Date: 2020-06-19 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: The long-awaited fifth book in the wildly popular series of horror/comedy novels featuring Andrew Mayhem! As a stay-at-home dad taking care of triplets, Andrew Mayhem's days of getting into wild adventures are over. His life is measured in diaper changes. Sleep has become an abstract concept, something oft-discussed with his wife Helen but rarely experienced. So when Internet celebrity explorer Percival Longshore asks Andrew and his best friend Roger to travel with him on a good old-fashioned treasure hunt, Andrew laughs off the idea. He can't even watch ten consecutive minutes of a movie, muc
Publisher: Independently published

Cemetery Closing (Everything Must Go)

Jeff Strand

Cemetery Closing (Everything Must Go) © copyright 2020 by Jeff Strand

Cover art © 2020 by Lynne Hansen

LynneHansenArt.com

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.

For more information about the author, visit http://www.JeffStrand.com

Subscribe to Jeff Strand’s free monthly newsletter (which includes a brand-new original short story in every issue) at
http://eepurl.com/bpv5br

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Books By Jeff Strand

Chapter One

I think about death a lot, because people are always trying to kill me.

For example, right now I was being held at gunpoint in some guy’s living room. If you’re new to my exploits, your reaction is probably, “Oh my God! That’s not good at all! How did he end up in this predicament? What’s the backstory?” The rest of you are thinking, “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

The man with the gun wanted to shoot me because he thought I was sleeping with his wife. I definitely wasn’t. Even if we remove other key elements from the situation (moral issues, lack of opportunity, my fear of my own wife’s wrath, etc.) it’s important to realize that I had absolutely no energy for any kind of extracurricular activities. None. The tank was empty. I was exhausted. If Helen told me I was allowed one night with Scarlett Johansson, and a scantily clad Scarlett was crouched on the bed beckoning to me and saying, “C’mon, stud—let’s do this!” I would proclaim that my greatest wish had been granted, politely ask Ms. Johansson to leave, and bask in a night of uninterrupted sleep.

Here, let me catch you up.

I’m Andrew Mayhem. Thirty-five years old but feel about seventy-two. In addition to my aforementioned wife, I have an eleven-year-old daughter named Theresa and a nine-year-old son named Kyle. A lot of very bad stuff has happened to us. I mean, I once had to pose as a serial killer so I could infiltrate a group of psychopaths who were playing homicidal games in a billionaire’s mansion. I’m not trying to be a whiner, but that was a terrible frickin’ weekend.

I’ve lost both of my pinky fingers. Not at the same time.

In my last madcap escapade, my parents were murdered. That wasn’t even the worst part of the bad guy’s master plan. What he wanted to happen is so messed up that I’m not even going to describe it here, because it’s the kind of thing you need to be eased into hearing about. If I dropped it right here into the recap you’d say, “Nope, nope, nope, I think I’ll find other reading material, thank you very much.”

That was about a year ago. Everybody was in pretty bad shape when it was over. Of course, we’re always in bad shape when these adventures are over. You should’ve seen me after the first one. We spent a few weeks mourning and healing, and then it was time for our next great big zany experience.

As I said, I have a son and a daughter. When Helen and I found out that she was pregnant again, we were apprehensive, because my kids haven’t fared very well having me for a father. I assume their tell-all book will be called Our Dad Keeps Getting Attacked By Psycho Killers And We Keep Getting Dragged Into His Shit. Theresa will probably ask to have her name legally changed before she starts dating.

When we found out Helen was having triplets, we were basically in a state of shock. I mean, even wealthy people who don’t find themselves frequently facing off against homicidal maniacs tend to go, “Uhhhh, what?” when they hear that they’re having multiple new children instead of one. With twins, you break into a cold sweat and say, “Oh, umm, okay, I guess we’re doubly blessed.” With triplets, you stare at the wall for a long time, not really seeing it, silently haunted by your own thoughts.

We’d gone through some seriously trauma-inducing stuff while Helen was pregnant, so there was reason to believe that there could be problems later. But she went into labor right on schedule, and my bumbling misadventures while getting her to the hospital were minimal. She gave birth to three healthy, beautiful baby daughters. I wanted to give them rhyming names, or at least alliteration, but was overruled by my entire family. Instead, we returned home with Brianna, Cecilia, and Rose. And I never slept again.

So when the angry husband kidnapped me while I was out buying diapers and accused me of sleeping with his wife, I would’ve laughed in his face if he didn’t have a gun. Infidelity? Now? Couldn’t he see the dark circles under my eyes? The way I could barely hold up my head? How I kept gazing longingly at the pillow on the end of his couch?

“I should kill you right now,” said the husband, pacing around his living room while he kept the gun pointed at me.

“Please don’t,” I said.

“You think it’s okay to sleep with another man’s wife? Is that the kind of person you are? Doesn’t anybody have a moral code anymore?”

“I didn’t sleep with your wife.”

“The hell you didn’t!”

“I haven’t had sex with anybody in almost a year, and I’m counting myself. I know I’ve done something vaguely along those lines in the past, because I have five kids, but I really don’t think of people in those terms anymore.”

“Liar!”

“Who’s your wife?”

He walked over to a shelf and picked up a framed picture of a happy couple on their wedding day. I recognized the groom, because he was currently pointing a gun at me, but I’d never seen the bride.

“Don’t know her,” I said.

“Why do you keep lying?” the man shouted.

That was a dumb question. If I had slept with his wife, I’d lie about it to keep him from shooting me. I mean, duh.

“I’m not lying,” I said. “I don’t recognize her. She’s a lovely woman and the guy who is having an affair with her is a very lucky man, but it’s not me.”

As soon as I blurted that out, I recognized that it wasn’t all that smart of a thing to say to an angry murderous husband. If I were operating on more than six minutes of sleep a night I would have phrased it differently.

“When will the lies stop?” the man asked. “Don’t you realize that I’m going to kill you?”

“I totally get that,” I said. “But let’s be real here. You’re one guy, who’s probably never taken a human life, pointing a gun at me with a hand that won’t stop trembling. This doesn’t even make my top ten. I got buried alive once. This other time I was climbing up burning corpses in the back of a semi truck that was teetering over the edge of a cliff.”

“I’m sorry—you were what?”

“It was a crazy day.”

“You were climbing up burning corpses? How does that even work?”

“I’m too tired to give you the full context. You had to be there.”

“Stop trying to distract me!” the man shouted.

“All I’m saying is that if you made a list of all the times my life was in danger, it would be a very long list and this wouldn’t be all that high up on it. I’m not saying I’m not scared. I’m totally scared. It’s just hard for me to keep my eyes open wide enough right now to look scared.”

“I order you to never see my wife again.”

“That’ll be easy. I accept those terms. Are we done?”

“Why do you keep lying to me?”

“Why do you keep accusing me of lying to you? Why do you think it’s me? Did you see her with a guy who looks like me? Did she say it was me? I don’t understand why I’m part of this drama when I don’t even like girls right now.”

“I read the emails,” he said. “God, they were so graphic! I know that she calls your penis Big William! I shouldn’t have to know that!”

“You absolutely have the wrong guy.”

“What’s your name?”

“Andrew Mayhem.”

The man hesitated. “Not Bill Brombowski?”

“No. Not Bill Brombowski.”

“Then why did I think you were him?”

“I couldn’t possibly answer that question.”

“You’re famous, right?”

“A little. Not rich famous.”

The man lowered his gun. “Oh, crap. I get what happened. I saw you and you looked kind of familiar, and I thought you were the guy my wife was talking to for way too long at that party, and I put two and two together, but I put them together wrong, like I thought it added up to three or five or something, and now we’re here. I’ve been pretty scatterbrained since I read those emails. I mean, she never stops complimenting his penis. She just never stops.”

“Did she say unkind things about yours?”

“No. If she did you’d be dead by now.”

“Okay, well, I’m glad we got this cleared up,” I said. “Can I leave now?”

He pointed the gun at me again. “No. I kidnapped you and threatened to murder you. That’s illegal. Now I have to see it through or you’ll go to the police.”

“I wouldn’t go to the cops. Look, I can totally relate to having a non-functioning brain right now. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t mistakenly kidnapped somebody, too. Make you a deal: you promise not to murder Bill Brombowski and I promise not to go to the police.”

“How can I trust you?” He vigorously shook his head. “No, I’m in this too deep now. I have to kill you, then Bill, then Elaine, then myself.”

“I have five kids. Do you really want to create five orphans?”

“Is your wife still alive?”

“Yeah.”

“Then the kids wouldn’t technically be orphans.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I don’t think both parents have to die for them to be orphans. Maybe I’m wrong. You’d think that’s something I’d know considering how often people try to kill me. Either way, you’d be creating a widow and five kids without a dad. Three of them are still babies. Can you live with that?”

“I already said I’d be the last victim of my killing spree, so I won’t be living with anything.”

“That’s right, you did. Sorry. But a killing spree ending in suicide isn’t the right way to go about this. How about instead of murdering them, you shame them on social media? That’s what it’s for.”

“What did you mean by ‘three of them are still babies’?”

“Triplets.”

“Holy crap.”

“I know, right?”

“I can’t kill somebody who’s taking care of triplets.”

“Thank you. They’re all girls. Maybe when they’re teenagers I’ll ask you to revisit the idea.”

“How do you tell them apart?”

“Toenail polish. Pink for Brianna, green for Cecilia, and purple for Rose.”

“Why not—?”

“I know, I know, why not use pink for Rose? The reason is that we were very, very, very tired at the time. We also keep this notebook where we write down tiny little differences that we notice. I’m not sure what the distribution of evil is with triplets. With twins you get a good one and an evil one, but I’m not sure if we get two evil and one good, or two good and one evil. Right now they all seem pretty evil.” Yes, I was babbling. I do that a lot.

“Smart. Okay, well, I’m not going to kill you or Bill or Elaine, so I’m just going to skip to the last step,” said the man, shoving the barrel of the gun into his mouth.

“No! Don’t do that!” I quickly got up off the couch.

He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“Take the gun out of your mouth,” I said.

He kept pulling the trigger.

“Seriously, stop doing that.”

He didn’t stop. I assumed that he wasn’t stupid enough to be trying to kill himself with an unloaded gun, so if he kept pulling the trigger, it might become unjammed and splatter his brains all over. My preference was for that not to happen.

I moved toward him.

He stepped back, keeping the gun in his mouth.

“Give me the gun,” I said.

He shook his head and continued to pull the trigger.

“Give it.”

He refused to hand it over. Despite my state of pure exhaustion, I decided that I could summon enough energy to try to forcibly remove the gun from his mouth. I rushed at him. He quickly backed away, tripped, and landed on his ass. He didn’t stop pulling the trigger. I crouched down and tried to grab the gun away from him, but he was moving around too much and I couldn’t get a hold of it.

“Keep your head still! I mean it!”

He said something that I couldn’t understand because he was talking with a gun in his mouth.

Maybe I should just leave.

No, I’d feel bad if I heard a gunshot go off as soon as I walked away. I’d seen much worse messes, but still, if you can stop some dude from offing himself, you should give it your best shot. And, yes, I recognize that “give it your best shot” is exactly the wrong phrase to use, but it’s an accurate reflection of my mental process during this time.

I grabbed for the gun again. Got a hold of his hand that was holding the gun. Tried to pry it out of his mouth. Couldn’t. Tried harder. Still couldn’t. Realized that if the gun went off while I was trying to pull it out of his mouth, it would be rather challenging to explain that I was trying to prevent him from getting shot. Kept trying anyway.

I punched him in the stomach with the hand that wasn’t trying to pull the gun out of his mouth. He let out a grunt of pain, and then I successfully yanked the gun away. It popped out of my hand, flew across the room, and struck the floor. It did not go off and shoot him in the face, which was perhaps a sign that my luck was changing.

He got up and ran.

I’m not sure why he felt the need to run. What was he fleeing? An inspirational speech about how life is worth living?

He smacked into a large bookshelf, then fell again. The bookshelf wobbled. You know how in a movie when something is about to hit somebody, they stare at it and scream instead of trying to get out of the way? That’s what he did. He put up his hand, as if that was sufficient to block the fall of six rows of hardcovers, and cried out.

The bookshelf came crashing down on him.

I just kind of stood there and stared for a moment. At least until I saw the trickle of blood.

* * *

“He’ll live,” said my friend Sergeant Tony Frenkle. “I’m not saying it’ll be a high quality of life, but it’s not like his skull was completely shattered.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Why were you here?”

“Mistaken identity.”

“Don’t you have kids to take care of?”

“Yes. Lots of them.”

“Well, I’ll take your statement and get you back to your large, large family.”

“Thank you very much.”

Chapter Two

A few days later, Wednesday night, my best friend Roger and I were having coffee together. We used to go to a coffee shop, but it burned down, so we started going to a different coffee shop, but then I had triplets and didn’t get to go anywhere anymore ever again, so we started meeting at my house.

I had Brianna on my lap and Roger had Cecilia on his. Kyle and Theresa were in the living room watching Rose. Helen was in the bedroom, snoring so loud that it reverberated throughout the entire house. She’d never snored before we had our third, fourth, and fifth kids.

Roger jiggled Cecilia a bit. “I think I’ve got a poopy diaper here.”

“There are always poopy diapers,” I said. “Poopy diapers are eternal.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Roger stood up and carried Cecilia out of the kitchen. That’s right, Roger was such a good friend that despite being childless himself, he’d learned how to change diapers so that he could help out when he came over. He’d been doing this for the past six weeks. It may be a coincidence that he started doing this the week after his visit where I suddenly started weeping and couldn’t make myself stop for nearly fifteen minutes. Or it may not. I never asked.

Previously, when I’ve recounted my adventures I’ve said very good things about Roger’s physical appearance. He’s got a big nose, sure, but dreamy blue eyes and an overall facial structure that the ladyfolk find most appealing indeed. Sadly, the past year had not been kind to him. He’d lost too much weight and looked like he’d aged a decade. He’d let his hair grow out, which wasn’t a good look for him, and he now had a wildly unkempt beard. Theresa was kind of scared of him now.

He’d had an amazing girlfriend, Samantha, who almost became his fiancée. After the first nightmarish experience, they’d stayed together, but after the second nightmarish experience Samantha had decided that this was perhaps one nightmarish experience too many, and that this kind of thing was probably going to keep happening to them. Because she loved him, she waited for his many injuries to mostly heal before she broke up with him. Roger had asked if they could remain friends, but Samantha explained that it wasn’t about their relationship status but rather their proximity to each other, so no, they could not. After one last wild romp in the bedroom, which popped a few of Roger’s stitches, they never saw each other again.

He returned to the kitchen a few minutes later with a clean baby. But now Brianna needed her diaper changed, so I excused myself.

With that done, we returned to sipping our coffee.

“You look sadder than usual,” I said.

Roger shrugged and nodded. “Maybe.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you remember how I said I wasn’t going to stalk Samantha on Facebook?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I decided that it was okay to stalk her as long as she didn’t know about it. I check up once or twice a day, a little more on weekends, no big deal. She has a boyfriend now. They made it official three hours and twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.”

“I knew it was bound to happen. She’s gorgeous, and intelligent, and funny, and beautiful, and smart, and witty, and attractive, and brainy, and amusing, so she couldn’t stay single forever. I guess I just thought it would happen after I quit checking her status updates.”

“Does he look like a total douchebag?”

Roger shook his head. “He seems nice. I doubt he’ll put her life in mortal danger.”

“It’s good that she’s happy, right?”

Roger stared at me for a very long time.

“Maybe it’s time for you to get out there, too,” I said. “Lose the beard, and—”

“What’s wrong with my beard?”

“Your beard is horrible, Roger. I tell you that every time I see you. Your particular face was not designed to have hair sprouting out of it. It’s awful. You look like a cannibal. I don’t mean like Hannibal Lecter, I mean like the kind of cannibals you’d encounter if your car breaks down on a dirt road miles from civilization.”

Roger stroked his beard. “I think it looks fine.”

“If a squirrel popped out of it, right now, I wouldn’t even flinch. I just naturally assume that there are forest creatures living in there. It’s a bad choice for you. I’m not trying to be judgy, but damn does that beard suck.”

“What does Helen think of it?”

“Helen only sees blurs right now. But have you noticed that Theresa stays eight to ten feet away from you at all times?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s the beard.”

“Well, it’s too late now.”

“What are you talking about? It’s a beard. It’s not permanently attached to your face. You can make it go away anytime you want. I’ll let you borrow a razor right now.”

Roger wiped a tear from his eye.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I wonder if Samantha is shaving her legs for Chad right now. Her legs were always so smooth. So, so smooth. But Chad’s an animal rights activist, so maybe he likes women who don’t shave their legs very often. He’s always posting pictures of his three dogs. Samantha likes dogs, but three is a lot. What if they get aggressive?”

“Hold on, are you Facebook stalking Chad, too?”

“We’re not talking about me right now,” said Roger.

“Maybe you should stay off social media for a while.”

“Yeah.” Roger took a sip of his coffee. “I miss A/R Tasks & Investigations.”

That was the business we’d tried to open together. On our first day, a woman named Shirley had walked into our office and said that she thought she might be a serial killer. Our day had declined significantly after that.

“Me too.”

“Maybe we should give it another shot.”

“You get that I’m a stay-at-home dad, right? Like, the only reason I’m not working a desk job is because it would pay less than the cost of daycare. How do you think Helen would react if I told her that I wanted to re-open our disastrous business? She would react poorly, that’s how. Very, very poorly.”

“I meant when the triplets are in school.”

“So five years from now. Sure, if I’m still alive five years from now, we’ll consider reopening A/R Tasks & Investigations.”

Roger glanced up at the ceiling. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“It sounds like Helen is choking to death.”

“No, that’s just the way she snores sometimes.”

“It’s unnerving.”

“Maybe you should get out of here for a while,” I said. “Clear your head. Take a vacation.”

“The last time I took a vacation we—”

“I know, I know. I was there. Take a better vacation.”

“You look like you could use some time off, too,” said Roger. “Maybe both of us should get away for awhile.”

“I honestly can’t tell if that’s a cruel joke or if you’re serious.”

“I was serious while the words were spilling out of my mouth, and then I immediately realized what I’d said and thought, ‘Wow, what a stupid thing to say.’ I know that you don’t get to take vacations anymore.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t.”

“Maybe I should.”

“You should.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Good.”

“Maybe I’ll wander the earth. Just start walking and go wherever my feet take me. That would get my mind off Samantha, Chad, and Chad’s dogs, right?”

“Or you could go to the beach. I hear the beach is nice.”

Roger shifted Cecilia from his right knee to his left, then frowned. “I think she has a poopy diaper again. How is that even biologically possible?”

“I don’t know. Theresa and Kyle knew how to fill a diaper, trust me. But these three together are trying to disprove the scientific theory about how you can’t create matter out of nothingness. I know how much they eat, and I swear to you there is more coming out than going in.”

Roger stood up. “I’ll take care of it.”

I almost said, “No, no, I’ll do it,” but then I realized that would be a foolish thing to say. I cooed at Brianna and tried to make her laugh until Roger got back.

“I am going to take a vacation,” he said as he sat down.

“Great! The beach or walking the earth?”

“A road trip.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Should I invite Samantha?”

“I’m gonna say no.”

“What if—hear me out—what if now—just hear me out—what if now that she’s in a relationship she’s suddenly realized that—no, the logic there doesn’t really work, maybe it’s not a good idea.”

“Don’t invite Samantha on your road trip.”

“I’m not going to, okay? Jesus.”

* * *

Five days later, while Cecilia and Rose were mercifully asleep in their cribs and Helen was feeding Brianna, Roger called. I was making dinner—not a gourmet one—so I put him on speaker.

“Hey, Andrew!” he said.

“Hi! How’s your road trip going?”

“I’ve almost made it to Georgia.”

We lived in Florida. “You haven’t even made it out of the state yet?”

“I’ve been stopping at a lot of bars, and it would be irresponsible to drive afterward.”

“That’s not really the kind of road trip I’d suggested,” I said. “I was thinking more like cruising along the open road with the windows down and music blasting. Since when do you get drunk?”

“Since five days ago. My alcohol tolerance is pretty low. Is Helen in the room?”

“Yes. You’re on speaker.”

“Oh. Can you go somewhere private?”

“No, I can’t go somewhere private! She’s right here! Why would you ask that out loud when I already said that you’re on speaker?”

Fortunately, Helen liked Roger. She just rolled her eyes and continued breastfeeding Brianna. You don’t want to read about how her nipples were doing. I heard about it frequently.

“Well, I was going to propose something to you, but she’s not going to like it, so I thought it was best that she didn’t hear it while I was saying it.”

“Are you drunk right now?” I asked.

“I’m not sober.”

“Maybe you should go take a nap.”

“I’ll just go ahead and say it, and if Helen gets mad, I’ll apologize for angering her. I met this guy at the bar I’m at. He’s planning an expedition to South America and he’d like both of us to join him.”

“An expedition for what?”

“A treasure hunt.”

“He invited you to go on a treasure hunt in South America, and you said yes?”

“He said it’s vast riches, greater than we can imagine.”

“Was he drunk, too?”

“Nah. I think we should go.”

“Sounds good to me. Helen’s right here, so let me see if it’s okay with her if I leave her with the triplets while I go off on a South American treasure hunt. Helen, you’re cool with that, right?” I asked. “The hospital won’t mind if you have three babies with you while you work your shift, will they?”

“Hey, Roger?” said Helen.

“Yes?”

“Go get some sleep. Maybe switch to bottled water for the rest of your vacation.”

“The guy is serious,” Roger insisted. “Since when are you against vast riches?”

“I’m all in favor of vast riches,” I said. “But I’m not jaunting off to South America to go on a treasure hunt with some guy you just met in a bar. Even if I didn’t have three babies at home I wouldn’t be doing that.”

“With vast riches you could buy three robot nannies.”

“I’m hanging up on you now, Roger.”

“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Water,” Helen told him, right before I disconnected the call.

I looked over at Helen. “He’s had a rough time lately.”

“I know.”

“I’m not thinking about going to South America.”

“I know.”

“Just wanted to make sure you understood that.”

“I did.”

“Good.”

* * *

Roger called the next morning. “Sorry for calling when I was a little buzzed,” he said.

“No problem,” I said.

“I’m sober now.”

“Glad to hear it. Did you finally make it to Georgia?”

“No, I’m on my way over.”

“To my house?”

“Yeah. With my new friend.”

In case I haven’t made it clear, this was really abnormal behavior for Roger. I was beginning to seriously worry about his mental health. “Don’t bring your creepy new friend over to my house.”

“He’s not a thrill killer or anything. I thought Helen should be there to hear his pitch.”

“We’re not going to listen to his pitch, and we’re not letting a stranger into our house.”

“Meet us for lunch. It’s on him. Bring the kids.”

“I’m not taking the triplets to a restaurant. Are you kidding? That would be pure madness.”

“He says he’ll pay two month’s worth of Helen’s salary for you to join us on the expedition, plus a cut of the treasure.”

I hesitated. Finances were tight, thanks to the plethora of children and me not working. “And he’s paying for lunch?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Meet us at Chamber Burgers & Fries in an hour.”

Chapter Three

Helen, Theresa, and Kyle were each responsible for one of the babies as we sat around the large table and enjoyed our hamburgers. Roger’s new buddy was named Percival Longshore, and he looked like he was playing the role of a late 19th century explorer in a low budget movie. He had a handlebar mustache and a beard that curled on the end, and I imagined that he had a fairly extensive sword collection at home.

“Thank you so much for meeting with me,” he said, in a British-adjacent accent that couldn’t possibly be real. “I’ll admit that I was taken aback to look across the bar and see Roger Tanglen there. I had to look twice because of the unruly beard, and I wasn’t positive it was him until he kindly verified his identity and let me buy him a drink. And I thought, where Roger Tanglen is, Andrew Mayhem can’t be far! But of course I was wrong and it turned out that you were quite far.”

Rose began to cry, so Kyle took her out of the restaurant.

“I see that you’re fond of children,” said Percival.

“Yep,” I said.

“I’m not asking you to leave them for long. The actual expedition will take one day at the most. You’ll be well compensated even if it ends in abject failure, but if it ends in success, which I guarantee it will...oh, you will be most wealthy indeed, Mr. Mayhem.”

“Why us?” I asked.

“I’m familiar with your prior adventures. I think you’d both be exquisite assets if you joined my team.”

“Okay, see, that’s where you lose me. If you were familiar with our prior adventures, you’d know that Roger and I are the last people you’d want to join your team. We are the most disaster-prone guys you’ll ever meet. I can’t believe you’d even feel safe here at a family friendly restaurant with us.”

Percival smiled. “Do you believe in fate?”

“I believe in bad things happening to me a lot, yeah.”

“I do not pretend to fully understand the myriad mysteries of the universe, but there I sat, having a drink in my favorite watering hole, thinking that I still needed two more warm bodies on my expedition, when Roger walked through the door. Was it fate? Was it coincidence? It doesn’t even matter. What I saw was an opportunity.”

“An opportunity for what?” I asked. “A body count?”

“I believe that you and Roger are cursed. Even if you don’t believe in curses, you have to admit that if curses do exist, you have one, right? Yes, you have a lovely wife, and yes, you have many delightful children, but you’ve also experienced far more than your share of misfortune.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve got a home, and Helen has a good job, and we’re not skipping meals, and—”

“You once sat at a dinner table where everybody else had been decapitated. That’s the sort of thing I’m referring to.”

“Okay, yes, I’ve spent more time around corpses than most private citizens.”

“I would like to reverse the curse.”

“Are we talking witchcraft, voodoo…?”

Brianna started crying, so Theresa took her out of the restaurant, just as Kyle returned with Rose.

Percival chuckled. “Nothing like that. Our expedition is well funded, well planned, and not dangerous. The majority of it will be in a well-populated area where families take vacations. Yes, there will be a trek or two in the heat, but considering what you’ve been through, a sweaty hike shouldn’t be a big deal. You will return home safe and rich. And then we can consider the curse...broken.”

“That’s one possible end result,” I said. “On the other hand, it might also prove that there is a curse.” I looked over at Kyle. “We’re not cursed. Don’t share that with your friends. Curses don’t exist.” I looked back at Percival. “You think we’ll return home safe and rich. I think we’ll return home dead and dismembered. I know you’re trying to be a nice guy by breaking the quote unquote curse, but we’ll probably turn your expedition into an absolute catastrophe.”

“Oh, I’m not making this offer to be nice. I should have stated that upfront. There is pure self-interest involved. I have an extremely popular YouTube channel where I chronicle my adventures. Having you two along would boost my clicks even further and let me do a very special video about how I broke your curse. Whether you believe in curses or I believe in curses is irrelevant. You’ll get the clicks. And I’m willing to pay handsomely for those clicks.”

“So what treasure exactly are we looking for?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” said Percival. “What’s to stop you from sending your own expedition to find it before me?”

“Everything. Literally every single element of my life is stopping me from sending an expedition to South America right now.”

Percival nodded. “That’s fair, I suppose. But, alas, it must remain shrouded in secrecy for now. The more important question is, how much wealth do you stand to acquire?”

“How much wealth do I stand to acquire?” I asked.

“You and Roger would each be entitled to a three percent share. The treasure is worth at least twenty million dollars.”

“So that’s…”

“Six hundred thousand dollars each,” said Percival, saving me from having to do the math. “At least.”

“Five percent,” said Helen.

Everybody turned to look at her.

“I just looked up your YouTube channel on my phone and you’re legitimate. So five percent, plus twenty thousand dollars up-front, plus a guarantee of an extra fifty thousand dollars each if you come home empty handed.” This was quite a bit different from the “No way in hell are you going on this expedition” reaction I’d expected.

“Goodness,” said Percival.

“Take it or leave it.”

Percival smiled. “Four percent. Nineteen thousand dollars up-front. A guarantee of ten thousand dollars if we come home empty handed.”

“Done,” said Helen.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Do you know how much sleep we could get if you brought home eight hundred thousand dollars?”

“All right,” I told Percival. “I guess I’m in.”

* * *

And that is how, one week and a yellow fever vaccination later, I found myself on a plane bound for Manaus, one of the largest cities in South America.

Theresa, an eleven-year-old wise beyond her years, had wondered if maybe Percival and his crew were going to hold Roger and I for ransom, but his YouTube channel chronicled his adventures around the globe, and I assumed that if people had died or went missing on his watch, it would show up in a Google search. We’d added a clause to our agreement that Roger and I could bail at any time, no questions asked, and keep our upfront fee. Percival had agreed to it on the condition that he would be permitted to do a video depicting us as shameful cowards, and we said sure, no problem.

Percival met us at the airport when we arrived in the early evening. After a ceviche dinner that I was able to eat in its entirety without interruption, one that was delicious enough to make me rethink my whole aversion to the “raw fish” genre of food, he took us to our hotel. “Sleep well,” he said. “We’ll depart early in the morning.”

“What time?” I asked.

“Eight o’clock sharp.”

That didn’t seem early at all. That seemed gloriously decadent. “It’s only nine o’clock now,” I noted.

“Correct.”

“Oh my God.” So much sleep. So very much sleep.

Roger and I bid each other goodnight then went to our separate rooms. Though my room was not a luxury suite, it had a comfortable looking bed. I just stared at it for a while. I didn’t want to climb into it right away—like a night with a lover, I wanted to savor the anticipation.

I had never seen such a fluffy looking pillow.

Look at that blanket. Soft. Inviting. A feast for the senses.

I pulled the blanket down and ran my fingers over the sheet. Smooth. Silky. Freshly laundered.

I needed to stop. If I kept this up I’d fall asleep too soon. I didn’t want to rob myself of the full experience.

Typically I did not sleep in the nude, but this was not a typical night.

I undressed completely and slid beneath the sheets. The pillow fit my head perfectly, as if it had been made just for me, only me, nobody else but me. Angels made this pillow out of magical clouds spun from cotton candy, but not sticky cotton candy, silky smooth cotton candy.

Sleep. I was going to get a full night of sleep.

I laughed softly to myself. Tee hee hee!

I closed my eyes and dreamt of the color of happiness.

* * *

I woke up at 7:29 AM, one minute before the alarm. What was this strange feeling that had come over me?

Was I feeling...refreshed?

I took a shower and got dressed in my explorer gear: hiking boots, full-length khaki pants, a light green shirt, and a fashionable sun hat. I wondered if Percival would have a pith helmet for me.

I stepped out of my room at the same time Roger stepped out of his. He’d shaved the beard and cut his hair. I assumed he’d cut it himself, since it had a very distinct “cut my own hair without really knowing what I’m doing” look, but I wasn’t about to criticize it. “Hey, looking good!” I said.

“Thanks. Did you notice we have really thin walls?”

“No. Was I snoring?”

“You were saying creepy things to your pillow.”

“How creepy?”

