Savage Jungle

by Shea, Hunter

  Henrik said, “Is Oscar there?”

  She reluctantly pointed to the great birds with Oscar’s cooling body between them.

  “He…he saved my life.”

  Henrik’s face remained unreadable. “I need you to slowly get on your knees, cover your head and stay perfectly still.”

  Natalie didn’t hesitate or question him. But the moment she started to crouch down, a pair of Orang Pendeks took a stuttering step toward her. There was a sharp burst of gunfire and the ape men flew backwards. The others in the circle around her shrank back.

  Legs shaking, Natalie bent to her knees. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I just need you to make yourself as small a target as possible,” Henrik replied.

  She clasped her hands over her head, trying to scrunch down as much as she possibly could, bruised muscles and bones protesting every inch of the way.

  “Austin, I need you to direct your fire away from your sister.”

  Natalie tilted her head, one eye able to see her rescuers.

  Austin said something she couldn’t hear. Then Henrik replied, “Because you’re not a marksman. We can’t take a chance of you accidentally shooting her.”

  “Listen to the man,” she called up to them.

  She could feel the Orang Pendeks gathering their courage. Pretty soon, they’d start closing ranks again.

  Henrik barked, “Now!”

  They opened fire. Natalie closed her eyes tight. She heard Orang Pendeks wailing, some gurgling as they choked on their own blood. The ground thumped as their bodies hit the floor.

  It was over in seconds.

  “It’s all right now,” Henrik said.

  Natalie looked around. The Orang Pendeks lay lifeless in the same circular formation they’d just been in when they were upright and breathing and thinking of the horrible things they were going to do to her.

  “Holy crap.”

  Austin said, “Take this!”

  A long vine dropped down the wall. She ran to it, wrapping her wrists and ankles around the vine. “I don’t have the strength to climb. You’re gonna have to pull me up.”

  Her brother grunted as he took in the slack, raising her up with incredible speed. In no time, she was out of the pit and being drawn into a long, warm hug.

  “I thought we’d never find you,” Austin said, his face in her hair.

  She’d never been so happy to see her big meathead brother. “I was starting to feel the same way.”

  The world went a bit sideways as a wave of fatigue almost dragged her under. Thankfully, Austin was more than capable of holding her up.

  Henrik tapped them on the shoulder.

  “I hate to break up your reunion, but it seems we have a new problem to contend with.”

  Natalie so wanted to pretend she didn’t hear him and just fall asleep in her brother’s arms. She’d earned that much. Hadn’t she?

  I guess not.

  She looked past Henrik and thought for a moment maybe they’d all be better off in the pit.

  “I don’t suppose you have any grenades left,” Henrik said with the same tone of voice someone would use when asking if there were any more mashed potatoes.

  “Used them all to get us here.”

  The Orang Pendeks had regrouped, standing at the edge of the clearing littered with broken and dead bodies.

  And they’d brought some friends with them.

  Some were sitting atop elephants, others on rhinos, while so many others on beasts she had no name for. It was like facing down the cavalry, all mounted on their horses, ready to save the day from the humans too dumb to stay out of the rain forest.

  “You have a gun to spare?” she asked her brother.

  He handed her a Colt .45, his eyes glued to the nightmare lynch mob.

  “I’m guessing none of our ammo could drop a rhino or elephant…or whatever the hell those things are,” she said.

  “You guess correctly,” Henrik said.

  The other things were all bipedal animals covered in a short, coarse fur that was a riot of colors. She was reminded of the thing Luke Skywalker rode in The Empire Strikes Back. They definitely resembled the upright snow camel whose steaming guts Luke had had to nestle within.

  “Any chance we can negotiate a truce?” Austin said.

  “You speak Orang Pendek?” Natalie replied, bewildered by his flippant comment. And she was the queen of flippant comments.

  He pointed to three Orang Pendeks walking in from their left. The trio, one of them wearing a bandage around its arm, stopped directly between the Orang Pendek mob and puny humans.

  “No, but they do.”

  “Why are they doing that?” Natalie asked.

  “Because they brought us here, to you,” Henrik said. “Your brother believes they did so in order for us to save them from the tyrannical rule of the creatures that attacked us at the camp and captured you.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, despite everything she’d been through. Every time she thought she’d hit the ceiling for insanity, they went crashing right through it to a whole new level.

  Facing her brother, she said, “He’s not messing with me?”

  He shook his head. “It looks like they have a problem, and they saw us with our weapons as a means to solve it.”

  “Is there anyone else that came with you guys?”

  “Surya, Ridwan, Saharto and Hengki, but they may have taken off when they saw the shit hit the fan,” Austin said. “I wouldn’t blame them.”

  Even if they’d had the four additional men armed to the teeth, it wouldn’t be enough.

  “So now what?”

  “We wait and see what Lucille, Luke and Dragline have up their big hairy sleeves,” Austin said.

  Lucille, Luke and Dragline? They gave them names? Natalie almost laughed at the absurdity.

  Henrik said, “We don’t have much choice in the matter.” He looked all around, hopefully plotting a means of escape. Natalie kept the gun at her side, the weight almost too much for her tired arms.

