Chapter 327: Into the Forest (7)
Now that they had decided to infiltrate the cannibals’ stronghold together and rescue the captives, the next step was to come up with a rescue plan.
As an anthropologist, Sophia was intimately familiar with the power structures and social organization of primitive tribes.
Judging from the stone axes and bone-tipped spears Everly had previously seized, she concluded that the Caribs’ level of productivity was still comparable to the Late Paleolithic Age. At that stage, tribes generally practiced communal ownership. The means of production belonged to the entire tribe, while only personal weapons such as stone axes and spears were privately owned. Everyone worked together, and the fruits of their labor were shared equally.
The cannibal tribe had carried away every corpse from the crashed plane. The forest was warm and humid, so unless they possessed a large supply of salt, the cannibals would have to eat the bodies quickly before the “food” spoiled.
Paradoxically, that gave Terry and the other eight captives a better chance of surviving.
“To keep their food fresh, the Caribs will most likely keep Terry and the others locked up somewhere in the village, saving them until they’ve finished eating the bodies from the plane. That means we don’t have to rush. We can wait until nightfall, when most of them are asleep, sneak into the village, locate the place where Terry and the others are being held, and free them.”
As for the mysterious force concealing the cannibals within the forest, Sophia, not being an expert in such matters, had no useful suggestions.
Fortunately, there was still the well-traveled Everly.
Since everyone’s interests were aligned, she no longer saw any reason to conceal what she knew. Stepping forward, she asked, “Have any of you ever heard of the concept of cognitive distortion? I suspect the ‘concealment barrier’ covering this forest is essentially a force that distorts people’s perception.”
“Cognitive distortion?”
“What’s that…?”
None of the three had ever heard of such a concept.
So Everly spent some time giving them a heavily sanitized account of what she had experienced on Black Trail, sharing only the parts relevant to the situation.
“If it really is a case of cognitive distortion, then there has to be a source behind it—either some kind of ritual array, ceremonial artifact, or a special creature. This time, the distortion is affecting people outside the forest. Since we’re inside it, we’re immune, which makes us the best candidates to deal with it. If it’s the former, we just need to find it and smash it—or burn it.”
The Black coach raised a hand.
“And if it’s the latter?”
“…”
Everly sighed inwardly at how slow he was to catch on.
“If it’s the latter, then I suggest we do absolutely nothing except turn around and run.”
The Caribs were monotheists. Their faith acknowledged only a single true god. If some special being was distorting the perceptions of outside rescuers, then there was little doubt that this “creature” was the evil god Oseyn, whom the Caribs worshipped.
Even if He had only a handful of followers and was so obscure that most historical records simply had no mention of Him, He was still a god. No matter how forgotten He might be, His divine status remained unchanged—far beyond anything mere humans could hope to challenge.
If an evil deity truly lay dormant within the Carib settlement, then the smartest course of action would be to abandon the rescue and flee as fast as they could.
That said, Everly didn’t think it was very likely.
Otherwise, the movie’s plot would suddenly become three protagonists infiltrating a cannibal village while simultaneously battling an evil god and rescuing their companions. The difficulty would shoot through the roof. Aside from superhero films, Everly couldn’t think of any movie that would take the story in that direction.
“Let me summarize our plan so far,” Anthony said. “First, we’ll search the area around the plane for anything useful to arm ourselves. Then we’ll follow the Caribs’ trail to locate their village. Once we’re there, we’ll scout the area, looking for anything unusual—ritual arrays, ceremonial structures, or special objects—while also finding where the survivors are being held. After nightfall, when the guards have let their guard down, we’ll split into two teams. One team destroys the ritual site, while the other rescues our companions… Does anyone have anything to add?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Then let’s get moving.”
After settling on a plan, the group split up and began combing through the wreckage of the plane.
The survivors had searched the aircraft before, but their goal back then had been food and water. Most of those supplies had either been lost or destroyed in the crash, so the search had yielded little.
