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Posted By: gnollslayer Feb 06, 2005 - 11:38 pm

Alright, this story is bit rougher than any o my other rough drafts, but I like the concept a whole lot. I barely squeaked this one in for the week (going off Alaskan time). I will put this before serious revisions before posting the next draft, but comments are appreciated as always.

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A bird cawed in the tree overhead and set the leaves rustling as it took flight. Tanner lowered his gun and turned to the men behind him, beckoning for them to be still. He watched for a long time, listening. When the wingbeats faded into the distant south he started again. Six men followed.

The trees ahead grew close to each other, and Tanner had to slow his pace to keep from brushing against them. He trusted his men to keep just as silent. He’d told them before the strike that their enemies had ears everywhere.

And eyes. Even the best camouflage couldn’t change that. But the mission had to be attempted. These people couldn’t go on living the way they did. It spit in the face of everything human. It spit in the face of those who’d given their lives for the Separation. Tanner would give his life too, if it came to that. If it meant that someone somewhere would carry the cause to its finish, Tanner would sacrifice his whole patrol.

He’d lost one man already, before they were even two miles into the woods. A snarevine had grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him up into the canopy. His screams had lasted less than a second.

Tanner watched the ground ahead for the same sort of trap. He’d sighted several already and steered his men around them, but wondered how many he’d missed just by luck. Too many, he thought, the enemy hides their work well.

He stopped, halfway through a step. His men paused behind him, and they all knew why he’d stopped. Tanner’s foot hovered half an inch above a pulsing vine, barely visible through the well-placed mat of leaves on the forest floor. It made a sickly sound as it snaked across the ground, seeking toward the warmth of his body. Tanner brought his foot back and set it on the ground behind his other. Two more steps carried him back to safety.

To the left, another path revealed itself, one where the leaves gathered less thickly in the space between the trunks. Tanner chose this path.

He followed it for three hours. At the end of the third hour, he sat down against a thick trunk and pulled out his GPS. His men stood around him with their guns raised. They didn’t have to see the GPS to know how close they were to the target.

A superimposed red dot on the map showed the position of the enemy village. A blinking white mark showed where Tanner sat. Less then a quarter mile separated those two dots.

The men breathed a slow sigh of relief. No men ever got this close without succeeding in the end. Strategists and tactical planners told the soldiers it was because the enemy didn’t plant traps close to their homes where it might hurt their children. It made sense to Tanner, but he didn’t want to take chances.

He tucked the GPS back in the right breast pocket of vest and pinched the seal together. The adhesive was starting to deteriorate. Command hadn’t meant the mission to take this long.

Neither had Tanner. He moved faster after resting. Fast enough that he might have stepped on a vine if there were any to step on.

The trees opened into a clearing ahead. Low-built earthen domes ringed the open ground, and a deep pit marred the soil in the center. Nobody moved outside the domes, but Tanner knew from previous missions that he’d find them inside. If they cooperated, he’d bring them out into the open and his men would secure the area for a safe chopper landing. If they didn’t cooperate, his men had enough ammunition. He didn’t like it when it came to that, but he had his orders. And he had the cause to justify him.

Tanner pressed the round button on the right side of his headset. Prerecorded messages began to play in his subordinates’ earpieces. Recon flights over the region had confirmed the layout of the village. Infrared satellite imagery and reports from solitary scouts in the region also contributed to the orders the men now received. The plan for the strike on this village was flawless in every way. Flawless, unless the villagers knew it was coming.

One by one, Tanner’s men nodded to verify that they’d received their orders. Tanner raised his hand to his left ear and tapped the yellow button on his headset as he’d done a dozen times before.

The strike proceeded efficiently, with each man circling to his appointed place at the appointed time and all of them coming together in the village in a precise pattern. Seven shouts rang out at once from seven ends of the village. Seven doors caved in. Seven men stared into empty huts.

“Pull back to the center!” Tanner shouted, “pull back!”

