Chapter 329: Into the Forest (9)
The facts proved that the other three members of the group were indeed smarter than the Black coach.
“See those folding pots over there?” Anthony gestured toward a corner of the rocky beach. More than a dozen folding pots of various sizes were stacked there, their rims coated with a thick layer of greasy grime.
“The wear on those pots shows these primitives cook with them regularly. If we’re patient and wait until they start making dinner, we can pour the fentanyl into the pots. That way, everyone will end up eating a dr*g-laced meal tonight.”
Sophia added cautiously, “It’s best to add the dr*g after the food has finished cooking and has cooled a bit. Some dr*gs decompose or denature at high temperatures, which would reduce or even eliminate their effectiveness.”
“I noticed a pile of fruit over there,” Everly continued. “If tampering with the soup proves too difficult, we could sprinkle the dr*g over the fruit instead—assuming they serve fruit with dinner.”
Even cannibals needed more than just meat to maintain a balanced diet. It was now mid-November, late autumn, when many forest fruits were ripe. A heap of freshly gathered fruit sat in one corner of the rocky beach. A quick glance revealed wild apples, muscadine grapes, wild pears, blackberries, and more. If the tribe shared the fruit at dinner, dusting it with the dr*g would be another good option.
Putting their heads together, they came up with all sorts of ways to administer the dr*g.
The biggest obstacle was the two-meter-wide stretch of open ground separating the food preparation area from the bushes where the four of them were hiding. Thanks to the day’s bountiful harvest, the preparation area was bustling with activity. Nearly every adult woman in the tribe had gathered there.
Trying to slip into the preparation area and lace the food under those circumstances would be harder than assassinating the President of the United States…
“Maybe we could make a slingshot,” Anthony suggested, pointing at the elastic hair tie Sophia was using to tie back her hair. “If we find some sturdy elastic cord, we could roll the fentanyl into little pellets and shoot them into the pot.”
“But if we roll it into pellets, small ones will be hard to launch accurately, while large ones won’t dissolve easily. And if someone spots them, we’ll alert the whole tribe.”
“Besides, the distance is too great,” Everly added. “None of the elastic cords we have are strong enough.”
When that idea fell through, the Black coach raised his hand with another suggestion. “What if we disguise ourselves as the primitives and sneak in to poison the food?”
Everly couldn’t resist a sarcastic jab. “Sounds like a great idea. But do you really think the four of us won’t be recognized on sight?”
“Uh…”
The coach looked down at his dark skin and conspicuously pale fingernails, then glanced at his three teammates, whose Caucasian features were equally unmistakable.
He himself was obviously out of the running for such a daring plan. Anthony, the only other man, was far too imposing—nearly six-foot-three, with shoulders as broad as a double-door refrigerator. Standing beside those cannibals, he’d make even the tribe’s strongest warrior look like a dwarf.
As for the two women, they were both on the tall side as well. Even if they painted every inch of their skin red, there was no hiding their blonde hair and blue eyes. And the primitive women all went bare-chested, so were they supposed to…
Meeting Everly’s icy stare, the Black coach shivered and wisely cut off that line of thought before it went any further.
He was starting to find the girl a little frightening.
Sophia offered another idea.
“What if we wait until dark and sneak in through the stream? It looked deep enough to hide a person.”
“The stream is a good route,” Anthony replied after a moment’s thought, frowning. “The problem is that there’s still some distance between the water and the fire pit. Crossing that gap, walking from the stream to the folding pots or the pile of fruit, sprinkling the dr*g, then making it all the way back without anyone noticing—with that many eyes watching? That’s asking a lot. And there are people washing corpses by the stream all the time. We might not even get the chance.”
Everly wasn’t convinced that approaching through the stream would work either. After thinking it over, she proposed, “Do you remember how we ran here from the other side of the forest? Maybe we can use the same tactic—create a distraction to draw the primitives’ attention away. Once enough of them have left, we can take advantage of the chaos to slip out and poison the food.”
From what she had observed, these Caribs had an astonishingly weak sense of security. That was probably because they had dominated the forest for centuries without ever encountering a serious enemy.
In any case, unlike a typical primitive tribe, the Caribs’ settlement was riddled with holes, like a giant sieve. There were no dedicated patrols, no sentries standing watch. Their organization was loose and undisciplined, less like a tribe and more like a coalition of rabble.
Take what had happened earlier, for example. When the rescue helicopter flew overhead, everyone in the settlement had been captivated by the prey in the sky. They dropped whatever they were doing and ran after the helicopter, shouting at the tops of their lungs. If someone had slipped into the food preparation area and poisoned the meal then, it might actually have worked.
Unfortunately, helicopters didn’t come by all the time, so they’d have to create a similar diversion themselves.
“That plan definitely has potential,” the Black coach admitted. “But who’s going to be the decoy? Just so we’re clear, it won’t be me. I know my own limits. If I try to play the decoy, I’ll get caught.”
Everly hadn’t been counting on him anyway.
The role was critically important. If the decoy failed to lure the primitives in the food preparation area far enough away, whoever was poisoning the food would be at risk. But if the disturbance was too large and attracted too many pursuers, the decoy’s own safety couldn’t be guaranteed. It was a difficult balance to strike.
