Luana (17 page)

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed to blubber. “I don’t want to die! I’m not a brave person, George. Don’t let them hurt me.”

Something knotted and tightened in his throat, nastier than any python.

“It’s my fault, Izzy. I should have shot us both when I had the chance.”

The village lay on level ground with little clear space around it. Trees overhung the cane and vine stockade on all sides. It was impossible to tell how big it was, because so many of the huts were set back under the trees, and there were even small trees and bushes growing inside the stockade. It was not a weak village, though, judging by the number of villagers crowding around.

The huts were made from palm, cane, and dry straw, with mud walls. They were little different from any other backward native village Barrett had seen in this part of Africa, though these were the first he’d evaluated upside down.

There were a few peculiarities that marked it uniquely Wanderi. For one thing, each hut boasted several poles in front of the entrance. Sitting on top of each pole, usually brightly painted and carved, was a human skull. Most bore intricate, neatly etched-in designs, especially the tops and jawbones. Some native peoples did fine work in wood, others crafted in ivory. The Wanderi might cling to archaic arts, but at least their handicrafts were consistent with their reputation.

Then there was the throne they were hauled before. The chief sat there. He was flanked by several, if not all, of his wives, and a pair of doctors not registered with the A.M.A. One stood on either side of the royal person.

Their bodies were magnificently painted, mostly stripes in shades of yellow and ochre and adobe red. All three men wore headdresses of monkey fur and the plumage of exotic birds. Their loincloths and shoulder skins were leopard, hyena, and wild dog, topped with chains of bone and wood beads.

In addition, the witch doctors had their own special accouterments. Rattles, witch sticks, tiny bark packets of powders and herbs and dried bugs. One wore a headdress based on the skull of a small crocodile. The other sported a leopard head chapeau to support the bird feathers and monkey fur.

They were released from the poles and forced to stand, hands and feet still bound tightly. Clearly their captors were going to give them no chance to kill themselves and thus spoil whatever party they’d planned.

The witch doctors pranced and hopped all around them. One shook a red powder in Barrett’s face that made him sneeze violently. They grimaced and made faces like out-of-work actors, but it wasn’t a bit funny.

The chief raised what was clearly a ceremonial club of some kind. That was the signal for the whole population to begin jumping up and down, howling with what seemed to Barrett like a perfect combination of joy and hate.

Abruptly, they were being taken outside the village, running with their captors. If anyone slowed, a spearhead prodded him or her to keep up the pace. Barrett could hear Isabel moaning and screaming behind him. She was crying again.

They didn’t go far into the jungle, though it felt like kilometers to Barrett. He didn’t know where they’d been taken nor why, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t for exercise. Good health wasn’t on the minds of their tormentors. He glanced around. It seemed like the entire population of the village had followed them.

They’d stopped at the edge of a tiny hill. A slope of some forty-five degrees ran ten or eleven meters downward before the ground leveled off again. At the bottom of the slope was a large jumble of dead trees and rotting palms. Unimpressed at first, his gaze wandered idly before shooting back to widen at the pile of decaying vegetation.

The surfaces of the prone trunks were in slow but constant motion. It was almost as if the punky wood wore a coat of ripply fur, like fox or sable.

Something happened to him then that hadn’t happened since he was a small boy. Not that last time the Wanderi had attacked and wiped out his party and nearly him. Not the day he’d gone for a bucket of water and been surprised by a spitting cobra and the doctors had told him he might lose his sight. Not even when the first shot from the Express had misfired at that charging bull elephant and he was sure he’d never get off the second.

He broke out in a cold sweat.

It was a weird, extraordinary condition. The sweat was pouring down his cheeks and arms and dripping down the back of his collar, yet he was shivering. He willed himself to look away and found he couldn’t. The sight below held his eyes with all the fascination of the gas chamber. Held them to the pile of dead unfeeling trees blanketed with a rippling, malevolent carpet.

It was a single organism, dozens of kilometers long. It was all mouth and no brain and most assuredly, no heart.

An army ant bivouac.

