“I’m so hungry, I’ll grab ‘em like a bear — with my teeth.” Emma grinned. She quickly found a six-foot-long stick, and drew her knife to knock the end into a spear shape. She held it up to examine.
“Ready, Tarzan?” Ben grinned.
“That’s Jane to you.” She nodded and then nodded towards the water. “Come on, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Ben waded in, pulling his knife, just in case something decided he was on the menu rather than vice versa.
The water wasn’t that clear, and he felt a gravel-like bottom under his feet. Clumps of weed and water grasses were becoming sparser the deeper he went. Silver torpedo shapes shot past him, one, two, and then another. Several were now between him and the reeds — just where he wanted them.
He took one last look at the deeper area of the pool and then started to turn, holding his arms out, as if herding cattle.
“Come on, guys, in you go.”
Ben could see out in front of him some of the shapes moving into the shallower water where the reeds poked up, and Emma waited with her sharp stick poised.
There came a splash from behind him, and he spun — at the center of the pond, something lumped and a V-shape started to head towards him.
“Ah, shit.” He began to back up, his knife ready.
Ben half turned. “How you doin’ there, Emma?” He continued to back away from the deeper water, his eyes fixed on the surface.
There was silence, and he wanted to turn, but knew that there was something in the water that might be a lot bigger than the fish… and it was making its way toward him.
“Emm?” Ben tightened his grip on his blade. “Emma?”
There was the sound of splash behind him, and then: “Ha!”
He continued to back up, as there came a sound of wet flapping. “Got one; a beauty.”
“Then I’m outta here.” He turned and started to run with high-legged strides out of the water. He saw that Emma was already moving up onto the dry bank with a fish flapping on the end of her stick.
When he got to the shallows he spun, just in time to see something the size and shape of a dolphin angle away, the water lumping as it turned,
“Jesus.” He blew air through his lips. “This place.”
He crossed to Emma who had already placed the fish on a rock and was using a knife to push it off the stick. She then pinned it down, holding it ready for him to work on. “Careful; looks a bit like a catfish, and I think there’s spines behind its head and gills.” She looked up, brows raised. “Anyone for Cajun-style blackened catfish?”
“I’m thinking more, catfish, sashimi style.” Ben reached forward. “Hold that sucker down.” He began to slice the fillets from it, laying them out on the dry rock. The blood ran down, and he immediately became concerned that the odor might attract the hunters.
“We need to be quick.” He stuffed a bit in his mouth. It was cold, muddy tasting, and he suddenly remembered why he liked sushi — because he used to drench it in salty soy sauce — not because he liked raw fish.
He chewed the meat from the tough skin and spat that out. “I’ve had better.”
Emma lifted a slice and held it over her mouth, winked at him, and then popped it in. She closed her eyes as she chewed and after a while removed the tough skin from her mouth.
She then smacked her lips. “Right now, just about anything would taste good.”
Ben turned. “It’s a good place to fish. As long as we don’t go out too far.” He nodded towards the pond. “Something out there got a little too curious. We should get this down quickly, fill up our canteens, and then head off before something else catches the scent of blood.”
“Yeah.” She nodded and popped another piece of fish into her mouth.
In another few seconds, the fish was gone, and Ben lifted the head with a string of bones attached and tossed it out into the center of the pool. Almost immediately there was a surge from a few different places as whatever was in there converged on the still-bleeding remains.
Ben then tossed sand and gravel up onto the bloody rock, but his hands were still sticky and smelled of fish.
“Let’s wash our hands and get moving.”
There was no way they could wade through the pool, and it extended right to the plateau edge so the only way forward was to follow the stream up into the jungle until they found a place shallow enough to cross. They had no choice but to enter the jungle depths.
Ben crept forward, and his feet squelched in a particularly muddy area. The tree roots were now growing mangrove-like up on stilt-like roots to try and stop their trunks drowning in the soaked landscape.
Unfortunately, the further they went, the more the river deepened and when he peered up along the water course, he saw it wasn’t getting any better further in. In fact, the jungle seemed more tangled, darker, and primordial, turning into a marshy bog-land.
Swarms of tiny black flies nipped at them and created a constant background whine in their ears.
“I don’t like it,” he whispered.
“I stopped liking it days back,” Emma responded softly. She nudged him. “Look.”
He followed her gaze. Underneath the stilt-like roots of a massive tree was a mound of rounded objects that looked like off-white river stones. Ben craned his neck, frowning at first as his mind tried to sort them into something recognizable.
They were each about two feet long, not round or oval, more oval-but-stretched like giant vitamin capsules.
“They look like leather,” Emma murmured.
“Yeah, like big, rubber footballs.” His memory nagged at him. “They remind me of something. I feel like I’ve…” Then his mind jumped back to a Congolese jungle mission from ten years back where his squad came across a python clutch — the massive snake had laid its eggs in a nest, and they looked the same — except less than about one-quarter of the size.
Mother of the river, he remembered as they stood on the edge of the water. He suddenly felt like he received an electric shock.
“Oh shit.” He grabbed Emma and started to drag her back the way they’d come.
“What?” She frowned as she backed up.
“Snake eggs,” he choked out and dragged her faster.
Emma gasped and her eyes widened. She turned and started to burrow through the mad, green tangle of vines, but Ben held on.
“Slowly… silently,” he whispered.
Ben tried to see everywhere at once, and he felt his neck tingle. There were just too many places that they could be ambushed from.
He held onto Emma, slowing her, but his mind kept screaming at him to run, and his legs wanted to obey.
He had to let Emma go so he could burrow a path for them through the thick tangle of vines, creepers, and fleshy fronds. His neck continued to prickle, but he needed to force himself to slow down — he’d seen the way the snake had been attracted by movement, so a couple of soft and warm bipeds, moving fast, would have drawn attention from any snake for hundreds of feet.
There was a crash behind him, and Ben swung back, gun up. But it was only Emma who had slipped and fallen to the ground. She grimaced and shook a hand she had just grazed against a rock.
“I’m okay.” She rubbed it against her chest.
They arrived back at the stream, still deep, and Ben stared, weighing up the risks. “Damn it, we go for it; it’s as shallow and narrow here as anywhere else.” He steeled himself. “Follow me.”
He gritted his teeth, gripped the knife, and headed in. The jungle was dark here, and it meant the water was like ink.
“Ah, Jesus.” He immediately sank to his waist and his boots were sucked into the ooze on the bottom. His testicles shriveled from fear.