by John Koloen
“There’s nothing we can do for him here,” Murphy said. “If we get back to the village, at least we can call for help, send a helicopter with medical people.”
“But just leaving him like this?”
“Joe’s with him,” Murphy said. “He’s not gonna go with us anyway. This is just us, the young guys. We got the best chance of anybody.”
“I don’t know,” Andy Wilson said. “It’s starting to get dark and we don’t know where the bugs are. We could be walking right into them.”
“It’s not that far,” Murphy said. “We’re only a mile or two from the ATVs. Besides, we’ve got headlamps and if we can’t make it out tonight we’ll make a fire and get some rest and find our way back in the morning.”
“Assuming we don’t get eaten by the bugs,” Mitchell said.
“You don’t have to go if you’re afraid,” Murphy challenged. “You want to stay here and listen to Jack scream all night, then go ahead. I’m going with or without you. It’s up to you.”
“Are we just gonna sneak outta here?” Mitchell asked.
“No, I’ll tell everybody. We got a better chance if we split up. It’s the only way we’ll find help.”
103
THOMAS AND DUNCAN opposed Murphy’s plan.
“There’s safety in numbers,” Duncan said.
“There’s no guarantee you’re gonna make it,” Thomas said. “This is a big jungle. It’s easy to get lost. Hell, I don’t how to get back except by going the way we came and I’m sure not going to do that.”
“Nobody’s saying you can’t stay. That’s up to you. I’m just saying we’re gonna go. You know, if we get through we’ll send help. I just don’t see what good it does for everyone to stay put. You guys don’t have a better plan, do you?” Murphy asked.
Thomas and Duncan glanced at each other.
“I think we’ll stay here for the night,” Duncan said. “We can’t just leave Jack behind, can we?”
“No,” Murphy said.
“But that’s what you’re doing, right?” Thomas said. “And he’s your guy.”
“Look, we’re not running away. We’re going for help. Maybe if we can get back quick enough with medical people he can be saved. But what can we do by just standing here?”
Duncan sighed and ran his hand across his forehead. There was no point in arguing. They were free to go, if they wanted. He felt that Boyd and Suarez would remain but wondered about Thomas’s team.
“They’ll do what I tell them,” Thomas said assuredly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go charging off into the jungle.”
“But if they’re lucky…”
“Yeah, if they’re lucky, they might get through and, who knows,” Thomas said, his voice moderating into a whisper, “maybe that poor man won’t die, however unlikely that seems right now.”
104
LIGHT WAS FADING as Murphy, Wilson and Mitchell prepared to leave. To a man, they felt they were doing the right thing and that when it was over they would be heroes. They would be the ones to send help so that the others would survive. It was simply a matter of covering as much territory as they could before nightfall, spend the night in a safe place with a big fire and then to the village in a quick march if they couldn’t find the ATVs. It would all be over by tomorrow. That was the plan.
Each carried whatever water and snack bars they hadn’t consumed and other items, such as heat reflective emergency blankets, ponchos, lighters, pocket knives and headlamps. Young, fit and energized by the object of their mission, they would travel light and with no one to hold them back they expected to cover a lot of ground before making camp. As they left the others behind they were even talking about reaching the ATVs before dark and perhaps the village. The one thing they were all happy to leave behind was the tortured, periodic screams of their colleague.
Robinson did what he could to comfort the unfortunate Walker. He wiped driblets of blood from his mouth and placed a stick between Walker’s teeth to keep him from biting his tongue. Although he was much closer to Walker, his screaming didn’t bother Robinson as much as it did Duncan, Thomas and the others who had slowly moved away until they were at the far end of the rocky outcrop. Even so, they would have appreciated earplugs.
After Murphy left, the remaining men second-guessed his motives and calculated his chance of success. He faced the same dilemma they did, namely, avoiding blaberus. They speculated whether the insects foraged nocturnally. Like Murphy, they planned to build a fire large enough to detect the approach of the insects and provide them with a weapon to defend themselves. Duncan and Boyd knew from experience that if the bugs got close to them, the only defense would be to run or climb a tree, though they weren’t certain that climbing a tree would provide protection. Just because they had never seen the insects climb didn’t mean they couldn’t do it.
The first order of business was to collect firewood, which they did like Boy Scouts working on a merit badge. While they scrounged for sticks and branches, Antonio Suarez used his machete to chop longer pieces to size. Within a half-hour they had collected enough to last the night. While the younger men did this, Thomas and Duncan selected a site to build the fire, bearing in mind where they speculated the insects would most likely appear. This was based entirely on the direction from which they had run that day. They did not want to believe there were other colonies in the vicinity, nor did they want to believe the insects could cover as much territory as the men had traveled in less than a day. But they knew the symbolic, psychological and physical benefits of a roaring blaze in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the enveloping darkness. At bottom, it would help them feel safe even if they weren’t.
Out of compassion, and because Walker could not be moved without raising his discomfort to an intolerable level, they built the fire close enough to him that he could benefit from the warmth. Although Boyd and Duncan carried emergency blankets, the others didn’t. They brought them because of their previous experience in the rainforest. It’s also why they carried extra batteries for their headlamps.
