In Which We Remain A Vagabond At Heart

You can read all the stories from our Saturday fiction series here.

Diegesis

by JOSHUA D. FRANK

A month out from their arrival on Tonga the three of them spied a small settlement in the distance. They'd been on foot through this deserted part of the island the entire time, and with one member of their party sick (or dying, depending on your point of view) it was a welcome sight. To think of food in such a place was a near impossibility, but every tiny outpost, even an abandoned one, was likely to have a source of fresh water.

They had been forced to let one of their cameras go when they last saw signs of human habitation, trading it for five gallons of water and a bag of highly caloric nuts which tasted something like burnt popcorn. Once you grew accustomed to it, the nuts weren't half bad, but the flavor stayed in Derwin's mouth for hours afterwards, turning sour and making him gag.

He left Tellman and Karen with the sidearm while he investigated the settlement alone. They had argued for a time about who should keep it, but he had won, although as he double-timed it unarmed in the direction of the largest structure, it did not feel like a victory. He did not particularly like the idea of leaving them. Tellman's attitude had gone from a sort of vague optimism to a spiritless drone rather quickly and he worried it might be contagious.

Along the way he saw several peka, the creepy Tongan fruit bats, circling overhead. Strange to see them out in the day. That they could not possibly want to consume human flesh was no comfort when he saw their weirdly coyote-like visages. Everything has a face, he thought. After forty-five minutes he stopped to slake his thirst, and the jungle had diminished enough to where he could see the structure more clearly. He had twisted his ankle on their first day on the island, and it ached now, but he pressed on.

From afar the structure resembled a simple hut, but the closer he ventured to it, the larger it became. At a distance of a hundred meters it loomed large overhead, almost blacking out the heat of the afternoon sun. From the overlaid carvings on the exterior it appeared quite old, but certainly not ancient. After approaching more closely, he decided it was a temple of some kind. Tellman would be unhappy he was not present for the discovery, but considering Karen's condition there had been no choice but that the man with some modicum of medical skill should care for her.

He tried the door, and it quickly gave way to his pull. He entered the temple only after finding twelve to fifteen huts of the kind he had imagined on the horizon surrounding the place. To his disappointment, but not to his surprise, they were all empty, and from the looks of it had been so for a long time. With the possibility of thieves and the occasional film crew accidentally stumbling on the settlement, anything of value was likely underground, and he could see no other viable access point.

As he entered the temple, he felt a cloud of dust enter his lungs and eyes, and some of it made its way into his mouth. He moved more cautiously into the anteroom after that, even as he grew more hopeful. If there were booby traps or deadfalls in this empty place, it only implied that there were items of value to protect.

The inside of the main chamber was filled with more carvings along the lines of what he had seen in the anteroom. All were done in a dark wood he could not identify: perhaps it was not even from the island. At the rear of the room was a rostrum, and behind it one large tableau to which all others seemed to direct and refer. The scene depicted an old and emaciated woman either leaning against a staff taller than herself as support or, as he decided was possible, commanding it. Behind her loomed what Derwin at first identified as a sun, but upon closer examination, the globe seemed to radiate no heat or energy, and he could see a landmass, faint but discernible, on its surface. Earth.

Next to the image of the old woman (he had to remind himself it was only a representation) was a small rodent or possum, most likely the woman's familiar. His eyes lingered on the old woman's face. There lurked both a quiet assurance and a subtle hint of fear. He did not know how long exactly he viewed the elaborate carving, but it was long enough to know he was not entirely well. When he tried to stand, propping himself on two legs felt fine for a moment, but then the light headaches would come in again.

When he woke there was no longer light coming in through the parapets. The woman was gone, and he was lying on his back in a different place. He smelled the dank aroma of popcorn with which he had become so familiar. He heard the sound of footsteps nearby, and tried to raise his head, but found he could not without furthering a dull, then searing pain in the back of his skull. Given a moment to his collect his wits, Derwin was sure he was experiencing the most savage hangover of his life. The only solution he knew of for a hangover was more alcohol, but when he reached into his pocket for the flask, he found it had vanished along with his only knife.

When a large figure entered the room, he immediately hid behind a wooden door. The slow moving shape entered, and seeing him no longer resting on the hard slate, let out an anguished cry. He pinned what he was now sure was a young man's hand behind his back and twisted. He would have threatened the boy quietly but his Tongan was rudimentary at best and pain would carry the message more quickly. What unnerved him was that the boy did not utter a sound after the first scream.

He noticed hanging from the boy's belt of rope, his only remaining knife. He had traded the other two he had brought with him in Vava'u for the seervices of a guide who had disappeared into the jungle as they marched west from the tourist-y part of the island. He pocketed the knife and slammed the boy's head as hard as he could against the door. Staring at the unconscious native, he knew that leaving him alive to follow was not a viable option. Leaning down, he plunged the knife into the boy's heart and felt a shudder: his own.

