Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (46 page)

“My God,” Zuppner said, jumping to his feet. “We have to save her.”

“We have to find her,” Tarzan said. “This world is not too much unlike her world. She will know better how to survive than you. Look up there.”

Where Tarzan was pointing through a gap in the trees a great winged reptile was flying lazily overhead. At first glance it looked like a massive kite.

“This world has as many creatures out to kill us as Pellucidar,” Tarzan said. “This is her world, and it is mine.”

“We must find her,” Zuppner said, “I . . . I love her, Tarzan.”

“Does she know it?”

“No,” Zuppner said shaking his head. “I should have told her.”

“We will find her,” Tarzan said.

“Where could she be going?”

“In search of food, shelter. In Pellucidar the inhabitants are born with a sure ability to find their way home. My guess is she will go in whatever direction that she feels will bring her closer to that goal. She may not fully understand how far away her world is, that this land mass is not connected to her lost world, but is a lost world unto itself.”

“Where are we?”

“I believe this is the lost continent mentioned by Caproni. He was an Italian explorer in the 1700s. He wrote that during his adventuring he passed a continent in the middle of the southern ocean, covered in mist. Most thought he was a fraud and a liar.”

“It has remained hidden all these years?”

“It’s not exactly on flight paths, and it would take a powerful plane to reach this spot.
¹
Come, let me make you a weapon, and we will follow her tracks.”

Zuppner could barely make out the tracks on the jungle trail, but Tarzan saw them easily. Before long, they found Zamona’s shoe. She had abandoned it.

Tarzan picked up the little shoe, examined it. The loss of it didn’t matter. Like Tarzan’s, her feet were as hard as cured leather.

“We at least know she came this way,” Tarzan said.

Tarzan dropped the shoe and went on. Zuppner followed as quickly as he could, carrying the long, knife-sharpened stick Tarzan had given him. It was not too unlike having nothing more than a large pencil as a weapon.

They spent a night in a tree, and the next morning, at daybreak, they were back on the trail. By the end of that day they had come to a break in the jungle, and there was a large savanna spotted with trees and a sun-glistened water hole. They were a good distance away, and they squatted down to observe. There were a number of large cats surrounding the water hole, purring and growling, but mostly lying in the sun near the water.

“My God,” Zuppner said. “Those are saber toothed tigers. This place is like Pellucidar’s cousin.”

“More like a brother or sister, I would think,” Tarzan said.
²
“But without the central and constant sun. At least here, we have sunset and sunrise.”

Out of the sky came a shriek, and a great shadow moved over the savanna. They looked up. A large leather-winged monster was swooping down on the water hole.

“It certainly is like Pellucidar,” said Zuppner. “That’s a pterodactyl.”

The creature dove down, extended its claws, grabbed one of the great tigers by the scruff of the neck, whipped it up into the sky as easily as if it had been a rag doll. Zuppner’s heart sank. Zamona had come this way, and savage or not, what chance did a small, unarmed woman have against these things? What chance did they have?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Tarzan said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean a thing. Remember. Zamona is resourceful. She grew up in the wild. Come.”

They dodged the cats, skirted the savanna, and after a while found another small watering hole visited by a herd of antelope. While Zuppner remained at the edge of the savanna, Tarzan crept through the grass toward the herd. When he was close, he leaped up and raced into them. Startled, they broke and ran. Zuppner couldn’t believe the ape-man’s speed. Tarzan reached out, nabbed one of the antelope by its nub of a tail, and jerked it down, struck it with his club. It was a brutal event, and ended with Tarzan dispatching the beast with his knife. After that Zuppner joined him. Tarzan skinned the beast rapidly and cut slabs of meat from it. They ate it raw. It was hard at first for Zuppner to get it down, but after a few bites he craved it and ate his fill. For the first time in a long time, he felt strong.

They drank from the spring that fed the watering hole, picked up Zamona’s tracks again, crossed the savanna, and eventually arrived back at the jungle. The day was almost done. Long shadows were falling through the trees and across their path in coal-colored patterns of leaves and trees and leaping monkeys.

That’s when they found the dead men.

