©️ March 5, 2011
Originally posted on my DeviantArt account.
She gauged the time roughly mid-afternoon—not by the slant of rays but by the diffusion of light permeating the thick vegetation. You got pretty good at telling time under the canopy when you’d been stranded here as long as they had been. Insects the size of her hand had tenaciously sought to devour her alive for the last three hours, but she hadn’t swatted them off unless the motion could be risked. Besides, over the heavy days of hunting, she’d gotten used to the infernal beasts.
Eight of them had stepped out—the seven guys and herself. Twelve altogether, if you counted those left behind to ride the airwaves or manipulate the expensive equipment she only vaguely understood. This was good. This was comfortable. How it should be. The veteran monsters stalking together like a wolf pack, or maybe a lion pride. Didn’t matter. What did matter was that she could trust them with her life. She could trust them each to do what he did best. More importantly, she had learned to leave her opinions about their personalities at the door.
When they first met, seven years ago, she’d passed out stiff strong handshakes as if checking for manhood and slapped them each with a “call me Jack.” Habitually her unique lifestyle required her to sledgehammer it in deep to the men around her that she was as a man as well. Gajewski had insisted on calling her Tits until she broke his arm in three places in about as many seconds. She hadn’t broken a sweat. After that, the men stopped even seeing her as human at all and chose instead to mutilate Jackalyn to the more appropriate Jackal.
Jack had escalated quickly through the ranks. Not that the soaring death rates didn’t help her career. The fleshed demons she ran with now had more or less been the same core she’d broken into four years ago, the crème de la crème of savagery. Nights burrowed in deep at camp left the men passing alcohol or other exotic refreshments, whispering about how they’d buy this car or that house or this many women when they got back to the Real World. The Real World had become nonexistent to Jack. Her pay remained hidden, like a hoard of food for winter, bits of paper and scraps of metal that no longer made sense. If she went back to the Real World, what would she do? It was too dark to think about. Better to just douse the lights and grab what sleep you can.
The jungle was hot, muggy. What an understatement. The air itself threatened to clot in her nostrils and the heat had some malicious way of sucking all the liquid from her slim muscular form and spit it out, wasting it in buckets of sweat. The very air tentacled about her and squeezed. The clothing she stitched together herself out of olive, sand, and juniper fabrics, streaked with patches of henna and sandalwood, clung in one big disgusting wrapping wet tongue to her body.
Jackal knelt down, lifting some branches and rotting leaves fresh-tumbled from the jungle’s heights to get at the soft, squishy soil beneath. With one hand, she streaked the rich-scented earth across her face, her arms, even her legs before freshening the dark patches she’d pasted onto—and since sluiced off—her body earlier. Surprisingly, the cool dirt soaked some of the torturous heat from her body. Jack preferred using such natural camouflage to best match her environment—even if it required frequent touch ups. Painstakingly choosing leaves from the windfall, she rubbed them against the fabric until chunks of plant fiber rubbed off with the hues. Perfect. It should mask her scent, as well.
Carefully, she tucked the torn plants underneath the vegetation cloaking the bare earth before rearranging the debris to match how it appeared before she had disrupted it. Jackal was the best of them all at leaving no trace. The guys teased her that it was her lighter weight, but she knew it simply came down to her attention to small details. The men tended to lean against the trees they hid behind. The men all seemed to believed that a leaf broken here or a forgotten footprint there would be overlooked. The men were more likely to utilize metal implements to strain their way up the trunks broad and bare as smooth walls.
Jackal’s secret was simple. She never let down her guard, and always strove believe that one day track her equal (or superior, if possible) would track her. She intended to be prepared for that inevitability. Hence, she crept forward—each muscle aching in long agonizing turn—in her strange crouching steps that balanced mostly on the balls of her feet—toes lifted—rolling one foot awkwardly to the side, then irregularly, a few paces left or right, the other. Her tracks did not look human. That was important. And in this tight crouch, she could easily dust the markings away and coat her trail with whatever nature gifted her with.
She preferred knives. Big ones. At least six inches long—eight to twelve preferable—with wicked curves. Of course Jack carried firearms—she’d be stupid not to—today, the heaviest two weighing at her hip and shoulder, a smaller one awkwardly at her left ankle—but they were loud, impersonal. Jackal absently patted two of her babies on either hip, enjoying the cool smoothness of the bits showing.
Her finger plunged free from the fingerless leather gloves. She had never really been able to explain it to the men, but she needed her fingertips free to rake in information. She’d risk them for that—and decide if the time came what would happen if she lost one. Or more. Despite all she had gone through with her comrades—even the hip-deep river of blood they’d let—she never felt right explaining to them the bare truth. She was her blades. They were not tools, but extensions. When they ripped through windpipes, it was as if she had sunk in her own teeth. It saddened her a touch to think the men with their guns and their silencers and other toys might worship their collections, but they would never feel what she felt. A wry smile danced briefly on her lips. If they got her close enough for the kill, however, that was enough for her. And they did. Over and over and over.
A creaking of branches far overhead gave way to a tug of leather gloves across rope. Jack listened to the faint chunk of metal going into the trunk offering sure footing. Daniels, overhead, with his ropes and crampons. If they had been out at practice, Jack would have shaken her head in disappointment and irritation. She usually left scolding to the men, but occasionally she’d shred the skin off these new ones. They could not forget people would die for their mistakes. The danger of her position and mission instead forced Jack to freeze, turning her sharp senses inside out in the rush to find the threat first.
