Fire Cult

by R. B. Shaw

  Despite the helicopter’s rotor blast, the howling flames spread toward the trussed figures at the centre of the sacrificial grid. Only one support remained free of flames, the charred trunk smoking profusely. Ted balanced his way carefully along the trunk, leaned over and cut the bonds of Seiji and Jake. The rotor-blasted ring of blue flame still trapped them. Below, on either side, the open bowels of the earth waited.

  The irate chief stood the intrusion no longer and ran shouting from the edge of the flaming pit. Angrily he tried to stir the cult into hostile action without result. In a rage, he broke tradition, grabbed a spear and tossed it at Ted. The fire-hardened blackpalm pierced the flimsy flameproof foil of the Nomex suit. The spear caught Ted in the chest and he faltered, staggered backwards, then regained his balance.

  Dave and Fang struggled free from the bewildered warriors. The horizontal wall of flames drove them back.

  With a painful effort, Ted caught the gyrating sling from the helicopter. He swung it across to Seiji and Jake through the blue flame. They both took a firm grip on the sling harness and jerked frantically on the cable as an urgent signal for Jan to lift them clear. Ted stood transfixed, refusing to fall, and tugged repeatedly at the barbed spear jutting from his chest. The chief shouted in anger, drew his shark tooth battle-axe and ran out barefoot along the smouldering timbers. He took a powerful swing, but the battle-axe bounced off the metal frame of Ted’s helmet.

  The chief wavered, still off-balance from his deflected swing. With a last effort Ted snatched the chief’s poisoned bone dagger from his cane waistband. Ted thrust the dagger deep into the shocked chief’s stomach. ‘That’s for Joe!’ he shouted, then thrust again.

  For both of them now it was simply a matter of time. Ted pulled the spear from his chest, gloated on the demise of the horrified chief, then recognised his own fate. He lost strength, staggered and grabbed the mortally-wounded chief, trying to drag him down into the pit. Despite his wounds, the chief struggled and broke free. He did not expect such bravado from the crippled old man.

  Ted stumbled, fell backwards and disappeared in a shower of sparks through a fire-weakened section of the grid. The pit finally reclaimed its lost victim.

  Jan hovered overhead, taking up slack in the cable and unaware of the tragedy beneath. She began to winch Jake and Seiji clear of the flames.

  Dave watched enraged, his shouted obscenities drowned by the din of the helicopter. The rotor blast still turned the flames away from those trapped on the burning frame. The chief took his opportunity and desperately ran through the flames to safety. The frail blazing structure groaned and collapsed with a thunderous roar. The gaping jaws of the flaming pit swallowed its grisly load of corpses. The helicopter sank then surged with the sudden additional load. It gradually gained height, lit with a fiery under-glow. The downwash caused huge vortices of smoke to curl back down through the rotor blades.

  The remaining cult warriors were agitated at the chief’s sacrilege. They jeered and abused him as he staggered around the gaping pit. Badly burnt, he held his bleeding stomach and tried to justify his brutal actions. As they approached, he wielded his deadly axe, turned and escaped up the trail towards the volcano.

  A dense cloud of incandescent sparks billowed skyward as Jan coaxed the helicopter up and away from the open pit. Through the glowing mist swung two suspended figures. She carefully carried them well clear of the Fire Cult, before lowering them safely on the nearby ridge.

  Almost irrational after witnessing Ted’s death, Dave shouted orders. ‘Fang! Get up there and check on Jake and Seiji. Fly back with Jan and head off Kless and the gold. I’m gonna get the chief.’

  Dave charged up the trail in pursuit, puzzled why the chief chose to escape in that direction. He followed, unaware the chief would soon die anyway as a result of his own deadly toxin. With a sudden shock, Dave remembered the Devil’s Slide ahead, its face carefully stitched with explosive charges. He knew the chief had long been contemptuous of rival tribes to the east. If the charges were detonated, hundreds of unprepared villagers would die.

  The eastern sky brightened as the sun rose. The vengeful chief turned briefly then took a short cut through the scrub. His shark-tooth battle-axe slashed through thorn bush and tangled liana vines thick and gnarled like Ted’s arms. Ted—the thought energised Dave. He caught sight of the chief and gradually gained on him. He took any short cut, ever upward through haunting canyons of stunted trees festooned with orchids. Bulging muscles tensed and thrust as they propelled him forward. Never had the steep tortuous track been negotiated so swiftly. They reached the lower lava slopes, still sparsely upholstered with rogue clumps of tenacious bamboo and charred casuarina. The chief powered on and they crossed the sacred boundary of hideous human skulls.