There were two of them, strange men with thick brows and near-absent chins, barrel-chests and short, stumpy legs. They wore only loin cloths. Beside them lay crude clubs, like the one Tarzan carried. One had an arrow through the eye, the other an arrow all the way through his throat.

While Zuppner leaned on his spear, Tarzan put his foot on the dead man’s chest, and yanked the shaft from his neck. The arrow was a simple creation, the point made by snapping a thin stick in such a way it left a crude point.

“Zamona made these arrows,” Tarzan said. “She found feathers in the jungle, used resin to connect them to the shaft. She was probably hunting, and they surprised her. There was a fight. She killed these two.”

“Good for her.”

“Yes,” said Tarzan, “but they took her.”

“Are you sure?” Zuppner asked.

“That’s what the sign shows. Look there.”

Zuppner saw a crude bow lying in the brush. Tarzan picked it up. It was a limber limb bent and bound by string made of twisted plant fibers. Tarzan slipped it over his shoulder, pulled the remaining arrow from the dead man’s eye. He slung the bow over his shoulder, held the crude arrows in his left hand, the club in his right.

“They didn’t bother to bury their dead,” Zuppner said.

“Simple tribe. Simple ways. No sentimentality. Look there. Blood drops.”

“I don’t see anything,” Zuppner said. Already it had grown too dark for him to define any thing other than the general pathway.

“It is there nonetheless,” Tarzan said. “I can see it, and I can smell it.”

“Hers?” asked Zuppner.

Tarzan nodded. “The drops are small, so my guess is the wound is small. You can see where she put up a fight.”

Zuppner didn’t see anything other than shadows, but he remained silent.

“There are six sets of feet here,” Tarzan said, “where before there were eight. They picked her up and are carrying her. Even if it is a minor wound, I have her scent full in my nostrils, and we can follow.”

“You can follow her blood by smell?”

Tarzan grinned. “Like a bloodhound.”

“Then follow we must,” Zuppner said.

Tarzan in the lead, they rushed along the trail as night fell over them like a hood.

The moonlight weaved in and out of the trees, allowing Zuppner to see Tarzan’s back as the ape-man moved swift and sure before him. It was all Zuppner could do to keep up. The jungle was full of sounds, chatters and roars, night birds and wind-rustled leaves.

Once a dark shape rushed in front of Tarzan, some kind of cat, Zuppner thought. Tarzan did not slow his stride, and as Zuppner passed the spot where the beast had rushed into the foliage, he saw two glowing eyes peeking out at him. They went along for a good ways like this. Zuppner was beginning to feel winded, but each time he thought he could not take another step, he thought of Zamona.

Eventually they saw the campfire. Where the jungle split there was a clearing, possibly made by a blaze sparked by lightning. In the clearing were a number of undefined human shapes huddled around the fire. They had killed something, and it had been tossed straightaway into the flames with the hair still on it and the guts still intact, boiling in its own juices. Zuppner could smell the hair burning off of it.

Tarzan whispered to him. “The wind is on our side, and the fire is making a stink of the wood and carcass. They can’t smell us.”

Once again, Zuppner marveled at Tarzan’s abilities. They squatted down, waited, and observed. After a moment, Zuppner’s eyes adjusted to the flickering of the fire. He could make out Zamona among the huddle. She sat on the ground on the far side of the fire. When the flames licked wide he could see her clearly. She was nude; the ocean having stolen her clothes same as theirs. She looked natural that way, not in the least bit prudish. She held her head high, haughty, proud. Her hands were tied behind her back, and she was bound at the ankles. There were five men in the group, and one of them, a big fellow, was squatting down next to her, holding a strand of her long black hair between his fingers. He made sounds that sounded to Zuppner at first like grunts and snaps, but he soon realized they were language. The man showed his ragged teeth. Spittle on his lips sparkled in the firelight. As if by signal, the other men in the group slowly stood up, turned toward her.

The big man said something sharply to Zamona and bared his teeth. She spoke back to him; her words were almost a bark.

From their concealment, Tarzan and Zuppner spoke in whispers.

“It is the language of the apes,” Tarzan said. “My first language. They want her.”

“Want her?” And then the reality of what Tarzan meant washed over Zuppner. He was grateful that he didn’t speak the language of the apes; he wouldn’t have wanted to understand what the man was suggesting coming directly from his lips. He felt as if someone had unscrewed a plug at the bottom of his foot and all that he was and ever would be was running out of it.