Fire opened on the opposite end of the village and he heard one of the men scream. He didn’t even know the name the voice belonged to – command never bothered with the details.

A blur of green tore across the empty ground. Tanner watched it tangle around two of his men and drag them back into the forest. Lines of twisted cellulose spiraled out from the surrounding canopy to form a locking web that descended over the remaining men. As it touched them, their jaws went slack and their limbs fell to their sides. Tanner felt a vine scrape against his skin, and the tiny quills that covered the plant’s surface secreted a small amount of neurotoxin into his veins. A slight pressure built up in the space behind his eyes, but before he felt it, his whole body had gone numb. His fingers released; his gun fell onto the clumpy ground. Before his vision blanked out, Tanner saw a bronzy hand reaching out to pull it away. Then the world evaporated into sightless oblivion.


To his surprise, Tanner found that he was not dead.

An unseen hand brought a moist cloth to his forehead and left it there. He heard sloshing as a bowl was lifted and carried away. The room went silent for a long time and he was left with only the smells to occupy his mind.

The thickest of the scents by far belonged to the trees. Sap, leaves, and bark swirled in infinitesimal quantities through the damp air. Infinitesimal, but it took only a small sampling to reach his nose. Mixed in with the fragrance of the jungle came the contemptible odor of processed rubber. He recognized it vaguely as part of his uniform, though he’d never noticed it before when he still could see.

Was it his boots? Yes, it had to be. They weren’t on his feet anymore: even through the numbness of the venom he could tell that his toes were bare. He picked through the scents in the air, trying to focus on the rubber soles. But his nose was untrained and quickly lost the trail.

The solid footsteps returned; solid but not clothed. He did not know what ground the feet trod on, only that they were as bare his his. And wet. At first he’d wondered if the trickling sound in the back of his mind was nothing more than his imagination filling up the dark. Now he was certain that it was not. The other person in the room had come through the stream before entering, and their feet now stuck a little to the stone as they stepped around the cot on which he lie.

Stone, Tanner wondered why he hadn’t recognized the sound before.

The moist cloth came off of his forehead and another one replaced it.

“You’re awake, I see,” said the old woman, and though Tanner couldn’t tell why, he knew she was smiling. “Are you one of the lucky ones?” she asked, “or is your vision gone like the rest?”

“It’s gone,” he mumbled. His lips and tongue were still as numb as the rest of his body.

“A shame,” she said, “but it will make things easier in the long run, I suppose. The men make the vines too strong these days. If I didn’t know better I’d think they wanted to kill everyone that came into these woods.”

“Do you mean that my men are still alive?”

“Of course,” she laughed, and she pulled away the rag she’d just put on him. A few seconds passed before she replaced it with a cooler one from the bowl of water she held.

“Where are they?” Tanner asked.

“They are near,” she said, “but not too near.” He could tell she was smiling again by the harmonious silence that followed her words. The slosh of water broke the silence as she started back out of the room.

“Wait!” he called, “when will I see them again? When will you free us?”

“You’ll see them again in due time; and we will free you when you are ready to see again.”

“I’m ready to see right now!”

“No. You do not understand.”

“Wait!” he shouted, and the words echoed off the walls.

“Wait!”

She was gone. Now Tanner realized that he was alone in a cave, and the stream that echoed in his subconscious was somewhere just beyond the entrance. If only he could get himself off the cot, he could make it out into the jungle, and follow the stream to its end at the sea. He wanted so badly to escape, but before he could he had to learn to walk again.

But many weeks were to pass before that.

Posted By: gnollslayer Feb 06, 2005 - 11:40 pm

On the third day of feverish numbness the woman who had met him in his first waking moments returned. There had been others to care for him in her absence, but they had not interested him as this lady did. She had a presence in the darkness that comforted him. Though he could not see her smile he missed it when she left him.

“How is your recovery progressing?” she asked when she returned for the first time.

“I still cannot move,” he said, “except to speak, and even that capacity does not last.”

