Tales of the Lost: Monsters of the Amazon

Chapter 6: War
By Persephone Bolero

(Tales of the Lost is loosely based on actual roleplay adventures in the Amazon in Second Life. To start at the beginning, go here. Photos courtesy of unsplash.com.)

As far as Yakturo knew, the gold we paid in a monthly tribute was created from the river with our magic pans and not a mine in their own backyard. We concealed the mine behind the latrines and, in order to keep up the ruse, sent someone out daily to pan the streams for gold. Whenever the Yakturo were afoot, the guards would whistle to alert the miners so that none of the tribe would see people coming and going behind the latrines.

With ten Yakturo warriors behind me, I returned to the city just as the first rays of dawn were washing over the stars, and we were easily spotted. The guards’ whistles erupted through the cool morning air.

The guard towers flanking the city gate were thirty feet high, three times the height of the spiked palisade. Thomas was manning the north gate tower, which I found perturbing. I was happy he was still alive, but the sight of him in the tower suggested he was growing roots in my vicinity. That brought up old fears.

Maru was in the south tower. The pair exchanged glances and unslung their rifles as we approached.

“Are you okay, Perse?” Thomas asked as I stood there in my chemise. He looked past me to the Yakturo.

“I’m fine. Open the gate,” I replied curtly with an impatient roll of my hand, my voice raised to reach him.

Maru was once a rising star in the Shimane graduate botany program in Japan. Now he served guard duty at night and assisted Lauren in the clinic by day. When he wasn’t working, he was doting lovingly over his wife, Nao. I don’t think the man slept more than a few hours a night.

“Mayor? You safe?” Maru called down in his Japanese accent.

“Yes, Maru,” I said. “Open the damn gate. These men are with me.”

I smiled up to them reassuringly, so they could see I was not being coerced. Thomas, though still wary, finally climbed down from the tower to lift the bar on the inside of the gate. The metal hinges groaned under the weight of the two heavy wooden doors as they swung outward.

Waking residents had been warming themselves with wood fires, and orange rays sliced through the top of the smoky columns rising above the tents and shacks of the city. Drawn by the chorus of whistles, the residents were now gathering outside their dwellings, most of them with weapons in their hands. Lauren came scurrying out of her clinic, tying the belt of her robe at her waist. Her face, like the other residents, was full of worry.

“Who assigned you to the tower?” I asked Thomas as the Yakturo filed in behind me.

“I volunteered,” he answered. “I received care in the clinic, so I’m pitching in to help.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yeah, I do,” Thomas replied with bit of a laugh as if my statement were absurd.

Though I had ten warriors to back me up against Miss Shards, I didn’t want to risk harm to any of my residents. So, I asked Lauren to tell everyone else to stay in their homes.

“Is everything alright?” was her reply to the instructions.

“It will be,” I assured her. “Just please tell them.”

“What’s going on?” Thomas asked.

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

I then went up to my cave to check on Kiki, leaving Thomas befuddled behind me. She was sleeping soundly with Beth dutifully watching her. I told Beth to wait in the cave and keep Kiki inside with her no matter what. She was full of questions like everyone else, but there was no way to explain to anyone what happened with Miss Shards without drawing them into the conflict. I had the situation under control, and I just needed everyone to stay hidden until it was over, which would be very soon.

I pushed the floppy tufts of hair off my Kiki’s face and kissed her forehead. She stirred gently and settled back into stillness. I changed out of the chemise and into a pair of cargo pants and a tank top. I tied a pair of combat boots to my feet and went down to the armory, where Thomas was cleaning an AK-47.

“What is going on?” he asked again, now more insistently.

With my back to him, I slid hollow-point rounds into the clip of a Colt Mustang and answered, ”It’s not your problem.”

He grabbed my shoulder and forced me around to face him. He towered over me by a foot. “If there’s a fight coming, it is my problem and I can help you.”

“Why would you do that?” I replied irritably and pushed the clip into the gun. I slid the weapon into the back of my pants.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s not your fight.”

“I spent nearly eighteen months wandering the Amazon, hoping to find my way back to This Place.”

He glanced upwards, his palms facing the ceiling, a gesture toward the surreality of this region of the Amazon, which seemed to lack any coordination to the space and time of the world outside it. This Place was more precisely its name than the Amazon.

