by Burke Bryant
“Is there anyone else we need to worry about. Anyone else with you?”
“No. It was just the two of us.” He replied. “Or so I thought.”
So he thought? “Why did you attack us?”
The man raised his head. “We thought the people who did this were after us, so we ran.”
Chris felt his lips thin into a narrow line. “You ran in the wrong direction if you thought we were the people who did this.”
Beside him, Caroline scoffed, and Nick shook his head. The man watched them all.
“No, we didn't run in the wrong direction; the noise we heard was behind us. We didn’t know you were even here.”
The man’s reply settled under Chris’s skin. If the man had heard something else, something from behind, that could only mean one thing.
Fuck.
Caroline’s fingers wrapped around the hilt of her knife and Nick immediately pivoted, scanning the high grass.
“Rake?” Nick asked.
“Yeah,” Chris confirmed. They were not alone.
4
“Stay here,” Chris told Nick. “Look after Grace, and do your best to keep this guy under lock and key. Looks like we’re going back out.”
“Roger that.”
Chris and Caroline crept back into the long reeds of jungle grass, moving back in the same direction the men who attacked had come from.
The jungle was silent as they pushed through the grass on high alert.
Too quiet, Chris thought. There should have been more noise—the sounds of animals, of nearby villages. Their absence was deafening, eerie. The locals in this area were superstitious and might have said the phantom whisper of the long grass was the whispering of ghosts.
At his side, Caroline must have been thinking the same thing.
She gritted her teeth and gripped her knife. “Why don’t we have guns?”
“Because that’s not what we’re about.” Not anymore.
Caroline sucked her teeth. “Bullshit. Look at us. We can’t get a break. Problems surround us everywhere we go. This is who we are. Gotta realize it sometime, Rake.”
They pushed through the grass and into a small clearing, walking past a burnt hut that had recently been someone’s home. Inside, on the ground, a small, charred, human figure lay curled in a pugilistic pose. The body was so badly burned it was impossible to tell whether it belonged to a man, woman or child.
Probably a child. The body, even burnt and shriveled, was too small to be an adult.
Repulsed, Caroline turned her head away. She made a swallowing sound, like she was forcing down bile. “What the fuck happened here? None of this makes any sense to me. Not a single fucking ounce of sense.”
Her words were followed by a sharp sound, somewhere behind them. Chris and Caroline froze. Listened. The noise sounded again. What was it? It could have been a number of things, but in a jungle that seemed to be filled only by silence, the noise was out of place. Foreign.
It sounded again.
Human.
Chris registered the noise. Someone was crying. For half a beat he had the insane thought the sound was coming from the body on the floor, but then Caroline tapped his shoulders.
When he looked at her, she pointed to their left. “It’s coming from over there.”
Cautiously they left the hut, navigating around another burnt dwelling, then around a large grove of trees on the outside of the village perimeter. The noise came again, cracking the silence. They were close. Chris and Caroline crouched as they walked, preparing for whatever they were about to face.
It was a child. They froze.
A small girl, no bigger than the body they’d found in the hut, sat in an open clearing about five yards away. She was on her knees, her trembling palms pressed against the earth as tears rolled down her cheeks, carving rivulets in her ash-strained flesh. Her mustard yellow sweater was smudged, and her tights were ripped, barely more substantial than her tennis shoes, which were missing their laces. Her head was bandaged, the wrap obscuring her eyes.
With a final heave, the girl sucked back her breath, pushed her matted dark hair behind her ears, and looked up at the sky. Her hands swept the ground, landing on a tattered stuffed animal with bright blue button eyes and a crudely tied ribbon around its neck. She held the filthy thing to her chest, clinging to it as if it were the only thing she had left in the world.
Which, Chris thought, perhaps it was.
“Is she alone?” Caroline kept her voice low.
Was she? Chris scanned the area with caution. If anyone were hiding in the jungle behind her, he could see no sign.
“Wait here,” Chris instructed, already beginning to move forward, toward the girl. “Watch my back. And Hunter, try not to kill anyone this time.”
Caroline pulled a face, but stood firm.
A branch snapped below Chris’s boot as he inched closer to the girl. He stopped dead in his tracks. Shit.
The girl turned in the direction of the noise and froze. Her shoulders folded in. Everything went silent, as if all the air had been sucked out of the sky.
But she didn’t run.
Instead the girl gulped in air, then lowered her head. Setting the bear down, she placed both palms against the ground, rooting herself into the earth, but this time she squared off. Still as stone, she sat as if making a desperate attempt to hide in plain sight from whoever or whatever she knew was directly in front of her.
Watching her.
Chris inched closer, until he was now within just a few feet of the girl. Close enough to touch her. He didn’t.
He kept his voice soft. “Hello.”
The girl said nothing as Chris lowered himself to one knee and slipped his knife into his back pocket. “Don’t be scared, I’m not going to harm you. Are you okay?”
Slowly the girl raised her head, moving in the direction of Chris and then fluttering from side-to-side as if she were attempting to pick up a scent. She sniffed the air in front of her. Exhaled. A stream of tears emerged from beneath the burlap cloth covering her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
“Are you hurt?” Chris asked.