“How much have you eaten?”

“Nothing,” he said, “they brought me food, but I could not swallow it.”

“The poison went to work deeply in you. Your men have made better progress than this. I think they were not strung as badly as you.”

He strained to catch the song that followed in the wake of her voice, but the incessant droning of the stream outside barred it away. Abhorrent things in nature always drowned the beauty of human life.

“You do not seem glad to hear of your comrades’ recovery. Is something troubling you?”

“This place troubles me,” he said, “I can’t escape the smell of the trees, or the sound of running water. I can’t escape my helplessness.”

As harmonious as the song of her smile was, so barren was the dirge of her frown. “Would you rather be in one of your cities on the coast? There you would find your comfort, wouldn’t you? Towers and metal things everywhere, and the cancerous hum of power in everything and everyone. The air there can’t be breathed, so full is it of your sweet exhaust. Only the vile dwell in such places. Truth dwells in nature.”

Hot anger pulsed through Tanner’s chest. The woman blasphemed against everything he stood for. Nature had corrupted her, turned her against her own humanity. Only natural corruption could lead someone to hate the city, mankind’s greatest achievement.

“Calm down,” she said, placing a wrinkled hand on his cheek, “anger will only delay your healing.”

“Take back what you said about the cities,” he said. His teeth clenched as the venom manifested his anger in pain.

“Oh, the cities aren’t all bad I suppose. But there is less life in them. In the jungle things follow the course nature meant them to; in the city everything is piled up on top of itself.”

“You can’t pretend you don’t see the marvel,” he said, “nature will never again be master over humanity.”

She smiled again. He felt it. “Would that be such a bad thing?”

The old woman left, and Tanner strained against the limpness of his own body. His former strength could not overcome his new weakness.

Four days passed before the woman visited again. In that time he took one meal; the others that were brought to him sat beside his cot, tantalizingly close as if in mockery of his inability to move.

Malnutrition emaciated him, and when the old woman returned at the end of the week he was thin to the point of frailty. His muscles had deteriorated, a natural process augmented by the poison in his blood. Poison that was now almost gone. Despite the deterioration of his muscles, Tanner was now able to move a little bit.

When the woman came in to meet him for the third time, he sat up to greet her.

“I’m ready to leave,” he said, “send me back to Rio.”

“I will decide when you’re ready to leave,” she said, “honestly, how do you think they’d accept you in Rio if you walked out of the jungle looking like this? No shirt, eyes glazed over, and your skin discolored to—”

“What’s wrong with my skin?” he tried to stand but his legs were too weak now to support him. She placed an aged hand on his shoulder and guided him back onto the cot.

“There is nothing wrong with your skin,” she said, “only a slight change in pigment brought on by the secretions of the vine. Most people here in the jungle will not even notice the green.”

“Green?” His hands patted down his chest, as if he thought he could feel the color festering in his epidermis. It was not the color itself that bothered him, people in Rio turned their skin different colors all the time. No, it was not the color but its origin. The fact that nature could alter him so easily unsettled Tanner. If he was not too weak for it, he would have felt anger. Instead, he turned in the darkness to where he thought the woman stood.

“What do I need to do to go home?”

She smiled at him, and despair melted from his heart. “I will show you,” she said; and she reached out to help him off his cot.


For many days afterwards, he spent his time with the old woman learning to walk. She told him that her name was Monice. Tanner came to depend on her for everything. Without her guiding hand, he could not walk. Without her guiding voice, he could not carry a conversation. All the time he spent in the darkness made his dependence on her grow until she became to him like a second mother.

And to her, the role was not a new one. Since she’d come to this small village in the Amazon several decades ago, the people of the tribe had taught her much about their ways. They taught her how to speak their language, and how to tame the vines. They taught her what it meant to be at peace with nature, though she’d learned much of this matter herself when she chose to flee the cities.

After teaching her the ways of their village, the people of the tribe had introduced Monice to the others like her who had sought for the forest’s sanctity. This was what she did with Tanner when she had taught him to walk again.

