by Shea, Hunter
“I must have been one bad asshole in a previous life.”
And then she started to laugh.
Imprisoned, battered and with no hope of getting out, something snapped. Natalie laughed until she cried, clutching her stomach, unable to catch her breath. When life gives you lemons, squeeze those suckers into your fresh wounds and lose your mind.
She didn’t notice that her laughter had caught the attention of other creatures that were in the pit. It wasn’t until she settled down, her mouth open so wide she almost choked on rainwater, that she saw she’d become the center of attention.
Several wet Orang Pendeks, who made wet dogs smell like ambrosia, gathered around her, staring at the crazy human.
“Oh, look, cell mates.”
She went into a fresh round of cackling.
If these poor suckers were down here with her, they were in equally rough shape. Just like with the ones back in the little square, she wasn’t afraid.
“You all want to link hands and pull ourselves outta here like a barrel of monkeys?”
They cocked their heads, but didn’t do much else.
“I guess if you could do that, you’d already be out, wouldn’t you?”
When she tried to sit up, one of them put its foot on her chest, gently yet firmly setting her back into the mud. It grinned at her, baring yellow and brown teeth caked with black flecks that, she assumed, were beetles or other bugs. So now she knew what was on the menu.
The grinning Orang Pendek was awful to look at. Shielding her eyes from the rain, she saw its face was a mish-mash of scars, one of its eyes drooping low, as if it was melting off its face. It looked diseased, or worse, demented.
She breathed a sigh of relief when it removed its foot from her chest, backing away from her until it disappeared within the steady sheets of gray rain.
The others didn’t look so good, either. They appeared to have been run over by pickup trucks, or out here, elephants. Faces had taken poundings. Their bodies were all wrong, limbs bent in strange directions, backs crooked as question marks.
Is this a prison, hospital or mental ward?
None of the Orang Pendeks down here looked right, physically or mentally.
They eventually backed off, but their strange eyes never left her. It was impossible to tell what was going on behind those jaundiced eyes.
“Austin, come save me,” she mumbled, afraid to get up.
Thunder boomed. Barbed fingers of lightning arced across the black sky.
“Austin come save me!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, over and over again, the storm doing its damnedest to muffle her cries.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“We ought to give them names,” Oscar said.
It hadn’t been easy keeping up with the three Orang Pendeks. They were remarkably lithe, finding every small spot to sneak through, undaunted by the choked, rough terrain.
Henrik had to use a machete every now and then to clear spaces big enough for the larger, clumsier humans. His arms and chest burned from exertion.
Oscar continued. “Now, if it was three males, that would be easy – Moe, Larry and Curly. But the female one, she throws a monkey wrench in the works.”
Henrik shot him a look.
“Pun intended,” Oscar said. “So I was thinking, how about Luke, Dragline and Lucille?”
“Oscar, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Henrik’s comrade-in-arms was a well-known chatterbox, especially when things went tits up. It was his way of not only helping those around him keep cooler heads, but also of exorcising his own trepidation.
“The movie Cool Hand Luke. I’ve watched it with you.” He pointed to the male taking point. Its fur was redder than the other male’s. It looked younger, fitter. “That one is Luke, a regular jungle Paul Newman. The other one with the touch of gray is Dragline, you know, the character played by George Kennedy. And of course the little lady there has to be Lucille, the woman they ogled washing the car when they were working on the chain gang.”
“Name them anything you wish.”
“What is a Cool Hand Luke?” Surya asked. He too had his machete out, but more for protection than slicing away the overgrowth.
“Only the best movie ever made,” Oscar said. “When we get back to the hotel, I’ll show you. I have a digital copy on my laptop. I never leave home without it.”
“I like the idea of being in a hotel,” Surya said.
“Don’t you worry, my friend, we’ll get there…eventually.”
Luke, Dragline and Lucille plunged ahead, Lucille occasionally glancing back to make sure they hadn’t lost them. Henrik rolled his eyes.
Fantastic, he has me thinking of it as Lucille already.
He did wish they would take a break, or slow down. Despite fueling up a bit at their camp, they were all exhausted and now weighed down with weapons and supplies. He wasn’t sure how much longer they could keep up this pace. He wondered if they just stopped, would the Orang Pendeks as well? Or would they plunge forward into the deep?
After the initial boom of the grenade, they hadn’t heard anything else. Of course, the torrential rain did yeoman’s work at swallowing up any sounds. It kept starting and stopping, a true afternoon in the rain forest. Which meant it was sheer misery.
They were covered in mud and muck, their sweat mingling with rain.
When they popped out into a small clearing, Henrik had to stop.
Oscar bumped into his back.
“I believe we’re on the right track,” Henrik said.
The bodies of four dinosaurs lay on the ground, dead of apparent bullet wounds. A large bird the likes of which he’d never seen pulled a strip of flesh away and flew into the high trees the moment it spotted them.
“What the hell are those things?” Oscar said, lifting his rifle, wary for more to come out of the woods.
Henrik noticed that the Orang Pendeks had paused as well, looking at the dead dinosaurs with shocked interest. The rain ceased once again, humidity draping over the field like a steamy caul.