Pricking her ears, the Jackal pinpointed Daniels’ location and cocked her head to trace his faint movements with her eyes. Sometimes she wasn’t sure which was true at times like this. Perhaps she spotted him because she knew him, knew his moves and where to look. Or perhaps he fucked up, and this creak, that clunk, could be heard for miles by the predators sharing the territory, human or animal. Jack forced a measured breath softly between her lips, forcing her muscles to take it down a few notches. Gotta be supple, agile, for this work. Can’t have your head locked on somebody else’s duties when you had your own hide to worry about. It all came down to trust. Strange as that seemed in a situation like this, with hard men like these. Survival was trust. And that was all she needed to know beyond her own expertise.
The awful foom heralding a bow sounded like an explosion in her ears. So did the wet, astonished gasp to follow. Jack’s heart lurched. They’d been spotted. Between the leaf fronds concealing her, she made out Daniels, half hanging in his climbing gear, one hand desperately scrabbling to hang on, the other hard against the right side of his chest. He grimaced as he tried to make out the entry point, struggling to assess the severity of his wound. Unfortunately, Jack could clearly see it was a lung shot. If the fight refused to end quickly, he’d suffocate up there.
Jack’s stomach lurched in terror—but she could not honestly determine if it was sympathy for the boy barely past drinking age up there or if it was the jolting reminder of her own fragile mortality. Daniels’ outer crust was still all talk, camouflaging the squishy bits within. Surely it was a shame to see such a tender life leak out in front of you. But, Jack was a realist. People died in this game. He would not be the first—nor the youngest. She inhaled deeply, soundlessly, through her nose. Her first priority would always be not becoming one of them, selfish as that sounded.
Her thumbs found the comfort of the familiar handles at her hips and eased her main weapons free. With soundless grace, they slipped free in a reverse grip, hiding the glint of eager steel beneath her forearms. The quick spattering of machine guns gave away the locations of the archer’s comrades, about a hundred yards before her, fanning to her left. The rest of the men already spanned in that direction, their oiled and consecrated guns protecting themselves from the attack, and more importantly, protecting their Jackal who now had her claws out.
Jack crouched as close to the ground as she could get, her feet spread wide, and bent over at the waist, head lifted like a predator scenting the wind, her arms before her, coiled with the power to slip through a man’s neck like butter. Confidence flooded into her blood, sharpening every fiber of her even further. She knew she could slip behind them, drop them one by one. It was what she did. It was what she excelled at. The fat trunks and the head-high tangle of vines and jungle growth gave her the sort of thick cover she had only encountered in dreams. Everything was perfect. She smiled wickedly. This was going to be fun.
Inching around the back of one warm trunk, sidestepping the tangle map of roots, Jackal darted her eyes from the next point of safety to Martens fifty yards out and thirty up, dangling neatly from his tree, heavy gun snapped out and down, coughing its fat rhythm as it took unseen targets down. His muscles rippled up from his wrist and shuddered down his back, gleaming brightly in the subdued green haze that passed for light. Concentration etched into his hard features, his jaw strained with tension. Jack could even see the thin vines of arteries trembling at his temples. Her eyes scraped the undergrowth before her. Martens was definitely laying down suppressing fire and a little noise. No. He was taking his targets by the mouthful. Which meant more of them sneaked about ahead than she’d thought.
Time to proceed with utmost caution. Even more so than before.
Jackal bent lower to the ground as she crept forward. The muscles of her shoulders squeezed until the belled out dull red tones. All down her spine and settling into her lower back, her muscles ached and screamed. Her thighs burned with every careful motion forward. Her base target of one hundred yards exploded to an impossible hundred miles as far as her protesting body was concerned. And while she pulled along, inch by shrieking inch the distance she must cover to reach the nearest walking sack of blood to spill, the men’s guns raised their hosannas.
Counting off fifty yards in her head, Jack crouched with muscles burning and her back against a black mammoth tree. She now hid even with Martens’ swaying aerial roost. Risking a glance up at him, her fingertips trailed through something warm and sticky as her boot thudded against something on the ground. Shock lightninged down her spine as she toed the body over. Dirt and sweat danced on his full cheeks, snubbed nose, and lined forehead. The bushy brows and full scruffy black beard further marked him as an unknown. He bled from back and chest, from gut. The four-inch blade protruded from his gullet. Jack wiped it off and slid it under her belt, tip tucked partially into her pocket. Her eyes scoured the plant life woven tight around her. They shouldn’t be this far forward. Not yet. And if she didn’t knife him, who did? She shook the chill from her vertebrae and crouched on.
After deducing that the killer of the unknown man lurked nowhere before her, Jackal smoothly slipped to her belly. Slowly, she slipped each knife into its sheath, leaving a finger’s width of metal showing for a fast draw. No matter what happened next, she’d need a fast draw. She inchwormed on, legs straight and close together behind her, dirtying herself from elbow to wrist as she pressed forward, popping up cautiously here and there, balanced on just the heels of her hands tight alongside her bra, to analyze what information the battleground gave. But she smelled nothing other than earth and crushed plants. She heard nothing but gunfire and shouting. She saw nothing but this enclosing tunnel of raw, wild green. She felt nothing but the dirt against her skin and the sweat beginning a river down her back.