The first they met was a quiet old man who’d sought refuge from the economic world after the market collapse of twenty-fifty-eight, instead of killing himself. He seemed genuinely happy when the two guests arrived in his hut, but Tanner could tell only by the pitch of his voice. Unlike the woman, his smile did not shine through the dark.

“Tanner, this man has been my friend for many years here in the rainforest. Once you are able to walk again, he will teach you things that I cannot. He will teach you how to smell the vine-traps on the path ahead so you are not hurt when you go out to hunt.”

“To hunt?” Tanner said, twisting around to face Monice, “you expect a blind man to hunt?”

“Everyone in this village does their part to feed themselves,” the man’s voice came from the floor. He was sitting on soft clay in a hut made of thin wooden panels, and the fronds of the roof ruffled as he spoke.

“But I can’t see!”

“Even the blind can be bait.”

“Bait!”

“It is not as cruel as it sounds. You will go out into the jungle along predescribed paths which you will learn in my company. I will guide you over the path a thousand times, until you know it by heart. You must know it by heart before we allow you to hunt on your own. And believe me, you will enjoy the hunt.”

Tanner thought of his gun gathering rust somewhere in the jungle, while these cretins sent the blind out to hunt by baiting. Never mind what he was meant to hunt.

“I won’t do it,” he protested, “I can’t do it.”

“I said the same thing myself when my mentor told me what he intended. But I’ve learned the path of the blind, and you will too.”

Tanner paused for a moment, letting the words sink in. Outside he heard bird rustling in the branches, and the trickle of the stream by his cave beyond the opposite edge of the village. For the first time he realized that the man sitting here with him heard the world the same way – with the ears of a blind man.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“Most of the new blind ones don’t. And I never mention it. The loss of my sight holds no meaning for me anymore. The rest of me is still whole.”

“How did you lose it?”

“The same way as you. I came into the jungle expecting to die, and when the vine snapped me up into the canopy I though I was going to. But the men of the tribe came by shortly to see what their trap had caught, and they found me hanging by my ankles in the canopy with a film over my eyes from the venom. I knew I’d never see again, and even when I regained the strength of my limbs as you are doing now, I did not think I could learn to cope with my blindness. Then they showed me how the blind hunt, and I have never regretted my role in this life.”

“What is it that you hunt?” Tanner asked. Though he could no longer see, he could remember having seen, and his mind could still draw images for itself. He had an idea of the sort of creatures that lived in the Amazon, and he hoped against everything that it was not the one that slithered last into his imagination.

“We hunt the anaconda,” said the old man, “you will begin to learn at the end of the week.”

Tanner wanted to protest, but before he opened his mouth to speak he felt Monice’s grip on his shoulder and she was pulling him out of the hut. She was still stronger than him.

“Do not fear what he told you today,” she said, “it’s not as dangerous as you’d believe. There have been only five hunting deaths among the newly blind since I came to this tribe, and two of them were out of carelessness on the path. I promise it will not be the same for you. Alvaro is a good teacher.”

Her words did little to comfort him. From childhood he’d heard of the dangers of the rainforest, the reasons humanity chose to dwell in cities as opposed to trees. Chief among all these reasons were the dangerous anaconda. Though he was a grown man now, and did not fear them in the way a child might, Tanner knew what they were capable of doing. A man on one of the other Jungle Strike Teams had been eaten by an anaconda while crossing a river. That was twelve years earlier, and every soldier sent into the Amazon since was instructed beforehand by lead herpetologists on how to avoid the same fate.

Tanner remembered a few things from the briefing with Dr. Sellano. Anacondas stuck mostly to riverbanks, sometimes basking on land, but most often waiting under the current for prey to wander in.

But they did leave the water occasionally to prey on wounded animals.