  There was shuffling within the Orang Pendek mob, and the crowd began to part. Henrik drew in a sharp breath, his lips pulling back into a sneer. She followed his level gaze as the cryptids made way for what could only be their leader.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  No! This can’t be!

  Henrik battled for control, his first instinct to shoot the four gray-haired Orang Pendeks that emerged from the crowd. Each held a long stake, and atop each stake was a skull.

  A human skull.

  But that wasn’t what was close to sending Henrik into a blind rage.

  One of the Orang Pendeks was larger than the rest, with a face blighted by the sun and elements, flesh that bespoke decades of a hard fought life in the inhospitable rain forest. Even from this distance, Henrik could make out the long scar running down its face. That face and that scar were all too familiar.

  But what let him know he was truly looking into the eyes of his greatest nemesis was the scrap of clothing twisted on the stake in its hand.

  Henrik’s father wore specially designed camouflage whenever he went into the jungle, the colors carefully selected to match the flora of each location. He’d had a designer, an old friend of the family, custom make his outfits. One of Henrik’s greatest presents was the smaller, matching version of one of his father’s special hunting camouflage outfits.

  If the ragged bits of cloth were his father’s, then the bleached and chipped skull perched on the pole was most likely his as well.

  A volcanic bubble of rage boiled in his guts, singeing his throat.

  This was the creature he had come here to kill. As certainly as his realization that most of the Orang Pendeks should be left to live their lives in the remotest place on Earth, this particular creature had to die.

  For the moment, he had to exercise extreme self-control. The Orang Pendeks that had brought them to this city were risking their lives, standing in the center of the broilin
g battle. He had no intention of directly causing their demise. For now, he needed to wait and see what they would do. And when the moment was right, he would put his father’s soul at rest.

  The one they called Lucille was the first to speak, her low, guttural grunts utterly undecipherable. The others regarded her with cold silence. Luke and Dragline deferred to her, keeping a watchful eye on the four Orang Pendek elders.

  “Jesus, they look old,” Austin said.

  “And mean as hell,” Natalie added.

  Perhaps, Henrik thought, leadership was given to those who struggled and survived the longest. True survival of the fittest. Which is why the warrior class is so dominant.

  The one with the scar gave a snapping bark, silencing Lucille.

  “This isn’t looking good,” Austin said. An impatient elephant trumpeted loudly, stirring the mob up. Luke and Dragline fidgeted nervously. Lucille remained unmoved, impassive, but hadn’t dared to speak their alien tongue since the harsh rebuke.

  Henrik wanted to say something reassuring to Natalie and Austin, but he was having a hard time holding himself together. It was too late for apologies, and bringing voice to any shred of made-up optimism would have been insulting their intelligence.

  He couldn’t just stand here, waiting for Lucille’s efforts to fail, staring at the unstoppable horde as he faced his own mortality.

  “I need you both to remain here,” he said. “If they attack, follow the perimeter of the pit. I noticed earlier that the city ends a hundred or so yards from here. Take to the jungle and do whatever you need to survive. Yandi said he would remain at base camp, so if you can find your way back, he should be able to get you back home.”

  Granted, if he’s still there and alive, he thought.

  Natalie tugged at his arm when he took a step forward. “So you’re saying we can die now or die just a little bit later?”

  He looked into her eyes, wishing he could magically take them away from this place, this brother and sister who had somehow found the key to unlock the world’s mysteries.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can do.”

  He approached the Orang Pendek leader, ignoring Natalie and Austin’s pleas for him to come back. The four Orang Pendek elders puffed their chests up as he got closer. It was a very simian display of aggression, at complete odds with just about everything else he had seen of them to this point. It made figuring out their origin all the more perplexing.

  But that was a matter that would have to wait for another time.

  If there would be another time for Henrik.

  Now less than ten feet from the scarred Orang Pendek, the remains of his father’s camouflage shirt twisting in the hot wind that whispered across the field, he was finally able to look his father’s killer in the eye, returning the burning stare of hatred in spades.

  At his approach, Lucille stepped closer to the elders, as if to keep Henrik at her back. He touched her muscular shoulder gently, causing the cryptid to flinch.

  “I only wish we could communicate,” he said. “It would be nice to be able to stress to you the importance that I bear the burden of what is to come.” He looked at the Orang Pendek leader. “And to let that beast know why its life was taken today.”

  Lucille silently stepped away, joining her two companions.

  Perhaps she can understand, Henrik thought.

  He addressed the leader of the wild people. “Your army is complete overkill. I only need to do this one thing, then you may do what you want with me. I should hardly think you need so many to accomplish so little.”

  The Orang Pendek’s eyes were cloudy, but its look was one that could have frozen a roaring fire.

  No matter. He refused to cow to the creature that had destroyed his family. He lost his father that day. His mother, though she’d survived, had never been the same. She passed away of what the doctors called natural causes five years later. There was nothing natural about a healthy thirty-eight-year old woman going to sleep one night and never waking up. Henrik knew she’d simply willed herself to die, to once again be with her husband and leave behind the horror she’d witnessed in Sumatra.

  The other three elders must have sensed his intention, because they moved to form a barrier between him and their leader. The skulls rattled atop the stakes.

