Tribesmen

by Adam Cesare

  His body went rigid against the bed and he held his breath, frightened in the dark, and suddenly with an acute awareness that they were all alone in the middle of the jungle. The volume of every sound in the small hut was cranked to maximum. Outside, the fire’s hisses and pops were amplified by the emptiness of the village.

  Were there tigers on the small island, other predatory animals that he’d never even heard of? The horror was immediate and primitive: he was a simple Stone Age man, shrinking from shadows.

  Denny tried to remain calm and soundless as he turned his head to see what had sloughed in through the small window. His eyes had adjusted to the dank hut, but they didn’t have to, because Cynthia’s bleached-blonde hair was almost phosphorescent in the darkness.

  She was right there! Denny wanted to laugh and shout, or at least heave with relief, but he stopped himself. Umberto was probably making laps around the camp with his dick in his hand, and here she was stumbling through Denny’s hut.

  She either hadn’t seen the bed, or hadn’t seen him because his brown tribal makeup was camouflaging him. With her back turned to him, she leafed through the baskets and tangles of fishing nets piled against the opposite wall of the hut.

  She would notice him soon: he would have to make his move if he was going to do it. As soon as he stirred, she would hear the groan of the bunk, so what was his plan? Knock her down and out, and then tie her up with her boyfriend.

  Without moving his head, Denny swept the room with his eyes, looking for something he could use as a club. There was nothing, unless he wanted to pry a leg off the bed, but by that point he would lose the element of surprise.

  His hands instinctively floated up to the light meter slung around his chest, and gripped onto the totem for comfort. He didn’t usually sleep with it, but tonight he was glad he did.

  Careful to make as little sound as possible, he looped the fabric from around his neck and hefted the light meter in one hand. It was a solid lump of polished metal. It would be much more useful than nothing.

  Here. We. Go.

  He leapt up from the bed, his lower back mewling at the sudden movement, and both feet sending up a cloud of dirt as they hit the dry ground of the hut. As soon as he was confident he wasn’t going to topple over, he took a big step.

  He lunged forward, the light meter held high and ready to slam down on the back of the girl’s head. Denny hesitated for a split-second, unsure how much force to use to knock her out, not wanting to kill her. Was he strong enough to kill her? He hoped not.

  Before he could lower his hand, the girl whirled around. There was shock and a stunning level of ferocity gouged into her dark, pretty face.

  Then there was a tug in Denny’s chest, and everything, even the fire and jungle outside, went silent.

  The only sound that filled his ears was his own breathing.

  He loosened his grip, and the light meter—his most prized possession, even more than his fix kit—hit the ground.

  “My, my,” he started to speak, his words frantic but hushed. His eyes darted down to his chest.

  The actress’s hand was still wrapped around the hilt of the small knife.

  The villager who lived here had probably used the knife to unravel his nets and debone fish, but now the blade was between Denny’s ribs, right over his heart.

  “Don’t.” He tried to say something about removing the knife. He’d read in a book once that it was only when you removed an impalement that you were in real trouble.

  Cynthia shushed him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know this wasn’t your fault.” There were tears in her eyes.

  She kept one hand on the knife and cradled Denny with the other. She helped him lay back on the ground with minimal effort, her muscles straining against his skinny frame.

  “Who…” Denny tried to speak to the figures that had gathered above him, the ones whose backwards feet were not touching the ground. Cynthia put her free hand over his mouth and pressed her fingers against his lips, silencing him.

  There was a flash of crimson as she pulled out the knife, and his still-beating heart sent a warm pool of blood out over the front of his shirt.

  She kept both her hands over his mouth and stayed with him until he drifted off to sleep.

  Denny began to dream of those long nights and thrills on 42nd Street. The movies, both great and terrible, and their starlets, both beautiful and tragic, flooded over his fading consciousness.

  Before he faded completely, Denny realized that one day Cynthia was going to be a star.