She may as well have crawled forever, she thought as now her arms and upper body threatened to give out and let the rest of her scramble over that alone. Now, however, she caught the glint of metal on black leather ahead of her—a loop for a bootlace framed in the tangle of branches. In one fluid motion, she braced her right foot under herself, pulling her knife free on the glide up. A straight sure slice opened his throat into a wide laughing grin before he could have even guessed at her presence. And just as smoothly, the Jackal buckled, down to a defensive crouch after the proof of entering the enemy’s turf, ready to do it all again.
And she did, thrice more.
Then the game changed.
Her target, a man who’s dirty blond hair nearly brushed his shoulders, cranked his head to see over his right shoulder. She had no idea how, but he knew she was there. His shoulder moved, his arm below it twitched after. He was reaching for a small side arm or a knife. Jackal drove hers through his kidney before he fully turned. Her left arm caught his sizable bicep as her knife tried to decide between throat, heart, and open stomach. As she hesitated, large hands swallowed her upper arms and pinched as they pinned them back. Disoriented by the truth of another getting the better of her, terrified of the promise of things to come, Jack panicked. She saw herself as a fish already in the bucket, useless and foolish. With all of her might, she pulled her lower body up, bracing and then kicking herself from the dying man she’d stabbed. The powerful movement launched her and her attacker over backward. She heard his skull smash into the ground. If she twisted viciously enough now, she could shatter his grip while he was dazed, and seize the upper hand.
The man under her back laughed.
Hands lea pt from the undergrowth, and hands grew up from the earth, latching hard onto her, fighting together to still her. Jackal went feral. Thrashing in their grip, she screamed and hissed, lashing out with murderous force with limbs, knees, heels, elbows, fists, forehead. In desperation she violently shrugged her body this way and that, all the while foaming at the mouth like some infected animal. At last something solid crashed into her head.
The world went black.
She woke with orange-sized seed pit inside her head, convulsing to split her skull and get out. The pain ringed her eyes and exploded through her forehead as if it wanted to give birth to a unicorn horn. From the aching base of her skull to the red waves radiating from her eyes and nose, her whole head throbbed. It took several staggered moments for her to register the separate splintering in her nose and stinging of her lip, to taste the copper blood. A fist or a heel had smashed repeatedly into her ribs and stomach, making her breath sharp and confusing her on whether she wanted to throw up or huddle around a ball of ice until the pain melted with it. Her arms were cut and bruised, her hands pulsated stubs with sticky congealing black, red, and brown grime. The short clipped nails were cracked and screaming from where she must have broken them on someone’s flesh or weapon. Her left knee shrieked where it seemed to have been dislocated, but someone had kindly snapped back. Surprisingly enough, the rest of her was intact. Jack shook her head over that unbelievable mountain. Men like these did not straighten dislocations. And they absolutely saw women as prey. She suppressed a shudder and wondered what sick special occasion she was being saved for.
The shudder gave her a basic sense of her bindings. Jack found herself in a white one-piece thick leather uniform that began at her throat, ended two inches past her wrists, and encased her feet. Fat matching leather thongs stitched her arms firmly to her sides in front and back from shoulder to elbow and stubbornly stitched her legs together from crotch to ankles. Surrounding her frame, broad straps cinched through flat metal buckles to conform the leather to her body shape.
Beneath, her skin informed her she still wore all of her own clothing, which only further bewildered her. Initially, Jack had assumed her bizarre costume might be some sort of BDSM toy for someone up the ranks. Now she wasn’t so sure. These men weren’t playing by the rules. The definitely didn’t strike her as domestics, as misguided fools who believed they were heroes, but they clearly missed the lecture branding them with the information that here in the wild, it was all red in tooth and claw.
Jack’s brain stewed over various tortures, over the things her captors might want to know, but sitting there in the last sliver of daylight, pulling herself into a sitting fetal position with her back against the grainy grey wooden wall, she let go. Whatever this was, this had nothing to do with the elimination strike. This was beyond all the rules she’d come by.
The gold and green light of day bled to darker shades, escaping by clawing up board by board of the aged stall Jack had been stabled in until the light itself got absorbed by the ceiling and disappeared, coating the building with onyx ink. Birds hushed, leaving only the sounds of night insects and the soughing of the wind through the sea of leaves. The canopy of the jungle choked out all moonlight or starfire. It’d be no use even if she could find a way out of this ridiculous restraint and then out of the stall itself. The straw cushioning the floor was dusty and lacked any animal excrement as far as she could tell. She wondered how long this building—and any others with it—had been converted for other uses.
Jackal watched the cracks between boards to get a grasp of how many guards patrolled outside. She could see the hellish lines of light and hear the crackling of their fire nearby. They must have set up a rather extensive, semi-permanent camp if they had a place to house prisoners.
The guards softly spoke to one another in a foreign language—no surprise, but it wasn’t Portuguese. In fact, she couldn’t unravel a syllable of it. Definitely not Brazilian then—but the words didn’t seem close enough to be Spanish. What then? French? Guiana had belonged to France once, didn’t it? But Jackal had no idea if any French still thrived there. She should have paid more attention to history classes. Or to the briefing. She was paying for it now. If she’d just had an inkling what was being said, it could be the difference between life and death.