“You said it’s the only one who understands you.”

“Ah. I didn’t really mean that, obviously.”

“You gave it pet names. Erotic ones.”

“We should get going,” I said. “We don’t want to keep Percival waiting.”

“Oh, I agree with that, but there’s no reason we can’t talk while we walk. I have so much more to discuss with you.”

Roger shared several disturbing details with me as we made our way to the hotel lobby. I was thankful that inanimate objects could not file sexual harassment suits.

Percival gave us a wide grin as we approached him. A very large and handsome man stood next to him.

“Good morning!” Percival said. “I trust you two slept well?”

I nodded. “Very well, thank you.”

“This is Ignacio. He is our guide and translator.”

“Nice to meet you, Ignacio.”

Ignacio frowned at me. “Please to repeat. I no understand.”

“Uhhh...nice to meet you.” I mimed a hand-shaking gesture.

Ignacio looked over at Percival, as if deeply confused.

Percival chuckled. “He’s kidding. Our Ignacio is quite the prankster. He’ll be saying lots of things like that, so prepare yourself.”

Ignacio smiled. “I will. Lots and lots of them.”

“So, Ignacio, how many languages do you speak?” Roger asked.

“Are you trying to get me to do a C-3PO reference?”

“No. It was a real question.”

“Two.”

“Oh. Okay. That’s sufficient, I guess.”

“And I know this region like the back of my hand.” Ignacio glanced down at the back of his hand. “Where the hell did that vein come from?”

“He’s making another joke,” Percival explained.

“I got that,” said Roger. “I haven’t decided yet which one was funnier.”

“I’m a big fan of the American humor that’s intended more to annoy than amuse,” said Ignacio.

“Anyway, here you go,” said Percival, handing me his room key. “My bags are in 203.”

“I’m sorry…?”

“I’m obviously not paying you to look pretty. You’ll be responsible for the manual labor during this expedition. Roger, go fetch me a coffee. Two packets of sugar, one squirt of creamer.”

Neither Roger nor I moved. We weren’t sure if he was kidding or not.

“Unlike our jokey friend Ignacio here, I only say true things,” said Percival. “Coffee and bags, please. Chop chop.”

It was the first time somebody had ever used the phrase “chop chop” in my presence before. I didn’t much like it. But I figured that for nineteen thousand dollars and the promise of eight hundred thousand more, I could handle carrying some bags. I went up to his room, expecting to find dozens of heavy suitcases, but there was only a backpack and a tan duffel bag that he could’ve easily carried downstairs himself.

When I got back down to the lobby, Roger had a brown stain on his shirt.

“It wasn’t a big enough squirt of creamer,” Roger explained.

“Hey, Percival, how about you not throw hot coffee on my friend?”

“It was lukewarm,” said Percival. “That’s what pushed me over the edge.”

“Don’t do anything like that again. We’ll be your servants but we’re not gonna be your little bitches. Not for—” I almost said “Not for eight hundred thousand dollars,” but I stopped myself because if I said it out loud I might decide that I would indeed be his little bitch for that amount of money.

“Very well,” said Percival. “I apologize. I’m used to hotter coffee and larger squirts of creamer and I forgot myself for a moment. Our Jeep awaits. Load it up and we’ll begin our journey.”

* * *

Ignacio drove while Percival sat up front. The Jeep’s engine was so loud and the road was so bumpy that Roger and I couldn’t really hear each other talk, so we sat there wondering if we’d made a terrible mistake. Most likely we had.

After about an hour, we pulled up to a checkpoint. I quickly counted at least ten men with machine guns, which was ten more machine gun-wielding men than I was comfortable being around. One of them approached our vehicle.

Percival glanced back at us and waved a manila envelope. “Don’t worry. We have our bribe ready.”

The man walked up to the Jeep and said something in Spanish. Percival passed the envelope to Ignacio, who passed it to the man. He opened it, flipped through the contents, then shoved the envelope into his pocket. Then the man pointed the machine gun at me and said something.

“What’s he saying?” I asked.

“He wants to know if you’re American.” Ignacio said “Si,” to the man.

The man angrily waved the machine gun at me and said something else.

“What did he say?”

“He said Americans are bullshit. He wants you to get out of the Jeep.”

I opened the door and got out. The man continued talking.

“He’s telling you to turn around and place your hands on the vehicle.”

I did as instructed.

The man bashed me in the back of the legs with his machine gun. As I cried out in pain and dropped to my knees, I realized that this particular adventure was not going to be the one that broke the curse.

Chapter Four

Later, we were back in the Jeep.

“I’d like to apologize,” said Percival. “I obviously never meant for you to spend several hours in jail. I trust it wasn’t too unpleasant?”

I glared at him with my eye that didn’t have an ice pack over it.

Fortunately, after receiving the first punch I’d been able to kick the ass of one of my cellmates and assert my dominance, which kept me from getting repeatedly beaten up during those eight very long hours. One of my other cellmates wasn’t so lucky.

They’d taken away my sun hat and never given it back, so I was much less fashionable now.

“I want to go home,” I said.

“I understand how you’re feeling,” said Percival. “And if you want to end this journey prematurely, I’ll be more than happy to turn this Jeep around and take you back to the airport.”

“Good. I want to go home.”

“That said, imagine how disappointed you’ll feel to have come all the way here only to experience little more than the walls of a jail cell. Don’t you want to share grand tales of adventure with your children?”

“No. I want you to take me back to the airport so I can go home.”

“Imagine the disappointment in your children’s eyes as you return home without the vast treasure they were expecting. You’ll still have their love and respect, presumably, but when they hug you, you’ll sense that something is missing.”

“You said it was going to be completely safe,” I reminded him. “I could’ve spent the rest of my life in a South American prison because of you.”

“Maybe you should focus a little less on your imprisonment and a little more on how I was able to pull together enough cash to bribe them to set you free. I wasn’t expecting to have to pay for your freedom. That’s a significant added expense. If you leave now, I bribed the authorities for nothing.”

“Airport.”

“I’ve seen far worse eye injuries. I once saw a man whose eye was dangling by a stalk. Now that was a man who was justified in wanting to go home. Your eye didn’t pop out even a little.”

“Why is the Jeep still going in the same direction?” I asked.

“How can I get you to reconsider?”

“Ten percent.”

“Not a chance.”

“Nine percent.”

“No.”

“Then we’re done.”

“How about this?” said Roger. “You give Andrew eight percent and me two percent. I don’t need the money. I mean, I need some money but I don’t need huge piles of it. So it’s only a two percent increase from the share you were already giving us.”

Percival thought about that. “Very well,” he said.

“Then my share better go up, too,” said Ignacio.

“You already get twenty percent.”

“Why the hell does he get twenty percent?” I asked.

“Because he’s been joining me on these expeditions for years. We have many shared experiences. We’ve sucked the poison out of each other’s snakebites.”

“Twenty-two percent or I stop this Jeep right here,” said Ignacio.

“How about twenty-two percent of kiss my ass?” Percival suggested, his accent transforming to a southern drawl. He quickly reverted to his British-esque dialect. “My percentages will not be held for ransom. If you all wish to return home, wallowing in shame and failure, I won’t try to stop you, but my army of YouTube subscribers will know just how greedy and cowardly you are, and the comments section will be scathing.”

“I’d like to keep going,” said Roger. “Of course, I’ll admit that I wasn’t the one who got beat up in jail.”

“I already said I’ll do it if Roger and I share ten percent,” I reminded Percival.

“I was only kidding about wanting twenty-two percent,” said Ignacio, though unlike the time he’d pretended that he didn’t recognize a vein on the back of his hand, I was pretty sure he hadn’t really been joking.

“Good. Then let us continue our journey,” said Percival.

A couple of hours later—way longer than Percival had said the trip would take—we arrived in a small village. Percival explained that because my imprisonment had put us so far behind schedule, we’d have to sleep here. It would be too dangerous to travel at night.

The accommodations, with the four of us sharing a barn with some interesting-smelling livestock, weren’t very comfortable, but I slept like the dead.

* * *

The next morning, it was only a short drive to our destination. “Behold!” said Percival. “The Amazon River!”

After covering ourselves in insect repellent, we beheld the Amazon River. I was still annoyed with the whole jail thing but I had to admit that this was pretty cool.

“Our boat will arrive soon,” said Percival. “Until then, let me tell you and the world of the treasure we seek.” He took out his cell phone, used his image on the screen to fix his luxurious hair, and began to record. “Hello. I’m Percival Longshore and this is Adventures With Percival Longshore. Welcome to the first installment of my latest epic adventure. This flowing body of water that you see behind me is the legendary Amazon River. It is the longest river in the entire world, if you don’t count the Nile, but most people count the Nile, so we’ll call it the second longest river in the world. That’s still very long indeed.”

He swung his phone around to point it at Roger and I.

“Do you recognize these men? It’s okay if you don’t. They’re not as famous as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber. Their names are Andrew Mayhem and Roger Tanglen. Wave to the people at home, Andrew and Roger.”

We waved. I still had the ice pack pressed against my face, but he’d be uploading these after our adventure was complete, so I didn’t have to worry about Helen seeing me and getting worried.

“Look them up. They’ve had a bad run for the past few years, but with my help, they’re going to—” He stopped and lowered the phone.

“Going to what?” I asked.

“I’m going to add that later,” he said. “It’ll be a booming, digitally enhanced voice with flashy graphics that say ‘Defeat the Curse.’ My viewers love flashy graphics. Then it’ll cut to animation as we explain the tale of the treasure.”

* * *

In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy-three, the pirate Erik Bestard stole some treasure that had been stolen from another pirate who’d stolen it from another pirate who’d stolen it from a king who’d acquired it by being a king. Nobody knew the exact contents of the treasure, but “shitloads of gold” was the best guess. Whilst pursued by other pirates, Erik Bestard and his men had sailed a smaller river off the Amazon until he found the perfect hiding spot for the riches. It involved a treacherous journey through the rainforest, and the individual shares of the treasure kept getting larger and larger as more and more of his men perished.

Upon hiding the treasure where it would never be accidentally found, and then hiding the key to the treasure separately, he killed the rest of his men and returned to his ship. He then drew a map and hid it behind a very unflattering portrait of his grandfather that hung in his quarters. Before he had the opportunity to return for his treasure, Erik Bestard stole a much larger treasure, one that made this treasure look like cheap-ass trinkets acquired at a street fair, and he was not sufficiently motivated to retrieve it. He considered devising an elaborate series of clues that would lead a future treasure hunter to the riches, but had difficulty coming up with sufficiently clever ones.

The map, which was not hidden very well, was found and then passed down through a few generations by a family that thought treasure maps were stupid made-up childish bunk. It was eventually purchased in the twenty-first century of our Lord on eBay by Percival Longshore.

End of lesson.

* * *

“Ah, our boat arrives,” said Percival, as a smaller-than-expected motorboat pulled up to the rickety dock. It didn’t look like it was going to start springing leaks, but I guess I’d expected that a boat we’d sail on the Amazon River to seek a vast treasure would be the kind you could walk around on. This was basically just a speedboat.

The boat’s driver and only occupant stepped out. It was a woman of indeterminate age. She had stringy black hair that hung over her shoulders. There were at least five different scars on her face, the kind that looked like she might have a fondness for getting into knife fights. She had cataracts in her left eye. When she smiled at us, I saw but three teeth.

“Are you the ones I’m taking downriver?” she asked.

“We are,” said Percival. “I am Percival Longshore. With me are Ignacio, Andrew, and Roger. You must be Henrietta.”

Henrietta nodded. “When you’re on my boat, you do as I say. Do not question me, even if my command seems strange or uncomfortable. I make no promises to treat you with respect.” She looked at Roger. “I’m not going to pinch your ass without permission, but I will look at it all I want, and I will talk about it all I want, and if you have a problem with that, you can take a different boat. Are we clear?”

“We’re clear,” I said, since Roger seemed momentarily speechless.

“Load our supplies onto the boat,” Percival told Roger and I. “Make haste. Henrietta, may I interview you on camera before we begin our journey?”

“You can interview me about his fine ass.”

“I’m not even turned around,” said Roger.

Henrietta winked. “I’ve got quite the imagination. You don’t want to peek inside my head, I promise you.”

Percival, Henrietta, and Ignacio walked away from the boat while Roger and I loaded the suitcases and other supplies. We didn’t speak as we did it, but we gave each other frequent looks to indicate that we were both wondering what the hell we’d gotten ourselves into this time.

When we were done, Roger and I recorded an upbeat message for the viewers of Adventures With Percival Longshore, sharing how excited we were to be going on this journey and having the curse broken once and for all. Then we all climbed into the boat and sped off.

The speedboat was far too loud for conversation. I just sat there silently, wondering if giant hippos attacking boats was an Amazon River thing or if it happened elsewhere. I also thought about how the scenery was beautiful and how this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that most people would never get to experience, but mostly I thought about the hippos.

After about half an hour, Henrietta shut off the motor and pointed to the right. “There it is. The Sawchan River.” She looked back at Percival. “Shall I share the nickname?”

“No, that’s not necessary.”

“What’s the nickname?” I asked.

“It’s not important,” said Percival. “The Sawchan River will suffice.”

“Do people call it The River of Death?”

“No.”

“The River of Nightmares?”

“No.”

“Blood River?”

“No.”

“Guts River?”

“No.”

“Splatter River?”

“No.”

“Insanity River? Madness River? Padded Room River?”

“Some call it the River of Descent,” said Percival.

“As in, descent into Hell?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps. And now you’re going to overreact.”

“No, I think it’s a badass name,” I said. “Bring it. Let’s head on down the River of Descent.”

Henrietta turned the motor back on, and we turned onto the much smaller river, which was only about thirty feet across. The scenery on both sides was still lush and beautiful. I thought I saw a toucan but it flew off before it could sell me some Froot Loops.

We sped down the river for about fifteen minutes, until the boat stopped with a sudden jolt that almost sent Ignacio over the side. Henrietta quickly shut off the engine.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Just a shallow area,” said Henrietta. “Nothing to worry about. A couple of you will have to get out and push.”

“Andrew, Roger, you heard the lady,” said Percival.

Chapter Five

“What kinds of things are in the water?” I asked.

“Black caiman,” said Ignacio. “But I don’t see any around right now and you won’t be in the water very long. You’re from Florida, right? A caiman is no different from the alligators you have roaming the streets.”

“I was mostly asking about what’s under the water.”

“Leeches, maybe,” said Ignacio. “You’ll be fine—you’re wearing tight pants. I doubt any piranha will bother you. You hear about how they can skeletonize a human body in seconds, and it’s generally true, but it won’t happen when you’re pushing a boat in shallow water like this. That’s more if you fall out of the boat and we aren’t able to pull you back inside in a timely manner.”

“And you’d probably see an electric eel coming,” said Henrietta.

“There are electric eels in there?” Roger asked.

“We’ll watch for them,” Henrietta promised.

“I can’t imagine having my obituary say I was killed by an electric eel,” said Roger. “That would be crazy. Who dies by electric eel? I honestly thought they were just made up for cartoons.”

“I’m not really concerned about caiman, leeches, piranha, or electric eels,” I said. “I’m more concerned about that parasite that goes into your urethra.”

“That’s not something to worry about,” said Ignacio.

“I’m sorry, but I will never not worry about the urethra parasite.”

“You’ll be fine. I’m not saying you should pee in the water—you definitely shouldn’t—but you’ll be fine. Just get out and push the boat. It’ll take three seconds.”

Roger and I climbed out of the boat and into the water. It didn’t even come up to our knees, which was the whole reason the boat got stuck, but the water was murky and any manner of deadly creatures could be making their way toward me at this very moment. I had a vision of a shark clamping its fearsome jaws down upon my leg, even though sharks aren’t known for spending a lot of time in rivers.

We got behind the boat and pushed.

It wouldn’t budge.

“Push harder,” said Henrietta, not helpfully.

We pushed harder. Roger and I were dumbasses but not weaklings, so the boat was really stuck. How long did it take for leeches to affix themselves to you? If I saw an electric eel approaching, would I be able to scramble back into the boat before it zapped me?

“It’s not moving,” I said.

Percival sighed. “Are you really going to make me send Ignacio out there to help?”

“You didn’t tell us we’d be pushing boats,” I said. “If we’d known that, we would’ve practiced.”

Roger flinched and stepped away from the boat, splashing some water.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing. I don’t think it was anything.”

“Was it an electric eel?”

“It may have been a fish. It didn’t try to skeletonize my leg so it’s fine. C’mon, let’s try again.”

We pushed as hard as we could. The boat shifted just a bit. We didn’t relent in our efforts, and as we shouted various inspirational things to show each other that we could succeed in this endeavor, the boat came loose. I lost my balance and fell forward into the river.

Roger helped me up. I thanked him and spat out some nasty tasting water.

“Uhhhh, you....you’ve kind of got a...” he said, looking at my face with a bit of concern.

There was something on my cheek. I touched it. It was slimy. There’d been nothing slimy on my cheek before I fell into the water.

“I’d better not have a leech on my face,” I said.

“You have a leech on your face,” Roger confirmed.

“Don’t pull it off,” said Ignacio. “Get back in the boat.”

Roger and I climbed back into the boat. I’d gone through much scarier experiences than having a leech from the Sawchan River stuck to my face, so I wasn’t going to panic quite yet. I sat down while Roger, Ignacio, Henrietta, and Percival stared at me. Percival took out his phone and pointed it at himself.

“Andrew Mayhem currently has a rather large leech attached to his face,” he narrated. “Let’s see how this all plays out, shall we?” He turned the phone toward me.

“Can I pull it off?” I asked. “I really want to pull it off.”

Ignacio shook his head. “If you pull it off, the mouth might stay attached to your face. You don’t want that. The easiest thing we can do is just let it finish sucking your blood. Once it’s done feeding it will fall off on its own. Shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.”

“I’m not leaving this leech on for twenty minutes.”

“I know it seems scary because of all the blood-sucking that it’s doing,” said Ignacio. “But it’s really not that big of a deal. People actually pay to have leeches on their face. It should almost be relaxing.”

“It’s not relaxing.”

“Do you have to burn it off?” asked Roger.

“No, no, no,” said Ignacio. “Not unless Andrew wants us to.”

“I don’t want you to,” I said.

“I’m just going to delicately remove it. Hold still. Breathe normally.”

Percival brought his phone right up next to my face for some hot close-up leech removal action.

“And...it’s off,” said Ignacio, holding up the leech. “Look at that, you’re barely bleeding at all. Do you want to keep it as a souvenir?”

“No,” I said.

Ignacio tossed the leech into the river. “All right, crisis averted. Your face is fine, your urethra is fine, and nobody lost an arm to a caiman, so I think we can continue.”

I sat down next to Roger as Henrietta started up the boat’s engine again.

“That could’ve gone way worse,” said Roger. “It could’ve been several leeches, and we could’ve had to burn them off like ticks. You could’ve been covered with leeches. They could’ve been writhing all over you. Compared to that, this wasn’t so bad.”

“Well, sure, and we could have discovered that we’re in an unexplored area where the leeches are six feet long and can eat your head in one bite. It can always be worse.”

“Maybe the leech is as bad as this trip gets.”

“My eight hours in jail were worse than the leech. Have you really forgotten about my jail experience already? We’re just gonna skip right past that?”

“I meant that maybe the leech is as bad as this trip gets, starting from when you got the leech on your face.”

“I bet it’s not. I bet we’ll be nostalgic for the leech. Did it improve my complexion, though?”

“Oh yeah,” said Roger. “Your skin has never looked better. It honestly makes me want to dunk my head in the water right now.”

Henrietta drove the boat a lot more slowly now, to avoid another incident. Before too much longer, I was able to go back to appreciating the beauty of the rainforest. I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to walking around in it, but it was nice seeing it on each side of the river. Natural, unspoiled beauty. No houses. No billboards. If I were the kind of guy who felt the need to get in touch with his primal state, this would be the place to do it.

No cell phone reception. That part was less appealing.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing up ahead.

“What?” asked Percival.

“That. Way up there on the right.”

“Ah. That thing. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“It looks like the opposite of nothing,” I said. “It looks like a body.”

“I assure you that it’s not really...all right, yes, it does indeed look like a body,” said Percival.

As we got closer, it became increasingly clear that there was a dead body tied to a wooden pole, sort of like a scarecrow. It wore no clothing. Though it wasn’t a skeleton, the body had no skin, just red meat.

“Should I just keep going and pretend we didn’t see this?” asked Henrietta. “Or do you want me to stop at the shore so you morbid fuckers can get a closer look?”

A quick vote was made in favor of stopping at the shore, though I’m pretty sure Percival would have overruled all of us had the vote not gone his way. Henrietta pulled over to the riverbank, and everybody but her hopped out of the boat.

The body was bound to the stick with brown rope, once around the waist and once around the neck. Its stomach was hollowed out, with no internal organs in sight. Its hair and eyes were gone. Its mouth was wide open. Enough of it was left to identify it as a male.

“It’s like his skin was flayed off,” I said.

“Or perhaps birds or insects consumed it,” said Percival.

“They wouldn’t just eat the top layer and leave the rest,” I said, as if I had any expertise about the feeding habits of birds and insects upon dead human bodies.

“How long do you think it’s been there?” asked Roger. “I mean, it’s not glistening or anything, but you’d think meat would disappear quickly around here. It should at least be covered with ants.”

“Perhaps it was treated with something,” said Ignacio. “Or contaminated.”

“Whoever left it here didn’t want nature to clean it up too quickly,” I said. “It’s obviously a warning sign to turn back. Hey, I have a great idea! Let’s listen to the warning sign.”

“We don’t know that it’s a warning,” said Percival.

“It’s a skinless corpse tied to a pole on the riverbank. Of course it’s a warning.”

“It doesn’t mean we’re being told to turn around. It’s just as likely that those who gaze upon the body are being warned not to engage in the same behavior for which he was punished. Maybe he’s a murderer or a thief.”

“Maybe he is,” I admitted. “But if we think the message could be ‘Turn back or the same thing will happen to you,’ shouldn’t we go with that interpretation, just to be safe?”

“I’m not going to give up because of one corpse on display. If you’re saying it’s been somehow preserved, it could’ve been there for years. The people who placed it there could be long gone. We’re not tourists; we’re searching for a treasure worth millions of dollars. I never imagined that I’d be traveling with such cowards.”

“I have a wife and five kids,” I said. “You promised that this was going to be a safe trip, but I’m standing here looking at a skinless corpse tied to a pole. This is way outside the scope of our agreement. I’m done.”

“Fine,” said Percival. “We will forge onward without you.”

“Take me back.”

“No. We’d lose too much time. We’re already behind schedule.”

“Take us back,” said Roger.

“I will be more than happy to leave you here by the corpse if you wish,” said Percival. “And if you can somehow magically get cell phone reception, you can call somebody to come pick you up. Or you can hike back. Or swim. I don’t care. But I am not turning back, so you can either come along, or stay here with your new dead friend.”

I wanted to punch him in the face. But I didn’t know how Ignacio or Henrietta would respond to that, and if they were totally on Team Percival because he was the guy signing the checks, Roger and I could end up stranded out here.

“You’re a dick,” I told him.

“You’re not the first to say it, and you won’t be the last.”

“Actually, if we get slaughtered because we ignored the very blatant warning, I will be the last. You’re a piece of crap. Why don’t we record a new video right now so I can share my honest opinion of you with your viewers?”

“You’ll get over it,” said Percival. “The money will make it easy to forgive.”

“And having my skin scraped off will make it more difficult.”

“Enough talk. We need to resume our journey. Are you getting on the boat, or staying here?”

I glared at him and walked toward the boat. Everybody climbed back on board, and Henrietta turned on the motor again. I wanted to slam myself down to show just how angry I was, but I didn’t want to injure myself, so I sat down normally but kept a scowl on my face.

Of course we were in mortal danger! Of course! Why would I have ever thought otherwise? Why would I have believed for one second that this ridiculous trip to the Amazon River might not be fraught with frickin’ peril? It was never going to happen any other way.

I couldn’t blame Roger. I’d dragged him into plenty of nightmarish situations. This was all on Percival and my own inability to recognize that guys with my track record did not fly down to South America for a treasure hunt, no matter how vast the potential reward.

When we went around the river bend, there was another skinless body on a pole.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, as Henrietta stopped the engine and just let the current carry us forward.

“I’m not going to lie and say this isn’t troubling,” Percival admitted. “But for the amount of treasure that awaits us, I’m willing to feel uneasy.”

“What if it’s cannibals?” Roger asked.

“Don’t be racist,” Percival told him.

“How is that racist?”

“You’re assuming that South American natives living in the rainforest are uncivilized cannibals. It’s a racist, xenophobic perspective.”

“We’ve sailed past two skinned corpses!”

“Were there any bites taken out of them?”

“I didn’t check the remaining flesh for teeth marks,” said Roger. “But when you see skinned corpses tied to poles on the side of the river, I don’t think cannibalism is such a stretch. It’s not racist. It would be racist if we went into a South American restaurant and asked if they served human flesh. It’s racist to look at a Chinese person and assume that they eat dogs, but if you watch somebody eat a dog, it’s no longer racist to call them a dog-eater. Maybe I shouldn’t have assumed they were cannibals. I take it back. But they’re clearly anti-social as hell!”

“Fair enough,” said Percival.

“Can we turn around now?” I asked.

“Not a chance. If one skinned body won’t scare me away, a second one isn’t going to do it, either. I maintain that we’re in absolutely no danger. And we have plenty of weapons.”

“Then let’s take out those weapons and pass them around,” I said. “I’ll take the grenade launcher if you’ve got one.”

Percival shook his head. “I’m not going to hand guns out to everybody on the boat. That would go terribly awry. Only Ignacio will be armed.”

I looked over at Ignacio. “Do you have a joke about that?”

“I do, but everybody is tense right now so I’ll save it for later.” He crouched down, unzipped a long duffel bag, and took out a rifle. “I’m a good shot,” he assured us.

“What kinds of things have you shot?” I asked.

“Targets, cans...in one of the videos I shot into the air to scare off a lion.”

“Did you hit the air?”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You’re as safe here as you are on a roller coaster, and you’re safer on a roller coaster than you are in your own home. That sounds like a made-up fact but it’s true. Roller coasters are very safe.”

“Start the engine again,” Percival told Henrietta. “If we spend all day gaping at skinned bodies we’ll never make it to our destination.”

Henrietta started the engine and we sped past Skinned Body #2.

Around the next curve, there was another pole. This one had a very large burlap sack hanging from it.

“I bet it’s full of heads,” I said.

“It’s not full of heads,” said Percival.

“The bulges do kind of make it look like it could be full of heads,” said Henrietta.

“Pull over to the shore,” said Percival. “We’ll see what’s inside. I am very sure that the sack is not full of heads.”

Chapter Six

Henrietta drove the boat over to the shore. Percival, Ignacio, Roger, and I got out. Ignacio brought his rifle, holding it like somebody who really hoped he didn’t have to use it. We cautiously walked about a hundred feet over to the burlap sack.

“How many heads do you think could be in there?” Roger asked.

“At least a dozen,” I said.

“That’s a lot of heads.”

“Sure is.”

“You’re not helping anything,” said Percival. “Ignacio, cut the bag open.”

“Do you want to record it?”

“Oh, yes, yes.” Percival took out his phone. The fact that Percival was nervous enough to forget that he was supposed to be making videos of our journey was more than a little disconcerting. He held up the phone, adjusted his hair with his free hand, touched the screen, and spoke. “Hello. Percival Longshore here. We’ve made an interesting discovery on our voyage along the river.” He turned the phone toward the sack. “Here is a burlap sack on a wooden pole, placed here with no explanation. What could be inside?”

“It’s full of heads,” said Roger, off-camera.

“Ignacio has taken out a knife, and he will use that knife to slice open the side of the sack so that we may discover its contents. There’s a consensus amongst my comrades that it’s filled to the top with heads, but I’m confident that it will be something much less upsetting. Ignacio, please start cutting.”

Ignacio handed me the rifle. He waved to the people at home, then stuck the blade into the top of the sack and sliced all the way down to the bottom. He pulled the sack open, gasped, and took a huge step away from it.

“Yep, it’s heads,” he announced.

A severed human head fell out of the sack and onto the sand. Another followed, and then head after head spilled out of the sack, until there was a pile of about ten or eleven of them.

The heads still had their skin, yellow and tight but not quite mummified. They also had their hair, though it was dry and scraggly. Their facial expressions were not those of people who had died peacefully.

I said “Shit!” Roger said “Whoa!” Ignacio said “Jesus!” Percival just yelped. Henrietta was still back in the boat but I assume she also had a verbal reaction.

Percival touched the screen of his phone and shoved it back into his pocket. “Okay, I apologize, you were all right, this is fucked up. Expedition cancelled. Let’s go.”

“Seriously?” asked Ignacio. “I’m scared, too, but what makes this so much worse?”

“I have a thing about severed heads, okay? It freaks me out! When somebody’s head gets cut off in a movie I have to turn it off!”

“So you’re not a fan of Highlander?” Roger asked.

“We all said it was probably full of heads,” I told him.

“I didn’t believe you!” said Percival. I noticed that his British accent was completely gone. “We’re done. I thank you all for your service but we’re not going any further. Everybody back in the boat. Now!” He turned and walked away from the pile of heads. At least they’d landed on dirt and weren’t rolling anywhere. I wasn’t sure if rolling heads would be amusing or more disturbing.

“You heard our fearful leader,” I said. “Let’s go.” It was possible that at some point in the future I’d regret turning back before we could get rich, but right now all I wanted to do was go back home to my family.

Ignacio winced.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“A bug stung me on the back.”

“Turn around.”

Ignacio turned around. A small dart protruded from between his shoulder blades.

I plucked it out. It was just a small, sharp piece of wood.

A dart sailed past my face.

“Run!” I shouted.

A dart got me in the right arm. My first horrified thought was “What if it’s poisoned?” then I decided I could worry about that later. The boat wasn’t far.

Roger cried out. Then he cried out again. He lost his balance and fell face-first onto the ground. Two darts were stuck in the back of his right leg.

“Go!” Percival screamed, presumably at Henrietta. “Go now!”

The boat’s engine roared to life.

As Roger tried to get up, I quickly glanced at the edge of the rainforest for a sign of our attackers. I saw a dart come flying at me but not who shot it. It got me right in the center of the chest and bounced off. A couple of inches to the side and it would’ve gone right into my heart.

Roger got up. A third dart struck his leg and he fell again.

Ignacio grabbed his rifle from me and fired several shots at our unseen enemy. I supposed I should have taken the initiative to do that myself. There were no cries of pain and I didn’t hear any bodies falling, so I assumed that all of his shots missed.

Ignacio and I each grabbed one of Roger’s arms and pulled him to his feet.

