Chapter 3
Ruzzell burst into a raucous roar of laughter; a menacing guffaw that unzipped us all. I had walked into his snare. No, leapt into it. Head first. Hook, line and sinker. Stoopid! The thug was waiting for a chance to assert his dominance. Into the silence left in the wake of his crowing cackle, he clicked his knuckles. Loud.
All I know is that I ducked the first cannonball fist launched in my direction, and I think I dodged another two after that. Several certainly found their mark; I woke up an hour or so later with a pounding headache, blood trickling down my nose, and a thickened lip. My swollen right eye throbbed—Ruzzell Hunt was a southpaw. I couldn’t even remember trying to land a punch of my own.
I wasn’t quite sure where I was until I heard a voice. “Rist … Ristan … over here!”
I looked up, and despite my fuzzy vision, I saw Jordin with our Raptor-feather broom in his hand. He had evidently been sweeping out the Base Stump communal area.
“Rist … in coming…” A wet rag slapped onto my chest.
“Cheers, Jordi.” I was about to wipe my face when a bout of the woozy struck.
“Sorry, Ruzzell wouldn’t let us help you,” said Jordin as he maintained his distance. “I can’t go near you and…”
I must have passed out again because when I stirred I couldn’t remember the end of my conversation with Jordin. What came to mind, however, were the words of my Dad’s favourite song. I could never recall the tune, but the words stuck. I knew them by heart. At least, I knew Dad’s version by rote. (While he had a photographic memory when it came to things like the periodic table, dear Dad could never remember a song. So, he just made up his own words.)
When you bundle through a squall
Keep your head on high
Don’t be scared of the dark
For when the storm ends
You’ll find a golden sky
The sweet sound of a lark
Walk on then in the wind
Walk on then in the rain
Even if your dreams are tossed and torn
Walk on then, keep hope in your heart
For you’ll ne’er be alone
No, you will ne’er walk alone
The words had a thoroughly therapeutic effect on me even though I felt so alone. I didn’t know who penned the words. Or what a lark was. And I had never seen a golden sky. But the phrase “don’t be scared of the dark” was pertinent in an eerie, bone-chilling way. “Dreams are tossed and torn” was a gross understatement given how the last decade had panned out, but the call to “walk on” simple enough to embrace as a life motto. More than anything, it was Dad’s song—an anthem from a famous football team he supported as a kid; a hymn that captured his faith towards the end.
I ran through the words again and felt my strength return. Sitting up, I stretched a creak out of my back. Although the swelling was more acute, my head felt clearer. The sun, directly overhead, told me it was around noon and shafts of violent violet sunlight pierced through the jungle-foliage canopy. Blistering hot, my soft, winter-paled skin was already sizzling, but I knew it would toughen up into a brown, tanned tone in the days ahead.
I then noticed Jordin stoking the camp fire.
“Where’s he?” I asked, not knowing how much ground we’d covered earlier.
“Are you back for real this time?”
“Yep, think so,” my voice sounded like I was gargling with gravel. I coughed hard to clear my throat. “So ... so, where is he?”
“Gone … They’ve all gone hunting; foraging. Nads went with Dixan in your place.”
I wiped the blood from my nose with the rag Jordin had tossed to me, and pulled myself up slowly. When was the last time I was knocked out? My mind tried to shift into gear. Yes, when I ran into a low-hanging branch chasing a wounded Hog … not my finest moment. That was last year, before Victor died.
“Are you okay?” asked Jordin, still keeping a fair distance between us. Even with Ruzzell away hunting, Jordin’s fear of him dictated his actions.
“Yes,” I replied at first. Then an upshot of anger pumped through my body. “No! What happened?”
“Ruzzell walloped you—”
“You reckon?” I said, my anger trumping the pang of guilt I felt for venting my sarcasm. “I know that part … what, did you all just watch?”
“Ummm … yeah,” he mumbled sheepishly.
I kicked the ground. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but I was hopping mad. The only reason we had survived this long was because, as a clan, we stuck together. We had an unwritten code. It was our way of life, a manner of living that maintained a sense of harmony and humanity. We all, unspoken though it was, were grateful to be part of this clan—certainly under Victor’s oversight. Now our life was draining from us, and it seemed I was the only one prepared to fight for it. Or in actuality, take a beating for it.
And what was up with Judd? Surely what Ruzzell did was beyond peace-keeping efforts?
“Did I punch back?” I heard myself grunt the question.
“Yes, you caught him with a few—”
“And how’s Gellica?” I asked, just happy to hear I did make more of a showing than I could recall.