One of the mercenaries hung an old lantern from a hook outside the stall as he made rounds. He unlatched the top half of the door and swung it inward. Jackal met his black eyes buried deep in his creased and bearded nut brown face with cold hatred. He showed only indifference as he scanned her over, clearly checking that her restraints still held. Without breaking his gaze, he turned his head slightly and shouted to his companions something unintelligible despite its clear ringing tone.
Jackal defiantly spat in his direction. The spittle fell short, but her intent didn’t. Again, the guard ignored her, and tilted the lantern as he scanned the rest of the stall. Jack’s gaze followed.
She wasn’t alone. Another woman sprawled on the far side of the box stall, mostly hidden in the deep shadow of the chinked wall and the deep clumps of musty straw. The shapeless woman had flopped there locked in rusty manacles and engulfed by her dingy shapeless dress for some time, long before Jack had gotten tossed in here unconscious. Jack shuddered inside with the realization that she had been awake herself for over two hours and had not heard a sound, not so much as a breath, from the far side of the stall.
The woman laid so still, she may as well have been comatose. Or catatonic. Her eyelids flickered now and again, and her chest rose and fell, proving her awake. Once or twice a finger twitched, but no more. Jack called out to her in a loud whisper, first in English, then butchering Portuguese and Spanish. No reaction. Blink, blink. Blink, blink.
Jackal gave up on her quickly. She might have been a deaf mute, but that was unlikely. Drugged perhaps. Whatever the men did to her, she was gone from her skull. Gone from the earth itself, apparently. Which, whether this stranger proved the middle-aged domesticated weakling she appeared or not, meant that Jackal had to find a way out. Now.
Jack surged about, nearly toppling over as she cast about for a weapon. The mercenaries had to feed them sometime. When they did, she intended to be ready for them. If this were a permanent prison they used, there was a chance she might find something useful in the aged bedding, whether dropped by a former inhabitant or a guard. Her hands raked up the straw to either side while her feet stirred up a circle whose diameter was the length from toes to nearly hips. Uncovering more dust—causing even the silent sufferer to sneeze up a storm—Jack braced her weight the heels of her hands and feet and inched several feet to her right, towards the back of the stall, to try again. Unfortunately, the light refused to reach so far back, so she had to try her desperate best by feel. Grime, grime, the needle pricking of aged straw under her finger nails, into the delicate crevasses of her hands, only interrupted by sneezing fits that made her aching head feel as though it slammed over and over into concrete. She gave up in despair, contenting herself to allow her eyes to rake the ceilings and walls for anything—weapons, information even. Minutes bled into hours, leaving Jackal helpless for the first time in her life, trapped with only a mute idiot for a companion. She tried to force her breathing into a strong regular shape, but panic welled within her as time ticked away, promising only torture or death.
Abruptly, the guard who placed the lantern framed himself in the doorway, far enough into the yellow light for her to recognize him. The paling light behind him signaled dawn. Surely she had not curled here all night, wrought with terror and mad out of her mind trying to determine her fitting torture? He said something, or so she thought, but Jackal stared at him, as wild now as any caged animal. He repeated himself, then gestured to her, then her companion. Jack shook her head helplessly, clueless to what he wanted. He seemed to swear softly before turning to call to someone farther down the cells with a wave of his hand.
Every chord in Jackal rang out, every muscle tensed and shrieked. Red alarms screamed through her skull as she desperately scrabbled back from the entrance. This was it. Dear God, this was it—
Another man appeared in the doorway and peered in, exhaling in boredom or possibly disgust. His soft dispassionate reply could have been anything from, “What do you want?” to “Kill them.” The two discussed in near whispers, gesturing now at one woman, now the other, now at things beyond Jackal couldn’t see, even at each other. Her pulse thundered. This was it. This was definitely it. How she would meet her vile end, justly deserved—
The men entered. Jackal thrust herself backward only to slam herself into the wall. The first spoke again to her, this time motioning in away she took to mean to stand up or get lifted up. She struggled harder then in the ridiculous leather contraption, only to find one man to each side, firmly aiding her to her feet. They endeavoured to lift her together, their arms forming a sling under her lower back and her bent knees, but Jack screamed, howled, and lunged rabidly to rend the flesh from their faces. Setting her back on her feet, for the most part the men ignored her as they apparently discussed a better way to move her. After a short but intense debate, the newcomer pulled out a well-loved Bowie knife and gestured downward in front of her. Jack tilted back with a grunt and tried to knee him in the groin, but failed miserably. After some thought, the lantern bearer nodded curtly, gesturing for his comrade to proceed. The other man knelt to the side and carefully slit through Jack’s bindings from a few inches below her knees clear through the last lashing her feet. Taking her up again by her upper arms, the lantern holder ordered and gestured her to walk with them. With no other trick to try, she obliged them.
As they neared the end of the stables, the foul smell made their destination clear. They were taking her to some sort of latrine site. Jack knew quite well that the promise of a latrine did not necessarily mean safety or honourable intentions. She frowned hard at one then the other of the pair. Their features were relaxed but concentrated. However, she found no eagerness or anticipation, and slipped inside herself, thoroughly baffled. She was a rare female prisoner, for God’s sakes. Men hard as this, men as alone as this, ought to be crudely trying to steal a feel or more. A dark thundercloud boomed inside of Jackal’s head as she considered the level of discipline required of such troops. Suddenly, she was praying for a quick death at the latrine with two brutes rather than a forced meeting with whomever commanded such mercenaries.
