Author's Note: Thank you to Cherylann, Paulina, ErinJordan and Evergreen, and everyone reading along.
CHAPTER 21
"N-no… stop… s-stop… pl-please"
Joe cringed, knowing he was making the nightmare worse by pinning Frank to his pallet, but unable to wake his restless sibling. Reza had been very specific about not letting him move that arm. "You're fine, Frank, it's me. You're okay."
"Stoppp… I don't un-derstand-d..."
The worst of the thrashing subsided miserable minutes later, Frank's eyes snapping open. They sought Joe more quickly this time, the lag in comprehension less. "J-Joe?"
"Right here, Frank. You okay?"
The lost look returned, as if the breadth of the answer left no possible response. "Arm hurts."
"Yeah. I'm sorry." The words were simple; the intent behind them was not. Strange how casually we use the word sorry. Leaves no word to convey when you truly are…
"Joe?"
"Yeah?"
"Where?"
Joe waited for Frank to complete the question, then realized he wasn't able to do so. "Where what? Do you want to know where we are?" The negation followed by curiosity on Frank's swollen face suggested this wasn't his question, but he'd like to know anyway.
"We're in a village in the interior of the island. They're helping take care of you."
Frank pondered that, the torturously slow thought process difficult to watch. Eventually his eyes fluttered closed with the effort.
"Dad?"
Not sleeping again after all. "No. It's Joe, remember?"
Frank's head shook subtlety. "Where dad?"
"He's not here right now, but Biff went to track him down."
"'K." Frank shifted beneath the rough spun sheet, the cloth sticking to his fever drenched skin. "Mom? Ch-Chet?"
Was really hoping it wouldn't occur to you to play twenty questions until later, bro… "I'm not sure where they are. We'll find everybody; it'll be fine. Rest."
"N-not fine." Coughs wrenched through his lungs, leaving him gasping too much to continue.
"Not yet, but Biff will find some help and we will be. I'll get you home, Frank, promise."
Some corner of Frank's head sent out a tendril of alarm, doubting not Joe's intent but his own ability to survive that long. "How find m-me?"
The you-Tarzan-me-Jane diction proved to Joe exactly how exhausted his brother was. "I'll tell you the whole story if you'll try to rest and not talk, deal?"
"Y-yes."
Joe edited his version of events only minimally, beginning with the escape from the hotel grounds and verbally meandering through Chet's illness and leaving the group, the stealing of food from the soldiers, finding the rebel stronghold and the gallows, discovering Frank there, and finally being caught by Reza and Topan and brought here. What he did curtail was mentioning the abject fear of losing Frank those events inspired.
"Safe here?"
Joe considered the inquiry, rubbing at the healing rope burns around his waist and wrists. The answer somewhat surprised him. "Yeah, I think we are."
"Prisoner." The tone wasn't a question. Whatever else he'd gotten out of Joe's story, he'd clearly picked up on Joe and Biff being forced to come here.
Joe was very glad he'd left out the detail that one of the village patrol had tried to shoot Frank. "Not anymore. I really don't think they'd keep us here if we tried to leave. Got somewhere you need to go?" Joe tried to grin, almost willing the mood to lighten.
"Yeah… N-not done… surf-ing."
"First thing in the morning, okay? I'll spot ya the first good wave.
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"Joe?"
Whoever put the sand in my eyeballs is so off the Christmas list…
"Joe, wake up. I need to talk to you." Reza prodded at his sleeping body with a toe.
"'M awake, mostly." Joe scrubbed at his eyes before prying them open and then propping up on both elbows. You ought to go poke something safer awake, like a nice grumpy bear… "Reza?"
"Yes. Get up."
He was blindly riffling through the twisted wreckage of his blanket for a shirt when he actually woke up, the bed-head murmur instantly converting his voice to alarm. "What's wrong with Frank?"
Reza found herself nearly knocked over as Joe tossed the fabric aside, immediately plonking to the dirt floor beside his brother.
"Hey, watch it; he's fine. Or at least as fine as he was, I think. I haven't checked on him yet this morning. That's not what I need to talk to you about."
"Oh." Joe let the knot in his stomach unravel a notch. "What's up?"
"Come outside first." Reza left the dim interior of the hut, confident Joe would trail behind.
The dampness of the predawn fog clung to his bare skin as he stepped outdoors, eliciting a faint chill. Joe ignored it; certain the cloying heat would return the moment the lip of the sun cleared the horizon. Not that he'd seen the horizon since entering the rampant growth of the rainforest ten days ago.
