Tribulation

by Kaz Morran

  This situation could not be reasoned out of. He had to take action. The thin mesh sliced with the rise and fall of his ribcage. He tempered his breathing. He might be able to maneuverer one of the multitools off his belt and cut himself free, albeit with one hell of a landing—head first onto rock and into the creatures lap.

  He arched his right hand, pushing his knuckles against the mesh and then crawling his fingers up his side, against the pressing nylon, closer to his belt. It took everything he had to reposition his elbow against the squeeze, and even then, he made hardly any gain. Harder he willed his muscles to stretch the mesh, but the web was too tight. For the moment, he had no choice but to relent.

  Listening for the secrets of the darkness to reveal themselves, he found, not death, but dormancy.

  Another noise.

  “Someone there?”

  No, he decided. Just paranoia.

  He hung there like quartered meat at a butcher’s, drawing slow circles over the invisible ground while his oxygen-starved brain flooded with the blood from the rest of his body. He could hear his arteries at work. He could hear his heart beating too fast; he could feel it pulsing through him, and the sound drove him into a fit of thrashing; a caged animal ravaging its confines desperate for freedom over death.

  But panicking did no good. He stopped, defeated, and struggling to fill his lungs against the throttling mesh, and accepted the nauseating sways and spins of his snare. Still, he listened. He listened to the silence that was not pure.

  Not tumbling rocks. Something else. Something no longer dormant. Something that was done biding its time.

  Shoosh …

  ***

  Taiyo held his breath so he could hear. The only noises were of his own body: his scalp moving over his skull with the pulses in his blood vessels, the rustling and of respiration, the hollow gurgles of his digestive tract withering down his fat reserves … He began to question if his organs were still up to their tasks.

  Was listening to the body like listening to the engine of a car? What kind of car? A Tesla should be flawless, but a Chevy was bound to hitch now and again.

  He tried again to call for Nel and Kristen, but barely a whisper fell from his tongue, so parched and asphyxiated was his throat.

  He felt dizzy and disoriented, even though the hammock had slowed like an abandoned tire swing. Maybe he hadn’t heard an inuksuk fall or an animal approach after all. It might’ve been the echoes of the others piling rocks over Walter’s body, or a hallucination.

  But he heard it again. Like a train of large duffle bags being dragged over dusty concrete.

  “Hello?” He asked the darkness, hopeful for human company.

  Each stretch of friction took several seconds, then a pause, and another haul in Taiyo’s direction along the uneven rock.

  Shoosh …

  Closer. And a rumbling purr announced the arrival of something distinctly unhuman to the camp. Taiyo’s attempt to recoil only tightened the net. The tendons in his skyward feet curled his toes. His shoulders pressed to his neck and pinned his arms to his sides while the mesh cut deeper into his compressed, twisted bones.

  It slinked his way.

  Shoosh … Shoosh …

  Its tail and abdomen shambled across the ground. Slowly, lizard-like, slithering closer. Closer …

  Closer, then it stopped. Right beneath Taiyo’s swinging head. Between the creaking sounds of the mast straining as his momentum traced a figure eight, he heard the predator sniff the air as he swept over its body.

  It snorted, swamping Taiyo’s face with the stench of mud and rotting flesh—the same smell as the crocodiles he’d taunted in the Bloomfield River. Bloody hell, those fuckers could jump. He remembered their gaping maw as they lunged to the upper deck of the pontoon. One would leap, snap shut its jaws, crash back into the water, rest, and do it again. It didn’t matter if it got the bait or not, it didn’t matter how many slabs of beef the tourists fed it. It never had enough. If there was food, it wanted it.

  Ronin was what? —About 180 centimeters? That’s how high the croc would have to jump to get its teeth on Taiyo’s head if he was right Ronin had stood eye to upside-down eye with him. Of course, Ronin could’ve been crouching.

  Taiyo clenched his jaw to conceal his nattering teeth, but the swoops of his pendulum made the mast groan under his weight. He was the slab of beef, dangling over the river from a bamboo pole, taunting the croc with his scent.

