by Perrin Briar
There wasn’t just one man, but a dozen. Most of them were dark skinned, tanned bronze. They were wearing very little, with just a large leaf over their genitals. They had lumps of wood through their faces, piercings and tattoos on every available piece of skin. They were thin but strong, and leapt about as if taking part in some kind of festival. One beat on a drum, producing a low thudding rhythm.
Their attention was entirely on the three members of their party that did not leap and howl with jubilation. There were four men in total. Three were white and stood out a mile. The fourth was the same bronze color as the other natives dancing around them.
The natives kicked and punched the figures in time with the music. It was a frenzied, frantic rhythm, the blows raining down. The defending figures raised shoulders and elbows in an attempt at defense, but were not successful.
Bill could hear the slap from where he was. It didn’t sound pleasant. Blood and bruises adorned the figures and they were pulled left and right, led by the ropes around their necks.
Scattered over the ground were human skulls, shattered rib cages and deformed leg bones. Bill did not get the feeling these items had been placed here for decoration, but had been here all along. This was where they had been killed.
“It’s not looking too good for them, is it?” Fritz said.
Two of the white men were fully grown adults. The third, and the native, were around Ernest’s age. The hollering from the natives grew to a crescendo, and then ended abruptly.
Something bad was going to happen.
“We need to do something,” Fritz said.
“I’m sure it’s all for show,” Bill said.
As if they had heard him, the natives dragged the bronze-skinned prisoner to a large rock with an indentation in the top. The natives pushed his head into it. A large native waved a large bone in the air.
“We need to do something!” Fritz said. “Now!”
“This is their culture,” Bill said. “They should do whatever they want to do.”
“What if they kill him?” Ernest said.
“They’ve killed plenty of their own before,” Bill said. “We have no right to get involved.”
The muscular native raised his bone and brought it down on the boy’s head. There was a wet mushy thunk as the bone cleaved through the skull and struck the rock underneath.
The natives let out a howl of merriment. Bill and the boys turned pale.
“If we don’t get involved now, when will we?” Fritz said.
Bill didn’t like the idea of them putting themselves at risk, in harm’s way. It wasn’t like they had a large number of weapons they could overthrow the natives with. They would only succeed in getting themselves killed.
But there was something grotesque in watching the natives perform their sacrifice with white people. If they wanted to carry out their savage ceremony with their own, that was one thing, but with someone from another world, another culture that had nothing to do with this? Bill was conflicted.
“What do you think the chances are of them knowing what a gun is?” Bill said.
“Pretty high,” Ernest said. “But why? We don’t have any guns.”
“No,” Bill said. “But they don’t know that.”
Bill moved to the treeline and seized a thin branch. He had to act quick if he was to save the lives of these doomed men. But was he only putting himself and his family in danger where they previously had been safe? After all, the natives didn’t know the family existed on this island, otherwise they would have acted already.
Though Bill was preparing to do the right moral thing by the lights of the endangered strangers, it was not the wisest course of action for the sake of his own family. But it was no good. Something inside Bill screamed at him, demanded he do something to help these poor people.
He snapped off the branch, shortening it, making it just shy of six inches in length. He hadn’t made one of these in years, and even then it had been for his kids in the wilderness of Chucerne Park. It hadn’t mattered then how unrealistic the item had looked. The boys made up the difference with their imagination. He hoped the natives would do the same. It was the best he could do considering the time restraints.
He held it in his hand and practised holding it like it actually weighed something. God, he hoped the locals knew he wasn’t just holding a stick. A threat was only as valid as the person you threatened believed it to be. If these guys had never so much as seen a gun before…
Bill didn’t know what he would do, besides turn and run as fast as his legs could carry him. But even that wouldn’t be enough if they were well trained with bow and arrow, which they almost certainly were.
“We could attack them with the weapons we do have,” Ernest said.
“That’s unlikely to be enough to scare these guys away,” Bill said. “They’ll be used to the kinds of weapons we usually carry, and they’ll be willing to pit their skills against us, I’m sure. I know I would if I were in their position. They’ve had a lifetime to have develop their skills. We’ve only had months. I know you’re all very good at what you do, but they are on another level. We use them for defense. They use them for survival and a way of life. It’s cultural for them.”
“What happens if things go wrong?” Jack said. “What if they haven’t ever seen a gun before?”
“Then we’d better be ready for them,” Bill said. “You’ll drop your sticks and leg it into the underbrush. Don’t stop. Don’t check to see how the others are doing. Just get out of here. It’ll be the only hope we’ll have. Don’t forget, the jungle is the natural environment for these people.
“Pop,” Ernest said. “We don’t have to do this. We could turn and leave, could return home. None of us would think any less of you. We understand the world we live in now. Sometimes you have to be ruthless if you want to survive.”
Bill mulled over Ernest’s words for a moment. He shook his head.
