Chapter 325: Into the Forest (5)
Sophia examined the three primitive corpses one by one, a puzzled look spreading across her face.
“What is it?” Anthony asked.
“It’s strange. Look at these totems…” Sophia gestured toward the symbols painted across the corpses’ chests—designs that looked somewhere between spindle shapes and human eyes. “My primary field of study is the culture of the North American Indians. I’ve only dabbled in the indigenous tribes of Central America. Even so, I’m certain these totems belong to the Caribs.”
“The Caribs?”
“They’re one branch of the indigenous peoples of Latin America, divided into island and mainland groups. The island Caribs, who lived throughout the Lesser Antilles and along the Caribbean coast, were infamous for one thing above all else—their practice of cannibalism. In fact, the Spanish word caníbal (‘cannibal’) is derived from a variant of the Caribs’ name.”
According to legend, the first person to bring the concept of the “Carib cannibals” back to Europe was the explorer Christopher Columbus.
During his first voyage through the Caribbean, Columbus encountered the Taíno people who inhabited the region. It was from these natives that he first heard of the Caribs.
The Taíno told him that the red-skinned Caribs who dwelled in the forests worshipped a terrifying evil deity. Blessed by their dark god, they were savage, bloodthirsty, and possessed tremendous strength. They would raid Taíno villages, slaughter and eat the men, then carry off the women to serve as wives and sl*ves, making the Taíno live in constant fear and dread.
Columbus reported what he had learned to the Spanish Crown, introducing Europe to the existence of the so-called “Carib cannibals.”
At that point, however, it was still nothing more than hearsay. No one had actually seen the Caribs in person.
It wasn’t until Columbus’s second voyage through the Caribbean that his fleet unexpectedly stumbled upon the Caribs in the midst of one of their raids. Following the red-painted savages into the forest, the sailors discovered a Carib settlement. Inside their crude huts, they found dismembered and roasted human remains, finally confirming the Taíno’s accounts beyond any doubt.
Upon receiving the report, the Spanish Crown immediately proclaimed that “cannibals” were enemies of all mankind, and that any conquest or ensl*vement of them was entirely justified.
“During the subsequent colonial expansion,” Sophia continued, “European colonizers adopted that narrative. They used ‘eliminating cannibals’ as a pretext to whitewash their massacres and conquests while waging war across the Americas. Neither the island Caribs nor the Taíno escaped the slaughter; they were nearly exterminated by colonial guns and cannons. Because of that, there’s long been a school of thought among historians arguing that Columbus fabricated the whole story—that the Caribs weren’t cannibals at all, and the claim was merely colonial propaganda. But judging from what we’ve seen… setting everything else aside, at least the part about them being cannibals appears to be true.”
Everly raised a question. “But weren’t they native to Central America? If we’re talking about the Caribbean, that’s around Cuba, right? That’s pretty far from here. How did they end up inside the United States? And another thing—even if isolated transportation and communication in the past explain why no one discovered them back then, this is the twenty-first century. With satellite remote sensing and drones being so advanced, if there’s an entire primitive tribe of cannibals hiding in these woods, there’s no way no one would’ve found them until now.”
Sophia shook her head.
“I don’t know. My research focuses on the indigenous peoples of North America. I don’t know enough about Carib history to answer that.”
As for the second question, it lay even further outside her area of expertise.
Just as everyone was growing increasingly bewildered by the endless stream of new mysteries, a deep, rumbling roar suddenly echoed overhead.
The four of them looked up. Through the dense canopy overhead, they caught sight of a helicopter marked with a red cross flying across the sky not far away.
“It’s a rescue helicopter! They must be looking for us! Come on, let’s get back!” the Black coach exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. The listlessness he’d shown earlier vanished as he hurriedly urged everyone onward.
He didn’t need to say it. The moment they spotted the helicopter, everyone instinctively straightened to their feet.
“Let’s head back first,” Anthony, the group’s leader, said. “We can report the cannibals to the rescue team and let them investigate. We’re unarmed—we shouldn’t go looking for trouble.”
