by Chris Bostic
But he couldn’t go back now.
Leisa had pulled ahead while he’d slowed to overanalyze his options. He imagined savages might still fly out of any of the thousand green canvas tents to grab her, but all remained quiet other than the crunching and sliding of their feet.
Weapon in one hand, scrunched maps in the other, he pressed ahead faster than advisable, especially since the tents were scattered all down the steep slope. One wrong move would send him tumbling again.
As the three flew through the camp, Joe wondered how the savages could sleep camped on the side of a hill like that. They had to keep their giant heads toward to the top of the slope, he assumed. But at least they had tents.
Joe knew better than to worry about trying to pull up a tent to bring that with them too. But he realized something at that instant that he had to share with the others.
“Watch the-”
Pete hollered as he tripped on a tent stake and went flying helmet first. As he skidded down the slope like he was on a snow sled, Joe cringed and finished the thought.
“Ropes.”
“You okay?” Leisa asked and adjusted course. Joe also ran to him.
“I think,” Pete replied, and made little effort to get back up. Once they arrived at the crash site, Pete finally rolled over and spat dirt onto the ground. “Thanks for the warning.”
“I thought you knew,” Joe replied and reached out a hand to pull a clump of gravel and dirt from the inside of his friend’s helmet.
“Just get up,” Leisa said, looking over her shoulder at the ridge top.
Joe didn’t need to turn to hear the inevitable. The dreaded chirping sound crested the spine and rolled down the hill toward them.
“They’re here,” Joe said, though he needn’t have told the others.
“Crap!” Pete tried to scramble to his feet, and ended up twisting his feet in the stake ropes of a different tent. The canvas rustled as he thrashed trying to free himself.
“What do we do?” Leisa said as she fought at the ropes, trying to free him.
Joe glanced up and made out the obvious shapes of savages silhouetted against the night sky. They slipped over the spine and across the gravel by the dozens, pouring into the woods well above them.
Joe knew there was no way to outrun them, and their time was about up. They couldn’t afford to hardly move a muscle. That left only one thing to do.
“Hide.”
Pete’s eyes bugged out again, making him look even more like a savage with his similarly skinny body. He opened his mouth as if to object, but kept quiet. At least he held still long enough for Leisa to get his boot loose.
Joe crawled for the door to the tent and found it unzipped. Leading gun first, he launched himself into the tent.
Nothing came running at him from the blackness.
He held the flap open as Leisa and Pete clambered inside. Tossing the crumpled maps to the rear, he quickly zipped it tight.
“Are you serious?” Pete whispered harshly as he looked around with wild eyes.
“What else could we do?” Joe hoped for Leisa to confirm his rash decision, but found only hesitation in her lack of a reply. “We were surrounded.”
“But some savage’s tent? It’ll come back.”
Joe could barely see a thing, and had already felt around inside. While he wasn’t sure if it was a positive, he had been relieved to find the tent completely empty. “There’s no sleeping bag in here. No gear.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Pete argued. “You saw ‘em carrying all their stuff on their backs.”
Joe couldn’t disagree with that statement. Instead, he reached inside his pocket for a knife. His fingers trembled as he finally locked on the small blade. He fumbled to pull it out, and dropped it on the floor of the empty tent.
“Then be ready,” Joe said as he located the blade and unfolded it.
“This is suicide,” Pete whined.
“It’s the only choice,” Leisa said softly, locking open a blade of her own.
Joe assumed that her chest heaved by the sound of her breathing. He was sure sweat beaded all of their foreheads. The heavy canvas would be hotter than an oven on a warm day. The three of them crowded in a little A-frame pup tent really pushed the limits. Two people could barely stretch out to sleep. At least this one seemed to be on less of a slope.
Still sitting up, Joe was so close to the low ceiling that his helmet scraped the canvas. He pulled it off but kept an ear gently pressed to the fabric. The chirping continued, but mixed with other unintelligible sounds like high-pitched barks and whines.