Posted By: gnollslayer Feb 06, 2005 - 11:43 pm

At the end of the week, when he’d mostly recovered his strength and begun to eat full meals again, Tanner learned that this was exactly the trick that the blind hunters of the village used to draw snakes out of the water. Alvaro took him to the edge of the village where a worn path led into the jungle. It felt rough on the soles of Tanners feet, but no rougher than the stone floor of his cave.

The hum of insects and the dense jungle mist bombarded Tanner as he stood at the rainforest’s edge. He could feel a wall in the air that separated the village from the surrounding trees – not a wall in the same sense as the borders of Rio; a wall in the sense that humanity dwelt on one side and the forest on the other. A wall that both parties breached from time to time, but both honored more often.

“This is the domain where nature’s might is greatest,” said Alvaro as he led Tanner onto the path, “our small path exists only through the unbending determination of the tribe to hold back the vegetation. You will learn the feel of this path well before we release you to hunt the anaconda.”

Tanner let his feet drag along the contours. Sometimes Alvaro paused at important places to let him absorb the feel of the path.

“You will want to learn these places well because you will not move slowly when the anaconda follows. You will run or you will die by crushing coils.”

Tanner heard a twig snap in the forest behind them and wheeled to face it. Alerted by the rush of wind from Tanner’s hair, Alvaro put his hand on the younger man’s arm to keep him from running off.

“It is only Aikiro following us,” he said, “the tribesmen appointed him to follow us with a spear in case one of the jungle animals came upon us before you finished your learning.”

“Monice said you were capable in the jungle; at least on this path.”

“I am, but what would you do if I ran off and left you here. I can feel my way between the trees by their sounds and smell. You have not yet learned the art. That is why Aikiro follows.”

“He could have done so without the secrecy.”

Alvaro turned Tanner back to the path and started walking again. “If he had come with us from the beginning you would have missed an important lesson about the meaning of sound in these trees. Listen for awhile and you will know what I mean.”

Tanner let his ears reach far, and he noticed that he could hear each of Aikiro’s footsteps behind. Once he knew where the man was, he could track him in his mind, could plot his location against the meanderings of the path. He supposed it would be the same with the anaconda: once he heard the first branch snapping he would hear every leaf rustling afterwards.

“I can hear,” said Tanner, “I never noticed it before, but now I do.”

“If he’d come with us from the beginning, you would have taken his steps for granted.” Alvaro put his arm out again and Tanner brushed into it. He stopped and felt the ground.

“No,” said Alvaro, in response to the shuffling of bare feet against the ground, “I meant to stop you before we came upon the smoothstone. It will feel cold because of the shade, but I do not want you to focus on the cold. Focus on the texture, and remember that when you come upon this texture it means to leap. Now, step forward.”

Tanner did, and he felt worn glass.

“The tribe places smoothstone pads before each tendril of the vines. There is one here now.”

Tanner noticed a foul tinge in the air. It was a subtle difference, and in other places of the jungle where the scent of trees dominated the air more heavily he might have missed it. But now that he knew, there could be no mistaking the faint reek of the toxic vine.

Alvaro pressed his right foot against Tanner’s left to get a feel of how the other man stood. “Take one small step forward,” he said, “make your foot follow mine.”

He lifted and set down.

“Now raise your other foot until your knee is straight out from your hip. Extend your leg all the way and step to the farthest spot you can reach.”

In accordance with the man’s instructions, Tanner took his long step. As he leaned forward into the step he wondered if it was too short. What if his foot came down on the vine? Would a second dose of toxin paralyze him for life? Would it kill him?

Tanner’s foot touched ground. He lifted the other foot high and brought it arcing around to meet the first. Alvaro stood beside him, perfectly calm.

“There will be several more vines ahead. Be patient this first time or you may feel another sting.”

“What would happen if I did?”

“Very little,” said Alvaro, “your body knows the poison now, and besides that these are weak vines, but you would dislike their touch nonetheless. The tribesmen planted weak ones along this path on purpose because it is so close to the village. To make up for lack of potency, the vines number many. The snake will touch them all before it succumbs.”

