Diffusion

by Stan C. Smith

  As Lindsey had predicted, Quentin soon had no idea which direction he was going. For a short time Bobby’s voice returned his shouts. But that soon faded away, and the only sounds he heard were chattering birds and buzzing insects. Above him there was an occasional rustling from Mbaiso, who had followed him and now moved from tree to tree to keep up.

  Quentin found it impossible to maintain a constant bearing without a compass. He was frequently forced to modify his path, moving to the right or left around a dense cluster of saplings, a tangle of vines, or a fallen tree. But he had reasoned that even with an erratic course, he would eventually come across a trail leading to a village. This made sense to him when he had started, but now he was lost and alone and began to question his logic.

  After pushing his way through yet another curtain of woody vines, he glanced at his watch. Two minutes until their second radio communication. He pulled the bag from his back, retrieved the water bottle, and took his first drink, downing a third of the bottle. He shook the bottle and gazed at the remaining water. Specks of matter swirled in the vortex. He unclipped the walkie-talkie and pressed the power button. A small battery icon flashed in the corner of the LCD screen—the charge wouldn’t last much longer.

  “Lindsey? Can you hear me?” There was only static. Quentin sighed and looked around, but the dense forest was the same in every direction. Behind him there were no visible signs of his passage, no trail he could retrace.

  The scraping of claws against bark brought his attention to the tree kangaroo, clambering down a tree trunk. “Hey, Mbaiso. You mind if I call you Mbaiso?” The creature appeared not to mind. “Where’s the village? Where is everyone?”

  “Quentin, are … there?” The crackling voice startled him.

  “Yes, Lindsey, I can hear you.”

  “Quentin? … you? … I can … hear you. Quen …”

  The flashing battery on the LCD screen had one bar left. “Lindsey, you guys okay?”

  “Quentin? I can’t … I hope … hear me … Bobby … people in the forest … I wasn’t sure … Ashley saw them … Quentin, they were … I need … know you’re okay … the kids … afraid now … hear me? … where …”

  Quentin’s throat constricted. “Lindsey, what’s going on?”

  The broken voice continued, “… what they want, but … inside the plane … the kids are … come closer … you need to … back …”

  Quentin jammed his thumb into the talk button to respond. The unit emitted a warning tone and then shut off. It was dead. He turned it back on and pressed the talk button.

  “Lindsey—”

  The unit beeped and shut off. It wouldn’t come back on.

  Quentin stood frozen. The forest seemed to tighten on him, shrinking the already tiny clearing in which he stood. He was a speck in a vast ocean. The clipped echoes of Lindsey’s ominous message played in his head. She had been right—he shouldn’t have left. He threw his head back and screamed her name, drawing the cry out until the last bit of air left his lungs. When he opened his eyes Mbaiso was clinging to a tree, watching him intently from above.

  “What kind of place is this?” he shouted, half to himself and half to anyone who might be listening. “If you’re here, why don’t you help? Jesus Christ, get out of my face!” He thrashed at the flies, striking his own face in an attempt to kill some of them. Then he plunged back into the tangle in the direction he’d come from.

  But everything looked unfamiliar and he was hopelessly lost. Finally he stopped and called out again. Silence. His watch told him twenty minutes had passed since he’d heard Lindsey’s broken message. He pulled out the walkie-talkie and pressed power. The batteries had recovered enough to power the unit on. He listened to static and then pressed the talk button. The unit beeped once and shut off. It was useless. Quentin shut his eyes to block the flood of loneliness and fatigue. In a few hours darkness would fall again. He would have to endure the long night not knowing what was happening to Lindsey and the kids.

  A sound rose into Quentin’s consciousness. At first he thought he imagined it, but there it was again—the sound of moving water. Not a waterfall, but more subtle, like the churning of a slow-moving river. He pushed through the foliage in the direction of the sound and almost immediately came upon a tangled bank of rolling, mud-brown water. Had he not heard it, he might have passed within meters of the river without seeing it.

