When he got back to camp his men flocked around him. They could tell at a glance he’d been in one hell of a skirmish by the way he was dressed and the scratches covering his body. “Don’t tell me,” Ajax said, “We should see the other guys.”
“Trust me on this,” Leon said pulling Crumley’s canteen off him and taking a swig, knowing that of anyone, he’d have the best go-go juice, “you don’t want to have to mix it up with these guys from up close. If you can put them down at a distance, do so. If you do find yourself in a wrestling match with one of them, or you’re lucky enough to get close to a dead one, rub their body lotion on you. It has fight-enhancing properties. Crumley, see if you can get your hands on some of the stuff so we can study it. Doubt we’ll have enough time to fathom its secrets or the botanicals they use to procure it, but it’s worth a try.”
Crumley nodded. “Now, let’s have Dr. Lockheart look at those cuts.”
“Nah, I’m good. The body goop they spread over themselves has rapid-healing abilities as well. Not too unlike our nano-infested body paints.”
“Hate to break it to you, pal,” DeWitt said, “but you sweated that stuff off of you long ago.”
Leon snapped at him. “I’m fine I said.”
“You’re gonna pass up a chance to have Laney rub nano-body paint all over your naked ass?” Ajax said. “Maybe we should consider another leader, someone a hell of a lot smarter.”
Leon chuckled, though without much sound coming out his mouth. “You know, come to think of it, I am feeling a bit sickly. Save the nano-paint though. We’re not using it up trying to cover this large a canvas. Have her treat me with whatever else she’s got in her tool kit.”
“Whatever else, he says,” Ajax jibed. “I think he’s getting the hang of the whole wounded soldier come on. Can’t wait until my arm is dangling by a thread.”
Ajax set off to fetch Laney.
“I think I’ve had all the fighting I can handle for one night,” Leon said. “I want an electronic perimeter set up so if something trips a laser the size of a jaguar, far less a bird man, we know about it. And I want at least two men on patrol with night vision goggles at all times while the others catch some shut eye.”
“Night vision goggles? The way this forest lights up? I’ll never string Christmas lights on the house again. Plan on taking back samples I can reproduce and just paint it on.”
“Don’t get over-reliant on the goggles in any case. The natives have learned how to mask their body heat.”
He gave them a chance to process that rather than trying to force feed them extra information while their brains were still frozen up. “The NVGs won’t help much with the cold blooded black Caymans either, or the numberless venomous snakes. The goggles will help however with the jaguars and other warm blooded bad boys of the night who you can bet have adapted to the night-glow forest to carry on their nocturnal activities.”
“We’ve already swept the camp for venomous snakes, scorpions and the like,” Cronos said. “But we’ll be mindful of them in any case.”
DeWitt sobered at the intel, nodding. “Jaguars can smell the size of their prey from their urine and feces. They won’t get near anything too big for them to handle.”
“Hear that, Crumley?” Leon said. “We better get to pissing and shitting up the place.”
“Way ahead of you.”
***
Leon took his rub down like a man.
Being as he didn’t have another shred of clothing on besides his briefs, he figured there was nowhere else for Laney’s eyes to go. So had acted accordingly.
Laney commented at his stoic silence. “You’re concentrating real hard on keeping your dick soft, aren’t you?”
“I assure you my military training has never been more demanding.”
She smiled. “The medical nano in the ointment isn’t as advanced as Natty’s stuff. But it has already absorbed into you so you don’t have to worry about sweating it out. And by morning you should be as good as new.”
He stood and pulled on some clothes. Dressing so fast that by the time she’d stowed her medicines in her bag and turned back to face him he was ready to go. “Now, let’s get you tucked in for the night.”
“I’d question your motives, but I see you’ve dressed. So what else is on your mind?”
“The hammocks we sleep in are to keep us off the ground and away from things we don’t want to wake up with in the morning in our sleeping bags, like foot-long black scorpions and much longer pit vipers. The mosquito nets we wrap around the hammocks are to keep the countless varieties of blood sucking insects off us at night. You think they’re bad by day. You should get a load of them by night; they’re a hundred times worse.” He coughed out some insects that had flown into his mouth to illustrate his point. “But the netting can’t be touching the hammock or the insects will drill right through them. It’s a bit of an art form learning how to set up the netting, and how to crawl in and out of the entire cocoon in a hurry without getting twisted up. And climbing out of your protective womb fast is just as important to your survival against other kinds of dangers.”
“Your men have taken good care of me on that score. But I’ll be happy to see if I pass inspection.”
A short while later Leon was giving her set up the once over, and watching how she got in and out of the suspended sleeping arrangements. “You have been practicing. How’s Natty making out with the sleeping arrangements?”
She pointed his way. Leon went over, inspected the overall housing, noticing the netting draped like a canopy over the hammock effectively. Natty fast asleep. He put his mouth up to Natty’s ear and shouted, “Snake!” Natty sprung up like a popped parachute, but got nowhere fast. He pawed at the hammock and netting as if he were swimming the English channel and just desperate to get to the other side in time. Becoming entangled in the cocoon in the process.
