by Perrin Briar
“They’re not there,” Jack said. “They’re gone.”
How was that possible? Liz thought. It didn’t matter. The point was, it had happened.
“Ernest, Jack, keep a lookout,” Liz said. “If they come within range, put an arrow in them.”
The boys took up positions, armed with their long-range weapons.
“No!” a high pitched voiced screamed. “No! No! Help! Mom! Pop! Help!”
“Francis?” Liz said.
The blood turned cold in her veins. She already knew what had happened before Fritz climbed the ladder to tell them.
The men had disappeared… Francis had been left waiting on the fringes of the jungle… The men had made their escape, and in the attempt, discovered a little boy. Of course, they would take him. He would be the bargaining chip they needed to get whatever they wanted.
Francis’s scream faded ever deeper into the jungle foliage.
Chapter Twenty-Four
FRANCIS’S FACE was pressed into the grass and he tasted dirt. His nose was bleeding and his hair was tussled. He was deathly afraid and upset.
“How did everything turn so fast against us?” Rupert said, gnashing his teeth and kicking a tree. “We had the family right in our hands and they slipped away! Why didn’t you do something? You’re useless!”
Rupert laid into Manuel, throwing punch after kick into the man’s hard flesh. He just stood there and took it, the blows barely even registering. The blood that ran down his cheek and the cut at the corner of his eye belied the damage he was taking.
It was like watching an adult fighting a child. Manuel couldn’t defend himself. Not without an order. He was helpless against Rupert’s onslaught. But at least a child might raise his arms in self-defense. Manuel didn’t even do that.
Finally, Rupert’s blows slowed and became less effective. He was panting and exhausted. He slapped Manuel across the face, but there was an element of affection in it. He put his head to the shorter forehead of Manuel and closed his eyes. They stood there for a moment, unmoving, mutually drenched with sweat.
It was the perfect time to creep away. But how? The men had tied Francis’s arms behind him, his legs together, another vine wrapped around his head and through his mouth, choking him.
“It’s all right,” Rupert said. “There’s a way out of this. There’s always a way out. And our way out is right here.”
Francis’s elder brothers had left him on the edge of the jungle, near where their home was, because they had heard noises, shouts mostly, from Falcon’s Nest. They could tell something was wrong, but they didn’t know what. Jack volunteered to climb up the tree and see what was going on. He never came back to tell them what was happening. Instead, he dropped the coconuts he’d harvested from the trees earlier.
When they had seen him climb out on a limb, they knew something was happening, and that they had to do something. They left Francis and approached the tree, preparing to climb the ladder to the top in case their parents needed them.
Francis had seen something going on up in the Nest, but not clearly. And when he saw someone fall, he’d assumed the worst. Unable to stand around for fear it was his mother or father, he took off to go check on them. When the figures stood, Francis could see they were the two strange men. Francis had taken a step back. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them. It was that his Mom didn’t trust them, and that was enough for Francis to hesitate.
“How are you doing, little fella?” Rupert had said.
Francis had turned to run, but he was too slow. Rupert had long legs and caught him easily. Francis screamed, but it was too late, as Rupert wrapped his hand around his mouth and they took off into the foliage.
They must have run for half an hour or more before they finally came to a stop. They found themselves here, in this clearing. They wasted no time in tying Francis up and dumping him on the ground.
Rupert approached him now and got down on one knee. He slapped away something that was on Francis’s head and smiled.
“You’re a key, my boy,” Rupert said. “With you on our side we have a hope of getting back everything we deserve.”
A figure stepped from the foliage. Francis spotted him right away. But the two men hadn’t. They had their backs to him.
Francis’s heart leapt in his chest. The man was big and broad shouldered. That ruled out Jack and Ernest. It could be Fritz or his father. He was so pleased to see him that he wanted to cry out, but he didn’t. He was a big boy and it was important not to make a sound.