  But it was not the river itself that gave Quentin hope. Running parallel to it was a path. He’d seen numerous animal trails running under low-hanging brush, indicating small mammals or ground birds used them. But this trail was different. In both directions, the foliage over the trail was clear to a height that would accommodate humans.

  The path would likely lead to a village. Quentin desperately wanted to return to the others, but there was little chance of finding them by wandering aimlessly. The path gave him a new option. Quentin walked a short distance in one direction, and then the other, but saw no signs that either way was the better choice. After watching the brown water for a moment he decided to head downstream. But first it would be wise to mark where he had found the path. He pulled the souvenir machete from the bag, slid the blade from its sheath, and hefted it in his hand. It looked cheap, but it had some mass to it.

  He located a sapling that could be cut up to arrange into an unmistakable marker. He reared back and swung the machete at the base of the tree. The blade sliced cleanly through and continued its arc until it buried itself deep in his left ankle.

  Quentin blinked at the machete. It had cut a slice in his trousers and a red stain spread rapidly from the blade. He jiggled the machete’s handle, wincing at the pain, but his tibia bone gripped it tight. He yanked hard on the handle, pulling the blade free. Blood spurted from the slice in his trousers and the red stain began spreading even faster.

  He crumpled onto the ground and sat staring dumbly at the wound.

  Seven

  It didn’t make sense to Bobby that they should sit inside the plane. It was hot, and it smelled like death. But Mrs. Darnell was afraid of the Papuan men.

  If they were so dangerous, they would have attacked when he and Ashley had met them in the forest. At the time they had been gathering fuel for the fire. Bobby was the first to see the dark face watching them and he nudged Ashley. When the stranger realized he’d been spotted, he rose from the bushes to his full height. Another man popped up at his side. Bobby and Ashley just stood there, afraid to speak. The men held sharpened spears, gripping them as if they thought they might have to use them. After a silent stare-down, the men slowly backed away until the forest swallowed them up.

  They had returned emptyanded, and the fire soon died. Mrs. Darnell didn’t want them leaving the plane anymore, and now Bobby was forced to endure the heat and smell. They hadn’t heard from Mr. Darnell in hours, and the plane’s cabin was filled with stale air and dread. Was this what it was like to wait for death? Was this what had happened to people he’d read about in books, explorers who were never seen again? Did they sit around like this, watching their friends die, waiting for their turn?

  Mrs. Darnell was speaking softly to Addison, stroking his face with a wad of cloth, and Ashley was dripping water in his mouth from a plastic bag. It was all they could do for him.

  Bobby thought about his own parents. What would they do? His mom would freak out. But his dad—if he were sitting in this shit-hole with them, he’d try to keep everyone together. Like he did during the divorce. And he would want Bobby to do the same thing.

  “Mrs. Darnell,” Bobby said, “you know that thing you and Mr. Darnell do sometimes, where you talk about stuff and make things up about it?”

  At first she didn’t answer, but then she said, “What do you mean?”

  “You know, like a game. You make up stories about things, like animals. What they’re thinking and stuff. You guys do that.”

  Mrs. Darnell shook her head slightly but said, “I guess so.”

>   “I remember when I was little, my mom and dad talked like that sometimes.”

  “Your parents seem like nice people.”

  “Yeah, but when they’re together, you don’t even want to be there.”

  Mrs. Darnell said, “Sometimes people change, even when you don’t want them to.”

  “Maybe Mr. Darnell found the Papuans’ village.”

  “Maybe,” Mrs. Darnell said quietly.

  “I think they’re a lost tribe, like the tribe Mr. Darnell’s parents found,” Bobby said. “That’s why they aren’t helping us.”

  Ashley snorted. “So now we’re all lost.”

  Bobby thought for a moment. “And Mr. Darnell found their village. They think he’s from the future or something. He’s trying to tell them we need to get to a town. But they don’t even know about towns.”

  Ashley opened her mouth like she might chime in, but then she just leaned back silently.

  “They’re probably getting ready to have a feast for us,” Bobby said. “All kinds of food we’ve never tried before.”

  This wasn’t working. Mrs. Darnell held her eyes shut as if his attempts at optimism were giving her a headache.

