I lifted my camera bag down from the rafter; it was sure to hold at least one power bar. It was heavier than I remembered. Bulkier, too. Like it had rocks in it.
Had I weakened so much in just a few days, or had the Dyaks added something to the pack? The horror dawned slowly. I dropped the pack, knocking over the gourd and spilling my only source of water.
Heads weigh a lot; my friends’ heads were missing from the pole. The Dyaks had given back what they had taken from me.
*
I grabbed my clothes and scuttled outside. I shook out the clothes and pounded my boots upside down, making sure no scorpions or spiders had made a new home in them. No uninvited guests tumbled out.
I glanced back at the hut where my camera bag lay. Sarah had given me the pack a half-dozen years ago in happier times, before her cancer was discovered. We’d just had a naked tussle in bed and were lying quietly. Suddenly she sat up and announced, “You know what? A professional photographer needs professional tools.”
She hopped out of bed, scampered to the closet, and returned hiding something behind her back. She presented it to me, and for a moment I forgot to stare at her.
She was holding a Tamrac backpack with wide shoulder straps. You could spend hundreds more and get no better protection for three camera bodies, eight lenses, a tripod, and sundry other items like batteries, rain gear, and a moleskin journal. The contents of that bag had always brought me joy and, later, even an income.
Now I dreaded learning what might be inside. I resolved that if I found a coconut-sized wrapping when I unzipped the bag, I would not unwrap the leaves. I would bury it the way I found it, even if it meant not knowing whose head it was.
I passed the morning sitting under a neighboring house, contemplating the task before me. My stomach rumbled. I licked my lips and thirsted for a drink.
Finally, I levered myself off the ground, walked to my hut, mounted the ramp, grabbed the pack, and hustled back to neutral ground.
I checked the smaller outside pockets first, unzipping each carefully, expecting spiders or worm-sized poisonous snakes at each opening. Then came the moment of truth: I had to unzip the large storage space at the top of the pack.
It bulged rounder than I remembered. I usually kept it half empty so that I could store blooms and other samples without crushing them. It felt hard and overfull, the contents bulging against the zipper.
I didn’t smell decay, and no fluid leaked from the bag. I closed my eyes as I tugged the zipper over the largest bulge.
My head swam. Breathe, my brain commanded. In, out. In, out.
I parted the flap with one hand, reached in with the other… and touched leather.
My eyes opened. Leather. I saw leather.
“Hah-ha-ha.”
I laughed in relief. My holster. My pistol. Not leaves. Not… not what I just knew would be there.
Now I stripped the bag. Cameras, lenses, and memory chips were all present and intact. And one power bar. I ripped it open and nibbled one corner.
I plopped onto my back, my hands shaking with emotion, my body radiating nervous energy. I stared at the forest canopy above me. I had to get a grip, but for the moment, I would be content just to be alive.
Eventually, I sat up, curious once more about my surroundings. The houses in this village bore new bamboo mixed with weathered wood, patches on homes, such as they were. This was an old, living village but a peculiar one. Most villages sprang up right on the water or a few dozen steps away. Not this one. I couldn’t see a single source of water, neither river, nor lake, nor well, as unlikely as that might have been.The whole situation reeked of mystery. Headhunters attacking a party of four armed men? That smacked of cunning, audacity, and recklessness. Unless they had an advantage that trumped guns and knives. I couldn’t think what that might be, other than the element of surprise.
Johnnie, Chik, and Sammy dead without firing a shot. Machete man dead as well. The old woman vanished. The villagers gone. I remained alive, and even seemed to be recovering from the wound on my face, not that I was ready to touch it.
I considered. These villagers hadn’t harmed me; they hadn’t even tied me up. They had given me shelter and cared for my wounded face. The machete man had raised his weapon against me, but he hadn’t struck. Surely he could have whacked off my head. But he hadn’t, and then he lost his head.
The pieces simply would not come together.
