Savages

by Shirley Conran

The report was immediately followed by a cacophony of shrieks and screams from the jungle creatures.

  Annie leaped for the M-16, which was propped barrel upwards, against a nearby tree. “Take cover!”

  “The shot came from the camp,” Suzy whispered from behind Annie.

  Annie whispered, “I thought it came from William Penn.”

  The two crouching women looked around them, deceived by the echoes of the shot, fearful of leaving the bamboo grove and fearful of staying in it.

  Annie said, “If the camp is being attacked, then we’d better get there fast.”

  Cautiously they headed for the camp, not using the regular path that led from the bamboo grove but flitting from tree trunk to tree trunk as they moved along.

  The camp was empty. The two fires had been extinguished but were still smoldering.

  Annie whispered, “They’ve gone down the cave shaft.” Any shot was a pre-agreed signal for the women to scatter and head for the cave.

  Still moving stealthily, Annie and Suzy arrived at the carefully camouflaged top of the shaft. Suzy slid down first, followed fast by Annie, who carefully pulled the camouflage undergrowth back over the hole, before slithering down the rattan rope.

  The other three women were already waiting in the dark at the bottom of the shaft. Patty gripped the AK-47, Silvana and Carey each held a wooden club taken from the pile where they lay, part of the cave’s permanent stock, along with the rations of smoked fish and water that Patty saw to it were always fresh.

  “What happened?” Patty whispered.

  “Nothing happened to us,” Suzy whispered. “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing. We just heard a shot and scrambled, thinking that you’d fired it.”

  They all agreed that they’d heard a shot.

  “Jonathan said that a shot could carry many miles even in the jungle,” Silvana said. “The shot might have had nothing to do with us. A native might have shot a wild pig miles away.”

  Patty said, “Only chiefs are allowed a shotgun—and then only as a disciplinary measure of last resort.”

  Annie said, “We’ll wait until three thirty, then Patty can swim out of the cave and check the beach and Carey can climb up and check the camp area.”

  Carey cursed. “If we have to stay down here, it will hold up the raft.” She felt even more nervous than the others as she stood on the soft bat shit listening to the rustling and squeaking at the top of that musty cave. Carey feared the bats; she had already taken off her pants and wound them around her head.

  At three thirty, Annie handed Carey the M-16 and said, “Okay, Carey, up you go.”

  Annie then walked cautiously to the front of the cave with Patty, where she handed over the flashlight. Patty took off her watch with the luminous dial and handed it to Annie.

  “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, Annie, you’ll know there’s something wrong and you’ll have to grope your way back along the cave to the others.” Patty hesitated, then dug into her pocket and pulled out Jonathan’s battered lighter. “Look after this for me, Annie.”

  Patty got to the edge of the black water and then turned around. “Give me back the lighter, Annie. Guess I’ll take it, for luck.”

  Annie stood alone in the darkness, one hand held protectively over her eyes and the other clutching that blessed little circle of luminous pale green—the Swatchwatch.

  It seemed far longer, but it was only fourteen minutes after Patty left that Annie heard a splash and heard someone gasping for breath.

  “That you, Patty?” They tended to whisper in the dark, even when there was no reason to do so.

  Patty climbed out of the water. “There’s nobody on the beach. Not a soul in sight. Let’s move back to the shaft and tell the others.”

  When they reached the faint lessening-of-dark that marked the bottom of the shaft, Carey still hadn’t returned.

  “But we haven’t heard a rifle shot,” Silvana reminded them, as they waited anxiously in silence.

  Just before five o’clock, as Patty checked her watch again, they heard three short whistles. Their signal was one short whistle for “help,” two for “hide” and three for “coast clear.”

  They heard the slithering and the panting, then the noise of Carey’s boots disturbing the bat shit as she jumped off the end of the rattan rope.

  “Nothing wrong at the camp,” Carey said. “But unless we get up there the campfire will die out.”

  They decided that the rifle shot must have been farther away than they had thought.

  “Damn nuisance,” Carey grumbled. “We can’t afford any more holdups.”

