Run Through the Jungle

We watch the river flow over the spot where the boat had gone down. Nothing surfaces. I watch intently for maybe the boy to pop up or something... but no, they are most certainly dead. Lou grabs my arm and drags me back a few steps.
"Jake," he whispers, "let's get off this bank, man."

We grab the gear and follow a break in the foliage. It looks like the path was freshly made, hopefully by Chris and crew. Lou stops us and squats down to the side of the path, pushing the fern and grasses aside.
"See this?"
He shows me footprints in the soft mud of the trail, but to the side of where we are following.
"Someone followed them."
"Why wouldn't they just follow the path?"
"In case they went back to the boat for supplies. They have a local guide... he would probably notice the shoeless prints on the trail." He stands and we continue up the crude path.

About twenty yards in we come to somewhat of a clearing. Here the signs of a struggle are evident. You can see spots on the jungle floor where equipment cases or bags had been set. There are a few footprints going here and there.
"By the size of this print and the depth this had to be Chris." I see something shiney in the mud and take a knee to pick it up. As I hold it in my hand my blood runs cold.
"What is it?" Lou walks over to me.
We both look down at the medallion, Antonelli's family crest... the diamond generating a dull sparkle through the muck.
"Oh shit."

We walk the perimeter of the small area and assemble the clues that are left for us. Lou is rather good at this as well, like an old west tracker, but now on the trail of an enemy in this foreign land. He had survived the hell of VietNam by keeping this mindset. There, or here in the jungles of Brazil, he follows the same enemy. They are all animals that leave the same tell-tale signs as they move about. The trick is knowing what to look for.
"They came in from this direction. You see this?" He points to footprints and the small round divit to the right of them. There are several, at least five or six men from this side alone.
"The foot prints, yeah. But what is that dot there?"
"Either a spear or the end of a bow. Either one is extremely dangerous if it is poisoned tipped."

There are spots where the grass and foliage is laid flat from others as they hid from view. Lou moves to the edge of the camp where Chris' footprints stopped. He feels in the bushes and then smells his fingers. Part of the more disgusting job of tracking.
"Took him while he was pissing."
"Wait til I tell him you were sniffing his piss."
"Look, Nancy... he won't be laughing if he's dead."
Lou pulls the hand held tracker out of his pocket. We are at the location... within sight of it. "That's what I was afraid of."
"What?"
"The watch is here, but Chris isn't."

We scour the area and find the watch on the opposite side of the small clearing that leads away from the river. Lou puts it on his wrist.
"Let's hope that Jerry remembers to turn his tracker on."
Lou holds up his hand... silence, even though he is the only one talking.

For a few moments he stays standing, but then drops down to the ground and I follow. We are now looking through knee high foliage back toward the river. I hear it now, the sounds of paddles in water... nothing else.
Lou and I hoist the gear on our backs and move out into the jungle, keeping the clearing in sight as we lower ourselves back down to the ground. MP-5s are readied. I have to reset my drum canister. Lou points out that it isn't locked in correctly. The ratcheting noise it makes has birds taking flight.
Lou gives me a look.
"What?" I mouth, like I knew it was going to do that.

We can hear the hush of the boats being pulled up on the bank. Lou begins to scoot back on his belly, putting more real estate between us an the clearing. I follow his lead and we put another twenty feet in front of us as quietly as possible.

When we stop moving we watch the jungle toward the river. No one charges into the clearing, not even sight of them in the brush. Minutes pass and there is nothing but the shallow sound of our breathing... well, my breathing. Lou has hidden in the jungle undetected within spitting distance of the enemy and lived to tell the tale. He is a stone.

I see them... movement that I have to carefully watch without blinking. It is hard to believe my eyes. They are there, on the perimeter of the clearing. So silent and careful with their movements. Camouflaged so that they blend into the jungle foliage like an insect disguising itself as a stick or a leaf.
Four of them at first, then six, now eight. Two of them hold spears and without looking at the others, they command their movements.

One comes from behind the group and takes the lead. He stops where we stopped when we found Chris' medallion, then turns... retracing my steps. Without a mistake he unwinds the tangle of footprints, gather mine and Lou's movements until he looks straight at our position as though it all points to us. My eyes go wide. He cannot see us as we hide in the grass, can he?"

