by Jeff Strand
He didn’t break the hug. I wasn’t sure what to do. Return it? I didn’t think I should be hugging the guy who kept threatening to kill us. I settled for patting him gently on the back.
When he finally stepped away from me, Jasper had a big goofy grin on his face. “All right,” he said. “I’m not going to kill anyone for now. You remember the map well enough to guide us to the spot?”
“Yes,” I said, not completely lying. I hadn’t studied the map as if I’d be quizzed on it later, but I could kind of picture the broad strokes in my mind, more or less. Enough to keep everybody alive for a while longer, anyway.
“That makes me super happy,” said Jasper. “When I saw that Percival wasn’t with you guys I thought, ‘Aw, crap, this whole trip was for nothing,’ but now I’m so excited I’m almost twitching.”
“I have two conditions,” I said.
“Oh, really? Conditions above and beyond me not slaughtering you and your friends?”
“Yes. First condition. Put that necklace back under your shirt. It freaks me out.”
Jasper’s finger necklace didn’t bother me at all. It was honestly a pretty lame prop. But if he thought there was some actual negotiation happening here instead of just me trying to keep from getting dismembered, he might be less likely to worry about me trying to escape.
“Fine,” said Jasper, pulling open the collar of his shirt and dropping the necklace inside. “What’s the second condition?”
“I want the same deal we had with Percival. We each get a ten percent cut.” At this point, I couldn’t even remember the percentage we’d agreed upon, but it didn’t matter. We didn’t know what the treasure was and it might not be possible to divide it out on the spot, in which case we’d have to trust that after Jasper sold it he’d pay us our share, which of course he’d never do, but hopefully he’d just say “Sure” and not try to work out the specific details.
“What if the treasure isn’t a bag of gold coins?” Jasper asked. “What if it’s a jewel? I’m not going to break off part of a jewel. You gonna trust me to mail you a check?”
“I’m going to trust that we can work it out.”
Jasper laughed. “Sure. Honor among thieves and shit like that. Okay, sure, if it’s practical, you, Roger, and the hag will each get a five percent cut.”
“Six.”
“I’m not going to do the math on a six percent cut.”
“Okay, five,” I said. “Do we have a deal?”
“We sure do.” Jasper extended his hand to me and I shook it. Then he said “C’mere, you!” and pulled me in for another great big hug.
I let it play out naturally. When we separated, Jasper had the kind of crazy eyes that would make me avoid somebody at a party.
“All right!” he shouted, even though everybody in the area was close enough to hear him if he spoke at a normal volume. “Let’s go get rich!”
Chapter Fourteen
“So, which way do we go?” asked Jasper.
I tried to picture the map in my mind. It was a fairly simple map, and I was pretty sure that I could more or less figure out the direction for at least the first part of it, the part that led to a key in some ruins. “That way,” I said, pointing to the forest behind him.
“And how far to the first stop?”
“I don’t know for sure that the map was to scale,” I admitted. “If it was, then...two miles, maybe? I’m not promising GPS accuracy here. I can get you to our final destination, but you’ve got to give me some wiggle room.”
“Wiggle room granted. But don’t screw with me.” He pointed to Roger and Henrietta and spoke to his men. “Tie their arms behind their backs and put the sacks over their heads.”
“Is that necessary?” I asked.
“Do you have a notarized statement saying they won’t try to get away? Is anybody here a registered notary? If not, then we can’t trust them, and we either tie them up and put sacks over their heads, or cut off their arms and gouge out their eyes. I honestly prefer the latter, but I figured you’d all learn toward the first choice.”
“It’s okay,” Henrietta told me. “They can tie me up. I won’t go feral.”
“Good thing we had our kidnapping supplies all ready,” said Jasper, as Ernest went to the boat to retrieve the rope and burlap sacks.
While Ernest and Connor tied Henrietta and Roger’s hands behind their backs, and Steve put the sacks over their heads, I thought hard about the map. Was two miles accurate? I honestly had no idea. I was going by gut instinct, but I could be way, way off. Yet if I told Jasper that I could be off by several miles, he’d go on a machete-hacking spree. I’d just have to hope that I was guessing correctly, and if I was wrong, that I could use my sparkling personality and persuasive skills to keep us alive.
I also had no idea how big our destination was. “Ruins” were hopefully expansive enough that you could be going slightly in the wrong direction and still run into them. If the ruins were small, even with the map in front of me, I might be screwed. In theory, since the guy who made the map intended to actually use it to find his way back to his treasure, it couldn’t require too much precision, right?
“You’re in luck,” Jasper told me.
“How so?”
“Since we don’t have a nice well-maintained trail, we’ll have to use machetes to clear our way forward. But I obviously can’t trust you with a machete, so you don’t have to do the work.”
“I don’t mind a little manual labor.”
“Ha. Funny. You can carry this backpack, though.”
I put on the backpack, which was way heavier than it looked. Maybe I’d have an opportunity to bash somebody in the face with it.
