Transition Plan Chapter 84: Searching for Jeanne Part 2

Rating: T for violence, abuse, mild profanity

…October 1914, somewhere on the border of Nigeria and Kamerun…

Weeks into their 2000 kilometer journey by boat from Kamina across the northern tier of Nigeria and into northern Kamerun, Gunter and Karl-Heinz knew they were lost, and out of gas. This dead end creek was not the Benue River that would have taken them directly to the most northern German outpost in Kamerun – the village of Garua. Somewhere along the way they took a wrong turn up one of the many estuaries that fed the complex river systems in this region. They barely escaped the edge of a fire fight between German Army and the British invaders in what they thought was the vicinity of Tepe, and several stray bullets ripped through the boat causing a leak, and worse, grazed the fuel tank and it quickly emptied into the river. The engine sputtered and died. Permanently. There were no petrol stations in the jungle.

Gunter got out and stepped up to his knees in muck, despite the ever present threat of crocodiles in the dark water, and pulled the boat ashore. They gathered their gear and stood amidst a cacophony of animal noises.

"Now what?" Gunter asked tersely.

Karl-Heinz stated the obvious, "We walk."

"To where?"

Karl-Heinz observed, "Until we find Garua. We're about 75 miles away by this map."

Gunter complained, "Oh great. Seventy five miles of wild animals with sharp teeth."

"Enough already, coward," chided Karl-Heinz.

Jeanne was secretly pleased that they were frustrated and anxious about the jungle, and arguing. She was not really that concerned. Jack taught her the tools she needed to survive, but knew that without that training she would have been just as fearful as the men. Perhaps this would give her a chance to escape.

To Jeanne's dismay, they bound her arms and hobbled her legs so she could not run or climb.

In very broken, rudimentary German that they had taught her along the way, Jeanne said with trepidation, "This is… uh… death for me…"

Karl-Heinz sneered in fluent German, "We only bound your hands. And you can still walk."

Haltingly she complained, "Can't climb… Can't run… if attack."

Gunter noted, "We'll cut your bonds if there is trouble."

He left unsaid the phrase, 'assuming there is time enough to cut them if there is trouble'.

Karl-Heinz glared at him, "Idiot. That's exactly what she wants. Then she'll run."

She raised her bound arms and pleaded in German, "Free me… I help you. Uhh…Not run. Me know… um… jungle. We… survive. All."

Karl-Heinz resisted, "No. You'll just disappear into the trees and order a herd of wild elephants to trample us."

Had they been in the land of the Mangani, Jeanne surely would have, and her elephant friends would have done so with relish. No animal would obey her here, not even being 'of the jungle'.

So Gunter continued to chop a wide path through the rain forest with Jeanne behind him, followed by Karl-Heinz. The massive exercise in the heat caused the older man to sweat profusely. He would drop from exhaustion soon. He turned to his associate, "Karl-Heinz, we need to each take turns at this. I will not last 75 miles."

"You fat old man. I told you to exercise. But all right. I will help. You're still good for some things," Karl-Heinz complained. Gunter never liked the younger man's criticism but he had nowhere else to go.

Jeanne chided the jungle neophytes in her broken, but improving German, "Doing it… um… wrongly. Not… tunnel… way through... Follow path… err… j-j-jungle gives."

She nearly choked quoting Jack and the pain she felt missing him.

In a nasty tone, Karl-Heinz asked, "Really, 'jungle girl'? You have a better way?"

Jeanne was flustered, and mixed her native language with the German, "Je do. Give I… votre machete."

He just laughed and dismissed her request, "Chopping us to pieces is not a better way. And remember, Meriem, no French. Remember the last time."

Chopping her captors to pieces would have been just fine for her, but she resisted any comment. And her bottom cheeks stung, remembering the spanking for uttering French. She felt like the men enjoyed spanking her too much.

Jeanne just gave him a nasty look, "Me won't hurt... uh… men. Now… us… stuck together. Me can't go back. You keep… map. You tell um… I… way. Me… get us there."