Tanner didn’t like the way the man’s voice changed when he said this. “How many does it take to subdue the animal?”

Alvaro hesitated to answer.

“There are fifteen vines on this path,” he said at last, “you will jump them all on the hunt.”

Fifteen. As soon as he reached the second, Tanner realized what a long distance he would have to run. And if he fell, the snake would kill him.

“They are all spaced this far apart,” said Alvaro, “for me, the pace count is twenty-eight. I do not know how many paces you will take. In a week though, you will know. Tomorrow I’ll take you on this path, and the next day we’ll go faster. At the end of the week you will run the path for the first time alone. The next three days you will practice it, and on the fourth you will conduct your first hunt.”

A week and a half was so short, Tanner thought. How could they expect him to learn so quickly?

When he returned with Alvaro along the loop of the path, he went first to his own cave. Alvaro left him there. Tanner had thought he wanted to visit Monice, but tonight – for the insects were chirping their twilight call – he did not feel like leaving his bed in the cave. There was a meal of bitter manioc bread and pork waiting beside his cot, which he located first by smell and next by touch. He no longer cared what the people in the city had told him about eating manioc. He’d survived a few meals of it already and decided that it was not as poisonous as most city dwellers claimed.

He finished the meal and sat his earthenware plate on the ground under his cot. Sleep came quickly after the meal, and the morning came quickly after that. He spent this day, and the next, learning from Alvaro how to trace the dirt path in the jungle with his feet. By the third day, the tribe trusted Tanner enough to let him go out with Alvaro alone.

Now he learned to run. The wind felt foreign against his face after so many days of hobbling warily about for fear of bumping into things. He no longer had to carry a cane with him. Not on the path. He counted the paces between vines carefully, and knew exactly how high to jump when he reached the smoothstone pads. His recovery from the poison progressed even more smoothly. Soon he was strong enough and familiar enough with the path that he rivaled the fastest blind hunters.

And then his training was over. The night before his hunt, the people of the tribe gathered in the village center to feast in his honor. The sighted members of the village prepared a generous meal for all to enjoy, and they set a spot in the central clearing for all of them to gather.

Manioc bread was served in substantial quantities alongside pork and various jungle fruits. After these courses had been consumed, a rare dish of dried anaconda meat was brought out. Monice, sitting at Tanner’s side, told him not to take any until after the dish had been passed around.

So he waited and listened until she whispered in his ear that it had reached the first man to have taken any. Tanner pushed the piece of meat into his mouth in unison with the other members of the tribe.

Surprisingly, he found that it tasted like chicken. He’d never liked chicken as well as other meats, even less so dry chicken, but he was relieved that he did not react disrespectfully to the taste. He did not want to feel like a fool amidst the tribe that he had slowly become a part of – or that he would be a part of when he had subdued the anaconda. Tomorrow. He would prove himself tomorrow.

After the feast, he returned to his cave. He did not expect sleep to come easily tonight.

And it did not. Lying on his cot, Tanner thought of the trial ahead of him tomorrow. In his mind he retraced his steps along the path in the jungle, and his mind generated the shadow of the feeling of wind against his face and through the hair that had grown long since his arrival in the village. He wondered why he bothered to submit himself to this rite, why he wanted to become a part of a tradition he’d been raised to eradicate.

But he’d never truly known what it was he’d fought against. If he ever had, he would not have fought. Not if he truly knew.

Night’s eerie feeling closed in around him and he imagined a snake’s coils doing the same. He also imagined the snake that he would hunt as its prey. The green anaconda of the Amazon had adapted to the harsh modern world by becoming harsher itself. As prey populations dwindled the snake grew fiercer in response. The scientists tried to call it evolution, but Tanner imagined it as more of an intelligent cruelty. The snake changed itself to remain the predator. It moved more swiftly, learned to hunt rather than ambush, and became more like the jungle jaguar than its own docile ancestors. But the jaguar was small and timid in comparison.

