Excerpt from "A Stand Yet Taken"

© 2004 by Randy Farnsworth. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal. Published by PublishAmerica, Baltimore MD, USA.

Chapter One

A graying man stooped at the edge of a small pool, hunched over its mirror-like surface. His knobby hands gently cupped a tiny object against his frail body. A cacophony of rain forest sounds droned around him—the fluttering and whistles of birds, the chattering of monkeys and, above all, the incessant buzzing of insects.

A human voice behind him sliced through the ruckus. "Release the creature!"

The frail man's bent figure flinched at the deep, rumbling command. Though its tone was calm, it came with unmistakable power. His tattooed, wrinkled face winced ever so slightly. He quivered, the beads of sweat dripping down his thin torso. He turned to the warriors behind him. Most were dressed as he was, with grass skirts and colorful tattoos. Raised blowpipes and jagged spears pointed his way. "Many people will die," he intoned, the words collapsing around his pleading gasps. "Whole villages will die. Even you…and your families…you might all die."

"We are prepared for that," came the deep-voiced reply. The man, heavy-set and dressed in western-style clothes that barely covered his sweat-soaked frame, stood stone-still, patient and imposing. A stubby assault rifle was strapped under one arm and a semiautomatic pistol hung from his belt. Once again the voice erupted from the man's massive chest. "But we are only people. The Tanguk is greater than us all, and to be Tanguk means we are willing to sacrifice. Now release it and let the process begin."

The jungle's relentless din and rippling laughter pressed down on the wizened old man. He peered down into the water. A faint steam drifted across its surface; beneath, minute bubbles appeared, evidence of the hot spring rising from below. Rings of ripples flowed out and gently trickled over the rocks several meters away, a knoll where the water commenced its long journey down the mountain towards the Java Sea. So clean and pure—each diamond-like droplet showering from rock to rock. The man's gaze withered. He knew that would soon change, that the evil once again was about to be released.

"Now!" The booming voice behind him had lost its calm air.

The old man's head bowed. His eyes widened in fear, then briefly squeezed closed as he opened his feeble fingers. His bare palms, deeply creased from a life in the jungle, revealed a tiny red and orange frog, covered with a sticky white froth. The startled creature croaked once, blinked its eyes and plopped into the water, leaving the white substance bobbing atop the pond's ripples. The heat of the submerged spring quickly drove the colorful frog to the opposite shore, where it scrambled out onto a rock.

"Kill him." The deep voice—though just as menacing—had again grown steady.

Almost simultaneously, a half-dozen darts sliced through the dank air and plunged into the old man's back. He rolled onto his side with little struggle, the poison taking its immediate effect. One gnarled hand clutched the grass in front of his face, then fell limp.

After a brief, eerie silence, the stone-faced warriors turned to weave their way back to the safety of their village, leaving the slumped body of the old man to rot in the dark humus. A brilliant rhinoceros hornbill squawked and took flight from a nearby tree. A tribe of proboscis monkeys once more took to wrestling and arguing in the lower canopy. The perpetual clamor of insects continued. Life in the forest resumed, oblivious to the deadly evil brewing in the seemingly insignificant pool.

Chapter Two

"My peaceful jungle is becoming a zoo!" Logan Pierce stomped up the front steps of his hut and flopped into a wicker chair perched on the narrow porch. He snatched a fleshy yellow papaya from the table beside him and sliced it open with the blade of a grimy knife. Kicking his sandals onto the floor, he propped his tanned legs onto a wooden stool and slurped a wedge of the succulent fruit.

Behind him, a small blue-rumped parrot nestled on an opportune perch in the window. Sensing an impending meal, it clambered down to the chair, then hopped onto the table, eagerly eyeing the fruit.

Logan lightly stroked the bird. "This is just what I came to Longpang to avoid, Mira," he huffed, pushing his long dusty hair out of his eyes. "Crowds, stifling bureaucracy…" The bright green bird, ignoring Logan's rants, accepted a sliver of the fruit, offered by force of habit. "Of course, you don't care, do you? The doctors will find you more interesting than the rest of the village. You'll get fat on fresh fruit and spoiled by all the attention."

