Demons in the Jungle

Chapter 16

  "Look what I found wandering around in the jungle, Milli!" The woman called as I entered in front of her and she closed the door. "A naked white man!"

I blinked as I stumbled inside, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. I realized almost immediately where I was, though the slit windows had been covered over with soil on the outside. This was a pillbox, an old military bunker, obviously long abandoned. It had been refitted as a home. There were two canvas cots in one corner, with a lantern on a table between them. In the center was another table, where there was a small hobo stove that had clearly been shoddily repaired over a long period of time. Vegetables gathered from the jungle were sprawled out near it, and hanging on the nearby wall were several animal carcasses, looking like they were being preserved with salt. In another corner of the room, two stacks of crates sat, filled with guns, ammunition, and equipment. Near them, in a chair, was a second woman, another pink-haired woman, who was staring blankly at me now.

"Well, I'll be damned." She said simply, watching me without moving. "A naked white man. You weren't kidding. Where the hell did you find him?"

The first woman, my rescuer, walked past me to the weapons crates and set her rifle down. "Running from the Kokowai!" She said, sounding impressed. "Little bastard was actually trying to fight one, his tackle flip-flopping all over the place!"

The two shared high-pitched giggles as they turned to me, looking me over curiously. "Where do you think he came from?" The first asked the second.

"I don't know." The second said, shaking her head. "Maybe we should ask him."

"He looks tired." The first woman said, frowning at me. "And hungry."

"Well, surely." The second said. "The Kokowai don't feed their prisoners. Do you suppose he speaks English?"

"How should I know?" The first said. "Do I look like a mind-reader?"

"I'm right here, you know." I said, my voice sounding grating and strange in my ears. "I can hear you."

"Mimi, he can hear us." The second woman said. "And he speaks English."

"So he does." The first said. "Sounds American."

"What do we do?" The second asked.

The first shook her head, and then they both leaned forward, staring at me with comically wide eyes. I sighed, shifting my stance slightly and taking a moment to really get a good look at them. They were Asian, Japanese, I think. The one named Milli, the second one, appeared to be around my age, perhaps in her early twenties. The other, Mimi, who had rescued me, was no older than thirty, likely younger. They were both small but tough-looking, the muscles in their arms and stomachs compensating for their thin waists and short stature. Mimi was wearing a pair of tan military cargo pants, a green open vest, and a dirty gray sports bra beneath it. She had a tan ball cap, from beneath which her pink hair sprouted on one side. It looked like the other side was shaved short. Down both of her arms were elaborate and colorful tattoos of koi fish and birds, ending at her wrists. On her back was a machete.

Milli, the younger, had a less conservative dress. She wore nothing over her sports bra, and had a pair of very tight-fitting khaki pants that she had cut into very short shorts. Her hair, also pink, was longer and tied into a bun, which was held together with a pair of wooden needles. Over her head was a simple cloth headband. Over her eyes, she wore a pair of over-sized aviator sunglasses, and in her hands was a tube of nail polish and its brush. I slowly realized that when I arrived, she had been in the process of painting her toes.

My mind briefly noted the strange color of their hair. It was occurring to me now that it was the same color of the headdresses worn by the Kokowai warriors. It must have been a local dye of some sort, extracted from a plant. They had been here long enough, had watched the Kokowai long enough, to figure out how to imitate them. Oddly enough, it looked good on them. Overall, they cut attractive figures, guns and all. They looked like a pair of Asian Lara Crofts.