Savages

by Shirley Conran

  More leaves fell from the lookout tree. “Okay, okay, I’ll do my best. But suppose they’re gay? Suppose they’re lazy? Suppose that, for some goddamn reason, one of them stays by the boat? Then what?”

  “Then somebody kills him, of course,” Patty said.

  “What with?” Suzy wailed.

  Patty said, “For God’s sake, we’ve got two rifles, an ax, five fish knives, two bows and arrows, and plenty of rattan rope. We aren’t going to throw stones at him, Suzy!”

  Annie said, “Let’s stop talking and get going. I’ll think over the plan. Patty had better be lookout while Carey and Silvana run the beauty parlor.”

  Patty said, “Beauty parlor?”

  Annie said, “Take a hard look at Suzy.”

  They all looked at Suzy, who was slithering down the gnarled eucalyptus trunk. Her hair, now dark, had been cut short to keep out the fleas; her face was grimy; she wore a tattered, dirty shirt and khaki combat pants that were several sizes too large for her.

  “She sure doesn’t look like Dorothy Lamour,” Carey admitted.

  Patty said gloomily, “Remember that western where they have to sober up the drunken gunman in a hurry? We’ve got a worse problem.”

  * * *

  The sun blazed down, the coconut palms rustled in the slight breeze, and in the shade beneath them, the rum bottle was almost empty. In spite of the heat, one of the naked men was still awake. He yawned, scratched his armpits, dusted gritty coral sand from his belly button and casually glanced up the beach.

  From the northern curve of coral sand, Suzy wandered toward him. Her brown limbs glistened with coconut oil and a red hibiscus was tucked behind her left ear. Her eyes seemed enormous thanks to a stick of charcoal and, although their lipsticks had long since melted, Suzy had rubbed the greasy residue from a lipstick tube onto her mouth and cheeks. A length of pink-flowered cotton, draped low on her hips, concealed the hidden fish knife.

  The naked man sat up and stared.

  Swaying provocatively, Suzy walked slowly toward him.

  The man blinked, grinned, leaned over and shook the shoulder of the next man.

  He opened his eyes, yawned, slowly turned his head, then sat up.

  Suzy turned to the sea and stretched out her arms.

  On the clifftop Annie whispered, “But wait till they see her run!”

  One of the men called out a greeting.

  Suzy jumped in simulated surprise. She turned to face the men. She put her hand to her mouth and gave a little giggle.

  One man jumped to his feet and sauntered toward her.

  In the hot bright sunlight, Suzy giggled again and shyly backed away.

  The second man jumped to his feet and called out—a warm, encouraging, flattering welcome by the sound of it.

  Suzy covered her breasts with her hands and looked uncertain.

  The third man sat up, clearly wanting to know why no one had told him what was happening.

  Suzy turned away and flaunted her small, high, rounded buttocks as she started to saunter back in the direction from which she’d come. Teasingly, she glanced over her shoulder a couple of times. The hibiscus blossom fell from behind her ear onto the sand.

  The third man scrambled to his feet.

  Suzy started to run, but languidly, in slow motion, as if her knees were bound together by elastic cord.

  Delighted by her inviting glance, the first man ran up the beach. When he reached the red blossom that had fallen from Suzy’s ear, he picked it up and ran after her, waving it.

  Suzy gave a playful shriek and ran a little faster.

  Careless and noisy as schoolboys on an outing, the three men splashed across the knee-deep channel that flowed from the waterfall to the lagoon.

  As they raced toward her, Suzy started to increase her speed. She hadn’t run in a straight line; she was making a big curve around the back of the beach and then back out again toward the sea. She was running fast now—faster than she had intended. Too fast.

  With one smooth, graceful movement, Suzy’s pink-flowered sarong suddenly unwound and fell to the sand. Her knife lay hidden in the fold. She was now defenseless.

  The men whooped and cheered at the sight of Suzy’s naked body. Suddenly, the first man stumbled and nearly fell. He flailed his arms in an effort to regain his balance, but the sand seemed to clutch at the soles of his feet. He floundered and tried to pull his feet clear of the muck. Alarm crossed his face as he fell, half-turning to shout a warning to his friends.