Karl-Heinz was impressed with her fast learning of German but would never compliment her. Even the correct accent was developing. He gave her a few critical lessons on the proper use of "I" and "me".

Gunter and Karl-Heinz looked at each other, "Oh, all right, we'll try this, girl. If you attack us, I'll kill you right here and you're buzzard food. I still have a gun. And you know how the barrel tastes, Meriem."

She suppressed a shudder over that near-death experience and gave the man an angry stare as she promised, "You…um… can me trust."

Soon they were making very good time. She had remembered the art of picking her way stealthily through the jungle just as Jack had taught her, looking for openings and alternate paths other than just plowing straight ahead like Europeans, disturbing the minimum of plants and fauna. But some things they had to disturb to make progress.

"Auggh! A snake!" yelled Gunter as it slithered across his shoulder, flicking its tongue at him.

Without warning or hesitation, she seized its head and immediately swung the machete two inches from the frightened man's head, decapitating the snake. She grabbed its writhing body, skinned, gutted, and boned it in seconds, and started eating it ravenously like sushi. It had been days since a good meal for any of them.

"Want meat… snake?" she offered, but reversed her adjectives. Sentence construction in German was completely backwards to French.

Both men shivered at the thought of eating raw snake flesh, but were so hungry, they reluctantly took the other chunks she had carved up. They had to admit it was good and gave them instant energy.

Neither man had any time to react to her attack on the snake and both instantly realized she could kill both of them without batting an eyelash whenever she wanted to. But she didn't and wondered why she hadn't. They started making good time, but aside from a general direction they were still more or less lost.

Jeanne requested, "Need picture of… uhh… village. And girlfriend. Show me. Know way… uh… find her."

Karl-Heinz corrected here, "She's not my girlfriend anymore. I have no pictures. But Garua has a radiotelegraph tower too."

The Garua German Communications Service Wireless tower was much smaller than Kamina but both men had trained and learned on it. It was their accuracy and speed of sending messages that had earned them the trust of the German Army and the contract to run the bigger station in Kamina. Not to mention a few bribes to the higher ups. They had literally taken the same now-abandoned boat to the new station from the village they were seeking.

With that, Jeanne knew exactly what to do, and called out loudly in the chirps and squawks of the tongue of the cape parrot. With weeks in the jungle with Jack following Icheoku to Kamina, Jeanne had learned the language of the cape parrots thoroughly.

Karl-Heinz was shocked, "What the hell kind of language is that? You do bird calls? We are not here to be entertained by you, Meriem. And eating parrot meat gags me."

Jeanne stated choppily, "Not food. Not bird calls. Bird talk. Shut up, Karl-Heinz. You… scare them."

Gunter snickered at Jeanne's back talk. Karl-Heinz about slapped her for her insolence, but scoffed, "No one can talk to the birds. This is one of your tricks or a stall tactic. Gunter, give me a gag. We'll stop this shit right now."

About that time, a female cape parrot landed on Jeanne's bare shoulder, and squawked happily. Its red, green, and yellow plumage was resplendent. Jeanne offered it a big juicy grub and the little parrot took it.

The bird squawked seeing her gender from her nudity, "You're a human female? I heard a sister bird call me."

Jeanne smiled at the puzzled parrot, "Yes. I called. That was me. In a way I am your sister."

Gunter and Karl-Heinz were utterly astonished. She was actually having a conversation with the little parrot.

The female cape parrot continued, "But you are not a bird, you are human. Although you have pretty plumage," complimenting Jeanne on her bottom-length hair.

Savoring the first compliment of any kind in weeks, Jeanne blushed and said, "Thank you."

The parrot continued the conversation but was very perplexed, "But you're talking to me. How do you know our language?"

"You could say 'a little bird told me'," Jeanne snickered. She'd learned so much from Jack's parrot friend that she knew nuances and humor in their language.

The bird laughed in its strange cackle, "Very funny. Whoever taught you, human, you learned well. You have an accent though."

"Call me Jeanne. Thank you. Well… I only had one moon cycle to learn," explained Jeanne.

"I am named Mawalie. You are not that bad, Jeanne. You sound like the flock to the west."