We turned to face the boat. Percival and Henrietta were screaming at each other. We couldn’t hear what they were saying over the motor, but the gist seemed to be that Percival was trying to get her to speed off and Henrietta was saying they needed to wait for us.

He punched her.

I’d never been a huge fan of Percival Longshore, but now I hated that son of a bitch.

Ignacio winced as another dart got him in the back.

A dart got me in the leg.

Henrietta, visibly unhappy about being punched, attacked Percival and the two of them began to struggle. It looked like Henrietta was winning, which didn’t surprise me. I sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to fight her.

The frequency of darts suddenly increased. My hope that it was just one person shooting them was dashed—there were at least four or five shooters. Roger, Ignacio, and I kept letting out grunts of pain as various darts hit us.

Now I fell, followed by Ignacio. My legs began to twitch. The darts did indeed seem to be tainted with something.

Percival flung Henrietta across the boat. She struck the side and almost went over but regained her balance, at least until Percival shoved her completely out of the boat. She fell into the shallow water. Percival rushed over to the controls. He applied the gas just as Henrietta grabbed the side of the boat.

He was actually going to leave us.

Henrietta tried to climb inside the boat and almost succeeded, but he did a quick swerve and she lost her grip. Percival sped off, heading back the way we’d come, leaving Henrietta splashing around in the middle of the river.

I got up. The many places where I’d been hit with darts were tingling, but I could still move and I wasn’t frothing at the mouth. Henrietta was swimming to the other side of the river.

Ignacio also got up. It seemed like our smartest move would be to join Henrietta in trying to swim across the river, though the way my arms and legs felt I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t simply get swept away in the current.

Somebody emerged from the rainforest.

It was a man covered almost entirely in white paint. He held a long wooden tube that he’d apparently been using to blow darts at us.

Another man stepped out of the rainforest after him.

And then another, from a different spot. Then another, and another, until seven men had emerged, all of them painted white and wearing only loincloths. Five of them had the tubes, while two others had machetes.

Ignacio pointed his rifle at the first one who’d emerged. “Stay back!”

The first man shouted something at him.

“Stay back or I’ll shoot!” Ignacio said. “I mean it!”

The men walked forward, moving cautiously.

“Are you trying to get shot?” Ignacio shouted at them. “Don’t come any closer!”

Roger and I each took a step backwards. Percival could’ve at least had the courtesy to throw some weapons onto shore before he abandoned us.

“I don’t think they speak English,” Ignacio said to us. “So I can tell you that I only have one or two shots left. I have to decide if shooting one of them would scare the rest off, or if it will make them mad. Any thoughts?”

“Do they know what guns are?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know?”

“You’re the world traveler. I thought you were familiar with this tribe or something. They’ve got machetes, and they probably didn’t make those themselves.” I was not familiar with the process of forging a machete blade, but it seemed like it would be difficult if you were completely isolated from the rest of humanity. “And they’ve had enough contact with other humans to fill a bag with heads. So I’m gonna say that yes, they know what guns are.”

“All I know is that a bunch of guys painted white are creeping toward us,” said Ignacio. “If I have to kill one of them, I don’t want you getting all bent out of shape. I’d like all three of us to be on board with that decision.”

“I’m going to say, don’t kill them,” I said.

Ignacio nodded. “Then what should we do?”

“Shoot in the air, maybe?”

“That wastes a shot.”

“But it could scare them without enraging them,” I said.

“Good point. Roger?”

“Huh?” said Roger.

“Do you have an opinion?”

“I guess I wasn’t listening. I’m not feeling very good. I think there was something in those darts.”

“All right, Roger’s abstaining,” I said. The men were still slowly moving toward us, and though I wished it was a “They’re just as scared of us as we are of them” scenario, I was definitely more scared of them than they appeared to be of us. They looked more angry than frightened, while the primary thought racing through my mind was, “Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!”

Ignacio pointed the rifle into the air and squeezed the trigger.

A couple of the men flinched, but they didn’t flee or shout in their native language about the display of sorcery. The other five men, including both of the ones with machetes, did not seem the slightest bit intimidated.

“Should we make a run for it?” I asked.

“River or forest?”

“River. I’m pretty sure they’ll catch us in the forest.”

“I can’t swim,” said Roger.

“Yes, you can.”

“I mean, I can’t swim now. My arms and legs feel like they’re on fire. I’ll just drown. You guys can go. I may have to surrender.”

“Nobody’s surrendering,” said Ignacio.

Several more men stepped out of the woods. These men were holding bows and arrows, with the arrows fully notched, pulled back, and ready to fire.

“Do you think they just got here?” I asked. “Or were they waiting for a dramatic moment to make their appearance?”

Ignacio dropped the rifle onto the ground and put his hands in the air. “I don’t think I can swim, either.”

Roger also put his hands in the air.

I didn’t want to give up. But when you’re up against two men with machetes, five men with blow darts, and six men with bows and arrows, and you don’t speak their language, and you assume they know the surrounding area far better than you, there aren’t a whole lot of options at your disposal.

I glanced back at the river. No sign of Henrietta. Had she made it to safety, or was her dead leech-covered body floating downstream?

I returned my attention to the men in white paint. Then, accepting that I was totally screwed, I put my hands in the air.

One of the men with the machetes shouted something, which I hoped didn’t translate to “Kill them all!”

The men quickly moved forward and surrounded us. They shoved us down onto our knees, and suddenly I had a machete in my face and arrows pointing directly at each side of my skull. Roger and Ignacio were in similar predicaments.

I had no idea what to say. I wasn’t sure how to communicate the message of “I’m sorry we spilled your heads all over,” so I remained silent.

I was terrified, but I wasn’t consumed by thoughts about how I would never see Helen, Theresa, Kyle, Brianna, Cecilia, and Rose again. If these men wanted to kill us, it would’ve been easier to just fill our bodies with arrows from a distance instead of getting right up close. They had other plans for us.

Did those plans involve skinning us alive? Perhaps.

For now I’d try to remain optimistic, even if I was being delusional.

* * *

They led us through a narrow, uneven trail. Ahead of me, Roger fell, and the men shouted at him until he got back up and resumed stumbling along. The places the darts had hit me felt like they were on fire.

I’d expected to spend much of my first hike through the South American rainforest worrying about deadly animals, so in a way it worked out for the best that my only concern was not getting shot in the head with an arrow.

We weren’t making good time, so I’m not sure how far we walked before we arrived in a clearing, though a clearing that was completely covered by the rainforest canopy. There were a few small huts, and one larger one. It seemed too small to call it an actual village, though I admittedly didn’t know when something transitioned from “huts in a clearing” to “village.”

The men shoved us to the ground.

One of them whistled.

We waited.

A woman emerged from the large hut, wearing a black robe with gold trim. She was dark-skinned and quite beautiful, though I was not at the moment focusing on her hotness. She slowly and gracefully walked over to us.

She looked at me, then at Roger, then at Ignacio, making eye contact with each of us.

She said something to Ignacio in Spanish. He nodded and said something back. I recognized the word “Ingles.”

Then she let out an exasperated sigh. “All right,” she said, in perfect English. “Which of you should we kill and eat first?”

Chapter Seven

I raised my hand. “I’d like to suggest that you kill and eat none of us.”

The woman looked mildly amused. “Is that so?”

“Yes, ma’am. If you’d let us go, we’d leave right away without causing you any more inconvenience, and we’d let you get on with the rest of your day.”

“I’m told you no longer have a boat.”

“That’s true. That’s very true. But that’s not your problem.”

“There’s no phone reception out here. You’d have to walk. You’d die.”

“Yes, we probably would, but again, that’s not your fault. We’re not here to bother anyone.”

“But you did bother us,” said the woman. “Why do you think we live under the rainforest canopy? Because we don’t want people to know we’re here! We don’t want visitors. Did you or did you not pass two skinned bodies on display on the side of the river?”

“We did,” I said.

“Why do you think they were there? Was it trying to send a welcoming message? Was it suggesting that we were encouraging you to keep sailing down the river? Or was it trying to say that we skin people and tie them to poles? Maybe the message of the first one didn’t quite sink in, but when you saw a second skinned body on a pole, why would you keep going? How was that the smart thing to do? Who sees a skinned body tied to a pole and decides that they want to keep going? How does that make any sense?”

“Not to throw anybody under the bus,” I said, “but I wanted to leave, and Roger here wanted to leave, and Ignacio here wanted to leave. Our boss is the one who forced us to continue. I assure you, the first skinned body was more than enough for me.”

“And even our boss got the message after we found the bag of heads,” said Ignacio. “If your men had taken thirty seconds longer to start shooting at us we would’ve been back on the boat and on our way to civilization. We would’ve been completely out of your hair.”

“So it’s your boss’s fault?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very much so.”

“Too bad he’s not here,” said the woman. “You invaded our territory despite the warnings, and we’re not going to let you go to tell others about us, so we’re going to kill and eat the three of you.”

“Wait,” said Roger. “You said you were only going to eat one of us.”

“No, I wondered which of you to eat first.”

“Oh. Damn.”

“I’m sorry. I thought that was clear. Just like our warnings.”

“The warnings were clear,” said Roger. “I just missed that all three of us were getting eaten. You know, earlier today we were talking about how it’s racist to assume that people living out here were cannibals.”

“It is,” the woman informed him.

“But you’re cannibals.”

“It’s racist to assume that we’re cannibals just because we live in the rainforest. It’s not racist for us to be cannibals.”

“But it would be confirming our unintentionally racist view,” said Roger. “If we think you might be cannibals, and you turn out to be cannibals, we can say we were right all along.”

“We’re not going to spare your lives just to teach you a lesson about not judging other cultures,” said the woman. “Would we rather eat a cow than a human? Yes. Are there any cows out here? No. We don’t go out in search of human flesh, but when it comes to visit, we’re not going to squander it.”

“We’re contaminated,” I said. “We’ve all brought Caucasian diseases from the north. I mean, not Ignacio, but he’s brought his own diseases. We’re out here searching for a root that can cure us.” I considered a light cough but decided that would be overselling it.

“You will be thoroughly cooked before you are eaten,” said the woman. “Even if you aren’t lying, which you are, the bacteria will be killed. Soon we feast!”

I raised my hand again. I’m not sure why I suddenly felt like I was back in school. “May I ask a question?”

The woman nodded. “If it’s a smart one, yes.”

“Where’d you learn to speak such perfect English?”

“Cleveland.”

“How’d you end up here?”

“I’m not going to share my entire life story while you try to figure out a way to escape.”

“Just the highlights, then?”

“I was born here. Moved to Cleveland. Had a bad experience in Cleveland. Moved back here. Congratulations. That’s the last piece of knowledge you’ll acquire before you end up in my belly.”

She said something to the other men. One of them jabbed me in the back with the tip of his arrow, encouraging me to walk forward. Roger, Ignacio and I were led to one of the huts.

“Go inside,” she said. “We must prepare a fire. I have not yet decided which of you will be eaten, but if one of you leaves the hut, my choice will be made.”

The three of us ducked under the low entrance and went into the hut. It was empty except for a bed made out of fronds on the ground. We sat down, cramped in the tiny space. They hadn’t taken our phones away, but a quick check showed that there was no service, of course, so they wouldn’t be good for anything but passing the time with games.

“What if all three of us made a run for it?” I asked.

“They’d fill our legs with arrows, then drag us to the fire,” said Ignacio.

“I agree with Ignacio,” said Roger. “Arrow-filled legs and a trip to the fire sounds reasonable.”

“Maybe Henrietta is on her way to rescue us,” I said.

“She barely knows us,” said Ignacio. “Why would she sneak into a village of cannibal natives to rescue three fools like us? If I’d escaped like she did, I’d leave you to die. No offense.”

“No offense taken.”

“And just so there are no surprises, I’ll be pushing for one of you two to be eaten first. I assume you’ll do the same to me. That’s fine. It’s natural that our survival instincts will kick in.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But maybe we could be trying to figure out a way out of this instead of making plans for how we’ll stab each other in the back.”

“I won’t be stabbing you in the back,” said Ignacio. “I’m saying right to your face that I will be trying to make a strong case for why one of you should be eaten before me. I’m being completely upfront about it.”

“What about a hostage?” I asked. “One of them comes to collect us, and the three of us pounce. If they live together in the rainforest like this, they have to be a tight-knit community, right? She’s not necessarily a sociopath who’ll let her followers die.”

“I’m cool with trying to catch a hostage,” said Roger.

Ignacio nodded. “We might as well try.”

“Any other ideas?” I asked. “Does anybody have a match or a lighter? We could set fire to the hut and try to escape during the chaos.”

“None on me,” said Ignacio. “There are matches galore in a bag on the boat.”

“I don’t have any,” said Roger. “I wish I’d taken up smoking instead of alcoholism.”

“Hear me out on this one,” I said. “What about pretending to be a god? We don’t know what their religious beliefs are. I guess it could be racist again to think that they’re so primitive that we could fool them into thinking that one of us is a deity, especially when the leader is from Cleveland, but maybe that’s the way out of this mess. Do we know for sure if they’ve ever seen a cell phone? Maybe they’d think Candy Crush was proof of our magic. I’m obviously just spitballing here but it’s worth a shot, right?”

“Perhaps we should just sit here silently and make peace with our imminent death,” said Ignacio.

“Screw that,” I said. “What’s that one poem about getting mad at the light?”

“‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas?” asked Ignacio.

“Yes! That one. With the whole rage thing.”

“‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.’“

“Right,” I said. “That’s me. If I sat silently and made peace, I’d have died about twenty life-threatening situations ago. I’m getting out of this mess. What do we have that we could bribe them with?”

“An arm?” asked Roger.

“Shut up,” I told him. “Does anybody have gold fillings in their teeth?”

“They could just take them out after—” Ignacio began.

“I know, I know, I caught the logic lapse right after I said it. What if we told them about the treasure? Maybe we’d offer to leave one of us as collateral while the other two went out to get it. How well do you remember the map?”

“Not at all,” said Ignacio. “He never really let me look at it.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, fine, so we’ll focus on the hostage. When somebody comes in, the three of us have to make a pact not to hesitate, even if it means we get jabbed with something. We just pounce. We should make sure that one of us does all of the talking so we don’t contradict each other. It definitely shouldn’t be Roger, but I’ll do it if you don’t want to.”

We heard the woman speak from outside: “Come out of the hut, all three of you!”

I didn’t need to say “Shit” again. It was understood.

“Should we refuse to come out?” I asked.

“That depends,” said Ignacio. “Do you think it’s more likely that they’ll send somebody in blindly to let us tackle them, or that they’ll just start shooting those tainted darts at us until we can’t stand up anymore and then drag us out of here to our deaths?”

“Probably the latter,” I admitted.

“Let’s just do what they say.”

Roger, Ignacio, and I stepped out of the hut. I could see smoke, though the fire itself was blocked by one of the huts. The woman stood there, surrounded by the villagers.

“Come with me,” she said.

The two other potential meals and I were led through the village. I didn’t see any women or children. Were they hiding away, or did this lady simply have one big harem to call her own? Kudos to her if it was the latter.

We reached the fire, which looked like it would be perfect for burning witches. A very large roasting spit was in front of it, perfect for rotisserie human. About fifty people—all men, all painted white—were gathered in the area.

“One of you will die,” said the woman. “Two of you will watch.”

I like to think of myself as a pretty selfless guy, but there was a very definite ranking preference in my mind for who would die and who would watch.

“I have made my selection,” she said.

Then she just stood there.

I honestly wouldn’t have thought that the leader of a village of cannibals would feel any real reason to draw out the dramatic suspense. Was she practicing to be a reality show host?

She pointed at Ignacio. “You are the tallest, the most fit, and the most attractive. You will be our first meal.”

I was more relieved than insulted. But now I was horrified, because though I barely knew Ignacio, I didn’t want to see him get spit-roasted and cooked over an open flame. Would they be merciful enough to kill him first, or would the spit-roasting happen before anybody whacked him in the skull with a hammer?

Ignacio tensed up and looked like he was trying to decide if he should make a break for it or not. I probably would have if I were him, even though there were many, many notched arrows pointed at him and he wouldn’t make it more than a few steps.

“Skewer him!” the woman shouted. “Soon we shall feast!”

Two of the men grabbed Ignacio by the arms and pulled him over to the fire.

What could we do? Apart from volunteering to die in his place, which was not on my list of options, how could we save his life? In a rapid-fire fashion, I kept thinking of plans and rejecting them as doomed to failure. The best I could come up with was “Let Henrietta save us,” which wasn’t a high quality plan.

Behind us, somebody shouted.

Everybody turned to look.

Two more white-painted, loincloth-wearing men entered the village. And in front of them, bleeding from the scalp and looking terrified, was Percival Longshore.

They led him over to where the woman stood. She smiled as the men spoke to her.

She looked over at Ignacio. “Is this your boss?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, you have been briefly spared. Return to your friends.”

Ignacio hurried back over to stand by us. He was trembling and covered in perspiration.

“I’m told this is all your fault,” said the woman to Percival.

Percival frantically shook his head. “No! Not at all!”

“You did not force them to continue down the river despite the warnings?”

“No! I begged them to turn back! They were blinded by greed!”

“You don’t have a trustworthy demeanor. It’s time for you to become our food.”

She gestured. Percival yanked his arms away from his captors and tried to make a run for it. The villagers launched a volley of arrows at him, all of them striking him in the legs. So we now knew that they were very good shots.

Without pulling out the arrows, a couple of men dragged a screaming Percival over to the spit-roast.

As it became horrifyingly clear what was going to happen next, I turned my head away.

Percival sobbed and begged for mercy. Yes, he was a cowardly piece of crap who’d abandoned us, and he was by far my top choice for “gets eaten first,” but it was still upsetting to hear.

I’ve been around some really awful things, but I have never heard a shriek like the one Percival let out. He continued shrieking, though the volume diminished after that first one, and soon it became muffled.

One of the villagers seemed to notice that I wasn’t watching and smacked me on the side of the head. I looked back to see a nude Percival, skewered, next to the fire, being slowly rotated to ensure even cooking. He was still making quite a bit of noise.

I wish I could say that I didn’t see a couple of the villagers licking their lips.

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when he died. His sounds of agony became increasingly more difficult to hear, and eventually he was silent, but I can’t say for certain when his suffering ended.

They continued to cook him. As the process went on, I would’ve expected at least one of the villagers to get bored and find something else to do besides watch this, especially once he stopped showing any signs of life, but all of them stood there, completely rapt.

Finally, one of the men turning the handle made a dramatic proclamation to the others.

“I think he’s saying that he’s done,” Ignacio said, though I really didn’t need the translation.

A villager walked over to Percival’s body with a very large knife. He cut out a section of Percival’s upper arm, which quite honestly didn’t look done enough to me, and presented it to the woman. She took a large bite, nodded her approval, and shouted something to the rest of the villagers.

Except for the ones guarding us, all of the villagers hurried over to the body. It wasn’t quite pandemonium, but they certainly weren’t lining up in an orderly fashion. They tore out chunks of flesh with their fingers, devouring it as they stepped out of the way.

Everybody was taking reasonable portions, so I hoped they’d all return for seconds and finish up all of the meat instead of offering some to those of us who were not cannibals.

They returned for seconds. And when only scraps of meat remained, they broke his skeleton apart and gnawed on the bones. They smashed his skull upon a large rock and feasted upon his brains.

The woman walked back over to us and smiled. “Your boss was very tasty.”

Roger, Ignacio, and I said nothing.

“Why do you look so scared?” the woman asked me. She gestured to my missing pinkies. “You’ve already had two fingers eaten, right?”

She laughed as a few of her men forced us to our feet and led us back to the small hut.

Chapter Eight

We couldn’t understand what the men said to us as we entered the hut, but from the tone and context it seemed to be, “If you come out of here, we’ll kill you.” Of course, we were going to be killed anyway, in a truly ghastly manner, but it made sense that we’d want to postpone sharing Percival’s fate for as long as possible.

“He didn’t deserve that,” Ignacio whispered. “This is all his fault and he left us to die, so he deserved something, but not that. Not that.”

“Since you’re next on the list,” I told Ignacio, “I’ll let you take the lead in how we deal with this. Do you want to sit here and wait to become breakfast, or should we try to be proactive?”

“Let’s wait for them to fall asleep. If the village sleeps except for our guards, maybe we can take them by surprise, overpower them, and escape. If one or two of us die in the attempt, it’s still better than our current situation.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“I agree, too,” said Roger. “I didn’t get over Samantha just to be devoured by cannibals.”

“You’re over Samantha?”

“Yeah. It happened pretty much while I was watching Percival die. Puts things into perspective, you know?”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Thanks.”

“We still have several hours before nightfall,” said Ignacio. “Maybe naps are in order. If we can all get in some sleep before our escape attempt, we’ll be better off.”

“There’s not a chance in hell that I could fall asleep right now,” I said.

“Me either,” said Roger.

“That’s reasonable,” said Ignacio. “Wake me up immediately if anything noteworthy happens.” He stretched out on the ground, closed his eyes, and was softly snoring within moments.

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Roger told me. “I thought it would go a lot differently. I’m not sure why I thought that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We were both dumb enough to think there might not be gore this time.”

“I have to admit, of all the ways we could’ve died, I didn’t think ‘consumed by cannibals in a South American rainforest’ would be on the list.”

“Oh, I did. But they haven’t eaten us yet.”

“Nope. And I know it’s not a pleasant topic of conversation, but should we vow to kill each other before it gets to the point of being skewered on the spit-roast? Because I really don’t want that to happen to me. Even if you have to pick up a rock and bash me to death with it, I’ll take that over the spit-roast. I cannot describe just how much I don’t want to go onto the spit-roast.”

“I’ll make every possible effort to kill you before that happens,” I promised.

“Do you want me to do the same for you?”

“No. I don’t want the irony of you killing me to spare me the agony, and then having somebody show up to rescue us right before the skewer would’ve gone in.”

“I guess that makes sense. I’ll take the risk, though.”

Ignacio opened his eyes. “I too would like to be killed before it gets to the skewering stage, even if it means possible irony later.”

“Noted,” I said.

“And now I’d appreciate it if you would stop having this macabre conversation so I can sleep.”

“Sure. Sorry about that.”

We waited. As we did, I wondered why we were so optimistic as to assume that the next victim wouldn’t be claimed until the next day. If Percival was a late lunch, maybe one of us would be a late dinner, or a midnight snack.

There really wasn’t anything to do to pass the time, so I played mental word association games with myself. They were less entertaining than you might think.

A couple of hours after we’d been forced into the hut, one of the men slid two large wooden bowls inside. One was filled with water. The other had a brownish grey gruel. We waited for more bowls to arrive, but they didn’t, so apparently we were meant to share.

We shared the water. Ignacio dipped his finger into the gruel, tasted it, and declared it “technically edible.” I didn’t want any, but he insisted that all three of us needed to keep our strength up. I’m not going to offer a full recap of its culinary pros and cons, but overall, it wasn’t very good.

We continued waiting.

The sun set.

The village was quiet.

“We’ll wait for one hour after it gets completely dark,” Ignacio whispered. “No more talking until then. Let them think we’ve gone to sleep and accepted our fate.”

We sat silently. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of not freaking out, considering the circumstances. I’d see Helen and the kids again, I was sure of it, and then I’d never leave the freaking house again, for anything, ever.

There was a loud thump outside, then a grunt. This was followed by another thump and another grunt.

Henrietta ducked into the hut, holding a rifle. She pressed her index finger to her lips.

The four of us crept out of the hut. There were a couple of fires going, which gave just enough light for me to see the pair of unconscious men just outside. We slowly followed Henrietta, walking on ground that seemed to crunch like we were stomping on potato chips.

The hut was in the middle of the village, but it wasn’t a very big village, so there was a very good chance that we’d be able to—

Somebody let out a piercing scream.

“Run!” Henrietta shouted. You might think this was an unnecessary command, but I can’t promise that I wouldn’t have just stood there in slack-jawed shock. We ran.

We suddenly heard lots of activity around us. These villagers weren’t heavy sleepers.

Ignacio winced in pain.

A dart struck me in the arm but bounced off.

We followed Henrietta around one of the larger huts, and then she stopped. The leader, flanked by a few of her men, stood in our way. I spun around, thinking that a change of direction was a good idea, and saw more villagers behind us. We were surrounded. Of course.

Henrietta raised the rifle and shot the woman in the forehead.

As her body dropped to the ground, the men around her gaped in horror.

For a split second, I had this fantasy that the men would thank us for freeing them from her wicked dictatorship and vow to worship Henrietta as their new leader, but as their expressions exchanged to anger it became immediately clear that this was not going to happen.

“Get out of our way!” Henrietta shouted, waving the rifle. “Get the hell out of our way!”

The men stepped out of the way. We ran past them.

Now we ran at a full sprint, trying to reach the “safety” of the trail where it would be more difficult for them to shoot us with arrows and darts. It was going to be scary as hell running through the rainforest in the darkness, though not as scary as being cooked and eaten. We couldn’t use the flashlight functions on our cell phones if we hoped to escape from our pursuers.

None of us tripped, which was pretty remarkable.

We made it to the trail.

Now the big question was, did we continue running as fast as we can, in almost total darkness on uneven ground, virtually guaranteeing that one of us would take a nasty fall, possibly breaking one or more bones, or did we slow down and take a more cautious approach?

Henrietta, who was in the lead, slowed down. We were still running, but no longer at a sprint.

“Are they following us?” she asked.

Roger, who was in the rear, said, “Yeah.”

But they probably couldn’t shoot darts or arrows at us while they were running, and the trail was anything but a straight line, so while we were at a disadvantage for not knowing the area, they most likely couldn’t puncture us with their long-distance weapons. I’m not saying that I was feeling comfy and secure, but it seemed fairly likely that we’d survive for another minute at least.

We kept running.

And running.

And running.

I was starting to get a little worried, because we should’ve reached the river by now. We were still on a trail, but not necessarily the right one. Were we kind of going in the right direction, or were we getting more and more lost?

Henrietta seemed to realize this the same time I did. “I’m going to stop running now,” she announced. “Don’t crash into me.”

We all stopped.

“As far as I can tell, they’re not following us anymore,” said Roger.

“We must’ve gone off the right path,” said Henrietta. “They don’t want to get lost out here at night any more than we do. Let’s just catch our breath and then we’ll figure out a plan. Don’t lean against anything, though. Any branch could be a snake.”

“Thanks for saving us,” I said.

“Sorry it took so long. There wasn’t really anything I could do until it got dark.”

“That’s okay.”

“So...the woman I shot in the head. She was super-evil, right?”

“They killed and ate Percival, so I’m going to say yes. I mean, even if you account for cultural differences, she was pretty sadistic about it.”

“I heard his screams,” said Henrietta.

“It smelled awful,” said Ignacio. “That would have been my fear—that the scent of human flesh being cooked was appetizing. I was relieved that it wasn’t.”

I couldn’t see him very well, but I stared at him in the darkness.

“Are you back to being a stand-up comedian?” I asked.

“You weren’t concerned about that?”

“No. Not at all. I have literally spent zero percent of my life worrying that somebody getting cooked would make my mouth water. That’s seriously what you were thinking about while it was happening?”

“To be fair,” said Ignacio, “I was trying to distract myself from the horrors we were witnessing. Worrying about being enticed by the aroma of human flesh is what kept me from going insane. If it weren’t for that, right now I’d be screaming and tearing out my hair.”

“Let’s change the subject,” I said. “I’m going to admit that I have no idea how we get back to the river. Does anybody else?”

“Not a clue,” said Roger.

“I thought I did,” said Henrietta. “The path must’ve divided at some point and we took the wrong way. I’m worried that if we keep moving we’ll just get more and more lost. Normally I’d be happy to get lost with three young, virile men, and maybe when we know we’re safe we’ll figure out a way to celebrate, but right now I think we should avoid getting lost.”

“I agree,” I said. “If we wait here until daylight, at least we know we aren’t too far from the river. If we keep going in the dark, or even using the light from our phones, we might get so far off-course that we’ll never find our way out.”

“On my boat, you do as I say. But we’re not on the boat, so I guess it’s a democracy. Does anybody object to waiting here until morning?” Henrietta asked.

Nobody did.

“We’ll sleep in shifts,” said Ignacio.

“Yeah, right,” said Roger. “I couldn’t sleep in the hut, and I’m not going to be able to sleep out here with tarantulas crawling all over me.”

“Whoever is keeping watch will be responsible for brushing the spiders off the others,” said Ignacio.

“What if I yawn and a spider scurries down my throat?” I asked. “How fast are your reflexes? Will you even see it?”

“I don’t want to sleep amongst the spiders either,” said Ignacio. “But we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Henrietta, have you seen the boat since Percival tried to flee in it?”

“No. I looked but couldn’t find it. Pisses me off.”

“So though there’s a chance that it’s somewhere on shore, they might have let it float up the river, or they may have destroyed it. We have to assume that tomorrow will not involve strolling to the river, finding the boat undamaged, and speeding back to civilization. It may be an extremely challenging day. It’s very much in everybody’s best interest to try to get some sleep.”

“I’ve had an exhausting day,” said Henrietta. “I get that you all had a pretty shitty day, but you may be thinking that all I did was swim back across the river and wait outside the village until nightfall, and that wasn’t it at all. I went through all kinds of misery. My day sucked. I would be very happy to take the first sleep shift.”

“Done,” said Ignacio. “We should have two people sleeping and two keeping watch. Roger? Do you have a preference?”

“I’ll take the first watch shift. Even with somebody on tarantula duty, I won’t be able to sleep.”

“I guess I’ll try to get some rest,” I said. With our luck (which, as a reminder, was typically quite bad) it was safe enough to assume that tomorrow would involve trying to get back to civilization without a boat, so Ignacio was right, we needed some sleep.

Henrietta and I lay on the ground. An army of tarantulas did not immediately scurry over my face, so that was a promising sign. I figured that there was no way in hell I’d actually be able to lose consciousness under these circumstances, but after a few minutes I started to forget where I was, and I drifted off into a peaceful slumber.

I dreamt of the triplets. In my dream, I was holding Rose and Brianna and Cecilia all at the same time, and they were fast asleep, like little angels. Their diapers smelled of buttered popcorn and peppermint.

In the dream, Helen was floating, her eyes closed, her hair moving as if it were underwater.

Kyle and Theresa were hugging me.

I didn’t want them to stop hugging me.

“Not so tight,” I said in the dream. “Daddy can’t breathe.”

They hugged me even tighter, like they were trying to crush me.

I opened my eyes.

I couldn’t breathe.

This was almost certainly because there was an extremely large snake coiled around me.

Chapter Nine

Ignacio and Roger were sitting several feet away, facing away from me, softly chatting. I let out a gasp to let them know I was currently being suffocated by a snake.

They turned around to look. It was too dark to see their faces, but they both moved toward me at a very speedy pace, so I assume their expressions were wide-eyed shock. Their conversation better have been damn good for them to be so inattentive to my reptile problem.