  The second man had paused to grab up Suzy’s pink cotton sarong. He looked surprised when a sharp, eight-inch knife fell from the folds, but he picked that up as well before running after his friend.

  Because of his pause, he was not so close behind the first man as he had been. When he saw his friend fall, then heard his mud-covered face scream a warning, he just managed to stop on the edge of the quicksand.

  For a moment it looked as if he was also about to be sucked into the sandy bog, but as his feet started to sink he threw himself backward, arms outspread.

  As the second man heaved his feet free of the clutching sand, Carey, standing astride on top of the cliff, took careful aim. She heard a sharp crack when the rifle fired but no thump. Shit, she’d missed.

  Again, she aimed carefully and gently squeezed back the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  She squeezed harder. She squeezed again. And again and again, as hard as she could.

  Nothing happened.

  Somewhere in that excellent example of design and engineering, the M-16 had jammed, thus proving that it needs to be cleaned if you want to fire it.

  Upon hearing the unmistakable crack of a rifle, the third man, who was well in the rear, abruptly stopped running. He turned in his tracks and sped back along the way he had come, toward the orange towels and the rifles that lay in the shade of the palms.

  Two grim, ragged creatures stepped from behind the trees.

  Annie lifted her AK-47 and fired at him. The shot missed.

  Patty, who had grabbed a rifle from an orange towel, raced toward the boat.

  When he heard Annie’s shot, the third soldier altered direction, but he was running too fast to stop immediately. He threw a look at the dinghy, riding serene on the aquamarine water, but the boat was anchored a good thirty feet out and a woman with a rifle had already reached the water’s edge. He had no chance of getting to the dinghy.

  He turned in his tracks and started to run, zigzagging as he went, in the only direction that was left to him. He headed for the little path that wound up beside the waterfall, intending to get up those rocks and hide in the jungle.

  Annie fired again and missed.

  Gasping for breath, the man flung himself at the cliff path, stones rattling beneath his bare feet. Little puffs of dust marked his steps as he scrambled up the rocks.

  Lying on her stomach, hidden behind the black rocks at the waterfall pool, Silvana rested her rifle on one of the big stones as she watched the naked man scramble toward her. Silvana was a steadier shot than Annie. She waited until the man had almost reached her, then gently squeezed the trigger.

  The man screamed and clutched his left shoulder. His hand was immediately covered with blood. He half-fell, half-scrabbled back down the cliff.

  Wildly, the third man looked around. Annie was below him. Patty, who had been running up the beach from the water’s edge, stopped and took aim. Behind him, Silvana stood astride the track, aiming at his back.

  Realizing that he was trapped, the man stood still and put up his hands.

  “No prisoners this time!” Annie shouted. “Shoot!”

  Without hesitation, all three women squeezed their triggers.

  “Where’s the second guy?” Patty cried anxiously.

  All three women turned to look up to the north end of the beach.

  From the top of the cliff the man should have been an easy shot, but Carey was screaming, “This fucking thing won’t work! I don’t know how to fi
x it!”

  Annie yelled back at her, “Don’t follow him, Carey. You’re unarmed and he’s got a knife. Get down here and grab one of their rifles.” She turned to Silvana. “You and Suzy guard the dinghy and the rifles while Patty and I go after him.”

  Silvana nodded. As soon as the first man reached the quicksand, Suzy had run into the sea and flung herself into the water; now she was swimming as hard as she could toward the dinghy.

  Patty sprinted back to fetch the third rifle, then ran with it toward Carey. Clutching their rifles, Carey, Patty and Annie raced north on the beach to where the second man was moving fast, in a random pattern. He had nearly reached the mangroves on the north horn of the lagoon.

  The trees glistened in the sunlight, huge, twisted clumps of dark green foliage, some of them over a hundred feet high. The daily three-foot fall of the tide revealed their thick, gnarled roots, tough enough to withstand the constant battle of the waves and the tearing of the winds. The only way the man could make any progress through the mangroves would be to clamber over the intricate, thick roots where the seawater sucked at their interlocked limbs.