It did not take long at all to realize he was underground. By following a long pathway, lit by a torch every five meters, he worked his way back into the anteroom. There was the old woman again, in the thrall of the planet, and he realized that he had missed her. He wanted nothing more than to sleep on a pew, to rest the aching head that weighed heavier on his shoulders with every step, but he could not. The one saving grace was that his ankle felt fine, better than fine. His strength grew as he walked and then ran away from the village, and even the pain in his head began to abate.

Tellman and Karen were not where he had left them. The majority of their supplies and the remaining camera were hidden in a nearby bush. He hoped this meant they would not be gone long, but leaving such things unprotected and nearly in the open mystified him. At the bottom of the pack he found the satellite cell phone he could not imagine them leaving behind, no matter how long the trip. He tried to puzzle it out: they thought they would be back quickly and were attacked; something had happened to Tellman and neither of his colleagues could carry the pack. No explanation seemed to take all of the aspects into account, and then he noticed the date and time on the satellite phone.

If the clock was correct, he had been gone over thirty-five hours, which must have raised an alarm. But for them to move, with the condition Karen was in... Crossing a fragile rope-bridge the previous day, she had cut herself on the twisting boards as they splintered. Infection was the biggest fear, but she had also lost a lot of blood in the accident. Her legs might have carried her as far as the temple, but he could not see Tellman risking it if he was with her. He would have left her here to wait if he had done anything at all. Would he have taken the sidearm with him? Derwin could not answer that, but it also seemed probable.

He thought to himself, Tellman leaves to go find me. Karen can't carry the gear and must leave it behind if she wishes to follow. She hides it and comes after him. Within the realm of possibility, but again something was not right. As night began to fall more of the peka circled, chirping at him when he stood up to shoo them off.

After making another meal of the foul popcorn, he hid the majority of the gear in a more concealed spot, strapped the pack to his back, and resigned himself to heading back towards the temple. There was no place else they might have gone. Halfway out, the Tongan rain began, a drenching, unrelenting stream that at first cooled him off, and then began to chill him.

On the steps of the temple he found the boy. Feeling quite silly, he checked for a pulse. Still dead. He viewed the wound and found another incision on the left side of the torso. As he closed the corpse's eyes, a burst of sudden recognition arrived. Add a beard and perhaps one or two kilos around the midsection, and he was certain the young man had been their derelict guide, who had vanished with a camera and a pack after promising to scout the the way ahead more than a week ago. They had hired the boy to help them look for a grave, the final resting of place of a legendary aviator. Tellman had been so sure, that the woman's body had been traded for gold, interred and dug up, passed around so many times, he actually found himself believing it might be found here. It hardly mattered now.

He put an arm through the temple doors, and then extended his right hand, clad in a latex glove, to examine the substance he had ingested on his first go round. The color was a sickly green, probably a native poison of some kind. Incapacitated so, it was no wonder he was unable to recognize the guide as his victim. The influence of the substance may have also been what allowed him to take a life in such a cavalier fashion. He still did not feel entirely like himself.

He found a second entrance to the tunnel system quite by accident, hidden below the rostrum. He fought the urge to stay above ground, not to descend below. There was nowhere else to go, so he followed, dropping seed behind him as he went so he would not find himself moving in circles. Soon the sound of voices grew louder, and this time he did not try to return to the surface, following the dank path until it opened into a larger cavern. He hid near the entrance, and in a moment he saw a glimpse of Karen, seated on a makeshift chair. He thought to try to signal quietly. Before he chanced it, his eye was drawn immediately to her injured arm. She no longer wore a sling, and moved the limb without effort.

He simply watched then. After ten minutes, Tellman made his first appearance, and they both worked in front of laptops. He decided that what unnerved him most was that they did not speak to each other at all. Occasionally Karen would turn to the spectacled Tellman and look as if she might either say something or cry, but after a moment, she returned to eyeing her terminal.

When his eyes had fully adjusted to the lack of light in the room, two things jumped out. The first was that the room was completely flooded with the fruit bats. The peka inhabited the cavern like ants on a hill, and they barely moved except to clean themselves. They second was that his sidearm lay well within reach, if he could move without being seen or heard. His two travelling companions were so involved in what they were doing he doubted he would arouse their attention, but what if the bats took notice?

Instead he stood and calmly walked across the cavern. He made no move towards the gun. He simply went over and stood before them. "What's going on here?" he demanded.

Tellman held up a solitary finger. In a moment, the cavern began to shake, subtly at first, but quickly the vibrations grew stronger. He heard Tellman say, "The boy was strong, and you must have been in the first stages of the virus. I'm surprised you were able to overpower him." Derwin thought to explain that it had been self-defense, but realized the very idea of defending his actions was absurd. 

"She's well," Derwin said.

"She's an automaton," Tellman said. "It's necessary to have one on board."

"You tried to kill me," Derwin managed.

"I'm sorry for that," Tellman said. "I truly am. We needed organs in case ours fail during the trip. You and that autochthon have the same blood type. I'm not being deceitful when I say I hoped you would win, and I left the gear for you to prove it."

"How have you..." he began. "Why the bats?"

"They're quite nutritious and tasty," Tellman said. "We'll need lots of food. Get comfortable. It's a long ride."

Joshua D. Frank is a writer living in Portland.

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