Ignacio crouched down next to me. “It’s a boa constrictor,” he informed me. I didn’t like his tone; it was as if he was trying too hard to sound calm and soothing. “They’re not venomous.”

I was glad to hear that it wasn’t venomous, but since it currently felt like it was crushing my ribcage, I wasn’t inclined to celebrate.

I managed to speak: “Get it off me!”

“We will, we will,” Ignacio promised. “Just trying to brainstorm ideas right now.”

“Shoot it!”

“That might draw the villagers over here. You’ll be fine. At least it’s not a Burmese python. If it was a Burmese python, I’d be terrified, but it’s not, it’s a boa constrictor and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Get the frickin’ snake off me, Ignacio!”

“Just think of it like a giant leech. You made it through the leech issue, right? I bet you didn’t think about that leech the entire time we were trapped in the hut.”

The boa constrictor’s head slithered up against my neck. Was it purposely trying to be frightening? Probably not. It was just a snake. But my fear level was off the charts, and if it had been easier to breathe I’m sure I would’ve been doing a lot of whimpering.

I tried to speak as calmly and clearly as possible. “It’s very important to me that you remove this snake.”

“Should I break off a branch and just start stabbing it?” Roger asked.

“No. You might anger or frighten it. We don’t want it to constrict further or bite him.”

“I thought it wasn’t venomous,” I said.

“It’s not. We still don’t want you to get bitten by a snake that big if we can help it.”

Henrietta snored peacefully.

“I just need to know what you want me to do,” I said. “I’ll do anything. I’ll follow any instructions you give me. I’m all in on trying to get this snake off of me.”

I had to be brave. Someday my children would ask, “Daddy, how did you act when the giant boa constrictor was trying to crush you?” and I didn’t want to have to lie to them.

“We’re going to try to pull it off of you,” said Ignacio. “If we decide that it’s not working, we may have you smash yourself against a tree, but for now we’ll go with the idea that slowly pulling it off will work. Roger, you’re willing to help me, right?”

“Of course I am.”

“Just making sure. It means handling a snake.”

“I’m not going to stand here and let the snake strangle him.”

“I didn’t want to presume that your friendship was at that level.”

“Let’s do it.”

Ignacio and Roger crouched down next to me. Roger’s breathing was quick and frantic, like that of somebody who was about to handle a boa constrictor.

“Any advice?” Roger asked.

“Not really,” said Ignacio. “I’ve obviously never done this before. If it weren’t so dark you’d be able to see that my hands are trembling. Try not to make it angry and try not to get bit is the best I can offer.”

They each grabbed a separate part of the snake. Roger sucked in a deep breath.

“Try to lift your right arm a little,” Ignacio told me.

I lifted my arm. He gently pulled the snake out from underneath it.

“See, this isn’t so bad, is it?” Ignacio asked. “Who’s the American who does concerts with a boa constrictor around his neck? He did that one song about school being out?”

“Alice Cooper,” I said.

“Everybody secretly wishes they were Alice Cooper, right? All that fame and fortune. It’s like you’re him. If he were standing here right now, he’d be very proud.”

Ignacio and Roger continued working on the snake.

“How are your ribs?” Roger asked.

“Not great.”

“Oh, shit,” said Ignacio.

“What?” I asked, thinking it was a very bad serpent-related development. Then I saw the torches off in the distance, that might be carried by kindly people on their way to help us out of this predicament, or might be carried by angry villagers who were seeking revenge because we’d killed their leader. I was pretty sure it was the latter.

Roger left me and the snake and hurried over to Henrietta. He shook her awake. He whispered softly enough that I couldn’t hear what he said, but Henrietta sat up immediately and grabbed the rifle.

“Our best move is to be as silent as possible and hope they don’t find us,” Ignacio whispered, when Roger returned. “Andrew, will you be okay if we leave the snake on you for a bit longer?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure, fine.” I was being sarcastic at the beginning of the sentence but by the time I got to the end I was sincere, because the torches were getting closer and postponing the snake problem was indeed the best plan. I’d try to alert Ignacio and Roger before a rib cracked.

The snake’s head slithered over my chest. A sword would’ve been so nice to have right now.

Somebody shouted. Once again I couldn’t understand the language, but the context clues seemed to indicate that the message was “There they are! Let’s kill them!”

They were definitely running toward us. And as they got closer I could see that the men, four or five of them, were wearing white paint. So, yeah, it was safe to assume that they were the dudes from the village whose leader we’d slain.

“Stay back!” Henrietta yelled at them.

They kept moving.

She waved the rifle into the air. “Don’t make me shoot you!”

This did not dissuade them. They obviously knew what the rifle could do, but either they weren’t frightened or—more likely—they couldn’t see it. By the time they got close enough to recognize the danger, they might be too close for Henrietta to shoot all of them before they reached us. I had no idea how much ammo was in the rifle, but I at least hoped she had more than five shots.

Henrietta fired into the air.

The villagers stopped moving.

And then they started moving again, but more slowly.

Henrietta lowered her aim, though still clearly trying to shoot over their heads, and squeezed the trigger. And once more the villagers stopped for a moment, then continued moving forward.

“I think I have to start killing them,” Henrietta announced to us.

At this moment, the boa constrictor began to squeeze more tightly. Maybe the rifle blasts scared it, or maybe it was a jerk who knew how inopportune of a moment this was. But suddenly the idea of dealing with one crisis at a time was no longer practical.

“Guys…?” I said.

Ignacio shushed me. I wanted to ask why the hell he was shushing me, since the plan to keep quiet had stopped being effective after Henrietta started firing the rifle, but I couldn’t breathe well enough to articulate my inquiry. Nor could I gesture with my arms pinned to my sides. The best I could do was let out a gasping croaking sort of noise.

Roger seemed to realize the problem. He returned to snake duty.

Henrietta fired again. Somebody cried out in pain. Their screaming continued, so whether on purpose or through bad aim, she’d wounded instead of killed whomever she’d shot.

“Should we ask her to shoot the snake?” asked Roger.

“It’s a magnificent creature,” said Ignacio.

“It’s killing my friend!”

“Let’s just keep trying to untangle him for now. We don’t want to blow off its head prematurely.”

Ignacio and Roger resumed their work in trying to get the snake off of me, while Henrietta continued to shout at and shoot at the villagers. After a couple of minutes, her shouts changed from “You’d better run!” to “That’s right, run!”

Henrietta hurried over to us. “They’re gone for now. We’d better get moving.”

“Shoot the snake in the head,” Roger told her.

“You can’t get it off?”

“We’d like to expedite the process.”

“I don’t really wanna kill a snake.”

“You killed that lady!”

“She was a cannibal. The snake’s just doing what comes naturally to it. If it was eating other snakes, I’d happily shoot it, because that’s taboo for a reason. For now, unless it actually starts digging its fangs into Andrew’s body, I don’t want to kill it until it’s absolutely necessary.”

“It’s crushing him!”

“Then maybe instead of jabber-jawing you should get back to work.”

“It’s okay,” I told Roger. “She doesn’t have to murder the snake. Please just get it off of me. I’m starting to feel dizzy.”

Roger and Ignacio resumed trying to pull the snake off me. Henrietta stood guard, brandishing her rifle in a way that would intimidate the villagers if they returned and got close enough to see her in the light of their torches.

“We’re going to stand you up,” Ignacio told me. “Then if you could turn around a few times, I think we can unwind him.”

“How did it even get this tangled?” Roger asked. “It’s like Christmas lights when you take them out of storage.”

Roger and Ignacio pulled me to my feet. I slowly turned around as Roger took the boa constrictor’s tail and unspooled it.

The snake hissed.

“You may be pissing it off,” I said.

“That’s okay,” said Ignacio. “As long as it doesn’t start biting you.”

It was becoming very difficult to speak, and there was really no point in notifying him that his statement was absolutely insane. Instead, I continued to slowly turn around, as the angry snake slithered and hissed and implied very strongly that it wanted to sink its fangs into me.

“Wow, this thing is way longer than I thought,” said Roger.

“Yes, but we’re making progress,” said Ignacio.

“Try to move a little faster,” said Henrietta. “The villagers might come back with reinforcements.”

“We’d move a lot faster if you’d shoot the snake,” Roger told her.

“No, no, we’re almost there,” said Ignacio. “Two more minutes at the most.”

Six minutes later, they pulled the last of the snake away. Roger and Ignacio gently set it on the ground, and it slithered away.

“How do you feel?” asked Roger.

I doubled over and threw up.

“How should we interpret that?” asked Ignacio.

I stood back up and wiped off my mouth with the back of my hand. “It was stress vomit.”

“That makes sense,” said Ignacio. “The snake situation was very stressful for all of us.”

“So what’s the plan?” asked Henrietta. “You want to just stand here tugging your garter snakes until the villagers come back to eat us, or shall we get moving?”

Ignacio cleared his throat. “I’ll have you know, ma’am, that I have more of a—”

“No dick jokes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We walked for about fifteen minutes, but we still had no idea if we were improving our situation or making it worse. Being crushed by a boa constrictor would be a more pleasant death than wandering around the rainforest until we died of starvation, so I didn’t want to be in a position where I regretted the rescue.

“We’ve put some distance between us,” I said. “Let’s go back to the plan of waiting until morning. I’m not sleeping this time, though. You guys did a terrible job. What happened to brushing tarantulas off me while I slept?”

“To be fair,” said Ignacio, “we did brush several tarantulas off your face. Then I got lost in my conversation with your friend. He’s had a fascinating life. You both have. Your life is even more fascinating now that you were almost strangled by a boa constrictor. How many Americans can say that? But I do apologize for being inattentive.”

“Apology accepted. But I’m done trying to sleep.”

“I’m not,” said Henrietta, sitting down against a tree.

“I wouldn’t mind getting some rest,” said Ignacio. “I know that Roger and I did a poor job of watching for danger, but I’ll trust you to do better.” He sat down and leaned against a tree as well.

“You can try to sleep if you want,” I told Roger. “I’ll be awake forever now.”

“Nah,” said Roger. “If I fell asleep I’d dream of cannibals and snakes and spiked pits and stuff.”

“Why spiked pits? Do you think we’re going to fall into a spiked pit?”

“I hope not. Just seems like something that could happen.”

“Maybe all of our troubles will be over when the sun rises.”

“Maybe.”

“Probably not.”

“Yeah, probably not.”

Chapter Ten

I’m not trying to brag, but we made it through the night without anything truly horrible happening. Henrietta and Ignacio slept through the night, those peaceful cretins, while Roger and I just sat up quietly talking. The primary subject matter of our conversation was “We can’t let this shit happen ever again,” though we also discussed the fact that we knew perfectly well that we’d let this shit happen again.

After the sun rose, Henrietta took the lead and we resumed walking along the trail. I had absolutely no idea if we were going the right way, but she seemed satisfied that we weren’t moving in a “lost in the rainforest forever” direction.

Before too long, I heard the distant sound of running water. Either we were headed toward the river, or so much blood was flowing that it sounded like a river.

Soon we emerged from the trail right next to the riverbank. And there, in a stroke of good fortune that almost defied belief, was Henrietta’s boat.

Oh, it wasn’t on the same side of the river as us, of course. But this still counted as a victory.

“Let’s not waste any time,” said Henrietta, wading right in.

Thoughts of leeches and piranha and homicidal hippopotami went through my mind, but I didn’t want to be the one to say, “So, uh, we don’t all have to go across the river, right? Like, somebody could get the boat and bring it to the other side?” Instead, all four of us ventured into the water.

It wasn’t very far across. Only thirty feet.

It got deep quickly. Soon it was up to my chest, and by the time we were a quarter of the way across we had to swim. The current was strong but not enough to sweep me away to my demise, so I vigorously swam until my feet touched the bottom again. I was pleased that I didn’t feel the fearsome jaws of a caiman chomp down upon my leg.

“Is everybody okay?” asked Ignacio.

We all indicated that we were. Henrietta stepped out of the water without any visible leeches attached to her body, followed by the rest of us. We’d made it. We’d achieved this straightforward task without everything turning to garbage.

Something occurred to me. “You got the rifle from the boat, right?”

“Yeah,” said Henrietta.

“Why’d you leave the boat here? Why didn’t you bring it to the other side?”

Then I noticed that our possessions were scattered all over the inside of the boat. I had no idea what had been stolen, if anything, but somebody had been going through our belongings.

“They took our food,” said Henrietta, answering the unasked question before the ones I asked. “Smashed up a bunch of stuff. Destroyed the engine. I promise you, I was more upset when I found this out yesterday than you are right now.”

“Destroyed the engine? You mean, the engine that was going to power the boat?” I asked.

“Yeah, that one.”

“When were you going to tell us this?”

“Just as soon as we escaped from the cannibals, swam across the river, and made it back to the boat. So, now.”

“Why would you keep this from us?”

“Morale. Bad morale makes it harder to survive. Good morale makes it easier.”

“So...we can paddle it, right?”

“Up the river? Nah. Not with that current.”

“Well, we sure as hell can’t walk back! How long has it been since the last sign of civilization? Twenty miles?”

Henrietta shook her head. “Thirty-two.”

“My morale is pretty bad right now.”

“I don’t see any holes in the boat,” said Henrietta. “As long as it floats, we can continue down the river.”

“Toward our doom?”

“Maybe toward our doom. And maybe to a place where your phones work. It’s possible that every mile we travel further down the river brings us closer to certain death, but I for one am not going to walk thirty-two miles through the rainforest.”

I sighed and said “Dammit” a few times.

“Nobody’s forcing you to get on the boat,” said Henrietta. “If you choose to walk, I’ll make sure you leave with one of the rifles. You seem somewhat resourceful. You might survive.”

“I’m not going to walk through the rainforest,” I said. “I’m just whining.”

“Then let’s get this boat back in the water. The ticking clock to starvation has already begun.”

We shoved the boat back into the river and everybody got on board. As we let the current carry us along, Roger, Ignacio, and I gathered up the possessions and tried to sort them out the way they’d originally been packed.

“Oh my God,” said Ignacio, picking up a brown folded piece of paper. “Percival didn’t have the treasure map on him when he was captured!” He unfolded it and ran his finger along one of the lines. “I can’t tell exactly where we are, but I should be able to orient myself fairly quickly.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. “You’re not really planning to still go after it, are you?”

“After all we’ve been through, is it better to return home with a treasure or without one?”

“Is it better to return home with internal organs or without them?”

“You’re a very reluctant man, Andrew Mayhem.”

My instinct was to rattle off a list of all the bad things that had happened since we embarked on this journey, focusing on the cannibalism, but I decided that it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to be the killjoy. If he wanted to get out of the boat and find his own way home, more power to him.

We continued to float down the river. Roger was keeping a close eye on his cell phone in case he got a signal, though for now it felt like the odds of coming anywhere close to a cellular tower were virtually non-existent.

As we went around a bend, Ignacio said, “Yes!” He tapped his index finger on the map. “We’re right here. The path we were trying to find is here. I’m not entirely sure about the scale, but maybe five more miles. I’m not ordering anybody to come with me—I’m certainly not going to point a gun at you or anything—but it would be nice if I didn’t have to go alone.”

“You think we’re just going to park the boat and wait for you?”

“I wouldn’t ask that of you. If I find a treasure worth millions after you’ve abandoned me, I’ll happily build a raft.”

“Why don’t we just table the idea of finding the treasure and come back when we’re not in the middle of a shitshow?”

“With all I know about your past, I’m surprised by how timid you are,” Ignacio told me. “I expected somebody much different.”

“Is this the ‘I thought you were cool’ speech? You think you’re going to peer pressure me into going along with this?”

“No, but I’m offering equal shares. We no longer work for that coward Derek Wilson. That’s right, Percival Longshore was a totally made up name. He didn’t know I knew that, but I saw it on a document once. I didn’t confront him because I didn’t want to make things awkward. He thought everybody believed the accent was real, even when it slipped on occasion or he said things like ‘Bless your heart.’ Anyway, we no longer have to settle for a percentage. Equal shares for the four of us, or three of us, or two of us, or just me, depending on who goes after the treasure.”

“What if there’s no treasure?” I asked.

“What if there is?”

“But what if there isn’t?”

“I choose to focus on the possibility that there’s a treasure worth millions not too far from where we are right now. If you choose to focus on the possibility that we might leave empty-handed, that’s fine. I’m not sure what happened to you, though.”

“What happened is that I matured,” I said. “I gathered life experience that made me realize that there are smart decisions and there are dumb decisions, and after a lifetime mostly spent making dumb decisions, I thought I should start trying to make more smart ones. And I have five kids. Three of them are babies. What happens when you have five kids at home is that your brain looks at things like you almost getting devoured by cannibals and says, ‘Hey, let’s remove ourselves from this situation as quickly as possible.’ How do we know there aren’t more cannibals? How do we know this area isn’t teeming with cannibals? There could be cannibals aiming blow darts at us right now.”

“All right,” said Ignacio. “You’ve made your point. And like I said, if the rest of you wish to continue without me, I’ll make a raft. We’ll discuss it further when we get there.”

We floated down the river in silence. I wasn’t going to feel bad about this. I knew I wasn’t cool. I didn’t need to impress anybody with how willing I was to take risks. I was several years from a midlife crisis.

The river had been relatively smooth through most of our journey, but I noticed that it was starting to get choppier. As we went down another bend, there was a significant decrease in how safe the river seemed to be for boat passengers. Henrietta didn’t seem concerned, so I didn’t say anything.

“Do we need to be worried?” Roger asked. “The water’s getting kind of rough.”

“It’s fine,” said Henrietta. “You may get knocked around a bit, but we’ll be okay.”

“I just don’t want us to go over a waterfall or something.”

“We’re not going to go over a waterfall.”

“I believe you. But is there a process in place for if you see that we’re approaching one?”

“Yes,” said Henrietta. “If I saw that we were headed straight for a waterfall like in a cartoon, I’d scream for everybody to jump out of the boat. You’d be paralyzed with fright, so we’d all shout ‘Noooooooooo!’ while you went over the falls and were dashed to pieces on the rocks below. I’d mourn you and your sweet ass.”

“Since you keep talking about his ass, I thought I’d mention that Roger’s single,” I told her.

“Yeah?” Henrietta asked. “I’d pounce on him right now, but the boat doesn’t have a privacy curtain and I’m not giving anyone a free show.”

“We’d avert our eyes.”

“Oh, you’d take a peek, trust me. I’d have him begging for his life.”

“Anyway,” said Roger, making an admirable attempt to pretend that he was able to ignore the dark turn this conversation had taken with no mental trauma on his part, “I just wanted to verify that we’re fine going through rapids, since the boat isn’t working right.”

“I’ll let you know if we’re going to die,” Henrietta assured him.

Ignacio was studying the map. “Can I take a look?” I asked.

He shrugged and handed it to me. It looked like a child’s drawing. I could tell which line was the river because there was an arrow pointing to it with the word “river” written next to it. An actual “X” marked a spot that was labeled “treasure.” Another “X,” closer to the river, was labeled “Find the key amongst the ruins.” There were also lots of crudely drawn skulls.

“What’s up with all the skulls?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“When Percival told me about this trip, he didn’t say anything about the map having a bunch of skulls on it. I’m not a professional treasure mapmaker, but I would probably use skulls to indicate bad things instead of good things. Like, I’m guessing this skull right here isn’t used to mark the place where we’ll find a spa.”

“I didn’t know about the skulls either. Maybe they were just put there to dissuade people from going after the treasure.”

“Well, you know, those skinned bodies were put there to dissuade us from going down the river. How do you know those skulls don’t represent death traps? I’ve been in lots of death traps. They suck.”

“If you’ve been in lots of death traps, why aren’t you dead?”

“I escaped. That doesn’t mean I want to find myself in more of them. If you shove your head in a lion’s mouth twenty times and he bites your head off on the twenty-first, that pretty much cancels out the first twenty victories.”

“You are just filled with cowardly wisdom,” said Ignacio, taking the map from me.

“I’m not a coward.”

“You’re so cowardly that your mind conjured up the lion thing because you were thinking about the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard Of Oz, which is the character you most relate to in that movie.”

“No, I relate most to Dorothy, because she wants to go home. And I look at you as the Scarecrow, because you don’t seem to have a brain.” I suddenly felt bad about that insult, even though it was relatively mild, all things considered. “I apologize. That was too harsh. You have a brain. You’re just confusing being cowardly with being risk-averse. If a great white shark jumped into the boat, I wouldn’t leave the rest of you to die. I’d fight it alongside you. But if there was a sign warning us that we were entering an area where great white sharks routinely jumped into people’s boats, I’d suggest that we go someplace else. Cowardly versus risk averse.”

Ignacio looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “You’ve made your case. I withdraw my description of you as being cowardly.”

“And I already withdrew calling you the Scarecrow.”

“Anybody who calls me The Wicked Witch gets a kick in the buttocks,” said Henrietta. “I may have an unhealthy complexion but that doesn’t make me a witch. And I’m not one of those flying monkeys, either. To hell with those monkeys. I don’t know who I relate to in the world of Oz. Who’s the most lustful?”

“Probably the munchkins,” said Roger. “There are a lot of them.”

“Well, you can lick my…” Henrietta trailed off. “I’m trying to come up with something about the Lollipop Guild but I can’t quite get it to make sense. Ignacio, you’re the joke crafter. Finish it up for me.”

“No, thank you.”

I gave Ignacio the map back. Though the skulls were concerning, it didn’t look like the treasure was too far from the river. Maybe if we instituted a policy of “At the first sign of this becoming a complete Dumpster fire, we turn right the hell back around” it might not be such a bad idea to try to acquire twenty million dollars’ worth of treasure.

Had Ignacio gotten inside my head? Was I suddenly worried that I was the whiny guy who ruins everyone else’s fun?

We went around another bend and my stomach dropped as the boat took an unexpected plunge. We all got splashed. If we were on a water ride at a Florida theme park, this is where I’d know that things were about to become really wild and fun.

The water ahead looked pretty frickin’ scary.

“Okay,” said Henrietta. “Do you want the bad news?”

“You’re not giving us a choice between bad or good?” I asked.

“No. There’s only one piece of news and it’s bad.”

“What’s the bad news?” Roger asked.

“It looks like the water is going to get much worse. And it’s going to be almost impossible for me to control the boat. So, uh, keep your arms inside the boat, and you may get wet.”

Chapter Eleven

The river conditions deteriorated rapidly. Within a couple of minutes I went from “This is gonna be a bumpy ride!” to “We’re all gonna die!”

There was a huge rock ahead in the center of the river. I hoped we didn’t smash into it.

We smashed into the rock.

The boat spun around so that it was now traveling down the river backwards.

“Hold on!” Henrietta shouted.

We smacked into another rock. Though I was holding on and seated, I lost my balance and crashed into Roger. Fortunately, neither of us fell out of the boat.

The boat continued traveling backwards. I was too scared to be pleased that we were suddenly making extremely good time. The boat swung around and rocketed down the river sideways for a while, before facing backwards again.

It scraped against another large rock.

Not to criticize a long-dead pirate, but this should’ve been on the map. A jagged little line, if nothing else.

The river curved to the right just ahead of us, and we were headed very, very quickly toward the riverbank. The boat wasn’t going to turn on its own.

We ran aground with enough force to knock everybody over.

“Is everybody okay?” Ignacio asked.

“Eh,” I said.

“I hate to say this,” said Henrietta, “but the terrible river conditions don’t change our plan. We have to keep going.”

Roger and I climbed out of the boat, pushed it back into the current, and jumped back in again. The boat, now facing forward, shot down through the rapids, like a flume ride that would probably end in all of our deaths.

We narrowly avoided another large rock.

I wondered how long bad sections of river usually lasted. Would this clear up at some point, or were we going to be suffering through this until the river spat us out into the ocean?

The boat turned sideways again, providing a much larger target for the rock up ahead. It was starting to feel like those rocks had been placed there on purpose just to mess with us. Without anybody shouting a warning, all four of us seemed to realize that we were going to smash into this rock, hard, and we all braced ourselves for impact.

The impact knocked everybody over. The boat spun around, careened off another rock, and then turned completely over.

I plunged into the river.

I swam to the surface and whacked my head against something so hard I thought I might’ve cracked my skull open. I emerged from the water and saw that I’d struck my head against the boat, which was still upside-down, sideways, and moving along at the same pace that I was.

I tried to call out for the others but my mouth was full of water.

As I held on to the boat as tightly as I could, I looked back and saw Henrietta in the water behind me. But the boat quickly picked up speed and left her behind.

Somebody’s legs came into view on the other side of the boat. Roger’s.

Then the boat struck a low-hanging tree branch and Roger apparently lost his grip. He flailed in the water behind me as the boat continued to move forward at an unnervingly fast speed.

There was obviously no way I was going to be able to turn it upright until the river calmed down or we ran aground again, but I tried to pull myself out of the water to decrease the chances that I’d also be left behind and we’d lose the boat entirely. I’d just have to trust that Roger and Henrietta would be all right.

I managed to climb onto the top. I saw Ignacio on the other side, trying to do the same.

There was another rock, the biggest one yet, in the middle of the river, right where we were headed.

I pointed to it and called out a warning.

Ignacio glanced back over his shoulder, then frantically tried to pull himself up onto the boat.

I leaned over the side and grabbed his hand.

I strained to pull him out of the water as the boat headed straight for the rock. It might have been better for him to just let go of the boat completely, let it pass over him, and try to grab the other side, but there wasn’t time to work out a detailed plan of action. I just had to pull him to safety.

He was halfway out.

It felt like we were picking up even more speed.

He got his feet out of the water and braced them against the side of the boat.

Ignacio was still in extreme danger if we bashed into the rock, but if we could get him on top of the boat with me he’d be okay, at least until the boat crashed and catapulted us into the raging river.

I pulled him up.

He lost his foothold and slid halfway down into the water. I kept my tight grip on his hand, but he pulled me down with him.

This next second had the potential to be devastating.

The boat smashed into the rock with so much force that I thought it might split the boat in half.

Ignacio was spared none of the impact.

Blood and water sprayed all over me as the boat spun around and continued on its way. Ignacio was imbedded in a huge dent in the center, his head bobbing around as if the bones in his neck had simply ceased to exist.

I screamed.

I didn’t let go of his hand, even though if he was somehow still alive, his internal injuries would be so severe that he wouldn’t survive a trip to a nearby hospital in an ambulance, much less being stranded out in the middle of the rainforest.

About a minute later, part of his body caught on something beneath the surface and was yanked out of my grip. He went under the boat and popped up behind it, facedown. A moment later he went under again and didn’t emerge.

I screamed again.

Though the rapid water didn’t relent, a couple of minutes later the boat struck a shallow area near the edge of the river and ceased moving. I wanted to just lie on top of it for an extremely long time and do some more screaming, but now my concern had to switch to Roger and Henrietta. If they were still being swept away in the current, I might be able to get in front of them.

I waited.

And waited.

They shouldn’t be too far behind me. If they hadn’t shown up, this could be a good sign that they’d managed to get out of the water or at least grab a tree branch, or it could be a bad sign that they were dead. Maybe Roger’s corpse had passed right by me, just under the surface of the water.

“Roger!” I shouted. “Henrietta!”

Nothing.

I shouted their names again and again.

They might not be dead. The rapids were loud. They could be safely out of the river, just out of sight, and not able to hear me.

But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do right now. I didn’t want to abandon the boat. If the current started to pull it free, I needed to be here to try to keep from losing it. Despite the dent, I assumed that if we could get it turned over, it would still carry us down the river.

Couldn’t turn it over myself, though.

If Roger and Henrietta were gone, I’d be stuck here without a usable boat.

One crisis at a time. For now, to maintain my sanity, I had to assume that they were still alive. Everything would be okay.

I hoped that being smashed into the rock had killed Ignacio immediately. It made me physically ill to think that he might have gone through the agony of drowning right after that. He was a good guy.

I kept calling out to them.

And then Henrietta answered. I couldn’t tell if she said “Andrew?” or not, but she said something.

I shouted her name. She shouted mine.

I figured there was no compelling reason for us to continue trying to shout a conversation over the sound of the river. It wasn’t as if I’d be difficult to find. I sat down on the boat and waited. I tried to think of something upbeat, but instead my brain kept replaying the moment where Ignacio got crushed between the rock and the boat over and over, sparing me none of the visuals or the sound. I quite honestly was surprised that my brain didn’t do it in slow motion.

A few minutes later, I saw Henrietta. She was on the riverbank, walking by herself. She gave me a half-hearted wave.

When she reached my spot, she waded back into the river and was able to make it to the boat without having to swim. She tapped her mouth. “Knocked out a tooth. Didn’t have many to spare.”

“Have you seen Roger?”

She shook her head. “Have you seen Ignacio?”

For a split second I considered lying, since she was the one who’d withheld information to keep up our morale. But then I realized that would be pointless. “Yeah. He...he was right here when this happened,” I said, tapping the dent on the boat.

“I don’t get it.”

“He got crushed between the boat and a rock.”

Henrietta gasped and put her hand over her mouth.

“I don’t know where his body went,” I said. “I won’t be able to tell his family anything except that it got swept away in the current.”

“Let’s take ten seconds of silence to honor him,” said Henrietta. “Then, as sad as it is that he’s gone, we need to move on to more pressing concerns.”

We were silent for a few seconds.

“Okay,” said Henrietta, who apparently had started timing the ten seconds from to honor him instead of more pressing concerns. “We’re much worse off than we were before, but that still doesn’t mean we have to be all nihilistic. Tell me about your friend Roger. If he got separated from his boat in the middle of river rapids, is he more likely to be alive or dead?”

“Alive.”

“Good. We can work with that. If he was walking, he’d be smart enough to stay close to the river’s edge so we could find him, right?”

“Yes.”

“And he’d walk downriver, not upriver, right?”

“Yes.”

“Even if he took a nasty hit on the head and was disoriented?”

“That I can’t answer.”

“We’ll go with yes. You seem to be doing okay, after all.”

“What?”

“You’re bleeding from the scalp.”

“Oh.” I touched my head and winced. My index finger was pink. “I bashed it on the bottom of the boat.”

“Well, I don’t see any brains leaking out, so we’ll assume you’re okay.”

“Let’s drag the boat a little bit this way,” I said, pointing. “Stabilize it some more so it doesn’t get swept away before we get back.”

“It looks pretty solid.”

“No. No, no, no. If we leave the boat where it has the potential to get caught in the current, I can say with one hundred percent certainty that it will be gone when we return. One hundred percent.”

“All right,” said Henrietta. We dragged the boat a little further to the left, so that even with my luck it seemed like it would stay in place.

“He might need to be rescued,” I said. “We should each take a separate side, so that nobody has to swim across the worst of the river if we guessed wrong.”

“Makes sense. The side I was walking on was relatively easy to navigate. The other side looked like a nightmare. Which side do you prefer?”