The man noticed Francis watching and put a finger to his lips, signaling for him to be quiet. Francis hadn’t seen the man before, but he trusted him more than he did his captors, that was for sure.
Then he realized it wasn’t Fritz, or his father. He was taller, bigger, he thought. But still, better than those who had kidnapped him.
Rupert and Manuel still hadn’t recognized the man standing behind them. But they had nothing to fear—the man wasn’t moving. Francis moved his body in an attempt to approach the man, and was surprised when the man didn’t make a move toward him.
“We have their youngest son,” Rupert said. “They’re not just going to let us go. We can use him to get everything we want. You’ll see.”
Manuel turned his head to one side.
“What?” he said. “What did you say? The island’s too big for them to watch it all? Shows what you know. We’ll go back at night and circle round the island. They won’t see us coming. They can’t see nothin’.”
Rupert got to his feet and slapped Manuel across the face. He hadn’t spoken, hadn’t said a word.
Then Rupert’s eyes became hard.
“You think they can defeat me?” he said.
Manuel didn’t react, his expressionless face giving away nothing.
“We know where they live,” Rupert said. “We know their habits. We know where they hunt, where they drink, where they live. We will kill them and take what they have for ourselves.”
“That’s very useful information,” a grainy voice said.
Rupert and Manuel spun round, weapons clutched tight.
The man Francis had spotted earlier stood before them. He was tall, angular, like he’d been carved from rock. He was hard to make out in the darkness. His clothes were black, his features pale, his hair melting into the forest canopy.
Rupert locked eyes on him, his pistol angled at his heart. Manuel’s legs were coiled beneath him to spring forward at any sign of aggression.
There was something wrong with the man, Francis thought. It was in his eyes. They were black and sheathed in shadow, a darkness in his face that he recognized intimately. It was madness, the kind a criminal has, but he had never seen someone with the shimmer of intelligence in his eyes at the same time.
“Good evening,” Rupert said. “Eavesdropping, were we?”
The man said nothing.
“I like dropping in on conversations myself while I’m on my midnight strolls,” Rupert said. “Of course, that was in the city, and not on a god-forsaken spit of land in the middle of nowhere. How did you come to be here, friend?”
“I am all places at once,” the man said. “I am everywhere.”
“Right…” Rupert said with a smirk. “Then you won’t mind if I plant a bullet in your chest, will you? If you’re everywhere and all.”
The man said nothing.
“A man of few words,” Rupert said. “I can respect that.”
Blam!
The bullet ejaculated from the nozzle and struck the man in the chest. It took him high in the shoulder, blowing his torso and arm back. Francis couldn’t see Rupert’s face, but he could imagine the dumbfounded expression painted across it as the man turned back to look at him, like he was a ragdoll.
Rupert turned pale.
His hand moved of its own accord. He made up for the faulty sight and caught the man square in the middle of the chest, where his heart was. Where it should have been.
The man staggered bac
k, but caught his feet and resumed his stance.
“What are you?” Rupert said.
“I am God,” the man said.
He raised his hands, and from the foliage stepped two dozen undead.
Manuel hissed under his breath and took on a squatting fighting stance, not knowing which one to attack first.
“Manuel,” Rupert said, pointing at the undead. “Kill!”
Manuel leapt forward, hands flying out, forming claws, that tore the jaws from the undead. Rupert spun and slammed his dagger into the cranium of every undead that reached for him.
But his eyes were only on the man in black. Somehow, if he could reach him, could cut his throat, could slice his head from his shoulders, he was certain this nightmare would be at an end.
He hacked and slashed at the undead, getting an inch closer with each thrust and parry. But for each Lurcher he cut down, another was there to take its place, and then two, then three. He couldn’t keep it up, and they overpowered him. They pushed him down, pinning him to the ground.
“Manuel!” Rupert said. “Attack! Kill!”
But his commands were not followed. He didn’t hear the usual grunt of affirmation from Manuel’s throat. He turned his head to the side to see Manuel lying beside him, pinned in place like he had been the previous day too. They were powerless.