  “Shame it isn’t high tide,” Patty said, panting as they ran. She glanced at her watch. It was only ten forty. High tide wouldn’t be until eight o’clock that evening.

  As the man neared the mangroves, Patty went down on one knee, lifted her rifle and waited for him to slow down. When he did, she took careful aim and fired.

  She missed.

  “Hope a crocodile gets him,” Carey gasped.

  “We can’t count on it,” Annie said, biting her lip.

  The man leaped over the first mangrove roots and disappeared from sight.

  * * *

  The women met at the dinghy. Suzy and Carey were crouched in it on a heap of khaki.

  Annie looked doubtfully at the dinghy. “It’s not very big.”

  “It’s big enough,” Suzy said, firmly. “If it was big enough for three of them, then it’s big enough for five of us. Now let’s get the hell out of here. We have a rifle each, plus a spare, and plenty of clothes and boots. Let’s grab the water, the dried fish, the charts and the compass, and take off! It doesn’t matter if the Katanga people see us. This motor can outdistance any canoes that might be lurking behind the headland. And we have rifles.”

  Annie said, “We’d never be able to cover the seventy miles to Irian Jaya before nightfall. If that soldier gets back to his base, they could have a helicopter here before dark. It would be easy to spot this white boat on the blue ocean. They could use us for target practice, like ducks at a fairground.”

  Suzy screamed, “Annie, we go to all this trouble to get a boat, and you make us do these terrible things, and then you don’t want us to use the boat! Why not?”

  Annie said, “The only terrible thing about what we’re doing is that it wouldn’t be considered terrible if men were doing it.”

  “Jonathan always planned to escape just after dark,” Carey reminded them.

  “The faster we get away, the safer we’ll be,” Suzy argued. “That guy may never make it back to camp. I vote we risk being seen in daylight.”

  Annie said, “Hands up, whoever wants to go in daylight.”

  Suzy’s hand shot out, but hers was the only one.

  Suzy looked around and said, “Okay. So what are we going to do?”

  Carey said, “If we hide the boat and no helicopter turns up, we leave at dusk.”

  “How do we hide the dinghy? There’s nowhere to put it,” Patty worried. “And the tide’s still going out. Soon that boat will be sitting on sand.”

  Annie said hesitantly, “Maybe we ought to wait several nights before we go.”

  There was an instant chorus of disagreement.

  “What’s the point of waiting several nights?” Silvana asked. Having shot a man, she was now back in favor.

  Annie said, “It’s taken us months to get to this point. We’re in the best position yet. Let’s not blow it. If the guy doesn’t make it back to his base, there’s no harm in waiting a few days. Right?”

  Reluctantly, they all nodded.

  Annie continued, “But if we hide ourselves and the boat, then when they come searching they’ll assume we’ve already left in the dinghy and search for us at sea, not on land. We’ll hear aircraft and know what the situation is.”

  Patty said, “We could provision the boat right away, then take her south around the headland. Hide her in some creek or behind overhanging foliage on the other side.”

  Annie nodded. “We could hide the boat, come back overland, then hide in the cave. No one’s going to find us there, and we’ve got plenty of water. It’s mucky, but fresh and untainted. The dried fish will last for at least eight days.”

  “Eight days in the dark?” Suzy said. The battery of the underwater flashlight was long dead.

  “People have been imprisoned in the dark for months and survived,” Annie said.

  Suzy said gloomily, “I can think of nothing more unappealing than drinking gritty water from a coconut shell and chewing on lumps of dried fish for a week in the dark, while soldiers with fixed bayonets wander above our heads.”

  “Jonathan always said that our best chance of escape was when nobody was hunting for us,” Carey reminded everyone. “That’s why he blew up the Louise. So I vote we don’t go until we decide that the terrorists are not going to look, or until after they’ve looked and left. Even if it takes eight days.”

  “So that’s settled,” Annie said. “We’ll split into two groups. Patty and Carey, take the dinghy around the point as soon as we’ve loaded it up. Carey, lend me Jonathan’s watch, so the camp group has a watch. Take Suzy’s neck-thong compass for the trek back.” She looked at Suzy. “You get into the cave. Silvana and I will go back to camp and lower our equipment down the chimney to you.”