Jackal felt her hopes deflate when they merely locked her in the tiny wooden hut and by the placement of their shadows seemed to stand guard. They had taken extreme care to prevent harm or escape as they deftly unlaced the rest of the lower garment and then indicated what scant toiletries existed before double locking the door behind them. She scoured the inside of the weathered wooden walls for anything useful, but still found nothing. Resignedly, she sighed, went about her business, and called out with a knocking to the guards. It seemed that before she could blink, the men had her trussed up again.
The second man gestured as he spoke for her to lean her head back. He then struck her dumb by indicating a bucket of water and what looked like soap at his feet. She nodded, and let him unbind and shake out her long ribbons of ebony hair and then every so tenderly wash it from root to tip. He combed in carefully with a plastic one he pulled from his pocket, then used a handkerchief to gently wash the dirt from her face. As he did so, she got a good look at him.
She estimated him at least six inches taller than him with a good strong fighter’s build and the same dark complexion as the first man. His handsome features were framed beautifully by his short spiky black hair, his fashionably trimmed beard, and pale as honey hazel eyes. He had a slim scar marring his left temple. He had torn the sleeves off his coat and shirt beneath it, most likely from the midday heat that squeezed a man dry in the jungle. Thin scars peppered his arms, but what struck her in the stomach was the fat, raised curving scar that tore across his left shoulder and a jagged one to match streaking down his left bicep, both unmistakably born of a large knife. She had the strangest urge to touch them, to cement their realness in her mind. These came from a deadly knife fight. She knew, she bore several herself. And she knew their would be more dancing across his muscled chest and stomach—all closer calls than this. Around the telling scars were the smaller jabbing ones that announced to the world where bullets had smashed in and later gotten yanked out.
Jackal blinked and looked him in the eyes with sudden respect before she could help herself. To cover her personal gaffe, she snarled at him, all white vicious teeth. He gave no reaction but a mild glance before looking to his companion and nodding that the three of them should move on.
The men did not lead her back to her stall, which raised her hackles once again with distrust. She looked up and around as they marched. The stables slipped away behind them, to the left stood a long somewhat shabby and rusted looking shed, and to the far right of the clearing Jack made out a fair-sized cottage that wept for a new coat of paint and other minor fixes. A road—which was really vegetation driven over and over until it was mostly packed dirt—swung in and arc that connected them all and ended at the cottage. The other end of the road trailed into the jungle, well past the shed. She saw the remnants of the few campfires she’d seen in the night, and a few depressions in the cleared undergrowth that marked where bedrolls or tents hand recently stood.
Abruptly the men stopped, so quickly she swung forward between them, only their strength holding her upright. A brief hushed argument erupted between the two before they came to a decision. Now the testosterone pricked her nostrils. Now the tension clotted across her tongue. She stiffened, knowing it would be no use as the pair urged, then dragged, her to the charcoal shed. It would be in here. Out of sight, out of mind. It would be in here where they could have some fun before tossing her to their leader for her execution. And for once in her life, there would be nothing she could do about it. They stopped—and she struggled—while the lantern man rolled up the vehicle door so they could go in.
The neat interior boasted only the dimmest lighting. The jeeps and trucks all lined up neatly along the walls. The center held a double line of what appeared to be flatbed trailers. The only other thing she could make out in the darkness was that the far wall had a giant mound of fertilizer or compost to each side of the door. Shovels, hoes, and other gardening and landscape tools hung neatly from the wall to either side. As they walked down the darkened pathway—Jackal terrified out of her wits for her safety and her life—she noticed that a number of the trailers carried something. More gardening? In the jungle? Jack snorted to herself preposterously. Each trailer that presented a full load had been covered tightly with canvas or tarps.
Jackal could see from where they walked at the middle of the building that the very last one had not been fully lashed down, and she found that curiosity got the better of her. This was the first thing in the whole camp that had piqued her interest for reasons other than a possible means to escape. Maybe if she knew what these people were doing down here, she’d have an edge, could find some way to lie or convince them of her use to them alive. She wracked her brain as hard as she could. There was always a way out. Always. She would find it. Or she would die. She crushed the thought and forced herself on.
Corpses covered the flatbed. Jack blinked at the twisted features, the frozen moans of agony etched on the slate grey canvas of flesh. Her eyes darted out of their corners at her guards, trying to find clues as to their intent. The faces remained impassive, looking only straight ahead. The men didn’t so much as slow. Jack’s brain reeled. So, she was not to be beaten and raped and left for dead on this gruesome pile. Why, then? Her eyes snagged on a uniform that matched hers. On a gaudy tattoo poking out from under the left sleeve, even more garish against the greyness of death. As the trio moved past, her head whipped around, caught on the face.
Eric. Bentley. Eric Bentley—like the car but faster. He had been so proud of that introduction, thinking he was some slick-shit lady killer. Thinking that it must work on a girl rough enough to find work with this kind of crowd. Now dried blood and bits of brain ruined his pretty face and his head caved in on the left side, leaving his skull awkwardly flat and leaking on the wooden planks, like a half deflated helium balloon.