“They look like velociraptors,” Henrik said, “but not entirely. Though theories on the actual appearance of dinosaurs is changing rapidly over the past decade.”
“They’re like raptors crossed with tigers,” Oscar said.
Surya nervously spun on his heels, muttering prayers.
“It looks like whoever did this took shelter behind this rock and made their stand,” Henrik said.
“And unlike the Alamo, it wasn’t their last.”
Luke let out a soft grunt, then resumed walking across the clearing. It was clear from the stamped down grass that others had gone that way recently.
Oscar held out his hand. “After you, fearless leader.”
“I don’t think we should pretend to be remotely in charge at this point,” Henrik said.
Led by Orang Pendeks through a jungle that housed dinosaurs. Am I in a coma? Did something happen to me when we were marching to find a place to camp yesterday? Henrik thought. Surely, this couldn’t be happening.
Lucille jittered nervously, charging ahead of Luke and trilling with excitement. At least it sounded like excitement. The humans stepped up the pace, legs feeling like wet logs.
Lowering his voice, Oscar said, “I’m not sure I want to know what can get these things hopping.”
“We’ll know soon enough. Just be ready for anything.”
And he meant it. The next surprise could come in front of them, behind them, the air or, for all they knew, straight up from the soft earth beneath their feet. Henrik had an awful vision of a giant, prehistoric worm breaking through the loamy surface, toothless, dripping maw opened wide, swallowing them whole before tunneling back to its underground lair. He shivered, wishing the image away.
Dragline and Luke let Lucille lead them onward, keeping silent, letting the female chatter on about what only the Orang Pendeks could know.
Surya said, “Maybe we should not follow so closel
y. What if they have been leading us to danger this whole time?”
“Little man has a point,” Oscar said, his eyes relentlessly scanning everywhere.
Henrik slowed down a tad, putting some distance between them but not enough to lose sight of them. “Agreed. The female – “
“Lucille,” Oscar interjected.
Henrik pretended not to hear him. “Its eagerness was momentarily infectious.”
They were deep in the jungle again, the clearing a fading memory. It was so thick with trees, it was as if night had instantly fallen. He was glad they had packed night vision gear. If it got any worse, they’d need it so they didn’t break their necks.
The Orang Pendeks, however, moved with the same fine agility. They either had tremendous eyesight, or were very familiar with this area of the rain forest.
A shot rang out.
Henrik, Oscar and Surya fell flat to the floor. A spider the size of the palm of a man’s hand scuttled inches from Henrik’s nose before disappearing under the leaves.
One of the Orang Pendeks howled. Henrik looked up but could no longer see them.
Another bullet whined over their heads, splitting the bark of a nearby tree. It was followed by a hail of gunfire that mowed down the surrounding greenery with the cold efficiency of the world’s biggest weed whacker.
Oscar shouted above the maelstrom. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire, goddammit!”
Surya shot into the darkness before Henrik could tell him to hold his own fire.
The shooting ceased.
“I think we found someone,” Henrik said, keeping his body pressed to the ground. Some of those bullets had just missed him, singing the hair on his head as they whizzed by.
“You’re damn lucky you didn’t hit any of us,” Oscar barked.
A voice popped out of the darkness. “Oscar?”
Henrik sighed with relief.
He called back, “Austin, are you alone?”
He closed his eyes, hoping to hear Natalie’s voice.
“No. Ridwan, Saharto and Hengki are with me.”
They stood up, brushing dirt and leaves away. “Just keep talking so we can follow your voice.”
Austin said, “You should stay down. I saw a bunch of those things. That’s what we were shooting at.”
“You needn’t worry. They were harmless, as far as we can tell. They actually led us back to camp and followed your trail. I think you frightened them off.”
They found Austin and the porters as they emerged from behind the trees, overheated guns pointed at the ground.
The four men looked worse for wear, especially Hengki. But they were upright, and maybe that was the best they could ask for at this point.
I wonder how we appear to them, Henrik mused.
“What do you mean they’re harmless?” Austin asked.
Oscar said, “They watched us kill one of them and didn’t bat an eye. In fact, they helped us…we think. So far, they’d been leading us to you, which they did quite well.”
Austin was utterly befuddled. He stood looking at them with his mouth partway open.
“Where is Natalie?” Henrik asked.
“Those things took her,” he said, his face hardening. “We were following their trail.”
“Gentlemen!” Surya cried. “We have a problem!”
The men turned to see the guide sandwiched between the male Orang Pendeks, each one gripping his arm. At their feet lay the female, her fur spattered with blood.
“Looks like they didn’t quite scatter,” Oscar said.
Surya yelped in pain. “Please, they are hurting me!”
Ridwan made a move to approach the creatures, his rifle drawn. Henrik held him back. “You’ll only get him killed,” he said, knowing the man couldn’t understand a word he said. But Ridwan did back down.
Surya’s face twisted in a spasm of agony as the males pulled his arms behind his back.
As Henrik slowly dropped his weapon, he wondered if this jungle tribe of ape men had discovered the concept of an eye for an eye.
