John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

His heart skipped a beat as he had a wild thought: Maybe someone in whatever place was cooking food would help him get away. Was that too much to ask? He didn’t need a big break-a little one would do. Any port in a storm, as Father Dom used to say.

The parade picked up the pace even more as the terrain became steeper. Evan didn’t have to run, exactly, but he had to move quickly to keep from getting run over by the soldiers behind him.

The ground was hard and dry here. The hard-packed dirt felt good against the soles of his feet. And the food smelled fabulous.

Without warning, the jungle gave way to a clearing that was lined with huts that were not dissimilar to the one he woke up in yesterday. That was yesterday, wasn’t it? Maybe two days ago? A week? God, what was happening to him?

Evan didn’t know what he was expecting to see when they entered the village, but it was miles away from the fear he witnessed. Soldiers waved their rifles in the air and shouted words he didn’t understand.

As the villagers scattered, there was no way to count them all, but Evan thought that there had to be forty or fifty of them at least. He noted, too, that they seemed either to be young or old, with few in between. Certainly, there were no young men. In fact, if you discounted the soldiers in their little parade, Evan was the oldest boy in sight. Even without thinking it all the way through, he knew there was no way for that to be good news.

The two soldiers in the front of the line took off at a run, chasing villagers who seemed to be running for their lives. The one who caught Evan’s eye just because he was closest seemed focused on one of the girls in the crowd, and she seemed equally intent on staying away from him. The soldier chased her at a dead sprint. At the last second, just as he was about to catch up, she cut hard to the right and evaded his grasp.

The soldier shouted at her-bitter staccato syllables that could only be cursing. The girl ran faster. The soldier stopped abruptly, stooped, and snatched a baseball-size rock from the ground and hurled it at her. From ten yards away, the rock sailed with no arc and caught the girl in the back of the head, sending her sprawling face-first into the dirt.

She screamed as she fell and clutched her head with both hands.

Evan saw a flash of red through her fingers. All around him, the other villagers had stopped running. Many stood and watched the attack, and Evan couldn’t believe that no one was doing anything to intervene.

The soldier wasn’t running anymore. He walked with long strides up to the girl and shouted at her. When she curled up tighter on the ground, he bent at the waist, grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled. She screamed louder, and he yanked, lifting her to her feet. When she tried to wriggle free, the soldier hit her across her face with an open hand. The blow seemed to stun her, and as she stood there, the soldier ripped open her shirt and yanked it down off her shoulders, exposing her breasts. She made a tired gesture to cover herself up, but when the soldier slapped her hands away, she surrendered the effort.

The soldier bent and kissed a breast, then turned back to face the rest of the soldiers, displaying the girl like a trophy, with one hand draped over her shoulder and the other rubbing his dick through his pants. He gave a thumbs-up sign, then shoved the girl through the door of the nearest hut. Three seconds later, an old woman and a little boy hurried out through the same door.

“A young man has needs that cannot be denied,” Oscar said from very close by.

Evan turned to see him standing at his side. The boy just stared.

“I could have them provide for you, too, if you would like,” Oscar said. He winked.

Evan backed away.

“Don’t wander far,” Oscar said with a smirk. “What the jungle takes it rarely gives back.” Behind him, the girl screamed from inside the hut and then fell suddenly silent after the scream was cut short.

Evan’s head swam with confusion. Where the hell was he? What was going on? Why were all these people just standing around as a girl was being raped? Yeah, he knew that’s what was happening. You don’t live the kind of life he’d lived and not know what a rape looks like when you see it.

The villagers outnumbered them ten-to-one. Why couldn’t they-

A hand landed on his shoulder. Evan jumped as if shot with electricity and whirled to see an old woman very close by, reaching out to touch him. He stepped to the side, the only way to distance himself without stepping closer to Oscar and the soldiers.

The woman smiled, revealing kind eyes and a mouthful of half-missing teeth. “Boy,” she said. She beckoned him with a gnarled old hand. “Wheat boy. Comb.”

She meant no harm, he knew. He recognized the friendliness in her eyes. In fact, she might have been trying to protect him, but it was hard to walk toward someone so…well, ugly.

“You. Wheat boy. Eat?” She pantomimed putting food in her mouth and smiled again.

Food. His awareness of the cooking smell returned, and with it his stomach rumbled. God yes, he’d love some food. He nodded.

The woman beckoned more broadly. “Comb.” She walked toward the open door to one of the huts, checking over her shoulder with every other step to be sure Evan was following her.

He was. Part of him said he was crazy for doing it, but that wasn’t the part that was screaming for food. For a fleeting moment, he thought of Hansel and Gretel, but he pushed the images away. He was definitely staying away from any cages, though.

As the old woman got closer to her doorway, she beckoned more aggressively. “Comb, comb, comb,” she said.

In that moment, Evan realized that she was saying come not comb. She was trying English, and the effort made him feel warm inside.

“ Gracias,” he said, hoping that it was the right word for thank you. He followed the woman through the open door and into a cramped living space that looked more like pictures he’d seen of teepees in the Old West than of any modern home. There was no real furniture-just some rough-looking wooden chairs-and the floor was made of the same dirt as outside, but somehow felt cleaner against his feet. Certainly drier.

Eight people-six of them old and two of them under five-filled the single room to capacity, yet they all stood as he entered. The old woman spoke a mile a minute, and the people in the room seemed to be pleased by what they were hearing. They pulled away from their tight circle in the middle of the room and made room for him at a table that was otherwise invisible. Just beyond the table was a pot of some kind of stew that smelled like heaven. One of the adults pulled a bowl away from one of the children and placed it on the table in front of Evan. She said something to him that he didn’t understand, but the accompanying smile reassured him that he was being welcomed as a special guest.

As Evan took a seat in the middle of a long bench, a different old woman leaned to the center of the table and ladled out a generous helping of the stew. Evan had no idea what it was, but because the broth was brown and there were green vegetables mixed in, he told himself that it was beef stew. The first sip blew that out of the water, but he refused to think about it. Whatever it was tasted good, and for now, that’s all that was important. That and the fact that it put food into his belly.

After two or three more spoonfuls, Evan realized that he was the only one eating. He looked up at the old woman who had brought him in, and he gestured with his forehead toward the pot. “Please,” he said. “Eat.”

Apparently, those were exactly the words they’d been waiting for because they wasted no time diving in and ladling stew into their own bowls. Conversation he didn’t understand roiled all around him as they crammed onto the benches hip to hip. They all seemed happy, and Evan didn’t understand how that could be the case when one of their tribe-if that’s what you called them-was being brutalized nearby. For all he knew, every one of the soldiers was out there raping someone. Yet the people in here were laughing and having a grand old time. It didn’t seem right.