This time, however, they were looking for anything that could be turned into a weapon.
Almost immediately, the four of them realized that the crashed airliner was practically a treasure trove.
Half an hour later, everyone regrouped at their makeshift camp.
Working together, the Black coach and Sophia managed to pry open a crushed emergency equipment compartment in the cabin. Inside, they found an aircraft crash axe and several handheld distress flares. The coach claimed the axe, while Sophia took the flares. Filled with magnesium, aluminum powder, and other incendiary compounds, each flare could release temperatures exceeding 1,000°C in an instant, making them equally useful for starting fires or injuring enemies.
Anthony, the group’s leader, took a far more hard-core approach.
Instead of searching for ready-made weapons, he improvised his own from the wreckage. He removed broken sections of the aircraft’s metal frame and sharpened one end into spears. Then he tore aluminum alloy panels from the wing’s outer skin, honed their edges until they were razor-sharp, and lashed them to wooden shafts with strips cut from seat belts, producing a whole stack of crude machetes.
Aircraft materials were designed to be hard, wear-resistant, and highly durable. The improvised weapons were sturdy, reliable, and no less lethal than Everly’s straight knife.
Last came Everly.
While everyone else arrived at the makeshift camp carrying piles of salvaged gear, she strolled over with both hands tucked casually into her pockets, giving the others the impression that she’d come back empty-handed.
They quickly realized just how wrong they were.
Everly reached into her pocket and pulled out several amber prescription bottles.
They were the standard pill bottles used for prescription medications in the United States. According to the labels, they contained fentanyl, an opioid painkiller.
Fentanyl is roughly one hundred times more potent than morphine as a painkiller. In medicine, it is primarily used to treat severe pain, such as that experienced by patients with late-stage cancer. However, because it is inexpensive to manufacture and relatively easy to produce illegally, this highly addictive drug has become the most widely abused opioid painkiller in the United States.
Its lethality is just as notorious as its analgesic effect.
A dose of fentanyl no larger than a grain of salt can stop an adult’s breathing and kill them on the spot. Illicitly manufactured fentanyl is especially dangerous because its dosage is often wildly inconsistent, making accidental overdoses common. In recent years, it has become the leading cause of fatal drug overdoses in the United States.
Everly had simply picked up a random suitcase and searched it without much expectation.
To her surprise, tucked beneath several thick coats were four full bottles of fentanyl.
Who knew why the suitcase’s owner had brought so much pain medication onto the plane?
It didn’t matter now.
The dr*gs belonged to her.
As a powerful opioid analgesic, one of fentanyl’s common side effects is profound drowsiness. People taking it for the first time, having no tolerance to the drug, were especially susceptible. One dose was often enough to knock them out.
So even if the amount they had wasn’t sufficient to kill the Caribs, mixing the fentanyl into their food would still incapacitate them, sending them into a deep sleep.
The other three clearly understood that as well.
Seeing the prescription bottles in Everly’s hand, they all broke into smiles.
As a result, the rescue plan—originally scheduled for nighttime—was moved up to daylight.
On the one hand, the sooner they rescued Terry and the others, the better their chances of survival. On the other, the forest became far more dangerous after dark. Limited visibility would make it much harder to escape if anything went wrong.
It was now three o’clock in the afternoon. Primitive tribes had little in the way of nightlife, so assuming they ate an evening meal, dinner would probably be around five o’clock, before sunset.
That dinner would be the perfect opportunity to dr*g the entire village.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, the group sat down for a brief rest. They ate what food they had salvaged from the wreckage, and once they had filled their stomachs, they shouldered their assortment of improvised weapons and set off on the long journey to rescue their companions.
Anthony took the lead.
As the undisputed masters of the forest, the Caribs were accustomed to ruling the area with impunity. When they returned to their village with captives and corpses in tow, they hadn’t bothered to conceal their tracks. For a retired Special Forces soldier like Anthony, following those footprints back to the cannibals’ settlement was child’s play.