He continued, “Just as I was ready to give up ever finding it again, I stumble upon the Yakturo tribe. I was thirsty, hungry, and exhausted. And I wasn’t sure I would survive sneaking through their territory. Then I stumble upon a camp just as I could go no further, and that camp happens to be led by you. That’s no coincidence. That happened for a reason.”

I sighed disappointedly and looked to the ground.

“I know. I know. It’s a city,” he corrected himself.

“No, it’s not that,” I replied, shaking my head. “You’re always finding meaning in things where there is none, Thomas. I would have thought you’d have learned something from me.”

He narrowed his eyes and shot back, “Was that it? Was that what happened with you and me? You were showing a naive man the truth of things?”

I was going to tell him that indeed my inexplicable rampage I went on after he proposed to me -- the reason he fled the Amazon -- was a benevolent maneuver to smack him back into reality and realize his love for me was delusional and never mutual. But with his eyes meeting my own, the lie didn’t so easily fall off my tongue. He was something to me; it was true. But it was something I couldn’t accept.

In those days before the city, when we ran and hid every day in whatever corner or shadow we could find, Thomas joined our band of nomads trying to survive killers and rapists and thieves. With his military background, he taught us to set up perimeters, move ourselves and our equipment unseen, use scouts to survey dangers around us, and set traps to alert us when enemies were near. We still had to flee from time to time, but thanks to him, we didn’t have to run as much.

Thomas extended me tolerance and understanding, even when I made mistakes. When he came to relieve me one night when I was on watch, I’d fallen asleep. He didn’t admonish me. He didn’t express his disappointment with a manipulative mind game designed to solicit the highest level of shame. Instead, he gave me tips to stay awake in the cool darkness of the jungle night. He was encouraging, supportive, and forgiving -- everything my father never was.

Our friendship flourished alongside the daily struggle we endured. Though I loved him deeply, I was well aware I could die any day. So for me, it was all a pleasant distraction in a place that lacked the infrastructure for it to be anything more. When he asked me to marry him, I realized he saw many more possibilities than I did, and it ceased being a distraction. It was just another thing for me to desire, which was another thing for me to lose. I didn’t answer him. Instead, I set out to sabotage everything we had and everything he felt for me in a series of overt trysts with every man in our camp, making it a point to be as loud as I could so he could hear it in his tent.

Not surprising, by the end of the week, he was gone. He left a one-line, handwritten note wishing me the best. I missed him after that. Oh, how I missed him. I had hoped he was alive, but I never wanted him to return. I traded our loving friendship for a load of regret, but truly I found that regret comforting in a way his love could never be. I was cruel, but remorse was something familiar, something I could trust. So, I didn’t regret doing what made me feel regretful.

More than three years since he left, I still could not explain all this to him. So what came out was elusive.

“You were going to make a big mistake,” I explained. “I wanted to protect you, like you protected us. I know you risked your life to find me again, and I’m sorry to disappoint you, but--.”

“Oh fuck you, Persephone. Don’t act like you did anything for me. Get over yourself,” he asserted. These unkind words weren’t like him, and he wasn’t finished. “You don’t need to worry for a moment that I’ll make the same mistake ever again. I never thought I’d see you again, even if I could get back to This Place, because I assumed you were long dead.”

“So why did you come back, then?” I asked selfishly, as if his reappearance were a slight against me.

“I came back here because it’s where I belong, and the fact I stumbled upon this camp just as I was about to die proves I was right. I made it all the way back to Houston. You have no idea what I went through to get out of the Amazon, but having escaped, I couldn’t wait to see the look on my wife’s face when I arrived on her doorstep alive and well. But it didn’t turn out the way I hoped. She swung the door open in a maternity dress and passed out at the sight of me. She was engaged to the man who got her pregnant, a man who helped her through the grief. She was getting over my disappearance, starting a new life, and I ripped the whole thing apart. So, I ran back to This Place for her, to let her carry on her new life without me. It was all for her, and I never gave a single thought about you when I made that decision.”

He met my lie with brutal honesty. There it was. We weren’t starting again. We were finished. And that finality was something I needed before we could move forward again.

“I’m sorry you lost her,” was all I could say at that point.

“Thank you,” he replied. “Now, I need a place to stay. And if you let me stay here, I need to earn my keep. So either I help you with this problem, or I’m walking out those gates right now. What’s it going to be, girl?” With that ultimatum delivered, he bumped a banana clip into the rifle and set it down.