And yet the undead hadn’t bitten him, not yet. What were they waiting for?
The man in black bent down and sniffed at Rupert’s face. He came to the cut across his forehead, a dribble of blood from a wound he couldn’t remember receiving. The man in black licked it, hard and forcefully with his rough tongue.
Rupert screwed up his face. He was in a dire situation, but still, he didn’t want to be licked. At least, not by someone he didn’t know.
The man in black straightened and closed his eyes, his tongue making slapping motions inside his mouth. A smile gradually crept across his face. Rupert couldn’t help the shiver travel up his back.
“Flowers,” the man in black said with a smile. “Rupert. You have led a most boring and useless life to this point. But you have redeemed yourself at least in the past few days. You failed in your own mission, of course. You were always destined to failure. But, alas, the information you have garnered shall prove of use to me. I am kind. I shall reward you.”
The Lurchers got up off him one by one, until Rupert could get to his feet. He reached for his weapons, but found they had been removed from his person. It didn’t matter, so long as he could get away with his life.
He turned to see Manuel had been released too. That was good. Perhaps this undead fellow wasn’t so bad after all.
“But I must right a wrong before I let you go completely,” the man in black said.
He turned to Manuel, pointed at Rupert and, moving his mouth in a way that looked very odd said: “Kill.”
The voice sounded just like Rupert’s.
That’s not possible! Rupert thought. Would Manuel obey? Was it only Rupert’s voice he recognized? Or would he have associated his face and persona with it too?
Rupert backed away. He wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.
Manuel looked from the man in black to Rupert and back again, his head cocked to one side, as if trying to make a decision.
“No,” Rupert said forcefully, and pointed to the man in black. “Kill!”
Manuel looked between them, uncertain.
“You’re forgetting,” the man in black said. “Manuel will always go for the first target first. Always.”
And slowly, very slowly, Manuel took a step forward, and then another, gradually growing faster as he took after Rupert’s fleeing figure.
The man in black bent down to Francis who, for the first time, caught a close glimpse of the man’s face. It was torn and pale as snow. He was a Lurcher, one of the monsters.
Francis’s small bladder weakened. He lost control and wet the front of his pants.
“Hello little one,” the man said. “You may call me The Overlord In Black.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“YOU CAN’T go out like this,” Liz said. “Please.”
Bill was able to stand, shaking his head to clear it of the cobwebs and bracing himself on the wall. He rummaged through his medical supplies. He grabbed a thick sugar cane and gnawed on it. He needed all the stimulants he could find. Without it, he was going to be a gibbering mess, without hope of making it through the jungle, much less discovering Rupert and Manuel and fighting them.
“They’ve got Francis,” Bill said. “If we don’t catch them now, we will be at their mercy. They’ll use Francis as a shield. Imagine the danger Francis will be in. If we don’t go now we’ll never claw back any hope of victory.”
“You’re right,” Liz said. “In principle. But I still don’t think it should be you that goes. Not alone at any rate. I’ll come with you.”
“You protect Jim and Jack,” Bill said.
“I’m coming,” Jack said. “Francis is my brother too. I won’t just sit here and watch a vegetable. I’m the best chance you have of finding where they went if you lose their tracks.”
“He has a point,” Fritz said. “And even if they do circle around to retake Falcon’s Nest, they’re hardly going to harm their own friend, are they? Jim is unconscious as far as they’re concerned, and that might actually give us an advantage.”
Jack looked like he could have kissed his brother then.
“Okay, fine,” Bill said. “But I want you safely out of the way. I don’t need you to get in trouble.”
“I won’t,” Jack said.
“He’ll be safely up a tree somewhere,” Ernest said. “He’ll be the safest one out of all of us.”
“Let’s do this,” Fritz said. “For Francis.”
“For all of us,” Bill said.
He took another bite of the sugarcane.