The flurry of activity throughout the village surprised him. Every resident aside from a few babes snoozing in baskets had an armload of something, rapidly gathering items to a central mound by the fire. The village elders presided there, a trio of weathered old men directing the chaos with bony pointed fingers.
"What's going on?"
"A few militia soldiers were spotted on the mountain above the village in the middle of the night. We need to go."
"Go where?" Joe found it a little difficult to imagine anywhere that was more at the end of the earth than where he stood right now. He shook his head to clear the last of the morning cobwebs. "Sorry, my brain hasn't hit fourth gear yet. Any reason to think they'll even come down here?"
"Maybe, maybe not, but none of us want to take the chance." Reza stood plaiting and unplaiting the end of her hair, a nervous habit from childhood.
Joe had no difficulty comprehending why this was bad for Frank, but he wasn't sure what it meant for everyone else. "Is this only a problem because of us? From what I gathered at the hotel when this all started, the rebel militia wanted to return your island to its traditional way of life. It seems to me you folks are about as traditional as it gets."
"You think so?" Reza gave a sad little smile. "I'll admit harboring you and your brother here is part of the difficulty, but there's more to it than that. We do have a traditional village structure, but I'm not the only young person here who has lived in the city. My brother is a soldier in the government army, as is one of my cousins, and one of the elder's sons has been in the capitol about twenty years now."
"Would the soldiers have any way of knowing that?" Joe pushed aside his reaction to the word harboring. It wasn't exactly like he'd asked to come here.
"Possibly. President Moluki started a program two decades ago to bring a few youngsters from each of the interior sectors to the capitol to attend school each year. That's how I ended up there. We've been sending scouts out at night trying to find out what's going on with the coup in general and a village nearby burned last night. That's the second one in three days that had sent students into the city. Could be a coincidence, but the elders aren't certain. There's been a lot of opposition to the practice for a long time."
Joe nodded. From what he'd learned of Ranei, that might be enough to make these people a target, especially with the militia losing and being driven into these mountains. "Where will you go?"
Reza shifted from one foot to another, eyes downcast, awkward in her avoidance of the question. "I'm not sure I'm going to answer that."
"Why?"
"Depends on whether or not you're going with us. If you're not and they find you…" she trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.
Joe's wan smile was more understanding than she expected. "Then you don't want me betraying your whereabouts. I wouldn't do that."
"I believe you, but the others aren't as sure. The militia can be persuasive."
The state of Frank's arm and back flashed through his mind. "Yeah, I can imagine that. So, are Frank and I going?" Considering how they'd arrived here, Joe wondered if he was being given a choice.
"I don't think he can handle the trip. There's somewhere closer, though. It isn't big enough for everyone, but it would hide a couple of people."
"I can't say I'm thrilled with the idea of moving him at all, but if the soldiers are coming, we can't stay here."
Reza pointed to a couple of loosely woven sacks. "Bag up the supplies for taking care of him and I'll be back in a few minutes. Since we'll be pulling Frank, it's about an hour's walk."
Joe turned back to the door, a tied collection of bamboo sticks, and promptly lost his balance. Reza instinctively wrapped a hand around his forearm, her diminutive form doing nothing to counterbalance the fall. They landed in a disorganized heap, Joe fortunately on the bottom.
"I'm sorry." Joe spluttered a bit as rolled from beneath and helped her sit up. "Stepped wrong I guess."
Reza, however, had over thoughts on the matter, especially when a small shudder ran through Joe's frame in spite of the warming air. She laid a hand across his forehead and took a closer look at the bloodshot eyes. "Um-hmm. That and I'll wager you're dizzy. When were you planning on mentioning that you're sick?"
"I'm not. Little temperature maybe; not a big deal." Joe shook his head, displacing the offending hand.
"Being sick isn't something you get to vote on, Joe. Gather the stuff, but leave the herb bag out and I'll fix something for you and examine your foot before we travel. You have a cough or sore throat or anything?"
"No. I'm fine, really. And I'm good with all the sludge mixtures being for Frank."
Reza flicked her eyes up and down the well muscled youth before her, embarrassingly reminding him that he was actually wearing very little. "You don't look like you're in the habit of just spontaneously falling over. Look at it this way, if you get too sick, you can't take care of Frank."
"Fine. You can come count my toes and feed me whatever foul smelling brew you concoct if it gets us on the road faster." Joe made another attempt at the door, successfully disappearing within this time.