No one objected.
However, they did disagree briefly over what to do with the IT worker’s body.
Everly and the coach thought they should leave him where he was for now, then tell the rescue team the location so they could recover the body later. But Anthony and Sophia couldn’t bear to leave their companion behind.
After a short discussion, the strongest member of the group—the coach—could only grimace as he hoisted the IT worker’s corpse onto his back and took up the rear as they started the trek back to camp.
With time running short, they didn’t bother retrieving the cumbersome pecans, leaving behind all the food they had worked so hard to gather.
After struggling through the damp, muddy forest for more than ten minutes and passing a stretch littered with trees that had been snapped in half by the crashing plane, the four finally returned to their base camp.
The place was eerily quiet.
The massive fuselage lay sprawled across a patch of charred earth like the bleached skeleton of a giant. Scattered patches of green dotted the blackened ground, like moss growing over gravestones, silently mourning the dead and preserving the memories of the living. Around the crash site, there was no sign of people, nor the thrum of helicopter rotors. Only the distant chirping of insects and occasional birdsong drifted through the forest, making the silence feel all the more profound.
“What’s going on?” someone muttered. “Where’s the rescue helicopter? It was flying this way just now, wasn’t it?”
“Terry and the others are gone too!”
The four hurried into the campsite and looked around.
It was completely deserted. The three injured survivors who had been lying on the ground had vanished. Only the bloodstains on the blankets and the uneven depressions in the earth faithfully testified that they had once been there.
Gone along with the injured were the six survivors who had stayed behind to guard the camp.
“What happened? Did we get back too late? Maybe they already left with the rescue team?”
“Impossible,” Anthony said flatly. “Before we went into the forest, I made an agreement with Terry. If the rescue team arrived while we were away, they were to tell them about us and leave someone here to wait for our return. Besides…” His gaze sharpened. “Haven’t you noticed? It’s not just Terry’s group of nine that’s disappeared. The bodies inside the plane are gone too.”
Terry was the executive from a publicly listed company, the leader of the group that had stayed behind.
Prompted by Anthony’s reminder, everyone shifted their attention away from the makeshift camp and toward the wrecked aircraft in the distance.
It had been a small commercial flight, carrying roughly eighty people, passengers and crew included. Before they had left to explore the forest, the cabin had been packed with corpses. Bodies hung from seats or lay sprawled across the floor, dark red blood splattered everywhere. The scene had been as horrifying as a vision of hell.
There had been too few survivors. Even if they had wanted to gather the bodies, they simply hadn’t had the strength. In the end, they had no choice but to pretend the corpses weren’t there and set up camp in a clearing not far from the wreckage.
Now, the shattered fuselage still rested where it had crashed. Suitcases flung from the cabin, torn seats, and fragments of the aircraft remained scattered exactly where they had landed. Looking through the ruptured hull, they could still see row after row of twisted, mangled seats, every surface spattered with blood.
Only the source of all that blood—the dozens of corpses—had vanished without a trace.
Even if the rescue team had come, there was no way they could have cleared away all the bodies in just a dozen minutes. This was a remote forest far from civilization, not the middle of a city with easy access.
Cold sweat beaded on the coach’s forehead.
“How is this possible…? F**k… where the hell did all those bodies go?”
Everly had sensed that something was wrong almost immediately. Her eyes swept across the ground until they settled on something beneath a fallen shrub.
“Come look at this.”
The forest was warm and damp, with dense grass and undergrowth carpeting the ground. Many traces were concealed beneath the vegetation and could easily be overlooked without careful inspection.
Anthony was the first to reach the footprint. He pushed the shrub aside and crouched down for a closer look.
Whoever had left it had been barefoot. In the soft mud, the crescent-shaped outline of a foot and the impressions of one large toe and four smaller ones were perfectly clear.
Judging from the footprint’s size and depth, the person who made it was a man around thirty years old, approximately 170 centimeters tall and weighing between sixty-five and seventy-five kilograms.