He stuffed another chunk of fruit into his mouth, then, losing his sluggish demeanor, suddenly dropped his feet to the floor and briskly leapt up out of the chair. Pivoting to face a cache of unhusked coconuts stored below the window, he slid his bare foot under the topmost fruit, lightly kicked it upwards and snatched it out of the air with a sweep of his strong hand. He then drew a half-meter long machete from its hook on the wall. The homemade tool was nothing more than a rusting length of sharpened steel with a section of retired automotive hose wrapped around the opposite end. Balancing the coconut with one hand, Logan deftly lopped off the top, pitched the knife back onto its hook and held up the fruit to let its refreshing water dribble into his throat. Most of the clear liquid ended up on his shirt. "I may not have followed Dad's footsteps into academia," he mumbled between gulps, "but I can hack a coconut like no one else."

After wiping his face with his sleeve, Logan tossed the coconut's drained shell, free-throw-style, in the direction of an overflowing barrel positioned near the base of a nearby papaya tree. The shell bounced off the tree and rolled down the heap of rubbish. Then, leaning against the porch pillar, the flimsy bamboo pole creaking under the weight of his strong build, he surveyed the unusual flurry of activity in the village, the expanse of which was visible from his raised vantage point.

A passionate outdoorsman and wandering adventurer since his childhood in western Colorado, his body and skills had been honed for life in the jungle. But since his arrival in Longpang eighteen months earlier, the villagers often chided him on how "soft and lazy" he had become. He spent his time fishing, cooking and only joining the villagers on hunts into the forest when assured they would be short, half-day affairs. This was the life he wanted, though— comfortable with no responsibility. On this particular day, however, there was way too much going on for his liking.

One group of villagers cleared away rocks and encroaching weeds to make room for tents. Another, wooden hammers flailing in a gamelan-like cadence, repaired the spacious pavilion in the center of the village common. A smaller cluster of workers saw to the unpleasant task of mucking out the pigsty. Even the children of the village had been recruited and sent foraging under the longhouse to extract the accumulated jumble of garbage, which they cheerfully burned in a sunken pit near the pavilion.

A trio of young men, fifty meters from Logan's hut towards the back of the village, was setting up a series of stalls behind a huge dipterocarp tree, its towering branches completely shading the ground beneath, where only minute glimpses of the late afternoon sun streaked the dirt. A nagging argument had apparently erupted as to how their work should proceed. One of them, spying Logan relaxing on the porch, scurried over to his hut. "Logan, sir," he murmured respectfully, using the local Dayak dialect, "we've built two of these shower rooms. How many more do the foreigners need?"

Logan couldn't help but break into a broad grin. "You've got one for the women and one for the men—I think that's plenty. If any other genders show up, they can bathe in the river with the rest of us. That's what I've been doing all these years."

The young man snickered at the joke and darted off to tell the others.

Logan stole another slice of papaya from the table. "I just hope these doctors arriving tomorrow finish their little study group quickly and head back to the city," he muttered through a mouthful of fruit. "You can have the rest, Mira." He pushed the remaining mushy bits towards the bird. "I'm going to go check up on our patient." Lost in thought, he lightly stepped down the stairs and set off across the yard.

Another stilted structure, much larger than Logan's hut, overlooked the broad Murung River near a wide, well-used path. Logan watched briefly as an attractive young woman meticulously fastened a sign next to the front door using strands of twine made from coconut fiber. Hospital, hôpital, rumah sakit , it read. "English, French, Indonesian…looks like you've covered all the bases, Sareen." Logan climbed up the rickety steps, then stopped and spun on his heels, a wry smile at the corners of his lips. "What about Dayak?" He spoke in plain English, testing her expanding vocabulary.

Pausing in her task, her dark pupils rolling into the top of her eyelids as she searched out the appropriate response, Sareen said haltingly, "I think that in Jakarta…few people from there speak Dayak."

"You're right. It would probably just confuse them anyway." With that, Logan turned and strode into the building.