  The tail brushed the ground side to side as the croc circled in search for its prey, and for the best angle of attack. It paced, always returning to the axis beneath Taiyo’s narrowing orbit. It knew to wait for its meal to come to a rest.

  Keep up the momentum, he decided. It won’t lunge if you keep moving. Every few swoops, he threw his mass into the apsis. He swung farther, with more momentum. The arm of the mast lurched—as did his thrumming heart—and the ominous sound of metal bending closer to the ground made him rethink his plan.

  He tried again to call Kristen and Nel. No reply. The binds around his chest and neck weakened his voice.

  The sway and spin of the hammock slowed overtop of the motionless crocodile. For several minutes it waited, sniffing, studying him. And then after a hiss, inexplicably, it moved on, dragging itself to a spot not far out of reach.

  Cautiously, with slow, shallow breaths so not to hyperventilate, Taiyo exhaled the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

  Of course! Relief swept through him. Of course it couldn’t reach him. Crocodiles used their tail to propel out of the water, so without a river to jump from …

  Snap! went the jaws.

  Taiyo yelped. The mass of the beast smacked the ground. It leaped again. Snap! Taiyo spun. Snap! His head took a jolt. He swung and twisted wildly in the snare. Every muscle clenched but could not contain his tremors.

  Again, it sprung for his dangling body and slammed into the top of his head, chomping shut dozens of crooked teeth on the hairs of his scalp before smack-landing back on the ground.

  Tight in the web, Taiyo’s limbs could not thrash. The violent spins and orbits bounced the mast. Eyes squeezed, he fought each frenzied breath for control. The arm groaned and cried, ready to collapse.

  The croc had relented but made its presence known with a slow, drawn-out purr. It would try again in a minute once recharged, once the swaying stopped.

  Each swoop above the waiting croc was another tick of the pendulum closer to Taiyo’s demise.

  He refused to believe it at first—the darkness would’ve prevented the sight—but under the trance of gyration, he felt he’d come to gaze at the animal’s eyes. Though, stare as he did at those obsidian eyes—volcanic glass, hard and black, sharp and unflinching—he could not see inside them, for they had no depth and had nothing to mask. The animal bore its intentions in its actions.

  The purr turned into a growl, and then it hissed. Still, he swayed, and it did not like being toyed with.

  Taiyo had no delusions about the indifference of nature’s ways. Whether through his experiences with drugs, or science, or disasters, he harbored none of the thoughts others might've had upon facing death. He did not narrate to himself that it could not be real. He had no narrative to uphold life’s meaningfulness. No comforts. No delusions. No repentance. No idols to appease. To nature, he was food; no more or less exceptional, and no more or less expendable, than any other creature on Earth. Even that was generous. He was a bundle of atoms—a fleeting complexity in a fluke reversal of the universe’s preferred state of non-existence.

  But no rationale could take away from the instinct to survive.

  The beast stirred in the shadows of the abyss.

  Taiyo pressed outward against the mesh, feeling the strain to his arms and cuts to his knuckles as progress. He arched the fingers of his right hand and crawled them up the side of his leg, grating his elbow in the squeeze of nylon threads … and seizing his wrist before it got his belt.

  The croc snarled, and the mesh vibrat
ed against the back of his hand. Bending back and forth as best he could at the hip, he got the strung-up hammock re-swinging. The subtle shifts in weight opened just enough space to free his wrist.

  He could almost reach his belt.

  The animal shuffled backward, preparing to leap.

  Almost there… The hammock hardly moved now. He felt the cool leather strap beneath the pads of his fingertips.

  The hammock came to a stop.

  The multitool was so close. His nail scratched at the case. Felt the velcro flap. If he could just get his finger under the—

  Chomp!

  Pain exploded in his ear. The dark world spun around him. His head numbed, went warm. Again the beast threw its mass, lobbing Taiyo like a tetherball and wicking the blood from the side of his head. The croc was recharged. It struck again. Slammed into his jaw, snagging its teeth on mesh and his chin, tearing both.