I wasn’t sure if this was a chivalry test or an intelligence test. “I...guess I’ll take the nightmare side.”

She smiled. “Trying to get you some, huh?”

“What? No, I—”

“I’m trying to keep the mood light, Mayhem. I’d give you the best ride of your life but I’m no homewrecker. Let’s go. Roger may be in serious peril.”

We crossed to opposite sides of the river. She was right—her side had a nice convenient riverbank, while mine was forest with a steep drop to the river. There was no trail and the vegetation was thick enough that it almost wasn’t worth Henrietta and I splitting up.

Also, there were places galore for snakes to hide. With each step I expected to hear a loud hiss and then feel a pair of fangs slam into my ankle.

We called out for Roger as we walked.

He wasn’t dead. I refused to believe that he was dead.

I’m not saying that I’m an optimistic guy by any stretch of the imagination—at least, I haven’t been in quite a while—but I genuinely believed that Roger was alive. Maybe he was lying on the riverbank with two shattered legs, but he was alive.

Henrietta was getting pretty far ahead of me. I couldn’t even see her anymore.

“Found him!” she called out.

I felt a renewed sense of energy, although my pace was still way too slow. Finally I saw both Henrietta and Roger. She was on her side of the river, and Roger was near my side, about ten feet from the edge, pinned on a tree branch, eyes closed, not moving.

Chapter Twelve

I made my way to the tree as quickly as possible. Because of the heavy current, Roger was jiggling around but he didn’t appear to be conscious.

“Hey, Roger!” I shouted.

He didn’t open his eyes.

Crawling out on top of the tree branch seemed like it would result in the branch snapping and both of us being carried off to our deaths. I’d have to get into the water and ease my way over to him, praying the entire time that he’d been knocked out instead of killed.

I climbed down the incline. I was no longer worried about piranha or similar aquatic dangers. I just needed to make it over to my best friend and bring him back safely.

Wait, was that a…?

I had to stare at it for a moment to confirm that, yes, there was a great big snake coiled on the branch between Roger and I. Its coloring wasn’t much different from the wood. I didn’t know why a frickin’ snake would want to be out on a tree limb that dangled over a river. Maybe it got an adrenaline rush from the feeling of danger. What I also did not know was what kind of snake it was. If it was another boa constrictor, hey, no problem. If it was a venomous rattlesnake, that could be an issue.

I couldn’t try to shake it off the branch, because that might dislodge Roger. And Henrietta was probably too far away to see what kind of snake it was. Our conversation would be the kind of comedy of errors that I didn’t have time for right now. I had no real choice but to hope that I made it to Roger and back without the snake deciding to do me harm.

I walked into the water, almost losing my balance in the current, and proceeded forward until my feet no longer touched the bottom. Fortunately, there were lots of smaller branches attached to the big branch, so my hands wouldn’t have to get too close to a potentially venomous snake as I made my way forward.

No problem at all. This was going fine. Better than expected, even.

I kept watching for something that might indicate Roger’s condition, but his eyes remained closed and his body kept moving around. As I moved directly underneath the snake, I tried to look for some kind of telltale markings that would tell me what kind of snake it was, at least until I remembered that I don’t know shit about snakes.

I passed completely underneath the snake without it trying to strangle or bite me. It didn’t even move. Maybe it was dead.

I was almost to Roger. Still no way to tell if he was breathing.

I froze as I thought I heard a branch crack. But the rapids were so loud that there was no way I’d actually be able to hear something like that, so it was just my imagination trying to make me even more tense than I already was. My imagination could suck it.

Just about there…

I made it. I could tell that he was wedged really tightly in between a couple of branches, but if I was able to wake him up, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to get him free, right?

“Hey, Roger?” I asked, prodding his shoulder. “Roger? Wake up for me, buddy.”

Roger gave no indication that he heard me.

I slapped him in the face. He didn’t wake up. I wouldn’t freak out about that yet. Both of his arms were submerged. I reached for one of them and pulled it out of the water, while maintaining my death-grip on the branch with my other hand, then placed my fingers against his wrist to check for a pulse.

Was it there? Was it not there? I couldn’t tell.

Even if he was dead, I wasn’t going to leave him out here, so I was going to assume that he was alive but that he wasn’t going to help me with the rescue effort.

I slapped him a couple more times just in case.

Dammit.

I tried to tug him free, but I’d been right, he was wedged in there really good. I could think of a lot of tools that would be really useful right now, but everything we’d brought was at the bottom of the river.

I tugged harder.

I couldn’t get any real leverage, so he almost definitely wasn’t going to come loose this way without his participation. I’d have to try to break the branches away. It wouldn’t be an impossible task, but it wouldn’t be easy. I’d probably have to use both hands, which would mean wrapping one arm around the larger branch while I worked.

I glanced over at Henrietta. Instead of a thumbs-up gesture of moral support, she was frantically waving both hands over her head. When she saw that she’d caught my attention, she pointed, then pressed her hands together and moved them back and forth in a slithering motion.

I turned around in time to see the snake coming toward me, mouth open wide.

Without even thinking I grabbed it by the neck, yanked it as hard as I could, then tossed it into the river. The current carried the serpent away.

Please do not think less of me, but I’ll confess that in that moment, and only in that moment, I wished somebody had captured the event on video. Nobody would ever believe that I did that. This quick action and bravery sort of compensated for being so useless during the boa constrictor issue last night. Anyway, it was a brief flash of regret, and then I returned my attention to the problem at hand.

Okay, now I could at least work on getting Roger free without worrying about getting poisoned. In fact, as long as I made sure I didn’t give him the opportunity to pop free and get swept away, it might be better now to try to climb up on the tree limb.

I pulled myself up onto it and went to work trying to free Roger.

It took some effort, but I managed to break the branches off that were pinning him. Now all I had to do was pull him back to shore.

Roger opened his eyes. “Andrew…?”

This startled me so badly that I yelped and almost fell off the branch. I lost my grip on Roger and he got whisked away in the current.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

I dove into the water after him, by which I mean I awkwardly toppled into the river and tried to swim after my friend. Henrietta ran along the riverbank trying to get ahead of him, but the current was moving a lot faster than her legs were.

Then Roger grabbed another branch. I grabbed the same branch as I reached him.

“Thank God you’re alive!” I said.

Roger looked like he wanted to say something witty or heartfelt. Instead, he coughed up a bunch of water.

Our branch snapped, and we resumed being carried away in the current.

This brief intermission had given Henrietta a chance to get ahead of us and wade into the river. I tried to adjust my course to bring me toward her. I obviously had no say in where the river took me and it was silly to think otherwise, but fortunately the current brought me toward her anyway.

Roger and I were still holding the same branch. I reached out, hoping to catch Henrietta’s outstretched hand.

I caught it!

Then I pulled Henrietta off her feet and the three of us kept going down the river.

We hit a shallow spot filled with lots of small, sharp, uncomfortable rocks and it slowed us down enough for me to brace my feet against the bottom of the river. Staying hand-in-hand, we each sat up, then just rested for a bit, not speaking, trying to catch our breath.

“Everybody okay?” I finally asked.

Roger coughed. “Where’s Ignacio?”

“He didn’t make it.”

Roger looked like he wanted to punch something, but instead he just softly cursed and nodded his understanding.

“How about we get out of the river?” Henrietta asked.

We waded out of the river with no mishaps, then sat on the shore to rest some more.

Roger patted his pockets. “I lost my phone.”

“I’m sure mine’s toast,” I said, taking my phone out of my pocket. The waterproof case had shattered, as had the screen of the phone itself. I pressed the button to turn it on and nothing happened.

“Okay,” said Henrietta. “That doesn’t mess up our plan too badly. It just means that instead of a cell phone signal, we need to find actual people. I’m sure there are some who will help us instead of eating us.”

“Did we lose the boat?” Roger asked.

“Nah, it’s just up ahead,” I said.

“So you came back for me?”

“Yeah, we came back for you. What the hell did you think? That I was just going to say ‘Oh well’ and leave you behind?”

“I meant that in a grateful way, not a surprised way.”

“Oh. Anyway, I’m glad you’re alive. If we have to die a slow, lingering death from starvation and heat stroke, I’m glad we get to do it together.”

“Me too,” said Roger.

“You guys are fuckin’ morbid,” said Henrietta. “I get that it’s a defense mechanism, but Jesus Christ.”

We walked along the edge of the river until we saw the boat.

It was moving. It should not be moving.

As we broke into a full sprint, the boat got fully caught up in the current and was carried away from us. The three of us shouted a combined forty-six expletives.

“It was secure!” said Henrietta. “It should’ve taken two of us to get it moving again! How did this happen?”

“Welcome to our life,” I said.

“Mr. Longshore was right about you!” said Henrietta. “You’re cursed! You’ve brought your dark curse here and it’s infected me as well!”

“To be fair, it’s not like we tied the boat down or anything.”

“It was secure! We both agreed that it was secure! At least one of you is cursed!”

“Fine,” I said. “We’re totally cursed.”

“I should walk away from you right now. I won’t, because it would surely mean your deaths, but I should.”

“So what’s our plan?” I asked. “Do you know how to build a raft?”

“Yes. But without a machete, rope, or competent help, it will take a long time and it won’t last on these rapids. We’ll have to walk until the river settles down. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and find that the boat has washed ashore.”

“What if nobody lives along the river?” Roger asked.

“Then we made the wrong decision and we’ll all die,” said Henrietta.

We decided to walk. Nobody was in a good mood, for obvious reasons, and we walked in a sullen silence for about half an hour. I assumed that we were all going to die, but I didn’t see any reason to spend our finals days, hours, or minutes talking about what a bummer it was.

“Do you hear that?” Roger asked.

We all stopped walking and listened.

“Crows?” Henrietta asked.

“No, like a motor.”

He was right. It did indeed sound like a motor. Were we saved? Was it actually possible that we were saved?

The motor was getting closer. It sounded very much like the motor that would drive a boat that would rescue us. I tried not to get too excited. This might all be a shared aural hallucination. We might still be completely screwed.

“I think that’s a boat,” said Henrietta.

I wanted to shush her, to tell her not to say it out loud, but I was a practical person who didn’t believe in jinxes.

“It’s definitely a boat,” said Roger.

A couple of minutes later, the motorboat came around the bend. It was about the same size as Henrietta’s boat. Three men were inside.

They pulled up right beside us and shut off the engine. One of the men tossed an anchor over the side. They were all white guys, and they had a very distinct air of menace about them. That didn’t include the fact that all three of them were holding pistols, including the guy who’d tossed the anchor and the driver of the boat, who should’ve had both hands on the wheel. They weren’t actually pointing the guns at us, but they were making no effort to hide them, even though we had to look like a pretty pathetic, harmless trio at the moment.

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve backed away and suggested that we find another ride. But these were not normal circumstances.

“Hi,” I said. “You can’t imagine how happy we are to see you!”

None of the men looked happy to see us.

“You’re not Percival Longshore,” the man who wasn’t the driver or the anchor-tosser said to me. He looked about thirty, with his black hair pulled back and a widow’s peak that made him look like Dracula without the smoldering sexuality.

“No,” I said.

“You’re Andrew Mayhem.”

“Yes.”

“Where’s Percival Longshore?”

“He’s not with us anymore.”

“Well, no shit. I can see that. Is he dead?”

It felt like a lie was the correct response here, but I honestly couldn’t tell if these gentlemen were friends of Percival’s or his enemies. If I said that Percival was still alive, how would I explain him not being here with us?

“Yeah,” I said.

“How’d it happen?”

“He...uh, he got...a village of cannibals captured us and ate him.”

The three men exchanged a look. “You didn’t stop by the skinned bodies, did you?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“Why would you do that? It was a clear warning. We sure as hell didn’t stop.”

“Mistakes were made.”

“Yeah, it sounds like it. We’ve been waiting for you to get here. Imagine our surprise when Ignacio’s corpse floated right past us. The cannibals didn’t get a chance to sink their teeth into him, huh?”

“No. May I ask who you guys are?”

“Well, since Percival and Ignacio are dead, and on our way here we saw your boat upside-down and stuck in some tree limbs, I’d say that we’re your saviors, don’t you think?”

The other two men on the boat chuckled.

Though there’s some editorializing, I strive to keep my retelling of these adventures as accurate as possible. You probably assumed that by all of the self-ineptitude that I describe in such great detail. But for the sake of clarity going forward, the next three lines of dialogue are completely made up.

“My name is Steve,” said the man with the widow’s peak.

“I’m Connor,” said the driver of the boat.

“And I’m Ernest,” said the man who’d thrown the anchor.

Okay. Back to truthful reporting.

Steve pointed his gun at me. “Get on the boat.”

“You didn’t have to threaten me,” I said. “We would’ve asked you for a ride. Why reveal that you’re assholes before it’s absolutely necessary?”

“I’m not a big fan of games. If you have no choice but to come with us, why pretend otherwise? Now are you going to get on the boat, or do I have to shoot the girl?”

“We’ll get on the boat,” I said.

Chapter Thirteen

The men weren’t considerate enough to bring the boat to shore, so we had to wade out into the river and climb aboard. They pulled up the anchor, started the motor again, and drove back down the river.

The rapids subsided less than a minute later. If we could’ve made it just a bit longer without Henrietta’s boat capsizing, we would’ve been perfectly fine. Ah, irony, you bitch.

We didn’t try to talk over the engine, and I doubted the men would offer any useful insight until we arrived at our destination anyway. I wasn’t good at calculating distance travelled while on a motorboat on the river, but five miles sounded about right when we got there. Connor pulled onto the riverside, where another man stood waiting for us.

This guy wasn’t holding a gun. He had a machete. It’s not fair to judge somebody on a first impression before you’ve exchanged a single word, but he looked most unpleasant indeed. He was a tall, fit-looking guy with very long, straight hair—black with streaks of gray. He wore sunglasses and had an unevenly trimmed goatee.

“Get out of the boat,” Steve told me. Again, I’m not sure why he thought he needed to give this order at gunpoint, but this time I didn’t say anything. Roger, Henrietta and I got out of the boat. The other men got out behind us, and dragged the boat up onto the shore.

The longhaired man pointed his machete at each of us in turn. “Okay, you’re Andrew Mayhem, and you’re Roger Tanglen, but I don’t know who you are.”

“Henrietta.”

“Hmmm. Why are they hanging out with a crone like you, Henrietta?”

“I was driving the boat.”

“Looks like you did a shit job.”

Henrietta didn’t respond.

“Where’s Percival?”

“Cannibals ate him,” said Steve.

“Good. I hope he was alive most of the time and that it hurt. Anyway, I’m Jasper. You all know what this is about, right? No gasps of shock? Nobody’s jaw is going to drop when I do the big reveal?”

“We have a pretty good idea,” I said.

“So where’s the map?”

“Ignacio had it.”

Jasper nodded. “Of course he did. That’s pretty disappointing. Did you know his corpse just floated right by us? I kid you not. Floated right on by where we’re standing at this very moment. Lucky thing Connor happened to be looking at the river when it happened. We hopped in the boat and went after it, but there was nothing in his pockets. I suppose that map is long gone by now.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“You don’t mind if we search you, do you? Just to make sure you’re not a goddamned liar.”

“Knock yourself out.”

Though I thought Henrietta might protest, she allowed Ernest to search her. Some blood was trickling down her lower lip, presumably from the tooth that got knocked out. I kept expecting her to spit in Ernest’s face, but she behaved herself. Jasper just stood there, watching silently as they searched us. Finally, each of the men shook their heads at him to indicate that we weren’t hiding the map, at least not where an external search could locate it.

Jasper closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He slowly exhaled. He repeated the process twice more, then he turned around and walked to the edge of the trees. He screamed “Shit!” and began to slam the machete against one of the larger trees, over and over again, shouting a different curse word with each strike. I was surprised he didn’t break the machete blade.

Steve, Connor, and Ernest watched without any particular reaction. Apparently they were used to this sort of outburst.

Jasper walked back over to us. He slammed the machete into the ground so that it stood up straight. “That didn’t make me feel any better. Trees don’t bleed. Who wants to make me feel better? Huh? Who here volunteers to make me feel better? One of you is willing to volunteer, right? Raise your hand.”

None of us raised our hands.

“Without the map, you guys are worthless to me. You understand that, right? Worthless. As in, having no value. You were supposed to sail right up here, and I was going to chop off Percival’s arms and legs. We’d all stand over him together and watch his torso bleed out. Bonding experience. Then we’d go get rich. I had it all planned out.”

Jasper was wearing a nondescript silver necklace, but when he tugged the front of it out from under his shirt, I saw that it was actually very descript. There were a couple of human fingers dangling from it.

“Like it?” Jasper asked me. “They aren’t yours, obviously. They aren’t even real. They look real, though. Amazing what you can do with plastic. I thought you’d get a kick out of it.” He looked over at Roger. “Sorry I couldn’t do the same for you. I’m not aware of you missing any body parts. Am I wrong about that? Do you have a dick?”

“I do indeed,” Roger informed him.

“Glad to hear it. And what about you?” he asked Henrietta. “I guess I should’ve had some charms made out of teeth, huh? Is it hard for you to eat? Do you pretty much just have to stick to soup and yogurt?”

“Bring your arm over here,” said Henrietta. “I’ll show you how well my teeth work.”

Jasper glared at her. “Was that a threat? Was that a fuckin’ threat?”

“Just keeping up the tone of the conversation.”

“Well, you got the tone wrong. You think it’s smart to threaten me?” He yanked the machete out of the dirt. “I could start chopping off parts of you right now. Or if I didn’t feel like it, I could ask one of my men to shoot you. Didn’t you think of that before you threatened me? Why would you say something like that when we’ve got guns and machetes? Are you stupid? Is that the problem? Do you not think before you speak? Do I come off as the kind of person who wouldn’t hurt a woman? A young woman, sure, I’d be nice to her. A beautiful woman. But you? Some nasty looking hag? You barely even count as a woman.”

I was beginning to believe that Jasper might be unstable.

“Bring my arm over there,” he muttered. “Yeah, I’ll bring my arm over there, to punch you in the face. Make you uglier than you already are. See what kind of man will want you when your face is all swollen and disfigured. Tear out your hair. What do you think of that, huh? I’ll bring my arm over there and tear out your hair.”

He stuck the machete back in the ground.

Walked away.

Walked back.

Pulled the machete out of the ground.

“Put your arm out,” he told Henrietta. He extended his arm that wasn’t holding the weapon. “Just like this. Put your arm out just like this. Do it.”

“Not a chance,” said Henrietta.

“Not a chance? Not a chance? Your arm or your head. How about that, huh? Now, are you so stupid that you’d have me lop off your head instead of your arm?”

“If you cut off my arm, I’d bleed to death. Might as well get it over quickly.”

“I guess you’ve got a point,” said Jasper. “It’s not like we’re going to take time out of our busy day to make a tourniquet for you. It’s your head, then. Think I can take it all the way off in one swing? How many chops do you think it would take if I used the dull side? Twenty? Thirty? Thirty-five?”

“If you’re doing it?” asked Henrietta. “I’d say about four hundred. Maybe four-fifty.”

“Get down on your knees,” Jasper told her. He spat when he talked.

“She’s sorry,” I said. “She didn’t mean it. Henrietta, tell him you’re sorry.”

“I have to die sometime,” said Henrietta. “When it happens, it’s not going to be while I’m cowering.”

“We’ve had a terrible couple of days,” I told Jasper. “None of us are in our right mind. I’m sure that if we all take a moment to calm down and focus, we can talk this out.”

“I don’t want to calm down. If I wanted to calm down, I would. I can calm down anytime I want.” Jasper pointed the machete blade at Henrietta. “Down on your knees. I’m not going to ask again.”

“I’m not going to let you kill her,” I said.

“Then I’ll kill you, and then her, and then maybe if Roger behaves I’ll let him live, or maybe I’ll see how well he can swim without arms and legs. Maybe I’ll go fishing and use him as a bobber.”

“You know that I got to study the map, right?” I asked.

Jasper lowered the machete. “I did not know that.”

“It had an actual ‘X marks the spot’ on it. We were planning to go after the treasure when you kidnapped us. I can take us to it, but you have to stop with all the death and dismemberment threats.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“Why shouldn’t you trust me? What are you going to do, spend months wandering around the rainforest hoping that you stumble upon it? You had a temper tantrum when you found out that the map was gone. I’m the next best thing.”

“Describe it,” said Jasper.

“I’m not going to tell you where the treasure is.”

“I’ve seen a picture of the map with most of it blocked out. It was on the eBay listing where that son of a bitch Longshore sniped me at the last second!”

“How much did the map go for?” Roger asked.

“Twenty-nine bucks. Nobody believed that it was real. I’m not sure Longshore even believed it was real; I think he may have just thought it would be a fun adventure for his dumb-ass YouTube channel.”

“I’m pretty sure he believed it was real,” I said.

“What makes you say that? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. He’s dead and in the bellies of cannibals. Wish I could’ve been there to see that. Did he scream?”

“Yes. A lot.”

“Good. So convince me that you’ve seen the map. Right now. Make me believe that inside your hollow little head there’s an image of the map bouncing around.”

“It looks like a little kid drew it. And there are lots of skulls.”

Jasper slammed the machete back into the ground and took a step back. His mouth dropped open in an expression of pure delight. Then he ran forward and grabbed me in a bear hug.

“Yes! That’s the map I saw! We’re back in business!”

He didn’t break the hug. I wasn’t sure what to do. Return it? I didn’t think I should be hugging the guy who kept threatening to kill us. I settled for patting him gently on the back.

When he finally stepped away from me, Jasper had a big goofy grin on his face. “All right,” he said. “I’m not going to kill anyone for now. You remember the map well enough to guide us to the spot?”

“Yes,” I said, not completely lying. I hadn’t studied the map as if I’d be quizzed on it later, but I could kind of picture the broad strokes in my mind, more or less. Enough to keep everybody alive for a while longer, anyway.

“That makes me super happy,” said Jasper. “When I saw that Percival wasn’t with you guys I thought, ‘Aw, crap, this whole trip was for nothing,’ but now I’m so excited I’m almost twitching.”

“I have two conditions,” I said.

“Oh, really? Conditions above and beyond me not slaughtering you and your friends?”

“Yes. First condition. Put that necklace back under your shirt. It freaks me out.”

Jasper’s finger necklace didn’t bother me at all. It was honestly a pretty lame prop. But if he thought there was some actual negotiation happening here instead of just me trying to keep from getting dismembered, he might be less likely to worry about me trying to escape.

“Fine,” said Jasper, pulling open the collar of his shirt and dropping the necklace inside. “What’s the second condition?”

“I want the same deal we had with Percival. We each get a ten percent cut.” At this point, I couldn’t even remember the percentage we’d agreed upon, but it didn’t matter. We didn’t know what the treasure was and it might not be possible to divide it out on the spot, in which case we’d have to trust that after Jasper sold it he’d pay us our share, which of course he’d never do, but hopefully he’d just say “Sure” and not try to work out the specific details.

“What if the treasure isn’t a bag of gold coins?” Jasper asked. “What if it’s a jewel? I’m not going to break off part of a jewel. You gonna trust me to mail you a check?”

“I’m going to trust that we can work it out.”

Jasper laughed. “Sure. Honor among thieves and shit like that. Okay, sure, if it’s practical, you, Roger, and the hag will each get a five percent cut.”

“Six.”

“I’m not going to do the math on a six percent cut.”

“Okay, five,” I said. “Do we have a deal?”

“We sure do.” Jasper extended his hand to me and I shook it. Then he said “C’mere, you!” and pulled me in for another great big hug.

I let it play out naturally. When we separated, Jasper had the kind of crazy eyes that would make me avoid somebody at a party.

“All right!” he shouted, even though everybody in the area was close enough to hear him if he spoke at a normal volume. “Let’s go get rich!”

Chapter Fourteen

“So, which way do we go?” asked Jasper.

I tried to picture the map in my mind. It was a fairly simple map, and I was pretty sure that I could more or less figure out the direction for at least the first part of it, the part that led to a key in some ruins. “That way,” I said, pointing to the forest behind him.

“And how far to the first stop?”

“I don’t know for sure that the map was to scale,” I admitted. “If it was, then...two miles, maybe? I’m not promising GPS accuracy here. I can get you to our final destination, but you’ve got to give me some wiggle room.”

“Wiggle room granted. But don’t screw with me.” He pointed to Roger and Henrietta and spoke to his men. “Tie their arms behind their backs and put the sacks over their heads.”

“Is that necessary?” I asked.

“Do you have a notarized statement saying they won’t try to get away? Is anybody here a registered notary? If not, then we can’t trust them, and we either tie them up and put sacks over their heads, or cut off their arms and gouge out their eyes. I honestly prefer the latter, but I figured you’d all learn toward the first choice.”

“It’s okay,” Henrietta told me. “They can tie me up. I won’t go feral.”

“Good thing we had our kidnapping supplies all ready,” said Jasper, as Ernest went to the boat to retrieve the rope and burlap sacks.

While Ernest and Connor tied Henrietta and Roger’s hands behind their backs, and Steve put the sacks over their heads, I thought hard about the map. Was two miles accurate? I honestly had no idea. I was going by gut instinct, but I could be way, way off. Yet if I told Jasper that I could be off by several miles, he’d go on a machete-hacking spree. I’d just have to hope that I was guessing correctly, and if I was wrong, that I could use my sparkling personality and persuasive skills to keep us alive.

I also had no idea how big our destination was. “Ruins” were hopefully expansive enough that you could be going slightly in the wrong direction and still run into them. If the ruins were small, even with the map in front of me, I might be screwed. In theory, since the guy who made the map intended to actually use it to find his way back to his treasure, it couldn’t require too much precision, right?

“You’re in luck,” Jasper told me.

“How so?”

“Since we don’t have a nice well-maintained trail, we’ll have to use machetes to clear our way forward. But I obviously can’t trust you with a machete, so you don’t have to do the work.”

“I don’t mind a little manual labor.”

“Ha. Funny. You can carry this backpack, though.”

I put on the backpack, which was way heavier than it looked. Maybe I’d have an opportunity to bash somebody in the face with it.

And so we began our crappy trek through the South American tropical rainforest in heat that made Florida seem like a stroll through an air-conditioned living room. Steve took the lead, hacking away at vegetation like a slasher movie villain, and I followed directly behind him. Jasper walked behind me, talking a lot less than I would’ve expected. Roger was guided by Ernest, and Henrietta was guided by Connor. We were making awful time.

Jasper’s phone wasn’t getting a signal, of course, but he’d brought an old fashioned compass, so after a moment to remember the training from my brief tenure in the Cub Scouts, I was using it to attempt to keep us moving in the right direction. Or at least the same direction. As soon as we started walking I’d realized just how little chance there was of us actually reaching the ruins based on my memory of the map. I needed to be constantly searching for a good moment to overpower the four men with machetes.

Henrietta tripped and fell. Connor pulled her back up. This was her third fall, now matching Roger’s number, and we hadn’t even been walking for fifteen minutes yet.

“This isn’t working,” said Connor.

“What’s not working?” Jasper asked.

“Having them walk blind. They keep tripping. It’s hard enough to walk through this mess without a bag on your head.”

“They can’t escape if they can’t see.”

“I get that,” said Connor, “but they can’t see the uneven ground, either. I almost tripped a couple of minutes ago and I can see fine. It’s just not an efficient way for us to be going about this.”

“Do you want to trade places with Steve?”

“Screw that,” said Steve, slashing across a branch with his machete.

“Steve won’t have any better luck than we are,” said Connor. “How about you try to walk fifty feet—no, no, twenty feet with one of these sacks over your head? See how well you do.”

“You’re supposed to be guiding them,” said Jasper.

“We are guiding them. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s really hard to walk through the jungle when you can’t see.”

“It’s not the jungle. It’s the rainforest.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it’s not. The ocean is not the same thing as the sea. Completely different ecosystem.”

“Well, if I were swimming with a sack over my head it wouldn’t matter if I was in an ocean or in a sea, because I couldn’t see if I was about to swim right into a reef!”

“Technically, it would matter,” said Jasper, “because reefs are only found in the ocean.”

“What? That’s not even close to being true.”

“Oh, you’re an expert on reefs but you don’t know the difference between a jungle and a rainforest?”

“He’s right, though,” said Ernest. “The ocean and the sea both have reefs.”

“We’ll look it up when we get back,” said Jasper. “All I’m saying is to quit whining about guiding a couple of prisoners. So what if they trip? We never promised they wouldn’t get banged up.”

“It’s costing us time,” said Connor. “We don’t know how long this whole treasure hunt is going to take. Why make it less efficient? Wouldn’t it be better to move quickly so we’re done before sundown? What if one of them twists their ankle and can’t walk? Are you going to carry them?”

“If they can see, they can run away.”

“Where are they gonna go?”

“Anywhere! We’re in the middle of the rainforest! They can go anywhere! If they make it ten feet away it’ll be hard to catch them again!”

“Let’s say one of them does escape. What are they gonna do? Hurry back to town and get a cop?”

“Why do you keep arguing with me?” asked Jasper.

“Because I’m right,” said Connor. “We made a bad decision in putting sacks over their heads and there’s no shame in admitting that we were wrong and correcting that. That’s what smart people do. They observe what’s happening around them and use that to inform their decisions. The sacks are costing us time. If one of them sprains their ankle, it’s going to cost us more time. If we’re out here after dark, we have to carry the flashlights, which means we’ve got a flashlight in one hand and the machete in the other, and it’ll be way easier for them to run away.”

“May I add something?” Roger asked.

“No,” said Jasper.

“Okay.”

“I get that you’re paying us and you’re the boss,” said Ernest. “I really do. Nobody is trying to take away your authority. I’m just saying that the current process isn’t working, and we should try a new approach. That’s all. It’s not a sign of weakness to slightly alter our plans.”

“Fine,” said Jasper. “Take off the sacks.”

“I don’t know that I agree with Connor,” said Ernest. “What if they escape and go back to the boat?”

“They don’t have the keys.”

“No, but they could push it into the water and float down the river.”

“Okay, but we’re weighing the very remote chance that one of them successfully escapes against the certainty that everything’s going to take longer. I feel like I would be more attentive to them trying to escape if I weren’t focused on trying to keep them from tripping.”

“I guess I agree with that,” said Ernest.

“For God’s sake, take off the sacks!” said Jasper. “I’m gonna have a nervous breakdown if I have to keep listening to this.”

Connor and Ernest removed the sacks from Roger and Henrietta’s heads. Connor unzipped my backpack and shoved the sacks inside.

“Thanks,” said Roger.

“Shut the hell up!” said Jasper. “We’re done discussing this!”

“I was just saying thanks. I wasn’t trying to extend the discussion.”

We all continued walking.

About a minute later, Henrietta tripped and fell.

“Are you kidding me?” Jasper asked.

