Chapter Twenty One
It was a tedious three hour climb up the well-worn path to the village. The normal two o’clock downpour left them soaked to the skin but they never slacked their pace. By four o’clock in the afternoon, they were about a half a mile away from the camp. You should have been able to hear some kind of noise coming from the camp, but all was silent. Diego and Bull looked for the normal sentry posts but all of them were empty.
Diego raised his hand in the customary signal to stop. He put his finger to his lips and his hand to his ear to tell everyone to listen intently. After a few moments, they all looked at each other and shook their heads ‘No.’ Bull mouthed the words, “Even the animals are silent.”
Diego whispered, “Either they have just left within the last ten to fifteen minutes or they are still hiding in the brush somewhere. However, none of our intelligence has said anything about them setting a trap. They normally do their damage and herd the rest away.”
Arthur reminded them in another whisper,” I say let’s do like David and run toward Goliath. But, in this case, let’s walk very carefully.”
The group began to walk slowly toward the village. Every nerve within them strained at detecting a tell-tale sound or movement. As they neared the edge of the village, Bea whispered, “The birds are singing again. Maybe they’re gone.”
A couple of goats wandered out to greet them and nuzzled them for hand-outs. The only sounds they heard were the clucking of the chickens and the grunting of the pigs in their cages. Diego said lowly, “Looks like they might have all gone. Let’s go on in and see what kind of damage they have done.”
As they entered the silent village, all they saw were lifeless bodies. Bull spoke first, “I’d say that from the looks of the marks on their bodies, they were caned to death. It must have happened yesterday. Look at the swelling around the neck and the head. Dear Jesus, I know that must have been painful.”
Bea knelt down beside the body of what looked like a six-year-old boy. “Look at the massive cuts on his legs. They had to be made by something larger than a razor blade,” she observed. “And the other leg is pushed down in the ground as well as cut like he was trying to amputate it.”
Diego stood at the opposite side of the village and added, “He must have figured out how to do it, because this poor guy had his arm and his leg severed.”
Bea stood back up to survey the whole scene and said, “I hope that most of them were dead already before he tried cutting on them. And he calls himself some kind of God, huh?”
Diego wandered back to the group as he replied, “All kinds of false messiahs have risen up since the resurrection of the real one.
Arthur had never seen destruction like this before. “Do you know any of these, Diego?” he asked.
“I might not be able to tell you all of their names, but I recognize about all of them,” he answered.
A faint cry rose up from the edge of the jungle. Bea looked at Arthur and asked him, “Did you hear that?”
“I thought I did.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I think it came from this side of that thorn-bush thicket,” Arthur said. “I think I’ll go take a look.”
The other four were more preoccupied with the horror before them that they only half-way acknowledged Arthur. Bea, Diego and Bull wanted to know but didn’t want to know if some of their relatives were in the mass. Matt was busy studying the indentions in the skulls of a couple of the elders. He couldn’t quite get the grasp of how one stalk of cane could have crushed a skull in what appeared to be one blow.
Arthur cautiously neared the thicket on the edge of the village. The villagers had allowed the thorn-bushes to grow profusely in that area for some reason. About thirty yards away he thought he caught a glimpse some colorful fabric often worn by the Aeta women. As he got closer, he saw the legs of what he presumed to be an adult woman sticking out onto the pathway and her body in the thorn-bush thicket. He hurried to see if she might be the lone remaining survivor of the massacre.
As he quickened his pace, a little head with curly black hair lifted up on the other side of her. He could just see her eye above the body of what must have been her mother. He heard another soft moan and then the eye closed and disappeared. He jogged the rest of the way.
The mother, indeed, was dead. Her head smashed almost beyond recognition like some of the others at the village. Arthur got within ten feet and slowed to cautious walk. The little girl came in view and was laying there with her eyes closed. As he quietly knelt beside her, he wasn’t quite sure if she was breathing. Gently, he laid his hand on her chest. Through her sweat drenched and tattered dress he felt the short rise and fall of a shallow breathing. How close to death she was he didn’t know.
Her body had become entangled in the thicket so bad that she could hardly move. There didn’t seem to be any cane marks on her, but her body was scratched pretty badly from her struggles with the thicket. As he reached around for his water bottle he noticed a pretty severe gash on her right leg. It was swollen and red from infection. Insects crawled around on it.