  Chapter 20

  Jacque

  It might have been some combination of blood loss, exhaustion, and the warm hypnotic glow of the fire. Whatever the reason, Jacque passed into a deep sleep right after Tito had stopped raving at him.

  The director had wanted an updated script, one that incorporated the recent changes in the production (i.e. the majority of the crew turning into raving murderous lunatics). Although he’d threatened to, Jacque guessed that Tito probably wouldn’t shoot him without the camera rolling. Refusing to give him story ideas had not stopped Tito’s creative juices from flowing, though.

  “In that fucking Italian piece of shit—the one that we are ripping off—they got in big trouble for impaling a girl. Big trouble means big box office, free press, underground status.” Tito waxed rhapsodically in French, his words moving his wheels until he’d revved himself into a frenzy of creation. “So how do we top that?” he asked Jacque, and continued before he could answer: “We impale a girl upside down! Instead of having the steak hidden underneath her ass, where you can’t see it, we have it come out somewhere else!”

  Jacque saw where this line of reasoning was going to end up. He also knew who Tito intended to be the impale-ee: Cynthia.

  “Nobody will be able to figure out how we did it, how we achieved the effect.”

  “Because you’re so crazy you’ll actually do it,” Jacque said, leaning forward against his restraints. No use. If he was going to help Cynthia, it wasn’t going to be by breaking out of the loops of gaffer’s tape binding his chest and hands.

  “That’s the beauty of it: nobody knows that we’re actually going to do it. Cinéma vérité! The world’s first Neo-realist splatter movie.”

  “De Sica just used non-actors and real bombed-out locations. He didn’t kill off his cast. They’ll know it when half the crew goes missing, when our families come looking for us.”

  “What family?” Tito asked, knowing the answer. Someone would miss the girl’s, at least, but Jacque was tired of arguing with a madman.

  “Sure. Sounds great. You’re a chin-e-matic genius,” Jacque said; and after a few more moments of rambling, Tito left him alone to fall asleep.

  His sleep was deep enough for dreams.

  ***

  In his dreams, he met the people of the island. They didn’t talk to him. He learned everything he would know about them by feeling and intuition, the way you’re sure of something in a dream without it being made explicit.

  There were many of them. Most of them were black, but there were some whites with shaggy looking beards and crazy eyes, as well.

  Jacque knew that they were stuck there: dead, angry and bored. They weren’t especially malevolent. It was hard to look tough when your leader is a little old lady, but what was going on now was their duty. They’d made an oath a very long time ago, and they were going to stick to it.

  The old woman looked like Jacque’s grandmother, only she wore ropes of shells and bones around her neck, and her feet were twisted to face behind her.

  She raised her hand and frowned, ready to say something, maybe even apologize.

  But before she could speak, Jacque was jolted back into reality.

  ***

  Cold wet tendrils wrapped themselves around his wrist, and he let out a gasp. The bloody hand that was fumbling with the gaffer’s tape stopped what it was doing and shot up to his mouth.

  “Quiet,” Cynthia whispered in his ear. “I�
��m getting you loose. but I don’t know where Tito is.”

  The sudden tenseness of his spine went slack when he realized it was her, that she was alive and setting him free.

  “Don’t move or I’ll slip and cut you, I’m shaking enough already.” She spoke so low and cautiously that she had to touch his ear with her lips just to be heard.

  There was a snip as she poked at the restraints with her blade, and then a tearing sound as she ripped the tape the rest of the way.

  His arms were free. But instead of relief came a numbness in his burnt hands and a dull pain at his shoulders. However long he’d been tied to the stake, it had been long enough for his bound arms to atrophy into jelly.

  Jacque turned to face her, the sudden burst of blood coursing back into his extremities, causing a moment of double-vision and light-headedness. She was covered in blood and dirt.

  “What happened?” he asked. The pained look on her face tried to remind him to keep his voice down.

