Savage Jungle

by Shea, Hunter

  “Look, I know this isn’t what you thought it would be. The Orang Pendeks aren’t all bad. We can’t take them all out to avenge your father. But I do think we’re of the same mindset as Lucille.”

  “And what mindset is that?”

  “We both want to take out the bad guys.”

  Henrik brushed past Lucille. “So you’re saying they brought us here to do their dirty work?”

  Austin couldn’t believe what was about to come out of his mouth. “I’m saying, they want us to save them.”

  Lucille ran her fingers down Austin’s arm. He looked into eyes that were so close to human it gave him chills.

  The Orang Pendek shrank back at the sound of multiple gunshots in the distance.

  This time, Austin wasn’t going to cower in a corner. He grabbed Henrik. “Can we go now?”

  The other Orang Pendeks were agitated, chattering excitedly amongst themselves but careful not to be close to the open doorway. Henrik looked to Surya and the porters. “Everyone stay close to me. If we get separated, we agree to meet back here. Yes?”

  Surya gulped. “Yes.”

  They spilled out of the old house, surveying the narrow street. It was, for the moment, empty. Austin knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  “Be prepared for anything,” Henrik cautioned him as they jogged toward the sounds of the continuing shots. They stuck close to the decaying architecture, one eye always on a means of escape or a place to hide.

  Austin turned back to make sure Surya and the porters were close by and was shocked to see Lucille, Dragline and Luke in the procession.

  They brought us here, Austin thought, burning sweat trickling into his eyes. Guess they want to see it through.

  Yes, but through to what?

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Natalie felt like the early worm. It wasn’t an ideal feeling.

  The first winged creature that got low enough received a wing full of lead from Oscar’s rifle. It howled like one of those irritating little monkeys that never ceased during their trek into the jungle, veered off and spun out of sight.

  Any hope that the rest of the flock would follow was dashed immediately.

  More than a dozen of the bizarre birds filled the sky to take its place.

  Natalie took aim and fired, missing one of the avian nightmares completely.

  “Wait until they get closer,” Oscar shouted over the burping of his rifle. “That gun doesn’t have the range to shoot that far away.”

  Just great! Now I have to wait until they’re almost on top of me? Natalie thought, not wanting to get any closer to them than was necessary. She was still shaking from her encounter with the dinosaur.

  Oscar was a shooting machine. He would pull the trigger twice at an advancing dino-bird, then move on to the next. Several thudded to the mud around them, dead or at the very least in death spasms. One nearly fell right on top of them, its sharp beak grazing Natalie’s thigh, leaving a burning welt on her already damaged flesh.

  One, this one a fiery red with long blue feathers around its eyes, swooped low enough for her to shoot. She caught it in the throat, a totally luck shot. It sailed over their heads and crashed into the pit wall, just like the dinosaur from earlier.

  She noticed they were no longer alone.

  The rim of the pit was once again lined with Orang Pendeks and other animals. In the quick glance she was afforded, she thought she saw rhinos and elephants.

  “Why the hell aren’t these things attacking them?” she said, taking aim at one that was getting closer and closer.

  “Maybe these bastards are afraid of them. We stand out from this crowd. Guess we look like dinner.”

  The flock was thinning, but those left were not scaring off.

  Natalie missed wide with her pistol when the unthinkable happened.

  Oscar’s rifle clicked. The magazine was empty.

  “Shit,” he cursed.

  In the time it took him to eject the empty and slam a new one home, two of the prehistoric birds were upon him. Each dug a talon into his shoulder, lifting him off the ground.

  “Son of a – “ he shouted, struggling to get free.

  Natalie jammed the pistol in her waistband and ran to grab his ankles. Her added weight forced the birds to lose altitude. Oscar growled in agony. Natalie looked up and saw the talons had pierced his skin, probably hooked under his shoulder blades.

  “I’m sorry!” she shouted.

  “Don’t be. Keep pulling!”

