo three feet to either the left or right to get out. Even with quick hands, It would take half a minute to complete the feat. With a guard on duty to make sure that each attempt was stopped, leaving was nearly impossible. Along the walls of dirt were great shelves with all kinds of decorations and precious metals on them.

  “So why do they have us?” I asked Saul.

  “I don’t know. What do we do, Walt?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The creatures stood staring at us for a long time. Occasionally, one would get bored and leave down the hall and then others would return in the one’s place and watch us. I felt like a freak, a spectacle. Even though I hadn’t gotten much sleep I was wired, jumpy, and shaking with fear. They looked so different, so alien. “I think that they built the dam,” I said to Saul.

  “What?”

  “On the lake, that big thing with the turning wheels, I think that they built that.” I looked up at the light hanging from a string above my head. “And I bet that that’s where they get their electricity from.”

  The day dragged on and we were brought food. One of the huboons tossed us round fruits through the bars. We were so hungry, we hadn’t eaten for days. The fruits were similar to the ones that Saul had gathered from the trees, but tasted less sweet. We were brought water in buckets. The items were always brought to us by huboons in t-shirts and eventually Saul and I realized that the ones with t-shirts were the official guards.

  With no windows and deep underground, I had no way of tracking the time. The light above us never turned off. After we had been in the cell for a while all of the spectators left and guards took shifts watching us. To test the lock Saul, went up and tried to move one of the bamboo pieces. The guard ran at him on all fours and sunk its teeth into Saul’s forearm. We didn’t try that again.

  We were brought two more meals and the spectators never came back. Only guards watched us. Saul and I talked about what would happen to us, but neither of us could come up with an answer that was convincing. If they were going to kill us, why were they wasting food on us? If they were going to let us go free, why did they catch us in the first place? If they were going to eat us, what were they waiting for? If we were some kind of weird zoo, why did the spectators leave?

  After running over the possibilities and finding none believable, we fell asleep at a timeless hour. Our bellies were full, the light was on above us, and despite being trapped we were in much better shape than we had been in when we were out wandering around the forest by ourselves.

  A crash woke us. Something had hit the floor hard. Saul and I looked out through the bamboo bars and saw that the case of shelves against the wall had fallen down on the huboon guard. He was crying out in pain, and was unable to move under the weight of the shelves. “This is our only chance,” I said to Saul. I didn’t have a plan, but I knew that it was the right time to try to escape. I ran to the door and with careful fingers I pulled out all six of the pieces of bamboo. I shoved the door open and took off down the dirt corridors. My brother followed out of the cell, but I didn’t hear his footsteps running behind.

  “Wait,” Saul cried. I halted and turned around. “Help me!”

  Saul was trying to lift the bookcase off of the huboon. “There’s no time, we have to go!”

  “He’s hurt, Walt!”

  That brought me back to my senses. Saul was right; we should help the poor thing. And besides, I didn’t know my way through the maze of dirt tunnels. I jogged beside Saul. We squatted down and picked the book case off of the huboon. When the shelves were off, the huboon lay on his back, his chest coming up and down under his dirty white t-shirt. His chest had been squeezed together so tightly that he couldn’t breathe. I kneeled down on one knee and asked him if he was alright. He grabbed my fingers with his pink hand, a gentle grasp, and smiled.

  I didn’t understand what happened next. A parade of huboons came into the room
from all angles. Many of them were clapping and screeching. They were all making some kind of noise and some of them carried trumpets and trombones and they blew in producing untrained notes. Their human eyes all fell upon us and they made a circle around us.

  “What is going on?” Saul whispered. I shrugged.

  The crowd around us grew quiet, but their human faces remained cheerful. The huboon that had been under the case joined the crowd and then returned to us with cubes of wood. He handed them to us. The cubes were identical 2” by 2’ by 2” smooth cuts from trees. On each side of the wood were certain symbols. I didn’t know what they meant, but they looked like hieroglyphics. As we were examining our gifts, the crowd began to leave. The last member of the crowd beckoned for us to follow with a wave of her furry arm. The line of huboons was leaving out through the doorway and soon we would be alone in the tunnels of the giant ant hill.

  “Should we go?” asked Saul.

  “I don’t have a better idea. If we try to run off, they’ll find us before we get out. They seem to be happy with us. We might as well follow along.”

  And so we did. The corridors went around and around with ascending slopes as we followed the line of furry creatures. I thought that ascending was a good sign. We continued to go upward for hours, walking until we were totally exhausted under hanging lights. We passed all kinds of hallways and nooks in the walls where huboons lived. They sat around, chattering and talking back and forth. Whenever we would pass, they looked up from what they were doing and stared at us. Eventually though, we came to a set of wooden stairs. We followed the crowd up those and out into the open air. When we got out, I looked around and saw that I was on what resembled an ant hill three times the size of Glen’s mansion. The crowd circled us once more and gave us a few more cheers. Outside, the sun was about to set. A huboon waddled over to us and handed us our satchel.

  “Thank you,” I said, but it didn’t matter. They couldn’t understand me.