Before she could process it, Jack squinted painfully at the sudden brightness outside. By the time her eyes adjusted, she locked on more carnage dragged home. The bodies sprawled from the rusty wall for about twenty feet along the road into the jungle. She couldn’t see how far back past the treeline the dead massed, but it didn’t matter. She could clearly see the corpses piled as high as her hips. For thrill and trophy, or for study, or even for an honest to God funeral, she didn’t know—she didn’t care—she’d lost all ability to even imagine.
What were they doing with them? What? her brain demanded senselessly. For the first time in her life, Jackal felt icicles drip down her spine and terror wrap her gut and bowels with boa constrictor perfection. She was going to die here—just one more body on the heap. She had to find a way out, she had to! And despite her expertise, these killers exceeded even her skills. They left a lady without so much as a bone to work with.
Jack sawed between her captors, hoping her weight would unbalance them and—and what? She’d hobble to freedom in this alien bondage condom, mincing her steps like some southern belle in the tightest dress and highest heels in history? Yeah, right. Maybe she could out-worm them on her stomach through the trees. Her determination whistled out around her collarbones, leaving her to face the horrific sense of absolute hopelessness.
Her last futile lunge nearly wrung tears from her as she tripped over her own helpless feet. As the men swung her up to right her, she tripped again, as another corpse clawed for attention, distressing in its stillness. These remains were Greely’s. She recognized him by the fancy gold watch poking between the ragged dark green cloth over it and what was left of his dark, dark skin. She never thought she’d be identifying people she’d known by their watches. Of course, she hadn’t exactly whittled the hours trying to place what each of her comrades would look like headless or torn to such ragged bloody strips that clothing and skin would completely mask their identities. Biting her lip, Jack forced herself to look away before she gagged in front of her captors. It wasn’t fair. Greely had been such a handsome man—such a blinding smile, those pearls against his ebony skin, such a touchable soft cap of curls on his head. She knew for a fact, she’d caressed them enough years ago.
Grief over Greely gripped her so hard, she nearly stepped on Lambert’s body. Jack squealed and hobbled around him, using the mercenaries restraining her to boost herself free. Lambert had grabbed her ass too many times over the years, but with him, it was always clear he wanted to see if he could get away with it—and better, to get a rise out of her, which truly didn’t take much in testosterone-infested tight spaces choked with adrenaline. Still, those minor crimes had not earned him the crude pair of spears rammed beneath his diaphragm just to erupt in splinters—one jutting against the bottom of his right scapula in the back, the other broken and twisted to ram through his throat and out his left nostril. Shuddering, Jack wondered if he had still been alive to choke on his own blood or if those vicious spikes had burst his heart first.
The two men steered Jackal away from the massive open grave, speaking in rushed, hushed tones to one another over her head as they sternly directed her stiff unwilling body across the road to the central clearing. Lifting her head, Jackal made out a small gathering that bit her with sheer surreal domestic quality after the previous atrocities. How could these people just—walk around? As if nothing were wrong?
Her escorts seated her roughly on a high, heavy wooden chair at a long table crafted of the same weathered boards that made up the stable. Each place setting contained spoons only, napkins and plastic glasses—nothing sharp. People fluttered about the far end of the table, conversing softly, but Jackal’s head reeled so sharply, they all became a dark fog dancing at the edge of her vision.
The men strapped waist with something like a seat belt, locking solidly into the underside of the tabletop. Knees and ankles buckled into the chair itself. Her arms followed—suddenly sliced free by that impressive knife—next expertly wrapped in ropes that sawed over her shoulders and pulled her arms close to the elbow where they seemed to move as if on a pulley so that she had some motion. She tested the bonds and wondered at this before she realized she was not alone. To her left were three women, hair pasted against scalps with sweat and dirt, sobbing softly. With a start, Jack recognized two them—Annette and Marjean, who worked on the desk end. Since there really was no “desk” end, they were highly paid prostitutes available for the men. The third woman’s face was swollen and red as she filled another bucket of tears. Her black hair streaked across her face, shielding her features. Jack had a sinking feeling this was another of the women from the camp.
Clearly, the men here had figured out where the women had been kept in relative safety several miles back from where her own crew had plummeted in such disaster. A new chill lapped Jack’s skin. If these people had known where the women were—and Jack herself was the only survivor of the strike, never once interrogated—her team had been doomed long before they set out. They’d been set up. Sold out. Or worse, had been baited by these very men and not tipped off by an outside source. The crushing weight of the horror of the situation pressed her head to her chest in an attempt to hide—or equally possibly, to curl up into a fetal position and bawl her eyes out like she was still six years old and boys on the playground still chucked rocks at her.
She took a few ragged breaths, trying to calm herself. If she wanted to survive this game, she had to grip a clear head. And the way it looked, a chance at survival slimmed with every second. Deep in her tough leathery heart, Jack knew that the game now changed to a question of how long she could hang on. How much she could take before she broke. Her eyes scraped quickly over the tear-tracked women, red-faced and bawling or screaming their windpipes raw. Stonily, Jack bit her lip, enough to draw the metallic taste of blood. Only the women had been taken alive. Of course. Which meant one thing. She’d been right before. It didn’t make sense however, why these men dragged out the inevitable. Petrifying as the thought was, part of Jack would really rather just get the beatings and rape over and done with so she could die in dignity. She risked a glance over at her soft companions. She thought the women knew their fate, but who knew with pretty fragile things? For all Jack knew, the girls might actually still be madly holding out for a Prince Charming.