Inside the crude one-room hospital, Logan paused to take in the dismal scene before him. A local villager, Gato, lay restlessly on a cot at the far end of the room. A bout of high fever and violent back pains had kept him bedridden for two days now. His young wife, Tika—her eyes puffy, her cheeks sagging and tear-stained—was anxiously perched on a stool near the head of the cot, where she occasionally dabbed Gato's glistening brow, arms and torso with a damp cloth.

A small stove near one wall simmered a kettle of medicinal tea, conjuring a muggy, breathless haze that smelled of decaying leaves. A battered table at the center of the room held a scattering of herbal and western medicines, along with an open first aid kit. Two men—one a skinny Caucasian, wearing glasses and heavily dressed in dark trousers and long-sleeved shirt, the other a handsome Indonesian with thick black hair—fussed with the various materials on the table. Deep in discussion, they didn't notice Logan enter.

Logan sucked in a long breath and headed towards Gato's cot. I'm not very good at this, he thought.

The sound of his footsteps jogged the two busy men from their preoccupation. "Logan, what's up?"

Good, a distraction. "Hey, Scott…Musa. How's our patient doing? Any improvement?" He addressed them in English, both so Scott could understand and to keep Tika from overhearing any unpleasant news.

Scott cocked an ear in the direction of their suffering patient. "It appears more serious than we thought," he replied, shaking his head. "He's gotten worse the past few hours—keeps trembling and moaning. The blotchy rash on his legs certainly hasn't gotten any better. I don't think my medicine is doing anything for him, but Musa's tea seems to be working."

"The tea is just to help him sleep," added Musa in flawless English. "But he's not improving at all."

Logan lifted a wooden mug of the steaming tea up to his nose and sniffed in its dense, woody aroma. He cringed slightly and swiftly slid the mug back onto the table. "Your jungle herbs seem to work better than anything else we've got, despite their smell. I suppose it's a good thing after all that these foreign doctors are coming. I think most of them don't have a clue about field medicine, but I'm told at least a few are specialists in this sort of thing."

Logan then turned and ambled cautiously over to Gato's cot, lightly chewing his bottom lip. The sick man, his eyes closed in fitful slumber, lay on his back, drenched in sweat. He wore only a dingy pair of white shorts. His legs were a dark purple color, blotted with black and red streaks, and very swollen. In obvious pain, his entire body suddenly twitched on the cot. Moaning loudly, he convulsed, thrashed more violently, then let out a penetrating scream. After a few moments, the spasms subsided and he fell back to sleep as if nothing had happened, his visage returning to one of apparent peace.

Logan sidled silently next to Tika and put his hand on her trembling shoulder. Speaking in Dayak, he asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Peering up from her bedside vigil, she whimpered, "I'm scared…don't you have some western medicine that can help? He's in so much pain."

Logan stooped down, eased his muscular arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. "Scott and Musa are both fine doctors. Believe me, they're doing all they can." Then, once more reverting to English, he called over to Scott, "She really thinks we have some magic to save him. I don't know what to tell her."

"Tell her what you told us—that the western doctors might make a difference." To avoid alarming Tika, Scott remained calm, hardly breaking from his work.

Logan struggled to come up with the right words in the Dayak tongue. "Tika…I can't tell you not to be scared, because I'm scared, too. But tomorrow afternoon a team of doctors and scientists will be here. They've spent their whole lives studying these kinds of illnesses. I know that doesn't help your husband right now, but…believe me that all of us will do all we can to help." He gave her shoulder another quick squeeze and stood back up.

"Can I break into your talking and bring food?" Sareen had crept in, followed by several women bearing plates of food and a cauldron of hot soup. Logan, in subtle appreciation, took in her stunningly graceful moves. With her waist-length black hair and arresting, almond-shaped eyes, he often joked that she could find a good career as a model for Bali travel brochures. "This is dinner for Gato and Tika." She cast a sly glance towards Musa, who blushed slightly. "But I think you men must have no other place to go, so you can eat with us." As she sashayed past in her form-fitting sarong, Logan and Scott found themselves gaping after her.