Leon rubbed his eyes and groaned.
Laney sighed. “He’s never been good in rehearsal. More of a theater-improv artist.”
“He doesn’t get to sleep until he’s mastered exiting that thing in a panic, you got me? Being as panic is his baseline.”
“Yes, sir,” she said respectfully, trying to compensate for her husband’s behavior.
“And you make sure he’s the one to fix the mess he’s made. Just talk him through it.”
“What’s going on?” Natty said, as Leon was walking away.
“Fire drills, darling.”
“What, are we back in school?”
“It appears that way.”
***
Leon rubbernecked Cronos’s way, heading back to his hammock. Cronos was sleeping face down on his hammock, only, his eyes were wide and unblinking. Soldiers often slept with their eyes open. This wasn’t one of those times.
“What?” Leon said.
Cronos pointed at the carpet of glow worms below him. Caught up in a feeding frenzy. Snatching and devouring insects lured to their light. “Don’t look now, but the worms around here are deadlier than we are.”
Leon widened his vision to the drama playing out all around them on the floor below. Through their entire camp. The killing efficiency of insects with less grey matter than a grain of sand was indeed humbling. He continued hiking back to his hammock.
***
Leon only now noticed some suitcases were late getting to camp. “What’s holding up the shipment?” Leon said over the COM after tapping his ear mike.
“Sorry, sir, we had a bit of a setback,” came the delayed, tentative voice at the other end. “Corporeal Haynes was taken down by some kind of insect, sir. Looks to be using him as a hatchery for its young. I’m afraid he’s gone, sir.”
Crumley, in earshot of him, sighed. He’d just finished stabbing a venomous spider. Held it out for Leon’s inspection before brushing it off the knife against his sleeve. “I guess the Amazon jungle is telling us, if we want to play our wargames on top of its wargames, we can go right ahead, see how we fare.”
&
nbsp; Leon held his tongue; a moment of silence for his fallen team member.
THIRTEEN
The next morning, as more light filtered down through the trees, Natty began to notice there was more exposed understory in this region doing without the protection of the higher canopy trees than was the norm. Perhaps the jungle opened up more over their heads owing to the peculiar properties of the trees growing here. Or maybe the bigger trees had recently been felled by loggers, or subjected to fire. And the scar in the forest just hadn’t healed yet.
His current chaperone, Ajax, sprinted up a tree like a tree monkey to Natty's amazement. Mumbling to himself, “What’s the difference between your boyfriend and a condom? Condoms have evolved: They’re not so thick and insensitive anymore.”
Natty cringed, figuring the joke was at his expense.
Enough time had elapsed for him to weary of craning his neck skyward, when Ajax ultimately fetched down a couple flowers growing on the tree as parasites. Once he was finally back on the ground, he handed one of the blooms to Natty. “Eat it.”
Natty glared at him with eyes of fire. Still stinging from the sight of Leon and Laney together, kissing, the previous night, his stomach was churning too much to entertain the idea of food. “I don't really feel like eating right now, Ajax, thank you very much.”
“Sometimes what separates the boys from the men is technical knowhow.”
The challenge to become more like Leon, in the hopes of balancing the scales against the center of gravity between them, Laney, grabbed hold of Natty's imagination. Ajax chomped down on his own flower. Natty, suddenly more acquiescent, bit into the blossom.
Elsewhere in the woods, later, Natty used his cutlass to drink from a hollow, tuberous vine. He’d been lapping up a lot of the water as they walked. A few paces beyond, under the sheltering arms of the highest canopy trees, Natty rubbed his stomach, doubling over in pain. “What did you give me? I feel drugged.”
“The flower's flushing all the prescription drugs out of your system. It's probably the first time you've known what it's like to be drug free.”
“Great. That's all I need is to be more paranoid right now.”
“That's just how I want you. Thinking about what could be lurking around that next corner.” Sounds of movement across crunching twigs that could have been anything, and bird calls that could have been birds or natives, kept Ajax scanning the periphery in all directions.
As goosebumps rose on his skin, he said, “How do you make your girlfriend scream during sex? Call and tell her about it.” Natty didn’t get the sense Ajax was making a joke entirely for his benefit.
Natty, too, studied the region of woods ahead that had all sorts of hiding places, even more scared. He looked back at Ajax defiantly. “Yeah, well, screw you and your drastic detox methods.”
He charged headlong into the woods a little too fast, and ended up scratching himself badly on a thorn bush, drawing blood.
They hiked on a ways at a calmer pace but Ajax could see the blood Natty was trailing was giving away their position. “Come here.”
Natty slowed enough for Ajax to grab him by the arm, a little too gruffly. As Natty went to pull away, he noticed the bleeding. He relented as Ajax reached into one of his many pockets and pulled out what he needed to tape him up.
The bandage job complete, Natty yanked his arm away; all he could give Ajax was a nasty look.
“Leon knows you belong together and he can't come between you.” Natty flinched at having his mind read. “Trust me, it's himself he's punishing right now, not you.”