The family armed themselves with their usual Lurcher hunting gear. What they were going to do against a man armed with a loaded gun, Bill didn’t know. But having silent weapons afforded them certain advantages too, especially since they would never run out of ammunition. Perhaps if they could draw Rupert out into shooting blindly at the jungle…
Bill felt a shiver that ran through him head to toe. That would mean leaving his family open to getting shot at. Bill did not like the idea of having a situation where so many things could go wrong. Francis could get trapped in the crossfire and suffer an injury. They would need to be silent, stealthy and careful, to sweep around the back of the enemy somehow and take them by surprise. No, Bill couldn’t allow that.
Perhaps they might even be able to rustle up a small contingent of undead to distract Rupert? But such plans were in the future. They needed to be flexible, ready for anything, to react fast. That was the way to survive. It was the only way to win anything important.
They entered the jungle in the direction the men had gone with Francis. As they made their way through the jungle Bill tore into the sugar canes, chewing, pausing when he needed to listen for fear he might give away their position. Then he resumed eating.
The night was dark, impenetrable. Rupert would be in the same predicament, except he would be camped somewhere, prepared to take advantage of the noise the family were making.
Bill took in his family, and a feeling of immense pride took him, a bolt of fear shaking him to the core. He didn’t want to involve them in this, but he had no choice. To head into the undergrowth by himself was suicide, especially in the condition he was currently in. And worse, he had brought this down upon them. If he hadn’t been so desperate, hadn’t wanted with every fiber of his being to want to expand the island and its community, he would have seen the kind of people he had invited into his family’s life.
“We’ll follow your lead, Pa,” Jack said.
His usual sense of joking mockery went out the window. He knew how dangerous this was. They picked up their weapons and headed outside. They stepped into the jungle.
&nbs
p; The jungle was a frightening place at night. It was when the most dangerous creatures came out to play. More than once Bill felt something slither past his ankles, brush against his hair. There were the usual cat calls, chirrups and whistles in the dead of night. Though the family were careful in where they placed their feet, they perhaps didn’t need to be, as the wild animal noises were more than enough to drown them out.
The family spread out, ten yards between each of them, and Jack high in the treetops, senses on high alert. Their brains sifted through the familiar sights and sounds and smells to isolate those they were not familiar with, what could be a threat.
They weren’t just keeping a lookout for the dangerous men, but for the undead and their cousins, the Spinners, that roamed the jungle too.
Bill spotted something out the corner of his eye. He started, naturally pulling back from what he thought was an aggressive assailant. When he looked back he found it was Fritz waving it him.
“What?” Bill mouthed.
Fritz pointed to something at his feet. He had evidently found something. Bill waved to Ernest, who turned to wave to Liz. Meanwhile, Fritz had already shifted his attention to the treetops in an attempt to catch Jack’s eye.
The family formed up on Fritz’s location, folding up like an accordion. Ernest was clearly disappointed at what they had reassembled for. A broken twig and some flattened moss. But Bill peered intently at it, hand on his chin.
“I think they went this way,” Fritz said, gesturing with his finger.
“Yes, I agree,” Bill said. “Jack, I want you to get as high as you can, and climb as slowly as you can too. I don’t want you to garner any attention. And if they start shooting at you, I don’t want you to be an easy target.”
“They’ll think he’s a chimp and leave him alone,” Ernest said.
“This is serious,” Bill said.
“I am being serious,” Ernest said. “Look at him.”
“Look at me?” Jack said. “Look at you!”
“All right, all right,” Bill said. “Let’s try and focus, shall we. Eventually we’re going to come across their position, and they’re going to be expecting us. They might set a trap, or otherwise do something we’re not ready for. We’ll need to act on the fly. We’ll do like what we did in Falcon’s Nest earlier. Jack, you’ll provide a distraction from the treetops. As soon as you do, get out of there. They’ll fire at you. You can return if our attempt to grab or otherwise incapacitate them fails.”