Benny left me for a couple hours, saying he would bring back a bit of food and make sure the camp doctor was free for a check-up.
Before he left, he gave me my bag, free of knives and pistols, for their safety or my own, I wasn't sure.
Other than missing those few possessions, I still had the map which I spread out on the floor.
Benny had told me that we were near the beach on the east side, opposite the small island just off the coast.
I found where I thought I was and then studied the rest of the map. Benny had promised that I was safe. None of the pirates were going to hurt me.
I did wonder what their plans were though.
I was searching for herons peak when the door opened and Benny walked in, a delicious aroma coming from the plate in his hands,
"What is that smell?',
"Cooked Venison",
"It smells delicious"
"Here you go",
He put it down next to me as he sat down,
"You even get a fork" Benny passed the piece of silver to me,
"Such a privilege" I smiled before digging in.
I hadn't had something this nice for weeks.
Once I'd finished, I past it back to Benny and rolled the map up before reaching for the bag and putting it back in.
"If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine, but where did you find that captain?"
Benny was the first person to ever ask about Murphy.
This is your chance...
I didn't think I could talk about him so quickly after he'd died, but I felt like it would give me some sort of peace, as if I could forgive myself.
"I met him outside a pub..."
Murphy had been lying on the floor, drunk and bewildered and staring up at the stars.
The night was unusually warm, the sky clear and there was a sense of calm in the waters. As if the mission I'd been on to find a ship to Rook had came to a hault.
I didn't pay any attention to the dribbling drunk at first when I sat on the bench near the waters edge, but then he started mumbling.
It was just words to begin with, random words I couldn't understand. Then he stood up and stumbled over to me.
"What... Are... You-" he fell to the floor and lied there for a few seconds before he rolled round on to his back, staring back up at the stars again.
He continued after a few more seconds,
"Trying to do",
"Get someplace..."
"Then why don't you?'
"Because it's far out there" I nodded to the sea,
"France?" he slurred as he stood up again,
"Now, far, far away"
"How do you get there" he sat down on the bench,
"I need a boat" I shrugged, "but it seems no one wants to go there",
"Where's there?"
"Rook Island..."
"And that was the end of that" I told Benny,
"He seemed like a good man",
"He was",
"Do you miss him?",
"Yeah, he was the only friend I had in the world. It was like we were on this sort of adventure, and we were both searching for the same thing, but it was completely different at the same time",
"He'd be proud of you" Benny told me, but I shook my head,
"Before he was taken of with the tiger, he seemed angry, as if he blamed..." I choked. I could feel the sob in my throat,
"You won't know this, but as they led him away, he kept repeating 'be strong, be brave' and he wasn't talking about himself",
"I've been far from brave",
"You've survived the jungle with nothing, but knives for weeks"
"Yeah, but I've been hiding in a cave beneath the colonists house, eating mushrooms, jumping of cliffs and reading, that's not being brave, that's being a coward!"
"Yeah, but you left the cave though. You could of stayed, but you didn't",
"Don't try and make me feel better by making me look courageous",
"If you weren't, the jungle would of ate you alive. The Rakyat would of found you much quicker than they did, you'd be dead already",
"Yeah, but if I stayed, Anna wouldn't have been shot by pirates" the guilt hit me then.
"Badtown was gonna happen anyway. It wasn't your fault Ren",
"No, when you were all fighting, Anna was there and-",
"Renae, she wasn't",
"She was, and Merrick"
"Neither of them were there",
"But I saw the bullets rip through her"
"Ren, I swear they weren't".
You really are going mad...
Benny changed the subject instantly, asking instead how my small jungle adventure had gone,
"I found sunset cove, a projector and a film",
"The one with that Brody guys girlfriend",
"Yeah, you said something about him" I shrugged. Benny went to say more, but I shook my head, "No, don't Ben, I don't want to hear about it",
"Okay, what else?",
"I had a run in with a tiger, sort off",
"How close?"
"Inches maybe", I told him, "It ran passed me when it was going after a tapir",
"You obviously didn't smell good enough",
"I smell worse than you",
"You do smell awful" Benny laughed,
"I can take you to the beach if you'd like",
"Are you sure thats allowed" I asked,
"You're not a prisoner Ren",
"Why do I feel like one then?", the whole locking me in the dark thing didn't help his words,
He avoided my question, "You can leave if you want to", why did it not feel as easy as walking out of the camp then, "But we just want you to be safe Ren, we don't want you to walk in to the Rakyat or the mercenaries",
"I get that",
"So, would you like to go for a swim?". I agreed, hoping that somehow it'd make me feel a little better.
