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Authors: John Gilstrap

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Thrillers

Hostage Zero (26 page)

BOOK: Hostage Zero
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C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-NINE
They walked for a long time. Evan guessed it was three hours, but it could just as well have been two or five. The jungle never changed. The heat never cooled. A foul smell filled the air at every step, as if everything around them were rotting in the heat. At first, he’d wished that he had boots like Oscar and the soldiers did, but after walking over and over again through shin-deep water, he bet they wished that they were barefoot like him. He saw a show on History Channel on trench foot, and given the shit they’d had to wade through, his guards would be lucky not to pull their skin off when they removed their socks.
No one spoke during the walk—certainly, no one spoke to him—which was fine with Evan, because he’d promised himself not to say anything to anyone until someone had answers. So he just walked. One foot in front of the other, hoping, even though it was ridiculous, that his footprints might leave a clue for someone to come and rescue him.
No one could find him out here. No one except God, of course, and as he slogged along, he offered up a continuous prayer that maybe He would at least tell Father Dom that he was okay. Father Dom would worry about that sort of thing.
It’s funny how your mind shifts into neutral when there’s nothing to say and nothing to see. It occurred to him that despite the hours spent marching along like this, he had no real memory of any of it. There were no special plants or flowers that stuck out to him—although he knew that he had seen some beautiful ones. It’s as if the sameness just attracted more sameness, and in the end it all translated into nothingness.
He was mentally entrenched in that sameness place when he became aware of a new aroma. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was as if something pleasant were struggling to push away the constant fart smell of the jungle. Could it be food?
He told himself that he was just getting hungry, and that he was imagining things; but within a dozen steps or so, he changed his mind. He was definitely smelling food. His stomach rumbled.
Apparently the others smelled it, too, because the whole line picked up its pace. By Evan’s estimation, they’d been doing about one step per second, and now they were doing like twice that. Would they let him eat?
His heart skipped a beat as he had a wild thought: Maybe someone in whatever place was cooking food would help him get away. Was that too much to ask? He didn’t need a big break—a little one would do.
Any port in a storm
, as Father Dom used to say.
The parade picked up the pace even more as the terrain became steeper. Evan didn’t have to run, exactly, but he had to move quickly to keep from getting run over by the soldiers behind him.
The ground was hard and dry here. The hard-packed dirt felt good against the soles of his feet. And the food smelled fabulous.
Without warning, the jungle gave way to a clearing that was lined with huts that were not dissimilar to the one he woke up in yesterday. That
was
yesterday, wasn’t it? Maybe two days ago? A week? God, what was happening to him?
Evan didn’t know what he was expecting to see when they entered the village, but it was miles away from the fear he witnessed. Soldiers waved their rifles in the air and shouted words he didn’t understand.
As the villagers scattered, there was no way to count them all, but Evan thought that there had to be forty or fifty of them at least. He noted, too, that they seemed either to be young or old, with few in between. Certainly, there were no young men. In fact, if you discounted the soldiers in their little parade, Evan was the oldest boy in sight. Even without thinking it all the way through, he knew there was no way for that to be good news.
The two soldiers in the front of the line took off at a run, chasing villagers who seemed to be running for their lives. The one who caught Evan’s eye just because he was closest seemed focused on one of the girls in the crowd, and she seemed equally intent on staying away from him. The soldier chased her at a dead sprint. At the last second, just as he was about to catch up, she cut hard to the right and evaded his grasp.
The soldier shouted at her—bitter staccato syllables that could only be cursing. The girl ran faster. The soldier stopped abruptly, stooped, and snatched a baseball-size rock from the ground and hurled it at her. From ten yards away, the rock sailed with no arc and caught the girl in the back of the head, sending her sprawling face-first into the dirt.
She screamed as she fell and clutched her head with both hands.
Evan saw a flash of red through her fingers. All around him, the other villagers had stopped running. Many stood and watched the attack, and Evan couldn’t believe that no one was doing anything to intervene.
The soldier wasn’t running anymore. He walked with long strides up to the girl and shouted at her. When she curled up tighter on the ground, he bent at the waist, grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled. She screamed louder, and he yanked, lifting her to her feet. When she tried to wriggle free, the soldier hit her across her face with an open hand. The blow seemed to stun her, and as she stood there, the soldier ripped open her shirt and yanked it down off her shoulders, exposing her breasts. She made a tired gesture to cover herself up, but when the soldier slapped her hands away, she surrendered the effort.
The soldier bent and kissed a breast, then turned back to face the rest of the soldiers, displaying the girl like a trophy, with one hand draped over her shoulder and the other rubbing his dick through his pants. He gave a thumbs-up sign, then shoved the girl through the door of the nearest hut. Three seconds later, an old woman and a little boy hurried out through the same door.
“A young man has needs that cannot be denied,” Oscar said from very close by.
Evan turned to see him standing at his side. The boy just stared.
“I could have them provide for you, too, if you would like,” Oscar said. He winked.
Evan backed away.
“Don’t wander far,” Oscar said with a smirk. “What the jungle takes it rarely gives back.” Behind him, the girl screamed from inside the hut and then fell suddenly silent after the scream was cut short.
Evan’s head swam with confusion. Where the hell was he? What was going on? Why were all these people just standing around as a girl was being raped? Yeah, he knew that’s what was happening. You don’t live the kind of life he’d lived and not know what a rape looks like when you see it.
The villagers outnumbered them ten-to-one. Why couldn’t they—