  Patty climbed up the rope, taking both the rifles on her back. The rest of them swam out of the cave behind Annie. Except for Suzy, they all hated to climb the sixty-foot rattan rope up the shaft.

  By five thirty, they were back at camp. At first they all moved cautiously, and then with increasing confidence, because it was clear that nothing had been disturbed.

  Suzy suddenly remembered the machete. “Hey, Annie, you dropped the machete at the bamboo grove, when you jumped for the rifle.” The two women looked at each other and for a moment they were tempted to leave it there overnight.

  Annie sighed and said, “Okay, let’s go get it.”

  Exasperated, Annie led the way, moving along the little path they had trodden parallel to the riverbank, which led to the bamboo grove.

  Annie stopped abruptly.

  “Oh, God!” Suzy had seen the same thing.

  Ahead, with his back to them, moved a figure in a khaki uniform. He carried a rifle, and moved with stealth.

  Annie had left the M-16 in camp. She whispered in Suzy’s ear, “Shadow him, to the right.” She melted into the trees to the left of the track. Suzy quietly kissed the compass around her neck, then moved off to the right. By the time he reached William Penn, both women were certain that this man was not used to the jungle, and that he was alone. He kept looking to the left and right, then checking behind him, after which Annie and Suzy immediately moved forward. Had the khaki figure not been alone, the two women would also have seen the others close to him. When moving in a patrol, each member, except the point, who led the way, was careful never to lose sight of the man in front of him.

  Having reached Willian Penn Place, the man glanced behind him once again and hurried to the left.

  Annie looked across at Suzy and with her right hand made two chops with an imaginary knife. The soldier must have spotted their camp and was going to fetch reinforcements.

  Suzy nodded.

  By the time the women reached the ropes of the Burma bridge the uniformed man was halfway across. His rifle was slung on his back, the top ropes were under his armpits and each of his hands clung to a rope. As they watched, his feet moved carefully over the single base rope. It was clear that he knew how to place his feet on the knots so that he didn’t slip.

  Annie nodded to Suzy.

  Both women unsheathed their knives and moved silently forward.

  The man felt the ropes jerking beneath his arms, causing him to sway and nearly lose his footing. He clung tensely to his handholds and turned his head in a swift, backward glance. He saw two wild, dirty brown savages, each hacking at an arm rope.

  The man yelled in terror and clutched the arm ropes.

  Within thirty seconds the top ropes had been severed. They sprang free.

  The man teetered on the still taut bottom rope, then lost his balance. Sixty feet below, the river wound its way between boulders to the waterfall.

  He screamed as he fell into the ravine.

  Suzy whispered excitedly, “It worked! It worked! Just like Jonathan said it would.”

  Annie bit her lip, because it hadn’t worked as Jonathan had predicted.

  The man hadn’t fallen straight down, to be smashed on the rocks below. He had lost his footing, but he had clung to the handropes as he fell, so he had been pulled down and forward by the ropes. He had been thrown onto bushes halfway down the o
pposite side of the ravine. He had bounced off these onto some smaller, scragglier bushes farther down. He now lay on scrub near the bottom of the ravine, screaming in pain.

  Suzy said, “He’s making an awful noise. We ought to shut him up in case somebody hears him.”

  “How?”

  “With a knife, I suppose,” Suzy said reluctantly.

  “You do it.”

  “I can’t, I can’t,” Suzy whimpered.

  “Neither can I.”

  Suzy swore, then shrugged her shoulders, “We’ll have to do it together. And we’d better do it fast. We can’t leave him there, yelling like that.”

  Longing to just run away and forget it, Annie said, “Maybe we can hear him because we’re looking into the ravine. Maybe you wouldn’t be able to hear him from farther away.”

  Suzy looked furious. “Annie, you know we’ve got to get down there and shut his mouth. Now come on!”

  Carefully, they descended the steep and tortuous slope of the ravine. Their handholds gave way beneath them, and their footholds started miniature avalanches of pebbles; the earth crumbled away beneath their feet and bounced down the rocky chasm into the bright, flashing water below.