Musa cleared his throat. "Uh, excuse me, gentlemen…" he murmured in a hushed voice, passing one hand in front of their faces. "I believe she's already spoken for—by me."

The women spread the meal on a squat table situated near Gato's cot. Though the ailing man, in his condition, was unable to eat, Tika acknowledged the display of kindness in whispered tones.

With their bowls full of rice, steamed fish and vegetables, the conversation in the room turned to other subjects. Logan pulled Scott and Musa aside. "Tomorrow, when our visitors show up, we need to watch what they do with Gato," he warned. "I'd hate to see them trying some experimental procedures just to make a name for themselves."

Musa reached past Logan and tossed some fish bones into a small trash pail. His head turned side to side. "Maybe they're not even concerned about our sick friend. Did they say they would bring any equipment or medicine that might help?"

"They weren't planning on it when they first scheduled their little field trip. They didn't say anything about doing research on exotic new diseases; they just wanted to see how you guys do your work out here. But with the World Health Organization involved, who knows what they'll bring with them. Now that they're aware of an undiagnosed illness in Longpang, they might have WHO supply them with all sorts of serums and medical paraphernalia." He reached for some more vegetables to add to his bowl. "You may be right, though," he continued, nodding at Musa. "They probably just think it's a bad case of malaria and aren't too concerned. In any event, they're definitely not going to airlift Gato to a city hospital."

Scott leapt to his feet. "Sheesh, is there anything in this soup besides peppers?" He took a lengthy swig from his mug. With a face still pained by the spicy brew, he went on, "Maybe this isn't the right question, since WHO sent me out here too, but do any of them really know what they're doing?"

Logan chuckled. "Probably not any more than you did when you first came."

"That's not very encouraging."

"Actually, I think they're mostly academics without much field experience. But there's one epidemiologist coming with them…Lynn something. They claim she's real good at this stuff, especially parasitic diseases. Apparently, she's worked outbreak sites before. But just keep an eye on them and remind them that Gato's no guinea pig."

"We'll do our best," Musa assured.

"I know. You guys are great. As for me, I'll probably be stuck coordinating and translating the whole time—my favorite jobs." Logan made no effort at hiding the sarcasm in this remark, and returned his attention to his rice bowl.

"I know that you are planning something, right?" Sareen had strolled up from behind. "And I know you three, you want to escape on a…what you always call it…ex-ped-I-tion." She struggled through the word, then continued, "And you will leave my father here to face foreigners alone."

"The chief could use a good lesson in administrative bureaucracy," Logan sighed. "Then he'd know why I left those organizations and moved out here. Don't worry, though, we'll stay…."

A jumble of plates and utensils suddenly crashed to the floor as Gato bucked off his cot, taking the small table and its contents with him. He rolled and thrashed uncontrollably on the floor, a piercing wail erupting from his lungs.

Logan and Scott bounded across the room and seized the man, forcing him back onto the cot. Gato fought like a mad man. At one point Logan lost his grip and took a kick in the stomach. "What's gotten into him?" Logan yelled as he wrestled with the tangle of arms and legs.

"Beats me!" Scott staggered backward against the thin wall to dodge a flailing arm. "Where's Musa?"

Before the question had escaped his lips, Musa had appeared at Scott's side, clutching a steaming damp cloth, which he pressed over Gato's face. Gato struggled for a few more seconds, seeming to respond to the applied compress, then finally calmed down. The three men positioned him gingerly back onto his cot as his bewildered wife and the others once more gathered around.

Logan eased himself down on the end of the cot, rubbing his aching ribs. "What was that all about? Musa, have you ever seen that before?"

"No. But I…no I haven't."

"Why did the hot rag calm him down?" asked Scott, adjusting his glasses.

Musa hunched his shoulders. "I'm not sure it did. The fit might have passed on its own. But I remember my father doing it for someone in my village who was hallucinating…maybe it has something to do with increasing blood flow to the brain."

"I hope it's not the start of another, more serious phase of the illness," Logan interjected. "You want me to spend the night here?"

"Nah, we'll be okay," replied Scott. "If it happens again, maybe we can tie him to the cot so he won't hurt himself."

"Don't let him hurt you, either."