A hand landed on his shoulder. Evan jumped as if shot with electricity and whirled to see an old woman very close by, reaching out to touch him. He stepped to the side, the only way to distance himself without stepping closer to Oscar and the soldiers.
The woman smiled, revealing kind eyes and a mouthful of half-missing teeth. “Boy,” she said. She beckoned him with a gnarled old hand. “Wheat boy. Comb.”
She meant no harm, he knew. He recognized the friendliness in her eyes. In fact, she might have been trying to protect him, but it was hard to walk toward someone so ... well, ugly.
“You. Wheat boy. Eat?” She pantomimed putting food in her mouth and smiled again.
Food. His awareness of the cooking smell returned, and with it his stomach rumbled. God yes, he’d love some food. He nodded.
The woman beckoned more broadly. “Comb.” She walked toward the open door to one of the huts, checking over her shoulder with every other step to be sure Evan was following her.
He was. Part of him said he was crazy for doing it, but that wasn’t the part that was screaming for food. For a fleeting moment, he thought of Hansel and Gretel, but he pushed the images away. He was definitely staying away from any cages, though.
As the old woman got closer to her doorway, she beckoned more aggressively. “Comb, comb, comb,” she said.
In that moment, Evan realized that she was saying
come
not
comb.
She was trying English, and the effort made him feel warm inside.
“
Gracias
,” he said, hoping that it was the right word for
thank you
. He followed the woman through the open door and into a cramped living space that looked more like pictures he’d seen of teepees in the Old West than of any modern home. There was no real furniture—just some rough-looking wooden chairs—and the floor was made of the same dirt as outside, but somehow felt cleaner against his feet. Certainly drier.
Eight people—six of them old and two of them under five—filled the single room to capacity, yet they all stood as he entered. The old woman spoke a mile a minute, and the people in the room seemed to be pleased by what they were hearing. They pulled away from their tight circle in the middle of the room and made room for him at a table that was otherwise invisible. Just beyond the table was a pot of some kind of stew that smelled like heaven. One of the adults pulled a bowl away from one of the children and placed it on the table in front of Evan. She said something to him that he didn’t understand, but the accompanying smile reassured him that he was being welcomed as a special guest.
As Evan took a seat in the middle of a long bench, a different old woman leaned to the center of the table and ladled out a generous helping of the stew. Evan had no idea what it was, but because the broth was brown and there were green vegetables mixed in, he told himself that it was beef stew. The first sip blew that out of the water, but he refused to think about it. Whatever it was tasted good, and for now, that’s all that was important. That and the fact that it put food into his belly.
After two or three more spoonfuls, Evan realized that he was the only one eating. He looked up at the old woman who had brought him in, and he gestured with his forehead toward the pot. “Please,” he said. “Eat.”
Apparently, those were exactly the words they’d been waiting for because they wasted no time diving in and ladling stew into their own bowls. Conversation he didn’t understand roiled all around him as they crammed onto the benches hip to hip. They all seemed happy, and Evan didn’t understand how that could be the case when one of their tribe—if that’s what you called them—was being brutalized nearby. For all he knew, every one of the soldiers was out there raping someone. Yet the people in here were laughing and having a grand old time. It didn’t seem right.
But the stew was great. He ate like the starving young man he was, slurping spoonful after spoonful down his gullet, barely pausing to chew the vegetables and the occasional hunk of meat that tasted different than anything he’d had in the past. It wasn’t till he’d emptied his bowl that he realized that the others were all way behind him. They were watching him, and whatever expression crossed his face made them all laugh. He felt his ears turning red, and then they laughed some more.
But it was friendly laughter. He smiled along with them and even got the feeling that he probably would have been laughing with them if only he’d known what was so funny.
The lady who’d brought him in leaned close and said something he couldn’t understand. It sounded like
blahn key roho.
When he shrugged to tell her that he didn’t understand, she repeated it. He still didn’t get it.
She held out her hand palm up, and he gave her his, palm down. She gently lifted his arm and ran her fingers down its length. She fingered his long blond hair. “Wheat,” she said. “
Blanco.
” Then she brushed his cheek and ear. “Roho.” She paused as she searched for a word. “Red?”
Then he got it. She hadn’t been saying
wheat
all this time. She’d been trying to say
white.
White boy. White arm, white hair, red face. Evan smiled. He rubbed his own cheeks with his other hand and said, “Blushing. White skin and red face means ‘blushing.’”
She repeated the word, and he didn’t correct her when it sounded more like
blooshing
. Then they all tried it, and they all laughed. There was some more small talk and laughter, and then the faces of the people across from his turned suddenly fearful.
Evan felt Oscar’s presence before he heard anything. “Kid!” he boomed. “You ready?”
The boy felt his shoulders sag, and the instant it happened, he knew that he’d just telegraphed weakness. “No,” he said. “I like it here.”
Oscar laughed. “Two minutes,” he said. “
Dos minutos.
Don’t make me drag you out of here. It’s tough to walk on a broken leg.” Two seconds later, he was gone.
The mood in the hut turned black. His hostess stood, and the others followed. She hooked her arm in his armpit and gently lifted him. When he got to his feet she cupped his chin in her palm and said something to that he couldn’t understand, but the tone of her voice clued him in that it was important.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” Fear rose in his throat.
The woman looked to the others for help, but there was none to be found. Her eyes brightened, and she held up her forefinger as an idea struck her. She hooked her arm around Evan’s shoulder and moved quickly across the room to a primitive set of shelves that was packed with all kinds of crap. Talking a mile a minute, she tore a small piece from a sheet of paper and then shaped into a rough oval. She held it up for him to see, nearly pantomiming Father Dom’s pose when he offered up the Host during Holy Communion.
BOOK: Hostage Zero
13.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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