Where were my friends’ bodies? Had the villagers eaten them? I dreaded the thought. Or had they left them at the river for the crocodiles to find? That would make sense. Their bodies, especially Sammy’s, would be too heavy to carry far. And yet someone had carried me to this village.
I’m a big person, not Sammy big, but definitely size husky. If they carried me here, that meant the river was either very close or there were huge numbers of villagers and a clear path for them to use. I inspected my wrists and ankles for signs that the Dyaks had trussed me to a pole and carried me to the village. I found no marks. The village wasn’t large enough to turn out many hefty warriors; in fact, the villagers I’d seen were like the small, lean people you’d find throughout Southeast Asia. Not a sumo wrestler or weight-lifter among them.
My speculations danced around one fact: They had killed my friends, but not me. I could worry that to—well, a long time, but I had more immediate concerns. I needed water and I had to learn more about my wound.
The water had to be close. All I had to do was find it. When I’d searched the village, I hadn’t seen any paths or gaps in the forest to slip through.
Either I wasn’t looking hard enough or I wasn’t recognizing what I saw. There had to be paths. These villagers weren’t spirits. They needed food and water, and neither of those fell from the sky like manna. Actually, rain does fall from the sky, but I saw no evidence that the villagers tried to capture it. The water came from somewhere, and I needed to find out where.
But first, I figured I would take a selfie of my face. The pain was better, much better, but infections run rampant in the moist jungle. Nothing good would come from an infection right next to my brain.
I dug into the camera bag again, pulled out a fifty-millimeter lens and attached it to my favorite camera body. I set it on automatic focus and shot away, trying to get a full body picture, top to bottom, front and back, paying particular attention to the wounded side of my face.
I retreated into the shade of a hut and scrolled through the photos on the LCD monitor. When I came to the first facial pose, I stopped, open-mouthed. I couldn’t believe it. I thumbed to a new photo, then another. More and then more again. I moved the photos back and forth in disbelief. It wasn’t possible. My head swam and my mind blurred. Back and forth, like a mad man searching for any solution but the one before his eyes, I twisted the camera dial. But the photos never changed. I dropped the camera to my side.
“Those bastards.” I told myself aloud. “Those damned bastards.”
Curse them as much as I would, the photos stayed the same. A brand shown through the bruised and inflamed skin on the right side of my face—the brand of a spider web.
Chapter 8
Hope
Despite my gruesome discovery, I slept that night without pain or dreams. Speckled light filtering through the doorway roused me the next day.
The silence was unnerving. I needed to hear a human voice, even if it was just my own.
“As long as I don’t carry on a two-sided conversation,” I said aloud, “I’m sane.”
With that rule established in my mind, I reached for breakfast—yesterday’s monkey bone—and unwrapped it. What I found made me twist around in surprise. I saw no one, but someone had brought a different bone, this one scorched throughout. Tiny white bugs crawled over it. I surveyed the hut again and after assuring myself that I was alone, I knocked the bone against the floor to shake off the creepy-crawlies and took a bite.
“Tastes like chicken,” I said to no one. I felt giddy and wondered if my Dyak minders had
slipped something into my water.
I chewed gristle on the bone.
I inspected the hut again, looking for my camera bag. There it lay, over in the corner. No, wait, it still hung from the rafter, where I had put it after finding, well, after not finding a head. No, I had taken it outside. My memory was playing tricks on me.
I crawled over to the bag and discovered it was Johnnie’s, not mine.
I dragged it outside and down the ramp. In the center of the clearing, I sat and rummaged through the Aussie’s pack. The first thing I found was a water bottle, still full. I gulped half of it in one long swig. My stomach rumbled and churned.
“Slow down,” I told myself. “Don’t overdo it.”
Johnnie packed for trouble. While I carried extra batteries and memory chips, he filled his bag with treasures: MREs, energy bars, two bottles of water, a first-aid kit, a rescue whistle, a mirror—and his satellite phone.
My way home!
I immediately started punching buttons, trying to start the phone. After several minutes, I gave up. This was no ordinary cell phone. The device had more buttons, knobs, and dials than the most complicated TV remote I had ever dealt with. I suspected it had come from some scientific “Q” inside the Australian Intelligence Service with extra bells and whistles.
