by Jeff Strand
“Pull over to the shore,” said Percival. “We’ll see what’s inside. I am very sure that the sack is not full of heads.”
Chapter Six
Henrietta drove the boat over to the shore. Percival, Ignacio, Roger, and I got out. Ignacio brought his rifle, holding it like somebody who really hoped he didn’t have to use it. We cautiously walked about a hundred feet over to the burlap sack.
“How many heads do you think could be in there?” Roger asked.
“At least a dozen,” I said.
“That’s a lot of heads.”
“Sure is.”
“You’re not helping anything,” said Percival. “Ignacio, cut the bag open.”
“Do you want to record it?”
“Oh, yes, yes.” Percival took out his phone. The fact that Percival was nervous enough to forget that he was supposed to be making videos of our journey was more than a little disconcerting. He held up the phone, adjusted his hair with his free hand, touched the screen, and spoke. “Hello. Percival Longshore here. We’ve made an interesting discovery on our voyage along the river.” He turned the phone toward the sack. “Here is a burlap sack on a wooden pole, placed here with no explanation. What could be inside?”
“It’s full of heads,” said Roger, off-camera.
“Ignacio has taken out a knife, and he will use that knife to slice open the side of the sack so that we may discover its contents. There’s a consensus amongst my comrades that it’s filled to the top with heads, but I’m confident that it will be something much less upsetting. Ignacio, please start cutting.”
Ignacio handed me the rifle. He waved to the people at home, then stuck the blade into the top of the sack and sliced all the way down to the bottom. He pulled the sack open, gasped, and took a huge step away from it.
“Yep, it’s heads,” he announced.
A severed human head fell out of the sack and onto the sand. Another followed, and then head after head spilled out of the sack, until there was a pile of about ten or eleven of them.
The heads still had their skin, yellow and tight but not quite mummified. They also had their hair, though it was dry and scraggly. Their facial expressions were not those of people who had died peacefully.
I said “Shit!” Roger said “Whoa!” Ignacio said “Jesus!” Percival just yelped. Henrietta was still back in the boat but I assume she also had a verbal reaction.
Percival touched the screen of his phone and shoved it back into his pocket. “Okay, I apologize, you were all right, this is fucked up. Expedition cancelled. Let’s go.”
“Seriously?” asked Ignacio. “I’m scared, too, but what makes this so much worse?”
“I have a thing about severed heads, okay? It freaks me out! When somebody’s head gets cut off in a movie I have to turn it off!”
“So you’re not a fan of Highlander?” Roger asked.
“We all said it was probably full of heads,” I told him.
“I didn’t believe you!” said Percival. I noticed that his British accent was completely gone. “We’re done. I thank you all for your service but we’re not going any further. Everybody back in the boat. Now!” He turned and walked away from the pile of heads. At least they’d landed on dirt and weren’t rolling anywhere. I wasn’t sure if rolling heads would be amusing or more disturbing.
“You heard our fearful leader,” I said. “Let’s go.” It was possible that at some point in the future I’d regret turning back before we could get rich, but right now all I wanted to do was go back home to my family.
Ignacio winced.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“A bug stung me on the back.”
“Turn around.”
Ignacio turned around. A small dart protruded from between his shoulder blades.
I plucked it out. It was just a small, sharp piece of wood.
A dart sailed past my face.
“Run!” I shouted.
A dart got me in the right arm. My first horrified thought was “What if it’s poisoned?” then I decided I could worry about that later. The boat wasn’t far.
Roger cried out. Then he cried out again. He lost his balance and fell face-first onto the ground. Two darts were stuck in the back of his right leg.
“Go!” Percival screamed, presumably at Henrietta. “Go now!”
The boat’s engine roared to life.
As Roger tried to get up, I quickly glanced at the edge of the rainforest for a sign of our attackers. I saw a dart come flying at me but not who shot it. It got me right in the center of the chest and bounced off. A couple of inches to the side and it would’ve gone right into my heart.
Roger got up. A third dart struck his leg and he fell again.
Ignacio grabbed his rifle from me and fired several shots at our unseen enemy. I supposed I should have taken the initiative to do that myself. There were no cries of pain and I didn’t hear any bodies falling, so I assumed that all of his shots missed.
Ignacio and I each grabbed one of Roger’s arms and pulled him to his feet.
We turned to face the boat. Percival and Henrietta were screaming at each other. We couldn’t hear what they were saying over the motor, but the gist seemed to be that Percival was trying to get her to speed off and Henrietta was saying they needed to wait for us.
He punched her.
I’d never been a huge fan of Percival Longshore, but now I hated that son of a bitch.
Ignacio winced as another dart got him in the back.
A dart got me in the leg.
Henrietta, visibly unhappy about being punched, attacked Percival and the two of them began to struggle. It looked like Henrietta was winning, which didn’t surprise me. I sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to fight her.
The frequency of darts suddenly increased. My hope that it was just one person shooting them was dashed—there were at least four or five shooters. Roger, Ignacio, and I kept letting out grunts of pain as various darts hit us.