A commotion ruffled the other end of the table, catching Jack’s attention. A broad, powerful man of average height approached the table with sure strides across the green from the cottage. A few gasps and muffled cheers buoyed up the light applause.
Jack blinked hard. Applause? For this man past his prime, with his short tight wavy black hair spinning to silver above his ears and his charismatic features running to etched lines at eyes, mouth, and forehead, shamelessly bursting a warm smile on these monsters? He must have cut quite a figure in his prime, but that couldn’t win him a position of authority. Where were the iced eyes of the killer? The sneer curling his lip as he contemplated endless carnage wrought from the single body of the one he locked in his sights? Jackal shivered in disbelief. There was none.
The commander tossed up his hands and spoke to his congregation in their own tongue, as unintelligible as the day before. He clutched shoulders of men with hearty pats on the back, he pressed women’s wrists to his lips before swallowing them in hugs. Wait. Jack’s heart slammed into her sternum. Women? Sure enough, nearly a third of the chattering cloud she’d ignored up until now was comprised entirely of beaming, joyous women—healthy, happy, and as dark of hair and tan of skin as the men, ranging from their mid-twenties to their mid-forties. Women? Where the hell had they come from? Were they wives? Daughters? Sisters? What? Far too weak for soldiers, and far too conservative in their black and navy dresses for harlots, they baffled Jack so thoroughly she almost didn’t register that the entire assembly headed her way.
Jack stiffened as the commander stopped on the other side of the table in the center of the seated women. He flashed that politician smile at them despite their howling and sobbing, and opened his arms almost in welcome.
“You now be here with us, chosen ladies,” he began slowly and jarringly, astounding Jackal with the sudden emergence of English.
His voice rolled thickly with accent, and he spoke with the potholes of learning the language years ago and only now attempting to speak it. She didn’t care. This man had answers—maybe she could find a way to work off a reprieve and at least keep her life. At least that. Her heart thundered and lurched so wildly she was sure it would burst forth and gallop off into the jungle and freedom. She hardly breathed, terrified of missing a syllable.
“You, our fine guests,” he continued, “be welcome. We make for you your dish, a special dish. To break fasting and for to open family.” He clapped his hands, and looked over the women’s heads with a curt nod. Jack couldn’t turn to see who or what was behind her. Disembodied hands darted in to place a covered dish in front of each woman. Steam rose from them, and a crackling noise abruptly popped from the middle woman’s platter.
The commander lightly touched the two silver lids closest to him, carefully meeting each girl’s gaze as he spoke. Jack’s bowels tightened. There. There it was. The hard glitter that locked out the humanity kept deep in the pupils. “You eat this, I am trust. Refuse strong hand,” he let the words linger as one hand opened loftily above their heads, “be crushed,” he frowned, balling his hand up into a white-knuckled shaking fist. On that ominous note, he stepped back, joining his retinue as the servers behind the women lifted the steaming covers.
Delicate leaf work edged the oval platters, the kind that forty years before would have found elegant. The base of the platter had a dark lettuce carpet artfully sprinkled with small white flowers beside heart-shaped crimson leaves common to the area. The dish opened like a centerpiece to fill the plate. The bowl spread big enough that she could pick it up in her hands to sip from had wanted to with her palms only bracing the sides, several inches at both top and bottom preventing them from touching. The dish itself appeared similar to stirred steaming grits or possibly some sort of white curry dish peppered with thin inch square pieces of meat that reminded her of bacon.
Jackal wrinkled her nose at the scent lingering underneath the fried fatty scent that made her stomach growl and her head think of her mother’s pork chops. However the servants had garnished the breakfast, a bitter scent plunged deep into her nostrils and made a grudging nest. Though nothing appeared wrong with the curds, it made her hesitate. She trusted her nose as well as eyes or ears. If it said something was wrong, it was for a good reason.
Jack was tilting her head from side to side, seeking for some glaring discrepancy. The ivory bowl itself was heavy and uneven, and seemed from this angle seemed unfinished—completely out of place with the presentation. Something tickled the back of her mind about the contours, but refused to fall into place. Her brain had only begun to unwillingly trigger an answer when one of the other women ripped into piercing screams riddled with sheer madness, bucking fiercely on her chair in her hysteric convulsions. The other women turned their heads to her and joined in the shrieking chorus of insanity. Jack only spared a glance at what they’d uncovered. Underneath the protective covering, her mind already knew. She didn’t need to see the orbital or the maxillary fragments on the sideways bowl grinning straight at her to know five skulls perched on the plates, offering up this ruse of breakfast like an offering to some extinct dark god.
The commander made a motion. The retort of a pistol echoed off the dense jungle walls around them, and the madwoman that had toppled from sanity to writhed helpless on the floor fell silent. A fat ruby marred her smooth skin above her fine brows. Her brown hair soaked in the mess of skull and blood and brain. The similarity pinched Jackal green, and despite her intimate history with corpses, she had to look away. She had no idea which member of the crowd fired. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that dead woman had claimed a better fate. No. How could she think like that? She must survive. She must. She had no other choice!
A stone plummeted to Jack’s stomach. The only bodies fresh enough—had been her comrades. Bile rushed up her throat. Which of her friends squatted here now, one last time? She swallowed hard, forcing her lurching bones and contorting muscles to be still, to make not a twitch or a sound. If she gave no reaction, these monsters had less hold over her. Without extra punishment she drew on herself, she would live longer. That was all that mattered. She nailed it foremost in her thoughts. Survive. Above all costs, survive.