Logan helped tidy the room, then returned to his own hut. After tossing Mira's leftover papaya scraps onto the ground near the full trash bucket, he retired to bed. It was earlier than his normal bedtime, so he lay on the cot for an hour or more, envisioning the mob of newcomers that would arrive the next day. His mind soon drifted to the events that had led him to this jungle outpost. After high school, he had wandered around India and south Asia for a few years, then enrolled at JNU in New Delhi. With school behind him, he and some friends, on a whim, moved to the resort island of Bali and opened an Indian restaurant. The business income gave him more freedom to travel, and he started working with aid organizations throughout Indonesia, soon making a name for himself in the environmental and activist community. Eventually, though, he tired of that, and migrated to this little-known village in the Borneo mountains to escape the lumbering aid agencies and their smothering red tape and bureaucratic rules. Still, despite his self-imposed exile, the World Health Organization managed to discover his whereabouts and first sent Scott to accompany him as an intern of sorts, and were now dispatching a throng of inexperienced health workers right to his village.

At last, Logan's thoughts turned cloudy. The white noise of insects drowned out the whirs of the village, and he floated into a fitful slumber.

Just a few hours later, an erupting racket tumbled out of the infirmary and filled the village common. Amid the general uproar could be heard men shouting and glass breaking, a ruckus that startled Logan awake. He vaulted from his bed, but the sounds had died down before he reached his door. Dizzy from the rude awakening, he staggered to the porch railing and called across the common, "Are you all right over there?"

The three-quarter moon that barely filtered through the jungle canopy illuminated Musa's face in the hospital window. "We took care of it…" he called back, a bit out of breath. "We'll tie him down this time."

Gato's screams awakened Logan twice more during the night. The second time, at about four o'clock, the man's tormented outburst went on for over five minutes before he quieted.

Then, just before dawn, Gato again jolted awake. Scott's panicked voice pierced Logan's open hut like a fire alarm. "Logan, we need your help!"

Urging his legs and feet off the cot, Logan threw on a worn pair of running shoes, cleared the stairs in one leap, and sprinted off into the semi-darkness. At the hospital, a small kerosene lantern dimly lit a scene of utter confusion. Gato's overturned cot, two tables and an array of medical supplies littered the floor. His two older brothers, Diwa and Bano, shielded Gato's sobbing wife near one wall. Musa, a mask of terror contorting his face, slumped against the wall by the door, while Scott kept his distance near the opposite corner. Gato's skin dripped with perspiration; trickles of streaked blood flowed from deep gouges on his face and chest. He swayed unsteadily to and fro, and growled animal-like; his fierce, inhuman, expressionless eyes scanning the scene.

Logan slowly made his way across the room, stooping to retrieve a crumpled blanket to wrap around the sick man. Just as he neared, however, Gato bounded across the floor and plowed into Logan's chest, knocking him to the ground. Logan fell hard, banged his head against a chair, then rolled over and grabbed at Gato. He managed to latch onto a leg, but the man kicked furiously, broke free and careened out the door, where he slipped on the hospital's damp veranda and plummeted headfirst down the stairs.

Dazed from the brawl—and fingering a throbbing knot on the back of his head—Logan scrambled to his feet and dashed outside, the other men close behind. Already, curious villagers had appeared from the neighboring longhouse. Diwa and Bano barged past Logan to help their sibling, but before they could reach him, he was already splashing across the creek, heading for the dense jungle. They took off after him, with Logan and several hunters joining the chase. Gato, despite his weakened condition, displayed surprising vigor as he darted onto a narrow path and disappeared in the darkness.

The men scurried to catch up. "We'll get him!" Logan called out, trying to sound convincing. "Keep going!"

After running full speed for several minutes, the men stopped, panting. Their eyes squinted into the shadows. There was no sign of the fleeing man. Logan feared that Gato had veered off the trail into the thick undergrowth. "Hold still for a minute!" he barked. "Let's just listen for him."