The clump of dead wood, of rotting trees and lifeless vegetation, was an army ant bivouac. Here a single hoard, which shamed all the Attilas and Hitlers of history in every way but size, had stopped. They formed living walls, chambers and rooms within the wood built with their living bodies, to store eggs and nurture more hell.

Foraging expeditions charged out in all directions to scour the earth clean of life and drag it back to the communal maw. They were small danger to a healthy man. Any child could step over the broadest of their powerful jaws, could outrun the swiftest of their soldiers, could crush beneath his foot the strongest of their workers, and then dart aside to kill yet another and another. Any child could do that . . . any free and unbound child.

The witch-men set up their screaming and gibbering again. One of the bearers was clubbed forward. The man twisted and screamed. The two witch doctors approached, bent him down. It took four other warriors to hold the bound man steady while the witch doctors bent his legs back and tied his ankles to his shoulders, wrists to knees.

They wouldn’t tie his ankles to his neck, Barrett reflected with cold detachment. That would be easier, neater. But that way the man might be able to choke himself. This was Jara, a good companion and solid worker, who earned his pay and never complained. Barrett forced himself to watch. If he were lucky, extremely lucky, the horror might fade with repetition.

They pushed and rolled him a few meters to the edge of the slope. As the two witch doctors gesticulated and pranced and mouthed at his pitiful, jerking body, the four warriors cut off his clothes. There was a horrible pause. Then the four shoved together.

Screaming unceasingly and shatteringly loud, Jara tumbled over and over down the slope and crashed into the wood. The carpet seemed to hesitate, then burst into a flurry of movement. His previous screams were expressions of mild surprise compared to the sounds his throat produced now. The ants had discovered a gigantic supply of fresh meat at the very doorstep of their castle.

Twisting desperately, Jara tried to wriggle away. But his tight bondage made it impossible for him to roll uphill. The tree trunks blocked any escape in the other directions. He only bled a little at each bite . . . but there were thousands of bites. Soon his twitching dark form was completely covered by the all-consuming blanket.

He continued to scream for at least five minutes, the screams growing progressively less loud. In thirty minutes there was nothing left to scream with, in an hour nothing but bones. Then even the skeleton began to fall apart as the linking ligaments were sectioned and devoured.

A second bearer was brought forward, bound, taunted, and rolled down the slope. He didn’t scream half as long, much to the evident disappointment of the villagers. He’d stopped screaming, Barrett noted academically, when the ants reached his eyes. Lucky devil. Heart failure, maybe, or just plain shock.

Trying to be as clinical as possible, he shifted his position and managed to locate most of his companions. They weren’t in single file any more, but all grouped around the slope. Isabel, fortunately, had long since fainted. Luana appeared to be watching the carnage with interest. Either that, or she’d fainted with her eyes open. No, her head moved, denying any such physiological oddity. She was quite conscious. Albright, somewhat surprisingly, looked to be praying. He was shaking very violently. Kobenene merely wept softly, to himself.

The last bearer was gone, and now Barrett felt hands working at his own bonds. He wondered if army ants could get indigestion. He hoped so. There was a fine shrieking inside him. So far he’d managed to keep it bottled up. Try to show courage, that was the best thing.

That wasn’t what he wanted to do, though. What he wanted to do was scream his guts out. But some primitive, antagonistic tribes would show a bit of mercy to a man of real courage. Maybe they’d stumble down the slope and pull him out before fatal damage was done. Say, with only his legs eaten away.

It was a straw, and a thin, bent straw at that, but it was the only barrier between him and insanity. His hands were pulled back and he felt them bending his legs towards his head. They were working at his ankles.

Suddenly there was a loud Wanderi voice. He understood little because of the alien dialect. Then he felt hands under his shoulders, lifting him to his feet. The shock of it was too much and he stumbled along in their grasp, a complete blank.

It wasn’t until they were nearly back to the village that he thought to ask Luana what had happened.

“I am not sure. I do not know for certain, but I can guess. Look around you.”