Karl-Heinz did not like the fact that she used her real name with the parrot, and that it had repeated her name, but stifled himself. Who would ever ask a bird about Jeanne?

"Exactly," noted Jeanne.

"I have relatives there," noted Mawalie.

"My human family is friends with that flock, and please, I need your help."

"OK."

Jeanne explained, "We are looking for other humans."

The little parrot clarified, "Like you? You are 'of the jungle'. Few humans are like you."

"No. Like them," the French girl spit the words and gave a condescending glance over to the men.

The little bird matched Jeanne's low opinion of the men, "Outlanders. I hate them. They shoot us just for our feathers for their females' hats and scarves. Why do you help them?"

Jeanne lamented, "They hold life and death over me and my family."

"You need to get away," advised the parrot.

"They have guns. They will shoot me. In time I will find a way. Right now I need to help them find other outlanders. Please help me."

The parrot did not hesitate to help, "All right. You are of the jungle and held captive by men. That compels me to help, just like any jungle animal captured by mankind."

Jeanne took a stick and scratched a rough sketch of a radiotelegraph tower and some thatch huts, "I need to find a place where outlanders with guns build their nests around this giant metal perch."

The parrot sat thoughtfully for a moment and asked, "Is it a giant shining roost taller than the trees?"

"Yes," she answered.

"I have seen this place. But it is far. And there are a great many men with guns," warned Mawalie, "Can you swing like the monkeys?"

"Yes, I can, but the men cannot. We must all walk and 'seek the path'," Jeanne replied.

The cape parrot thought about that a bit, but answered, "It will be slow. But I will help. I need an adventure."

At the mention and tone of the word 'adventure', Jeanne knew the bird would have smiled if she could have. Parrots were not too hard to figure out even with their very high intelligence, and acted a lot like people in their varied interests.

"Thank you!" Jeanne smiled, caressed the bird under its chin in the spot they could never reach and liked being scratched there. She fed it a huge worm.

"This human girl knows our kind well," the parrot thought pleasantly, savoring the massage and the treat.

Jeanne explained to her kidnappers that the bird was going to lead them to the German radiotelegraph station.

Gunter scoffed, "You trust a dumb damn bird to get us to the station?"

She said tersely, "Big roost for them. Another parrot… got Jack and me to Kamina…"

They clearly understood the implications of that statement. Karl-Heinz lamented that the Kamina guards had not killed them all including this one. He'd be out of this Godforsaken jungle at his comfortable table at the Kamina bar flirting with the Fraulein who caught his eye months ago, and shared his bed.

Gunter was still skeptical, "I don't like this, Karl-Heinz. The bird could take us right into a French or British outpost. And then we're prisoners – or dead - and she's free."

"Did 'damn dumb map' help you?" she insulted the older man's excuse-making.

German style profanity was beginning to creep into her conversation and her mind, having heard it so much from the men.

Karl-Heinz fumed, "I don't like being dependent on you for anything Fraulein Meriem, but it looks like we have no choice. Who would trust a naked girl? If you take us to the English or French forces, I will put a bullet in your head."

She stated very seriously, "I take you to Garua. No tricks."

…

Thirty five miles into the journey, they heard another patrol. The distant words were French. Jeanne's hopes were momentarily buoyed, but Karl-Heinz forced them to hide. Karl-Heinz seized her from behind to immobilize her. She felt cold sharp steel on her neck, sensed a little ooze of blood, and the man whispered, "One noise and I slit your throat, Meriem."

The patrol passed by going another direction, oblivious to the foursome hiding. The German released her. She turned and glared at him. She could not stand his touch against her natural body, and knew she needed to get a dress once they got to the village, "If you kill… I… uh… me… you not get 10 million Deutschmarks."

Karl-Heinz retorted, "If you bring the firepower of a whole French platoon on us, Meriem, we won't get the 10 million either."

She fumed at the wiry German, and truly hated her new name almost as much as she hated them, but turned and followed the bird again.