No wonder Connie called them savages, Joe thought. They sounded like a pack of howling animals. Hyenas came to mind.
The savages spread out through the camp. Joe couldn’t see them, but he could hear the footsteps and the rustling of tents from all around them. Too close.
Though he couldn’t make out more than a shadow and the occasional flash of the whites of her eyes, Joe looked to Leisa. She appeared to have her knife at the ready. Her hand moved to her head to brush what must have been loose strands of matted, sweaty hair off her forehead. Like Joe, she faced the tent door with grim determination.
He tried to suck in a breath, but could manage little more than a shallow panting. Even his tongue seemed to want to loll out of his mouth. He almost chuckled upon realizing he was acting as animalistic as the savages.
“Maybe they won’t need this tent,” Joe whispered.
“Yeah, right.” Pete’s shadow showed that he’d returned to staring at the floor.
With an attitude like that, Joe was happy that he’d ushered Pete to the back of the tent away from the door. But still he tried to reason with him.
“If it’s the same group, we must’ve taken out hundreds of them down by the river. They might not need all their tents now.”
“Or it’s a different group.”
“C’mon, Pete. You’re really not helping,” Leisa whispered, and turned back to face the door.
“What’s the point?” he groused. “Might as well turn ourselves in.”
“Then go do that,” Joe snapped. Not that he wanted to lose his buddy, but he never dealt well with failure. “Make us a distraction so we can get away.”
“Maybe I will.” Pete rustled the tent fabric.
“Stop. I didn’t mean that.” Joe thought no one should have to do what Connie had done for them, though he certainly appreciated the sacrifice—even if it had only gotten them as far as the savages’ camp.
“We’re getting out of this together,” Joe added.
“I wasn’t going anywhere,” Pete replied. “I don’t like you guys that much.”
“Funny,” Leisa said, though she obviously wasn’t amused.
“I just had to get my legs out from under myself,” Pete replied. “If they try to get in here, I’ll fight.”
Joe went through the plan for ambush in his head, not that he wanted to have to think about it. He saw the possibility that they could pull it off if everything went perfectly. The door would unzip, Joe would surprise the savage and pull it inside. Then the guys would stab it and hold it down and keep it quiet. Extremely risky, but doable.
If he had his choice, he preferred to avoid a struggle. He’d be too anxious to sleep a second, but it was nice to think that maybe they could hide all night. That suddenly reminded him of something important.
“Why are they here now? It’s nighttime.”
Leisa finished the thought. “And they always attack at night.”
“Exactly.”
“Great,” Pete said. “They’re gonna tear down the tents and move camp.”
“We don’t know that,” Joe said, but he shuddered as he realized that was a definite possibility. There was no way to pull off a successful ambush in that scenario, and the realization hit him hard.
Joe quieted, lost in dark thoughts.
Footsteps continued plodding all around camp. Zippers slid up or down, and canvas rustled. Joe tr
ied so hard to hear a clue that his ears ached. There was no audible indication that tents were being taken down, but that was only because there were so many random noises across the hillside.
Close by, a savage spoke in its strange dialect, the words some kind of bizarre combination of clucks and chirps and the occasional word that sort of rhymed with ping or pong or boing. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before.
Worse yet, each voice stabbed into his aching gut. He remained hypersensitive to every sound, trying to track how close it was, where the speaker was going, were they getting closer, and so on.
Minutes seemingly turned to hours, though Joe knew he hadn’t been there for nearly that long. At that pace, he’d never make it through the night. His heart would burst. Or maybe he’d have a stroke, as the beating remained so frantic in his chest that his fingers tingled. An oppressive headache provided the icing on the cake.
At some point, lights came on across the camp, with little bursts of brightness spread out over a large area like stars in a night sky. Probably some kind of lanterns, Joe assumed. At least they helped him get a slightly better look inside the tent. He didn’t dare crack the tent flap for a peek outside.