  She let her body go completely slack, hoping the dead weight would get them back on firm ground. It was close. Her feet skimmed several inches over the mud. She couldn’t imagine how much pain Oscar was in. Still, she gave a hard tug. Oscar only grunted this time, the birds squawking in protest.

  She had a brief image of the kind of nest they would take them to, her and Oscar being dropped into the mouths of enormous baby dino-birds. She shivered, tightening her grasp on Oscar’s legs.

  His rifle fell from his hand, clipping her elbow and thunking in the mud.

  “Aaaaggghh!”

  It hit her right on the funny bone. Her entire arm went all pins and needles. Now she clung to him with just the one arm, waiting for the motor control to return to her other.

  The birds were gaining altitude. Pretty soon, they’d be up and over the pit and flown to her worst nightmare.

  That’s when she noticed the big bowie knife that Oscar had extracted from the sheath clipped to his belt.

  “Get…the…hell…off…me!” he shouted, hacking at one of the bird’s legs. Gouts of blood spurted from the slash. Natalie caught some in her eye when she looked up, wondering if it was possible just once not to be a gore magnet.

  The bird faltered, trying to let go but its talon was lodged in Oscar’s shoulder. They canted hard to the right. Natalie almost lost her grip on Oscar.

  Oscar went to work on the other dino-bird, but was having a hard time connecting the blade to its claws. They jerked crazily in the air.

  Natalie gritted her teeth and forced her semi-dead arm to reclaim its grasp on Oscar. She held on for dear life. They brushed by the edge of the pit. For the first time she could see the full extent of the cryptids. There had to be a couple hundred of them. Interspersed in the bizarre, hirsute crowd were tamed beasts of the jungle. All eyes were on the spectacle in the sky.

  Daring to reach for her gun, Natalie gripped the pistol, raised it above her head and pulled the trigger. The blast just missed Oscar, but it did catch the bird right in its ass. It immediately dropped. The two birds and two humans went into a small spiral, landing in a mass of limbs and wings right back in the pit. Natalie rolled free, resting on her hands and knees.

  Oscar wasn’t so lucky. The bird she’d shot wailed and thrashed about. The other was frantic to break away. The two creatures formed a kind of tug of war, with Oscar as the rope. The agony on his face was almost too much to bear.

  “Kill it!” he pleaded.

  Natalie reached for her gun. It wasn’t there! She must have dropped it in the fall.

  Scanning the ground, she was distracted by the pained cries of both the bird and Oscar.

  “Where the hell is it?”

  Crawling through the mud, she desperately searched for the pistol. She couldn’t see it anywhere. It was so heavy, it may have sunk into the wet earth. Even Oscar’s rifle was nowhere to be seen.

  The Orang Pendeks above hooted, exceedingly turned on by their plight.

  She turned her gaze to them, shouting, “Fuck you!”

  The other birds had flown off, either losing interest or maybe frightened off by the crowd of Orang Pendeks. It was a very small mercy.

  “Hold on, Oscar!”

  What she did find was the grisly thigh bone. Scooping it up, she ran toward the thrashing head of the bird. Swinging as hard as she could, she caught nothing but air as it jerked out of the way.

  Stay still you bastard!

  When it turned back to her, she stomped her foot
on its long beak, driving it as deep as she could into the ground. With its head secured, she brought the bone down on it like striking hot metal on an anvil. The bone vibrated painfully in her hand as it connected with a surprisingly hard skull. Undaunted, she swung again and again until it finally cracked like an egg. The bird went still, vital juices oozing from the fractures in its head.

  The bone slipped from her hand, her arms having gone numb.

  “Oscar, are you – “

  She gasped in horror.

  While she’d been hammering the bird, it must have made a last, desperate bid to scrabble away. By doing so, it had torn Oscar’s arm from his body. A strip of thin flesh was the only thing keeping it tethered. His eyes were wide open, murky as milk, his mouth frozen in a final, horrible scream.

  “Oh, Oscar.”

