The Judas Strain - James Rollins [129]
With a shout, Ryder lunged forward, his pistol raised.
The sentinels were unimpressed.
Monk shoved down Ryder’s arm and stepped forward, holding up his hands, palms forward. “Don’t spook the natives,” he whispered to Ryder.
One tribesman shifted onto the trail. He wore a breastplate of bone braided together by leather. His waist was circled by a kilt of long feathers. His legs and feet were bare, painted with grease and ash, too. He carried a sharpened shoulder blade of some animal.
At least Monk hoped it was an animal.
Monk heard a rustle behind him, knowing their back trail was already being closed off. Drums pounded ahead. The firelight spat momentarily brighter.
The man on the path turned and led the way toward the glow.
“Looks like we’re invited to the party,” Monk said, putting his arm around Susan.
Ryder followed, pistol in hand.
If things went awry, they might need the billionaire’s remaining thirteen rounds to blast their way to freedom. But for now, Monk knew their best bet was to cooperate.
The path ended at a cliff face in the volcanic rock. A natural coved amphitheater had been carved out of the reddish-black rock, roofed over with thick palm thatching. The downpour drained in a sheet of rain off the roof ’s front edge, creating a watery curtain.
Beyond the flow, lit by a massive bonfire within, Monk spotted lines of drummers along both walls, working hard, pounding away. Two massive drums, as wide as his outstretched arms, hung from the rock walls and were struck with bone hammers. Each stroke shook the thin waterfall that cascaded from the thatched roof to the rock floor.
They were led forward.
A single boar rooted through the open space in front and squealed back from the strangers’ approach. More pigs huddled under an overhang, squeezed tight together, rump to rump.
Monk led Susan through the sheet of water and under the large overhang. He shivered as the rain cascaded over his bare chest. The heat of the fire inside was welcome, but the smoke choked and stung, doing its best to exit a narrow flue in the thatching.
Around the fire ahead, a crowd had gathered, some standing, some squatted. Monk estimated over a hundred. Men, bare-breasted women. But cave openings lined the walls. More faces peered out. A few naked children stood staring, wide-eyed. One cradled a piebald piglet.
At some signal, the drums suddenly stopped with one resounding note. The quiet intimidated.
In that sudden silence, a voice called out.
“Monk!”
Startled, he turned. A thin figure stood pressed up against the bamboo bars of a cage built into a back corner. He wore a torn shirt and a pair of muddy white briefs.
“Jessie?”
The young nurse was still alive!
But before they could continue their tearful and heartfelt reunion, a towering figure stepped forward, though for the tribe, towering was about five-foot-nothing. The old graybeard looked like someone had sold him a skin suit two sizes too large. He was greased and daubed in ash, too. He wore some sort of twisted gourd over his privates and a shock of purpled feathers in his hair, sticking straight up, as if startled. And nothing else.
Monk recognized that this was the tribe’s leader.
It was time to perform, to dance for his supper—or rather, to dance not to become supper.
Monk lifted his arm toward the elder. “Boogla-boogla rah!” he intoned solemnly, then tensed his forearm and reached his other hand to pull the toggle at his wrist.
Freed from its electromagnetic contacts, his prosthetic hand dropped to the muddy volcanic stone.
A gasp arose from the crowd.
The leader fell back a step, almost into the fire.
Monk lowered his arm, staring