  Caged in a centrifuge, a piñata about to spill open, Taiyo swung in broad circles as he twirled on the axis of the rope, one way, then the other.

  His gut reeled—the mast pitched … Falling … and stopped, but closer to the ground, closer to the jaws of the monster.

  The next blow clubbed his shoulder, and the force inched the bend in the mast even lower.

  Focus. Think. Act.

  The tear in the net by his face gave him room to wiggle. Not much. Enough to edge a finger under the flap of the pouch on his belt …

  The hammock dropped another inch.

  He wedged his nail into the velcro…

  A hard blow struck the back of his neck.

  Feeling along the cool, rubber-gripped body of the multitool, he coaxed it toward his palm as he gyrated in front of the crocodile.

  A head strike. He dropped. Something hard, sharp. Pain in his head. The mast sunk. Pressure on his face…

  It had him.

  No. It had the hammock.

  The croc was dangling with him. Its teeth had caught on the mesh. Their faces pressed together while its body writhed to get free, thrashing and jolting Taiyo and the hammock. Unable to flee or take down its prey, the croc slung into a death roll. Together, Taiyo and the Croc spun higher as the rope coiled up, wringing the net around his feet.

  The spinning stopped … and begun the other way; down. Intertwined at the head, they twirled toward the ground. Hot breath from the croc’s nostrils rushed through Taiyo’s hair. His neck bent backward under his own piled weight, while the mesh chafed between the soft skin of his cheek and the hard enamel of the dagger-like teeth sticking up over the outside of the reptile’s lips. Those teeth, like conductors, passed the resonance of its snarl up from its belly, through its bones and thick scales, and rattled the braincase that was Taiyo’s skull.

  The tail anchored both the croc and Taiyo to the ground as the monster hung motionless but for the residue of its momentum. Taiyo knew his adversary had not lost its focus. Perhaps, like him, it was thinking up its next move while it recharged.

  The mast won’t hold. Good. Time to take control. He rehearsed what he’d do in his mind, and when the croc growled through its teeth, bathing Taiyo in the stench of undigested human remains, he spit in its face. It worked. The croc hissed and wiggled—not enough to break free, but enough to put an inch between its snout and his mouth. Enough for Taiyo to launch his own attack.

  He drew back his head as far as it would go, and then using the air from its nostrils as the target, he shut his eyes and head-butted its nose. It hurt him, so it hurt the croc. But he didn’t wait for the reaction. He bit down hard on scaly flesh—lip or nostril, he didn’t know—and tore with his teeth.

  The beast writhed and bucked. One after another, threads snapped. The mast bent, dropping their heads to the ground and giving the croc the leverage to launch into a death roll and crumple the mast.

  They hit the ground in one heap and tangle of netting just as Taiyo had foreseen. The stunned croc and slack mesh, at last, let him grab the multitool. Prostrate, he kept calm, tracing each implement with his thumb until he found the largest blade.

  The croc snapped its jaws. It missed Taiyo’s flesh but snagged a mouthful of rope and mesh, which it used to throw him into a roll. He tumbled and knotted tighter against the scaly giant. It’s next chomp sounded constrained; it had further ensnared its own snout.

  The croc rolled again. It whipped its head and flung its tail, all with Taiyo coupled to the impulses of its rage. He rolled with the croc to keep from getting more intertwined, and when it paused, he grabbed a handful of mesh and slit the threads. As one tangled mess, they rolled again and again, and at each break, when the croc had to pause to recharge, Taiyo sawed at his end of the web.

  Draped in the tarnished hammock, he slid on his haunches toward the animal. He listened for the subtle friction of a giant belly rising and falling against the dusty rock floor. At half a meter—as close as he thought safe—in one sudden move he pushed right up flush with the side of its belly, dug his feet into its ribs, and springboarded off toward freedom.