With the fire casting a semicircle of light away from the outcrop, and having established a watch schedule, they settled down, quiet, contemplative, exhausted, some holding their ears against Walker’s periodic screams, all hoping that Murphy had made the right decision.
105
NIGHTFALL CAME SOONER and quicker than Murphy had hoped. As the forest darkened, he egged his colleagues on, another hundred yards, and then another, followed by another. Not too far. The destination was in sight, but it was fluid and until it became apparent they could go no further they stopped where they stood. Had they waited too long? The forest floor was dark even though the sky still held light. Finding firewood was their first priority, but the farther away from their campsite they had to scavenge, the more uncomfortable and isolated they felt. They’d thought that escaping Walker’s screams would somehow free them from an intolerable burden, but they discovered new fears in the screeches of unknown animals and movement they could sense but not see. They began to understand why a person might whistle while walking through a graveyard.
Little was said until the fire was going and then they spoke nervously, though they tried to hide their nervousness. Each was frightened by what he didn’t know, not the least of which was the location of the insects.
Murphy, the oldest and the boss, struggled to maintain his confidence. With every step he grew less certain they were doing the right thing.
“I, for one, don’t mind saying that I’m scared shitless,” Bob Mitchell admitted quietly.
Andy Wilson looked at Murphy for a reaction, but could not discern his expression in the fire’s jumping light.
“You just gotta let go of that,” Murphy said.
“Easy for you to say.”
“You’re scaring yourself and fear is infectious. Ask yourself, what are you afraid of?”
Mitchell sighed deeply.
“I don’t know. Everything. Maybe we shoulda stayed, you know, what they sai
d, safety in numbers. There’s only three of us. What can we do?”
“What can we do about what?” Wilson asked.
“Anything. There’s things around us and those monkeys or whatever, the screeching, don’t you feel it?”
“Sounds like you’re afraid of being afraid.”
“Exactly. No, wait, that’s not what I meant. I’m afraid of what’s out there,” Mitchell said, pointing into the darkness.
“There’s only two things you can do,” Murphy said. “Either go crazy with fear, in which case I will personally bash your head in, or you can just do what they do in combat, which is just assume you’re a walking dead man and do your job.”
“And what’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“My job.”
“Build a bigger fire and try to get some sleep.”
106
MITCHELL WAS AWAKENED from a fitful sleep when Andy Wilson whispered into his ear that it was his turn to stand watch. It was about three-thirty and everything around them was engulfed in warm, humid darkness.
“You might want to build up the fire,” Wilson said as he tried to find a comfortable position to rest. “The wood around here burns fast.”
The three had positioned themselves in a semi-circle near the fire. All around them was open space punctuated by palm trees and clumps of underbrush, which is where they found most of their firewood. Though awake, Mitchell struggled to focus. Whatever sleep he’d had wasn’t enough as he stood, rolled his head around his shoulders and took deep breaths. If only they’d had coffee, he thought, as he rubbed his eyes. At least they had water. Dipping the end of his shirt into the bottle, he wiped it across his face, the cool dampness acting as a tonic to his drowsy mind.
“God, what I wouldn’t do for an espresso,” he mumbled as he stirred the fire with piece of petiole cut from a palm frond.
Most of the wood they’d collected had been burned and the fire was no longer the blaze it had been when they’d set the watch schedule. The light had diminished to less than twenty feet, and much of that dim. Using his headlamp, Mitchell inched away from the fire and into the darkness. Although he wasn’t completely comfortable with the cacophony of sound, he was no longer startled by the high-pitched shrieks emerging from the encircling darkness. What he was most concerned about now was to gather as much wood as he could, as quickly as he could without being injured. Even with his headlamp, he wasn’t certain he’d be able to tell the difference between a snake and a piece of twisted wood. Somehow the fear of snakes had pushed the possibility of being swarmed by an army of insects from his mind. Using the palm to poke at the undergrowth, he cautiously grabbed handfuls of small sticks to add to the wood pile. He longed to find just one or two substantial pieces that would burn for an hour but found none. Worse, even as he added wood to the fire, he had to venture farther from the safety of the light until, facing the fire, a dark gap had opened between where the firelight ended and his lamplight began. The dark strip startled him, as if, venturing too far, it was now a barrier that he had to cross to return to safety. His mind was playing tricks—or was it playing games? To prove to himself that he was not afraid, Mitchell boldly stepped through the darkness and back to the fire where he dropped the sticks directly onto the flame, raising a cloud of sparks that rose like sprites in the hot draft.
It was clear to him that he should not have taken the third watch. His companions had already collected the easiest-to-find firewood, leaving him with all the risk. Goddamn it, he thought angrily, upset at himself and at them. Now he was wide awake. The hormones were flowing. He thought about waking them and telling them off. He was the youngest guy and they were taking advantage of him.
