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By Root 189 0

to the one she had nearly fallen victim to, but then she saw exactly where it had come from. As another soldier, companion to the dead man, pointed into the thick underbrush, Victoria could just make out a figure lurking in the green shadow. A parrot-sized bird was nodding on the figure’s shoulder, its colourful beak tilting this way and that. And then a second snake was flipping from the direction of the figure, snapping into the pointing man’s wrist and locking its lithe body around his hand. He screamed and tumbled back into a church organ tree. His face was already turning a shocking green. As Victoria watched, the whites of his eyes flecked green too, and then were completely subsumed by the colour. The man stopped gasping.

Agus barked an order and his squad levelled their pulse rifles at the shape dimly seen in the undergrowth. The parrot-like bird flapped away noisily into the interior. In the flash of flame that lit up the jungle, Victoria saw the figure belonged to a grotesquely thin black man, standing stiffly in the bushes as if propped there like a scarecrow, arms outstretched and withered by age, eyes – no, not eyes, but holes in dead flesh, and a mouth like a tunnel. Then the creature became a roman candle ignited by weapon blasts and the soldiers ceased fire.

A groan from a man next to her. The soldier twisted, fumbling for something at the back of his neck, something that had arced through the air from the opposite side of the trail to the first assault. He stared into Victoria’s eyes as he died, as if seeking assurance from one so pure, so beautiful, so white...

Then he was twitching on the ground, and Victoria could see where this attack had come from: a second withered figure, squatting in the fork of a tree, long, muscle-less arms drooping down like black vines, knees tucked under the smoked jaw, net hat secured to the skull. The eye sockets gaped at her, as did the mouth.

‘Mumi! Mumi!’ a soldier shrieked, letting go to delicious, liberating panic.

Agus snatched his Luger from its holster and joined in the chorus of pulse fire that greeted this new attack. The Mumi was ripped apart, the head tumbling down the chute of melded roots like a coconut shaken out of a palm by hungry natives.

It landed in front of Victoria. A black seared thing, smoked first by preserving care, and second by furious Indoni blasters. Agus placed his right boot on top of the hair net and sent a bolt from his Luger to turn it into fragments of dried skin and old bone that scattered into the bushes.

The rest of the squad were searching for more attack possibilities, weapons scanning the green pressing around them. When no further assault became apparent, Agus holstered his Luger and ordered them to continue.

‘Now you see,’ Agus said grimly. ‘This is an example of the black arts practised by the rebels and their tribal supporters. Or maybe that’s what they’d like us to think.’

Victoria looked down at the stiffening corpses that had once been soldiers. Every portion of exposed skin had become the colour of leaves, the colour of the jungle itself, almost as if... but, no, that was silly...

Almost as if the jungle had touched them and made them its own.

‘But don’t the Papul tribespeople believe the gods are on their side?’ she said, choking down the fancy ‘That’s what Kepennis said. The Mumis are their ancestors, speaking for their jungle gods.’

Agus shook his head sadly. ‘Please don’t be contaminated by their superstitious rubbish.’

‘But you saw! Those things killed three of your men.’

‘I saw a trap planted for us. Now we must find those who prepared it.’

‘Then you don’t believe the Mumis are alive?’ She could see by the fearful expressions on the soldiers behind her that they obviously didn’t all share their commander’s view.

‘If the gods are on their side,’ he said confidently, ‘then we’ll just have to hunt them down and kill them too.’ He patted her shoulder. ‘Won’t we?’

One minute the river was placid, a brown, slowly moving expanse, bordered by mossy trees and palms.

The next: scream from Santi. Guttural shouts