“I should have guessed with your eyes all on your number one man, this little drama playing out between us wouldn’t have escaped any of you,” he said venomously.
Natty ratcheted down the anger a notch. “Why aren't we with the others?”
“Well, if we all form a circle around you to protect you, kind of makes you more of a target.”
“Who you using as a decoy?”
“Leon.”
As a look of satisfaction crawled across Natty's face, he said, “Yeah, Leon is good.” Natty rubbed his forehead as the latest effects of the flower reached his brain. “We need to get down to the river.”
“Why?”
“Piranha.”
Ajax tried to make sense of what he was saying. “You want the bad guys to disappear?”
“Well, if we kill the natives and leave the bodies lying round, that's really going to piss them off and make them even more intent on killing us. But if they just don't know where their men are...”
“Should spook'em pretty well. The terror might well mitigate the anger. Not bad, soldier.”
Ajax took the lead through the woods and they were gone, disappearing into the foliage.
***
Less than an hour later, Natty, camouflaged, was cowering against a tree. Frightened to even twitch lest he give away his position. While Ajax fought off two of Jacko's natives using capoeira-styled martial arts.
Natty made pained faces watching the beating Ajax was taking, ashamed of himself for not lifting a finger. The whole time the rhythmic drumming and chanting pulsed from the woods. Voices singing, “Panno. Panno. Jacko. Jacko. Mudra. Mudra.” Their invisible audience participating in the dialogue in movement between the two men.
Always the natives were better at ducking or jumping or somersaulting over the sweeps of Ajax’s dominant right leg when he managed to stand upright. Each time he went down on his hands to uncoil the springs of both folded legs he found his feet lashing only at air. His target doing a handless cartwheel out of the way. Or another backflip. It didn’t matter if he uncoiled both legs at once, or did an inverted splits to jab at both attackers simultaneously fighting at opposite sides of him.
But the natives couldn’t break from the rhythms of the drums. Their movements entirely in sync with them. It was part of how they maintained their trance. And Ajax could step out of sync with the rhythms, climb over them, slide between the notes, move against the melody entirely. The more he did so, the more he scored points against his attackers.
And while the wild eyes of the native capoeira fighters and the wicked smiles on their mouths belied the dance as part of a spiritual self-actualization ritual, a communing with their gods so as to become one with them, Ajax, on the other hand, had only one focus, winning. He was not seeking enlightenment or self-transcendence in the process. Just a continuous heartbeat.
As one of the natives unwittingly rubbed up against Natty, smearing some of his body oils on him, Natty felt his adrenaline response muted. So, the drugs the natives steeped in, infused into the many colored pigments on their skin, may have made them more fearless, and may have opened a channel to their gods, but it also calmed, perhaps even semi-sedated them. Something else for Ajax to capitalize on. If he could make adrenaline his friend.
Natty realized the drugs also did something else. They showed up the energy bodies of every living thing in the forest. The auras erupting from the fighters, the trees and plants and animals scurrying through the forest were like the ones Natty was used to seeing when he fell asleep with his contacts in. Forgetting to take them out, upon awakening, his oxygen-starved eyes put halos around everything. The “ooh and ahh!” mindset of halo gazing did not exactly facilitate rational thinking. So Ajax could be more clinical in his dismantling of his two adversaries. His countermeasures more studied and surgical. He may not have looked as fluid in his movements, but then maintaining “flow” state was hardly his goal.
Gradually, things began to turn for him.
Ajax finally finished off the first attacker by scissoring both legs about his neck and using the angular momentum of his spinning body to snap his neck, even as his feet clipped the head of the second fighter.
When the second fighter got up, he was groggy. Ajax took full advantage, slamming both feet into his face so hard he pancaked the frontal bones, driving shards from the nose into the brain. By the time the native’s body hit the ground, the sounds of
the drumming and the chanting had stopped. A sudden rustling of leaves and crunching of twigs from all around indicated that the audience had melted back into the jungle.
Natty stepped out into the open. “I'm sorry I...”
Ajax drove a knife into attacker number three, cloaked against a tree, as he made a move on Natty. Sending the blade of the knife up through the chin until it came out the top of the skull, the only thing stopping it from going further, the hilt of the blade. “He was just waiting for you to betray your position. Hiding was the best way you could have helped me.”
“By being a coward you mean?”
“Not cowardly to know when you're in over your head. I couldn't fight them off and protect you at the same time.” He threw body one into the quicksand pit by the edge of the river. Natty watched dumbstruck as the body sank. “You can help me now,” Ajax said.
Natty snapped himself out of the daze. He helped Ajax throw the other two bodies into the all-devouring mud.
There was something sobering about watching them sink into oblivion.
“Why do women have orgasms?” Ajax said, panting. “Just another reason to moan, really.”
“Now you make a joke? What about back there when you were fighting for your life?”
“Shit, they were just helping me with my morning cardio. You’ll know when I start feeling out of my depths, kid.”
Ajax couldn’t have been a day older than Natty. All the same, he decided, within the given context, to let the “kid” remark slide.
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 9