Rogue Element

Joe and Suryei knew the soldiers were close behind. They heard an eerie, lone bird call carried on the still, early morning air. They moved quickly and carelessly through the living obstacle course of the jungle. Their passage alerted the local inhabitants of this world and sent them scurrying noisily from trees and bushes. The monkeys were the worst. It was almost as if they delighted in giving away Joe and Suryei’s position, which, in fact, was true. The primates were the jungle’s early warning system, and they were remarkably good at their job. The soldiers, however, knew how to thread through the jungle quickly, and relatively effortlessly, with little noise or disturbance. Although Joe and Suryei had several minutes head start, that advantage was whittled away with every step.

Suryei began to claw her way desperately through the foliage. Joe caught the urgency. The jungle was now full of sound. Bushes and ferns were moving, seemingly of their own accord, all around them. They were being surrounded.

A soldier appeared in front of them, stepping from behind the trunk of one of the jungle’s giants, and barred their path. He raised his carbine to fire. Not fast enough. Joe swung his axe against the man’s rifle. It discharged harmlessly into the air. Three of the man’s fingers plopped like fat grubs to the jungle floor as the blade of his axe clinked against the weapon’s metal barrel. The soldier looked at his hand in disbelief. He dropped to the ground and tried to pick up his digits with the hand that no longer had any fingers.

Joe dodged around the tree trunk as automatic fire cracked behind them and slugs fizzed past just centimetres from his body. Joe and Suryei ran blindly, oblivious to the thorns and spikes that tore at them as they raced. The fact that Joe was facing death was apparent to his subconscious. Base survival instincts overwhelmed him. He was merely an organism trying to stay alive, clawing through the kaleidoscope of green, running as a terrified animal might run from a predator.

Joe suddenly burst out of the bush and into a campsite where half a dozen tents were neatly arranged in a semicircle in a clearing hacked out of the jungle. He stood there swaying, mouth open, brain fighting to come to grips with the sudden appearance of civilisation. Smoke curled from a few low breakfast fires. He smelled coffee. Joe would not have been more astonished if he’d found himself in a shopping mall. Suryei staggered into the clearing, panting, seconds behind him. She stopped in her tracks and looked around in shock.

They stood, sucking in air, in front of a group of men, all of whom were armed and wearing building-style hard hats. The men were obviously nervous, fingering a range of weapons including rifles and machetes. Their camp was in a slight depression, and the noise from the exploding 747 five kilometres away had apparently passed unnoticed, shielded as they were by a ridge. The few who had been woken by the distant rumble thought it nothing more than the last gasp of the monsoon thundering over the horizon. But all of them had heard the approaching gunfire. Nature was also in an uproar with macaques leaping and screeching in the treetops. The sight and state of the two people spat out by the jungle into their clearing took them totally by surprise. Swaying breathlessly in the middle of their camp were two wild and desperate-looking people, covered in dirt and bloody scratches.

The group of clean-shaven men, some Asian, some Caucasian, who were lined up opposite them, lowered their weapons in astonishment, mouths agape. There was a crack and the face of the man standing in front of Suryei disappeared in a spray of red.

Suryei and Joe were running out the other side of the clearing, into the bush, before they were aware of the soldiers charging in behind them. Automatic weapons fire and the screams of men filled the jungle around them. Two explosions boomed. Joe grabbed Suryei’s hand as they ran, frantically looking for an escape from the hell erupting around them.

Sergeant Marturak now knew for sure that he was chasing two people, a man and a woman, both young. He had seen them. Where had the woman come from? he wondered. He’d taken cover with two of his men behind a conveniently sited berm of earth at the perimeter of the clearing, to assess the situation. His crash survivors had blundered into what must have been some kind of forward survey camp for a logging operation. Sulawesi was full of them. They came in, counted the trees to determine whether the effort required to build the roads and infrastructure needed to pull the logs out was economically viable, and then surveyed the terrain for the road crews to follow.