And so we began our crappy trek through the South American tropical rainforest in heat that made Florida seem like a stroll through an air-conditioned living room. Steve took the lead, hacking away at vegetation like a slasher movie villain, and I followed directly behind him. Jasper walked behind me, talking a lot less than I would’ve expected. Roger was guided by Ernest, and Henrietta was guided by Connor. We were making awful time.
Jasper’s phone wasn’t getting a signal, of course, but he’d brought an old fashioned compass, so after a moment to remember the training from my brief tenure in the Cub Scouts, I was using it to attempt to keep us moving in the right direction. Or at least the same direction. As soon as we started walking I’d realized just how little chance there was of us actually reaching the ruins based on my memory of the map. I needed to be constantly searching for a good moment to overpower the four men with machetes.
Henrietta tripped and fell. Connor pulled her back up. This was her third fall, now matching Roger’s number, and we hadn’t even been walking for fifteen minutes yet.
“This isn’t working,” said Connor.
“What’s not working?” Jasper asked.
“Having them walk blind. They keep tripping. It’s hard enough to walk through this mess without a bag on your head.”
“They can’t escape if they can’t see.”
“I get that,” said Connor, “but they can’t see the uneven ground, either. I almost tripped a couple of minutes ago and I can see fine. It’s just not an efficient way for us to be going about this.”
“Do you want to trade places with Steve?”
“Screw that,” said Steve, slashing across a branch with his machete.
“Steve won’t have any better luck than we are,” said Connor. “How about you try to walk fifty feet—no, no, twenty feet with one of these sacks over your head? See how well you do.”
“You’re supposed to be guiding them,” said Jasper.
“We are guiding them. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s really hard to walk through the jungle when you can’t see.”
“It’s not the jungle. It’s the rainforest.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it’s not. The ocean is not the same thing as the sea. Completely different ecosystem.”
“Well, if I were swim
ming with a sack over my head it wouldn’t matter if I was in an ocean or in a sea, because I couldn’t see if I was about to swim right into a reef!”
“Technically, it would matter,” said Jasper, “because reefs are only found in the ocean.”
“What? That’s not even close to being true.”
“Oh, you’re an expert on reefs but you don’t know the difference between a jungle and a rainforest?”
“He’s right, though,” said Ernest. “The ocean and the sea both have reefs.”
“We’ll look it up when we get back,” said Jasper. “All I’m saying is to quit whining about guiding a couple of prisoners. So what if they trip? We never promised they wouldn’t get banged up.”
“It’s costing us time,” said Connor. “We don’t know how long this whole treasure hunt is going to take. Why make it less efficient? Wouldn’t it be better to move quickly so we’re done before sundown? What if one of them twists their ankle and can’t walk? Are you going to carry them?”
“If they can see, they can run away.”
“Where are they gonna go?”
“Anywhere! We’re in the middle of the rainforest! They can go anywhere! If they make it ten feet away it’ll be hard to catch them again!”
“Let’s say one of them does escape. What are they gonna do? Hurry back to town and get a cop?”
“Why do you keep arguing with me?” asked Jasper.
“Because I’m right,” said Connor. “We made a bad decision in putting sacks over their heads and there’s no shame in admitting that we were wrong and correcting that. That’s what smart people do. They observe what’s happening around them and use that to inform their decisions. The sacks are costing us time. If one of them sprains their ankle, it’s going to cost us more time. If we’re out here after dark, we have to carry the flashlights, which means we’ve got a flashlight in one hand and the machete in the other, and it’ll be way easier for them to run away.”
“May I add something?” Roger asked.
“No,” said Jasper.
“Okay.”
“I get that you’re paying us and you’re the boss,” said Ernest. “I really do. Nobody is trying to take away your authority. I’m just saying that the current process isn’t working, and we should try a new approach. That’s all. It’s not a sign of weakness to slightly alter our plans.”
“Fine,” said Jasper. “Take off the sacks.”
“I don’t know that I agree with Connor,” said Ernest. “What if they escape and go back to the boat?”
“They don’t have the keys.”
“No, but they could push it into the water and float down the river.”
“Okay, but we’re weighing the very remote chance that one of them successfully escapes against the certainty that everything’s going to take longer. I feel like I would be more attentive to them trying to escape if I weren’t focused on trying to keep them from tripping.”
“I guess I agree with that,” said Ernest.
“For God’s sake, take off the sacks!” said Jasper. “I’m gonna have a nervous breakdown if I have to keep listening to this.”
Connor and Ernest removed the sacks from Roger and Henrietta’s heads. Connor unzipped my backpack and shoved the sacks inside.
“Thanks,” said Roger.
“Shut the hell up!” said Jasper. “We’re done discussing this!”
“I was just saying thanks. I wasn’t trying to extend the discussion.”
We all continued walking.
About a minute later, Henrietta tripped and fell.
“Are you kidding me?” Jasper asked.
“Sorry,” said Henrietta, as Connor pulled her back up. “It’s hard to keep my balance with my hands tied behind my back.”
“We’re not untying your hands,” said Jasper.
“I never imagined that you would. I just wanted to explain my clumsiness.”