“Fuck it,” he whispered. I’ll know better next time, he told himself as he resumed his search for firewood. Marching forcefully across the dark gap, his shoes stomping into the dry soil like bricks, focused on his task, he didn’t hear or see the three shadowy forms as they emerged behind him. What he heard as he bent toward a shrub, his back to the fire, were words in a language he didn’t understand. Any chance he had to escape vanished as he turned around to see what was happening, his headlamp marking his position like a beacon. One of the men, holding a shotgun at his waist, stepped toward him.
The man shouted something, motioning with the barrel of his gun for Mitchell to approach him. For an instant he thought of running, but like a fantasy that resolves itself quickly, he could see where it led. He might get away or he might not. The land around him was relatively flat and it was dark. He could turn off his light and if their lights weren’t strong enough they wouldn’t be able to see him. And sound at night in the forest was hard to pinpoint. But what stopped him wasn’t them but blaberus. What if he ran into the bugs? What then? He raised his hands and shuffled toward the campsite where the men stood alongside his two companions.
“What the fuck did you do, Andy?” Murphy whispered harshly.
107
HOWARD DUNCAN WATCHED his optimism crumble as Murphy and his companions were led into the small enclosure where he and his group were being held. Their large fire had kept away animals but had attracted several armed men who collected their belongings and led them through the darkness to a camp about an hour’s march away. They were fortunate that Antonio Suarez could speak to them in Portuguese. It was through this dialogue that they learned they were being held hostage by a group of criminals who earned their keep through illegal lumbering, theft, extortion and the occasional homicide.
“They are proud of it,” Suarez said when reporting to Duncan. “These are bad men.”
“I figured that when they killed Walker.”
According to Suarez, it was Walker’s occasional screams that got the men’s attention. The sound carried a long way. It was like nothing they’d ever heard and it made them curious. While they couldn’t place it, one of them climbed a palm and saw a distant glow in the darkness. Even though they knew this part of the forest well, they would have found the men simply by following the screams and eventually the blazing fire. Only a couple of the Americans were awake at the time and they were frightened out of their wits when the criminals appeared suddenly from out of the darkness.
The capture was orderly. No resistance was offered. Duncan instructed everyone to follow their orders, which Suarez translated. Walker was the only one who didn’t fall in line, because he couldn’t. One of the three pointed at the ailing Walker prostrated on the ground, blood dripping ghoulishly from both sides of his mouth, and stammered frightfully, “vampiro. Ele é um vampiro.”
As the man stepped back, his companions joined him.
“He’s no vampire,” Suarez said in Portuguese. “He’s sick. He’s bleeding inside. He needs a doctor.”
The three exchanged glances and laughed.
“He looks like a vampire,” one of them said, leaning over Walker for a better look. “Levantar-se velho.”
“He can’t get up,” Suarez said, as the man poked Walker’s abdomen, jumping back as the soundman screamed piteously.
The three men briefly conferred.
“Get your men to carry him,” one of them commanded, as Suarez translated.
Suarez shook his head, looked helplessly toward Duncan and the others who stood nearby. Duncan was of two minds. With the three men clustered in front of Walker, could he, Boyd and the others overpower them? He scanned his colleague’s faces; some looked barely awake, and some were frightened. He tried to whisper to Boyd but Robinson stepped in front of him to help Walker, whose tearful eyes betrayed his pain.
“Someone come help me,” Robinson implored as he reached for Walker’s shoulder. Walker burst into a screech so hideous that all the other noises of the forest seemed to disappear. One of the thieves held his hands to his ears. This was the moment, Duncan thought. We can take them. Looking back at Boyd and the others, though, he saw that they were so numbed by Walker’s suffering that he could not get their attention even if he tried. But what happened next br
ought the hopelessness of their situation into brutal relief.
Wordlessly, one of the men pointed his shotgun at Walker. One of his companions shook his head.
“Don’t waste the ammunition” he said quietly in Portuguese, gently pushing the man aside and, in one swift move, pulled out his machete and plunged it into Walker’s chest, once, twice, three times. By the third plunge, all of the Americans were either staring at their feet or looking away.
There was no escape now.
108
SUAREZ TRIED TO remain within earshot of the kidnappers both on the march to their camp and after they were tied to posts in the enclosure. Duncan and Suarez were tied to one post while Thomas, Gruber and Thomas’s assistants were tied to another. Robinson and Boyd were tied to a third. Murphy and his cohorts were tied to the fourth. The posts, which supported a hastily built roof covered with palm leaves, were buried in the sandy soil about ten feet apart. Almost immediately, they realized the posts were not buried deeply and wobbled when pressed. It was obviously a temporary encampment, though the men had been there long enough to have set up a small kitchen outfitted with a wood-burning camp stove. There was also a generator and chain saws. The air was heavy with the smell of burned lumber, the ground an amalgam of ash and soil.
While the captives talked quietly, Boyd counted ten captors. The leader appeared to be the man who had killed Walker. Shortly after Murphy’s group had arrived, the kidnappers shared a breakfast of coffee, tortillas and beans.
“Wonder if they’ll feed us?” Gruber said.
“It does smell appetizing, doesn’t it,” Thomas said.
“I don’t know about y’all but I’m starving,” Mitchell said, rubbing his abdomen.
Robinson glared at the young producer and spat.