Chapter Ten

Zoe pushed against the doctor’s chest to walk past her. “Do I have permission to eat now, or are you not through analyzing my life?”

The doctor led Zoe toward the cook tent, where a fire was blazing in the open pit. Men and women, most dressed in fatigues, clustered around it, standing in line or sitting cross-legged on the ground or on rocks. Others were eating at makeshift tables nearby. Several stared at her as she approached.

Only a handful of people sat at one of the tables: three guerrillas and two women and a man in torn, threadbare civilian clothes. There were other hostages here. One of the women—blond and painfully thin—seemed to be about her age. The other, a brunette with olive skin, was younger, perhaps still in her teens. The brunette sat close to a man Zoe guessed was her father—they had similar coloring and the same sharp features, and as she watched, the man put his arm around the girl protectively and squeezed her shoulder. She headed toward them and sat nearby on a dry patch of ground.

“If you’re waiting to place your order, you’ll starve,” said someone behind her. “The food is over there.” Zoe looked up to see the doctor, pointing to a large metal pot placed on stones beside the fire pit. “Get it while it lasts.”

Zoe got in line behind a couple of rebels and two more people who looked like hostages: a tall, skinny blond man and a petite, dark-haired woman, both of whom looked to be in their forties or fifties. Everyone seemed to be serving themselves, but a woman with a filthy apron stood next to the pot, apparently monitoring portions. Following the example of the others, Zoe fished a tin plate and spoon out of a crate to one side and waited her turn. When the blond man reached the pot, he carefully scooped out one ladle full of food and emptied it onto his plate. It looked like gooey rice, with black objects floating it in. At first, Zoe thought the black bits must be insects, maybe small cockroaches or flies. Her stomach recoiled.

“How do you eat that stuff?” she asked no one in particular. She didn’t even know if either of the hostages or any of the rebels nearby spoke English.

The blond man answered without looking at her. “You’d be surprised at what you can eat when you’re starving.” His accent was distinctly Australian.

“At least today we eat,” the petite, dark-haired woman in front of her said. “You’re the new one. I’m Marcella, from Italy.”

“Zoe, from England. How long have you been here?”

“Almost a year…I think,” Marcella said. “It becomes hard to remember. Willy there has been here longer, maybe two.”

“Years?” Zoe practically shouted the word. “Can’t your family or someone get you out?”

The blond man, who had started to leave to find a seat, paused to look at her and shook his head dolefully. “You’re about to find out how screwed up these fuckers are,” he whispered, and went to sit near the blond woman.

Marcella stepped up to the pot and carefully ladled out a portion for herself.

“What did he mean by that?” Zoe asked.

“Even if the guerrillas get the money they ask for,” Marcella said, “they don’t free you. They keep you here and ask for more.”

A chill ran through her. “What? That’s bloody insane.”

“Everything here is,” Marcella replied, and walked away.

It was her turn to get dinner, but though she hadn’t had a decent meal since her abduction, she had lost her appetite. What if the same happened to her? What if she too was stuck here for a year, or two, or forever? The dreary prognosis made her stomach churn, and she dry-heaved, unsteady on her feet. As she tossed her plate and spoon to the side, the stocky cook said something in Spanish, but she ignored the woman and went to sit by the fire, almost in a daze. The rabid hunger she’d suffered for days had disappeared as fast as her hope.

The doctor was seated on the other side of the fire pit, looking in her direction. But she appeared to be distracted, lost in her own thoughts. How could this woman try to justify what was going on here? How did she and all these other fanatics have the right to take away her life?

She would not resign herself to an endless future here, in the jungle, constantly on the run and continuously guarded by Neanderthals. She’d take a sharp object and stick it through her eye all the way to her brain before she’d let that happen. No, she resolved. I’ll find a way out of here. Although she didn’t have anything or anyone to go back to, except her father, she refused to give up on life. Zoe was determined to figure out a way to escape, or at least die trying. She needed to be alone, to think and plan. These people, everything about her environment, were adding to her nausea. But where? She got up and walked over to the doctor, to ask where she was to sleep.

“I thought you were hungry,” the woman said.

“I lost my appetite.”

“You should eat,” the doctor said. “You probably haven’t had a meal in days.”

“Is that what you call this crap?” Zoe glanced over at the blond hostage who’d been ahead of her in line. He’d already wolfed down his portion and was meticulously licking his plate.

“If they see you turn down food,” the doctor said in a low voice, “which I’m sure they have, it might be a long time before they let you eat again.”

But food was the least of her concerns. “Is it true? Do you keep the hostages here and ask for more after you receive the ransom?”

The doctor shrugged. “It depends.”

“On what?”