Not long after, he caught a whiff of the awful fish smell he’d come to associate with the savages. It was some kind of spoiled anchovy scent that really turned his stomach, not that it needed much help.
“Dang, that stinks,” Pete said, breaking their silence. “How do they eat that stuff? It’s ungodly.”
“Like rancid fish guts,” Leisa said.
“Yeah,” Joe agreed. “It reminds me of when my dad would bring home fish. That was rare…but if we left the carcass out too long, you know, you couldn’t get rid of the smell for a week. I’ll never forget it.”
“You guys had fish?” Leisa asked. “You’re like royalty.”
“Yeah, right. My pops would trade for it sometimes. Not a lot.” He looked at her curiously. “Didn’t you?”
“Oh heck no.” Leisa closed her eyes as if imagining the old days, which weren’t that far back yet seemingly a million miles away. “But we had so much dang chicken I could barely stand to look at it after a while.”
“I would’ve killed for chicken. Literally.” Joe decided to leave out the common varmints, and stretched the truth when he said, “Fish was about the only meat we had.”
Pete went there. “Raccoon isn’t bad. Neither is ‘possum or squirrel.” He swallowed exaggeratedly like he had a bad taste in the mouth. “Never was a fan of mice or rats. But even that’s not sounding so bad right now.”
“That’s so gross,” Leisa said. “How could you?”
She looked at Joe, and he averted his eyes. You do it because that’s all you have, he thought. He was far from royalty, and it was looking more like Leisa was the spoiled, affluent one of the group.
“What?” she asked.
Joe realized he hadn’t done a good job of hiding his reaction. “I just didn’t realize you really were a princess.” She narrowed her eyes at him and looked ready to argue. He didn’t give her the chance. “I’ve eaten all that crap too, which I wouldn’t consider so much meat as I would survival food.”
“Oh.” Leisa’s brow relaxed. “I’m no princess, Connie, and there’s no castle. Just a hut on the outside of town…and a big wire cage where we raised our chickens.” She smiled at him bashfully. “We’ve all gotta do whatever it takes to survive.”
“You can say that again,” Joe said turning his thoughts back to the present.
“Whatever it takes to survive,” Pete said, trying to be a smart-aleck. But Joe was suddenly too focused on the situation to give him trouble.
Louder voices rose above the chatter of savages milling about. There was an urgency, and Joe hoped that meant they were marshaling their forces to head out for another night attack. Instead, the voices grew louder.
One of the savages warbled like a sickly bird, and the others quieted down. Clucks and tongued-notes were dispensed like orders, and Joe heard the distinct sound of wood rather than fabric.
“They’re moving crates around or something,” he whispered. “Close.”
“Way too close.” Leisa fiddled with the knife in her hands.
“Maybe they’re breaking camp,” Pete said.
“Sounds like they’re setting up camp,” Joe said, though disbelieving his own words. He wanted to peek out of the tent so badly, but couldn’t find a way to do it without making a noise. The slim vent along the ridge of the tent didn’t allow for a look outside, and there were no windows. He was thankful for that, but still wanted to see what was going on.
Savages shuffled by close to the tent. The fabric jerked, making all three of them flinch. Joe raised an arm to strike with the knife, and held his breath. He couldn’t afford to be heard, no matter how small the sound or movement.
Footsteps continued. The door never unzipped.
Must have tripped on the tent stake, Joe thought. He knew they were all around them, and finally he decided he couldn’t take it anymore. He had to know what was going on. So he leaned forward to slowly unzip the tent.
As his fingers hovered on the zipper, he heard a pained moan. Pulling back, he shot a look at Leisa.
“You hear that?” he mouthed.
She was so tense her head barely moved as she nodded. Before she could speak, another moan ripped across the camp, and morphed into an angry growl.
Not an animalistic growl. Joe knew the voice was definitely more human than savage.