Of the four of them, Everly was the best suited for the job because she possessed the Chameleon Skull. The forest was full of natural cover. As long as she found a sufficiently concealed spot, crouched down, and held the skull in her mouth, the primitives wouldn’t be able to find her—even if they were standing face-to-face with her.
Even in the worst-case scenario—if she really was discovered—she could always call on Bloody Mary to swap herself into a mirror and take refuge.
Compared to that, poisoning the food was actually the more dangerous task for Everly.
So when Anthony, after hearing the Black coach’s remarks, was about to volunteer himself as the decoy, Everly immediately cut off his self-sacrificing offer.
“Let me do it. I have a way to protect myself, so I’m perfectly suited to be the decoy. As for the one who’ll poison the food, we need someone who’s both bold and meticulous, with quick reflexes. Anthony, can you handle that?”
Anthony paused for a moment. Recalling how effortlessly Everly had dealt with the three Caribs earlier, he found little reason to doubt her. She was a capable and dependable teammate. If she was willing to take on the role, she must have her reasons.
Without dwelling on it any further, he nodded immediately.
“Of course. Leave the poisoning to me.”
“Then it’s settled. We wait here for now. Once they’ve finished cooking dinner and it’s getting dark, I’ll run out and act as the decoy to lure them away. Anthony, that’s when you dump all the powder into the food.”
With that, Everly fell silent. She lay flat on the ground to conserve her strength, settling into a state of patient vigilance.
The other three followed her example, obediently flattening themselves against the ground, remaining perfectly still as they disguised themselves as rocks.
After lying there for nearly half an hour, several of the primitive women finally stopped smoking strips of meat.
Carrying the stack of folding pots, they walked to the stream and filled every one of them with water. Then one woman, dressed more elaborately than the others, removed an insulated outdoor flask from her waist, unscrewed the lid, and carefully poured a small amount of an unidentified thick red-black liquid into each pot.
While she added the liquid, the others stirred the contents and tossed in strips of meat. Once everything had been added, the women arranged wooden supports over the campfire, set the folding pots on top, stoked the flames, and began boiling the stew.
Crimson tongues of flame licked at the bottoms of the pots. Before long, the liquid inside began to bubble and boil vigorously. At the same time, a sour, putrid stench—like vomit left to rot—rose with the steam and spread rapidly through the camp.
The moment the smell reached them, the surrounding primitives couldn’t help twitching their noses, their faces melting into expressions of pure bliss. Hidden in the bushes, however, Everly and the other three felt as though someone had beaten them across the face with a pair of socks that had been fermenting for days. The stench was overwhelming, so nauseating it nearly made them vomit.
As expected of cannibals—their taste in food was certainly… unique.
Pinching their noses, the four remained hidden until the stew had finished simmering and the women carried the pots over to the nearby rocky beach to cool.
The sun had only just begun to sink in the west, and the forest was still bathed in ample daylight. A few primitives gradually returned to the settlement carrying plants and animals they had gathered, but there weren’t many of them yet. The main hunting party was still out.
The freshly cooked stew was far too hot. None of the four had any expertise in pharmaceuticals, so they didn’t know whether fentanyl would lose its potency at high temperatures. To be safe, they decided to wait another ten minutes. In the current weather, that would be enough time for the stew to cool below sixty degrees, at which point it should be safe to add the dr*g.
Of course, if the primitives showed any sign of moving the pots before then, Everly would act immediately without hesitation to stop them from taking the stew away.
Once the plan was finalized, Everly tucked the two signal flares Sophia had given her into her gear and began crawling toward the bushes off to the left.
Anthony, meanwhile, crawled to the patch of undergrowth closest to the folding pots, clutching four bottles of fentanyl that had already been crushed into powder. Every muscle in his body was taut, poised to spring into action.
Ten minutes later, at precisely 4:47 p.m., Everly would burst out from the bushes to the left and fire the signal flares at the primitives in the food preparation area, creating a massive commotion and drawing them away.
The moment she did, Anthony would take over, dash in, and dump the powdered fentanyl into the folding pots.
The plan was sound.
Its execution, however, hit an unexpected snag.
At 4:44 p.m., three minutes before the operation was scheduled to begin, a burst of commotion suddenly erupted from one corner of the settlement.
From her hiding place, Everly had a partial view of what was happening.
The source of the uproar was eight or nine young Caribs carrying hunting gear. Working in groups of three or four, some supported the heads while others held the limbs, lifting three stiffened Carib corpses high above their heads. As they carried the bodies toward the center of the settlement, they shouted incomprehensible words at the top of their lungs.
The cries seemed to serve as some kind of assembly signal.
Hearing them, the Caribs throughout the settlement put down whatever they were doing. Grief flooded their red-painted faces as they wailed and gathered around the procession.
In just a few minutes, the funeral party grew from little more than a dozen people to several dozen.
Crowding around the three bodies at the center, they raised both hands high with their palms facing upward in a strange gesture of support. Their mouths hung open, exposing rows of yellowed, blackened, rotting teeth as they danced wildly, howled, and cried, escorting the dead to the altar at the heart of the settlement.
Standing before the altar was an elderly woman with snow-white hair, dressed in the garb of a priestess.
A dagger in hand, she waited in solemn silence for the return of the fallen warriors.