  “I fell out of a tree,” she said, offering a faint enough smile that he could see the jagged gap where a tooth had once been. She looked at the blood on her hands. “And I killed Dennis. Did I have to do that?” Her question caught him off guard.

  “It’s us or them,” Jacque offered in reply, but it sounded stupid as he said it. Who knew if Denny hadn’t just been in a state of shock when he’d been filming Daria’s murder? Maybe he was just playing along with Tito and Umberto because not doing so would have gotten him tied to the stake behind Jacque.

  There was no going back from dead. He tried not to think about it.

  “You had to,” he said, hoping it was the truth. Cynthia looked like she needed him to be sure, so he tried to sound it.

  “Tito is definitely off the deep end.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.” Cynthia hooked an arm under his shoulder and began to pull. “Can you stand?”

  She wasn’t giving him much of a choice, so he tried it. His joints stung as if someone had wrapped them in barbed wire while he was asleep, but he got to his feet and was able to lean against the stake.

  The fire was dying down now, and it gave everything a soft orange glow, but little illumination.

  “Where are we going?” Jacque needed to know, because her plan was oblique at best.

  “If we head into the jungle, we’ll be able to hear them coming.” She was choosing her words and pulling him along as she whispered.

  “Not that way. Over here, we need water. The well.” Jacque pulled back against her and wished he hadn’t. The strain between his arm and shoulder almost made him scream out in anguish.

  Cynthia mouthed a silent “sorry” and followed him to the far side of the village, ducking low to the ground and trying to move in the shadows cast by the huts. The crouching was not only a burden on Jacque’s cramped-up legs and back, but altogether useless for avoiding Tito.

  “Stop right there!” Tito’s voice boomed out in English. There was not even a hint of his cartoon accent in the words. “I’m through wasting bullets on warning shots. The next time I pull this trigger, I’m putting one in your skull, Jacky boy.” The last part was in French except for “Jacky Boy.”

  Jacque didn’t turn to face Tito. The old man was already out of breath from shouting, and it sounded like there was a solid distance between them. Squeezing Cynthia’s hand hurt, but he had to do it to get her attention.

  “Don’t listen to him. We make a run for it. And when I drop your hand, you split to the right and head for the trees.”

  He gave her one look, long enough to see her eyes gently pleading.

  And then they ran forward together.

  Chapter 21

  Tito

  Tito Bronze was a veteran director with over thirty films in his oeuvre. Over forty, if you counted the porno movies and stag loops that he’d done under the name “Terrance Amato.” Tito Bronze was a professional.

  Tito Bronze did not bluff.

  He did not bluff, but he had not expected the crazy writer to start running away, either. It took a moment to widen his stance and level the gun. Between the inconsistent light, Jacque’s bobbing gait, and his reluctance to hit the girl, the first shot went wild.

  There was a small explosion of dirt and debris in front of the black man, and he loosened his grip on the girl’s hand in response. Already the pair was disappearing deeper into the village, zigzagging at odd intervals and trying their best to mess up Tito’s aim.

  He decided that he could use their indirect path to his advantage if he ran straight forward. The fastest route was always a straight line. Tito began to hobble after them, his lungs burning with exertion and heavy with the tar of too many cigarettes.

  Cynthia began to peel away into the jungle and Tito let her go. They could always catch the girl again. He had no real way of stopping her, and no hope of catching her on foot. Besides, Tito had promised that he would shoot Jacque, so he kept after the black man.

  Tito felt his gut jiggle with each step, wishing he were just a bit closer so he could put one in the base of Jacque’s neck. Intentionally winging Jacque to keep him alive was an option, but there was too little time for trick shots. His target was approaching the tall grass, his dark skin getting harder to spot as they moved further away from the fire and into the inky blackness of night.

  Jacque made a jerky motion, as if he were jumping over a small hurtle. He thinks jumping is going to save him. The thought amused Tito as he leveled the weapon. Now was as close as he was ever going to be.