I look back, unable to turn and run... not knowing where I would go anyway. Now their tracker makes a motion to the man making the calls and just like that men that we could barely see against the jungle backdrop are no longer there.

I feel Lou tugging at me and realize that he has already begun our retreat and had to come back to collect me. He is no longer belly down but crouched and ready to run. I take all of this in as the first of the darts fly our way. Seconds before they impact you are aware of their trajectory. We are in a carefully managed crossfire, the trees around us bristling with the first volley of darts fired from afar.

Run through the jungle... I follow the black pack ahead of me as it turns, leaps, ducks, and dodges through the labrynth of Amazon Jungle. Behind us our pursuers have to be moving quickly, silently, if they are on our tails.
For a split second I try to look back and when I am eyes forward again I catch my boot on the root of a tree and tumble to the ground. As I skid to a stop I hear them, the darts whistling in as I scramble to my feet, a light slapping as they impact my back pack... one of them catching in the sole of my boot as I run again.

In front of me Lou stands tall, MP-5 leveled at me... well, behind me. I blow past him and he opens fire, laying down a long burst at waist level along both sides of the trail and the path itself. I ready my weapon to make our stand, but Lou runs by and drags me along to follow.
"That might have bought us a little running room." He says in passing.

For a hundred degrees with matching humidity I seem to be doing well with the double shot of adrenaline that courses through my veins. I don't know where we are going, but away from there is fine with me. I am on Lou's heels and see him pull the MP-5 around and fire off to our right. With a quick cut of the eyes to the right and then back to the trail I can see them, running along side about twenty feet off.

Lou fires a couple of silenced bursts and then I see the darts coming in from the left side of the trail. A spear connects with a tree that I just have left behind me. They have us on both sides.

I start with a long burst, the mechanism of the rifle sounding louder than the report from the silencer. When I let off the trigger, I hear Lou shout to "save it." It being the ammunition.
"SHORT BURSTS", he calls over his shoulder.

But then the darts and spears stop as we run into the more heavily terraced jungle. Before either of us can speak, we run headlong into a massive network of thick spider webs. Our momentum pulls the web back over our packs and as it stretches and snaps it looks like we are running beneath a crocheted bedsheet.

Before we can wonder what huge fucking spider might have made this web, we tumble down the throat of a huge pit... hidden from view by the thick foliage. The drop is long enough for us to realize that something is going to break when we hit bottom. Not a word is spoken. Our asses and equipment packs connect with the wall and we slow with the gentle angle it takes as we near the bottom. We settle to the bottom with a harsh stop at the base of a large hardwood tree, its height not reaching the jungle floor above.

"Wow... what a hole."

Lou isn't listening. He stands quickly and checks himself out, no broken bones. I do the same and wince at a slightly sprained ankle. Not bad though. I put more weight on it and then walk a bit.

We look up first and try to see our little native pursuers. There is no evidence of them, not that we could see them if they were standing right in front of us. No weapons being fired either... not a dart or spear to be seen.
From our position we can see that we are at the bottom of a hundred foot... what, a lava tube or sink hole or something. It is pretty amazing. The jungle still grows in this pit. The tree, vines, and plants all reach up toward the dim light filtering down from above.

"Jake."
I turn and look at Lou who is pointing to the ground at our feet. The stench registers as my eyes adjust. What we couldn't see at first we see now. Bodies... maybe hundreds, in various stages of decay from coffee colored bones to the ten or so that are still identifiable as human. There are locals... maybe natives from the tribe that chased us, or maybe from a warring tribe, identifiable from the scraps of cloth worn around what was their waist. Then there are the men dressed in more modern garb, khaki shorts and shirts, those are the ones that concern us.

We pull LED headlamps from our packs and light them up. This is a grim sight in here, the bodies... the fresh ones, are bloated and hardly human in appearance. They have to be part of Chris' crew, or at the very least unfortunate enough to have crossed these guys at about the same time.

"These men were killed, or at least drugged before they were thrown down here." Lou pulls a dart from a bloated neck, then another. He starts to roll the man over.
"What are you doing?"
"We gotta make sure Chris isn't down here."
"He's not."

Lou straightens up, "How the hell do you know that?"
I point to the bare and bloated legs, complete sets among the bodies.
"No shit... good one, Jake."