“Sorry,” said Henrietta, as Connor pulled her back up. “It’s hard to keep my balance with my hands tied behind my back.”

“We’re not untying your hands,” said Jasper.

“I never imagined that you would. I just wanted to explain my clumsiness.”

“You think this is a great big joke, huh? How about this? The next time you fall, we put you out of your misery. I’ll shove a blade right through your neck. That goes for you too, Roger. You don’t get another warning. So you’d damn well better find your center of gravity right now, because I’m tired of this.”

“If you hurt either one of them, I’m done helping you,” I said.

“Is that so?” Jasper asked. “First of all, let me be very, very clear: I didn’t say that I was going to hurt them, I said that I was going to kill them. Killed. Dead. Gone. Second, I’m calling bullshit on the idea that you’d be done helping me. Because I might kill them quickly just to keep us on schedule, but if you withhold your assistance...well, I may take a page from the cannibal’s playbook.”

“Are you threatening to eat me?” I asked.

“No. I was threatening to skin you alive and tie you to a pole. I get the confusion—that’s on me. But we both know that you will continue to do what I say. I’m letting you pretend that you’re being all noble and doing it just for your friends, with nary a whisper of a thought of concern for your own well-being, but that’s not the case.”

“Do you want to test that theory?”

“Do you want me to test that theory?”

I did not want him to test that theory. And he was probably right. If they murdered Roger and Henrietta, I’d be filled with rage but I’d also be disinclined to be skinned alive in a show of solidarity.

I shook my head. “Let’s just keep going.”

“I asked you a question,” said Jasper.

“And I shook my head.”

“I’m not sure everybody saw that. Answer me out loud.”

“No, I do not want to test that theory.”

“You’re damn right you don’t. Now let’s keep going.”

We resumed the trek. I had every reason to believe that he’d make good on his threat, so I tried to walk slowly to decrease the chances of Roger or Henrietta stumbling. Unfortunately, I wasn’t setting the pace, and when Steve started to get too far ahead, Jasper smacked me on the back of the neck.

After about an hour, nobody had fallen—though Roger had a close call—but I was starting to get really nervous. We’d probably passed the ruins already. It was insane of me to have thought, with the amount of guesswork I’d done, that we’d just stumble upon them. Hell, maybe there weren’t ruins at all. This whole expedition was based on the idea that the map wasn’t a complete fake. I didn’t think Jasper would be particularly understanding if it turned out it was the map’s fault and not mine.

“How much longer?” asked Jasper.

“I’m not sure.”

“Give me a general idea.”

“I don’t know. This isn’t an exact science.”

“Of course it’s an exact science. It’s a treasure map. Are you just screwing around with me, Mayhem?”

“I told you from the very beginning that I needed some wiggle room.”

“Well, you’ve wiggled enough. This is starting to piss me off.”

“What did you think was going to happen? You knew there was uncertainty involved. I’m going by my memory of a badly drawn map. I want to find the treasure as much as you do, so maybe if you’d let me do my job instead of constantly threatening me, this would be going better.”

“I haven’t threatened you in an hour. But I’m threatening you now. Do you have a tooth thing?”

“Excuse me?”

“A tooth thing. A thing about teeth. Do you have one?”

“What?”

“Open your mouth.”

“No.”

“Open your mouth or I’ll slash open your belly. And then your slippery intestines will be all over, and your friends will slip and fall on them, and I’ll have to kill them. Open your mouth.”

I opened my mouth a little.

“Wider. Like you’re at the dentist.”

I reluctantly opened my mouth all the way.

Jasper shoved the tip of his machete blade into my mouth, then very slowly began to pull it out, dragging the metal across my lower front teeth. I think I whimpered, though I couldn’t hear it over the scraping.

Yeah, I had a tooth thing.

He pulled the blade all the way out of my mouth, cutting my lower lip in the process.

“You’re lucky I didn’t give it a twist,” he said. “Next time I will. Consider yourself warned. My patience is just about gone. Take me to the ruins.”

Chapter Fifteen

I needed a plan. Something brilliant.

I thought about some kind of thing where I somehow got the upper hand on Jasper, and then used him as a hostage to force the other three men to let us go free. But I couldn’t imagine that any of these guys would negotiate to save any of the others. My threat would be met with a disinterested grunt and then they’d probably kill Roger and/or Henrietta to make it clear that they didn’t actually give a crap.

So I needed a better plan than that.

Plans were not my forte. I mean, I’d come up with some decent ones in my time, one of which involved me getting knifed in the buttock on purpose, but usually my method consisted of me thinking “What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?” without arriving at a foolproof scheme.

I was really beginning to doubt that we’d find the ruins. Most likely we were getting further from them with every step. This wasn’t going to end with us finding the treasure and celebrating. This was either going to end with Roger, Henrietta and I becoming food for the insects of the rainforest, or us somehow escaping our captors.

“Hold up,” said Connor. “I’ve gotta take a leak.”

“Me too,” said Henrietta.

Jasper pointed to Connor. “Make it quick.” He pointed to Henrietta. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Connor made his way to a more private area.

“I’m gonna wee myself,” said Henrietta.

“And that’s my problem how?”

“It will make everybody uncomfortable. Your servants will be distracted because they know they’re the kind of monsters who would make a lady wet her pants.”

“We’re not his servants,” said Steve.

“You keep telling yourself that, honey.”

“You’re not going to turn a piss break to your advantage,” said Jasper. “You can hold it or you can go in your pants. I don’t care either way.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you care a little, you naughty boy.”

Connor cried out. The bushes rustled, and he emerged, covered with inch-long ants that he was frantically trying to brush off. Steve and Ernest both turned to look at him. Jasper, clearly sensing that this was the kind of moment where a guy like me might try to escape, held up his machete to make sure I knew he’d anticipated my thought process.

“Get ‘em off me! Get ‘em off me!” Connor shouted.

“Oh, dear, those are bullet ants,” said Henrietta. “It’s literally the most painful sting you can get from an insect.”

Connor screamed in pain.

Henrietta nodded. “Yep, that’s the right reaction.”

Ernest reached out to help brush them off.

“You won’t want to use your bare hands,” said Henrietta. “They’re called bullet ants because their sting feels like getting shot by a bullet.”

“It hurts!” Connor wailed.

Ernest used the dull edge of his machete to try to get them off. Connor slapped at them, almost blubbering now. I saw one crawl up onto his neck then go around to the back. I didn’t actually see it crawl down the back of his shirt but I like to think that it did.

I wasn’t timing the process, but it took wonderfully long for Ernest to declare Connor ant-free.

“Oh God, oh God, it just hurts so bad,” said Connor.

“Don’t worry,” said Henrietta. “The pain should go away in twelve to twenty-four hours.”

“Shut up!”

“What? I’m giving you useful information. You’re not going to die, and you’re not looking at an eternity of torment. I’d think you’d be happy to hear that.”

“It hurts!”

“Did one get on your willy? Oh, that would justify the shrieking. You’d better take it out and let everybody have a look.”

“I told you to shut up!”

“Don’t get mad at me. I’m not the one who stung you dozens of times.”

“Enough,” Jasper told her.

“I apologize. I should’ve warned him not to lean against a tree or whatever he did to get all of those bullet ants on him. I could’ve saved him a lot of needless suffering. So, just for everybody’s information, he’ll probably start shaking. That’s normal when you’ve got bullet ant venom coursing through your veins. He might get nauseous, so don’t put him on any amusement park rides until that clears up, and he might get a fever, so don’t put your hand on his forehead unless you don’t mind it getting warm. And he might puke. I don’t know how the rest of you feel about watching somebody vomit, but I don’t like it at all. I hope you didn’t have a colorful breakfast.”

Connor started to shout something at her, but instead he contorted his lips.

“Oh, crap,” said Henrietta. “Did one get in your mouth? That’s not good at all. That’s no fun. Yeah, you’ll want to spit it out before it stings your tongue.”

Connor spat a couple of times. Then he dug around his mouth with his index finger and thumb, finally pulling out a squashed ant and flicking it away.

“There could also be a speck of paralysis,” said Henrietta. “So you’ll want to be ready for that.”

“One more word and I’ll kill you,” said Jasper.

Henrietta nodded.

“Connor, we can leave you here and hope we find you on the way back, or you can keep walking with us. What do you want to do?”

Connor just wept.

“Hey! Listen to me! Do you want us to leave you here?”

Connor wiped his eyes with his swollen hands. “No. I’m coming.”

“Then let’s get moving. We can’t afford any more delays.”

We started walking again. I honestly felt kind of bad for the poor guy, and I’m not sure if that paints me in a positive or negative light. He whimpered a lot as we walked, but I couldn’t blame him.

“Hey, uh, Connor?” said Roger. “You’ve got a blue frog on your shoulder.”

Henrietta glanced at it. “That’s a poison dart frog.”

Connor grabbed the frog and flung it away.

“Okay,” said Henrietta, “that’s the opposite of what you should have done. They secrete the poison through their skin. I personally would not have touched the frog with my bare hand, but I’m a prisoner and I’m not really in a position to give you orders.”

“I told you to shut up,” said Jasper.

“He’s grabbing poison-secreting frogs with his bare hands! He’s a danger to himself. What did you want me to do, wait for him to lick it?”

“Lick it?” Roger asked.

“Oh, don’t pretend you’re not aware of licking hallucinogenic frogs.”

“I’m really not.”

“Shut the fuck up!” said Jasper. “The next time somebody talks without being asked a direct question, they die, no questions asked.” He seemed to immediately realize what a stupid sentence that was, but his expression dared us to call him out on it.

We once again resumed walking. It sucked that Jasper had been so attentive, because if I couldn’t use Connor being covered by stinging ants as a distraction, what could I use? Henrietta pissing him off so much that he made a crucial mistake? Seemed unlikely.

I kind of felt like my master plan was going to be to keep walking, praying that we’d find the ruins, and if Jasper finally reached his breaking point...well, we were going to have to immediately attack and hope we didn’t lose this incredibly lopsided battle. The odds were against us even if you left out Connor, but I didn’t think we’d have another choice.

Connor fell over.

By Jasper’s rules, it was time for him to get a machete blade to the neck, and I could tell that Henrietta desperately wanted to make a smartass comment to that effect. But she kept her mouth closed.

Connor got back up and we continued.

“Hold on,” he said. “I’ve gotta puke.”

“Puke while you walk,” said Jasper.

“I’m serious.”

As I looked back, Connor veered off our path, doubled over, and vomited. Then he fell to his knees and vomited again. And then he cried out in pain.

A snake slithered away from him. Wow. We were having amazingly poor luck with those things on this trip.

“What kind of snake was that?” Jasper asked.

“I don’t know,” said Ethan. “A big one.”

“Do you know?” Jasper asked Henrietta.

She nodded.

“What kind was it?”

“Pit viper.”

“So he’s basically dead, right?”

“I’d say so, yeah.”

Connor got back up. He had vomit on his knees. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “I can make it.”

“He can’t make it,” said Henrietta.

“You answered my direct question, so now you’re back to shutting up or I’ll kill you.” Jasper sighed. “It’s over for you, Connor. Do you want us to leave you here to die of the poison, or do you want us to put you out of your misery?”

“I want to come with you!”

“That wasn’t one of the choices.”

“I’m feeling a little sick, but I’ll be all right. I don’t even need time to rest. Let’s go.”

“You’re not even looking directly at me,” said Jasper. “How many copies of me are you seeing?”

“Three, but that doesn’t matter. I’m ready to go. Let’s do this.”

“Again, do you want us to leave you behind or do you want us to put you out of your misery?”

“I don’t want to be hacked up by machetes.”

“We’d use a gun.”

“Just...just leave me. I’ll catch up.”

“If we leave you, it’ll be a slow, agonizing death. Is that what you want?”

“No,” said Connor.

“You deserve to die with dignity. Who wants to do it? Ernest? Steve?”

Steve’s face lit up so much that I expected him to wave his hand in the air and go “Ooh! Ooh! Choose me! Choose me!” Instead, he simply said, “I’ll do it.”

He set down his machete and took a gun out of his backpack. As he did this, everybody stepped away from Connor, leaving him standing alone behind us. Again, this would have been another prime opportunity for an escape attempt, but Jasper seemed ready for it.

“Any final words?” Jasper asked.

Connor nodded. “Please don’t kill me.”

Steve shot him in the knee. Connor screamed. Before he could fall over, Steve shot him in the other knee. Connor dropped to the ground, landing on his knees, which was presumably unpleasant. He shrieked until Steve shot him in the forehead. He toppled over, dead.

“What the hell was that?” Jasper demanded.

“What?”

“Why’d you shoot him in the knees first?”

“I dunno. Felt like it.”

“You added to his suffering!” said Ernest.

“Oh boo hoo. He suffered for an extra three seconds. Cry me a river.” Steve didn’t even try to hide his grin.

“That was messed up,” said Jasper. “Don’t do anything like that again.”

“Okay. You’re the boss. I figure, his knees hurting for a moment doesn’t compare to what he’s going through in Hell.”

“Seriously, that was a psychotic thing to do. Keep those impulses in check.”

“I said okay.”

“I don’t like that the numbers are even,” said Ernest.

“Two of us have our hands tied behind our backs,” said Roger. For a second I was horrified by Roger breaking the “no speaking” rule, but Jasper seemed to have forgotten about it.

“Still, I think we should take out one of them. What do we need all three of them for?”

“Nah,” said Jasper. “What if we get chased by cannibals? Wouldn’t it be nice to shove them to the ground while we run away?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Anybody want to say a few words to pay their respects to Connor?”

Nobody did.

Jasper shrugged. “Then let’s get this show back on the road. And Andrew, if you don’t mind me being blunt, I don’t think you’re contributing much. In fact, I’m really starting to believe that you’re just jerking me around.”

“I’m not.”

“Uh-huh. Well, guess what? You’ve got half an hour to prove your worth. If we’re still wandering around by then, it’s execution time for you, and we’ll work something else out.”

“How does that benefit you?” I asked.

“It’s not your problem. Your problem is making sure we keep going in what you claim is the right direction. Your thirty minutes start now.”

So now I had my plan. In twenty-five minutes, if we hadn’t found the ruins, I’d attack the bad guys and hope it all worked out okay. Of course, I didn’t have anything to keep track of time, but I hadn’t seen Jasper start a timer, so he was probably just going by an estimate. Maybe twenty minutes was better. When I felt like twenty minutes had passed, I’d attack.

This was going to suck.

About ten minutes later, the area in front of us looked like it was clearing up. A couple of minutes after that, the path we were forging opened up to reveal a pond, the size of, I dunno, two basketball courts.

A circular stone wall protruded from the water, with maybe half of it above the surface. Other parts of the stone structure were within the circle. It was hard to tell what this had originally been, but if we were looking for ruins, these sure as hell seemed to be ruins!

I couldn’t believe it. I’d used the compass correctly, picked the right direction to walk, and (most likely) seriously lucked out.

That said, I hadn’t expected the ruins to be in the middle of a pond. That seemed like something that might have been nice to include on the map, though to be fair to the pirate Erik Bestard, the pond might not have been there over a century ago.

“Gentlemen,” I said, taking off the backpack and dropping it onto the ground. “I think we’ve arrived.”

Jasper grinned. “Admit it. You were terrified that we wouldn’t find it, weren’t you?”

“Sweating bullets.”

“Now what?”

“The map said ‘The key lies within the ruins.’ So, uh, I guess we look for a key.”

Everybody stared at the pond for a moment.

“That’s it?” asked Jasper. “That’s all we have to go on?”

“Yeah.”

Jasper turned to Ernest. “Apologize to me.”

“Why?”

“I said, apologize to me.”

“I’m sorry. What did I apologize for?”

“I don’t want to splash around in that nasty, parasite-filled water, do you? Who knows what lives in that muck. You wanted to kill one of them, but since we didn’t, we can send both Roger and Henrietta out there to look for the key. So you owe me an apology for suggesting that we kill one of them. It was a terrible idea. I’m glad I overruled you.”

“Ah, yeah, okay, I get what you’re saying.”

Jasper clapped his hands together. “Roger? Henrietta? This is your chance to be useful. Go find us a key.”

Chapter Sixteen

Roger's Side

Hey, it’s your buddy Roger Tanglen! I finally get to chime in on one of these narratives. I did get to contribute that other time, but that was a transcription of stuff I was saying into a tape recorder during the actual experience. This time I’ll have the opportunity to perfectly express myself, instead of relying on whatever babbling I was doing in real time when I thought I was doomed.

The fact that I’m writing this is kind of a spoiler that I survived, but it’s like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s tagline: “Who will survive and what will be left of them?” What will be left of me? Enough to type up this chapter, in theory, unless I’m using voice recognition technology.

I’d really like to devote some space to constructive criticism about how I was portrayed in prior retellings of our adventures (and, yes, this one as well) but we’re well past the halfway point and I don’t want to disrupt the momentum any more than I already have. So I’ll just do what I’m being paid an extremely unimpressive sum of money to do and pick up right where Andrew left off.

My first thought when Jasper said “Go find us a key,” was “Have you lost your effing mind?” The ruins were mostly underwater. Unless the key was just out there sitting on one of the chunks of stone, I didn’t see any way we could find it without scuba gear or a metal detector.

I didn’t express this thought, because Steve, guessing that we’d protest, had already pointed a gun at me. I didn’t want to get shot in the knees and the head like poor Connor (kudos to Andrew for having the good taste not to describe the way his brains blasted out of the back of his skull) so I just nodded.

“You’ve got to untie my hands first,” I said.

I honestly thought that Jasper was going to tell me to swim around a pond and find a tiny little key with my hands tied behind my back, but he wasn’t quite that impractical. Jasper untied my hands while Ernest untied Henrietta’s. Steve kept the gun pointed at us as if to say “Go on, try something, I dare you. I’m begging you. Give me a reason to shoot you. Any reason at all.”

Henrietta and I walked over to the edge of the pond.

I considered removing my shoes, then I remembered that I didn’t want my feet to get slashed apart by objects I couldn’t see in the murky water. Better to walk around in wet squishy shoes than to be bleeding from 20+ lacerations.

“That’s really all we have to go on?” I asked Andrew. “Find a key in the ruins?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Credit where it’s due: Andrew looked genuinely upset that I was being forced into this, and I’m positive that if Jasper weren’t keeping him alive because of his duties as the guy who knew what the map looked like, he would’ve gone into this nasty-ass pond in my place.

I glanced over at Henrietta. “What kind of horrible stuff do you think’s in that water?”

“I think it will be fine.”

“No, it won’t. You’ve been Ms. Worst Case Scenario this whole trip. Is there anything I should know?”

“I wouldn’t drink any of it. That’s about all I can say.”

“Great.”

“You go clockwise,” Henrietta said. “I’ll go counter-clockwise. We’ll meet on the other side. Don’t bother doing a thorough investigation on this pass. Just get a general idea of what we’ll be searching.”

“Sounds good.”

We stepped into the gross water and went our separate ways. The ruins certainly didn’t look like any tourists had been here in the past century. There was slime a-plenty. Truthfully, if there was a key, it had probably turned to rust and disintegrated long before we got here, but I’d worry about that when we were on our ninth hour of searching and hadn’t found anything yet.

Around the perimeter of the ruins, the water came up to my waist, and each step was difficult because my feet sunk into muck. I tried to search for anything unusual, like perhaps an etching of a key with the words “Look Here!” but I saw nothing to give any indication that I was on the right track.

Henrietta and I met on the far side. “Any luck?” she whispered.

“No. You?”

She shook her head and lowered her voice even more. “Sound carries over water, so talk very quietly, and don’t react. Make it look like we’re working out a searching strategy. I’ll point to different spots, and you nod, and you can also point to some spots and I’ll nod. Okay?”

“Are you going to suggest that we run?”

“No. You wouldn’t leave Andrew behind, I’m sure.”

“Correct. And I don’t know how we can fight back, unless we throw pond muck at them.”

“I’m not talking about a plan for escape right now,” said Henrietta. She glanced over at where Andrew and our captors stood. “Let’s keep moving and searching.”

We began to slowly search the parts of the perimeter that were above water.

“Do you remember when you were checking out that skinned body?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Very clearly.”

“Percival left the map in the boat.”

“Oh my God. Are you saying that you switched it with another map, and you have the real one?”

“What? No. I did consider speeding off with it and leaving you men behind. I hope you don’t hate me for that.”

“Nah, it’s cool.”

“Thank you.”

“I guess I probably would’ve hated you if you’d actually done it, but not for just thinking about it and ultimately making the right choice.”

“I couldn’t abandon your nice firm ass.”

“I appreciate that.”

“What I’m saying is that I looked over the map, and there was writing on the back. We’re not expected to just randomly search this entire pond. There was a clue.”

“Hey!” Jasper called out. “Enough with the chatter! Keep searching!”

Henrietta gave him the finger. “Bite me, psycho! He’s having a panic attack and I’m keeping him from completely losing it. If you’d like to take over, be my guest.”

“Maybe you should be more polite than that,” I suggested.

“They’re not going to kill your friend because they think he’s the only one who knows the map. And they’re not going to kill us because then they’d have to be in this horrible pond. So it’s perfectly safe to tell him to bite me. See? He hasn’t shot me yet. It’s fine.”

“What was the clue?” I asked.

“Search where the three frowns intersect.”

“Got it. We need to find three frowny faces.”

“If you find one, don’t make too big of a deal of it,” Henrietta told me. “If they find out that I know the map, Andrew will become much more expendable.”

We split up and resumed our search of the perimeter. This time I ran my hands over the slime-coated ruins beneath the water, trying to find something that was carved in the shape of a face. I hoped the faces still existed. These ruins were in pretty bad shape. Yes, yes, I know that’s what ruins are, by definition—what I mean is that they could have deteriorated since the clue was written. If even one of the frowns was gone, we were boned.

And I had to hope that “frowns” meant literal frowns on a face. I wasn’t in the mood to try to figure out multi-layered riddles right now.

So much slime and gook. But at least it distracted me from thoughts of parasites and caiman.

There was really nothing on the perimeter of these ruins to hint that I might find carvings anywhere. It was pretty straightforward stone wall stuff. We might not find anything until we swam into the deeper water.

Wait. What was this?

I tried to wipe off the underwater slime.

The stone protruded in what might have been some sort of decoration. Or it could be hardened slime. Even if I had goggles, the water was far too murky to see anything, so I’d have to go by feel.

Was this a nose? It might have been a nose.

Above the nose, there was an indention that would be in the correct place for a right eye, and just a couple of inches over, there was one that could have been a left eye.

No ears. But as I slid my fingers down...maybe a mouth?

If it was a mouth, it was frowning. I didn’t blame it for its negative emotion.

Okay, if this was indeed what we were looking for, we were now in much better shape than we were before I sensuously ran my fingers over a slime-ridden frown. And if we were looking for an intersection between three of them, the faces would have to be on the inside surface of the perimeter, not the outside, so that would cut our searching time in half.

Awesome. I walked the perimeter, running my hand along the stone, resisting the urge to shout “Victory!” at Henrietta. Now that I had an idea of what I was looking for, I could move more quickly, so I caught up to her.

I subtly pointed to the spot where I found the face. “There’s one over there. It’s a carving of a face that sticks out maybe an inch.”

Henrietta quietly thanked me and we searched the rest of the inside of the perimeter. Only the one face, as far as we could tell. Which meant that now we got to experience the fun of going deeper into the pond.

Things I did not particularly want to do: Go deeper into the pond.

Things I did not have a choice about doing: Go deeper into the pond.

Henrietta and I gave each other a look of shared misery, and then we walked toward the center of the pond. Hopes that maybe the pond stayed shallow went away quickly. We weren’t even close to the next visible part of the ruins before the water was over our heads and we had to swim.

I hope I have made it clear that this was not a beautiful, relaxing pond. Maybe I should’ve been using the word “pit.” I had my lips tightly closed to ensure that nothing passed through them while I swam, and I assumed that a plethora of parasites were circling every body cavity. If there wasn’t some ancient creature lurking in the depths to wreak vengeance upon those who awakened it from its slumber, I’d have been very surprised.

Henrietta spat out a mouthful of water as she swam, so I figured that was goodbye for her.

Finally, we reached an exposed piece of stone. I assumed that this had to have been some sort of structure at one time, but now it really just seemed to be random large pieces, as if a stone building had been knocked out by a wrecking ball.

“Holy shit,” said Henrietta. “Look.”

It was, to my immense relief, a good “Holy shit.” Not too far from us we could see a face carved into a large protruding piece of stone. While I would call it more of a scowl than a frown, this was obviously what we were looking for.

So we’d found two of the three. Not bad at all, if I do say so myself, and Andrew never said I couldn’t offer up self-praise when I was writing this.

We began to search.

And continued to search.

And searched some more.

And more. And more. And more.

I’m not going to say that it was hours, but it felt like hours. Every once in a while Jasper would scream at us, and Henrietta would give him a rude status update, asking him how easy it would be for him to swim around here searching for a key. To his credit, Jasper seemed to accept that finding a single key in the middle of a pond was a ridiculously difficult task. I doubted he’d be quite as understanding if he knew that we were searching for a face, which was much larger than a key.

“I feel like we’ve covered every inch of surface area,” I said. “Do you think we could just use the other two faces as the clue?”

“You need three points to triangulate,” said Henrietta. “That’s why they named it after a triangle.”

“Right, but we could at least narrow down the search area.”

“You’re welcome to try. I’m going to keep looking for the third frown.”

“What the hell is going on out there?” Jasper shouted for the eighth or ninth time.

“If you’re so impatient, send your men out here to help!” Henrietta shouted back.

The men discussed something. Ernest looked like he was protesting. And then he began to wade into the pond.

“I’m glad he’s sending the less psychotic one,” said Henrietta. “Don’t tell him about the face.”

Ernest swam out to us, but he clearly was not an accomplished swimmer, so Henrietta and I continued to search while we waited for him to join us. Finally he wrapped both of his arms around a chunk of the ruins and tried to catch his breath.

“You didn’t swallow any of the water, did you?” asked Henrietta.

“Shut up.”

“If you did, you’ll want a stomach transplant as soon as possible, before the lifeform that’s growing inside your tummy tries to find the fastest way out.”

Ernest didn’t say anything else. This would’ve been a good opportunity to try to do a hostage exchange, except that having him swim out here made it even more clear that “Jasper doesn’t care about the safety of his men” was accurate.

“Where would you like to start searching?” I asked.

“Just let me catch my breath!” said Ernest.

“I apologize. I thought you’d already done that.”

“Screw you.”

“I wasn’t being insulting,” I insisted, even though I had indeed been getting in a dig at how long it was taking him to recover from the swim.

Ernest let go of the stone and swam into the direct center of the pond.

Then he went completely underwater.

Henrietta and I stared at the spot for a moment.

“I’m not sure he’s coming back up,” she said.

“Should we do something?” I asked.

“It would mean one less bad guy to deal with.”

“But Jasper might take it out on Andrew.”

“Yeah,” said Henrietta, “I suppose you should probably try to save him.”

“You’re the better swimmer.”

“I’m less emotionally invested in the outcome.”

Since Ernest was currently drowning, this wasn’t the kind of conversation where we could go back and forth for a few minutes, debating the pros and cons of which one of us should attempt the rescue. I swam out to where he’d gone under.

Something grabbed my foot.

I had a split second where I was deeply concerned that this might not have been Ernest grabbing me, but then my rational mind returned.

And then Ernest pulled me under the water with him.

Chapter Seventeen

Thanks, Roger, for sharing what happened while I was stuck standing around with Jasper and Steve. I’d suspected that Roger and Henrietta were working out some kind of scheme, but I obviously never guessed that she’d studied the map and had more information than I did. Good for her.

Roger cried out as he went beneath the surface. It happened quickly, like he’d been pulled under.

I immediately hurried into the pond.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jasper demanded.

“Saving my friend!”

“Get back here!”

“I’m not going to let him die!” I was semi-sure they wouldn’t shoot me for rushing off to try to rescue him. If I’d taken a second or two to review the situation before acting, I might have been less optimistic about my chances of not getting shot, but that second or two could be crucial and I was already moving.

Once I was out past my knees, I dove into the foul water and swam.

Nobody tried to shoot me.

When I made it out to the center of the pond, I couldn’t see anybody. Then Henrietta emerged, spat out some water, and said “I couldn’t get him!”

I went under. I didn’t bother to open my eyes, but I swam around, hoping to collide with him. No luck. I touched the bottom, which was maybe twelve feet down, and swam until I had to come up for air. Roger had gone under long before I got there. If I couldn’t hold my breath any more, what shape was he in? I had to assume the worst.

When I opened my eyes, there he was, swimming toward one of the exposed parts of the ruins, pulling an unmoving Ernest behind him.

He made it to a large enough section of rock that he could pull Ernest out of the water onto it. Henrietta was already there to help. As I swam over, she called out “He’s not breathing!” to Jasper and Steve, then began to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

I patted Roger on the shoulder to show him that I was glad that he hadn’t drowned.

She blew into Ernest’s mouth twice, without pinching his nose closed. Then she began to do chest compressions, pushing in the incorrect spot.

“You’re doing it wrong,” I said.

“I know.”

“Oh.”

“But it looks like I’m trying, right?”

“From where they’re standing, I’m sure it does.”

“You’ll notice that I’m resisting the urge to beat the shit out of him.”

She blew into his mouth twice more. Since his mouth was covered with pond goo, I had to admire her commitment to the illusion of trying to save him.

“You’re not going to give me any crap about him being a human being who deserves a chance, are you?” she asked, returning to the chest compressions.

“Nope.” I wiped some slime away from his wrist and checked for a pulse. Nothing. I checked his neck as well. No pulse that I could find. “I think he’s dead.”

“Does that make me a necrophile for having kissed him?”

“It definitely doesn’t.”

“Pity.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Roger. “Try to Weekend at Bernie’s him?”

“I think we should try to lure one of them out here,” I said. “Steve won’t swim with his gun, so it’ll be three against one. We can take him.”

“Why wouldn’t he swim with his gun?” Henrietta asked.

“It wouldn’t be safe to shoot.”

“Sure it would. It’s not going to blow up in his hand. He could shoot it underwater if he wanted.”

“Okay, then what if the three of us go after him while he’s swimming? He can’t shoot accurately while the water’s over his head. We’ll wait for him to get close, then attack.”

“What the hell is happening out there?” Jasper called out.

“I think he’s going to be okay!” I shouted. “But we’ll need your help getting him back to shore!”

Jasper and Steve looked at each other.

“There are three of you,” said Jasper. “You can get him back.”

“It’s hard to swim in this muck,” I told him. “The more people helping, the more chance we have of saving his life!”

“Get him back here or we start shooting,” Jasper warned us. His reluctance to cooperate with our plan didn’t surprise me.

“This may be our only chance to escape,” said Henrietta. “Are you boys prepared to make a run for it?”

