Chapter 6: Black Water

That night, Gunsmith and John chose to rest in the cave.

With enough to eat and drink, John recovered his strength, but his mental exhaustion was probably beyond curing. If there were people in this world who slept with one eye open, John had undoubtedly joined their ranks.

Gunsmith did not suggest taking turns on watch. He knew the native cannibals would not search at night because it would take twice the effort for half the result and carry considerable risks. Hunters would not make that choice unless they had no other option.

Darkness was the dividing line between civilization and the primitive world. People in modern society might use advanced equipment to conceal themselves and move silently through the night, but the cannibal savages could only travel at night by torchlight. Any prey in nature with a brain would be scared off by the light and heat of those things, let alone John, who was already jumping at shadows.

More than half the animals in the rainforest foraged at night, but humans could not do the same. Throughout the long process of evolution, humans had never been granted the ability to function at night, which was also why our biological clocks were naturally suited to daytime living. In this particular wilderness, a species' innate abilities were more reliable than any complicated tool.

This was Gunsmith's second night in the rainforest, and once again he slept badly.

Originally, Gunsmith had only needed to figure out how to make his way through the jungle alone and return to civilization. Now he had an explorer with no equipment, exhausted in body and mind, tagging along as dead weight. He was still completely in the dark about the mysterious metal spire he had dug up earlier. And deep in the rainforest was a firmly entrenched tribe of cannibals, strong and well led, who might send a dart at him from the shadows at any moment.

In a predicament like this, probably only a run-in with a Predator could make things worse.

Gunsmith slept fitfully and dreamed again, once more of his childhood. It was another night, a bitterly cold night in a blizzard. He was in a room, wrapped in a blanket before the fireplace, waiting for his grandfather to come home. Little Charles had caught a cold that day, so he had not gone hunting with his grandfather.

At first he had been full of anticipation, hoping his grandfather's catch would mean steaming hot meat broth for him. But dark clouds gradually covered the sun, the sky grew gloomy, and before he knew it, a blizzard had arrived. Between noon and night, anticipation turned to worry. Fortunately, it never became despair, because his grandfather did come home. The instant Old Rohl opened the door, a fierce, icy wind rushed into the room. The old man blocked the wind and snow with his tall frame, then pushed the door shut again.

The flickering fire in the hearth steadied again, and a large chunk of animal meat, tied up for carrying, was tossed onto the floor. Old Rohl had clearly encountered difficult prey, and the foul weather had kept him from bringing home most of his spoils. That day, the old man had lost more than half an animal's carcass. He had also lost his right eye. By the time he reached home, the blood flowing from the socket had long since frozen solid...

“Hey, Charles, wake up. Charles!” John was calling Gunsmith's name.

His poor sleep rewarded him with an immediate headache. Still groggy, he replied, “What is it?”

John had barely slept either, but he seemed quite alert. “I heard something outside. The cannibals may have caught up.”

At the mention of cannibals, Gunsmith perked up too. Humans were creatures who could be woken by a small scare and frightened out of their wits by a big one; a shock might even give them a heart attack.

“I'll go take a look.” Gunsmith sprang to his feet and hurried off. At the cave entrance, he cautiously poked his head out and looked around. Seeing nothing unusual, he grabbed a few pebbles and threw them in a fan across three or four different directions. Rustling soon came from the trees.

He turned back to John. “Doesn't sound human. Could just be animals. What did you hear?”

“I'm not sure either,” John replied. “Oh, right, it came from up in the trees. Could those savages have sent people up there to scout?”

Gunsmith looked higher and threw a few more pebbles, this time aiming up into the trees. Apart from a few birds startled into flight, nothing living reacted.

“Could just be monkeys. Or my first round of pebbles alerted them, and they've already fled,” Gunsmith said. “We shouldn't stay here. Let's get moving as soon as possible. Keeping on the move is the best way to shake off pursuit.”

John was naturally all for that suggestion.

They left the cave and used the sun's position to find their way. The previous night, they had agreed to keep heading west, because John's expedition had originally been exploring from west to east. Of course, their compass had still been working then.

With Gunsmith clearing the way ahead, traveling through the forest became far easier. John was a professional explorer, naturally fitter and more skilled at survival than the average person. He had suffered no real injury or illness, and after a night's rest and respite, he had recovered seventy to eighty percent of his strength. Following Gunsmith made the journey much less strenuous.