  The volcano ahead erupted violently. Thunder rent the air and large chunks of glowing airborne debris whistled overhead like macabre fireworks. Blue, red and green lightning flashed as it refracted through silicates carried in the airborne tephra cloud. The deadly chase led them across the yawning expanse of the Devil’s Slide. The collapsed sections were meant to be crossed with care. The temporary sapling pathway demanded the most wary approach.

  The chief’s foot slipped through the light timber and he dropped awkwardly, his knee wedged in the elevated platform. Dave grabbed him in a headlock and tried to wrestle the lethal battle-axe from his grip. The chief deliberately swung his full weight sideways and threw Dave over the edge. His legs dangled over a thousand-foot drop. Dave frantically clung to the chief’s neck, his only link with life.

  The overstressed pathway lurched sideways with the abnormal load. Dave managed to throw one leg over the edge of the frame but released his grip on the chief to save himself. The chief grabbed a support stake and dragged himself back on to the elevated pathway. He spun around and swung at Dave. Now the lethal toxin reached its mark. Vertigo unbalanced the chief and the poisoned battle-axe slammed harmlessly into the timber frame. The chief prised it free, leaving some of the shark’s teeth deeply embedded. He took advantage of Dave’s predicament and raced off up the trail. Dave clawed across the collapsed timbers and ran along the perilous lava pathway, his boots crunching on the black cinders.

  The chief weakened as he reached the hut. Ted’s earlier forced entry had left the door open and the protective case exposed to the chief’s axe. Without hesitation he detonated the pre-set charges. Dave only just managed to clear the ledge as a gigantic explosion fragmented the ground behind him. A brilliant chain of flashes erupted across the ridge face of the Devil’s Slide. The steep surface fractured and collapsed with a horrendous roar.

  A huge wedge-shaped section of the crater wall dropped away. A gaping lip opened in the volcanic crucible, throwing up a towering cloud of thick dust. In the blinding cloud, the chief staggered onto the charred lava flats of the upper volcano. He turned back briefly, fighting for balance along the very edge of the outer crater rim. Dave followed reluctantly; below lay tiers of smouldering lava, the noxious smoke almost overpowering. The black ragged skyline ahead cleared briefly to reveal steep castellated peaks. He lost sight of the chief in the sulphurous white fumes swirling in updraughts from the caldera lip.

  An unearthly landscape lay ahead, a scene from Dante’s Inferno. A small eruption nearby tossed them both off balance and burning lava soared skyward in a glowing spray. Natural chimneys and crevices streamed banners of twirling smoke. The vortices coiled to form twirling tufts of drifting cloud. Whiteout conditions on the rim forced the chief to weave his way through the solidified lava field.

  The black central cone and its torn summit loomed ahead. Dave followed and panted as he scaled what felt like a sand pyramid. The climb led them close to the fire fountain and airborne clots of fiery lava fell heavily all around. It quickly coalesced on the ground, looking as if it had been there a thousand years. At the centre of the steaming cone sat the lava lake, thirty metres long and covered with a thin veneer of fractured lava. Red-hot rivers of lava lit t
he smoke with a surrealistic inner glow. The fiery surface fragmented, forming agitated slabs of floating impurities. Flaming billows of trapped gases erupted continually. As Dave neared him, the chief turned and wielded his battle-axe.

  Thick globules of extremely dense steam boiled and screeched from a nearby fissure, then expanded rapidly into an immense billowing plume. The chief stood arrogantly on the edge of the fuming molten pool of lava, exposed to the incredible radiant heat. The super-heated liquid below boiled at over 3000 degrees. He challenged Dave to follow him to the edge of the volcanic lip. Only he knew he would soon die in agony. ‘Come closer, Stark! Are you as brave as your stupid old friend?’ he taunted and gasped in pain.

  Dave stayed back, the incredible heat almost overpowering. He realised the chief wanted to satisfy some suicidal urge to reach this religious centre of his world, the sacred lava lake amid the Mountains of Heaven.