“We must fight,” Zuppner said.

“We have no choice,” Tarzan said, shoving the points of the two arrows into the dirt, pulling the bow off his shoulder. “I will take care of two of them from here, and then we charge.”

Before Zuppner could respond, Tarzan strung an arrow and let it fly. Zuppner saw it as it reached the firelight, wobbling. But it struck true. It hit the big man in the ear as he squatted beside Zamona. It was such a swift and silent shot that when the man fell over, the other four didn’t move for a long moment. By the time they were moving, another arrow was in flight, striking one of the men in his open mouth. The man stumbled, went to one knee, tugged at the arrow, dislodging it. Zuppner could see by the glow of the fire that he was spitting gouts of blood.

Tarzan was moving. Zuppner followed.

The ape-man swung his club over his head in a heavy arc as he entered into the firelight. The club struck one of the men, smashing his skull like a china cup. Zuppner rushed the man who was bleeding from his mouth and drove his spear against him. The point went in with some difficulty, but it went in. He forced the man to the ground and pushed the weapon deep into his gut. The man clutched at the spear and groaned for a moment, then gasped blood and stopped moving. When Zuppner turned, the remaining men were dead. Tarzan had dispatched them with the club. One had fallen into the fire to cook along with the crude dinner.

That’s when the jungle broke open with a rattle of leaves and a cacophony of yells. More of the primitive men had arrived, and in that moment, Zuppner realized the party they had dispatched had been waiting on them.

They came out of the jungle in droves, came like ants swarming over a discarded picnic, rushed and yelled, swung clubs and fists. Tarzan met their charge with his whirling club. Heads knocked and heads exploded. Zuppner fought with his crude spear, stabbing, but the point was soon blunt, and he began to use it like a yeoman’s staff.

As one of the wild warriors went down, another took his place. The shadowy jungle seemed to leak them. On they came, and finally Zuppner went down. He glanced at Zamona. She was still bound, struggling to get loose. She had rolled on her belly, and, using her knees and wriggling her body, she was trying to crawl toward him. Then Zuppner was snatched up. He made a wild swing, missed, was hit again and again. He kept trying to cling to consciousness the way he had clung to that fragment of lumber in the midst of the ocean. It was a losing battle. But before he passed out he saw Tarzan swinging his club. He heard jaws shatter, heads crack, and then a horde of the men were on him, covering him thick as grapes on a vine. Then those men seemed to explode, flying up and catching the light of the fire, dropping down into shadow to leave Tarzan standing alone, a broken club in his fist.

They rushed again, covering him, even as Tarzan tossed aside the remains of the club and went at them with first his knife, which was knocked from his hand, and then his fists, and even his teeth. Zuppner smiled.
He will not go easy
, he thought, and then he passed out.

When Zuppner awoke, his head hurt and he feared he might have a concussion, because the world was upside down and he was bouncing and everything was red.

It took a while to realize his hands and feet were attached to a pole and he was being carried. The redness was the rising of the sun. He glanced to his right, saw Tarzan, bloodied, bound in the same way, being carried on a pole supported by the jungle dwellers. Glancing to his left he saw Zamona. She was looking right at him. A smile crossed her face. It was an odd thing to do considering their situation, but it warmed Zuppner and gave him a flash of courage.

Eventually they came to a clearing on the edge of a great cliff. Zuppner could hear water tumbling violently over rocks. A moment later he was hanging at a precarious position as they carried him down a narrow, rocky trail. They had all fallen into a single line now. Tarzan ahead of him, Zamona next, and him at the end of it. Down they went. The trail twisted and turned, and the men who carried him moved carefully so as not to slip and fall. Off to his left was a great gorge and he could see a tremendous waterfall; it came tumbling over glimpses of black stone with a roar like a den of lions. Zuppner, Zamona and Tarzan continued down, and finally they came to a river where a large number of the tribe had gathered. Here there were women, as primitive looking as the men. They were tossed down roughly and left tied to the carrying limbs. Nude and bedraggled, bruised and insect bit, they waited by the shore. A moment later, Zuppner saw and heard something horrible, and realized their fate.