He could clean her up later. Right now he had to get her re-hydrated from the loss of fluids. He popped the top of the bottle spout and carefully squeezed a couple of drops onto her lips. She licked them up. That was a good sign. He squeezed a couple of more drops. He didn’t dare try to force too much into her while she was on her back. She feebly tried to open her eyes. Her mouth opened a bit as if asking for more water. Gently, he squeezed a few drops in at a time and gave her enough time to swallow it. She opened her eyes and looked at him. As her eyes focused she looked beyond him and screamed.
He immediately thought, ‘Jah. The razor edged rod.’ He heard a grunt and knew that he must be swinging the rod at him. In one swift move, he scooted the girl with his right hand and tried to tilt his body away from the swinging arc of the rod. He barely made it as the blade raked a gash from shoulder to shoulder just one inch below his neck.
As the girl continued to scream, Arthur tried to get to his attacker before he could get another swing. Before he could grab his attacker’s legs, Jah swung the bottom of the cane and caught Arthur on his right jaw bone and ear. His mind went numb for a moment and he fell flat on the ground. His chest hit a tree root and a God idea manifested.
From the village came a call, “Lord, we have them surrounded and they are weaponless.” Arthur was stunned. Somehow the horror of the moment had caused them to let their guards down and now they were all helpless. That is, helpless unless Arthur could carry out the God idea. He quickly put it into action.
With short snorts and gasps, he acted like his breath had been knocked out of him. He got back up on his hands and knees but wobbled as if he wasn’t in full control of his physical abilities. Like a dazed man, he held his eyes wide open without blinking. His head shook at odd intervals. Although he kept Jah within his peripheral vision, he acted as if he did not know where he was.
Aha! Jah was wearing a long purple sash that hung from his right shoulder down to below his left hip. It entered Arthur’s mind that as Jah swung the rod down, his purple sash would come within a foot of the ground at least. The God plan made sense now.
Jah answered his men with a laugh, “Just play with them as a cat would torture a mouse before the kill. I will dispose of this Christian menace once and for all. Too bad he is already beyond hope, I would have enjoyed hearing him cry. But, when I am finished with him, I will let each one of you take practice swings with my new rod.”
Arthur heard a cry of victory from the captors and surmised that there must be more than twenty men. However, he had to throw all of his effort and God’s wisdom into this battle if they were to win. If he could defeat their lord, the sheep would lose heart and scatter.
As Arthur watched him through his peripheral vision, Jah lifted the rod high in the air. As Arthur figured it, Jah winced and grunted the split second before he brought the rod down. Arthur collapsed his right shoul
der and rolled to his right and out of the way of Jah’s sharp-edged rod. Just as Arthur figured, the rod’s steel blade caught firmly in the root of the tree making it virtually immovable.
Arthur rolled to his right and swung his left arm in circles in the air hoping to get a good hold on the sash somehow. Good deal, he got two loops of sash. His right hand grabbed hold of his left as an astonished Jah let go of his rod to try to fall back and pull his sash away from Arthur.
Of course, Arthur realized that he had to hold on literally for dear life. He spun around on his butt until he faced Jah, brought his knees up to his chest, jammed his feet into the ground and fell backwards. The sudden thrust was too much for Jah and he began to fall toward Arthur. As Arthur’s back hit the ground, he pulled his knees up again and caught Jah right in the hips. As Jah passed the apex of his fall, Arthur kicked with all of his might and flipped him about five feet behind himself into the middle of the thorn-bush thicket. Arthur tried to disentangle himself from the sash but, to his amazement, it slipped easily over Jah’s shoulder and remained firmly in Arthur’s grasp.
He got up off the ground to gain an advantage over his adversary while he was entangled in the thicket. Before he got straightened up, he heard and “Oomph,” and the sickening sound of a body hitting hard against rocks. He stood up to see where Jah should have been only to find a hole in the thorn-bush thicket. Cautiously, he stepped over to the hole and saw the reason the villagers had let the thorn-bush grow so profusely.
On the other side of the thicket was about a thirty foot deep rock-strewn ravine. As he stepped closer to the hole in the wall, he saw Jah’s still body in a grotesque posture at the bottom of the ravine. His head was at an awkward position and blood was coming out of his ears and mouth.
He looked up and saw that some of Jah’s followers had ventured about half-way to the thicket to watch the fight. Now they stood there staring at Arthur. Without a leader, they had no direction and Arthur figured they had no courage. He stepped to the rod that was stuck in the tree root and pulled it out. He held it up in his right hand and waived the sash with his left. He stepped hurriedly toward them and shouted in anger, “Your god is dead and you will join him. I’ll kill you with the very rod that he used on innocent Christians.”