“I am,” I said. Roger nodded.

“We might get shot at while we swim,” said Henrietta. “They have more distance to cover, but they’ll be running faster around the pond than we can swim through it, so we’ll need to move as fast as we possibly can, and accept that one or more of us might take a bullet in the process. Do we all accept that risk?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Roger said.

“If we make it out of the pond alive, it then becomes a chase through the forest. They’ll be less tired than we are. They’ll also have machetes to help clear a path. So the advantage is unquestionably theirs, and if they get close enough to shoot us in the back, it’s all over. I think we can fairly say that at least one of us is going to die in the process of making this escape. Maybe two of us. Are we okay with that?”

“I’m not,” I said.

“Nope,” Roger said.

“Then what should we do?” Henrietta asked. “This may be our only chance. We know perfectly well that if we do somehow find the treasure, they’ll shoot all three of us.”

“I should clarify,” I said. “I’m not okay with one or two of us dying, but I’m also not as pessimistic about our chances if we make a swim for it and then a run for it. I think we can make it.”

“I agree,” said Roger.

“Then when should we go?” Henrietta asked.

“Before they suspect anything.”

Ernest opened his eyes.

Water trickled from the sides of his mouth.

Then he grabbed Henrietta by the throat.

She slammed his head down upon a jagged chunk of the stone. His arm flopped back down.

“They may suspect something now,” she said.

We began to vigorously swim toward the opposite shore. It wasn’t that far. We could beat them there—I was sure of it.

A gunshot rang out and some pond water splashed into my face.

“Don’t shoot them, dipshit!” I heard Jasper shout.

I was suddenly less sure that we could beat them there. This had been a reckless idea. Yes, it was a fair assumption that if we found the treasure we’d get in maybe six seconds of celebration before the executions began, but still, there had to be a better escape option than this.

All three of us were doing a good job swimming, though. No slackers in the group. I had no idea how close Jasper and Steve were, since I couldn’t hear them over our splashing and didn’t think it was an intelligent idea to pause to check up on their progress.

We reached the outer perimeter of the ruins. The water wasn’t over our heads anymore, but we kept swimming to maintain our speed.

We might make it.

It would be so freaking awesome if we weren’t captives any more. I would be oh-so very happy about that. It would totally make my day.

Roger was the first one out of the pond. Henrietta followed. I stood up and hurried out after them.

Another gunshot.

Henrietta cried out and fell to the ground, clutching her leg.

Roger and I both stopped. We couldn’t just leave her. Not only would it be a dick move after she’d crept into the village to keep us from getting devoured, but we’d get shot as well, since Jasper and Steve were basically right here now.

Well, shit.

Henrietta had been shot in the upper left thigh. I couldn’t see how bad the wound was, but there was blood trickling between her fingers.

“That was really stupid,” said Jasper. “Monumentally stupid. Astronomically stupid.” He looked over at Steve. “Shoot that bitch in the head so we don’t have to listen to her whimpering.”

Steve grinned, then walked over to Henrietta and pointed his gun at her face. “Is this scary?” he asked. “How does it feel to know you’ve got three seconds left to live? It’s okay if you want to cry.”

“Don’t taunt her, just shoot her,” said Jasper.

“She’s seen the back of the map,” said Roger.

Henrietta nodded. “It’s true. There are clues.”

“Really?” asked Jasper. “Are you sure that’s not just a big ol’ heaping pile of steaming bullshit?”

“We weren’t just looking for a key,” said Henrietta, speaking through clenched teeth. “There was a clue on the back. It was about faces.”

“And this clue was…?” asked Jasper.

“Faces. That’s all you get. I’ll point you to where one of them is so you can see for yourself.”

“So what you’re telling me is that there were important clues on the back of the treasure map, and you’re the only one here who knows what they say. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We won’t finish killing you then. But that does make Roger redundant.”

“No,” I said. “Henrietta can’t walk by herself. Unless one of you wants to carry her, we need Roger to help her.”

“Why can’t you do it?” asked Jasper.

“I have to navigate. I can’t keep us going in the right direction if I’m distracted.”

Jasper shook his head. “No. No, no, no. I am so sick of this. I’m sick of the lying and the schemes and the ‘Oh, you can’t kill me because you need me for this!’ and the ‘Oh, you can’t kill me because you need me for that!’ over and over! I can’t take it anymore! I’m done! I’m done with all of you!”

He slashed his machete in the air three times in a “Z” pattern, like he was Zorro combined with Jason Voorhees.

“You hear me? Done! I’m not playing any more of your games! I can’t take any more of this! I’ll find the goddamn treasure myself if I have to crawl through every inch of this continent on my hands and knees!”

He swung the machete a few more times, then let out a scream of rage.

“You’re dead,” he said, pointing the machete at Henrietta. “Dead. All three of you are dead. I don’t need you. I’m done. It’s over. Fuck you.”

He hoisted the machete over his head, then stomped his way over to Henrietta.

Steve shot him in the gut.

Jasper dropped the machete. He touched his stomach and then looked at his bloody finger. “What the shit?” he asked.

“Sorry,” said Steve. “But I’m not letting you turn this whole trip into a waste of time.”

Jasper’s face contorted with anger. He stumbled toward Steve, arms extended as if to strangle him. Then he seemed to decide that Steve was too dangerous of a foe, but he wanted to attack somebody, so he abruptly changed direction and went after me.

He tackled me, and we both fell into the pond.

He started punching me while screaming obscenities. The punches hurt, but weren’t landing hard enough to actually injure me. I had to admire his ability to maintain this level of energy right after being gut-shot, but I wanted him to knock it off.

I punched him in the face. He let out a shriek that would have shattered every piece of glass for a one-mile radius, had any glass been around. I’d had a lot of encounters with a lot of homicidal maniacs, but I’d never seen anybody with quite the level of “crazy eyes” that Jasper had right now.

I really didn’t need to beat him this fight. I just needed to get away from him. Presumably he’d bleed out on his own.

He scooped up a handful of pond muck and tried to shove it into my mouth. “Eat it!” he screamed. “Eat it! Choke on it!”

I quickly glanced over at the shore. Henrietta was still on the ground. Roger stood there helplessly as Steve pointed a gun to his head. Steve was not actually laughing but he did seem to be entertained by the fight that was happening in front of him.

I tried to scoot away from Jasper but he kept pushing the slimy mud against my mouth. Wasn’t he in agony? Wasn’t getting shot in the gut supposed to be some of the worst pain you could experience?

Jasper screamed something at me that I couldn’t understand as he continued trying to force-feed me the muck. I grabbed a handful myself and splattered it into his face. I had more success, since his mouth was open. He coughed and spat it out as I resumed my efforts to get the hell away from the gentleman who was having a complete mental breakdown.

He grabbed my foot and yanked me back over to him. Then he slammed me down against the bottom of the pond. It wasn’t deep here, but since I was lying flat on my back it was now over my head.

I tried to get free of him.

Couldn’t.

Adrenaline must have been surging through his body. No matter how much I flailed with my arms and legs, I couldn’t break his grip. And I hadn’t taken a nice deep breath before I went under.

I began to panic.

Chapter Eighteen

I was not going to die in a foot and a half of pond water. I was perfectly willing to concede that I might die today, but I rejected the idea of it happening right now, under these particular circumstances. Screw that.

I punched him in the stomach. The very same stomach that currently had a bullet lodged somewhere inside of it.

His scream was muffled because I was underwater, which meant that instead of it being twice the volume of a standard human scream, it sounded normal.

I managed to pull away and get my head above water. I gasped for breath.

Jasper had his arms crossed over his belly. I’d hoped to see intestines rapidly spooling out, but thus far his internal organs seemed to be properly contained. Either way, as I stood up, I figured this had to be the end of our fight.

He charged at me again.

Had this son of a bitch smuggled some PCP on the trip with him? How the hell was he not in the fetal position right now?

He moved way too fast. Tackled me again. We splashed into the water once more, and then the crazy bastard bit me on the shoulder. I mean hard, like he was trying to tear out a chunk of flesh and emulate the villagers. He didn’t actually succeed because I punched him in the ear, which hopefully burst his eardrum, and he released his grip.

Jasper shouted at me again, but by now he was just speaking in tongues. His eyes indicated an even greater detachment from reality. If I lived through this, I honestly was going to have nightmares about this guy.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me. I really should have been able to yank my arm away, or even pull him in the direction of my choosing, but instead he successfully dragged me through the water for about twenty feet. I would’ve found it embarrassing if I weren’t so concerned about getting killed.

He pulled me to the perimeter of the ruins. (If he’d dragged me straight there, it would’ve been less than twenty feet, but he didn’t take the most efficient route.) I kept trying to tug my arm away but he had the grip of a cyborg.

I was pretty sure that his intention was to bash my skull against the jagged stone until such time that I was deceased.

Well, you know what? Two of us could play at the game of going berserk. I let out my own incoherent battle cry, and used my free arm to slam his arm against the stone.

I couldn’t hear the bone break over the sound of my own voice, but it definitely happened.

Jasper’s reaction was not subdued.

He spat in my face and then, like an angry toddler, began to stomp toward the shore.

I really didn’t want to go after him. I wanted him to bleed out from his stomach wound and leave me alone. The downside was that even if he did just keel over, we still had the Steve problem to contend with.

Hopefully Steve would just shoot him again.

Steve kept his gun pointed at Roger as Jasper got closer, but he looked ready to turn the weapon on his boss if the need arose. Henrietta was still on the ground, and I couldn’t tell from here how bad the blood loss was.

Jasper walked out of the pond, still stomping. He went over to his machete, picked it up, then turned around and stormed right back into the pond. His broken arm flopped around with each step.

I tried to find a loose piece of rock to fling at him, but couldn’t find one, so instead I scooped up a handful of pond muck and threw it at him. I missed. I mean, I really missed. Steve let out a snort of laughter.

I grabbed some more and threw it. This time a little bit of it got on Jasper, but it did not harm him or slow him down.

He began to slash at the air again.

Seriously, why the hell were his intestines still contained within his torso?

I didn’t want to be chased around the pond by a deranged coked-up (seemingly) machete-wielding madman, so I decided that I was going to have to face this threat directly. I grabbed one more handful of the muck and then charged at him.

For this crappy plan to succeed, all I needed to do was not get my head chopped off before I could wrench the machete out of his grip. If he chopped off my head, I’d have to call the plan an unequivocal failure, but in a scenario where I had the machete and he was empty-handed, I’d feel much better about my chances of surviving the next couple of minutes.

Jasper swung the machete at me and missed.

This was because he swung it when I was still a couple of feet out of range.

He swung it again and struck me in the side. This wouldn’t have chopped me in half, but the blade might have gone in a few inches if he hadn’t struck me with the dull edge. My big advantage in this battle was that Jasper was not thinking very clearly.

I screamed and flailed my arms around as if I’d been delivered a mortal wound, hoping he wouldn’t notice the lack of spurting blood. Jasper let out a gleeful cackle that made him sound like a wicked witch.

I lunged forward and grabbed his broken arm. I gave it a not-so-gentle-twist.

Jasper stopped cackling.

I yanked the machete out of his hand, then stepped away from him.

Surely he wouldn’t come after me.

He came after me.

I swung the machete, lopping off his right hand. It dropped into the pond with a gentle splash. His stump began to do what stumps do when they’re brand new.

Jasper just stared at it. He held it up for closer inspection, not seeming to notice that blood was squirting on his face.

“Give it back,” he told me.

“What?”

“My hand.”

“I didn’t take it. It dropped into the pond.”

“Well, help me find it!” Jasper crouched down and began to sift through the water with both his attached hand and the stump. Since his attached hand was, as you’ll recall, attached to a broken arm, he wasn’t sifting in a very efficient manner. I saw his hand floating next to him but didn’t call attention to it.

I walked away from him.

“Where are you going?” Jasper asked. “You have to help me find my hand!” He held up the stump. “It’s going to get infected! I need antibiotics! This is the worst day ever!” He wobbled a bit but didn’t fall over.

“I don’t know what to do here,” I told Steve. “The fight seems to be over, so...what, are we just gonna watch him bleed out?”

“We might as well,” said Steve.

Jasper stood up and cupped his hand over the stump to quell the flow of blood. “I’m feeling kind of queasy,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Steve told him. “You can go to sleep.”

“My stomach hurts.” Jasper noticed his severed hand, made a few failed efforts to grab it, then successfully picked it up by the thumb. He tried to wipe it off on his filthy shirt.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t just shoot him?” I asked Steve.

“Nah.”

“I think he’s going to try to stick his hand back on, and then he’s going to be confused when it doesn’t stay there, and it’s going to be really sad to watch.”

Jasper toppled over. He made a halfhearted attempt to get back up, then went under the surface of the water. A moment later he floated back up, facedown.

“I guess he’s gone now,” I said.

“Looks like it.”

“I’m not completely sure where everything stands,” I admitted. “You’re the one who shot him, but I assume that doesn’t mean we’re all partners now.”

“Nope,” said Steve. He hadn’t stopped pointing his gun at Roger during our conversation. “You’re all still captives. I just couldn’t let that jackass cost us the treasure. Basically, everything is staying the same, except that Jasper is dead and Henrietta is in no shape to help with the search. Tell me about these faces. If you lie to me or withhold information, I’ll know it, and then I’ll decide you’re not useful, and then I’ll shoot you somewhere that will eventually kill you.”

“I don’t know anything about the faces,” I said. “I never saw the back of the map.”

“The clue said to find three frowns,” said Henrietta. “There’s more to it, but somebody has to help me tie off my leg first.”

“Fine,” said Steve.

I glanced over at Jasper’s body, which was floating away, and then I walked out of the pond.

“There’s a first aid kit in the backpack,” Steve said. “It wasn’t really meant for gunshot wounds, but you should be able to patch her up a little.”

He stepped back, keeping the gun pointed at us but giving us enough room to work. We didn’t have anything to use to dig out the bullet and wouldn’t have tried that anyway, since the inevitable result of Roger and I trying to be surgeons would be plenty of arterial spurting. But we were able to use an antiseptic wipe, and then use rope and some sticks to put together a quick tourniquet. Henrietta wasn’t going to be able to walk on her own, but she wasn’t going to bleed to death. At least not right away.

“Thank you,” Henrietta said.

“The clue…?” Steve prompted.

“The key is in the intersection between the three frowns. Roger and I found two of them. I’m not going to be swimming around in the pond anymore, but Roger can show Andrew exactly what we’re looking for. You’re welcome to join them. It would make the search go faster.”

“I don’t think I’ll be joining them,” said Steve. “Andrew? Roger? Get to work.”

Roger and I returned to the pond. By now Jasper had floated almost to the middle. I wished I didn’t have to keep seeing his corpse, but I also didn’t want to accidentally step on it if it sank to the bottom. A lose-lose situation.

Roger led me to one of the faces so that I knew exactly what kind of carving I was looking for. And then we continued the search.

We searched. And searched. And searched.

And searched.

It would be fun to report back that there was a “Eureka!” moment where we suddenly discovered that we’d overlooked a detail that should have been obvious from the beginning. Or that the third face was hidden in a fiendishly clever way—maybe we discovered a loose piece of stone that slid away, revealing a secret compartment. Or that the ruins, seen from above, were in the pattern of a frowny face.

Instead, no, after several hours of searching it turned out that the third face was just a lot smaller than the others, and it was four feet below the surface, and we had to shove a lot of muck out of the way to find it.

Still, we did find it! Woo-hoo!

But now it was getting dark. Steve was enough of a sweetheart to let Roger and I leave the pond so that we could sit on the ground and rest. I was thoroughly exhausted and could barely feel my arms and legs.

“It’s too dangerous to walk through the forest in the dark,” said Steve. “And we all need some sleep. I wish I could trust you not to run away or try to subdue me while I’m asleep, but I can’t, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to tie you all up.”

“Is that really necessary?” I asked. “This morning I woke up with a boa constrictor wrapped around me. I’d like to be able to defend myself.”

“Do you swear you won’t try to escape?” Steve asked.

“I swear.”

“And did you understand that I was completely joking, and that I would never be so rock-stupid as to trust that I wouldn’t wake up with my own gun in my face?”

“I understood that,” I said. “Figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”

“It did hurt, because it offended me. I have a more negative opinion of you now.”

“Sorry.”

“Apology not accepted. Now shut up so I can tie you all up and go to sleep.”

Chapter Nineteen

This is where I’m tempted to write something like, “I still got more sleep than I do at home! Ha ha ha!” but I would be lying for comedic effect. If Helen had given birth to octuplets, and then the doctor said, “Whoa, whoa, we ain’t done yet!” and then she gave birth to another batch of octuplets, I’d still get better sleep at home than I did tied up on the ground next to the pond. Before Steve gave me a gentle kiss goodnight (I’m lying about the kiss for comedic effect) he sprayed me with enough insect repellent to deter Mothra, but I still kept waking up with bugs crawling all over me. By the time the sun rose, I was covered with enough bites that if you wanted to play connect the dots, you could pretty much draw anything your imagination could conjure.

When I sat up, I saw that Jasper’s grotesquely bloated body had drifted onto the shore, and something had been eating away at him.

Steve yawned, got up, and picked up his gun. He untied me, and then Roger. We were allowed to walk a short distance away to pee, as long as we didn’t leave his line of sight. When we returned, Henrietta had the same desperate need, so I was allowed to untie her and help her, which was not a highlight of my life.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked her.

“Do you mean am I going to live, or are you asking if I’m going to thrive?”

“Pretty much just live.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I should be okay. I can’t feel my leg anymore, so that’s good.”

“I don’t think it is good, actually.”

“It gets me out of swimming in the pond again. Have fun with that.”

Now that we’d found the three frowns, we had to calculate where invisible lines drawn from each of them would intersect. This would’ve been pretty easy if we had a drone, but alas we did not. But with me swimming around between the faces and Roger and Henrietta trying to help from the shore, we came up with what we were pretty sure was the intersection between them.

The water was far over my head, so this was going to be a treat.

I swam down to the bottom and dug around in the glop at the bottom until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. The nearest ruins were ten feet away, so I was going to have to swim over to them every time I needed a rest, which would make it a challenge to keep track of the exact spot of the intersection, which we didn’t know for sure was the exact spot anyway.

I dove down a few times, with no luck.

Roger took over. No luck for him, either.

We kept trading back and forth. We didn’t know if this was just a tiny loose key, or a key in a treasure chest, and we didn’t know if it was buried or if the pirate had simply tossed it into the pond. We didn’t know if somebody else had found it long ago. We didn’t know if a fish ate it. We didn’t know if it had disintegrated into rust particles. We didn’t know if the whole treasure map was complete bullshit.

I had no idea when we’d give up. I suspected that the answer was that Roger and I would be expected to continue searching until the effort literally killed us. I didn’t try to verify this with Steve, because I honestly didn’t want to know the answer.

I’m not sure how many dives I’d done—somewhere in the high double digits—before I dug out a few handfuls of sludge and my fingers scraped against something hard. I swam back to the surface, took a breath, and returned to the bottom. Couldn’t find it again. Swam back up and repeated the process. There it was.

I dug around it some more. It seemed to be a rectangle, about the size of a laptop computer, although that’s not how the pirate Erik Bestard would have described it. I tried to tug it free. Couldn’t. Kept trying until I had to catch my breath again.

I was getting too tired to safely dive down there again, but I really did not want to lose the spot. I waved Roger over. “Down here!” I said, before going under.

I tugged on whatever it was. It wouldn’t come loose. This wasn’t a good time to utter an expletive so I simply thought one instead.

Roger joined me down there, accidentally punching me in the head as he dove. I grabbed his hand and guided it to the rectangle, and together we tried to pull it free.

It popped free.

We swam to the surface, then over to the closest chunk of ruins. As I lifted my prize out of the water, I saw that it was a metal box...and that the bottom had come off when we pulled it out of the bottom of the pond, so there was nothing inside.

I didn’t weep with frustration, but I might have if Steve hadn’t been watching from the shore.

Roger swam back to where we’d found the box and went under. I took a minute to catch my breath, then swam out to join him.

“Got it!” said Roger, holding up a key.

It was a large silver key, in that old-fashioned style like something that would unlock a door in a haunted mansion. We swam back to the ruins. Though the key didn’t look shiny-new, the metal box had protected it pretty damn well for something from the nineteenth century.

I was suddenly very, very excited. Because throughout this journey, I’d always been fairly dubious about the actual existence of the treasure. I was here because the base pay was generous, and while a treasure would’ve been nice, I’d never quite allowed myself to believe that I’d come home with anything.

But if the key was real, the treasure had to be real, right? That didn’t mean it was still there or that we’d be able to find it even if it was, but the map was legitimate! We weren’t wasting our time!

I’m not saying that I suddenly had gold fever or anything like that, but my entire perspective on the situation changed. We could do this. We could get rich.

Well, of course there was the issue that Steve was going to murder us after we found it. That was a pretty big stumbling block.

He had the gun, but thanks to the grisly and extended deaths of Jasper, Connor, and Ernest, we outnumbered him three to one. Even if you didn’t count Henrietta, we outnumbered him two to one, but I thought we could count Henrietta even with her injured leg.

There had to be a way to get rid of that guy.

Roger and I swam back to shore. “We found it,” I said, holding up the key.

“About damn time,” said Steve. Then he grinned. “No, I’m kidding. That’s great. You guys are awesome and I appreciate all of your hard work.” I couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or sarcastic. I honestly thought he might have been sincere, but I didn’t want to give him too much credit since he was praising us at gunpoint.

He snatched the key out of my hand.

“You can rest for ten minutes,” he said.

“I need to look at Henrietta’s leg and change the bandages.”

Steve shrugged. “That’s like resting. The ten minutes starts now.”

I crouched down next to Henrietta and gently removed the bandage. The wound looked okay. I mean, it was a bloody hole in her leg from a bullet, so it didn’t look appealing, but considering that it could’ve been an infected, pus-leaking, gangrenous nightmare, I took solace in the fact that I didn’t think we’d need to amputate it with a machete.

“Play along,” I whispered to her.

She nodded.

“Jesus Christ!” I shouted, recoiling from her leg.

“What?” Steve asked.

“Didn’t you see it?”

“See what? I wasn’t looking.”

“Something protruded from her wound! It was like an insect leg!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about an insect leg protruding from her bullet wound! What did you think I was talking about?”

Steve walked over and peered at her leg. “I don’t see anything.”

“Then you’re lucky,” I informed him. “I’m not saying that she’s transforming into an insect creature. I’m saying that some kind of insect dug its way into the wound while we were asleep.”

Steve crouched down and peered closer.

“Does it hurt?” I asked Henrietta.

“Agony,” she said. “It feels like something is burrowing around under there.”

“Oh, God.” I scooted away and tried to make myself throw up. Alas, I do not have the ability to regurgitate on cue, but I hoped my dry heaving sounded convincing.

“Do we need to dig it out?” asked Steve.

“We should just wait,” I said. “It looks like it was trying to get out on its own.”

Steve tapped the wound with his index finger. Henrietta winced.

“The clock is still ticking,” Steve said, standing up and stepping away.

“Roger, can you clean out the wound for me?” I asked. “If that spiny leg pops out again I’ll lose it, I swear.”

“Yeah, sure.”

I’m not sure if Roger knew we were making up the whole insect leg thing, but I gave him a very subtle look to encourage him to keep up the ruse. The nice thing about having been friends for so long is that it took very little facial work to send the message “Pretend that she has a scary insect squirming inside of her bullet wound.” That level of communication doesn’t happen overnight.

Roger tore open the antiseptic wipe, then slapped his hand over his mouth to muffle a scream. “Fuck!” he said as he scrambled away from her. “I thought it was a small insect leg! How did she not feel that thing digging its way in there?”

Steve crouched down by Henrietta again. “I guess we’ll just have to get a knife and—”

Henrietta kneed him in the face.

Got him right in the chin. Something small and pink fell onto Henrietta’s leg. He’d bitten off the end of his tongue.

As he cried out in pain, both Roger and I tackled him, trying to get his gun. I focused on punching him in the face as hard as I could while Roger focused on trying to wrench the gun out of his hand. He wasn’t going to let it go without a vicious fight.

As we struggled, I noticed that the gun was now pointed at me.

Then it was pointed at Steve. Much better.

Then me. Shit.

Then Steve.

Then it went off.

There was a lot of blood and other assorted components as the bullet struck Steve in the forehead. His face was frozen in an expression of confusion, as if he were trying to figure out why it was so difficult to think about anything, and then he flopped forward on top of Henrietta.

“Please get him off me,” she said.

Roger and I rolled Steve’s corpse off of her. Then we rolled him another ten feet away because it was not a pleasant sight.

“You had no choice,” Henrietta said. “He would’ve killed us all. You did the right thing.”

“Oh, we’re not having a moral quandary,” I assured her. “We’re very glad he’s dead.”

“Okay, good.”

“So now what?” Roger asked. “The bad guys are all dead. I guess we can just head back to their boat and get back to civilization.”

“Yep,” I said.

“Is that what you want to do?”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“I think we should behave responsibly.”

“I agree. We’re finally safe.”

“So let’s head back to the boat,” said Roger.

“That’s definitely what we should do.”

“And we will.”

“Yes.” I was silent for a moment. “But, in terms of keeping our options open, we should at least discuss the fact that we’re holding a silver key to a treasure that could be worth twenty million dollars.”

“With only three of us left to claim shares,” said Henrietta.

“It’s definitely something to discuss,” said Roger. “I mean, we found the key, so why shouldn’t we be able to find the treasure? The hard part is pretty much over, right?”

“Seems that way,” I said. “I don’t want to be dumb about this, but if we’re this close, I feel like we should at least take a stroll in that general direction.”

“That’s reasonable,” said Roger. “But, y’know, we should also maybe think about getting Henrietta to a doctor.”

Henrietta shook her head. “I’ll be fine. If I lose my leg, seven million dollars will buy me a bionic one. I’d slow you down way too much, so I’m willing to stay behind. I believe that you aren’t the kind of men who would go off to get the treasure and then just leave me here to die.”

“No, we’d come back to get you,” I said. “I’ll even give you a piggyback ride to the boat.”

“I can’t promise I won’t hump your back.”

“Roger can carry you, then.”

“Even better.”

“Let’s do this.”

Chapter Twenty

“Was there another clue on the back of the map?” I asked Henrietta.

“No. Sorry.”

“Well, that’s good, right? Doesn’t that mean it should be easier to find? If somebody feels like they need to give you a hint to accomplish one task but not the other, the one without the hint is probably less difficult.”

“Maybe,” said Henrietta. “Or he wanted the treasure to be harder to find than the key.”

“That’s also possible,” I admitted. “But I like my optimistic line of reasoning better, so we’re going to stick with that for now.”

We went through the contents of the backpacks. Lots of bottled water. Insect repellent. Pistols. Extra ammunition. (Note that the backpack I was personally carrying did not have pistols or extra ammunition in it. That would have been silly of them.) Very small shovels for digging up buried treasure. Cell phones with passcodes on them, though if we could get to a signal, we might be able to still make an emergency call with them. We gave Henrietta some of the water and all of the bandages and antiseptic wipes, plus one of the guns, just in case.

Then I completed the unpleasant task of searching Steve’s corpse for the keys to the boat. Fortunately, I picked the right pocket on the first try.

Henrietta and I compared our memories of the map and agreed upon the direction to travel. West, according to the compass. After she wished us luck and made an even lewder than usual comment about Roger, we went off to seek our fortune.

I took the lead, enjoying that the machete was being used against vegetation instead of flesh.

“This is a lot nicer when nobody is threatening to kill us,” I noted.

“I know, right? I don’t have to worry that if I trip and fall I’ll get shot in the head.”

“I’m not saying that this is something I’d do for fun. I’m not going to take the triplets out to the South American rainforest for vacation when they get old enough. In fact, it still kind of sucks. But the level of suck has gone way, way down.”

“It also helps that if we find the treasure, we’ll get to keep it, instead of being killed immediately afterward,” said Roger.

“Oh, yeah, that’s a definite bonus.”

“What do you think the treasure is?”

“I think we’ll learn that the real treasure is the friends we made along the way.”

“If that’s carved on a big block of gold, I’m good with it.”

“I hope it’s something that’s easy to carry,” I said. “A twenty million dollar ring would be nice.”

“Yeah, I didn’t even think about the possibility that it might be a great big statue. If this all works out, what are you going to do with the money?”

“Five college educations. If there’s anything left over, a large order of Buffalo wings. What about you?”

Roger thought about it for a moment. “Buy a small house. Pay off my car. Give a lot to charity. Get the ad-free versions of some of my phone apps.”

“We’re very responsible.”

“Can you imagine how we would’ve spent the money in college?”

“We’d both be broke and at least one of us would be dead.”

We walked without talking for quite a while. We were making pretty good time, considering that we were mentally and physically exhausted and had to keep alternating who was on machete duty.

We were assuming that this would lead us to something large like the pond. I couldn’t see any way a pirate could’ve used that map to get back to his treasure if it was just “Look by this tree.” Thanks to our successful acquisition of the key, I now also had a better concept of the scale of the map, and so I’d at least have some idea of when we’d gone too far.

The rainforest was peaceful.

Almost too peaceful.

I didn’t say, “The rainforest is peaceful...almost too peaceful” out loud, but apparently thinking it was enough. Some bushes rustled and I caught a glimpse of something with a yellowish coat of fur and many black spots.

Probably my imagination.

I caught another glimpse of it. It was about thirty feet away.

Probably not my imagination. It was out here in its natural habitat, not under my child’s bed.

“Don’t panic,” I told Roger, looking back at him.

Roger’s eyes went wide with panic. “Did you see what that was?”

“I think it was a leopard.”

As I know now, it was not a leopard, but instead of calling attention to our ignorance and possibly confusing you, I’m going to correctly refer to it as a jaguar.

A jaguar is not as large as a lion or a tiger, but in this particular moment I was not thinking, “Whew, I’m so relieved that it’s not a lion or a tiger!” And in fact, a jaguar’s bite is more powerful than that of a lion or a tiger. Their bite force is fifteen hundred pounds per square inch, which essentially means that if one bit your head, it could break open your skull. Granted, if a lion or a tiger is gnawing on your head, you’re still pretty well screwed even if it can’t get to your tender brain, but would you rather be gnawed upon by a giant cat that can chomp through your skull, or one that can’t? Though it falls short of the biting force of the mighty hippopotamus, it’s more than a grizzly bear, and nobody wants to get bit by a grizzly.

So a jaguar, which is an apex predator, was wandering unnervingly close to Roger and I, who are not apex predators.

“It may be time to get the guns out of the backpack,” I said.

Roger took off his backpack and unzipped it. More bushes rustled, on the other side of us, and I realized that we had a jaguar on each side. Two jaguars, for those keeping count. A combined total of three thousand pounds of bite force per square inch, which is not how it works, but nevertheless we were currently in a position where jaguars could chomp through both of our skulls simultaneously.