  The internal agony of the active toxin surmounted all other pain as the chief’s flesh melted and charred. His mouth foamed, as he stood defiant and motionless in a self-induced trance. Suddenly, the grass and fur of his anklets ignited. The flimsy feathers of his elaborate headdress burst into flames. Transformed into a human torch, his burning headdress resembled a grotesque halo of flames.

  With elemental and demonic energy, the blazing chief managed a last painful scream, ‘Follow me now!’

  Dave crouched below the rim, shielded from the direct radiant heat. He watched incredulously as the chief, a bizarre vortex of flames, slowly turned and plunged almost gracefully into the scarlet volcanic pool below. Dave paused spellbound at the shocking sight, then turned to assess his own predicament. He could not return by way of the pit. The Devil’s Slide obstructed his escape, now a yawning cavity pouring molten lava down the face of the caldera.

  He threaded his way between superheated rivers of glowing lava and gaping volcanic vents. Some spewed an evil mix of burning mud, sulphur and steam. Two of the crimson lava rivers merged below, forming a bigger but slower flow. The burning lava each side gradually advanced toward him. Dave was cut off, but stemmed his panic. Some hardy shrubs, metres away from the searing heat, exploded in flame. It would be futile to attempt a crossing. Another fumarole nearby belched a searing blast of noxious gas with a thunderous roar. Dave knelt to avoid the scalding blast, puny in the presence of such awesome power. He wondered how long he could endure the incredible heat before being incinerated alive.

  Even with deep breaths, Dave found little relief from the oxygen-starved air. He stumbled across the slope, almost blinded. The acidic cloud of steam and sulphurous gases scorched his throat. Another howling fissure blocked his way. It spewed out hot muddy lava like some giant grotesque anus. Super-heated fumes vented with a violent deafening roar that made the most powerful jet engine seem feeble.

  Dave dropped to his knees, coughing uncontrollably. The man who never gave up had finally run out of options.

  51

  Jan had been through an emotional nightmare and felt physically exhausted. She had not eaten or slept properly since the previous day. She dropped Fang and Seiji back at the Thunderbox near the head of the trail, then Jake at his motorcycle. Reluctantly, she powered the helicopter skyward along the ragged slope in the direction Dave had taken in pursuit of the chief.

  After the terrifying incident in the Invader and the resulting jungle ordeal, her hands trembled as she approached the thick cloud of volcanic ash. Suddenly a tall fountain of earth and dust hurtled into the sky. She flew close to the rugged terrain, well clear of the towering cloud of airborne debris, still searching urgently for Dave. With the volcano still in eruption, a new lava spill appeared below. A broad river of sluggish flaming liquid crept down toward villages on the east coast.

  Jan diverted slightly to overfly the villages. The sinister lava wreaked havoc in some small hamlets high in the foothills. The mountain was bleeding. The erratic spread of silver lava engulfed everything. The crust fractured exposing the red inner glow. The natives ran downhill carrying their children and bundles of possessions. Grass huts exploded in flames before the super-heated lava reached them. Miraculously, the smouldering wall slowed, then congealed among the squatters’ hamlets well up the ridge. The flames extinguished as the fuming surface turned silver-grey with solidification.

  Jan thought about the man she loved—a tall rugged rebel with a heart of gold. She wished desperately that they could be together one more time. Her emotions were ready now to accept this nomadic adventurer. She followed the lava flow up the ragged slopes of the volcano, searching for Dave or any human life. The fresh flows near the ruptured ridge face ran like sluggish rivers of molten metal, almost obscured by its own smoke. Though still morning, a dark brooding twilight prevailed. It accentuated the multi-coloured lightning that often flashed directly to the summit rim of the volcano.

  After twenty minutes of fruitless searching through dangerous ash fallout and turbulent gasses, it looked hopeless. Jan assumed Dave must have returned safely to the pit or the campsite. She could not think about other possibilities. She turned the helicopter around near the summit caldera. Avoiding the fiery fountain of liquid lava and its deadly plume, Jan headed back. Hovering slowly on the return leg, she scanned any likely spots through the swirling clouds below.

  Five kilometres away, Bruno Kless celebrated with a bottle of his best cognac. He ordered his carriers to stack the bags of gold dust in the security of his plantation lock-up. After supervising the transfer, he locked the door behind him, then hurried into the house shouting for Lani.