  He exhaled and took two more long strides. On the third step, he squeezed the trigger.

  As the ground gave way underneath him.

  The well. The fucking well.

  It was a primitive hole in the ground with no real covering, and no warning that it was there. There didn’t have to be. All the villagers had probably warned their children often not to play near it.

  Tito heard his own yelp as his gut slammed into the far side of the hole, crumbling the dirt around the edge and knocking the breath out of him. As his feet kept falling, he threw out his arms in a desperate attempt to grab a hold of the edge.

  He balled his hands into a fist, and the gun went off again, jumping out of his hand and onto the dirt at the mouth of the hole. Both elbows crashed against the edge, his hands flailing, fingers ripping at the ground, trying to pull him back on to solid ground.

  Struggling caused more harm than good. Tito snapped off the fingernail on his left index finger.

  Then plummeted into claustrophobic darkness.

  Chapter 22

  Umberto

  From the beach, through his good eye, Umberto could see the faintest corona of light as it stretched across the watery horizon.

  The coming dawn made him wonder how long he had been out in the jungle, looking for the girl.

  At one point in the night he had heard something, but the movement seemed to come from all directions at once. So by the time he mustered the energy he needed for pursuit, popping a pill down his dry throat and rushing off into the foliage, the night was again at rest.

  When he heard the gunshot, he was preparing to give up the search, collapse into the sand and let the sunrise warm him. His bare feet were numb from running. Last night, he’d taken off his boots and used the laces to affix the boar head to the top of his own. The rest of his body was numb from the fistfuls of uppers and downers marinating with the bits of makeup girl-flesh in his stomach.

  Running made the mixture in his stomach slosh around like a caged animal, but it didn’t exactly make him sick.

  Umberto couldn’t believe he ate so much. At first he was just rolling the meat around in his mouth, but then he decided that when the footage was played back in a theater—three stories tall, just mouthing the blood and guts wasn’t going to read as authentic. So he’d swallowed some, then a bit more.

  The people pressing against his mind urged him on with every bite and lick.

  Tito was the only one with a gun. Tito was neve
r going to leave the comfort of the village. Thus Umberto concluded that the gunshot had to have come from the village. At a full sprint, the assemblage of huts and fishing nets was still a minimum of ten minutes from the beach.

  A second shot, closer but still far, rang out through the woods and quickened his footfalls. Umberto bounded over fallen trees and through a number of deep mud puddles that could have just as easily been quicksand.

  He wasn’t running because he wanted to protect the cameraman and director—he could give a shit—but to protect the project. Umberto had already given up so much over the last two days (not only out of his schedule, but possibly out of his soul): he intended on collecting the fame that he had been promised.

  How long since you’ve slept? a familiar voice asked at the back of his mind, he almost didn’t recognize it at first. It had been so long since he had heard his own voice in his head.

  It had been a long time since he’d been asleep. The last time had been on the plane. It did not feel like it had been that much time, but it was.

  As suddenly as it had arrived, the voice of reason departed. The now-familiar chorus of the island raised its voice until there was no more of Umberto left.

  They told him to keep running.

  As he hit the packed dirt roads of the village, it took tremendous effort to will his arms and legs to stop moving. His skid into town left a trail of dust in his wake like the perpetual cloud that followed Speedy Gonzales.

  There had been two gunshots, but there were no bodies and blood that Umberto could see. He looked around in the first morning light. There was no one at all: living or dead.

  “Pronto,” Umberto asked into the emptiness of the village. What had happened here, and where was the moolie? The wooden stake was empty, the remnants of Jacque’s tape restraints still stuck to the sides.

  There was a groan and Umberto whirled around, muscles painfully tensing as he readied himself for attack.

  There was nothing behind him, no one that he could see.

  “Aiuto!” The voice was calling from right in front of him, but Umberto still saw nothing.