Of course, I didn’t send him out into the jungle. I briefed him on the situation with Miss Shards, beginning with the encounter at the cenote, through the theft at Aries’ trailer, the tribute, the way I deceived Kartago -- everything. He gazed at me with disbelief for a long moment. Then, he went about organizing the defense, and it was just like old times. Just like that.

“You’re sure this Miss Shards is always alone?” he asked.

“She shuns everyone. She’s so controlling that even a dog isn’t loyal enough for her.”

“You need to get men up on that canyon rim. If she’s as much of a sniper as you say,” he advised.

“She’ll come to me for what she wants first. That’s why I got the Yakturo. When she comes through that gate, we can ambush her.”

“What if she already knows you don’t have it? What if she knows you have the Yakturo to back you up?”

These were good questions. Miss Shards’ moved freely through these jungles unseen, and what she spied always kept her one step ahead of her enemies. It’s quite possible she’s been watching me this whole time and knows not to come into the city.

“Good point,” I replied.

Thomas took over command from there, and I let him do what he does best. He sent the residents into the caves on the canyon walls and had them pull up the ladders. Near the gate, Thomas used a camouflage net to set up a bivouac shelter. Using me to translate his instructions as best I could, he stationed two Yakturo soldiers in the gate towers. He sent four others to scout the jungle over the canyon, and the other four natives took cover under the shelter with Thomas and me. Then, we waited.

The sun rose to its zenith by noon, cooking the city and baking residents inside the caves, who were growing restless as they were left to wait without any explanation of what was going on. As noon passed into afternoon with no Shards, I began to wonder if she’d show. If she knew I had an army, she might hunt me down later. I would never feel safe again. 

“Hey, remember that time we found that case of Wild Turkey in that plane wreckage?” Thomas asked as we waited under the shade of the ribboned camouflage, the farrago of shadows across our faces.

Pondering that Shards would live this day and seek her revenge later, it took me a moment to register what he said. I nodded absentmindedly at the memory. “We should have traded it for medical supplies.”

“Ah, but what a party it was,” he replied, his white teeth grinning white between his thick, dark lips.

He continued to reminisce, and I humored it, grateful for the distraction. The flies buzzed in the heat, licking at the sweat seeping from our faces.

“Mayor,” Beth said over the radio at nearly three o’clock, her Irish accent scratchy in the speaker. “Kiki is acting the maggot up here. She really wants to leave, and we’re all getting hungry. How much longer do we have to wait?”

I asked Thomas if maybe I should go up and talk to my people, reassure their patience.

He considered a moment and answered, “Yeah, maybe it would be good idea to bring them up some food.”

As I started to come out from under the netting and head toward the mess tent, a screech penetrated the humid stillness of the city.

“Persephoneeeeeeee!”

The song was unmistakably that of Miss Shards, and I froze where I stood. Her shrill voice echoed through the canyon, making it impossible to tell from which direction it came. Thomas scanned the rim of the canyon through the netting.

“I really appreciate that you sent these nice Yakturo to welcome me,” Shards called down, “but I want this to be a fair fight. So, I’ll send them back to you.”

Things began to move fast now. My eyes caught the movement overhead, and at first I thought they were stones flying down into the city. They came from all sides of the canyon, all at once. There were four of them, and they hit the ground with a thud too soft to be rocks. They tumbled across the ground, strands of hair spinning around them, before coming to a stop near the gate. We could then see the faces on the severed heads of the Yakturo scouts, their hair caked with dried blood. The other Yakturo began shouting spiteful curses in their language, pointing their rifles up to the canyon top, searching vengefully for the woman who murdered their friends.

I looked to Thomas for what to do, and he must have realized the mistake. Shards was not alone.

“Take cover!” he started shouting repeatedly.

Automatic gunfire erupted from the rim of the canyon, coming from multiple directions. It ripped into the towers, splinters exploding from the structures. The soldiers in them slumped against the sides of their boxes. The gunfire then spread throughout the camp, tearing into tents and shacks. It ruptured chimney pipes and sent puffs of dirt shooting up from the ground. Flashes from rifle muzzles peeked out from multiple places in the dark foliage at the top of the canyon.