  She thought of the book he’d ben reading and how it was all about the hero's journey. The big man had gone out like a hero. She closed his eyes and smoothed his hair back from his forehead.

  There was no time to mourn the man’s loss or take in the full horror of his awful demise.

  No.

  Natalie watched with grim resignation as Orang Pendeks jumped into the pit, a roiling wave of fury heading her way.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Henrik wished there was time to fully and carefully take in the crumbling grandeur of Gadang Ur. In all likelihood, that would not be a possibility. It was a shame. Gadang Ur must have been a wonder to behold in its time. So little was known about the people who built this legendary place in the middle of literally nowhere. At least to outsiders. The natives of Sumatra had assuredly passed down through oral tradition much of the citizenry and builders of Gadang Ur, but they treasured this knowledge so much, very little was ever told to foreigners who would only exploit or cheapen their proud yet mysterious history.

  Henrik couldn’t blame them.

  Most pressing right now was finding Oscar, and hopefully Natalie, and getting the hell out as fast as they could. His need to pay the jungle creatures back for what they had done to his father had bled off like steam from a leaking radiator the more he came to understand these strange, isolated creatures.

  There was no black and white out here in the middle of nowhere. They were drowning in a turbulent sea of gray where all of his assumptions had been tossed like a rudderless boat.

  Perhaps someday, he could return, all the wiser from this experience.

  But maybe, some places are never meant to be found.

  They jogged carefully down a long thoroughfare that was lush with verdant overgrowth. But under all of it were innumerable structures. Gadang Ur was a massive achievement. No amount of hidden riches could eclipse the grandeur of the jungle metropolis.

  He wondered if the Orang Pendeks claimed the city for themselves while it was still inhabited or if they had simply settled in long after it had been abandoned.

  They paused beside an enormous tree that had sprouted up from what may have been a fountain.

  “You hear that?” Austin said.

  “At least it will point the way,” Henrik replied.

  The shooting had stopped, only to be replaced by the chilling cries of what sounded like a horde of Orang Pendeks.

  The three that had been with them looked apprehensive. He wondered how much longer they would tag along before hiding like the others.

  And they had seen so many cowering in the shadows as they made their way across Gadang Ur. A baby Orang Pendek had ventured out of a cramped dugout a few blocks back, curious to see the strange looking people running through its home. A frightened female rushed out, scooping the baby off its feet and disappearing.

  They’re all terrified, Henrik thought. At least we’re on common ground.

  “It doesn’t sound like we’re too far,” Henrik said, slipping out from behind the tree. “Come!”

  The building on their left was the most impressive in all the city. It was a tall monolithic structure with round windows carved into the boulders and stone used to build the monumental structure.

  As they rounded a corner, leaving the jungle skyscraper behind, they came upon a broad clearing. Up ahead lay utter madness.

  The men stopped, paralyzed by the unholy scene.

  “Fuck me sideways,” Austin said.

  “We are fucked more ways than that,” Surya mumbled.

  They had come to the circular ring Henrik had spotted when they first crested the hill. Around the ring were throngs of Orang Pendeks, and interspersed within the howling multitude were rhinos, elephants and other creatures too strange to classify, other than being creatures from a long lost age. The animals didn’t seem the least bit interested or perturbed by the cacophony.

  “I think it’s safe to assume that the shooting happened there,” Henrik said.

  And with the Orang Pendeks diving into the arena, he feared the worst for Oscar.

  “We will never get through them,” Surya said, though Ridwan and Saharto looked more than ready to try. Hengki hung back, keeping an eye on the rear just in case more of the cryptids decided to creep up on them.

  “Not if we try to walk on through,” Austin said. He switched weapons to an M16 assault rifle. It was also a grenade launcher. “But we can blow a hole in the crowd.”

  Henrik worried that Oscar or Natalie could be in that crowd, but if they were, they were surely no longer alive. He only hoped they were in the arena below and would be spared the deadly work of the grenades. He switched to his own M16 and nodded.

