Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [34]
B-BOOOOOOMMM!!
Several sharp blasts, like rapid pistol fire, launch mortars of fiery spume twenty stories into the air, creating phosphorescent wings of smoldering debris that shatter in every direction. Every direction, that is, but one—ours. Let's hope it lasts.
K-BOOOOOOM!
The sloping innards of the volcano are as barren as the moon. Inside the bigger crater, there's a smaller one, with a red-flaming fissure etched into the bottom that churns restlessly the whole time, as if the Earth has a bone in her throat and is trying to dislodge it, throwing up with each gargantuan belch a meaty phlegm of shimmering golden magma that splays through the air uncomfortably close to where we're standing.
B-BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
“Whoah!”
Nothing emphasizes your insignificance, I find, quite as effectively as being close to some powerful object that could at any minute indiscriminately roll over and snuff you out.
“Walk this way,” Camera Mark, completely unfazed, bawls into the wind, directing me to one of the narrower points on the rim. “Stand there. Then we can shoot the eruption as a backdrop.”
“Nope. Sorry.”
B-BOOOOOOOM! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Pebbles and dust at my feet bounce in time with the detonations.
“Aw, c'mon. It's totally safe, just do it. Three paces back, then walk toward us.”
“Nope. I'll fall.”
There follows a Crew Look. Eric glances at Camera Mark, who glances at Director Mark. All three glance at Tasha. A round robin of disapproval.
“You won't fall, Cash. Come on, just three steps.”
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!
“Aaaaagh!”
Loud cracks of what sound like thunder ricochet around me, as a bulging tongue of magma soars up in slo-mo, attempting to lick the clouds above us.
Excuse me—hello? Anyone feel like running for their life right now?
“Dude!” Bold, unshaken, as always, Camera Mark shouts, “Come on—hey, where are you going?”
His pleas are tinnitus in my head. I issue a few odd comments to Joe, for the benefit of the camera, about how awesome this all is. Then, gripped by blind terror, I race over the rim in precisely the opposite direction Mark's been pointing at, and down the hill again, to safety. My work is done here. I have what I came for. I can now say with incontrovertible certainty that there are neither angry spirits huddling in Mount Yasur's crater, nor twenty thousand American marines and their caregivers. I can't wait to see the glee on the faces of the John Frums when they hear that their hope all these years was false and their faith in America completely misplaced.
Wouldn't surprise me if they decided to reward me in some way for enlightening them, perhaps bestowing on me the status of god and savior. Y'know, now that the position is vacant ‘n’ all.
After sunset a slight wind picks up, rustling the leaves in ways that wouldn't sound creepy normally, only when an entire forest you can't see is closing in around you.
Darkness in the jungle falls faster than a collapsing high-rise. When it does, your senses become drastically impaired. You find that your eyes, for example, which normally would adjust, don't at all, principally because … well, what are they going to adjust to? There's nothing out there.
About now is when Nature comes into its own and gets a little cocky. Suddenly, humans are the endangered species. We're surrounded by invisible movements and shrill screeching and nonhuman footsteps and barking and sniffing and, now and then, frantic wing-flapping overhead. Not far off, dusky zombies, seminaked, move sluggishly among the trees, sedated by the mystical soporific power of kava, their eyes reduced to gray pinpricks in the beam of a flashlight, staring blankly ahead. Some stop, disoriented. Others continue, playing out their eerie choreography for a final few steps until they find a space apart from everyone else, where they sink in a slow, fluid collapse to the ground and sit there, stupefied.
At the center of the John Frum village,