I could barely hear Thomas yelling at me to get down, and when I failed to react quick enough, he threw himself down on top of me. A series of explosions followed as mortar fire tore through the city, sending flames leaping up from the wreckage of the tents and shacks. Burning detritus fell all around us, and the air was heavy with sulfuric smoke.

One of the mortar rounds landed near the bivouac, and suddenly the chaos was muffled beneath a high-pitched ring in my ear. The bivouac collapsed, draping its net roof over all six of us. Thomas’ weight lay upon my legs, and the debris and dirt covered the both of us.

I choked on the smoke and dust and pushed up against the netting to try to get some space to move. Through the ribbons, I watched as two men repelled down ropes to my cave. Two figures were at the top where the ropes were belayed, one of them the rotund shape of Miss Shards. All of them were dressed in jungle fatigues. Shards and the soldier beside her provided cover fire as the repellers bounced upon their feet down to my cave.

I began to scream and push frantically to get out from under Thomas and the netting. When I finally did, I pulled the gun from my pants and fired aimlessly in the direction of repellers. The soil around me erupted, peppering me painfully with dirt and rocks. Dust stung my eyes. Unable to process any sense of my own safety, I started to race toward my cave blindly. Thomas tackled me from behind just before I was about to dash between two shacks, which then exploded in front of us as he pinned me to the ground. The splinters and flaming tar paper rained down upon us.

“Kiki!” I screamed over the roar of warfare raging through the city.

Once the repelling men reached the cave entrance, they unhooked themselves from the ropes. Maru appeared from a cave on the opposite side of the canyon and began to fire upon the men at my cave with an M16. With her precision aim, Shards hit his center mass, which exploded bloodily, and his body tumbled off the ledge he was standing upon.

I could hear Nao screaming for her husband as the men at my cave tossed objects behind the canvas covering. There was a loud thud and a bright flash from behind it. The men darted inside. Flashes of gunfire lit up behind it. I froze with a horrified whimper. Thomas led me behind a wall, as Shards and the soldier beside her continued to rain down cover fire. And there we were pinned down.

The Yakturo were firing back from behind shattered wooden walls. A sniper from somewhere in the jungle put a bullet in the head of one of the natives, taking half of it off. His legs crumbled beneath him. The other three Yakturo ceased firing back and sought better cover.

I peeked over the top of the wall I was behind and watched Shards’ men emerge from my cave. One of them had Kiki in a harness strapped to his back. I started to run toward the gate to get to the top of the canyon, but Thomas stopped me again.

"You go up there, you will not save the girl. You will die!" he yelled.

The kidnappers hooked themselves to the ropes, and Shards twirled her finger in the air, a command to someone behind her. The kidnappers were pulled quickly up to the top.

“Perrrrr!” Kiki screamed, her little arms and legs flailing against the harness that strapped her to the captor’s back.

“Kiki!” I cried back, screaming desperately as I struggled against Thomas’ hold.

At the top of the canyon, the two repellers ran into the foliage with Kiki continuing to call for me. I sobbed, my tears turning to mud on my face.

Shards and the other man stopped firing and retreated into the jungle. “Since you failed to get me a piece of Aries,” Shards called from the darkness under the canopy, “I’m going to take a piece of you, Persephone.”

I stood stunned and helpless as the city burned all around me. Thomas, standing behind me, kept his rifle trained to the top of the canyon. The other Yakturo were climbing the towers to the men who’d fallen inside their boxes. Smoke swallowed Thomas and me, and we could no longer see up to the top of the canyon.

“Don’t you hurt her!” I roared back. “Don’t you fucking hurt her!”

“If anyone follows us,” Shards warned, her voice further away now, “I will kill this girl.”

“Kiki!” I screamed again. Distantly, I could hear the girl screaming back to me, her cries fading as she was taken further away.

I fell to my knees, mouth gaping to the sky as I screamed with grief. The dust, heat, and smoke burnt my lungs. At the time I was unaware a bullet had cut through the flesh of my calf, and my blood was soaking my pant leg. I choked and gasped for air, feeling nothing but panic. Thomas wrapped his strong arms around me, holding me while I cried.

A Yakturo soldier climbed down from the tower, a dead man in his arms. The dead soldier must have been the man’s brother because unlike the other survivors, his face was full of more sadness than rage.

(To be continued….)