Tanner saw again when he dreamed. He had every night since the arrival in the village. But tonight he would remember the dream too well, the dream of being caught by the anaconda; of having its teeth sink into his ankle and its body throw itself around the rest of him in coils. It would suffocate him first. Then it would turn around and take his head into its throat, and slowly it would swallow.

He awoke early on the day of the hunt. Before he heard Monice’s voice he heard her footsteps on the soft soil of the village center. She came into his cave, splashing through the stream and stopping afterwards to let the water drain off of her feet.

“Tanner,” she said, “the village is awakening now. Alvaro awaits you in his hut.”

Tanner slid his legs across the cot and stood up. He shivered apprehensively as he took the first steps toward the open air, leaving his cane on the floor beside his cot. He would not need it today.

“This way,” said Monice, and she took his hand to lead him across the village. He took it gladly, though he no longer needed the guidance; only the reassurance.

The moist ground pressed between his toes as he walked, and by it he knew his orientation. Monice did not have to tell him when they arrived at the old blind man’s hut.

“Are you afraid?” Alvaro asked as his door swung in.

Tanner did not lie to him.

“It is good for you to be a little nervous. You will run faster this way.”

Tanner smelled something inside the hut that he’d smelled before: boar’s blood. Alvaro was preparing a mixture of crushed leaves and old boar’s blood.

“This will make sure you have the snake’s attention,” he said.

The old man finished preparing the bait mixture and applied it with a rag to Tanner’s chest and shoulders. The reek was strong inside the hut, but Tanner noticed it less when they went outside.

“There is a small group of men waiting at the last vine with spears in case the vines’ poison does not weaken the anaconda enough for you to wrestle it. I—”

“Wrestle?”

“There is no other way to kill it. We cannot have such potent vines so near the village.”

Tanner’s heart thudded in his chest. As Alvaro brought him closer to the head of the path doubt crept into him that he could pass this ritual of the tribe. He doubted that he even wanted to. He could try to escape, run to the city.

No, the risk of death would be even greater then. He knew the path, but not the rainforest, and the old man had already smeared him with animal blood to attract predators.

“Where are the men that accompanied me into this village? Why do they not hunt?”

“Monice visited them while they were healing, and she thought the might be as strong as you. But they were not. They are dead, except for one, who still lies bedlam and takes his meals in tiny sips. Monice did not want you to know.”

Tanner wanted to be angry, but for some reason knew he could not. He’d seen the way these people lived, and knew what would have befallen them if his strike had succeeded. He’d seen the asylums where the kept the jungle-dwellers under the guise of rehabilitation. The people in those bleak buildings didn’t know the lives of their subjects. They only thought of adusting them for the bland city life.

Tanner couldn’t go back to that life.

“We’re here,” said Alvaro.

Tanner recognized the break in the moist ground that separated the village from the jungle. In his mind he’d begun to construct an image of the hunting path, and now he saw it ahead of him. He knew it only by his feet.

“Good luck,” said Alvaro, “and I won’t pretend you don’t need a little of it.”

Then he was gone. It was only Tanner and the path.

Tnner took a few hesitant steps forward. He was sure of the path, but not of himself. As the village dropped away behind him he opened up his ears to listen to the sounds that Alvaro had taught him to hear.

A twig snapped off to the side of the path. Tanner quickened his pace.

Another snap confirmed his suspicion that a great snake had caught his scent. Leaves brushed against its scales as it followed him from the jungle. He thought he caught the flick of a tongue.

The sounds of the anaconda were closer now. He could hear its every move. And it was so close.

The first smoothstone was thirty paces away when the snake burst forward in a surge of speed that belied its size. From the crashing of lowgrowth Tanner knew the serpent was huge. He bolted, but made sure to count his steps.

The snake came onto the path behind him. It moved faster on the cleared ground than in the jungle, and it was so close behind.

Tanner’s feet slapped against the first smoothstone and he leapt. He caught himself the way he’d learned to in training, not judging by sight but by feel. The snake was so close.