All along the way, Jeanne gathered, hunted, fished, and provided the men food and shelter. While they silently appreciated it, and were very impressed with her survival skills, they never admitted it. They wanted her ego and will to be completely beaten down. The insect cuisine was particularly hard for them to accept, and were amazed a mere girl actually relished it, but the bugs provided basic nourishment when they couldn't find other things to eat. The little cream-filled ones were actually pretty tasty.

They discovered quickly that Meriem was no ordinary prissy little French girl, realizing she was the daughter of the French Army Special Forces Colonel. She never said anything about Jack or his family. She didn't want to implicate them in anything, other admitting that she was the jungle boy's girlfriend, whom she claimed was adopted Nigerian tribesman with his father. Jeanne was very convincing, and the Germans firmly believed Tarzan and Jack were just adopted Nigerians. Jeanne made up a story about being the boy's family being shipwrecked and saved by the Igbo tribe, and liked being with the Nigerians so much that they stayed and adopted their simple ways. It was not far from the truth, so she protected their real identity with fictitious names.

She kept the lie going, and realized how easy it was to lie to people. That was a disturbing revelation to her.

She got them around a number of dangers, including hiding high the branches to avoid a flesh eating army of ants, avoiding crocodiles, a lot of snakes and poisonous spiders, and talking several predators out of eating them. Not once did the men express their appreciation, so she just dreamed of Jack being proud of her efforts and praising her like he always did, which gave her a confident feeling.

…

A few weeks later, the unlikely foursome had closed the distance to Garua, and they could see the outline of the huge fortress with the radiotelegraph tower inside its walls ahead. The radio station was less than half the size of Kamina, and was much older and flimsier. But it was protected by barriers, barbed wire, bristled with machine gun nests, and manned by hundreds of troops with rifles. Karl-Heinz realized that much of the construction of the fort was new – obviously placed there in the aftermath of the fall of Kamina.

He admitted, "Well I'll be damned; the parrot got us here after all."

"I told you," Jeanne said with scorn.

Jeanne fumed that Karl-Heinz credited the parrot and not her skills that permitted them to survive these many weeks. They said goodbye to the parrot, and Jeanne lavished the little bird with compliments and some special treats.

The bird had her own special goodbye for the human female, "If you need me in the future, call for me. I like you human Jeanne. You have a friend in this jungle. You must escape when you can."

"I will try, and I like you too, Mawalie. Tell the flock to the west I am safe, and forced to live here in this man nest. Seek out Noni and her mate, leader of that flock."

"I cannot guarantee that, friend Jeanne. I have never traveled beyond my flock's territory until now, but perhaps someday I will."

It was not likely the bird could be counted on to help, but it was worth the try.

Outside the fortress was Garua proper, a small, agrarian Kamerunian village the Germans had commandeered for military defense of northern Kamerun and for the radiotelegraph operations. There were many soldiers patrolling in the rudimentary streets of the village, and the main fortification was fenced and gated with guard shacks.

As they got closer, they were challenged. In a strong voice, a powerful looking solider, sweating in his full uniform and helmet, pointed his carbine at the threesome and demanded, "Halt! Who goes there?"

Karl-Heinz stated confidently, "German Communications Services."

The soldier was skeptical and eyed them suspiciously, especially the nude dark-skinned native-looking girl, "You have no uniforms. Prove it."

Karl-Heinz showed them the crumpled and slightly torn German military radiotelegraph operator's license.

The soldier sneered, "Oh. Contract laborers."

"We ran the Kamina station," stated Karl-Heinz confidently.

"Oh really?" he asked rhetorically, raised his gun, aimed it at Karl-Heinz' heart, and cocked the trigger, causing the trio to gulp, and ordered, "You're under arrest, sir. You better come with me right now. Schnell."

"Why are we being arrested, soldier?"

"Didn't you know? There's a bounty on your heads for the destruction of the Kamina station."

...

Authors Notes: Poor Jeanne. She's a tough girl but so much is going on that is overwhelming her, and she suffers so many setbacks at the hands of Karl-Heinz. And its changing her, despite her continued resistance against them. She's more profane already, and she is learning to lie.