road. There was a lot of activity on the highway, with trucks passing by at a furious rate. The few glimpses he’d caught convinced him they were all Chinese.
There were aircraft as well — jets high overhead and helicopters in the distance.
He was being followed. He knew it had to be the little girl he’d seen earlier, though she was very careful now about not getting close enough to let him see her. He heard noises in the brush, noises unlike those a deer or other animal would make, or a frog, or even the wind.
Pale green, with overly large black eyes, the frogs sat on the rocks and low plants, looking as if they were trying to decide which insect to pull out of the air next. Their color made them blur into the surroundings, and Josh didn’t notice them until one leaped almost into his face as he walked, spooked by the human’s approach. After that, the scientist realized the amphibians were all around him, occasionally scattering as he walked, but most often just sitting still, clacking in a low, guttural call, and staring.
It wasn’t until night began to fall that he realized he could eat the things.
The first frog he tried to catch hopped away into the brush, escaping easily. The second, which he tried to scoop off the ground in front of him a moment later, leaped up toward his hand, smacked against his open palm, and rebounded down against his leg. The live feel of the thing surprised him. It felt like a wet human biceps slapping against his hand. The webbed feet scratched gently at his flesh, the legs flailing awkwardly as he grabbed for them. The sensation was so odd that Josh stared at his hand as the frog went free.
It should have been easy, considering what he had done to the man whose rifle he had, and yet it was hard, very hard.
He was thrust back into his precollege days, biology class in high school, dissecting a frog. They’d tried injecting adrenaline into the thing to see what it would do to its heart.
One of the girls had complained that they were being cruel to animals. The teacher agreed.
A few meters farther on, he saw two frogs sitting within two feet of each other at the side of the trail, separated by a pair of leaves from one of the plants. Singling out the frog on the right, Josh lowered himself in front of it.
He raised his hand, then began to extend it. When he was about ten inches from the frog, it leapt to the left, escaping easily. Instead of swatting after it, he turned to catch the other one, spotted it in midair, and swung his hand. Much to his surprise, he grabbed the animal. It started to squirm, pushing its head out of his fist until he held it by only one leg.
Josh tightened his grip, clamping his hand against the squirmy skin. Then he swung his hand down, hammerlike, dashing the frog’s head against the ground.
He hadn’t meant to kill it, just get it to stop squirming. The blow split the creature’s skull. Blood and the gray ooze of brains spilled out.
Josh felt like he was going to get sick — like he
The next one was easier, and the one after that easier still. He caught ten frogs in all, dashing their brains out and piling them at the end of a small clearing about a hundred meters from the road. He brought some twigs together to make a fire, then decided he was too close to the road. He pulled up his shirt, put the dead frogs in it as if he were a kangaroo, and walked through the jungle until he found another clearing, this one with several clumps of dried grass, which he used to start the fire. With sturdy sticks he roasted the frogs on spits, something he had seen in a movie.
Or thought he’d seen. The boundaries between experience and dream seemed to have eroded.
And nightmare.
The fire threw up sparks as the frogs roasted. He picked at the skin of the first frog’s leg, burning the tips of his fingers. He managed to pull the flesh out, then lost it as it slipped to the ground.
He used his teeth on the second leg. The meat was tender, not really like chicken as some people said, unique.
He ate two more, quickly. Then a third and fourth.
He took his time with the fifth, hunger nearly satiated. Josh savored the bites, trying to work out the taste — not really fishlike, yet it seemed closer to that than chicken.
Something rustled in the brush. Two eyes looked at him from the dark shadows, their whites glowing with the reflection of the fire.
The girl.
“Here,” said Josh, lifting the half-eaten frog toward her. “I can cook some for you.”
She didn’t move.
“I’ll make a fresh one. Here.”
He leaned over and took another frog, holding it away from her as he poked the stick through its mouth and then out its body. Then he put it over the fire.
“They’re good,” he told the girl. “You have to eat. You need to eat.”
She was still staring at him. A good sign. He tried to remember the Vietnamese word for hello, but stress had drained his vocabulary away.
“How old are you?” Josh asked, still speaking English. “Five? Seven? I have a cousin who’s eight. I think he’s eight. I lose track. Maybe he’s ten. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
He reached and turned the stick, roasting the other side of the frog.
“My name is Josh. I’m a scientist. I study weather. It’s a good thing to study these days. A lot of call for it. Because it’s changing, you know. And, um, everything changes with it. These frogs, probably. I’ll guess they’re higher than they used to be. I mean their range. Probably it wasn’t up this high. They’re adapting, or they will adapt. They’re following their food source. I don’t know a lot about frogs, but that’s not exactly a radical guess. They are frogs.”
He stopped speaking and looked down at the animal on the skewer. “I think they’re frogs, not toads. Fauna’s not my thing.”
The girl took a step forward, parting the brush. She wore traditional Vietnamese pajamalike clothes, but her shoes were Western-style sneakers, cheap knockoffs that you could get in most Asian cities. Josh crouched down to her level, trying to make himself look less threatening.
“You can eat,” he said.
She launched herself forward, streaking toward him so quickly that his only reaction was to flinch, thinking she was going to bowl into him. Instead, she grabbed the frog and continued past him, escaping into the woods beyond.
“Hey!” he shouted, but she didn’t stop.
He jumped up just in time to see her disappear into the jungle. Josh stood for a second, unsure what to do. Then he grabbed his rifle and started after her, worried that she would go all the way out to the highway.
He had lost sight of her, but he could hear her running through the brush’. He followed along for thirty or forty meters, falling farther and farther behind. He could see only a few meters through the shadows and the trees; with every step the light seemed to fade further, until at last he could barely see to the tips of his extended hands.
Josh stopped and listened, quieting his breath as best he could so he could hear. She was somewhere ahead, not too far, maybe only a few yards, moving slower than before.
Did it really make sense to try and catch her? It wasn’t like he could talk to her. The only reason to grab her was to keep her from telling the Chinese about him if she was captured.
That was the only
Because he wanted her to be his friend. He wanted her to realize he was on her side, he was one of the good guys.
A poor reason to risk his life. Yet he felt compelled to continue after her.
Six or seven steps farther on, Josh heard the sound of heavy vehicles moving in the distance — Chinese