For Surya’s sake, he prayed not.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Natalie drifted off, lying on her side in the mud, facing away from the weird Orang Pendeks that shared the pit with her. At one point, the rain throttled back down to a drizzle. She was as exhausted as she was terrified, bone weary fatigue winning the battle. Her sleep was plagued by troubled dreams, and she woke up crying, her body a broken patchwork of aches and pains, her brain instantly on fire with anxiety.
She didn’t move, she just lay there spitting mud from her mouth.
At least they didn’t mess with me, she thought.
It was getting darker. She had no idea how long she’d been out.
Natalie closed her eyes, thinking about the spa back in Germany. She’d kill a nun to be there right now, sipping a girlie iced cocktail by the pool, waiting for her early afternoon massage. Austin would be lifting weights or eating raw eggs, dipping in the hot spring before joining her for dinner, along with the perpetually pale and polite Henrik, none of them talking about what they had gone through before or what was to come.
It had all been a perfect little bubble, a temporary Eden.
She opened her eyes, saw one of the Orang Pendek limping along the wall, staring up at the sky.
Surely, she was now in hell.
There wasn’t anything in her experience, in any human experience, to help her make sense of this. It was pure fucking madness.
And there weren’t any cops or ambulances to call out here. She was as far from civilization as she could be. For all she knew, she was the only one left alive. That thought brought a fresh wave of tears.
“How long before there are none,” she mumbled.
No! Austin was still alive. Even though, as twins, they’d shared very little in what the rest of the world liked to call ‘twin senses’, she was pretty sure she’d somehow know if he was dead. A part of her would die as well. Even though she felt like seven shades of dead meat herself, her soul, their shared soul, was still intact.
Not wanting to wallow in the mud any longer, but afraid to face what was next, she reluctantly got to her feet. The damaged Orang Pendeks cast furtive glances her way, but kept to themselves.
“Good. Stay there,” she said.
Now, how the hell do I get out of here?
Not that things would be any easier up top. Gadang Ur was teeming with Orang Pendeks, dinosaurs and domesticated wild beasts. Maybe she was better off down here.
“Hey, when do they serve dinner?” she asked an Orang Pendek as it shuffled a dozen or so feet from her. It stopped, took a moment to stare at her with its mouth open wide, then resumed its pacing.
Jesus, Nat, keep your mouth shut! What if you pissed it off and it attacked you? You don’t even have long nails to scratch it.
She couldn’t help it. When she was nervous, her wise-assery kicked into high gear.
Austin used to tell her that her big mouth would get her in trouble she couldn’t get out of one day.
This could be the day.
Thinking about her brother made her chest ache.
A commotion topside caught her attention. It sounded like a crowd of people – people from another country, speaking all at once in a foreign language –was approaching. The Orang Pendek prisoners heard them as well. But whereas she stood her ground, scanning the edge of the pit, the others huddled together, not daring to look up.
“Oh, this can’t be good.”
It wasn’t long before the entire circumference of the pit was lined with Orang Pendeks. They stared down at them like a crowd at a hockey game.
She briefly wondered who she’d kill to be at an Islanders game right now.
The ape men and women chattered noisily. Actually, aside from some of their physical aspects, there was nothing of the ape about them. They were really just tiny, hirsute humans. Maybe if she kept thinking of them that way, they’d be less terrifying.
Fat chance of that
.
A dark shape flew above the heads of the Orang Pendeks to her right. Natalie watched as it plummeted into the pit, splashing into the mud. The blob was actually some strange kind of feathered dinosaur. It scuttled to its strong hind legs, shaking mud off like a dog.
New inmate, or the cleanup crew? Natalie wondered, the tension in her body only serving to make the omnipresent pain even worse.
The dinosaur screeched, tiny arms flapping wildly.
The Orang Pendeks in the pit with her cried out, running as far from it as they could. That only served to get its attention. For the moment, it didn’t even look her way, its entire focus on the strange collection of Orang Pendeks.
The crowd above fell silent as the dinosaur sprinted toward the Orang Pendeks, extended jaw snapping so loud she could heard its teeth clacking.
Frozen to the spot, the damaged Orang Pendeks were easy pickings. It tore through them, rending them to bloody bits and flailing body parts in seconds.
Natalie couldn’t breathe.
“Holy shit. Holy freaking shit!”
Taking time to consume its chum-like prey, the dinosaur still hadn’t given her so much as a passing peek. Its feathers turned crimson as it waded in the gore, snuffling through organs and split limbs.
She looked up, saw the massive wall of Orang Pendeks staring at the spectacle in mute fascination.
Natalie scanned the ground, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon. She stole a glance at the feeding dinosaur. It would have to be one hell of a weapon for her to have a shot at not being torn to ribbons in the time it took to say, “Please don’t tear me to ribbons!”
There was no way she could scale up those sheer walls, and even if she did, she was pretty sure they’d only shove her back down. The unbroken wall of Orang Pendeks hadn’t moved a muscle since the dinosaur entered the pit. The show wasn’t over. Not as long as the human was alive.
The dinosaur let out what sounded like a belch, then a keening roar.
Natalie had to will her body to turn.
The creature that in no way in hell should even be here stared back at her with hunger in its beady eyes.