Even in this unfamiliar environment, they would certainly be moving no slower than the native cannibals. In John's experience, after about three days of traveling like this, even if they had yet to leave the rainforest, the cannibals would surely have abandoned the pursuit. Primitive tribes generally did not venture beyond their own territory. These savages got around mostly on foot, and they flatly refused to go anywhere too far away. For them, leaving their territory took as much courage as Columbus sailing toward the “end of the world.”

They traveled for half a day without finding any sign of pursuit. It seemed John really had been overly suspicious that morning, seeing enemies behind every bush.

The farther they got from the tribal village, the safer they would be. As far as basic survival went, they had little to worry about.

At noon, they did not stop to light a fire. To keep their remaining meat from spoiling in the heat and humidity, they had roasted it the night before until it was about seventy percent cooked, which also made today's travel easier. So they only rested briefly, gnawed a few mouthfuls of bland dried bat meat, and carried on.

Those bats really had been unlucky. They had been living in that low-lying cave, minding their own business, only to run into Gunsmith. He never missed with a throw. Whether birds in the sky or fish in the river, once he spotted them, they generally couldn't escape his clutches.

By afternoon, both men had largely relaxed. They had been traveling for most of the day, crossing swamps, wading streams, and hacking through undergrowth with barely a stop, and now their pace began to slow.

Then Gunsmith happened to turn back to say something to John and caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye.

His expression changed involuntarily. He knew what he had seen was no illusion, and it made his skin crawl. The black shape that had just flashed past was clearly no jungle animal. It was a person.

“John, there's a black figure following us,” Gunsmith said bluntly.

John went pale in an instant. He immediately turned around and scanned their surroundings warily. “Where? Is it a cannibal?”

“No... well... how do I describe it...” Gunsmith took a moment to find the words. “When I say a ‘black’ figure, I don't mean I couldn't see it properly. In fact, I saw it very clearly. It's just that ‘it’ is black... It's not far behind us, up in a tree... I suspect it made the noises you heard this morning.”

“What do you mean? Is it a cannibal or isn't it? What do you mean, black?” Panic was written all over John's face.

Gunsmith had already drawn the bone gun. His instincts told him that the thing before them might be more dangerous than the cannibals. “It's about as tall as a ten-year-old, but its build is definitely an adult's. It isn't a dwarf, though. Very strange... Like a scaled-down person, and it's black from head to toe. Not the skin color of a Black person, but the kind of jet black you'd get from spray paint. Seventy percent chance every inch of its body is coated in black dye, twenty percent it's wearing some kind of special suit, and a ten percent chance... he was born that way.”

As Gunsmith explained what he had seen to John, he was also trying to work out just what that thing was.

John replied nervously, “What are you going to do...? If it poses no immediate danger, I think we should avoid provoking an unknown creature. We should just get away as fast as we can.”

“No danger?” Gunsmith said. “Then what's it been following us all this way for? To propose to you?”

John slowly backed behind Gunsmith and crouched down, as though a poisoned dart might fly at him at any moment. “Charles, this is hardly the time for jokes at my expense.”

Gunsmith couldn't help laughing. “One day I'll introduce you to someone. Then you'll learn what it really means to be mocked...”

Before the last word was out, he pulled the trigger. The report of the bone gun startled birds and beasts throughout a broad stretch of rainforest. A second later, a black shape fell from the dense branches and hit the ground.

John looked up and around. “How did you hit it? I didn't see a thing.”

Gunsmith did not answer. He merely waved for John to follow and approached the unidentified creature. “I shot it in the leg. That'll keep it alive but stop it from escaping.” He smiled. “If it really did just want to propose to you, it can still get down on one knee and offer you a ring.”

John's mouth twisted. “That joke isn't as funny the second time.”

When they reached the tree, what they found really wasn't so funny, because the unidentified creature was nowhere to be seen.

“Looks like it can get away with a bullet in the knee after all, doesn't it?” This time it was John's turn to make a snide remark.

Gunsmith scanned their surroundings. The black creature had vanished without a trace. He crouched and stared at a small pool of black liquid on the ground. Not daring to touch it, he only leaned close and sniffed. “Do you think this is its blood?”

John also examined the area before replying, “If it were blood, it would have dripped all along its escape route. But look, no footprints, no drops of black blood, not even any signs of it climbing a tree.”

“So... it stopped the bleeding in a matter of seconds, then darted away without a sound, covering over fifty meters in one go,” Gunsmith continued.

John spread his hands. “There's another explanation. If any part of it gets shot, its whole body instantly evaporates, leaving just this little bit of black water.”

Gunsmith stood up. “Let's keep moving... I hope you're the one who's right.”