POCKET CHANGE
by Sharon R.
Chapter Fourteen
I Will Dance So Freely
Four men barged into the hut, tackling Carter and Luka, binding their hands behind them. Instead of the burlap bags, this time dark blindfolds were tied around their heads. More feet shuffled in hurried fashion around them as their faces were pressed into the floor, a foot on the back of their heads. Excruciating pain seared through Carter's shoulders and arms as he was unable to stifle the guttural moan that came from his throat.
"Geez, get off me!" Carter could barely get the words out of his clenched mouth, the pressure from above reducing his lung capacity in half. To make matters worse, his outburst earned him an even tighter restraint on his hands as another rope was added near his elbows winching them so unnaturally close together behind him that the last surviving threads of his mangled ligaments tethering his arms to his body frazzled. Carter felt the edges of his shoulder blades rub together, his upper body pivoting back and forth on his sternum.
Luka fought to get the blindfold askew enough to be able to get a glimpse of his surroundings only to have it tied tighter pressing against his eyes. Carter's groans made him feel helpless as he lay on the floor just inches from him. "Hey," Luka shouted, "hey, he's been sick. Leave him alone." Not about to give in, Luka struggled to free himself out of instinct more than realistic expectations, but his efforts were met with stronger force and he was obliged to give in to his captors.
The movement and voices hushed as Luka's hair was grabbed from behind, his head jerked backwards jutting his throat against the floorboards.
"That's the one," a voice shouted in French. Jules.
Two pair of arms jerked Luka to his feet, the other hand never leaving his hair. He was half pushed and half pulled by the hair out the door to an awaiting Jules. Luka could smell him. Aftershave in the jungle - intriguing. He immediately thought back to Carter's description of Sobriki, of the lingering memory of the psychotic man's smell, and how it stayed with him after all these years.
"We have no more use for you." Short and simple. Jules was relishing the mental anguish he so superbly wrapped around his victims.
"Why the blindfolds today? We never had blindfolds."
"Those feed sacks are valuable to the people here. Their animals eat out of them. Putting your heads in them, especially now, would surely be a waste of a good sack." Luka could hear Jules sucking in the air between his teeth. "Good-bye, Dr. Kovac."
"You make me ill." With all his energy, Luka snorted what snot he could find in his sinuses and hocked in Jules' general direction, getting only a belly laugh of satisfaction in return.
"At least Dr. Carter spat on target. You are pathetic, and quite frankly… you smell."
It was quiet in the hut as Carter wondered where all of the people had gone. Face down, hands and arms tied behind his back, he assumed he was alone and rolled to his side getting his knees underneath him. The cold, round metal suddenly poking at the back of his neck was enough to convince him that he was not alone. A shuffle of feet and he heard Luka's body thrown back on the floor next to him. Once again, a foot found its way to the back of his head.
"Luka?"
"Yep."
"What's with the blindfolds?" Carter waited. "I only remember seeing two guys with actual blindfolds and they … they…" Neither one spoke, neither wanting to admit what they were thinking.
They continued to wait on the floor. Luka could smell the rubber soles of the boots the rebels wore and the cigarettes as they were snuffed out under them. They both looked inside themselves for answers and didn't like what they came up with.
Luka turned his head to the right facing Carter and whispered, "be proud of who you are, Carter."
"You'd benefit from taking a little of your own advice, you know," Carter whispered back.
"You okay?"
Carter waited to answer Luka, waited as he felt his mind and body - his soul - calm. "I'm okay with this."
"Yeah," Luka inhaled as he understood Carter's answer, "yeah, me too."
(Lyrics to a few lines of Let Me Fallsung by JoshGroban and written by James Corcoran and Jutras Benoit previously properly attributed, deleted as per new regulations by site administrators 5/3/05. The complete original text of Pocket Change can be found at LUKAFIC)
From the hut they were moved to the bed of a pick-up truck crowded with soldiers. Enduring a couple hours of jungle back roads and one down pour of rain, the two were finally off loaded - shoved off the truck like bulky cargo - and forced at gunpoint, nearly hog-tied and blind, to march through the jungle. They were led on a terrifying hike through unknown terrain, tripping on the underbrush. Sometimes helped up. Sometimes not. They were forbidden to talk and had to rely on other senses to keep them afoot. Luka strained to keep track of Carter's breathing and faint, restrained sounds he made just to assure himself they were still together. They were exhausted, unsure of their fate, yet hauntingly confident in their resolve to hold their heads high.
(Lyrics deleted)
The group of marchers halted twice when Carter fell ill. Sick to his stomach, Luka knew this would happen. When he begged to check on his friend, Luka was pummeled to the ground with a blow to his midsection, pushing the air out of his chest and felling him to his knees.
Over sloggy roads, through swamped areas, and finally the mangled roots of a field of mangrove trees, their captors became more and more rushed. The mangroves slowed them as the blindfolded prisoners' feet were swallowed by the contorted unearthed roots. Eventually resorting to dragging the doctors, the captors too, fell - prisoners in tow. Panic set in as the rebels talked, then shouted to each other. Out of nowhere a hail of gunfire erupted pinning the group of marchers down. The rebels quickly prepared and started to fire their weapons but found their hostages to be an encumbrance to their firefighting capabilities. Luka and Carter were tied together at the ankle, and to further guarantee that they wouldn't escape, Luka's other leg was tied to a tree.