  Suddenly a dark figure filled the cabin’s opening. For a second, Bobby thought Mr. Darnell had come back. But it wasn’t him. They all stared at the stranger.

  The man crouched, holding a spear in front of him. He was a Papuan tribesman, maybe one Bobby and Ashley had seen earlier, but he was much closer now. Green parrot feathers stuck out from his hair in all directions. Bobby couldn’t tell how old the man was. The skin on his face was smooth, like a boy’s, but the confidence in his eyes was that of a grown man.

  Mrs. Darnell’s voice was a whisper. “Don’t do anything to threaten him.”

  The man inched into the opening. Bobby turned to Mrs. Darnell for help, but his eyes were drawn to a hole in the unfinished insect barrier above her head, where a second Papuan peered in at them. This man’s eyes, set high on a smooth black face, had the same cool, assured gaze, and Bobby felt a chill when they looked directly at him. And then the face pulled away and was gone. Bobby spun around and the second Papuan appeared next to the first. The green-feathered man looked from Bobby to Ashley, and then to Mrs. Darnell and the still bodies at her side. He bobbed his head from side to side as if to see into the shadows more clearly.

  “Gu mbakha-to-fosu le-bo? Mba-mbam?” The Papuan’s voice was higher than Bobby expected, almost musical. The man stepped into the cabin and then moved toward Mrs. Darnell. “Walukh, khomilo?”3

  Bobby saw Ashley tense up, and he feared what she might do. The man passed by within arm’s reach. Bobby stared at the dark-stained point of his spear. Above the darkened tip, rows of symbols and shapes were carved into the wood. There were rectangles, triangles, spirals, loops, and many more, and for some reason the carvings seemed oddly familiar to Bobby.

  “Walukh, khomilo? Dead?” The man pointed to Addison, Carlos and Miranda.

  Mrs. Darnell’s eyes widened. “You speak English? You understand me? Toktok Inglis? Uh… saya dari Amerika. Dari mana?”

  The Papuan kneeled next to Carlos and pointed at him. “Khomilo? Dead?”

  “They’re not dead, but they’re hurt. Can you help us? Do you speak English?”

  “English. Samuel neni fo English.” The Papuan touched Carlos’s arm and ran his finger down the red and gray flesh. He started removing the wrap from Carlos’s hand.

  Mrs. Darnell pushed his hand away. “We need to get to a hospital. Can you help?”

  The man turned to Mrs. Darnell. Bobby couldn’t see, but he must have given her a convincing look, because she let him remove the wrap. He looked at the rotting hand and then reached into a pouch that hung from his neck. He pulled out his hand, his fingertips covered in gray globs. He spoke to Mrs. Darnell in his musical chatter.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But that’s not what we need.”

  The Papuan reached for Carlos’s face, forced open one eye and smeared the stuff onto his eyeball. Bobby’s stomach went tight.

  Mrs. Darnell pushed the man’s hands again. “Stop that!”

  The second Papuan rushed past Bobby and held his spear in Mrs. Darnell’s face. This man’s spear was also covered with vaguely familiar symbols and shapes.

  “Please,” Mrs. Darnell said. “There’s nothing wrong with his eyes. He needs a hospital.”

  The man spoke to her again. They were soft words, and they made Bobby believe the men did not want to hurt them.

  Ashley said. “Just let them do what they want so they’ll leave!”

  Mrs. Darnell backed away and watched.

  The man with the pouch crawled from Carlos to Miranda. He examined her broken leg and then scooped out more gray sludge and forced open her eyelid. She moaned as he smeared the stuff against her bare eyeball. Mrs. Darnell whimpered and turned away, helpless.

  Next he moved to Addison. The man touched his face and chest, and felt his neck.

  “Yu le khomilo-mbo,” he said. “Khomilo. Dead.”4

  Mrs. Darnell wheeled around. “He’s not dead!” She moved toward them, and the second man brought his spear up again, but she ignored it. “His heart is beating, see?”

  The man looked at her silently, his face close to hers. Bobby had always thought of Mrs. Darnell as pretty, but next to the Papuan her face seemed old, and very white.