“She went with Ruzzell,” he avoided the real question. “Rist, really, what did you expect us to do?” Despondency stretched across Jordin’s face, making him look half his age. Timid and vulnerable. I wanted to reassure him somehow.
“Nothing from you, Jordi.” It came out harder than I meant it. “I don’t know,” I tried again, “but he can’t do this.”
“Rist, you’ll just make it worse.”
I blinked hard and bit my lip. “What…?!”
“You-you’ll make things worse…” Jordin mumbled, sensing my agitation.
“So you want to let Ruzzell destroy everything your father built here?” I hit the raw nerve with unintentional accuracy. I shook my head, annoyed with myself.
You know better.
Jordi’s face went white as the blood drained from it. Tears soon followed. Before I could shuffle over to him, he started sobbing … heart-wrenching bawling. It wasn’t pretty.
I threw my arms around him. It just happened. Turned out easier than I thought.
Jordin collapsed in my hold; his whole body heaved with grief and anguish. “I so miss him … why did he have to die? … I hate them … I hate them!”
“Okay … okay,” I tried to comfort him as best I could, hoping secretly that I could shed a tear, too. It’s been too long. Nothing. Not a trickle.
“Why?” he screamed hysterically—it was so jarring I got a fright.
I found myself reiterating the prayer Victor had taught us: “The Lord bless you; the Lord keep you…” That’s all I could remember. I repeated it several times.
It had the desired effect. The sobbing slowed down; his body stopped heaving. “Okay, my friend. I’m here for you.”
My efforts to console him didn’t last long.
Hearts jumped into throats as the shrill, terrible ca-cawing sound pierced the air and tore at our nerves.
Jordin snapped out of his grief instantly. His eyes wild with terror. I cranked into hyper vigilance despite my headache and the restricted vision on my right side.
“Them?” Jordi’s question was laced with dread, his body strained.
“No, Raptor for sure. Shhh!” They didn’t like the light; they preferred hunting at night. I listened for the heavy thrash of wings in the air.
We both heard it at the same time.
Overhead. Close. Sweeping down on us.
The bird of prey’s nerve-jangling ca-caw blitzed my eardrums as I felt the air about me churn in response to its powerful wings.
“Quick!” I yanked a stiff-with-fear Jordi towards the river. Every muscle in my body stood to attention, my mind crystal clear on what to do. It wasn’t exactly the first time I was confronted with this predicament. Dodging Raptors was as commonplace as avoiding a school bully, or that was how Victor had expressed it. The c
onsequences were vastly different, I guess.
The massive bird of prey rushed thunderously past us, missing Jordi narrowly; its terrible talons tearing at thin air. I knew it would circle and try again. We were about ten strides from the water. My head was throbbing, my vision blurry. We had to make it. I wouldn’t let Jordin share his mother’s fate.
About twenty strides wide, we could swim across the river underwater easily enough. While Raptors weren’t crazy about the river; more importantly, on the other side of the river, we kept our pile of decomposing Hog—from where we garnered our paste for bed time, and available for just such occasions.
We plunged head-first into the warm water of the river moments before the four-winged beast launched its second strike.
A Raptor didn’t carry its prey away. Once it had sunk its teratoid talons into its victim in a vice-like clamp, it would gouge its prey using its monstrous beak. And then the grisly feast would commence; gorging itself on fresh blood and strips of lacerated flesh … while its catch was still alive. Usually where one Raptor ate, many more would quickly join, materialising seemingly out of thin air; their bald, violet-coloured heads and wings stark against their blazing red underbellies. A human could be devoured by a cawing murder of Raptors in a wild three-minute feeding frenzy. A furious flurry of vivid purple and red.
We held our breath for as long as we could, and then burst out on the other side of the river, landing straight into our life-saving stash of rotting Hog carcasses.
By now, we easily stomached the stench when applied selectively to our night wear, although we were never completely comfortable with it. Tumbling into the middle of several decaying carcasses was a different matter altogether.
We both started retching and gagging, and the only thing that kept us rooted to our spot was the sight of a determined Raptor slashing the air with its colossal wings, eager to advance, but unable to endure the reek.
We don’t know why. We knew that the Raptor preferred live food, and devoured its prey fresh. While it would scavenge off the carcass of a new kill, it became fussier when a carcass started to decompose. However, it would not come within five strides of the rotting flesh of a Hog.
I grabbed a handful of rotting entrails and tossed the guts at the Raptor. Screeching its annoyance as the intestinal missile slapped into its head and swung around its beak, it shook its pecker violently before arcing in midair and beating a hasty retreat.
“Stupid bird!” yelled Jordin punching the air with an upshot of relief mixed with belated bravado.