“Never a five-year-old around when you need one,” I muttered.
I started over again, working my way through the controls, waiting at least ten seconds after pushing each button. Nothing happened.
I tried again, using combinations of buttons. Again, nothing.
The last I saw of Johnnie, I recalled, he was trying to ping his embassy. If the phone was on when the Dyaks attacked, the batteries might have run down.
I rummaged through the half-dozen small pockets attached to the outside of Johnnie’s pack and found spare batteries.
“Okay, Johnnie, don’t let me down here.”
I started from the beginning; the fourth button, top row, far right, produced magic.
“Lousy user interface,” I told myself.
I punched in the sheikh’s private number. If anyone had the power to grab a signal from Bumfart, Borneo, the sheikh did.
“Agh. This sucks.”
I couldn’t figure out how to send the call. Once again, I tried all the buttons, to no effect.
The only thing worse than not having a phone is not knowing how to use the one you have. I took in my primitive surroundings. I held my future in my hand and couldn’t make it work. Anger and frustration took over.
“Only one thing to do.”
I dug into my camera bag, pulled out the Webley, raised my arm to the level of my head, and pulled the trigger.
A boom rocked the forest and deafened me.
“Damn, not so close next time.”
Twice more I fired the mini-cannon into the forest canopy.
For the first time since I awakened in this place, I heard the screeches and cries of wild monkeys and birds.
If anyone’s looking for us, that should tell them where we are, I thought. If that includes the Dyaks, I’ll be ready for them.
I strapped the Webley around my waist and pulled the holster belt tight; I was one notch thinner than before the ambush. How did that happen in—what?—just two or three days? That didn’t seem likely. True, I had fat to burn, but I couldn’t imagine losing that much weight in three days of fasting.
I retrieved my camera and scrolled to the last photo I’d taken from the boat before we landed. I checked the time and date stamp. I dialed in one of the photos I had taken of my face and compared the date from that photo.
Ten days!
I’d been out of it for at least a week. And in that time, no one had come looking for us. If Johnnie’s ping had reached his embassy—or even if it hadn’t—someone should have come searching for us.
The realization dawned slowly. If I was going to get out of here, I would have to do it by myself. I had no idea how to make that happen and little hope that I could.
I sat on the ground in my boxer shorts and pondered my leave-taking for a long time. I prepared to travel light: Johnnie’s lightweight backpack with water, food, map, compass, and mini-flashlight. My heavier, padded backpack would stay, along with the cameras and lenses. I’d wear the Webley, fully reloaded now. I stowed Johnnie’s gun, fully loaded, at the top of his backpack.
I walked the entire village one more time, camera in hand, shooting dozens of photos from every angle, including the interiors of the houses. I worked methodically, just as I did photographing flowers, and paid particular attention to the ground around the edge of the village. Behind machete man’s house, I found what I knew had to exist, the slight wear and tear of a path that could be entered sideways. I removed the memory cards from the cameras and slipped them into the Aussie’s backpack.
With that done, I returned to my new hut and hacked the legs off my khakis. I slashed the leggings into strips and tied the strips together to make a rope.
When everything was ready, I nibbled on an energy bar and played with Johnnie’s phone some more, searching for the right combination of buttons that would get a call through to the sheikh.
As the light dimmed and the darkening forest loomed around me, I stood and made exaggerated motions of yawning and stretching, then climbed the ramp into the hut. I took a seat in the shadows just inside the door. Now all I had to do was stay awake.
I would have only one chance, and it required that I not fall asleep. If that happened, I’d end up thrashing through the forest until I dropped. And that would be the end.
Sometime later—minutes? hours?—I jerked awake. Something or someone was outside the house. The hairs on my arms stood on end. I strained to listen.
There. Heavy breathing. Snuffling.
Snuffling? Disappointment washed through me. A wild boar. A stupid pig. I hoped it wouldn’t keep my expected visitors away.