Barrett did so, but his mind was still adjusting to the fact that his inventory of flesh was complete.

“Well?”

“What do you see?”

The sun had long since set. It was a wonder to Barrett how the men who were directing him could see where they were going in the dense underbrush.

“Not much,” he replied. “It’s practically night.”

“That’s it,” Luana agreed. “I think that’s why they stopped. It cannot be much fun for them if they can’t see you or the ants.”

There were many torches burning when they reentered the village. Barrett saw several burning brands mounted on the chiefs throne. In front of the tier several witch-men were working on something unseen. The lack of discovery didn’t bother Barrett overmuch. He’d seen enough for one day.

One by one they were untied, then unceremoniously shoved into an empty, surprisingly clean hut. A single torch burning outside the open portal threw plenty of light into the hut. There was also a low fire in a stone pit burning in the center of the floor.

The six survivors backed as far into the hut as they could. Barrett struggled to crawl on skinned knees to where Isabel lay, crumpled in a dirty heap against the wall. The shock of being thrown into the hut had brought her out of her daze. Apparently she was all cried out.

“Isabel,” he asked, as gently as possible, “how are you holding up?” It sounded inane, but he didn’t know how else to put it.

Her reply was surprisingly steady and just plain surprising.

“As well as can be expected for anyone who’s going to provide a bug’s breakfast.”

Her tone was flip, but he could see her body shaking even in the bad light.

“I wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “if this is how the people who used to operate the concentration camps got used to it? Isn’t there some kind of limit to how much horror the human mind can observe before it snaps? I thought I’d passed mine a dozen times already.”

“Izzy,” he began softly. “When they take you and push you in you must try not to scream. Most primitive peoples admire courage. They might save you. Especially . . . you. They might—”

He wasn’t as steel-nerved as he thought. He choked on the words. But she knew what he’d said unspoken.

“Save me for a fate worse than death? I hope you’re right, George. With every gram of my being I hope that you’re right. I’ll take that fate worse than death. Because I’ll scream, George. I know it’s weak of me, but I’ll scream right away.”

He looked away. There was nothing else he could say.

“I’ll try, George, if it comes to that,” she said tightly. “I’ll go crazy, but I’ll try. But George—oh, God!”

“You’ve got to, Izzy,” he whispered, as strongly as he could. “If you can hold off for even a few minutes, give them time to think of you as someone strong, worth keeping alive, they may—”

He looked up and stopped. In the dim light he hadn’t noticed when she’d turned away from him. She wasn’t looking at him now. Her body was jerking—once, twice. He could hear her heave, long, wracking gasps. The feeling of helplessness was the worst part of it. He didn’t know what he could have done anyway, but the feeling—

It occurred to him that she must have seen something else, to suddenly turn and heave like that. He thought back. She’d been looking at him . . . no, past him, over his shoulder. He turned on his side and for the first time noticed the walls of the hut they were in.

The ceiling was made from polished hardwoods and rose to a high peak. Ceremonial masks and other conjuring articles lined the sections where the roof ended and the walls began. It was the wall decorations that dug into his interest with crooked, hooked fangs, and hung on.

The straw matting was lined with neatly trimmed, beautifully preserved human skins. Male and female, adults and children. Most of them were dark, but a few were obviously East Indian and a couple, yes, Caucasian.

First they’d been split neatly up the back of the legs, arms, and spine. Then peeled off, opened, and cured to preserve them against rot and shrinkage from heat. Thank God the heads were missing. Outside on poles.

But he’d noticed far more skulls than skins. Unless there were a large number of medicine huts like this, which he doubted, this treatment was reserved only for very special captives. Normally the skin and everything else was destined for the ants. The skulls could be recovered from that chamber of horrors with long sticks.

He found himself studying, with clinical detachment, the skill involved. Each skin was perfect, without nicks or tears. There was one of a tall man, there, that looked like it could jump right off the wall. Was his self-control really this good, or was he retreating into a kind of wide-awake shock?

Isabel rolled back towards him, still choking and coughing slightly. She struggled to a sitting position.