clearing to avoid. The two native guides were still
nowhere to be seen.
Rock looked around. “Yeah… so?”
“They are heavily decayed,” Manon pointed
out. “You have been roaming jungles for a long time. How long does
it take for a native hut to crumble like that? The grass making up
the once thatched roof is nonexistent. The bamboo poles have
rotted, cracked and broken. A few of the huts have fallen over
completely.”
After a few seconds of silence he continued,
“If these people lived in these huts before… this… happened, and
they stopped maintaining them at the same time, that means these
bodies have been disintegrating for…”
Rock continued for him. “years… wow.”
Rock got up. Nobody else seemed inclined.
“Grab the camera Manon. Let’s go have a look.” They walked over to
the nearest hut.
“The most likely place for the poles to fail
is where they touch the ground, but look,” he gestured towards one
of the thick supports. “They did not bury the poles in the ground.
Instead they placed them on thick rocks with pockets for the poles.
That makes a lot of sense in the wet jungle where insects will bore
into the wood and contact with soil will lead to rot. They probably
also smoked the poles before using them, which can help to keep the
insects away.”
“I would just be guessing, but if the huts
were well maintained beforehand, maybe four years… give or take a
year or two.”
There was a minute of silence while they
circled the hut.
When they reached the stairs leading to the
hut’s elevated entrance Manon asked, “What do you make of this
one?”
The figure at their feet had fallen in on
itself like many of the others. It seemed to be one of the most
ruined. It had been a tall individual for a native tribesman,
probably making it a male, and had fallen to the ground face first.
There was no skin left. Only the leftover bones were still visible
and they had all sunk flat to the ground. When Rock poked a rib
with his walking stick, it slid in like a knife into warm
butter.
Still looped loosely where the neck had been
was a rope connected to a long decaying bamboo pole. The pole was
lying on its side, weathered and covered with small holes. It had
been there so long the far end was half buried in the dirt. A spear
with a stone tip lay half underneath the body and appeared to have
been thrust completely through the chest. The back of the ribcage
had now melted around the spear’s handle.
“It looks like it was restrained,” Rock
commented. “Maybe a prisoner?”
Manon contemplated a moment before speaking.
“What if this one had caught some kind of disease, or went crazy,
and they tried to capture him? Remember the long poles we used to
capture the crocs last year in Africa?”
They had done a show the previous season
about crocodiles encroaching on people’s homes in Egypt. A long
sturdy metal pole with a coiled steel cable on the end was used.
The cable had been slipped over the reptile’s heads in the process
of capturing them for relocation.
“It does not appear they were successful,”
Rock said, and smiled at his sarcasm. “That gives me an idea. Do
you think we could take one of these back with us? The only thing
better than the footage we have is an actual subject.”
“I believe that is the worst idea I have ever
heard,” Manon replied. “Obviously, whatever is wrong with these
people spread to all of them. Now that I think about it, what in
the world are we doing this close without suits, or at least masks,
on? We could be infected with some deadly disease already.”
Rock quickly replied. “I thought about that.
I don’t think that is how this works. I think you are right about
it being some kind of disease, but I don’t think it spreads through
the air.”
“Answer this for me,” Rock continued. “If you
saw others around you getting sick, would you not get as far away
as possible to escape it? Yet here, about thirty people caught
something so
Sable Hunter, Jess Hunter