A few minutes later everything was packed. Joe gagged down some sort of bark tea while Reza scraped at the wound on his foot, her dissatisfied clicks accompanying the process. "This is definitely where the fever's coming from. Can you walk on this?"
No problem… with a cast, a cane, and say six or eight people to hold me up... oh, and possibly a goat cart; it'll be a breeze… "Of course I can. Let's go."
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If the hut had been primitive, the narrow cave chimed in at medium barbaric. Joe had stumbled his way through the hour hike, refusing to allow Reza to pull the travois even after falling became routine. He simply didn't believe she'd be able to do it as Frank was, among many other things, heavy. Now lying on the rough stone floor, Joe was measuring out time by the throbbing in his foot.
Deciding moving couldn't make it feel any worse; he set about unrolling his pallet and the meager stash of supplies. He understood why Reza had picked this particular cave. The opening was extremely narrow, decreasing the chances of unwanted guests, human or otherwise, and a natural spring dribbled water lazily onto an outcropping of stone right outside the mouth. Joe didn't know if that old tale about snakes refusing to crawl over a rope was absolute or not, but after the number he'd seen today, he decided it couldn't hurt and arranged a length across the rock entrance.
Reza returned from collecting fruit, nagging until Joe ate a piece before directing him back outside for a quick tutorial in which of the surrounding vegetation was edible. Not necessarily good, but edible.
Joe groaned as he sank back to the cave floor, eyes immediately falling closed. Ten minutes… ten minutes and then I'll sort the rest of the stuff out…
Reza was just finishing the last strip of linen on Frank's legs when Joe awoke. He'd been asleep at least an hour.
"I would have helped."
Reza appeared almost as tired as he did; the neat braid now a messy jumble, a few streaks of mud decorating her face. "I know. I wanted to get it done before he woke up again."
Joe nodded, the recollection of changing the bandages on a semi-coherent Frank the morning before all too fresh. He'd been awake enough for it to hurt tremendously and not enough to understand what was being done or why. Joe couldn't recall ever feeling like more of jerk than he did during the process, his brother pleading for unseen strangers to stop hurting him and Joe holding him down so Reza could finish.
Fully awake, Frank would have never admitted to how much that hurt, and certainly wouldn't have squirmed so, but Joe feared they had many repeat performances to go. His gaze roamed over the injuries for the thousandth time, heart sinking with the recognition that they were now even further from a hospital. Hang in there, Frank; I'll get you home…
Reza rearranged the clay jars against the damp crags of the walls, then stood almost to her full height beneath the low ceiling. "I'm going to see if I can find some more betel nut, he'll need it." She hesitated, clearly deciding something before removing a final item from her pack. "Here."
Joe accepted the offered gun without comment, brushing a thumb over the barrel before tucking it under the edge of his bedding. He could hold his own at a firing range; the result of a safety class his dad had decided was advisable with a handgun in the house, but Joe had never fired a gun at a person in his life. He wasn't eager to start.
A stifled yell halted the musing.
"Frank?!"
"Hurt." Frank's face contorted to an expression Joe hadn't seen before.
"I know it hurts. I'm sorry. Shh. Try to keep your arm still. It's okay."
"N-no. Breathe hurts." Frank scarcely completed the words before the coughing resumed, escalating in violence as his complexion deepened to purple.
Frank painfully turned his head away from Joe out of ingrained habit, hiding the first speckles of blood. The splatter that followed wasn't as easy to camouflage.
Desperate to keep his brother from choking to death, Joe rapidly slid behind him, propping Frank's back against his chest. The scream that resulted from jostling the arm tore through Joe as much as Frank, the younger of the pair helpless to do anything about it.
"Come on Frank, breathe. Please breathe…."
The wet, gurgling coughs finally petered out to rasping shallow breaths, Frank's head lolling against Joe's shoulder, flecks of blood dappled over both of them.
Joe sat there seemingly forever, only the horrible wheezing convincing him Frank survived. He can't take much more of this… and I can't either… have to take care of him… I have to.
By the time dusk faded completely into the ebony of night, plunging their cavern into darkness, Joe reluctantly concluded Reza wasn't coming back. He crawled to the edge of the entrance; the cloud shrouded moonlight there rendering the deep ink of the tree line barely distinguishable from the sky above. Adjusting his back against the rough stone when shaking chills would have displaced him, a faint mantra began to rattle inside his head. I am not sick. I am not sick. I am not sick….
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to be continued...