The girl shook her head. No.
“Do you need help?”
She nodded. Yes.
“What’s your name?”
The girl raised one hand and wiped at her cheeks even as fresh sobs escaped between her lips. “My name is Natalia.”
Chris waited for a break between her sobs. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Natalia. My name is Chris. Are you lost?”
“No.” The single word shook on her tongue. “I live here. This is my home.”
He hated to ask the question. “Where’s your family?”
Natalia’s breath grew heavy as she fought back fresh tears. “They’re gone now.”
Chris thought of the body in the hut and his skin pimpled in the sudden cold. “I’m sorry, Natalia. Can you tell me what happened here?”
She pointed at the sky.
“The sky?” He didn’t understand.
“There.”
Chris looked up, studying the clear blue overhead. A perfect day by even the lowest standards. A perfect day, despite whatever horror had befallen the village—befallen Natalia, and her family.
Caroline made a clicking sound in the background and Chris waved her over, keeping a careful eye on Natalia so as to not spook her.
“There’s nobody else here. It’s just her. I scanned the area. We’re good,” Caroline said as she arrived.
She didn’t look at the girl, but hearing her voice, Natalia went rigid.
“She’s from here,” Chris said. “Her name is Natalia. “
“Family?”
“I don’t think they made it.”
Caroline’s gaze flitted over Natalia but didn’t land. “Did she tell you what happened here?”
“Not really. I asked her and she pointed at the sky.”
Caroline’s brow knit together as looked up. “What happened to this village didn’t come
from above,” she said. “A bomb didn’t do this. This was an extermination. Whoever did this came on foot wielding force.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking the same. She might be suffering from shock.”
Was Caroline not looking at Natalia because the girl reminded her of her own daughter? Chris considered himself a brave man, but not a reckless one. He’d never ask.
“So what do you want to do with her?” Caroline asked. She left the rest unsaid—that it would be impractical to take her with them.
Still, he couldn’t just leave her here with nothing. With no one but the dead.
“Let’s get her back to Brannon. He can check her out, take a look at whatever she has going on under that bandage, and see what happened to her. She said she’s not hurt but I think she’s been burned. Maybe eye damage.” Chris turned his attention back to the girl, who had sat quietly while they talked. “Natalia, I need you to come with us, okay? It’s not safe out here anymore, I’m sorry. There’s a doctor with us and he would like to take a look at you. Is that all right?”
Natalia pushed herself to her feet and clutched her stuffed animal against her body. She sniffed as a stream of snot rolled from her right nostril, then nodded.
Chris hesitated. “I’m going to pick you up, so you don’t have to walk. Is that okay?”
“Yes.”
Chris scooped up the little girl in his arms and looked at Caroline over her shoulders. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“That worked well.”
“Would it have worked on you?”
Caroline patted Chris on the back and marched ahead. “I’ll stand on my own two feet even when I’m dead.”
“Just trying to liven up the day, Hunter. No need to get feisty.”
Chris, Natalia in his arms, followed in Caroline’s lead as they made their way back to where they’d left Brannon. Caroline had chosen a different route, this time avoiding the dense grass to walk directly through the middle of the village.
A bell jingled and she froze, her hand going automatically to her knife. A small brass bell hung from a branch of a small bush and Caroline eyed it without moving, assessing.
Boobie trap, Chris thought, and he knew Caroline was thinking the same.
“My house!” Natalia exclaimed. “We have to stop.”
Her house? Why was there a small bell where Natalia had once lived?
The remains of a burned hut were stationed immediately to Chris’s right. A small bushel of bananas and a water gorge sat just outside where the door had been, before it had burned away. A small burlap sack beside it, tied with a string. Neither were damaged.
Chris eyed the items. “Did you leave something there, Natalia?”
“Yes.”
Caroline moved closer to inspect the items. She retrieved the small burlap sack and turned it toward Chris. An image decorated the front, the words RICE CO. etched on its side. Caroline opened it up and looked inside. “It’s rice.”
“Yes, rice,” Natalia confirmed.
Caroline shrugged, tied the bag back up and continued walking, but Chris lingered behind, still staring at the hut. How did the girl place the bag of rice, the bananas, and the water at her home if her eyes were injured and she couldn't see?
Perhaps she did this before the damage was done to her face.
“Who put the rice there for you, and the bananas and water?”
“I did. It’s mine,” she said. “I had it all with me.”
Curiosity—and his need for information—got the better of him. “Where were you when all this happened?”
Natalia sniffed, but her voice was firm. “I left. I went walking. I knew what was coming, and no one wanted to listen to me. I tried to warn them.”
Up ahead, Caroline spun around “What was coming?”
The girl unwrapped one arm from Chris’s neck and pointed upward. “From above. It was coming.”
Chris shrugged. He wasn’t sure what to make of her statement either. Caroline rolled her eyes and continued walking. They moved away from the heart of the village and soon could see Nick in the distance, sitting next to Grace and holding a small water bladder to her mouth. Grace was slumped to the side, the tree barely keeping her upright—but her eyes were open.