“You’re right, Ernest,” Bill said. “But we’re not going to run. Not today.”
He tossed a stick to each of the boys.
“Get back into the position we were watching the locals from before,” he said. “If things look like they’re getting a bit hairy, then you’ll know what to do.”
“With these?” Ernest said, glancing at the stick his father had just handed him.
“We’ll be fine,” Fritz said to his father. “You just worry about yourself. Don’t take any risks you don’t have to. Believe it or not, but we’ve grown fairly attached to you over the years. That’s the problem with having parents. You grow close to them given enough time.”
Bill shared a smile with his sons. He hoped this wasn’t the last time he would get to do that.
Being on the beach by himself would leave Bill exposed. The boys all knew that, but Bill wouldn’t give himself a little leeway if it meant putting them in a fraction more danger. If they were perched on the top of the short cliff, then that would give them a little more time to get away and escape to safety, and that was worth more to Bill than anything else.
Bill headed a little away from where they would be camped and peered down at the horrific scene taking place. The natives were jumping around again, preparing the spirit world to receive its next sacrifice.
It was like he was watching a movie, disgusted, horrified, and entranced all at the same time. And now he was going to step from reality and into that world, becoming one with the story taking place before him.
Was he ready for this? He doubted he would ever really be ready for it. He took a deep breath and let it out in a single puff.
Here goes nothing, he thought.
And that was exactly what he was doing—risking everything in order to get very little in exchange, save three men’s lives. Armed with just a few short sticks.
Chapter Three
BILL RAN a short way into the jungle. He would step from the jungle, not letting the natives know his sons’ location. The dancing figures whooped and hollered at the top of their
voices.
Bill took a deep breath and stepped from his hiding place and onto the beach clearing. The natives didn’t even notice him, their shouts covering his approach.
And then they stopped, becoming silent. That was when the bone club would woosh through the air and slam into a man’s skull.
“Hey!” Bill shouted.
The locals stopped their gyrations and dancing and turned to look at this interruption. Ten dangerous pairs of eyes belonging to men from a bygone era, an era that might well have just returned, and returned in their favor. Bill regretted his decision immediately.
They said nothing. Even the drumming had stopped. They just stared, like this man before them was a ghost. One of the locals finally moved, stepping forward to address him.
“Howdy,” Bill said, his hand gripping tighter around his makeshift pistol.
Suddenly it felt like what it was: a child’s toy.
The native man looked Bill over. Now Bill was there, had put himself in this position, he was at a loss as to what it was he was meant to say. The natives presumably couldn’t understand what he said anyway. But he would just have to try to communicate. His voice quivered as he spoke.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you kill these men,” Bill said. “My conscious won’t allow it to happen. There must be some way we can sort this out?”
The native man made a quick movement, but Bill was ready, and whipped his wooden pistol up, putting it in the native’s face. The native understood immediately.
Bill was relieved a little. The natives had seen this mystical object before, and the leader of the native wasn’t about to put himself and the rest of his men in its way.
The native said something under his breath and the other natives approached Bill from either side. They were attempting to encircle him, knowing he couldn’t shoot them all if they got too close.
“Howdy!” Fritz shouted from the clifftop.
The natives turned to look at the three long sticks pointing down at them, to their eyes what might have been long-range rifles. They were a safe distance away, but close enough to get a good accurate shot off.
If the three white men gave any indication that they knew what the rifles really were, they didn’t show it. It would have hardly have been in their best interest. They were surprisingly calm considering their predicament.
Bill could see the thoughts passing through the native leader’s face. He had more face paint than the others and more ornaments in his ears and nose. Bill supposed that meant he had more authority.
Bill recognized the resigned look in the young leader’s eye. The fact he would have to admit shame and turn tail and head away. He had a disgusted expression on his face and walked past the white men, toward their canoes.
The native leader lashed out, striking a powerful and sinister blow at the youngest of the white men, the boy around Ernest’s age. Bill sensed it was an insurance policy. Bill would run to aid the boy, relieving the possibility of him shooting the tribe members in the back.
The boy had had a beaming smile on his face until the vicious attack on his person.
Bill rushed to the fallen figure and checked him over. He was unconscious, blood running down one side of his face, turning the damp sand brown. A bump on the side of his head was already beginning to swell.
“Thank God you were here,” one of the older white men said. “If you weren’t here we would have ended up in the same state as the native boy.”
He nodded to the body with a crater for a head. Yes, Bill thought. If he hadn’t been such a coward he might have been able to save him too. He’d just been a young boy. His leg still jittered, as if running in his sleep.
The natives pulled across the water with strong rhythmic pulses of their muscular arms. They sailed in the direction of wherever they had come from. A single figure stood in the stern of the canoe, looking at them.
Bill didn’t believe it was the last time he would encounter them. He didn’t believe that for a second.