The doctor looked around before answering. “On the negotiator I’m sure your father has hired. If they pay too fast or don’t negotiate a considerably lower amount, then yes, they will ask for more.”

“Because you think they can afford it.”

The doctor nodded. “Yes.”

“It doesn’t even cross your deranged minds that these people may have just spent and mortgaged everything they own and simply don’t have anything left to offer?” Several of the rebels standing close by were openly staring at her now, but Zoe didn’t care.

“Get some food,” the doctor said sternly, without looking up at her.

“Is that your answer?”

“No, it’s a damn order,” the doctor said, much more sharply, her jaw muscles tightening. “Go get some damn food. Now.”

“I just said—”

“I refuse to drag you around and nurse your ass because of deliberate malnutrition. If you won’t do it yourself…” The doctor stared up at her, unflinching, her mouth firmly set. “I’ll tie you down and force-feed you.”

Was this woman out of her mind? Who the hell did she think she was to order her around? She wasn’t a child. She didn’t need to be told when to eat. “Can you point me to my quarters?” Zoe said angrily.

The doctor jumped up, grabbed Zoe by the wrist, and dragged her over to the food. Zoe tried to resist, but the woman was much too strong, and any attempt to dig in her heels only sent shooting pains through her raw, tender feet.

As the cook looked on with a bemused smile, the doctor jerked the ladle from the pot and dumped its contents on a plate. She shoved a spoon into the dubious concoction, picked it up, and pulled Zoe off to the side of the camp. Soldiers sitting by the fire started to hoot and whistle, shouting what Zoe was sure were obscenities.

They stopped by a tree, and the doctor dropped the plate on a low, crude table set beneath its branches. “I’ll give you one more chance. You either feed yourself or I do it.”

“You can’t be serious.”

The doctor pushed her up against the tree and pinned her by the throat. She reached down with her free hand, grabbed a heaping spoonful of the foul goop, and held it in front of Zoe’s face. “Dead serious.”

Zoe couldn’t move. Damn, the woman was strong. The fire in the doctor’s eyes made it clear she wouldn’t stop until she got her way. Her hand was still tight around Zoe’s neck. It was the first time the doctor actually scared her.

“Okay, I’ll eat,” Zoe managed to choke out.

When the doctor released her, Zoe coughed and tried to fill her lungs with air. When she could breathe again she picked up the plate and shoveled the slop in, taking huge, deliberate mouthfuls for the doctor’s benefit, and finished in seconds. It tasted even worse than it looked. “Happy?” she asked, her voice hoarse, as the goop dribbled down her chin.

The doctor smiled. “Ecstatic. Let me show you to your quarters.”

Zoe was led to a small hut in the center of the camp, constructed of rough planks with a roof of thatched fronds. It was dark inside, but the wide spaces between the boards in the walls provided enough light that she could immediately make out a hammock and a long, thick chain that stretched across the dirt floor. Without a word, the doctor picked up the small metal collar attached to one end of the chain, unlaced Zoe’s left boot, and secured the collar around her ankle. She departed, leaving Zoe alone.

She stared down at the restraint. It didn’t cut into her ankle, but with only a thin sock as padding between the metal and her flesh, it would leave some bad bruises as soon as she moved around very much. At least the damn contraption wasn’t around her neck. She’d expected the worst after having to endure being chained like a dog.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she explored the rest of her roughly ten-by-ten foot living space, holding the heavy chain in one hand to lessen the friction against her ankle. Her rope hammock bed had no pillow, but at least she had two blankets—the same one she’d had for the long march here, crusted with dried mud, and a thicker one made of wool. To her dismay, the only other thing in the hut was a bucket in the corner that reeked of urine.

No clothes. No water. Nothing to clean herself with. No light of any kind, not even a candle. The idea of spending a year or more in this fetid prison was unthinkable. Unimaginable.

Twilight was fast approaching. Zoe wrapped herself in both blankets like a cocoon and stared out at the camp through a wide gap in the boards. The rebels were lighting fires in open pits scattered here and there. One was only a few yards away, but too far to give her any warmth. The night was fairly mild, but exhaustion had left her cold and empty. Only one thought gave her any hope right now—finding a way out.

She took off her boots, wincing at her sore feet, and carefully got into the hammock. She kept the blankets tightly coiled around herself to provide some padding between her body and the rough rope, but it was still horribly uncomfortable. Her raw feet were pinched where the ends of the hammock came together, and she was afraid she’d fall out if she moved much.

Living under these circumstances was not an option. Not because she was spoiled, an assumption the doctor seemed convinced of, but because she missed her life. No. It wasn’t her life she missed. No one, not even a pet, depended on her. She’d even managed to kill the one plant her father had brought to liven up her apartment, because she forgot to water it. Responsibility had never been her strongest suit.

