The Kidnappers

The Kidnappers - Sand (Chapter 21)

CHAPTER 21

- Sapien's POV 

The sand kicks up around us, as our feet pound through it, to get to the back speckle that Love has spotted. All our fatigue is replaced by anticipation of the black speckle potentially being shelter or even a campsite. We get nearer and nearer to it, I speed up, sprinting ahead of the others, eager to find out what it is, as I'm still trying to decipher it. I hope it's not a mirage. But all of us can't see the same thing can we? 

The black speckle splits into other smaller multiple coloured dots. The sound of voices talking, children laughing vibrate into my ears. The aroma of cooked food entices me to travel even faster. I don't care that I'm ahead of the others, I need to get to this place, this camp site. My desire to find people overpowers my usual patience with my team. I see shapes of black and grey tents erected becoming more defined as I am drawing nearer, set up in a rough circle. Chairs and pans are scattered outside each tent. Some women are stirring the contents in charred pots over tripods, wearing colourful dresses, whilst children scurry around them, giggling. A group of old men are sitting in a small circle, sheltered by a canopy of one of the larger tents. It's a campsite, they're a indigenous people, full of life. Hope gushes through me, we made it.

They can help us, they might have a method to contact someone to deliver another plane so we can go home. They can give us food and shelter, whilst we wait. I slow my pace down, sheltering behind a sand hill so the others can catch up, it's still quite a distance from the settlement but not too far, that we can't spot their activity.

 "So are you planning on just spying on them from here and then jumping them, when they're not looking, you'll grab their supplies and leg it? I knew you were some weird stalker when I met you." Zeki pants, out of breath form the exertion. He roughly lands beside me spraying up sand, causing it to bite my skin. Do you not know how to be delicate, Zeki? Of course not it's all part of your unwritten man code.

I roll my eyes, at his stupid plan, only he could conjure up such a half-witted idea. Does he not know, that he would be captured and then skewed in seconds because of the flat open land the settlement is positioned on?

"Well, you can do that and I'll just watch you get captured and shoved in a man-sized pot, with boiling water." Dese rasps whilst crouching with Love beside her.

"They're not cannibals, Dese." I glance at her.

"How do you know?" she shoots back defensively. 

"Because they are natives, they use the land, with the traditional methods and have their own cultures. They have their own methods of finding food, like we do. They're just like us but just don't live in towns and cities, they're not cannibals." I explain rationally to her. 

"I bet I'd taste delicious anyway." Zeki pipes up. It's as if he blocks out the other half of the conversation that occurs after he speaks, sometimes. 

"You'd taste of old, scratchy leather, just like that jacket you always wear." Love scrunches up her button nose. " I mean, when I was living alone, I still changed my clothes, instead of wearing the same foorrkin' thing everyday, that's just mingin'." she says grinning also managing to shiver in dislike at the same time.

Well that is impressive, she's actually answering back to I'm-too-cool-for-anything Zeki. 

"It's my signature jacket, it has everything in it." Zeki replies back huffily, not missing a beat at her taunting.

"Yeah everything from all the dust mites to the revolting smells that surround you." Dese mumbles. "That coat is like a sponge, it soaks up all the traumatic and scarring places and situations you have been in, and deposits everything onto you."