Chapter 328: Into the Forest (8)
Both the altar and the wooden cage stood in the very heart of the settlement.
To reach them, they would first have to cross the open clearing around the village and then make their way through a dense cluster of cone-shaped huts.
There was still more than an hour before sunset, yet the settlement was already bustling with activity. Natives whose bodies were painted crimson wandered everywhere—men and women, old and young alike. Scattered among the huts like beans strewn across the ground, they formed a living barrier protecting the altar.
Without the help of the fentanyl, forcing their way through so many obstacles and reaching the altar would be next to impossible.
There was good news, however.
Everly carefully observed several of the huts nearest the forest’s edge.
Judging by their size and shape, they weren’t suitable for cooking over an open fire. Around the huts, she found only scattered animal bones and human bones, with no signs of hearths or cooking pits.
That suggested the Caribs still followed a tradition dating back some six hundred years: after a hunt, all food was turned over to the tribe, where designated “cooks” prepared it. Once the meal was ready, it was distributed equally by the tribe’s respected elders.
As for where the tribe’s kitchen was…
Everly swept her gaze across the settlement for a few moments before quickly settling on a spot diagonally across the clearing.
It was still broad daylight, yet several thick columns of bluish-gray smoke were continuously rising from that area, as though something was being burned.
Thinking back to the bodies the tribesmen had carried away, it was hard not to suspect that the Caribs were preparing today’s “catch.”
The patch of woods where the four of them were hiding lay on relatively flat ground. With the cone-shaped huts and the altar blocking their view, they couldn’t make out exactly what was happening at the source of the smoke.
After taking turns with the telescope, they huddled together, their heads nearly touching, and quietly discussed their next move.
In the end, they decided to circle around to the opposite side of the clearing and observe the area from a better vantage point.
Just then, a deep, rumbling roar echoed overhead.
Moments later, a rescue helicopter emblazoned with a large Red Cross flew low over the settlement, instantly drawing the attention of every red-skinned tribesperson below.
“Urulu! Paraka!”
“Ora!”
The moment they spotted the helicopter, the Caribs reacted as though they had just discovered the fattest prey imaginable.
They shouted excitedly and danced with exhilaration.
Those carrying weapons gave chase, hurling spears and shooting arrows into the sky. Those without weapons improvised on the spot, grabbing stones, clumps of dirt, even loose bones from the ground and throwing them at the aircraft with all their strength.
The helicopter was clearly still conducting its search mission, flying less than four stories above the ground. The tribespeople also possessed astonishing arm strength.
Within moments, a dense barrage of arrows and spears streaked toward the helicopter with terrifying force.
Although the powerful downdraft from the spinning rotor blades deflected many of the incoming projectiles, plenty of spears, arrows, and rocks still struck the aircraft.
The lighter impacts merely dented the sturdy fuselage before bouncing away.
The heavier ones punched straight through the metal skin, leaving the helicopter bristling with shafts like a porcupine.
What was remarkable was that despite being attacked so ferociously, the pilots inside the cockpit remained surprisingly calm. Through the windshield, they appeared almost completely unruffled.
Everly guessed that the force distorting people’s perception was probably replacing the primitive village and the volley of incoming weapons with the image of a dense forest and treetops scraping against the helicopter’s fuselage.
Branches brushing against a helicopter flying at low altitude was perfectly normal.
So the pilots remained unflustered. They merely pulled the aircraft a little higher without even changing their speed.
“Thrum… thrum-thrum-thrum…”
Modern technology proved its worth.
Despite taking a savage beating from the cannibals during the brief flyover, the rescue helicopter survived the ordeal. Listing from side to side, it managed to pass over the settlement before disappearing beyond the far side of the forest.
“Gugulasa!”
Watching their prey escape unharmed, the Caribs pounded their chests in fury, raging helplessly at the sky.
Meanwhile, Everly and the others took advantage of the tribesmen’s distraction. While every eye was fixed on the helicopter, the four of them hurried through the forest, relocating from their original hiding place to another thicket diagonally across the clearing.
From there, they finally saw the source of the smoke.
In one corner of the settlement, a large group of Caribs was working together to smoke enormous quantities of meat.
The area was a broad, rocky stretch of open ground near the edge of the village, with few structures nearby.
Scattered across the stone flat were several earthen pits about half a meter deep. The largest measured nearly two meters across, while even the smallest was at least as wide as a manhole cover.
Bonfires blazed inside the pits.
As the fires burned, tribespeople repeatedly laid thick, water-soaked branches over them, preventing the wood from burning completely and producing dense clouds of smoke.
Those drifting plumes were the very columns of bluish-gray smoke Everly’s group had seen from the other side of the forest.
Around the rim of every fire pit, sturdy Y-shaped wooden stakes had been driven into the ground. Across them rested a crisscrossing framework of branches, from which thick strips of meat—each about as thick as a person’s forearm—hung suspended by braided grass ropes.
Thick smoke and heat billowed up from the pits, enveloping the fresh strips of meat. Before long, a dark coating would form over their surfaces.
Everly had received formal wilderness survival training. At a glance, she recognized the technique the tribespeople were using.
It was pit smoking—a traditional method of preserving meat when salt is scarce. By slowly smoking the meat over smoldering fires, its shelf life could be extended considerably.
As for where the meat had come from…
Everly’s gaze drifted uncontrollably toward the edge of the rocky flat.