But Zoe did miss her father, the only person who, until recently, never judged her and always believed in her. She wasn’t angry with him for firing her. He just wanted her to get her life together, but she was disappointed that her career had to suffer. She was good at her job. Maybe her heart wasn’t in it, but she gave her best to the company. Not for herself, but for her father. She wanted him to be proud.

She regretted that he thought the stupid tabloids could undermine and disprove her abilities. It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t anticipate when and where the paparazzi might pop up to commemorate her lifestyle with their cameras, but they always seemed to be there to catch every unfortunate moment. The bastards never made a big deal out of her charity donations or fundraisers, however. Those always ended up buried on the last page of the rags, if they were covered at all.

“Opportunistic leeches,” she said out loud. And the bimbos she was often caught with didn’t help. They were anything but disappointed to be seen with her or accused of being her playmate. Some were even straight or married women who’d pop into the picture and kiss her at the last second. It didn’t matter to them what the headline read the next day, as long as their mug and name were immortalized for a week. Regardless, what people thought of her rarely mattered, unless or until she had to endure her father’s disapproving silent stare.

Zoe shivered. She should have been warm under the cocoon of blankets but she couldn’t stop shaking. Her arm had started to tingle. It was going numb from laying on it. Though she wanted to shift position, she was afraid to rock the hammock and risk falling out. She had never been this tired, but sleep eluded her. Fear of being trapped in this jungle for an indefinite period overrode all other senses.

Even if she did escape, how long would she last, alone in the jungle? She didn’t know the first thing about survival and had not been gifted with an internal compass. She had a hard enough time reading maps, never mind blind navigation. If only she’d watched those survival programs on National Geographic instead of using them to lull her to sleep. Maybe more of it had sunk in than she realized, like listening to foreign language tapes while you slept. Was it foolish to hope that some strange sort of telepathic osmosis had taken place, and she’d instinctively know what to do?

Laughter from outside only added to her misery. More than a dozen rebels were gathered around the campfire just outside her hut, talking in Spanish and passing around a bottle of something. Even if she could possibly extricate herself from the chain, which was secured to a heavy block of concrete, she wouldn’t be able to slip away during the night if she was always so heavily guarded.

The glow of the fire shone through the gaps in the boards, painting the ceiling and opposite wall with strips of amber light. She was almost enjoying the display when movement caught her eye—something, thick and black, scurried up one of the light strips toward the ceiling.

Sweet God, was that a spider? And no mere house spider, for when it came into view again and she got a better look at it she knew it had to be a bleedin’ tarantula. She screamed and shot straight up, so suddenly she was dumped ass over teakettle onto the dirt floor, the chain tangled around the now twisted hammock. “Bloody fucking spiders!” she screamed.

It took her five minutes to add a few new vulgarities to the English vocabulary and free herself from the Gordian knot. She picked up her blankets and propped herself up in a corner of the room, far from the hairy creature. She scanned the light strips, but she’d lost sight of it. That was it. She’d never go to sleep again.

“I bet you’d just love this,” she said aloud, thinking of the doctor. Fight for the cause. Did the doctor really think she could convince Zoe of the righteousness of their ridiculous war? Oh sure, they wanted to use her life to make a half-assed pseudo attempt to overthrow their government, and pocket a few million for personal benefit in the process. Why, no problem. Be her guest. She was thrilled and privileged to be here.

“Gun-toting maniacs!” she yelled out into the night.

When she got out of here, when not if, she vowed to herself, she intended to do everything in her power to hurt these people. Yeah, right. Like what? No one could touch them. But it was probably normal to have thoughts of revenge, and force-feeding that overinflated doctor was high on her list.

She was so tired. But she wouldn’t be able to shut her eyes until she spotted the spider again. When she finally did, it was scurrying toward the top of the door. “That’s right. Keep going, you furry mutant.” Relaxing a little, she reached up to run her hand through her hair and quickly found it was an impossible task. She ruffled it and enough dried mud to build another hut fell off and onto her blanket. Just bloody magic.

Shifting to position herself near one of the wide gaps so she could get a good look at herself by the firelight, she examined her clothes for the first time in days. Everything was torn and caked with muck. Her nails were broken and jagged, and her hands were badly scratched from the thorns and branches of the jungle. She had itchy bug bites everywhere, but her feet were the worst problem. She gingerly peeled off the socks the doctor had given her. They were still bandaged, but the gauze was thin, and when the cool air hit them her misery increased. As she pulled the socks back on, tears started to form at the corners of her eyes. She shut them tight and, wrapping herself up again in the blankets, started to hum her mother’s lullaby.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 739