Jackal soaked in one last image of her bullet-pierced female comrade. The sobbing terrified women lined up to her left bled into her mind. Her eyes dropped on her skull bowl, hoping it wasn’t Greely. Then again, the thought lightninged, perhaps it would be fitting to consume and absorb and devour her ex-lover completely. Complete this demonic ritual as a funeral rite and take him away in a last act of love. Jack choked on the morbidity of her imagination and shook her head violently until it cleared of such madness. Still, the choice sprawled before her.
Brains. Human brains. Or die.
Survival.
Jack picked up her spoon, again wondering which of her companions had been the unlucky donor. She’d read somewhere—or perhaps someone had mentioned it—that in studies of creatures that ate the brains of their own kind (especially in humans), the recipient descended into an agonizing madness that after a few short years yielded only death. It gave her pause. She may not have that handful of years. But, a few short years was better than instant execution, so Jack scraped a tiny bit of the grey matter up and rolled it onto her tongue. Each globule caught in the back of her throat, inducing her to gag. This, she sensed, was a trick. To give the bad guys an excuse. She did not rise to their paltry occasion. Instead, she swallowed without a grimace, without an eyelid creasing. The pasty gelid consistency might have been overlooked if it hadn’t been so horribly bitter and sour. They may as well have rolled up the disgusting mixture of the lower intestine and coated it in vomit. Still. Survival.
The women beside her were throwing up and screaming. Meanwhile, she felt all eyes stapled to her, in curiosity. Jackal distracted herself as she took in each tiny spoonful. Hadn’t she also read somewhere brain was supposed to be delicious? Why else would the French or whoever serve it as a delicacy? She pondered briefly insulting the chef before deciding against it. Too big of a risk, too little to gain. This place had enough danger to float in already. Besides, maybe if she didn’t call them on the obvious lacing of mild poison the dish, she might earn some twisted respect. Maybe fleece them into bestowing special privileges, and use them to escape.
Jack had no idea what the little reddish-brown cooked squares had been, but she knew that they had originated with the same body the brains had. No matter. She needed something to kill this taste, or she would lose the fight and her own brains would plaster the woods behind her and no doubt her body would be used for foul things before its own marination. She scooped some brain up on the square onto her spoon. It killed enough of the taste to continue in her numb, painstaking determination. She summoned all her training and will power to blend, to keep her alive. To keep her from gagging. To keep the vile chunks going down.
Warm hands encased hers, stilling them. Another fleeting pair pulled her macabre feast away. Stupidly, Jackal’s glazed gaze roamed about, seeking something solid. She had locked her thoughts so deeply and tightly up inside her own skull to keep her sanity, she had no grasp of how long she’d sat there, mechanically shoveling human flesh into her gullet. She had no idea how much she’d even forced down. A glance the left showed a line of women with identical dents above their flawless features oozing raspberry jelly, their perfect tresses stained forever with gore. Failures, all. And Jack had never even heard a shot.
Her eyes welled. Madness, shock, terror, who cared at this point. She hadn’t shed a tear since the third grade, and now the entire Amazon basin threatened behind her lashes. She just wanted… what? To stop? To survive? She had no idea anymore. She had no idea if her life was worth it. Worth preserving after all this. But the selfish seed lodged in her heart still beat, still fought the rest of her to continue to beat.
The warm hands shook both of hers lightly, almost joyously. Congratulatory, Jack realized in the haze of her beleaguered thoughts. The commander’s grin spread as wide as a picket fence. His fatherly hazel eyes rained down approval and blessings. Jack could only feel small and lost.
“I own you now. You are seeing this, yes? No way for escape.” She nodded weakly, her head feeling as though it might fall off. “You do what I say, for what you must, or you die. Yes?” Jack nodded again. “Like we all,” he gestured grandly to the men and women with midnight dress and weapons, every face calmly accepting or radiating with a beatific smile. “And we make happiness. Family. Ah, ah,” he stumbled, fingers snapping as if to pluck the words from the air. “Family of jaguar. Now you, too. Worthy.”
He lightly brushed his lips across each set of knuckles as if in blessing. The act unwound a warm enveloping sensation from the base of her spine, engulfing her entirely in a sure sea of acceptance. Of having found her place. Abruptly, Jackal realized she was standing with him, that someone had freed her from her restraints and helped her to her feet. They’d vanished before she’d even noticed. She stood before the savage congregation in the knifed remains of her white leather garment, and her dirt and soak-stained clothing beneath. But at last, she could move.
The commander took her preciously by the shoulders. “Tomorrow it is my son his birthday. Present is being you. The perfect one that we seek.” He gestured to her right, where off to the side stood the handsome young man that had helped her about that morning. Jackal nodded faintly. Of course. The perfect Jackal taking the perfect Jaguar as a mate. With her new baptized eyes, she saw the suppleness and stealth in his every movement. A suitable match. One that could only be borne and tested in the harshness of this raw forgotten world.
Jackal met the commander’s anticipating gaze with a steady one of her own.
He brushed her cheek lightly with his knuckles, another paternal smile pricking his lips as he leaned to embrace her.
“Yes, you see. You have come home now.”
Mischa Fox 