  Henrik was shocked by the sudden wave of reticence that came over him. The thought of indiscriminately killing the Orang Pendeks ahead of them gave him pause. After what he’d seen and experienced, it would be akin, almost, to opening fire on a crowd of excited people at a soccer match.

  No, it’s not like that at all, he recused himself. At the very least, Oscar is there and we simply don’t have time to find a better way to rescue him. Not to mention there is a definite pecking order in Gadang Ur – those whole rule by violence and fear and the infirm and subjugated. The ones we have no qualm with are too afraid to even approach the arena. Stop wasting time!

  He turned to Austin. “Shall we?”

  Austin replied by firing, the first grenade detonating on the hind quarter of a rhino. It exploded in a mass of gray flesh, orange fur and tangled meat. The sudden explosion cause dall of the Orang Pendeks to cease their caterwauling. Henrik sent another, more to the left of Austin’s first blast, whereas Austin sent another to the right. Twin explosions wreaked maximum damage on the tightly packed creatures.

  The instant rush of pure havoc sent their three Orang Pendek guardians scurrying. Lucille took a moment longer, casting a troubled look at Henrik, as one who made a deal with the devil would reconsider their tragic choice.

  Surya whooped at the carnage. Orang Pendeks and their domesticated animals scattered in every direction. He pointed to an upright beast nearly ten feet tall covered in yellow and red fur, its tail whipping furiously and taking the legs out from nearby Orang Pendek. “What is that thing?”

  Austin fired another grenade right into the oncoming rush of fleeing creatures. “It’s not something I’ve ever seen in the Museum of Natural History, I’ll tell you that.”

  The grenades had been successful in dispersing the horde, but now there was the problem of not being overrun by ape men and wild animals alike who had never seen nor heard such weapons before. To say they were in a blind panic was the understatement of the millennium. Henrik maintained his composure, now switching to automatic fire, mowing them down as they got closer. Surya and the porters did the same, with Austin continuing to fire grenades, emptying the crowd from the sunken arena.

  The Orang Pendeks, realizing that running in this direction was futile, sprinted away from them, disappearing down alternate roadways.

  Seeing the way was clear, Austin ran to the arena.

  “Austin, wait!” Henrik exclaimed. It was no use. If he felt his sister was this close, there was noth
ing he could do to slow him down. All he could do was run to keep up with him.

  “Find a safe place to hide and keep this area secure,” he shouted to Surya as he ran.

  “Yes! Go!”

  Henrik had to be careful where he ran, nimbly avoiding the slick piles of meat that littered the ground. One slip and he could break his ankle. Austin wasn’t so cautious, the muscular man barreling through the battlefield like a locomotive.

  They got to the edge of the arena and Henrik saw it was more of a deep, steep pit.

  His breath caught in his throat when he looked down into the pit.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Through all of the chaos, Natalie heard Austin cry out, “Nat!”

  The moment she’d heard the first explosion, she knew it could only be Henrik or Austin. Surrounded by exceedingly ticked off Orang Pendeks, she figured she had about ten seconds left before they gave her the bum’s rush and ended her foray into the rain forest.

  The bombs going off had startled the pack of cryptids into total paralysis. They cast nervous glances above, cowering in fear of what sounded like the wrath of God raining down on the forgotten city. Even Natalie was scared.

  What if something goes wrong and whatever they’re using to blow shit up ends up down here? she worried.

  The breath she’d been holding rushed from her lungs the moment she heard her brother. She looked up and saw him waving to her. Next to him was Henrik, who coolly took in the creatures in the pit.

  “Are you all right?” Austin shouted.

  “Um…no! Can you please get me out of here?”

  It was easier said than done. There were at least thirty Orang Pendeks in the pit, and once they emerged from their initial shock, she was pretty sure they were going to take out all of their anger and frustration on her. Even if they were the two best shots in the world, Austin and Henrik would never be able to get them all before the reached her, especially if they attacked en masse.

  “Just stay right there,” Austin said.

  “Where the hell else do you think I’d go?”