Chapter 3
Home is the Hunter
"Aren't you worried about the Chinese Wild Man?"
Ned turned to stare at Biff. "What?"
"You know, the Chinese Wild Man. The Asian version of Bigfoot."
Ned shook his head and continued breaking a path in the jungle. If he recalled the map correctly, cutting through the jungle at this point would lead them to the Marine base, where they could get medical help for Biff and Frank both.
Ned woke with a start, banging the back of his head against the hard cement wall of the cell. Rubbing the sore spot as his eyes watered slightly, he sighed. It had been a dream. He and Biff and Frank were still in their cell. He leaned back and tried to find a soft spot on a cold stone floor.
Ned picked at the rice as he contemplated escape. And in order to do that, he had to go back to the scene of the attack, as Nancy would have put it.
"What's eating you?" Biff asked.
"A dream," was the curt reply. "Nothing that concerns you."
He remembered taking one of the skulls out of the box and fingering it, eying the braincase of the specimen. It was still gritty, which surprised him, even though it had been out of the dirt for over a year.
Who was it who had packed the specimens and asked for Marine assistance in transporting them to New York till after the war? He had to find that out—that might explain a lot. Like why his platoon had been attacked.
"Give me land, lotsa land under starry skies above/Don't fence me in—" Frank sang softly. Ned had to think for a minute before remembering that Frank liked Bing Cosby. "Let me ride through the wide open country that I love/Don't fence me in. Let me be by myself in the evening breeze/And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees/Send me off forever but I ask you please, Don't fence me in."
"Do me a favour, Hardy, and quit singing," Ned snapped. He was already in a bad enough mood; he didn't need that song to remind him further of their predicament. If he closed his eyes and pictured Nancy, he could almost forget where they were. Almost.
Dear Nancy,
You'll never get this, because I'm writing it in my head due to lack of paper here. I hate this, waiting for the next time they want to take out their anger on us. When will it end?
Anyway, I need your help. Do you have any suggestions for where to start looking in order to figure out why they want us? Or why they attacked us and took just me, Biff, and Frank prisoner? Is it because we're Americans? Or something else? Wish I knew. And I know that everyone back home is asking the same questions.
They took Frank Hardy last night. Don't worry—he'll be okay, they just roughed him up a bit. Well, maybe "a bit" is an understatement, but believe me when I say he'll be okay.
I dreamed about escaping last night; that dream gave me a bit of hope. I might just be able to find a way out of here. If they don't get me first.
As Ned had feared, he was next. But it was definitely a contradiction to his imagination as to what actually happened.
"Tea?" a very American voice asked as he was led into a bright room. After the gloom of the cell area, Ned blinked to get the suncats out of his eyes.
"No thanks, keeps me up at night," Ned retorted.
The man laughed. "You're wondering why you're here, yes? It's because I can't risk you taking those fossils back to New York."
"What do you mean?" Ned asked, puzzled. "Everyone, well almost everyone, on the dig back in Peking thought the site'd be a good place to verify Piltdown Man."
"Exactly the reason you can't take those fossils back to New York," the man said. "You handled one of the skulls. You know that the fossils are fake."
"Casts were made of those fossils," Ned warned him. "You won't get away with this. Hell, even as we speak, those casts are on their way to New York. The top anthropologists there will find out that your precious Piltdown Man is fake! They'll use the Peking Man fossils to help them!" He was pulled toward the entrance, but dug in his heels. "And just for the credit, I'm definitely not an expert in forgery."
"What happened?" Biff asked as Ned was thrust back into the cell.
"I found out why we're here," Ned said bitterly. "Those fossils we were supposed to be protecting are fake!"
A/N: Just a side-note on the Peking Man fossils. This is just my version of the story. I am an historical archaeologist, and I have done my homework for this fic. However, according to the research I've done, it seems that the casts that were made of the fossils way back before the war actually match up with fragments found at Choukoutien and elsewhere after the war, in the 1960s. And even government-sponsored "expeditions" to try and find the missing fossils have turned up some interesting leads but little of consequence.
I'm not making any promises for updates until at least Thanksgiving break, maybe Christmas.