  It didn’t work. The reptile’s head swung and snared by the clothes and mesh around his waist. It whipped Taiyo’s body side to side, raised and slammed him back down. He felt the teeth try to open and close on his abdomen, but the tangle reduced the bites to nips. He hooked his fingers in the mesh, his knuckles tight against the scales of the crocodile’s back, and while the animal tried to shake loose to devour him, Taiyo plunged the knife wildly with his free arm. He stabbed rock, mesh, his own boot.

  Focus! Mid-flight, he jabbed forward and hit what must have been the croc’s head. Again and again, he plunged the blade until his back slammed into the ground.

  But it needed to rest. Once more, he could hear that great big belly gently rising and falling not more than an arm’s length away.

  Having failed once, he knew what to do. He crept backward on his haunches this time, to crawl quietly away through a hole in the netting.

  The monster was having none of it. Taiyo was food, and food was to be defended. Each bit of ground he gained in backing up made the crocodile hiss, growl, or lurch toward him.

  He knew what he had to do. For sure this time.

  Again while it was recharging, he inched as close as he could safely get to its belly, but only as a reference point. From the belly, he shuffled up the body. Once at the shoulder, where he doubted the swinging head could reach, he dug into the ground with the toe of his boot like a sprinter on the start, threw a rock as a decoy, and when it reared its head he pushed off. The rock bought a precious half-second, just enough to dive clear of the net.

  Crawling, stumbling, running before fully upright, he raced blindly through the dark, hoping if he hit something—even if he smacked a wall and passed out—he’d be far enough from the predator.

  His head seemed to spin as he ran. Blood and oxygen rushed from his brain and back through his veins; a valiant reclamation of his limbs. Externally, he bled as well. He stumbled but didn’t let his legs slow down. As if it made a difference to his ability to navigate in the dark, he wiped the blood from his eyes.

  “Taiyo!”

  He twisted mid-stride at the sound of his name, redirected, and ran for the voice.

  “Taiyo …”

  Somewhere ahead, a light beam smeared in the void.

  “Run!” Taiyo yelled. “Go back!”

  But the figure in the headlamp didn’t move. Taiyo’s boot hit the camp perimeter. He flew, landing with a roll but rebounding to regain his stride. Time slowed. The blurred light grew into a hallow as he neared. By the height, he knew who it was.

  A dozen strides until impact.

  Only the toes of his boots made contact with the rock. Harder with each stride, he pushed forward, not for having drunk the wine of self-preservation, but for injecting the venom of retribution.

  Eight strides until impact.

  He ran faster still, regaining his strength.

  Six strides.

  Sights were locked; the knife was poised in his hand.<
br />
  Four.

  Think, Tai, Think. … What happens next?

  Three.

  The light filled his view. He did not slow his pace. Taiyo, think… The universe is indifferent to life.

  Two.

  … But scale bends perspective.

  One.

  … On human scales, we are not expendable.

  He chucked the multitool and its blade behind him.

  Impact.

  The force of his momentum transferred into Ronin, displacing the larger mass and deflating Ronin’s lungs. The second blow came when Ronin flew backward and hit the ground. The third, when Taiyo landed on top of him.

  Taiyo got to his feet. Ronin didn’t.

  Taiyo shook as his heart and lungs fought for composure. His eyes stayed on the light of the headlamp, and the light stayed motionless on the ground.

  He threw up his hands, at first because he believed the absence of a weapon exonerated him, and then because he couldn’t believe what had happened. He knew what he’d done, and yet—he panted, hands on his knees now—it felt like someone else had done it.

  And Ronin. Had he killed him? Knocked him out?

  His confined, inkblot of a world spun around him as the magnitude of what he’d done radiated from his core to the surface of his skin.

  He stepped back, vibrating, dazed, while Kristen and Nel rushed in to tend to their fallen crewman.

  A wave of dizziness and nausea crawled up from Taiyo’s groin, through his bowels and chest, and out his mouth as a silent but fiery bile-laden belch. Memories of Ronin cycled in his mind; feelings and images that reached up from their graves like the clawing hands of the cave art and Sakura Kawashima to latch onto Taiyo’s throat and drag him to his knees.

  38

  The nail that stands out gets hammered down.

  —Japanese proverb