  Lani looked lovely in a short black satin dress nipped at her slim waist by a broad white leather belt. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Throw some things in a bag, babe. You and me are getting out of here for a while.’ Kless announced. ‘I’ve got a fortune in gold and we’re heading for bigger and better things.’

  Tiana walked out from behind the bamboo screen to join her sister but hesitated when she heard Kless’s plans and the mention of gold.

  Lani stared mystified. ‘What gold?’

  Kless smiled arrogantly. ‘A fortune in gold dust, baby, and we’re rid of those salvage arseholes for good.’

  ‘What happened?’ Lani asked with genuine concern.

  ‘Who cares? The cult got ‘em. Probably barbecued at the bottom of the Sangami pit by now.’ He chuckled and downed another glass of cognac.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she pleaded cautiously.

  ‘Madang first, then Australia. Just be quick.’ Kless ordered. ‘I want to get the gold to my plane and fly out before dark.’

  The revelation hit Lani like a blow. Stark and the others, all dead. Her hopes of rescue faded. She did not believe it and could not let Kless get away with the gold. As soon as he went to his room to pack, Lani told Tiana of the developments and slipped outside to the carpark. She had no intention of going anywhere with Kless.

  Kless clambered into his Range Rover, groped for the ignition keys, then swore loudly. He looked around the floor, then stepped out and checked his pockets. He hurried over to his Hi-Lux pickup and again saw no keys, and then to the plantation’s ten seat minibus. He stomped angrily from car to car—every key was missing. None of the locals would even dare enter his estate. Only one person knew about his plans and could have taken the keys.

  Tiana and the other girls heard a piercing scream and ran out to the lounge. Kless dragged Lani across the polished wooden floor by her long black hair.

  Tiana pushed through the cowering group. ‘Stop it. Let my sister go, you bastard!’

  Kless shoved Tiana aside, pulled Lani across a woollen rug and deliberately swung her into a carved table. ‘You’re coming outside, bitch. If you don’t show me where you put those bloody keys, I’ll beat the living shit out of you!’

  Lani struggled to free herself and regain her footing. Her nails left bloody scratches on Kless’s arms as she tried to break his strong grip. Kless stormed about, half drunk and in an uncontrolled rage. Before Ti
ana could intervene, he dragged Lani down the front steps and threw her to the ground.

  Tiana ran down the steps in a fury and stood between Kless and her motionless sister. ‘Don’t you dare hurt her again.’

  Kless studied Tiana’s flaring beauty and rethought his options. ‘Tiana, you’re comin’ with me instead. I’m tired of her continual troublemaking anyway. It’ll be a great lifestyle, babe.’

  Tiana defiantly stood her ground. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t care about your gold!’

  Kless laughed aloud. ‘What about my white gold dust, babe? Little Lani couldn’t exist without her favourite hit. What about you? Wouldn’t you like a Kless and coke every night?’ he taunted, waving a small plastic bag of white powder. He snorted sarcastically.

  Tiana felt revulsion. ‘I said I won’t go!’ she insisted defiantly, then turned and crouched to help her sister.

  ‘I’ve told you before—do as I say.’ Kless persisted with his altered plan. ‘Come with me and I’ll instruct my foreman to look after Lani. Give me any trouble and the Buka can do what he likes with her.’

  There were no alternatives. Tiana reconsidered, then nodded reluctantly. She brushed grass from Lani’s back and shiny black hair and helped her to sit up.

  ‘Okay bitch, where’s the keys?’ Kless snarled at Lani and looked around the odd assortment of useless vehicles. He suddenly remembered Joe’s faithful old Ford still parked at Stark’s Kulili campsite just up the coast. He schemed briefly then turned back to Tiana. ‘First instruction, Tiana, that’s if you don’t want your sister hurt. I need wheels. Joe’s old Ford is still at Stark’s deserted camp. It don’t need keys—you’ve seen how he starts it. Ride over to their camp on the motorcycle, get the Ford going and drive it back here to the lock-up.’ He hesitated and turned back. ‘Don’t get any smart ideas about calling the authorities. I’ve got someone monitoring the airbands and I know Stark’s frequency as well. If I hear a radio call go out, you’ll never see your sister again.’