I leaned back against the wall and listened as the boar snuffed its way through the village. Unwelcome memories crept into my thoughts. Sarah flashing her lopsided smile. Sarah in tears, fighting the pain of leukemia. Sarah lying cold in the hospital bed. Then slips of bills from doctors and hospitals, obligations that Sarah had asked me to pay.
Death had transformed my Sarah into a financial nightmare. A tear slipped down my wounded cheek, the salt etching a stinging trail. Was the tear for Sarah or for me? What had they done to my face? Why? No. No questions, I thought. I will only think of answers. That’s when I sensed someone on the ramp, just outside the door.
The two packs lay end to end on the mat. In the darkness, they might resemble a sleeping body. It didn’t matter; it was all I had. I tensed my sore muscles, ready to spring my own ambush.
If the visitor was carrying a knife, I’d be in trouble, but I was already in trouble. My only fear was that I’d get knocked in the face and end up in agony, unable to fight.
The intruder paused at the edge of the doorway, listening. I pounced, reaching through the doorway. My left shoulder scraped the edge of the doorway and I cried out.
My target gasped and turned. I grabbed at the darkness. My right hand caught air, but the left touched and closed on a limb. The intruder jumped or fell off the ramp. I held on. Something plopped onto the ground, and my now reluctant visitor flailed, but still I held on.
On my knees, I shoved back against the doorframe with my right arm. Teeth dug into my left arm. I yelled and punched out with my right. The teeth withdrew, but I fell forward onto my stomach, my chest half in and half out of the doorway.
The intruder, hanging from my arm, suddenly felt twice as heavy, as if someone on the ground were pulling from that end.
Fury erupted from me. The fingers of my free hand splayed open and I bellowed, “No!”
I almost lost my grip, but I jerked back, freeing my prey from the grasp of whoever was on the ground. I dragged what seemed like dead weight into the house, scraping against the door opening again.
I felt no resista
nce. All fight was gone. I straddled the intruder before letting go of the captured arm. I groped the body in the dark, trying to find a neck.
Adrenalin pumped through me, and I squeezed with all the energy I could spare. After a while—time meant less and less to me the longer this ordeal dragged on—I released my grip and dug into my pants pocket for the flashlight. I snapped it on and aimed it at the still figure beneath me.
As I had expected, it was the old woman who had lured us to the ambush. My trap had worked, but she lay too quiet. I shook her and slapped her face like they did in the movies, trying to rouse her. I played the light over her. Her sarong had pulled away from her torso and her shriveled body lay naked beneath me, her eyes wide but unseeing.
I had killed her.
Chapter 9
Hostage
I climbed off the old woman’s still body and half-scooted, half-jumped down the ramp, following the flashlight’s narrow beam of light.
The flashlight bored into the darkness. What was this? Whoever had tried to haul the old woman out of my grip during our tussle lay on the ground. I kicked at the body; not a twitch or groan. This was crazy. I knew I had probably strangled the old lady; dawn would tell. But what happened to this body?
Panning the light under the log ladder, I looked for a rock or something that might have knocked him out. I found an overturned bowl with residue of the green liquid in it, and a few steps away, I noticed another monkey bone that had come unwrapped and a smaller wrapped leaf still bound up.
My heart pounded like I was having a heart attack. Anger swelled in me. The whole village was involved in keeping me prisoner.
I screamed into the darkness. “I got the old woman. Come and get her. You just try.”
The forest should have erupted in sound from the commotion, but it was absolutely still.
As quickly as it had come, my anger passed, and I realized I was a sitting duck for a blow dart. I scurried back up the ladder and into the hut.
The hag blocked the doorway, lying still, where I had choked her to death. I rolled the corpse onto its stomach and hogtied it with the rope I’d make of my khakis. I located the Webley and cocked it. The old woman’s fellow villagers didn’t know she had died and might try to rescue her. I intended to resist the effort.
The Mark of the Spider: A Black Orchid Chronicle Page 6