CHAPTER 21
“What the heck?” Joe asked. “I’m checking it out.”
“Don’t,” Pete said, but Joe moved back to the door anyway.
He felt around for the zipper and pulled as slowly as he could go. Tooth by metal tooth, the zipper lowered until a little bit of gray oozed into the blackness of the tent.
Pressing one eye to the crack, Joe looked out into the camp. As he had suspected, a few scattered lanterns were spread out across the area, casting more shadows than light. But Joe couldn’t see anything besides tents. The clucks and groans and a myriad other sounds were a little farther off to his left, meaning he needed to lower the zipper farther.
“What’s out there?” Pete asked impatiently.
“Hang on.” Joe inched the zipper down and leaned to the side. A second later he crashed back to the floor of the tent. “Whoa.”
“What?” Leisa said.
“Prisoners,” Joe said softly. “They’ve got prisoners.”
“They’re gonna eat ‘em,” Pete said. “That’s the smell. Blood and fish and a leg of fricking human.”
Joe gagged, remembering that’s what Connie had told him a hundred times, “When the savages run out of dogs, they’ll eat the prisoners.”
Joe hadn’t heard any dogs, but there were no campfires for cooking either. No sign of anything but a few bug-eyed stickmen herding limping soldiers across the camp at the point of bayonets. The captives wore the uniforms of Regulators, maybe from the Fifth as far as Joe knew. Surely the savages don’t eat them raw, he thought.
The notion turned his stomach. He needed fresh air, and pressed his face back to the crack. The prisoners had apparently vanished deeper into the camp. Savages continued to work in a small clearing about twenty yards away. Another row of tents stood between him and them.
More wood knocked together, and Joe leaned farther to the side to get a better view around the tent in front of his. He finally twisted enough that he spotted several savages hauling crates to the little clearing. He watched as they unceremoniously dropped them to the ground with a crash and kicked them around to butt up against each other.
They’re making another table, he thought. His mind went into overdrive with wild thoughts, like how the savages were going to butcher the prisoners right there and hand out the guts to their waiting comrades.
But the prisoners were long gone, and no more had come.
Then came more savages.
“What’s going on out there
?” Leisa whispered in his ear, having crawled up next to him.
He leaned back so she could scoot in front of him. “They’re building another table. The prisoners are gone.”
She watched with rapt attention, not speaking for a minute or more while Joe waited in stunned silence.
“No way,” she uttered. “You…you gotta see this. I can’t watch this.”
Leisa pulled away to let Joe take her spot. He leaned in quickly, and spotted something that shocked him to the very core.
A pair of savages had just deposited a lifeless man in a Regulator uniform onto the makeshift table. Another set of savages were coming right behind them, holding the shape of an even larger man by the feet and shoulders as if he were on a phantom stretcher. He groaned as they placed him on the table next to the first one.
But it was the gentleness that surprised him more than anything. They revered the man, as if offering up a sacrifice.
Joe watched with rapt attention as the savages walked away. They were replaced by an unusually short man. Unlike the typical K-NAP soldier, his head seemed more in proportion to his body. Even more strangely, he was almost fully covered in a light-colored uniform that resembled more of a cloak.
“It seriously is a sacrifice,” he said, settling onto his backside in stunned disbelief.
“What do we do?” Leisa asked.
“What can we do?”
“Get outta here,” Pete said, but they both discounted the idea.
“Not with this place crawling with savages,” Leisa said. “We wouldn’t get ten feet.”
“I know.” Pete hung his head and scooted back to the rear of the tiny tent. Paper rustled as he settled into the corner.
“What was that?” Joe said, but instantly remembered the maps. He couldn’t bear to watch the sacrifice, and instead held out his hand. “Pass those over here.”
“What?” Pete said, sullen and looking ready to take another nap.
“The maps.” Joe was about to drop too, but the adrenaline wouldn’t let him calm down. “I want to see the maps.”