  No matter. A quick burst from his Heckler and Koch MP7 would tear them to ribbons in seconds. When he did it, he had to be accurate, careful not to hit the leader behind them.

  He would only be satisfied killing the scarred one by hand, close enough to feel its life seep from its mortally wounded flesh.

  After that, Henrik was sure he’d be overrun by the waiting horde. Death would more than likely be exceedingly painful, but quick. That would have to be all he could ask for.

  The Orang Pendek elders tensed, knees bending, ready to charge him.

  Henrik slipped his finger on the MP7’s trigger, calculating how he would control his shots and the time it would take to retrieve his knife from the sheath at his belt and drive it into the leader’s eyes. It would be close. If the old leader was fast, he might be able to disappear into the protection of the crowd before Henrik got to him.

  No! Envision its death and it will happen.

  The three elders bared their teeth, screeching as one. He felt their hot breath on his face, choking back his gorge from the vile stench.

  With just the slightest pressure on the trigger, the MP7 blared, a deadly arc of bullets ripping the elders’ chests to tatters. For a satisfying moment, they danced in their death throes, arms thrown wide, eyes rolled up into their heads, their war cries instantly silenced for eternity.

  The mob of Orang Pendeks and beasts roared at the sound but did not charge.

  The leader stood its ground, glaring at Henrik.

  He let the MP7 hang from his shoulder, reaching for his knife.

  Several harsh cracks echoed in the distance.

  The howling of what sounded like condemned souls erupted, giving Henrik pause. It was all the time the elder needed to dash off, dropping the stake with the remains of Henrik’s father.

  “Damn it!”

  He looked to the sound of the sudden fracas.

  For the first time in a life spent putting himself in impossible and dangerous situations, Henrik cursed being yanked from the jaws of certain death.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The moment Henrik flipped his lid and fired on the three old Orang Pendeks, Austin grabbed Natalie and started running. She lagged behind but he refused to let her go. Never again. If he had to put her on his back and carry her the rest of the way, so be it.

  They stopped in their tracks at the sight of the thundering herd of dinosaurs, great gouts of mud splashing from the ground as they pounded toward the fray with madness in their eyes. He’d never seen anything like it, not even in movies.

  Or his worst nightmares.

  Dozens of wild, prehistoric creatures that defied classification charged madly toward what had become the battleground in the lost city of the bizarre. He could smell the fear coming off the strange animals, a sharp tang that put his own senses on edge.

  “Henrik!” Natalie shouted.

  Their German friend was smack in the middle of the dinosaurs’ path. He simply stared them down, surrounded by the bodies of the Orang Pendeks he’d massacred.

  When she tried to run to him, Austin jerked her back harder than he’d intended.

  “You’ll get yourself killed! There’s nothing you can do for him.” It pained him to say it, but he’d quickly learned to face the painful facts out here.

  “But – “

  “Come on, we have to get around this thing and out of harm’s way.”

  They resumed sprinting along the edge of the pit. Austin almost lost his footing on the soft soil. His foot met empty air, but he managed to shift his weight so he was back on firmer ground. If they stuck to their current course, the dinosaurs would miss them by twenty or so yards, so long as they remained in the ti
ght line of stampeding terror.

  He hoped to God they didn’t attract any undue attention and end up trampled or thrown into the pit where they would be sitting ducks.

  “What’s got…them so riled up?” Natalie asked, trying to catch her breath.

  “I think I know.”

  The mystery didn’t last long. They came to the furthest edge of the pit and were able to spot the men responsible for the crazed dinosaur panic.

  Surya, Ridwan, Saharto and Hengki fired their guns over the backs of the dinosaurs, causing them to flee even faster. The sounds of gunfire were practically drowned out by the pounding of multi-ton beasts. The four men ran after the creatures, but were soon outpaced by the stronger, faster dinosaurs.

  Austin couldn’t help but smile.

  “I thought you guys ran away.”

  Surya gave a weary nod. “It was a consideration. But then we saw this and knew we had to try.”

  Behind them was what looked like an enormous holding pen. Massive tree trunks had once blocked the entrance but had been moved, allowing the escape.

  “How?” Austin said, eyeing the trees.

  “It was easier than it looks,” Surya said. “A pretty remarkable feat of engineering, I am sure.”

  They all turned to watch the chaos unfold. The wild dinosaurs ran directly into the crowd of Orang Pendeks and their beasts of war. The resounding thuds of impossibly large and solid bodies crashing into one another was astounding. To Austin, it sounded like an apocalyptic thunderstorm. Any moment now, the Four Horsemen would blaze through the clouds, hooves thundering across the killing field.

  The Orang Pendeks tried to control the animals they rode upon to no avail. It was every beast for itself. Orang bodies were flipped into the air and pummeled underfoot.

  For a moment, Austin almost felt bad for them.

  Then he looked at his sister and remembered, and all pity was lost.

  Equally lost in the scrum was Henrik.

  “We can’t just stay here,” Natalie said. “What if they decide to come this way?”

  “Where shall we go?” Surya said, his men keeping the creatures in the sights of their rifles if they decided to make a deadly detour.