As Arthur broke into a trot, he slung the sash over his shoulders and hefted the rod on his right shoulder as if he was going to throw it. Jah’s astonished followers began to back away from their prisoners. Their leader had been killed and his instruments of leadership were now in the hands of the enemy. They didn’t have a clue as to what they should do now except drop their weapons and run. And, they did that very well.
When Arthur saw them scurry away, he dropped the rod and ran back for the girl. The frantic fight had loosened the thorn-bush’s hold on her and she had crawled part of the way upon her mother’s body. Her droopy eyes showed how frail she still was. She reached her hand toward him and pulled her fingers to her palms pleading for him to come back.
Arthur skidded to a stop on his knees and began to gently pull her legs away from the thorn-bush. As she watched him, she wearily laid her head on her mother’s arm and said, “Mama ng patay.” (Filipino for Mama’s dead.)
“Alam ko (I know),” Arthur answered. He carefully slid her foot out from underneath the last tangle and pulled her close to him.
Bea brought the first aid kit and dropped down on her knees next him. “Dear God you’re back looks awful. I need to put a compress, maybe two on it,” she said.
He turned the girl around so that her legs faced Bea and countered, “She’s in worse shape than I am. Clean her wounds first, especially that bad cut. It’s got all kinds of junk in it. Then, work on me while I give her some water. She’s awful weak from this heat.”
The little girl was too tired to fuss about what they did to her. But, when Bea began cleaning the wound on her leg she began to cry from the pain. Arthur held her head close to his chest as he said, “Ito ay ang OK. Lamang ng isang maliit na bit higit pa. (It’s OK. Just a little bit more.)”
As Bea was as gentle as she could be, Arthur asked, “Where’s the guys?”
“They’re checking out the trail to make sure they’re gone and not doubling back.”
“Oh, good idea.”
Bea put some triple antibiotic ointment on the cut and wound plenty of gauze around it. Arthur sat down on the ground in front of her so she could work on the cut on his back. He reached for his water bottle and started giving the little girl some small sips.
“E-w-w, this needs stitches. It’s going to take every bit of gauze and tape I’ve got to get this thing closed to the elements we’re going to face going down the mountain.”
Arthur suggested, “Why not just lay something across it and wrap the little girl up in my left arm with that purple sash over there?”
“As much as I hate to say it that sounds like the only plausible idea,” she agreed. “It’s going to be hard enough to carry a sick little girl with everything else we’ll have to take with us. Let me go get something out of my other back pack.”
As Bea sprinted back to the village, Diego came back in from the other side. He opened up with, “It looks like for right now they’re pretty well scattered throughout the jungle. I don’t believe for a minute that they have all gone. Some of them could very well be hiding to ambush us.”
“Yeah? Well, Arthur’s got a pretty bad gash across his shoulders that will require several stitches I know,” Bea stated.
“We don’t have but about an hour of daylight left,” Diego anxiously remarked. “We’ve got to get out of here because this is not a safe place to spend the night.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to find Bull,” Diego decided. “I hope I have a plan. If Matt gets back before I do, tell him to round up and tether all the goats he can and see if he can bag some chickens as they go to roost. Tell him to take a dress or shirt off of one of the bodies if he has to. Bull can’t be too far away. I’ll be back in a few.”
“OK,” Bea responded, “I’m going to see what I can do for Arthur. And, I want to take a peek at Jah to see if he really is dead like Arthur said. It would be terrible if he was only stunned.”
They looked at each other for a long moment. Diego finally, “That’s a scary thought. While you’re over there keep an ear out for anything that sounds like someone moving in the brush.”
“Got it,” Bea answered as she got up. Diego went off after Bull. She thought for a moment before she left. Then, she reached into her back pack and pulled out the extra t-shirt she had packed. “I knew this would come in handy. It’s a good thing I have a little bit of vanity left in me.”
As she walked back toward Arthur, she continued to talk to herself. “Well, I did pack it to be worn on the trip back down the mountain but I didn’t suspect it would be this way.”
Arthur had been giving the little girl some slow sips of water. He could tell she was reviving. She never took her eyes off of his face and he wondered what could be going on in that little mind. He couldn’t imagine the terror that she had lived through. When he thought about her possibly being in her mother’s arms when she was struck down by one of them, he shuddered.