Near the forest lay a gigantic mound of corpses, piled together as carelessly as a heap of garbage.
Most of the bodies belonged to Caucasians. They wore modern, factory-made clothing and rubber-soled shoes. Some were adorned with gold and silver jewelry, while others still had expensive watches fastened to their wrists. Their appearance was completely out of place among the red-skinned tribespeople moving about them.
Looking more closely, Everly recognized several familiar faces.
She had seen them in the airport terminal before boarding the flight.
There was no doubt about it.
The bodies in this gruesome pile were the victims of the plane crash.
Two Carib women stood beside the heap, stripping the corpses of their clothes, shoes, socks, and accessories with astonishing speed, as effortlessly as someone plucking feathers from a chicken.
Like the male Caribs they had encountered earlier, the women wore no clothing on their upper bodies. Their skin was coated in red pigment and decorated with all manner of strange painted patterns. If not for the obvious feminine features of their chests, it would have been nearly impossible to distinguish them from the men by their faces alone.
Neither the male nor the female Caribs wore proper clothing. They covered only their private areas with pieces of fur.
As a result, the clothing stripped from the bodies was treated as worthless refuse and tossed onto the firewood pile, where it would be burned together with the logs as fuel.
The naked corpses, meanwhile, were lifted one-handed and passed to the people waiting beside the stream.
They were the second stage of the tribe’s “corpse-processing assembly line.”
After receiving the bodies, the Carib women stationed by the stream grasped each corpse by the hair and carefully used knives to remove the entire scalp in one piece.
Next, they cut open the chest and extracted the heart intact.
After special treatment, the scalps would become wig-like ornaments worn by the women. As for the human hearts, Everly guessed they were considered a delicacy reserved for eating. After all, the tribesman they had encountered in the forest had eaten the IT worker’s heart.
Once those two parts had been removed, the women laid the corpse flat on the ground and slit open the abdomen from top to bottom. Gripping the flesh on either side, they pulled it apart with force, exposing all of the internal organs.
Apparently, they had little interest in any organs besides the heart.
The slick, limp entrails, giving off a pungent, metallic stench, were roughly yanked out and tossed aside, forming bloody heaps of offal.
The hollowed-out bodies were then lowered into the stream, where the current carried them downstream to the feet of the women responsible for the third stage of processing.
Their task was to butcher the corpses.
First, they chopped off the heads, which contained little edible meat. Then they carefully removed the large sections of skin from the backs before cutting the remaining bodies into evenly sized strips of flesh. The strips were tied with braided grass ropes and hung over the smoking pits.
To carry out this work efficiently, the women had traded their crude stone axes for modern knives—military knives, machetes, and similar blades.
Everly recognized most of them as the sort of survival knives commonly carried by wilderness enthusiasts.
She couldn’t help suspecting they had all been taken from hikers who had wandered into the forest.
At the moment, everyone on the rocky flat was occupied with their work, and no one had noticed the thicket where Everly’s group was hiding.
Even so, remaining concealed was an agonizing ordeal.
No one could remain completely composed in the face of such a gruesome spectacle.
The more modern people saw themselves as the masters of the Earth—the pinnacle of all living things, secure in their civilized world and accustomed to being in control—the more unbearable the shock became when they were suddenly cast into this savage, primitive place, where that sense of superiority vanished in an instant.
They were no longer the hunters, but the hunted.
No longer the diners, but the livestock.
Here, every title and privilege that modern civilization had draped over humanity was mercilessly stripped away.
You were simply yourself—and nothing more.
The only reason you were still alive was that the executioner’s blade above your head had not yet fallen.
That realization gave rise to an overwhelming sense of terror and helplessness.
As if on cue, a cool breeze swept through the forest.
The four of them were hiding downwind. Every time the wind passed over the smoking pits, it carried with it the rich aroma of roasting meat, tinged with the sweet scent of fruitwood.
They had been on the move all day, surviving on nothing more than a few snacks salvaged from the wreckage. By now, all four were ravenously hungry.
The smell of meat triggered an instinctive response.
Their stomachs churned with hunger, gastric juices surged, and their mouths filled with saliva.
But the moment they remembered where the meat had come from, nausea rolled through them instead.
Their stomachs twisted violently, and they fought back the urge to vomit.
Enduring the torment, the four huddled together, their heads nearly touching as they whispered among themselves.
“I think this is their food-processing area. We’re upstream… should we try dumping the drugs into the water?”
The Black coach reasoned that since every corpse was rinsed in the stream, pouring the fentanyl into the water upstream would allow the drug to coat the bodies naturally. It seemed both safe and efficient.
The suggestion was immediately rejected by the other three.
“The Caribs are smoking the meat to preserve it. In other words, this is their food reserve. If you drug it now, who knows when they’ll actually eat the contaminated meat?”
“The drug will also be heavily diluted in the stream. If the concentration ends up too low to have any effect, we’ll just waste all the fentanyl.”
“Besides, the smoking process might break down the fentanyl’s molecular structure. We don’t know enough chemistry to predict what would happen, so we shouldn’t gamble.”
The coach hadn’t expected that one offhand suggestion would draw so much opposition.
He shrugged, rolled his eyes dramatically toward the sky, and said with a helpless sigh,
“All right, all right. You’re all smarter than I am. So what do you think we should do?”