Benny asked me to wait five minutes whilst he got me a few things in which I spent the time exploring the room. The cupboard didn't have anything in it other than some dust.
As I turned back, Benny walked in, the doctor in Badtown following behind him,
"We meet again" the doctor exclaimed as he set a bag down on the small table. I just stared in aww at him.
How the hell did he get out
"You know each other?" Benny wondered,
"Yes, yes, it was I who first treated young Renae",
"Well-",
"How?" suddenly came out of my mouth, reminding both men that I was still here, the doctor looked at me and answered,
"My mind was needed elsewhere" he said as if he was worth more than us,
"How did you get out?",
"I was never there, now, enough talk, let's have a look at that leg", the doctor changed the subject and I knew my questions would go on deaf ears.
He re-stitched it, complimenting on the cleanliness of it and then gave me a few bandages to strap it up with. He left it unwrapped for now.
Once the doctor had left, closing the door behind him, the silent Benny, who had brooded over in the corner suddenly came a live again,
"Lets go" he announced as he threw a towel and an extra pair of kaki pants he was carrying, at me,
"You don't have anything a bit more my style" I joked,
"We weren't sure that you'd want to wear a dead woman's clothes and I think they suit you" Benny laughed. I shivered at the thought of it and followed him outside.
As much as I wanted it not to be, the camp was bustling with pirates. They were scattered around in groups of twos and threes, either sitting on balconies or on the numerous couches that were sat around.
They didn't look as much as I thought they would, but some did. Even when I went through the gates, it felt like they were still staring.
"What do you think of our place then?",
"It seems cleaner than I remember" I shrugged,
"You weren't here before" Benny shook his head, "You were in the slave camp, that's a bit away from here" he explained,
"Where's here then?" I asked as we walked through the gates.
"Our main base" Benny explained, "We used to stay over on the small island to the east, but Vaas decided he wanted a change".
I kept quiet and listened as Benny described to me the hardship they had put in to building the huts and storage units, but it had been something that had kept most of the pirates away from the slave trade for a while, almost given them an objective, but that didn't mean that the vacationers were safe, it meant each one of them ended up dead or buried in sand, where they eventually did die.
The beach wasn't far and we took the longer route, which meant avoiding the road and any suicidal warriors wanting to start a fight.
The well-used path was small, but walkable. The jungle trees towered over us, shielding us from the sun and making Benny whine a little as he got hit in the face a few times with some run-away twigs.
I kept quiet as I watched Benny walk. When we'd been younger, he was the boy who would eat an extra sitting at breakfast, dinner and tea, didn't have much luck training with knives and wasn't very social. That's where me and Vaas came in.
His dad and mum were both from America, they'd came here on a holiday and hadn't left. His father became a friend to my father, which allowed for Benny to be more involved with the Rakyat kids.
He'd grown a lot since our teens. The last time I'd seen him, he'd been seventeen with long brown hair and a chubby posture, but now, he'd lost the weight, cut his hair short and gained a few pounds in muscle.
He'd always had a nice looking face, but it looked like all the stress and hardship of the last few years had gotten to him. It was only then, as the path got bigger and we walked side by side, that I noticed the dark beneath his eyes and the lines etched in to his face.
I wanted to ask him what he'd been through, but I stopped myself. I'd started to see it, the hopelessness behind his eyes, the worry, the death. He seemed like all the other pirates on the outside and while he was amidst them, but I realised, that away from them, you could see what had really happened to him.
We came to the beach. The water was calm and cool and I just sat in the shallow water and relaxed for the first time in weeks.
During my weeks in the cave, even whilst sleeping, I'd felt like I'd been half awake.
Benny had walked in the opposite way, across the shoreline, patrolling, giving me some privacy.
I washed the mud out of my hair, scrubbed my face with the flannel Benny had threw at me before he'd left and then went to my feet.
They were absolutely stinking.
Once I'd finished, I sat back on the sand, took off the pants I was wearing, dried my legs off and then put the new ones on.
My top was slightly splattered with water, but I'd live.
I thought about sitting there and waiting for Benny to return, but as I looked round, I realised he was gone.
I pushed myself up. I was panicking. Where the hell had he gone!
As I started walking cautiously in the way I'd seen him leave in, having nothing else to do, my head started to stir
Don't...
Eventually, everything in my body was telling me to stop, but it was only the sound of the horn that stopped me dead in my tracks.