None of the survivors who had stayed behind fit that description. Moreover, every survivor still had their shoes before the others left. It was hard to imagine any of them deciding to take off their shoes and wander barefoot through the mud.
Inspired by the discovery, the group spread out and searched the area around the wreckage. Before long, they found several more scattered barefoot prints.
The footprints varied in size but all appeared to belong to men. Some sank much deeper into the mud than the first one they had found. The pressure marks extended across the entire sole, indicating the person had been carrying a heavy load.
In addition, beside one set of footprints near the makeshift camp, Sophia found unmistakable signs of a struggle. After brushing aside the surrounding grass, she revealed tiny flecks of blood.
Everly rubbed a bit of the blood between her fingers.
It was still fresh. Judging by its condition, it couldn’t have left the body more than ten minutes earlier.
In other words, just a few minutes earlier, while the four of them had been making their way back, a group of barefoot men had entered the camp, attacked the survivors, and carried off all the corpses from the plane.
Considering what they had encountered in the forest, the identity of the intruders was all but obvious.
“It had to be those Caribs! They attacked the camp and took everyone… What do we do now?” The coach’s lips trembled as he looked desperately to Anthony and Everly for guidance.
Everly didn’t answer.
Instead, she suddenly snapped her head up and looked through a gap in the trees toward the sky.
The coach quickly understood why.
Rumble…
The low throb of rotor blades echoed through the distance once more. Moments later, a helicopter appeared on the horizon. A large red cross was painted on its side—the very same rescue helicopter the four of them had spotted from the forest.
“Thank God! The rescue team’s finally here! We’re saved!” Seeing the helicopter flying straight toward their position, the coach’s despair gave way to joy, and a smile spread across his face.
Unfortunately, he celebrated too soon.
The helicopter was flying unusually low, its landing skids almost brushing the treetops. Wherever it passed, the rotor wash sent branches and leaves swaying violently with a loud rustling.
At that altitude, it should have spotted the crash site the moment it drew near.
The wreckage was impossible to miss. The surrounding trees had all been snapped and flattened by the impact, leaving a conspicuous bald patch in the otherwise dense forest—like the crown of a head stripped of its thick hair.
Yet the rescue helicopter flew the entire route without hesitation. It came from several dozen meters away, passed directly over the wrecked airliner, then continued into the distance.
Throughout the entire flight, it maintained the same steady speed, never slowing in the slightest—let alone stopping.
“Hey! Hey! We’re over here!”
The coach tore off his shirt and ran after the helicopter, waving it frantically overhead.
Afraid of drawing back the Caribs who had only just left, he didn’t dare shout too loudly. His arms, however, showed no such restraint, swinging with all his might.
It was no use.
By the time he had run into the forest and the helicopter disappeared behind the canopy, it still hadn’t shown the slightest intention of stopping.
He trudged back to the campsite with a miserable expression, grumbling under his breath.
“What the hell was that? Why did the helicopter just leave…? Was it only passing through?”
“Even if it wasn’t here to rescue us,” Anthony interjected, “the people on board should have stopped to investigate after spotting a plane crash. Besides, it was flying unusually low. It didn’t look like it was just passing by—it looked like it was searching for something.”
When he finished speaking, he turned to Everly.
“What do you think?”
Ever since they had encountered the Caribs, the young woman’s composure and judgment had impressed him time and again. If not for her age, Anthony would almost have thought he had met a fellow former special forces soldier.
Without realizing it, he had already come to regard Everly as a dependable partner. At a critical moment like this, his first instinct was to ask for her opinion.
Everly didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she looked back at him.
“Anthony… Sophia… what do you think?”
Horror Movie Survival Rule #2: Stick close to the protagonists.
At a moment like this, what Everly herself thought wasn’t important at all. All she had to do was follow the survival rules she had painstakingly worked out.
Because this was Anthony and Sophia’s horror movie.
Their decisions—not hers—were the signposts pointing toward the right answer.