The chaos and confusion of their forced blindness while lying unarmed and helpless in battle washed in waves over Carter and Luka as they tried in vain to coordinate their awkwardly positioned bodies to avoid the gunfire they could only hear. It was hard to ignore the whishing sound the bullets made as they sliced through the air so dangerously close to their heads occasionally striking the trees sending splinters down onto them. They could hear the return fire their captors kept up along with the commotion of feet and voices, their own racing hearts beating wildly through their tightly tied wrists not lost among the upheaval.
Eventually, they were freed from each other and the tree only to be pushed and prodded to run. Finally they were stopped as one young man reached up to lower their blindfolds to their necks.
"We run, okay?" His English was choppy, his nerves even worse. "We lose my friends. We go find them."
Spinning around to orient themselves they noticed that they had somehow become separated from the rest of the rebels and now were running for their lives with three young rebels surrounding them firing at whomever or whatever was after them. The irony of the situation occurred to each one of them, that the people who, up until then had been their torturers, were now their only hope of survival. Carter and Luka were ducking and running, following and being guided by these same men.
"You go fast, yes?" the man pleaded with Carter who was too out of breath to answer. "Please?"
The other two were well ahead of them, their English speaking captor bringing up the rear. Although the gunfire seemed to distance itself from them, one last round came very close as the rebel pushed the doctors to the ground.
"Down, down, down!"
Hitting the dirt road they had just crossed they looked up in time to see a bullet rip straight through the man's neck. His eyes still open and focused on Luka and Carter, he fell first to his knees before succumbing in a heap into his own puddle of blood, the final escape of air from his lungs producing a long, drawn out gurgle.
The other two rebels had gone over a ridge on the other side of the road and were now out of site leaving Luka and Carter to contemplate their own fate. Still on the ground they were within inches of the young man whose death mask stared them in the face, blood gushing from his shredded neck
"We have to get up. Get out of here." Luka announced. "Can you do it?"
"I don't think I have a choice," Carter muttered as his adrenalin working on over-time gave him the needed boost to get him to his feet, hands and arms still tied behind his back. "Which way?"
They looked around and, hearing gunfire once again, ran in the only direction they knew there would be people who knew them: over the ridge. As they plunged over the embankment, their feet immediately fell from under them as the loose soil and mud collapsed tumbling with them to the bottom. But before they could get their wits about them, several pairs of feet encircled them.
Squinting up into the fresh sun Carter barely made out the figure of a familiar man. "Uh-oh."
"What?" Luka asked.
"Romano's back."
The one armed man shouted to his men as Carter and Luka were manhandled once again, their blindfolds abruptly replaced and tied even tighter. Brought to their feet, the hike resumed as though nothing had happened. After being steered through a shallow stream and up onto a rock bed, they stood in silence for a while until, finally, a large group of people came upon them, the many feet clattering over the jumble of rocks. Carter and Luka began to pick out familiar voices, even the sound of the weighty weapons clattering against hips and shoulders. The original group from their encampment was back together again.
After a couple of hours, the swishing through the jungle growth and muted thud of feet hitting rocks and petrified wood suddenly stopped as they were forced to their knees. Through a process of elimination, they knew that they were not on a dirt path or a clearing. In fact, the hugeness of the jungle growth was all around them. Without the use of their eyes they could sense the denseness of the trees, bushes and African grasses around, below and above them. The men were pushed down, as though their faces could get any lower to the ground. Were they together? Was this the end?
(Lyrics deleted)
They heard voices behind them and a language not recognizable to either. When the voices were replaced by the metal clicking sounds of guns, they feared the worst, crouching lower, hanging their heads as if to bury them in the soil of the jungle. Carter started shaking – he couldn't stop. He tried to but terror took over his ability to control his body. Luka's breathing became labored as he grit his teeth in fear and anger, saliva stringing down from his mouth. Was that whimpering or someone struggling? They were no longer able to define if the very quiet sounds of fear they were making belonged to themselves or the other. They reached a moment of utter silence, then in synchronization were deafened by gun blasts and a painful crack to the head.
(Lyrics deleted)
By the time Carter was lucid, the ringing in his ears took over. He gagged, then shook his head to free his mouth of the dirt and bugs that had crawled in during his momentary black out. His head had a new knot somewhere now, and shaking it made the pain shoot straight through front to back. Other than the buzz in his ears, he couldn't hear anything. He wasn't deaf; there just wasn't anything to hear. No feet, no voices. Only the screech of a bird overhead and the leaves of the plant next to his head flapping in the steady breeze.
"Luka." He cleared his throat and spoke up, confident that they had been left alone.
"Luka?"
Rubbing his head on the ground he was able to move the blindfold up over his forehead, the small stones in the soil adding more scratches to the bruises and abrasions on his face. With great effort and swift courage he dug his shoulder into the earth, flipping his body onto this back. The sun poured into his eyes making it impossible to see, his dehydration drying his eyes even more. Carter managed to get his knees under him raising him up to get a better look around, at least as much as his adjusting eyes would allow, but the dense and tall foliage molding his body gave him very little to see from his position.
"Luka!"
Jutting out from the tall jungle grass, within Carter's reach, were Luka's feet. Scooting closer, Carter was relieved to see that they were still together. Lost, tired, sick and sore. But together.
"Hey Luka," Carter kicked his limp foot, "wake up. Come on."
With his eyes finally focused, Carter got a good look at Luka's legs. Then using his body to move the tall blades of grass, he was able to get to Luka's upper body. His heart sank. Carter collapsed back on his heels, then let his head fall forward. He was alone.