“Please be faster about getting out the guns,” I said.

Jaguars are solitary beasts that rarely hang out with each other unless it’s time to mate. So we were up against horny jaguars. Or at least jaguars that were seeking out a post-fornication snack.

If you’re up on your jaguar facts, you may know that they rarely attack humans. That is true. What is also true is that Roger and I did not know this particular jaguar fact (and, as noted, we thought they were leopards). Even if we had, let’s say hypothetically that you were wandering around in the rainforest and you had a jaguar on each side of you. You know from Wikipedia that a jaguar is only likely to attack you if it’s cornered or wounded. How much better do you truly feel in this particular moment? Do you just stroll merrily on your way, confident that these jaguars are representative of their species and will behave the way jaguars are supposed to behave, or do you say “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! I’m surrounded by jaguars!”?

We went with the latter, and I feel no shame for that.

One of the jaguars growled. I don’t speak jaguar, but he certainly wasn’t growling to assure me that jaguars rarely attack humans.

Roger finally got the gun out of the backpack. He fired into the air.

The jaguars immediately ran away.

So, yes, our jaguar problem was quickly and easily resolved, but still, I don’t care how many homicidal psychopaths you’ve battled, being surrounded by jaguars is a scary experience.

We resumed walking. The rainforest didn’t feel quite as peaceful anymore.

We were sweating like crazy and had to stop a couple of times to blast ourselves with more insect repellent. I didn’t want to start ripping at my bug bites with a fork, but the itching ranged from “a mild nagging discomfort” to “one step from succumbing to the dark pit of madness.”

After quite a while, I started to feel like we might have missed our destination.

After a while longer, I was reasonably confident that, yes, we’d missed it.

The problem, as noted before, was that this was a crudely drawn map and we couldn’t trust any kind of “one inch equals 1.37 miles” consistency. So we had to go with our gut instinct about what a nineteenth century pirate might have intended.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked Roger.

“I guess we need to backtrack in a slightly different direction. Though that does seem to increase the risk that we’ll get lost forever and ever.”

“It definitely does.”

“And it would suck if the treasure is actually just fifty yards ahead of us.”

“Should we walk another fifty yards, just to be sure?” I asked.

“No, that would be stupid.”

“Let’s go south for five minutes. Then we’ll go east until we’ve either found it or we’re pretty sure we missed it again.”

So that’s what we did. And soon we were pretty sure we’d missed it again.

We tried again, adjusting our direction once more.

Then again.

I was trying very hard to ensure that, despite the changes in direction, I had a very strong sense for how to avoid getting lost forever and ever. I was extremely sure that I could get us back to the pond. But me being extremely sure that I could get us back didn’t necessarily mean that I could actually get us back. And we needed to consider that at some point we were going to have to cut our losses and give up.

“When do we bail on this?” I asked.

“Are you ready to quit?”

“No. I just think we should have a general plan. I don’t want to sleep out here again.”

“Me either,” said Roger. “And we don’t know how Henrietta is doing. Is there any reason we shouldn’t just go back to the boat, get to civilization, rest up for a day or two, then come back?”

“Maybe we should have done that in the first place.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m kind of surprised that isn’t something we discussed when we were back at the pond. It makes a lot of sense.”

“Well, sometimes we aren’t very smart.”

“Let’s give it one more hour. If we haven’t found anything by then, we’ll give up for now.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

It would be more dramatic to say that exactly fifty-nine minutes later we emerged into a clearing, but it was more like half an hour. It was a large clearing, not quite the size of the pond.

A cemetery.

There were maybe twenty-five tombstones, spaced pretty far apart.

“This...this may be the right spot,” I said.

“And graverobbing’s totally in our wheelhouse,” said Roger. “You even had that one time where you had to figure out which grave to dig up. This could not be better suited to our skill set.”

I was so excited about our discovery that it took a few moments for it to sink in that there were twenty-five tombstones and no clue about which one might mark the spot of a buried treasure. There may have been some sort of clue on the map that would suddenly make sense now, like if we held it upside down or something, but we also had to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we’d have to dig up twenty-five graves.

“Let’s take a stroll through the tombstones,” I said. “See if anything sticks out.”

There were no words carved on the tombstones, just crude etchings of faces.

And then…

We both stopped and stared at one of the tombstones. The carving was of a skull and crossbones.

“It’s too early to freak out,” I said. “Let’s stay dark and cynical for now.”

“Yes,” said Roger. “I’m sure there’s no treasure buried under there. This is going to be a total waste of time. I’d turn around right now if I had anywhere else to be at the moment.”

The shovels were more like garden trowels but we had two of them, so we started digging.

“May I ask something genuinely cynical, instead of fake cynical?” Roger asked.

“Sure.”

“Does it concern you that the cemetery is so nicely maintained? I’m not saying that somebody comes out here every week with a lawnmower and weed whacker, but unless it’s a cursed place where nothing grows, I don’t think it’s an abandoned graveyard.”

“That’s a very good point,” I said. “Let’s dig faster.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Roger and I dug frantically, as one does when one is trying to uncover an extremely valuable pirate’s treasure. We originally found ourselves digging a coffin-shaped hole, because old habits die hard, but we caught our error and began digging a treasure-chest sized hole instead.

Some bushes rustled.

Crap. Please not another pair of jaguars. Or the same jaguars, here to seek vengeance for our cruel act of hurting their ears with the sound of gunfire.

A man stepped into the cemetery. He was painted completely white.

He was followed by many more of the cannibal villagers. At least thirty of them.

Roger and I climbed out of the hole. It was more like we stepped out of it—it wasn’t a very deep hole yet.

I held up my hands to show that I was not dangerous, in case the villagers were concerned that their thirty-to-two advantage was insufficient. I slowly stepped to the left, toward the backpack with the guns.

The villagers continued to walk toward us. They looked unhappy.

Slow and subtle wasn’t working. I quickly moved for the backpack, grabbed the guns, tossed one to Roger, then pointed my gun at the villagers.

“Stay back!” I shouted. “Keep away from us! You’ll eventually win, but we’ll take some of you with us! We’re not here to hurt anybody!”

The villagers did stop moving, but I did not get the sense that they were going to turn around and march back the way they came.

“Do any of you speak English?” I asked. “Can we talk this out?”

A tall, thin man stepped ahead of the others. “I speak some English.”

“Great! Perfect!”

“Lower your weapon,” he told me.

Roger and I lowered, but did not drop, our guns. The man walked over to us, then pointed at the hole. “Why? There is a word for this. Let me think.” He concentrated for a moment. “Deviant.”

“No, no,” I said. “We’re not deviants.”

“Digging up a dead body. Deviant behavior. What will you do with the bones?”

“It’s not a dead body. It’s buried treasure.”

“Bones are buried treasure? Deviant.”

“No bones. Riches.”

“There is a word for this. Let me think.” The man frowned. “I remember: horseshit.”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Sacred place. We’ve buried our leader that you killed. We return to honor her.”

“So you know a shortcut from your village to here?”

“Efficient route, yes.”

“I’m very sorry about your leader,” I said. “To be fair, she was trying to have us killed. I wish our friend hadn’t shot her, but she had no choice. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sure she was a kind leader.”

The man shook his head. “She was terrible. Made us eat human flesh. Disgusting.”

“I’m glad it wasn’t your idea.”

“And she was the only woman. Long lines. Deviant.”

“So you’re not mad at us for killing her?” I asked.

“Very angry. Filled with rage. You must die.”

“Like I said before, if you all charge at us, you’ll win in the end but we’ll take a few of you with us. Why not just let us leave?”

“Not my choice. Until we choose a new leader, it’s anarchy.”

I had no idea what to do. I really didn’t want Roger and I to start shooting villagers left and right. I’m generally cool with killing madmen who are actively trying to do me harm, but opening fire on a group of people felt very distasteful. Maybe a shot in the air would work on them the way it had the jaguars.

“Can’t you at least try to talk to them?” I asked.

“What’s the treasure?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“We don’t know.”

The man looked very confused. “What if it’s disappointing?”

“It probably will be. My friend and I have terrible luck.”

“You’re cursed?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“I think you’re lying. I think you’re digging up bones. You keep digging, and if there’s treasure underneath the ground, I’ll ask the others not to kill you.”

“Great, sure, that sounds fair,” I said. I turned to Roger. “Okay, break’s over. Let’s get back to work.”

As the man spoke to the other villagers, Roger and I returned to the hole and resumed our digging. “You get that the stakes now are way higher, right?” he asked.

“I sure do.”

“This might not be the right tombstone.”

“I’m very much aware of that.”

So the fun excitement that we might be digging up a buried treasure was replaced by the stomach-churning fear that we might not be digging up a buried treasure. I wondered if maybe we could dig really, really slowly and hope that they got bored and left.

We decided not to do that, in case it pissed them off.

My shovel struck something.

Probably a rock. Or a skull. Or very hard dirt.

I quickly dug around it.

It was not a rock. Or a skull. Or hard dirt. It was a...holy freaking crap it was a treasure chest!

Oh, sure, it was a fairly small one. Maybe the size of a lunchbox. But it looked like the image that’s in your mind when you picture a treasure chest, unless you have some deranged mental image of a treasure chest, in which case just try to picture what other people think of when they envision a treasure chest.

I lifted it up. It was quite heavy.

Roger’s jaw had literally dropped. Not to the ground, just the standard amount that a human jaw drops when its owner is completely gobsmacked.

I placed the treasure chest on the edge of the hole. Roger and I stepped out.

“What’s the word for when you’re really shocked?” asked the man.

“There are lots of them,” I told him.

“Bamboozled?”

“Nope. Just go with surprised.”

“I am very surprised.”

“So are we. Anyway, you’ve now seen that we weren’t trying to steal anybody’s bones for, I don’t know, whatever kind of kink might be involved with that. Can we go?” Yes, I was mostly playing stupid, but it was possible that a group of villagers who lived out in the rainforest and eschewed contact with outsiders might have no real use for a treasure chest.

“Open it,” the man told me.

I took the silver key out of my pocket, inserted it into the lock, and turned it.

Nothing happened.

“Turn the key more effectively,” the man said.

I tried again. Still nothing.

“It’s a really old key, and it’s a really old chest,” I said. “Yeah, the wood is in fantastic shape for something that was buried for so long—they must have treated it with something—but it makes sense that the lock will be a bit rusty. No big deal.”

“Let me see the key,” said the man.

I handed it to him. He looked over the key, then bit down upon it. He nodded with satisfaction.

“I like this key,” he said. “It’s a fair trade for your lives. If you didn’t have the guns, we’d kill you and take everything, but since you do, we’ll settle for the silver key. Agreement?”

“Yes. That’s more than fair. Thank you.”

The man held the key up to the others and made a dramatic announcement. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but his tone and gestures seemed to indicate that he was telling them that being the holder of the silver key made him their new leader.

Roger scooped up the backpack while I picked up the chest. The villagers didn’t pay much attention to us as we quickly walked past them and out of the cemetery.

When we were a safe distance away, we put the chest into the backpack.

“Should we try to smash it open against a tree?” Roger asked.

“Nah,” I said. “The chest itself might be worth something.”

“Good point.”

“We can pick the lock later. We might open it and find out that it’s full of rocks and a picture of the pirate Erik Bestard giving us the finger. I’d rather imagine that we’ve struck it rich for a while longer.”

“I like that idea,” said Roger. “For now, we’re filthy stinking rich.”

A few minutes later, it began to pour. On one hand, this felt like a purposeful attempt by Mother Nature to spoil our good mood. On the other hand, we were literally in the rainforest. We were overdue.

And screw you, Mother Nature. Our good mood didn’t diminish. We even whistled.

Imagining that the chest was full of gold made the weight of the backpack easier to bear, but we still kept trading back and forth, to make sure we didn’t suffer spinal damage. The pouring rain slowed down our pace, but I watched the compass carefully and as far as I knew we were still headed toward the pond. I wondered if it was raining there. If so, Henrietta was probably in a pretty foul mood, but I was confident that the treasure chest would brighten her spirits.

Though we were moving more slowly, we saved time by not fumbling around and missing our destination. We reached the pond on the first try.

It was still pouring. Henrietta sat there, looking absolutely miserable, as if she’d been shot in the leg, was left alone for several hours not knowing if she was going to die out here, and was now sitting in the rain.

Roger and I had discussed the possibility of honoring Ignacio’s sense of humor by telling Henrietta that we hadn’t been able to find the treasure, and then saying that we were just kidding, but we decided against it.

“I can’t believe it,” said Henrietta as we walked over to her. “I assumed you’d died hours ago.”

“Nope.” I took off the backpack and unzipped it. “And guess what we found?” I took out the chest.

Henrietta’ eyes went wide. “What was inside?”

I returned the chest to the backpack. “We don’t know. The cannibals stole the key.”

“Well, break it open against a rock.”

“The chest might be valuable.”

“Ah, good point.”

“We’ll pick the lock. I don’t want to do it now in case the treasure is something that shouldn’t get wet.”

“Like a Mogwai,” said Roger.

“So whose back am I riding on?” Henrietta asked.

Roger and I did a quick game of rock, paper, and scissors. As always, Roger cheated by making his selection an instant later than the rules indicated, so he had the backpack and I had Henrietta. She was a fairly small woman, but unless it’s Tinkerbell, trying to walk through the rainforest while giving somebody a piggyback ride is quite a challenge. Her comments ranged from playful to disturbing. That said, she would’ve been justified in constantly screaming “My leg! My leg!”, so if I had to listen to the occasional flattering but haunting remark, I’d live.

The exhaustion and the rain were starting to outweigh the giddiness of being potentially rich. And it was starting to get dark, so we’d have to decide if we wanted to sleep in the rainforest again or trust that flashlights would be enough to keep us from slipping and breaking our ankles.

And then the rain stopped.

And I heard the sound of a river.

With a sudden renewal of energy, we walked toward the river and emerged from the rainforest. It wasn’t exactly where we’d entered, but we could see Jasper’s motorboat a few hundred yards to the north.

We’d made it.

“Why are you crying?” Henrietta asked me.

“Because I’m relieved.”

“Well, knock it off. It’s making me uncomfortable.”

We walked to the boat, almost delirious with happiness. But I had to remain focused, because it would suck to make it this far only to lose my balance and splatter my face on the ground. Roger took off the backpack and set it inside the boat, while Henrietta slowly limped around to inspect the vehicle.

“Please tell me you have the starter key,” she said.

“I sure do.” I took it out of my pocket and gave it to her.

Henrietta climbed into the boat. “Then give this thing a push and let’s be on our way.”

Roger and I shoved the boat off the shore. I wasn’t even worried about caiman or parasites anymore. Our problems were—

“Shit,” said Henrietta.

“What?” I asked.

“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Hopefully it’s not a big deal. Hold on a second.” She unzipped the backpack. By the time I thought “Hey, it might not be good that she’s digging around in the backpack,” she’d already pointed a gun at us.

“Step away from the boat,” she said.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked.

“All the way back onto the shore. Both of you.”

“Can’t you at least drive us back to the city, and then steal the treasure?”

Henrietta shook her head. “Sorry.”

“C’mon, Henrietta,” I said. “I thought we were friends. The treasure divided by three is way more than we thought we were going to get.”

“Speak for yourself. Hell, if I’d known the treasure could be carried by one person, I might have let the cannibals eat you. Now get the fuck back on shore or I’ll shoot you in the neck.”

Roger and I stepped away from the boat. “You’re really going to leave us here to die?” I asked.

“Not necessarily. You’re resourceful. Build a raft. See what lies down the river.”

Henrietta moved to the driver’s seat, started the engine, and sped off, heading back the way we came.

Roger and I just stood there in a state of shock until she’d vanished from sight.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Roger and I spent admirably little time pouting. I’m not saying we didn’t pout at all, I’m just saying that we could have easily pouted a lot more. Finally, accepting our bad fortune, we decided upon our next step.

We really only had three options. The first was to build a raft, and then float down the river and see what happened. But it was fair to say that whatever happened would be very bad.

The second was to walk up the river. We’d probably perish long before we made it back to civilization, but a kindly boater might find us before we died.

The third was to return to the village and ask if the cannibals would let us live with them. This was mentioned in jest, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say there wasn’t a germ of sincerity to the discussion.

We went with the second option.

“So what do you think was in the chest?” Roger asked as we began the long, long, long, long walk. To keep ourselves from getting lost, we were walking in the river, right next to the shore, which we’d continue to do until we reached the rapids.

“Animal feces,” I said.

“Maybe it’s booby trapped. Maybe when she pops open the lid a thousand daggers will fly into her face.”

“That would be nice.”

“Maybe the lock simply can’t be opened without the key, no matter how hard you try. Maybe she’ll descend into madness from the effort.”

“Or maybe she’ll donate the twenty million dollars to a good cause,” I said. “Something to help children or animals or something. Maybe she’ll be so wracked with guilt that she’ll start a charitable foundation in our name. Or, even better, she’ll get mugged and somebody will steal it from her, but that person will donate the twenty million dollars to a good cause, so she doesn’t get the credit for the donation.”

“Or maybe every time she closes her eyes she’ll see our faces. Forever haunted. She’ll never know another moment of peace. Maybe she’ll wake up in the middle of the night screaming, until finally she can’t stand it anymore so she flings herself out of the sixth floor window of her mansion, and she lands on...I don’t know, a unicorn statue or something.”

“What we should probably do is save our energy by not talking.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” said Roger. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’re going to die out here.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I dunno. Naivete.”

We decided to keep walking in the dark. Neither of us would’ve been able to sleep.

Roger and I walked and walked.

We were like zombies. Not the fast-moving ones or the ones that people call zombies but are actually just infected human people—we were the slow, shambling, groaning ones.

“Do you see that?” Roger asked.

I assumed he meant “our approaching death,” but, no, there was a light up ahead.

A flashlight beam. In the middle of the river.

We picked up our pace. It was Jasper’s motorboat, run aground in the middle of the river. I couldn’t actually see that it was Henrietta holding the flashlight, but who else would it be?

She heard us coming and spun around. “Who’s there? Andrew? Roger?”

I waved to her. “Howdy!”

We kept walking toward her. She didn’t wave around a gun and tell us to stay back.

When we got close enough to speak without shouting, she said, “Boat got stuck again.”

“We see that.”

“I can’t push it by myself.”

“Bummer.”

“Okay, look,” she said. “I can shoot you both, and then die myself, or I can admit that I didn’t completely think this through. Can we let bygones be bygones?”

“Nope,” I said. “We’re walking just fine.”

“You give the boat a push, I give you a ride back to civilization, and we go our separate ways.”

“Who gets the treasure?”

“I do.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Fine. Even shares.”

“All right, but you’ve proven yourself to be slightly untrustworthy. So we get to take the chest, and you’ll give us your contact information so we can send you your share of the proceeds later.”

“Not a chance.”

“Then, as I said before, kiss my ass.” Roger and I resumed our stroll.

Henrietta sighed. “Fine, okay? Fine.”

She got back in the boat. Roger and I gave it a great big push, while remaining cognizant of the fact that she might try to quickly start the engine and speed off without us. She didn’t. We tossed the guns overboard, and soon we were speeding back up the river.

And then, miraculously, we reached the mouth of the Sawchan River and sped onto the Amazon.

And then, even more miraculously, we were back where we’d boarded the boat. Roger and I got out, taking the backpack with us.

“I’m sorry things ended on a sour note between us,” said Henrietta. “At least I have a better boat now. Mine was a piece of crap.”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “We all have our moments of greed where we leave people behind to die.”

“Can we try to open the chest now?” she asked. “Maybe it’s something we can divide up.”

I took a knife out of the backpack, and while Roger shone the flashlight beam on the lock, I stuck in the blade and jiggled it around. I had no idea how to pick a lock, but maybe the lock had deteriorated to the point where a few quick moves with a knife could—

The lid popped loose.

Suddenly a million butterflies formed a mosh pit in my stomach. This was the moment of truth. This was the moment where we’d find out if this entire journey had been a waste of time.

I raised the lid, feeling like I was going to throw up.

The chest was empty.

“Oh,” I said.

We all leaned in for a closer look at the emptiness.

“Oh,” I said again.

“Well,” said Roger. “I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not disappointed.”

“Is this a joke?” asked Henrietta. “Did I seriously betray you for nothing? I didn’t take that lightly. I weighed the pros and cons. My heart hurt when I left you. I had existential angst over that. Shit!”

“Is it okay if I close the lid?” I asked. “All I’m seeing is the swirling black void of my crushed dreams.”

I closed the lid. We all stared at the chest for a while.

“The chest could still be worth something,” I said. “We’ll have it appraised. Maybe we’ll be able to send you thirty bucks.”

“I appreciate that,” said Henrietta.

“So, uh, on that big freaking letdown of a note, I guess this is where we part ways,” I said, picking up the chest.

“Sorry again about abandoning you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Thanks for saving us from the cannibals.”

Roger and I got into the Jeep. Henrietta waved to us as we drove away.

“I apologize for dragging you into this,” Roger said, wiping a tear from his eye. “I guess I should’ve known how it would turn out. Maybe Percival was right. Maybe we’re cursed.”

“No need to apologize.”

“Yeah, I think I do need to apologize. You’ve got a family. You can’t be out here doing things that almost get you killed. You should have told me to go to hell. I’m a terrible friend.”

“You really don’t need to apologize.”

“Stop trying to make me feel better. I don’t deserve it.”

“No apologies are necessary.”

“Of course they’re necessary, Andrew! We almost got eaten! We almost got parasites up our urethras! Nothing good came out of this trip! I don’t think it even built character!”

“The chest has a false bottom.”

“What?”

“The bottom of the chest is not the bottom of the chest. It shifted a bit when I first opened it. I was hoping Henrietta wouldn’t notice. I mean, I’d never screw her out of her share of the treasure if she hadn’t left us to die, but since she did, I figured I’d wait until we’d gone our separate ways before we looked at what was beneath it.”

“Wow,” said Roger.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we should put some more distance between her and us first. Check it out at the hotel, just to be safe. I know that sounds paranoid, but it’s been the kind of trip that generates paranoia.”

“I totally agree,” I said. “I’m paranoid, too.”

I soon realized that I didn’t have the slightest idea how to get back to Manaus. But after a long drive and several dead-ends, we found a town, and then an inn. We’d forgotten how bad we looked until we walked into the lobby, but after some distasteful looks and a significant language barrier, we got a room.

The false bottom of the trunk was surprisingly difficult to pry loose, but after a few minutes with the knife I managed to get it off.

There was nothing underneath.

“I hate that fucking pirate,” said Roger.

“Don’t blame the pirate,” I said. “He wouldn’t bury an empty chest. Somebody obviously got there ahead of us.”

“And reburied it? Why would they do that?”

I tapped the bottom of the chest with the knife.

“I think it’s another false bottom,” I said.

It was even more difficult to pry this one loose.

“Just to warn you,” said Roger. “If it’s empty again, I’m going to smash that chest into sawdust.”

I removed the false bottom.

It was not empty again.

Inside was a dagger. A golden dagger encrusted with jewels all over the handle.

“Okay,” I said. “Now that’s more like it.”

Epilogue

In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy-three, the pirate Erik Bestard made a map to his buried treasure of the golden dagger with the jewel-encrusted handle. But the map, though practical, lacked the aesthetic merits that he desired, so he drew a bunch of skulls on it.

End of lesson.

* * *

We couldn’t pack a dagger in our carry-on luggage, and we didn’t want to mail it, and the Caribbean Sea made it difficult to drive from South America back to Florida, so we packed it very carefully in our checked luggage and spent the entire flight assuming that it had been stolen.

When we landed, Helen, Kyle, Theresa, Brianna, Cecilia, and Rose were there to greet us. I gave them hugs and kisses and burst into tears and I had snot coming out of my nose and my two older children were mortified but I didn’t care.

“I’m never going to leave you again,” I promised.

I’d told Helen on the phone that the treasure hunt was inconclusive and that I’d explain everything when I got home. I basically didn’t want her to get her hopes up if I opened my luggage and a certain jewel-encrusted dagger was missing.

As we waited at baggage claim, my heart gave a jolt every time a suitcase emerged that wasn’t mine.

Mine was one of the last. I quickly grabbed it, carried it over to a row of seats, and popped it open. I dug through all of the assorted junk I’d put in there to throw potential thieves off the track, and began to unfold my dirty underwear, further traumatizing Kyle and Theresa.

The dagger was still there.

“Kids,” I said, “this year you’re going to get really nice birthday presents.”

* * *

When we got home, all three of the triplets had dirty diapers, but I didn’t mind. I was thrilled to be changing their diapers. It was a special treat. I made up a clever diaper changing jingle right there on the spot.

“You’re acting weird,” said Theresa.

“It’s because I’m happy to be back.”

“We’re happy you’re back, too, but you’re still acting weird.”

“Get used to it. Here, help me make up the second verse.”

* * *

Helen and I went at it like wild animals. Though quietly, so as not to wake up the triplets.

* * *

It took quite a bit of research to find somebody who could accurately appraise the value of the dagger. He was a ninety-minute drive away, and when we presented him with the treasure he said it was going to take a few hours to give us an answer.

Helen, Roger, the kids, and I went out to a nice lunch, then hung out at a park until we got the call. We drove back to the appraiser’s office and all gathered in front of his desk.

“It’s a very nice piece,” he said. “And you were under the impression that it was worth twenty million?”

“Yes, that’s what I was told,” I said.

“Then I’m afraid I have bad news. It’s not even close to that. Again, it’s an extremely nice piece, and I can absolutely sell it for you, but its value is far below what you anticipated.”

“Okay,” I said, my heart sinking. “No big deal. How much is it worth?”

“At auction, if you included the chest, I’d say that the most it would fetch is six million dollars. Maybe six and a half.”

We all looked at each other.

“That will be fine,” I said.

— The End —

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Tod Clark, Donna Fitzpatrick, Lynne Hansen, Michael McBride, Jim Morey, Paul Synuria II, and everybody who has spent the past decade asking when there was going to be a fifth Andrew Mayhem novel.

Books By Jeff Strand

The Odds - When invited to a game that offers a 99% chance of winning fifty thousand dollars, Ethan rejoices at the chance to recoup his gambling losses. But as the game continues, the odds constantly change, and the risks become progressively deadlier...

Allison. She can break your bones using her mind. And she’s trying very hard not to hurt you.

Wolf Hunt 3. George, Lou, Ally, and Eugene are back in another werewolf-laden adventure.

Clowns Vs. Spiders. Choose your side!

My Pretties. A serial kidnapper may have met his match in the two young ladies who walk the city streets at night, using themselves as bait...

Five Novellas. A compilation of Stalking You Now, An Apocalypse of Our Own, Faint of Heart, Kutter, and Facial.

Ferocious. The creatures of the forest are dead...and hungry!

Bring Her Back. A tale of revenge and madness.

Sick House. A home invasion from beyond the grave.

Bang Up. A filthy comedic thriller. “You want to pay me to sleep with your wife?” is just the start of the story.

Cold Dead Hands. Ten people are trapped in a freezer during a terrorist attack on a grocery store.

How You Ruined My Life (Young Adult). Sixteen-year-old Rod has a pretty cool life until his cousin Blake moves in and slowly destroys everything he holds dear.

Everything Has Teeth. A third collection of short tales of horror and macabre comedy.

An Apocalypse of Our Own. Can the Friend Zone survive the end of the world?

Stranger Things Have Happened (Young Adult). Teenager Marcus Millian III is determined to be one of the greatest magicians who ever lived. Can he make a live shark disappear from a tank?

Cyclops Road. When newly widowed Evan Portin gives a woman named Harriett a ride out of town, she says she’s on a cross-country journey to slay a Cyclops. Is she crazy, or...?

Blister. While on vacation, cartoonist Jason Tray meets the town legend, a hideously disfigured woman who lives in a shed.

The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever (Young Adult). Three best friends with more passion than talent try to make the ultimate zombie epic.

Kumquat. A road trip comedy about TV, hot dogs, death, and obscure fruit.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This (Young Adult). Geeky, non-athletic Henry Lambert is sent to survival camp, which is bad enough before the trio of murderous thugs show up.

Pressure. What if your best friend was a killer...and he wanted you to be just like him? Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Novel.

Dweller. The lifetime story of a boy and his monster. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Novel.

A Bad Day For Voodoo. A young adult horror/comedy about why sticking pins in a voodoo doll of your history teacher isn’t always the best idea. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Young Adult Novel.

Dead Clown Barbecue. A collection of demented stories about severed noses, ventriloquist dummies, giant-sized vampires, sibling stabbings, and lots of other messed-up stuff.

Dead Clown Barbecue Expansion Pack. A few more stories for those who couldn’t get enough.

Wolf Hunt. Two thugs for hire. One beautiful woman. And one vicious frickin’ werewolf.

Wolf Hunt 2. New wolf. Same George and Lou.

The Sinister Mr. Corpse. The feel-good zombie novel of the year.

Benjamin’s Parasite. A rather disgusting action/horror/comedy about why getting infected with a ghastly parasite is unpleasant.

Fangboy. A dark and demented fairy tale for adults.

Facial. Greg has just killed the man he hired to kill one of his wife’s many lovers. Greg’s brother desperately needs a dead body. It’s kind of related to the lion corpse that he found in his basement. This is the normal part of the story.

Kutter. A serial killer finds a Boston terrier, and it might just make him into a better person.

Faint of Heart. To get her kidnapped husband back, Melody has to relive her husband’s nightmarish weekend, step-by-step...and survive.

Mandibles. Giant killer ants wreaking havoc in the big city!

Stalking You Now. A twisty-turny thriller soon to be the feature film Mindy Has To Die.

Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary). First in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Single White Psychopath Seeks Same. Second in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Casket For Sale (Only Used Once). Third in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to “Shirley”). Fourth in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Suckers (with JA Konrath). Andrew Mayhem meets Harry McGlade. Which one will prove to be more incompetent?

Gleefully Macabre Tales. A collection of thirty-two demented tales. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Collection.

Elrod McBugle on the Loose. A comedy for kids (and adults who were warped as kids).

The Haunted Forest Tour (with Jim Moore). The greatest theme park attraction in the world! Take a completely safe ride through an actual haunted forest! Just hope that your tram doesn’t break down, because this forest is PACKED with monsters...

Draculas (with JA Konrath, Blake Crouch, and F. Paul Wilson). An outbreak of feral vampires in a secluded hospital. This one isn’t much like Twilight.

For information on all of these books, visit Jeff Strand’s more-or-less official website at http://www.JeffStrand.com

Subscribe to Jeff Strand’s free monthly newsletter (which includes a brand-new original short story in every issue) at http://eepurl.com/bpv5br

And remember:

Readers who leave reviews deserve great big hugs!