Now I fell, followed by Ignacio. My legs began to twitch. The darts did indeed seem to be tainted with something.
Percival flung Henrietta across the boat. She struck the side and almost went over but regained her balance, at least until Percival shoved her completely out of the boat. She fell into the shallow water. Percival rushed over to the controls. He applied the gas just as Henrietta grabbed the side of the boat.
He was actually going to leave us.
Henrietta tried to climb inside the boat and almost succeeded, but he did a quick swerve and she lost her grip. Percival sped off, heading back the way we’d come, leaving Henrietta splashing around in the middle of the river.
I got up. The many places where I’d been hit with darts were tingling, but I could still move and I wasn’t frothing at the mouth. Henrietta was swimming to the other side of the river.
Ignacio also got up. It seemed like our smartest move would be to join Henrietta in trying to swim across the river, though the way my arms and legs felt I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t simply get swept away in the current.
Somebody emerged from the rainforest.
It was a man covered almost entirely in white paint. He held a long wooden tube that he’d apparently been using to blow darts at us.
Another man stepped out of the rainforest after him.
And then another, from a different spot. Then another, and another, until seven men had emerged, all of them painted white and wearing only loincloths. Five of them had the tubes, while two others had machetes.
Ignacio pointed his rifle at the first one who’d emerged. “Stay back!”
The first man shouted something at him.
“Stay back or I’ll shoot!” Ignacio said. “I mean it!”
The men walked forward, moving cautiously.
“Are you trying to get shot?” Ignacio shouted at them. “Don’t come any closer!”
Roger and I each took a step backwards. Percival could’ve at least had the courtesy to throw some weapons onto shore before he abandon
ed us.
“I don’t think they speak English,” Ignacio said to us. “So I can tell you that I only have one or two shots left. I have to decide if shooting one of them would scare the rest off, or if it will make them mad. Any thoughts?”
“Do they know what guns are?” I asked.
“How the hell should I know?”
“You’re the world traveler. I thought you were familiar with this tribe or something. They’ve got machetes, and they probably didn’t make those themselves.” I was not familiar with the process of forging a machete blade, but it seemed like it would be difficult if you were completely isolated from the rest of humanity. “And they’ve had enough contact with other humans to fill a bag with heads. So I’m gonna say that yes, they know what guns are.”
“All I know is that a bunch of guys painted white are creeping toward us,” said Ignacio. “If I have to kill one of them, I don’t want you getting all bent out of shape. I’d like all three of us to be on board with that decision.”
“I’m going to say, don’t kill them,” I said.
Ignacio nodded. “Then what should we do?”
“Shoot in the air, maybe?”
“That wastes a shot.”
“But it could scare them without enraging them,” I said.
“Good point. Roger?”
“Huh?” said Roger.
“Do you have an opinion?”
“I guess I wasn’t listening. I’m not feeling very good. I think there was something in those darts.”
“All right, Roger’s abstaining,” I said. The men were still slowly moving toward us, and though I wished it was a “They’re just as scared of us as we are of them” scenario, I was definitely more scared of them than they appeared to be of us. They looked more angry than frightened, while the primary thought racing through my mind was, “Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!”
Ignacio pointed the rifle into the air and squeezed the trigger.
A couple of the men flinched, but they didn’t flee or shout in their native language about the display of sorcery. The other five men, including both of the ones with machetes, did not seem the slightest bit intimidated.
“Should we make a run for it?” I asked.
“River or forest?”
“River. I’m pretty sure they’ll catch us in the forest.”
“I can’t swim,” said Roger.
“Yes, you can.”
“I mean, I can’t swim now. My arms and legs feel like they’re on fire. I’ll just drown. You guys can go. I may have to surrender.”
“Nobody’s surrendering,” said Ignacio.
Several more men stepped out of the woods. These men were holding bows and arrows, with the arrows fully notched, pulled back, and ready to fire.
“Do you think they just got here?” I asked. “Or were they waiting for a dramatic moment to make their appearance?”
Ignacio dropped the rifle onto the ground and put his hands in the air. “I don’t think I can swim, either.”
Roger also put his hands in the air.
I didn’t want to give up. But when you’re up against two men with machetes, five men with blow darts, and six men with bows and arrows, and you don’t speak their language, and you assume they know the surrounding area far better than you, there aren’t a whole lot of options at your disposal.
I glanced back at the river. No sign of Henrietta. Had she made it to safety, or was her dead leech-covered body floating downstream?
I returned my attention to the men in white paint. Then, accepting that I was totally screwed, I put my hands in the air.
One of the men with the machetes shouted something, which I hoped didn’t translate to “Kill them all!”
The men quickly moved forward and surrounded us. They shoved us down onto our knees, and suddenly I had a machete in my face and arrows pointing directly at each side of my skull. Roger and Ignacio were in similar predicaments.
I had no idea what to say. I wasn’t sure how to communicate the message of “I’m sorry we spilled your heads all over,” so I remained silent.