When Nick saw them coming, he stood and rushed toward them, eyeing the small girl in Chris’s arms.
There was defeat and something close to shame in Nick’s voice. “I’m sorry. A few minutes after you left, he got up and ran. He got away. I went after him, but I was afraid I’d get too far out from Grace, so I had to turn back.”
Chris put a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I don’t know what else he could have helped us with anyway. And if he brings friends back, we’ll be ready.”
Nick nodded as Chris set Natalia down, her stuffed animal tucked under one of her arms. Her hair clung to the sides of her wet cheeks.
“What happened to her?” Brannon asked as he began to inspect the girl’s face and head.
“I’m not sure. I think her eyes were burned.”
Nick took Natalia’s hand and, gently, led her to smooth rock. He kneeled in front of her. “My name is Nick. I’m a doctor. Do you have any injuries anywhere on your body?”
Natalia shook her head. No.
“Ok, good. I’m going to lift the cloth so I can see what happened to your eyes, okay?”
Natalia’s body was tense, frightened. Chris knelt beside her. “You can trust him,” he told the girl. “He wants to make sure you’re okay, that you’re not hurt.”
After a long pause Natalia reached over and searched for Chris’s hand. She found it and grabbed on, then turned her head back in Nick’s direction. “Okay.”
Nick reached for the cloth and, with both hands, pulled it up. When the sunlight hit her eyes, Natalia reached up, shielding her face with her free hand.
Her fingers pinched into Chris’s hand.
“It’s okay,” he told her.
Slowly, Natalia lowered her hand. Her palm sweated against Chris’s.
She’s terrified, he realized.
Nick freed the burlap wrapped around her head and tossed it aside.
Natalia’s eyes pierced into the distance. Bright emerald green, their contrast against her dark skin and black hair was mesmerizing. But something about their gaze was wrong. Unfocused, and there was no damage to her face.
“My God,” Caroline gasped. “She’s blind.”
5
When Chris awoke the next morning, the makeshift bed Caroline had fashioned for Natalia was empty, leaving only the imprint of a small body pressed into the grass. Alarms went off in his mind.
Gone.
He sat up and brushed the sleep from his eyes as his gaze darted over the campsite. Caroline laid flat on her back, still asleep atop her pack with her left hand resting atop the knife at her side. Nick slept stationed close to Grace, who leaned upright against the tree, her eyes closed. Chris watched the woman as she slept. Studied the rise and fall of her chest. She twitched in her sleep, no doubt uncomfortable from the position, but the water in her lungs would not allow her to lay in any other position other than upright. On her back, she would drown.
She’s still alive. Good.
The thought was of little comfort. She was still alive … for now.
In his sleep, Chris’s head had slipped off his pack, bending his neck uncomfortably sideways. Now, it throbbed with a dull ache, and Chris rubbed at the cramp, trying to force it from his muscle. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a good night’s sleep or a decent meal. For the last few days his diet consisted only of water, protein bars, bananas, and a small bag of cashews he had purchased off a local farmer.
I’m getting too old for this shit, he thought. With each press of his fingers, the pain in his neck surged, unabated.
The blind girl, Natalia, was sitting about fifteen yards away, close enough that Chris could hear her humming. The tune was pleasant, sweet. A lullaby maybe, something her mother might have taught he
r. She sat cross-legged atop a large, flat rock, her ratty stuffed teddy bear at her side. The frayed strip of burlap Brannon had removed was wrapped once more around her head, and she was combing her fingers through her knotted hair, pulling out the tangles as she hummed.
She was happy, he realized. After everything that had happened here in her village—the fire, the loss, the death—the girl, even though blind, still managed to be happy.
Kids. Scared one moment, singing the next.
Chris grunted and checked his watch. 0600. He cracked his neck and pushed himself to his feet, then walked to Natalia. He made sure to make enough noise as he neared that she’d be sure to hear him, though this was probably more for his own assurances than for hers. The blind didn’t necessarily need their sight to know when someone—or something—was close. She would have sensed him coming. Her keen sense of sound had definitely made up for her lack of sight.
He thought of the feeling yesterday when they’d arrived in the village, the sensation of growing dread as he’d moved in the direction of smoke and the stench of death and shivered despite the tropical heat of the jungle. Did the girl feel it now?
“Hola,” Natalia said as Chris settled onto the flat rock beside her.
The rock was high; he’d had to pull himself up. The girl would have had an even tougher time of it, being less than half his size and made of bones and elbows. “You get up here by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“You get around pretty good.” Chris smiled, realized she couldn’t see it. “I’m impressed, kiddo.”
She turned her face in his direction, head cocked to the side in the universal gesture of curiosity. “What’s kid-doh?”
Chris opened his mouth to reply. Shut it. He shook his head. “You know, that’s a really good question. I guess you could say it’s one of the ways an adult addresses a younger person. Someone they’re familiar with. It’s friendly.”
Her mouth twisted. “Why not just use my name?”
A slight smile had crawled across Natalia’s face as Chris considered her question, making her look sly rather than curious. He’d never thought about it before—even his own daughter had never asked him, and he’d used the same words countless times in their past conversations.