Another thought hit him. Was it a God thing again? It could have been. He remembered the story that his mama had told him. When kids got sick in her grandma’s day and couldn’t keep any solids on their stomachs, they would chew up some food for them and feed it to them with the edge of their finger. To someone in modern day America that would probably sound gross. But, right now as he looked into the eyes of this dark eyed, dark haired, dark skinned little angel, he knew it was her only hope if she was going to make this journey.
While cradling her safely in his left arm, he reached into his pants pocket and found a piece of beef jerky that he hadn’t opened, yet. Little Angel watched his every move. He tore the end of the package with his teeth and managed to rip the wrapper down on one side. Carefully, he bit off a piece and be
gan to chew it.
Bea had watched him as she came up. “Fixing to feed her?” she asked as she knelt back down behind him. As she saw the surprised look on his face she explained, “That’s just normal for the villagers here. That’s how they wean their children off the breast.” She looked at Little Angel and smiled, “Gutom? (Hungry?)”
A weak smile played across her face as she shyly turned her head into Arthur’s chest. Briefly, she shook her head ‘yes’ and tried to brush away an insect that was making its way toward her eye.
As Arthur spit a little of the juice on his finger and put it on her lips, she gratefully accepted the offering and looked to see if more was coming. Bea took the blood soaked gauze off of Arthur’s back and tried to wipe up any excess that had dripped down his back. When she threw it into the brush, Little Angel saw it and frantically asked, “Saktan? (Hurt?)”
Bea tried to calm her by saying, “Lamang ng kaunti. (Only a little.)”
Arthur gave her another finger load and calmed her by saying, “Hindi ko ay mamatay. Nangangako ako. (I won’t die. I promise.)”
Even though Bea was trying to clean the wound and it felt terrible, he managed a smile that seemed as if it calmed her. Still she was a bit apprehensive.
Bea rolled up her t-shirt and placed it across his back as she noted, “The bleeding has just about stopped and that’s a good thing. Now let me get that sash and find a way to bind you and her together.” When she picked up the sash, she looked at it and then swung it back and forth for a moment. “Hm-m-m. It looks like he had this thing weighted on the bottom.”
Arthur watched her for a moment and then said, “Let me see that for a moment.”
She held the weighted end of it in front of him and Arthur felt the hem where several bulges were. He fiddled with it for a moment and then looked at her with a smile and declared, “Those aren’t just weights. Those are computer memory sticks. It feels like three of them at least.”
Diego came striding to them and asked, “Dear God, Arthur, that’s a nasty gash.”
“I’ve got the bleeding just about stopped,” Bea stated as she pulled up the ‘weighted’ end of the sash and cut it open with her knife. When she pulled out the memory sticks, she held them out for Diego to see as if they were pieces of gold. And, indeed, they very well could have been. “Look what Jah left us as a present,” she boasted.
Diego took them out of her hand and exclaimed, “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for. I can’t wait to get them to a computer. First, we have to get off this mountain safely. Bull and I have found an entrance to one of the underground caves the Japanese dug. We used to play in it all the time when Dad brought us up for a visit. It goes all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. There are several spots to stop and rest, and a couple of pools of water.”
“Great,” Arthur said as he continued to feed his charge.
“Where did Jah land?” Diego asked.
Arthur stood up under Bea’s protest but he stated, “I saw how he landed and I can tell if he has moved or not.”
She relented and the four of them went to the edge of the drop off. The waning sun had put the entire ravine in the shadows, but Arthur was sure that he hadn’t moved. Diego couldn’t remember whether there was any way to get to that ledge or not. The villagers had always used that spot as a junk pit.
As they came back from the ledge, Bea told Diego, “I was just beginning to wrap the baby up in Arthur’s left arm and bind his wounds as well.”
Diego looked at Arthur and said, “Well, I guess that’s why God had me practice taping your arm to your chest as we practiced for the fight.”
The light came on in Arthur’s eyes as he concurred, “You know, you’re probably right.”
Diego took command, “Let’s get out of these shadows and get you ready to go. Bea, help Matt catch a few chickens will you?”
“Chickens?” she asked. “Are we going to camp out in the tunnels for the night?”
“Of course, not,” Diego chuckled. “If he’s still alive, there’s an old Japanese hold out from WWII living in those caves. It wouldn’t be right if we wandered through his domain and didn’t bring him a few presents now would it?”