  In a splatter of stones, Suzy reached the riverbank first. She looked upward.

  Fifteen feet above her, Annie was spread-eagled, frozen against the rock face.

  “I … can’t … move,” Annie gasped. It was an effort for her to breathe, let alone to talk; she was rigid, almost paralyzed by fear.

  Suzy couldn’t coax Annie down. She couldn’t cuss Annie down. She couldn’t get Annie to move or speak.

  Annie had vertigo. Her knees were knocking so hard that every time they jerked toward each other the movement was dislodging clumps of earth from below her feet.

  Suzy looked across the river; it was deep and narrow, fastmoving and noisy at this point. She’d have to get across the goddamned water before the man recovered enough to reach for his gun.

  She considered using her slingshot, aiming at his head, but the torrent was about eighteen feet wide at this point and she was the worst shot in the camp. She was also the worst swimmer, of course, but swimming was the only way to get across, and she had to stop that screaming.

  Suzy moved upstream about twenty feet in order to correct against the current. She was on the bank and lowered her legs into the water. She was about to slither over the side into the river when the screaming stopped abruptly.

  “Please God, please let him be dead,” Suzy prayed. She pulled herself back onto the bank and returned to the spot where, above her, Annie was glued to the rock face.

  “I’m coming up for you,” Suzy called softly, and started to climb. On reaching Annie Suzy said reassuringly, “Put your right hand on my shoulder.” The thing was to get Annie moving again.

  “I can’t,” Annie whimpered. “I’m afraid I’ll fall.”

  “Okay, I’ll wait. But you can’t lose if you try,” Suzy said. She resisted explaining that Annie was going to fall anyway. She couldn’t hold on forever.

  For seven minutes the two women hung there, side by side against the chasm wall.

  “You’ll have to get down before night falls,” Suzy warned, meaning that then Annie, too, would fall.

  Slowly, Annie pulled her rigid right arm away from the rock face and grasped Suzy’s left shoulder.

  “Now put your right foot on my left foot, as a foothold,” Suzy encouraged.

  This time there was only a two-minute wait before Annie’s right leg moved.

  Slowly, with Suzy moving down a few inches and then Annie following her, they descended the slope until they reached the bottom.

  Looking at Annie’s ashen face, Suzy’s encouragement stopped abruptly. She said sharply, “You can’t faint now, Annie. We have to deal with this bastard.” She turned her head and glanced across the river at the limp khaki body. “With any luck, we won’t have to bother. And we’ll have another gun. Let’s cross quickly, we want to get back before dark.”

  They crossed the river, swimming side by side, with Annie, the stronger swimmer, downstream.

  As they hauled themselves out, through the undergrowth on the other bank, Annie said, “I can’t climb up to him.”

  Suzy could see that there was no point in arguing. Agile as a monkey, she clambered up the cliff face. Carefully, she positioned her feet on a rock about two feet below the man. He was lying on his back with his head lolling over a ledge.

  Quickly, Suzy tugged at his rifle and managed to pull it from the limp body. It was another AK-47.

  She held her hand over the man’s face. Yes, he was still breathing.

  “The bastard’s alive but unconscious,” she called softly down to Annie. Nevertheless, Suzy moved about a yard to her right. He might be faking. He might grab her. She didn’t want to find herself used as a hostage.

  Pulling herself up by the scrub, Suzy climbed to above the khaki figure. Hanging on with both hands, she roughly kicked him with her left foot, trying to dislodge him and roll him down to Annie.

  The man didn’t move.

  She kicked him under the chin. He slithered a few feet down the precipice, but not to the bottom.

  She moved down and gave him another kick. And another. It was much harder than she’d expected. Repeatedly, her toe encountered limp, yielding flesh.

  Suddenly the man slithered down the rocks and landed on his back at Annie’s feet.

  Swiftly Suzy followed him. “Let’s shoot him,” she said to Annie, who held the man’s gun. “We can use his own rifle.”

  Annie looked down at the khaki clad figure. His dark face was very young, his nose was bleeding and so were his cheeks where the rocks had scratched them.