“You think this is a great big joke, huh? How about this? The next time you fall, we put you out of your misery. I’ll shove a blade right through your neck. That goes for you too, Roger. You don’t get another warning. So you’d damn well better find your center of gravity right now, because I’m tired of this.”
“If you hurt either one of them, I’m done helping you,” I said.
“Is that so?” Jasper asked. “First of all, let me be very, very clear: I didn’t say that I was going to hurt them, I said that I was going to kill them. Killed. Dead. Gone. Second, I’m calling bullshit on the idea that you’d be done helping me. Because I might kill them quickly just to keep us on schedule, but if you withhold your assistance...well, I may take a page from the cannibal’s playbook.”
“Are you threatening to eat me?” I asked.
“No. I was threatening to skin you alive and tie you to a pole. I get the confusion—that’s on me. But we both know that you will continue to do what I say. I’m letting you pretend that you’re being all noble and doing it just for your friends, with nary a whisper of a thought of concern for your own well-being, but that’s not the case.”
“Do you want to test that theory?”
“Do you want me to test that theory?”
I did not want him to test that theory. And he was probably right. If they murdered Roger and Henrietta, I’d be filled with rage but I’d also be disinclined to be skinned alive in a show of solidarity.
I shook my head. “Let’s just keep going.”
“I asked you a question,” said Jasper.
“And I shook my head.”
“I’m not sure everybody saw that. Answer me out loud.”
“No, I do not want to test that theory.”
“You’re damn right you don’t. Now let’s keep going.”
We resumed the trek. I had every reason to believe that he’d make good on his threat, so I tried to walk slowly to decrease the chances of Roger or Henrietta stumbling. Unfortunately, I wasn’t setting the pace, and when Steve started to get too far ahead, Jasper smacked me on the back of the neck.
After about an hour, nobody had fallen—though Roger had a close call—but I was starting to get really nervous. We’d probably passed the ruins already. It was insane of me to have thought, with the amount of guesswork I’d done, that we’d just stumble upon them. Hell, maybe there weren’t ruins at all. This whole expedition was based on the idea that the map wasn’t a complete fake. I didn’t think Jasper would be particularly understanding if it turned out it was the map’s fault and not mine.
“How much longer?” asked Jasper.
“I’m not sure.”
“Give me a general idea.”
“I don’t know. This isn’t an exact science.”
“Of course it’s an exact science. It’s a treasure map. Are you just screwing around with me, Mayhem?”
“I told you from the very beginning that I needed some wiggle room.”
“Well, you’ve wiggled enough. This is starting to piss me off.”
“What did you think was going to happen? You knew there was uncertainty involved. I’m going by my memory of a badly drawn map. I want to find the treasure as much as you do, so maybe if you’d let me do my job instead of constantly threatening me, this would be going better.”
“I haven’t threatened you in an hour. But I’m threatening you now. Do you have a tooth thing?”
“Excuse me?”
“A tooth thing. A thing about teeth. Do you have one?”
“What?”
“Open your mouth.”
“No.”
“Open your mouth or I’ll slash open your belly. And then your slippery intestines will be all over, and your friends will slip and fall on them, and I’ll have to kill them. Open your mouth.”
I opened my mouth a little.
“Wider. Like you’re at the dentist.”
I reluctantly opened my mouth all the way.
Jasper shoved the tip of his machete blade into my mouth, then very slowly began to pull it out, dragging the metal across my low
er front teeth. I think I whimpered, though I couldn’t hear it over the scraping.
Yeah, I had a tooth thing.
He pulled the blade all the way out of my mouth, cutting my lower lip in the process.
“You’re lucky I didn’t give it a twist,” he said. “Next time I will. Consider yourself warned. My patience is just about gone. Take me to the ruins.”
Chapter Fifteen
I needed a plan. Something brilliant.
I thought about some kind of thing where I somehow got the upper hand on Jasper, and then used him as a hostage to force the other three men to let us go free. But I couldn’t imagine that any of these guys would negotiate to save any of the others. My threat would be met with a disinterested grunt and then they’d probably kill Roger and/or Henrietta to make it clear that they didn’t actually give a crap.
So I needed a better plan than that.
Plans were not my forte. I mean, I’d come up with some decent ones in my time, one of which involved me getting knifed in the buttock on purpose, but usually my method consisted of me thinking “What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?” without arriving at a foolproof scheme.
I was really beginning to doubt that we’d find the ruins. Most likely we were getting further from them with every step. This wasn’t going to end with us finding the treasure and celebrating. This was either going to end with Roger, Henrietta and I becoming food for the insects of the rainforest, or us somehow escaping our captors.
“Hold up,” said Connor. “I’ve gotta take a leak.”
“Me too,” said Henrietta.
Jasper pointed to Connor. “Make it quick.” He pointed to Henrietta. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Connor made his way to a more private area.
“I’m gonna wee myself,” said Henrietta.
“And that’s my problem how?”
“It will make everybody uncomfortable. Your servants will be distracted because they know they’re the kind of monsters who would make a lady wet her pants.”
“We’re not his servants,” said Steve.
“You keep telling yourself that, honey.”