Chapter Four
LIZ FOLDED the washing absentmindedly. She always liked housework. It gave her time to think and go over the various issues and concerns she had. There was little she didn’t think about when she was doing the laundry. It was strangely hypnotic, zen-like.
Still, she would have preferred not to clean everything by hand. It was amazing how dirty clothes got when you lived in the wild. There was no impetus for the kids to try and keep their clothes clean.
Francis had started out by helping her, but he soon fell asleep on the pile of clothes that floated in a wicker basket. Clearly alone time wasn’t the kind of thing that pressed his buttons. He was meant to be keeping an eye on all sides, for them to stay safe while she did the laundry. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like undead would willingly come near water in any case.
The water here was clean enough to wash, if not to drink. This water came from some distance away—the peak of Sharpie the mountain. Yes, to say the family was comfortable here was fair. Their every need was met, and she was confident no one else could have set themselves up better.
She became aware of the appearance of the boys and Bill when they crossed the stream. They hadn’t seen her and were busy discussing amongst themselves something in low voices.
Liz frowned. There was something about the voices. They sounded different, not like those she knew so well. There were more of them that there should have been, she realized.
Bill was helping carry an injured body. Liz’s heart leapt into the back of her throat. She was relieved when she performed a quick headcount, realizing all the boys were accounted for. That meant the body had to be of someone else. But who?
Liz left the forgotten clothes and stepped toward Bill.
“Bill!” she said.
He didn’t hear her, as he was busy transporting the unconscious body through the jungle, in the direction of Falcon’s Nest.
“Francis!” Liz said, shaking him awake.
“Ng?” Francis said, lazily opening his eyes.
He rolled over to return back to sleep. The lulling shushing sounds of the stream and the soft calls of nature and the gentle breeze on an otherwise perfect day had been too much for him. He had succumbed to its hypnotic rhythm.
“You have to get up,” Liz said. “Now.”
She picked him up and half-carried him, half-dragged him through the forest in the direction of home. She caught up to the other figures.
She was right. Two of them were new, walking behind Bill and the boys as they transported the unconscious body.
As she got closer she noticed the unconscious boy had a nasty knot on one side of his head. It was red and bulbous. The two men, large and muscular, were following in his wake. They had also been beaten, sporting more injuries than Liz could count. They had their arms wrapped around their ribs. But they were still walking, though the shorter of the two men limped.
Fritz and Ernest brought the fold-up bed Bill had made for such an occasion as this, in anticipation of when one of them would be knocked unconscious and unable to scale the ladder up to the treehouse and would need to be lifted, like an air ambulance, up to the safety of the treehouse. Luckily none of the Flowers had had need of the contraption yet, but now it had received its first patient.
They strapped the boy into it, careful to ensure the straps were tight enough so he would not slip out while he was halfway up to the treehouse.
Bill turned to the two men.
“Lads, can you give me a hand lifting the body?” Bill said.
“We’ll certainly try,” the taller of the two men said.
“Can you go up first?” Bill said. “You’ll need to pick him up when he gets to the top.”
The two men began their ascent.
“Bill?” Liz said. “What’s going on?”
But Bill continued to issue orders.
“Fritz, Ernest, Jack, after you help me get the boy up to Falcon’s Nest, I need you to keep a lookout at the shore, as well as you can,” he
said. “If the natives circle back, we want to know about it.”
The boy’s body rose steadily, inch by inch. Once he got to the top, the two men unfastened the straps, lifted the boy off, and set him down on the floor of Falcon’s Nest.
Bill and the boys brought the bed down slowly, until it touched down. And then they took off for their watch tower positions.
“Bill, what’s going on?” Liz said.
“Natives brought four men to the island to sacrifice them,” Bill said. “We intervened and got the men away. We’re not sure if the natives will come back to the island now or later, or at all, but they looked angry enough to ensure some kind of retribution. The boy got injured in the process.”
“Where did they come from?” Liz said.
“I told you-” Bill said.
“No, I mean before that,” Liz said.
“We haven’t had time to discuss it yet,” Bill said.
“He looks pretty broken up,” Liz said.
“Yes,” Bill said. “Which is why I need to see to him.”
“Go,” Liz said.
Bill climbed the ladder.
Just another beautiful sunny day on the island of New Switzerland, Liz thought. And she got the terrible feeling that it was just another adventure they were about to undergo. Please God, make it not so.
Chapter Five
JIM LOOKED very comfortable in Ernest’s bed. It was the one closest to the door, which was no accident. Ernest had chosen it for that very reason—in case he suddenly needed to evacuate and get somewhere safe. He was the one to take the initiative because he always prepared for the worst case scenario.
There was little he didn’t take into consideration when he had the time to think through a given situation. Life was a game of chess to Ernest, and he was a grand master. There was little he didn’t see, little he couldn’t exploit, little he wasn’t prepared for.