  Annie said, “He looks about the same age as my Fred.”

  “Shit, Annie, this is no time for sentiment.”

  “I can’t kill him, Suzy.”

  “Then I will.” Suzy snarled, and grabbed the gun and held the barrel against the man’s head.

  Annie waited, dreading what would follow. That head would explode into a red, dripping, dreadful mess.

  Suzy pulled the gun away. “I can’t do it either.”

  They looked at each other. Cowards. Neither of them could.

  Suzy said, “Remember what Jonathan once said? That the horror is using your hands to kill? Remember he said that pulling a trigger distances you from the act, and absolves you from that horror?”

  Annie nodded.

  “He was wrong.”

  Annie nodded again. “I’ve got a better idea,” she said. “Let’s take him prisoner and make him take Silvana’s place building the raft. Even with a bad hand, Silvana can cover him with a rifle.”

  Suzy was relieved. “We’ll still take his clothes!” She looked speculatively at the boots, shirt and trousers like a peasant woman eyeing the produce of a market stall. “We’d better tie his hands behind his back.”

  Using Annie’s knife belt, they tightly bound the prisoner’s hands. Using his peaked cap, Suzy bailed some water from the river and threw it over the unconscious face.

  Eventually the man gave a long sigh, coughed and opened his eyes.

  Slowly his eyes focused. He saw two women above him. He grinned.

  Suzy kicked him hard in the ribs—not that she was able to kick very hard in sneakers. “Wipe that smile off your face and get up.”

  “Okay, okay, everything okay,” the prisoner said hastily.

  Suzy cried, “Hey, the sonofabitch can speak English! On your feet.”

  The prisoner tried to stand up, but was obviously incapable of doing so. Suzy encouraged him by kicking him until, awkwardly, he managed to stand. He stood swaying in front of them.

  “What were you doing in this part of the forest?” Annie asked.

  The prisoner shrugged. “I go for walk. I lose myself.”

  “You’d think he could invent a more plausible lie,” Suzy said crossly.

  The prisoner shrugged again. “Is true.”


  In fact, his story was true. The streams of the forest looped, snakelike, back on themselves. If you waded across one curve of the loop and then across another, it seemed as if you had crossed two streams, but in fact you ended up on the same bank from which you started, only a little farther along. This was what the man had done. He had no idea that he had traveled so far south. Until he arrived at the rope bridge he had thought he was heading back to his barracks.

  “Don’t get too near him,” Suzy warned Annie. She pointed to the riverside track that led toward the sea. “Move, mister.”

  “Okay, okay, everything fine,” the prisoner mumbled. He started to limp slowly along the track, stumbling over the pebbles and small boulders.

  He stopped and turned to the women. “My leg is hurt.”

  “Too bad,” said Suzy. “Move!”

  The man limped forward another few steps, buckled at the knees and collapsed in a khaki heap at their feet.

  Suzy muttered, “Isn’t that unfair? Just when I was being really tough.”

  “I don’t think we can handle this by ourselves,” Annie said. “You keep him covered while I fetch Patty and Carey.”

  Annie returned to the camp and brought Patty and Carey back to help them move their captive. The four women half-carried, half-dragged the prisoner downstream, to the point where the river widened but the banks were only a few feet high.

  On the opposite bank, they had cleared away the undergrowth for Suzy to draw water. Here, they all swam across. Carey went over on her back, hauling the terrified man across on her chest, her left hand under his chin.

  Back at the camp Suzy quickly recounted the events to Silvana, who was still up the lookout tree.

  Annie removed the prisoner’s boots and pushed up his trouser leg. After gently feeling his bruised foot, she said, “Nothing really wrong, but he might have a slight concussion.”

  “Great!” said Patty. “Now we have another mouth to feed, an invalid to look after and a captive to guard.”

  “You should have killed him,” Carey said crossly to Annie. “No man would take a prisoner in that situation.”

  “Okay, let’s kill him now,” said Patty.

  “No,” Annie said hastily. “Let’s make him work on the raft. We need physical strength and he’s got it.”