The second and third stones passed. Tanner heaved for breath. The snake showed no sign of fatigue, or even slight annoyance as it slithered over the vines.

The fourth stone. Tanner tripped as his feet impacted the ground.

The snake’s sounds echoed all around him, but he could not distract himself with the noise. He pressed himself off the ground and ran even harder than before. The strain on his legs urged him to stop; the hiss of the anaconda urged him to run.

By the time he reached the tenth stone and vine his legs seethed. He could not know how far behind him the snake was; only that it was closer than at any of the previous stones. He wondered if the vine poison affected it at all, or if Alvaro and Monice had played a cruel trick on him with this hunting path. It could be that they wanted him to suffer for his attempt to destroy their way of life. The men at the end of the path could await him for the sole purpose of turning him back to the mercy of the snake. The serpent had none.

But Tanner made himself run, though his mind and legs objected. The twelfth stone came, then the thirteenth, then the fourteenth. The snake began to slow.

Tanner crossed the final stone and kept running.

One step. Two. Three.

The snake caught him by the heel.

Before his face hit the ground the coils wrapped themselves over his chest. He struggled to throw them off, but his arms pinned to his sides. He couldn’t breathe in, but knew that if he exhaled the snake’s grip would tighten.

Suddenly, he became aware of the men standing around him. A rustling here and a footstep there gave them away. They remained silent as Tanner carried on his personal struggle against the serpent.

“Please,” he begged, “help me.”

They made no reply. Tanner’s ribs began to bow inward under the snake’s pressure.

“Please….”

They did not answer him the second time either, but began to circle around the snake and it’s prey, chanting. At first it was a whisper, but it grew in time. Tanner did not know the language, but understood the message. They were urging him to fight.

And for the first time, he felt he had the strength to. He pressed against the anaconda’s coils with both arms, and, succumbing to the poison, the snake yielded. Sweet air flooded into Tanner’s lungs. Then the coils surged together again and he gasped in pain.

Both beasts rolled across the ground, pressing at each other with all their strength. It was Tanner who first broke free, kicking the serpent’s head against the ground until it released.

When it wrapped around him the second time, Tanner knew the vine’s had done their work. He broke the predator’s grip and wrapped both arms around its neck. Throwing all his weight into the maneuver, he hurled himself at the ground with the serpent underneath. Its body shuddered.

He dashed the animal’s head against the ground a second time. Its efforts to writhe away weakened. Finally, its movements ceased. Tanner fell away, exhausted, and the men ceased their chanting. They closed in around the serpent and the man who’d killed it, and they carried both back to their village.


A feast was held that night for Tanner, and the meat of the anaconda was brought out, this time freshly cut. The blind hunter accepted his share with great pride. Despite the pain in his bones he ate all that was given to him.

“Eat more,” said Alvaro, who sat on his left side in the seat of secondary honor, “the snake’s flesh will warm your heart. I think you need it after your bout today.”

“I can’t eat anything right now,” Tanner wheezed, “my belly aches enough as it is.”

“You should be proud of what you have done today, Tanner. The serpent you wrestled was larger than any I’ve seen before.”

“But you’ve never seen any before.”

“That doesn’t mean its not true. The men told me the serpent’s length, and I checked it with my own pace. Fourteen yards. It’s a record. The feasts will last one day for every yard of snake. You are a hero now.”

Tanner grinned. He knew at last what it meant to belong to the tribe.

The people of the village continued feasting for many hours, and in their revelry they did not notice the sounds of human feet gathering in the forest around them. Eight men in camouflage took the village in a matter of seconds, and held its people at gunpoint. Tanner heard the distinct sound of rubber on dirt approach him in the village center.

“Captain Tanner Delgado?”

“Yes.”

“I am here under orders to extract you from this hostile environment, and to have these people extracted as well. You will be taken to El Hospital National de Brazil for recouperation and reintroduction to society…”

Tanner could already hear the helicopters in the distance.