Nodding, Miko runs over and returns shortly with a six foot long stick.
Taking the stick, James says, “Help me up.”
Miko takes his arm and helps him to his feet. Once he’s up and stable, Miko let’s go as he leans heavily upon the stick. “You gonna make it?” he asks.
“I sure plan to,” he replies.
He takes some wobbly steps but finds that with the aid of the stick, he’s able to move down the beach as they resume following the seeker bubble. Making their way around the dead ‘rhino-lizard’ as James calls it, they quickly move away from the dead animals.
Leaning heavily upon the stick, he and Miko work their way down the beach. Suddenly from behind them, a cry can be heard as another of the rhino-lizards comes out of the vegetation and commences to tear into the closest dead one.
Miko glances back toward the feasting creature and shudders. “What are we going to do now?” he asks.
“First of all, we need to find Jiron and make sure he’s okay,” James tells him.
“But you’re barely able to walk,” he replies.
James pauses as he glances to Miko. “Be that as it may, I can’t let this stop me from helping a friend. I may not be able to walk well, but I am still a force to be reckoned with.” Turning away, he continues down the beach.
After walking beside him in silence for several minutes, Miko says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know, we just need to find him,” James reassures him.
They continue down the beach for another half an hour when they come across two sticks stuck in the stand with shells and a skull hanging from a rope tied between them.
“What is that?” Miko asks.
Coming closer, James can tell it was put here by someone. The primitiveness of it makes him think of a ‘totem’. “It was probably placed here by locals to warn trespassers to keep out,” he tells him.
“Maybe we should too,” he says.
“I would if Jiron wasn’t up there, somewhere,” he says, pointing further up the beach.
“He might be okay now,” Miko says hopefully. “He is a good fighter.”
Nodding, James replies, “You may be right. Let’s find a pool and I’ll try to locate him again.”
They move a little inland, away from the pounding surf but not within the vegetation which may hide a rhino- lizard. Looking around they locate a pool that’s shielded from the wind whipping in off the water, so remains fairly flat.
James settles down around it as Miko joins him. Concentrating on Jiron, he watches as the image begins to shift and then suddenly they see Jiron, strapped to a pole as it’s being carried by two of the natives. He widens the image and they see six others carrying spears, traveling with the ones carrying Jiron.
Letting the image go, he turns to Miko and says, “I don’t think he’s okay.”
“No, it didn’t look like it,” he replies. “How are we to get him free?”
“Won’t know that until we get there,” he tells him. Leaning upon his walking stick, he gets back to his feet and then returns to the beach. Continuing down their original course, they don’t travel very much further before they come across a well trodden path extending into the swamp area. James pauses before it as he contemplates what to do. He glances to Miko and shrugs, before turning to follow the path.
After moving several hundred feet deeper into the swamp, the air begins to smell foul. The stench of decay and gaseous fumes permeates the air. “What is that foul odor?” Miko says, holding his nose.
“Some areas, like swamps, give off odors due to stagnant water and other rotting decay,” replies James. “Though I’m no expert on these sorts of things, just something I’d read once.”
The further they go into the swamp, the thicker the swarms of mosquitoes become. Miko is becoming quite slap happy as he continuously kills bugs that land on him. For every one he kills, it seems another dozen or more take its place. The fact that he’s bare from the waist up makes it even worse. “This is unbearable,” he says after killing his hundredth mosquito. His back has dozens of raised bumps from where they’ve gotten to him.
“I know,” agrees James as he kills another one. “Let’s stop for a second.”
He tries to remember the shows he’d seen on the Discovery Channel about bugs and attempts to come up with a spell to help keep them at bay. He formulates his thoughts before releasing the magic and then suddenly, a cool mist settles about their exposed skin. It takes only a second before the smell hits, the most god-awful smell James has ever come across.
Miko begins gagging and tries to move his head to get away from the smell, but it’s all over them. “What did you do?” he gasps, trying to breathe without smelling which is nigh on impossible.
“Tried to keep the bugs off us,” replies James, eyes beginning to water from the stench.
Miko quickly realizes that whatever the foul smelling mist may be doing to his senses, it is in fact keeping the bugs away.. No more of those pesky mosquitoes are landing on him, or even coming close for that matter.
“It worked,” James exclaims in satisfaction. “I’d rather have stink than bites, wouldn’t you?” he asks.
“If it just wasn’t so bad,” Miko begins, but then nods his head in agreement. “Next time, try to put some perfume in it, okay?” The rain had by this time all but slacked off and doesn’t seem to be washing the pungent stuff off of them.
“Okay,” agrees James as they once again start following the trail deeper into the swamp. Further along, they come across the skeletal remains of one of the rhino-lizards they’d run into earlier. It’s half sunk in the water, lying next to the trail. The top half of the animal, the part not in the water still has rotting, decaying flesh attached to the bones. The section within the water looks to have been picked clean.
Miko eyes the carcass as they pass and observes small fish swimming in and around the bones. Not paying attention to where he’s putting his feet, he accidentally steps off the trail and into the water.
Suddenly a flurry of activity surrounds his boot as the water begins to churn. Pulling his boot out of the water quickly, he finds three of the small fish are attached to his boot. Appalled, he rubs his boot along the ground, and quickly scrapes them off before running to catch up with James. This time he’s paying much closer attention to where he places his feet.
From up ahead, they hear the sound someone coming down the trail toward them. James begins to leave the path and enter the water in order to hide in a copse of trees when Miko grabs him by the arm and shakes his head vehemently. Pointing to the small fish swimming there in the water, he warns him quietly “They’ll eat you alive!”
Nodding his head, James turns around and quickly leads them back down the trail to a group of trees they passed just moments earlier. Moving carefully off the trail and making sure not to step into the water, they hide amidst the trees as they wait for whoever is approaching.
A group of four warriors appear out of the swamp as they come their way down the trail. Each is carrying a lethal looking spear as well as wearing a necklace of bones, one of which looks to contain a human ear as well as the bones. They hold very still as the natives come closer.
As they near the trees where James and Miko are hiding, one of them pauses and begins sniffing the air. The bug repellent! James suddenly realizes. He smells the bug repellent. The warrior cocks his head to the side as if attempting to determine from which direction the smell is coming.
James watches as the others suddenly take notice of the smell. After a brief exchange of words, the warriors begin working their way closer to the trees they’re hiding in. They’re almost upon them when a rhino-lizard bursts out of the dense foliage and grabs one of the warriors, dragging him screaming off the trail and back into the swamp. The other three warriors immediately turn, and screaming war cries, give pursuit as they try to rescue him.
“Come on!” James says as he comes out from behind the trees and hurries down the trail as fast as his injured leg will allow. As they rush down the path, screams and roars can be heard coming from where the warriors are fighting the rhino-lizard.
“This is crazy,” Miko announces after they’ve put some distance between them and the battle behind them, “we don’t even know if we’re going in the right direction.”
Pointing off through the marshy wetlands, James says, “Would you rather try to cut cross country?”
Thinking of the little fishes that inhabit the water, he shakes his head no.
“Then we have to stick to the path as best we can and hope that we run across him,” he explains.
The pain in James’ leg continues to throb with every step he takes, perspiration courses down his face. He