  She was sobbing now. “He’s breathing.”

  The Papuans looked at each other. They talked in their high voices back and forth like they were trying to decide something. The man then reached to Addison’s face and rubbed the stuff into his eye. The second man frowned and shook his head at this.

  Both men left the plane, and again stale air and dread filled the empty space.

  Quentin limped along the path, cursing his recklessness. He paused and gazed down at his leg. Blood still flowed from the gash in spite of his efforts to stem it. He’d knotted one of his socks around his ankle, but the sock and lower leg of his trousers were now saturated with blood. The blood had seeped into his hiking shoe, and his foot slid inside it with each step. It was getting harder to walk. He had to find a village before losing consciousness. So he trudged on.

  The path still followed the river. Occasionally it would cut away and Quentin would lose sight of the water, but soon it would reappear. Finally he could stand the pain no longer, and he stopped. He turned and looked back the way he had come. The forest seemed darker than before. For a moment he forgot which way he had been walking, and he rubbed his face in frustration. Only a small amount of water remained in the bottle, and he drank it down, reveling in the sensation of moisture in his throat. Grunting, he hobbled to the river’s edge and knelt by the water. He submerged the empty bottle. The water looked like chocolate milk as it gurgled into the bottle. No doubt it contained microbes that would have a heyday with his system. But what difference did it make now? This thought struck him as funny, and he laughed out loud and took a long drink from the bottle. The water tasted like mud and algae.

  He pulled the bag from his shoulder and peeled off his shirt. He pushed aside the tangled vegetation and waded into the river. A red stain curled away from his blood-soaked trousers and moved slowly downstream. He splashed brown water over his head and body.

  Feeling somewhat renewed, he pushed on. The path continued, but seemed to narrow. Sometimes the way was blocked by a riot of new growth, but when he fought through it the path continued on the other side. With every step he heard himself grunt, but it seemed like the voice of a stranger.

  The forest grew dark, and the stain on his trousers was now black. Quentin could hardly see the path, but he pushed on anyway, feeling only pain and hearing only the continuous grunting. He no longer knew or cared whether he was making the noise himself. He cared only about taking another step, and then another.

  Finally he could go no further and he stopped. For a moment he stood watching the shadows swing
back and forth as his body swayed. With a final grunt he buckled and sat down on the trail. He just needed to rest. Then maybe he could start gain.

  There were voices talking in the blackness—small, funny voices Quentin didn’t understand. He willed himself to open his eyes and look. A few stars peeped through the canopy, and he realized he was on his back. Two figures, silhouettes of blackness, stood above him. He tried to speak but the words jumbled themselves. The figures stopped talking.

  He focused his efforts and tried again. “Help…we need help.”

  One of the figures spoke, “Gu mbakha-to-fosu le-bo?”5

  Quentin tried to concentrate. “I don’t understand.”

  “Nu pesau im-le. Pesua.” The speaker crouched by him. “Friend, gu spirit lai-ati-bo-dakhu. Lele-mbol-e-kho-lo? Laleo? Spirit?”6

  Suddenly Quentin was more alert. “Do you speak English?” He struggled to sit up. The figures moved and there was a sharp pain. The men were holding spears against his chest.

  “What are you doing?” He collapsed. “Jesus!”

  “Mbakha lekhen, Jesus? Laleo khop.”7

  Quentin’s mind groped. Were the men even real? He raised his head again. They were still there. One was taller. Strands of light-colored objects encircled his neck, forming a wide loop over his shoulders and chest. Each of the men wore a headdress of some kind.

  “I need to go to your village and radio for help. Do you have a radio?”

  “Gu laleo-lu de-te-dakhu, Jesus,” the taller man said.8

  Quentin tried to get up again but the weapons snapped to his chest. He shoved the spears aside, gripping one of them in his hand. “Look, I need—”

  The spear was yanked from his hand and he felt a fire in his chest, and then another. He fell back, clutching the pain. Looking down he saw two dark spots on his shirt.

  “You stabbed me! Shit!”

  A calm grayness descended upon Quentin. “Lindsey, I didn’t...”