Leading his three companions, he moved swiftly through the forest, following the trail.
At first, the terrain was completely wild. Aside from footprints pressed into the mud and moss, there wasn’t the slightest sign of human activity. Whenever they came across patches of dense undergrowth, they had to use sticks to push aside low vines covered with thorns and serrated edges before they could pass.
As they continued, the path beneath their feet gradually widened.
Looking ahead, they could see that the tangled thornbushes that had once spread across the trail like giant spiderwebs had been hacked away by human hands, clearing a dirt road wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The ground was densely packed with countless overlapping barefoot footprints, the earth compressed from being trampled over and over again through the years.
Along both sides of the road, thick wooden stakes about the width of a wrist had been driven into the ground at regular intervals.
Mounted atop each stake was a human head.
Some had long since decayed into bare skulls, their yellowed bone cracked and weathered after prolonged exposure to the elements.
Others had been placed there only recently. Flesh still clung to their faces, and thick, dark brown putrefaction fluids dripped steadily from their chins, pooling into foul-smelling puddles on the ground.
As the group drew closer, they could see glossy black insects swarming over both the heads and the edges of the fetid pools beneath them. A suffocating stench of decay rolled over them, so overpowering it nearly stole their breath.
From this point onward, they had officially entered territory frequented by the Caribs.
To avoid exposing themselves, Anthony led the group off the road lined with severed heads and into a wooded area some distance away. Crouching low, they slowed their pace even further.
The four of them crept through the undergrowth for another five or six minutes.
Suddenly, a flash of red appeared at the end of the head-lined road.
Looking more closely, they saw that it was a young Carib warrior carrying a spear, strolling casually along the road toward the forest.
Fearing they might alert him, all four immediately dropped flat against the ground, holding their breath and daring not to move.
Fortunately, the Carib was merely passing through. He didn’t so much as glance toward the nearby bushes where they were hiding.
They waited in complete silence until his figure disappeared from sight before cautiously moving on.
This time, they hadn’t gone very far before they were forced to stop.
The trees ended.
The dense wall of green that had filled their vision abruptly gave way to an enormous clearing. At its center stood the Carib settlement, bustling with red-skinned tribespeople. If they didn’t want to be spotted, exposing themselves now would be a terrible idea.
Everly pulled out a crude telescope she had fashioned from a hollow steel tube and fragments of eyeglass lenses, then peered through a gap in the trees toward the clearing.
The clearing was roughly the size of a sports stadium. Around its perimeter were obvious scorch marks, suggesting the vegetation had been deliberately burned away. There was no palisade or other defensive wall surrounding the settlement.
A stream flowed straight through the middle, dividing the clearing into two roughly equal halves.
Clustered in the center were dozens of low, cone-shaped huts.
Their frames were built from timber, while their exteriors were covered with grayish-white hides crudely stitched together with thick cord.
As Everly’s gaze swept across them, something about the hides struck her as odd.
They were taut and remarkably smooth, with fine, delicate grain. They looked thinner than ordinary cowhide or sheepskin, and their surfaces lacked the dense hair one would expect from animal hides.
On some of the pieces, she could even make out faint bluish-black patterns.
Wait…
Those were tattoos.
Everly’s scalp tingled as she realized the Caribs’ huts were covered in human skin.
There had been far more victims here than she’d imagined.
To build an entire settlement like this… who knew how many flayed hides it had taken?
Suppressing the wave of nausea, she tore her eyes away from the grotesque structures and refocused on finding their objectives.
It wasn’t long before she spotted a raised stone altar in the center of the clearing.
At the foot of the altar stood an unusually ornate tent. Everly guessed that it belonged to the tribe’s priest. If there really was some ritual array or artifact responsible for the “cognitive distortion,” it was most likely either on the altar or inside that tent.
Not far from the tent sat an enormous wooden cage in the open.
The people they had come to rescue—Terry and the other survivors—were locked inside, guarded by several Carib tribesmen.