I was terrified, but I wasn’t consumed by thoughts about how I would never see Helen, Theresa, Kyle, Brianna, Cecilia, and Rose again. If these men wanted to kill us, it would’ve been easier to just fill our bodies with arrows from a distance instead of getting right up close. They had other plans for us.
Did those plans involve skinning us alive? Perhaps.
For now I’d try to remain optimistic, even if I was being delusional.
They led us through a narrow, uneven trail. Ahead of me, Roger fell, and the men shouted at him until he got back up and resumed stumbling along. The places the darts had hit me felt like they were on fire.
I’d expected to spend much of my first hike through the South American rainforest worrying about deadly animals, so in a way it worked out for the best that my only concern was not getting shot in the head with an arrow.
We weren’t making good time, so I’m not sure how far we walked before we arrived in a clearing, though a clearing that was completely covered by the rainforest canopy. There were a few small huts, and one larger one. It seemed too small to call it an actual village, though I admittedly didn’t know when something transitioned from “huts in a clearing” to “village.”
The men shoved us to the ground.
One of them whistled.
We waited.
A woman emerged from the large hut, wearing a black robe with gold trim. She was dark-skinned and quite beautiful, though I was not at the moment focusing on her hotness. She slowly and gracefully walked over to us.
She looked at me, then at Roger, then at Ignacio, making eye contact with each of us.
She said something to Ignacio in Spanish. He nodded and said something back. I recognized the word “Ingles.”
Then she let out an exasperated sigh. “All right,” she said, in perfect English. “Which of you should we kill and eat first?”
Chapter Seven
I raised my hand. “I’d like to suggest that you kill and eat none of us.”
The woman looked mildly amused. “Is that so?”
“Yes, ma’am. If you’d let us go, we’d leave right away without causing you any more inconvenience, and we’d let you get on with the rest of your day.”
“I’m told you no longer have a boat.”
“That’s true. That’s very true. But that’s not your problem.”
“There’s no phone reception out here. You’d have to walk. You’d die.”
“Yes, we probably would, but again, that’s not your fault. We’re not here to bother anyone.”
“But you did bother us,” said the woman. “Why do you think we live under the rainforest canopy? Because we don’t want people to know we’re here! We don’t want visitors. Did you or did you not pass two skinned bodies on display on the side of the river?”
“We did,” I said.
“Why do you think they were there? Was it trying to send a welcoming message? Was it suggesting that we were encouraging you to keep sailing down the river? Or was it trying to say that we skin people and tie them to poles? Maybe the message of the first one didn’t quite sink in, but when you saw a second skinned body on a pole, why would you keep going? How was that the smart thing to do? Who sees a skinned body tied to a pole and decides that they want to keep going? How does that make any sense?”
“Not to throw anybody under the bus,” I said, “but I wanted to leave, and Roger here wanted to leave, and Ignacio here wanted to leave. Our boss is the one who forced us to continue. I assure you, the first skinned body was more than enough for me.”
“And even our boss got the message after we found the bag of heads,” said Ignacio. “If your men had taken thirty seconds longer to start shooting at us we would’ve been back on the boat and on our way to civilization. We would’ve been completely out of your hair.”
“So it’s your boss’s fault?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very much so.”
>
“Too bad he’s not here,” said the woman. “You invaded our territory despite the warnings, and we’re not going to let you go to tell others about us, so we’re going to kill and eat the three of you.”
“Wait,” said Roger. “You said you were only going to eat one of us.”
“No, I wondered which of you to eat first.”
“Oh. Damn.”
“I’m sorry. I thought that was clear. Just like our warnings.”
“The warnings were clear,” said Roger. “I just missed that all three of us were getting eaten. You know, earlier today we were talking about how it’s racist to assume that people living out here were cannibals.”
“It is,” the woman informed him.
“But you’re cannibals.”
“It’s racist to assume that we’re cannibals just because we live in the rainforest. It’s not racist for us to be cannibals.”
“But it would be confirming our unintentionally racist view,” said Roger. “If we think you might be cannibals, and you turn out to be cannibals, we can say we were right all along.”
“We’re not going to spare your lives just to teach you a lesson about not judging other cultures,” said the woman. “Would we rather eat a cow than a human? Yes. Are there any cows out here? No. We don’t go out in search of human flesh, but when it comes to visit, we’re not going to squander it.”
“We’re contaminated,” I said. “We’ve all brought Caucasian diseases from the north. I mean, not Ignacio, but he’s brought his own diseases. We’re out here searching for a root that can cure us.” I considered a light cough but decided that would be overselling it.
“You will be thoroughly cooked before you are eaten,” said the woman. “Even if you aren’t lying, which you are, the bacteria will be killed. Soon we feast!”
I raised my hand again. I’m not sure why I suddenly felt like I was back in school. “May I ask a question?”
The woman nodded. “If it’s a smart one, yes.”
“Where’d you learn to speak such perfect English?”
“Cleveland.”
“How’d you end up here?”