  “You haven’t convinced me, but let’s get on with it,” Suzy said.

  By eleven o’clock they had discussed and agreed on their plans. Patty and Carey thought that it was worth taking an hour and a half to equip the dinghy properly. This would give the group two hidden equipment areas—the dinghy and the cave. As they didn’t know what trouble they were going to run into when they rounded the headland, Patty wanted to take clothes, rifles, food and water in case they had to stay hidden there.

  Besides the weapons and the beach towels, the soldiers had carried three fishing lines, three pocket lighters, three packs of cigarettes, six bottles of orangeade, some fruit, and a bottle of rum, now half-empty.

  Listening to their brisk, efficient planning, Silvana suddenly realized how much they had all changed from the terrified women who had originally fled into the jungle. Although they had had nothing much in common, at this moment these five women were comrades in arms. They had shared danger, and they all knew that they could rely on one another.

  Annie said, “We’d better figure out a rough time plan, and then do the best we can.”

  Carey calculated. “Assuming that guy hits the jungle path and travels at around three miles an hour, he should arrive back at the hotel five hours after we last saw him. That would be about three forty. Allow them twenty minutes to organize a search party—assuming they have a helicopter immediately available—and another fifteen minutes to get here by air. We should all be hidden by four fifteen this afternoon—at the latest.”

  Patty said, “Sixteen-fifteen hours.”

  Suzy rolled her eyes. “Why are we suddenly on military time? Next thing, you’ll be telling us to synchronize our watches.”

  “Patty and I have already done that,” Carey said. “You’re going to be in the cave where it’s permanently dark, so you’ll have to keep track of whether it’s four in the afternoon or four in the morning. You don’t want to rendezvous twelve hours late.”

  “It’s eleven twenty now. We’ll each do three trips to load the dinghy, with Silvana supervising in camp,” Annie said. “Allow thirty minutes for each trip. At twelve fifty the boat takes off. With luck,
you should round the headland just after one o’clock, Carey. No need to tell you to try to keep out of sight of Katanga. Once around the headland, allow yourselves an hour to find a hiding place and camouflage the dinghy.”

  Carey nodded. “That brings us to, say, two fifteen in the afternoon. If we see natives, then Patty will stay on board with a rifle. If not, we’ll both try to get back, overland, to the cave. We’ll hope to make it by four.”

  Patty added, “Of course, if we find that the land around the headland is secondary jungle, we won’t have a hope of crossing it. We’ll stay with the dinghy.”

  “How can you possibly tell how long you’ll take on a trip you’ve never done?” Silvana asked dubiously.

  “If we start out overland, then find that we can’t complete the trip by four o’clock, we’ll return to the boat—even if we’ve nearly arrived at the cave,” Carey said. “Because if we’re found near the cave it might endanger you guys inside.”

  Silvana nodded. “So we’ll have just over three hours to lower down the cave chimney as much of the camp equipment as possible.”

  Annie nodded. “At four o’clock, everyone here gets into the cave and stays there. Silvana will camouflage the chimney exit and swim into the cave.”

  Silvana said, “That’s going to be tough without light.”

  “I’ll light one of the soldiers’ lighters as soon as you swim inside and call,” Annie said, “so you’ll be able to scramble out.”

  “Couldn’t we throw some wood down the chimney and have a fire in the cave?” Suzy asked. “So we can see what we’re doing?”

  Annie looked doubtful. “Someone might see smoke escaping from the chimney.”

  Suzy said, “Suppose that soldier is a regular four-minute-miler and gets back to his camp in record time?”

  “With no boots? And no clothes?” Annie said. “Do you remember what that track was like?”

  Suzy shuddered.

  28

  Patty and Carey heaved up the anchor and pulled the dinghy into deeper water. The tide had turned at eight o’clock that morning and the best time to load a boat would have been just before then, but the tide was still going out, for which Patty was grateful. Although they had the outboard, it still might have been difficult to leave the lagoon with the tide against them.