The men breathed heavily now as they hunched over, listening intently, their bodies tense, their heads pivoting from side to side. Only the slightest glow from the low moon filtered through the forest canopy; Logan could see but a few meters in any direction. A moist breeze flowing down from the higher mountains offered faint relief from the heavy atmosphere of the rain forest.

Suddenly, wild screams rang out ahead, off in the distance. "He's probably reached the rice fields by now," puffed Bano.

Now the men picked up the pace, weaving single-file up the gentle slope. Thick vegetation snapped back against them as they negotiated the narrow pathway. At last reaching the fields, Diwa halted and yanked something from off a broken branch: a white, blood-covered strip of cloth.

"This way!" Bano pointed across the paddies to the far side. Away from the canopy cover, the dawning eastern sky was just becoming visible, a soft gleam that barely illuminated a trail of trampled rice plants. Logan thought he caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure scaling the steeper terrain beyond the water, but nothing was clear in the faint light.

The two brothers set off through the water on a dead run, with the others close behind. Logan welcomed the cool water splashing on his flushed skin. They stopped briefly where the paddy turned into a sudden, pathless hill. Logan was again grateful for the brief respite.

Bano glanced around, expertly eyeing the scene, then kneeled at the water's edge, his eyes fixed on a dark spot that, in the dimness, looked like stirred-up mud. He brushed one hand across the tops of the young rice plants, then turned it over to expose his palm. Even Logan's untrained eyes could see that it was streaked with blood. With renewed determination, Bano and Diwa sloshed onto the shore to ascend the steep incline.

The men sweated and wheezed in the dense air, and some of the older hunters fell far behind. Jagged leaves and unbending branches tore at Logan's drenched skin as he struggled to keep up. He considered himself reasonably fit, but realized now that his sedate village life had taken its toll. Following the few younger men still tailing Diwa and Bano, who were setting the rigorous pace, Logan couldn't detect any sign of a trail. But the hunters, their gaze attuned to the subtleties of the mountain jungle, were able to detect the few intricate signs—bent leaves, broken twigs and overturned stones— that marked the way. In time, Gato's screams ceased, but his pursuers were sure of which direction he had gone.

After ten more minutes of rigorous climbing, Bano stopped again. Logan's side hurt from forcing the thick air in and out of his lungs, and the perspiration and mud that clung to his skin stung the scrapes on his legs and arms.

Bano studied another bloodstain left on the side of a tree. Diwa climbed on a little further, listening for any sounds of his frenzied brother. "He's hurt and hasn't eaten in two days," said Bano. "How can he run this fast?"

"I can't believe he hasn't passed out yet," agreed Logan, clutching his side and feeling as if he was about to pass out himself.

The men continued clambering up the hill, frequently pausing to examine the trail. The terrain gradually leveled and the track led east towards a flatter area. Here it opened onto a grassy field, bordered by a marsh. No longer compelled to travel single file, the hunters fanned out in an effort to locate their quarry.

"The animals are quiet," Bano intoned. "Gato must have startled them. He's near."

Logan cocked an ear. Though the clicking and buzzing of the insects was as loud as ever, the silence of the primates and nighttime fowl seemed abnormal. By now the slower hunters had caught up with the group as they renewed the chase, methodically sloshing across the weed-strewn marsh, searching for any signs of Gato.

"Here! Over here!" Diwa's cries echoed from the base of an ancient teak tree.

Logan anxiously rushed over with the others. His nervous tension, however, quickly turned to horror. Gato's body lay face down in a soggy bog, covered in blood and mire. The flesh on his arms and legs was as if an animal had slashed it. A swarm of gnats and flies already teemed around the steam emanating from the body's many wounds.

Most of the hunters turned away, repulsed by the gruesome sight. Gato's two brothers fell to their knees beside the prone figure, sobbing uncontrollably. Logan suddenly felt sick to his stomach and sucked in a deep breath, attempting to stop the nausea in his belly from rising. He approached the two men and gently put his hands on their shoulders to offer a word of comfort. "I'm sorry," was all he could think to say. His eyes filled with tears as he stared silently at the pitiful form—a man who had been his good friend. When he reckoned that he could speak without his voice cracking, he helped Diwa and Bano to their feet. Following an awkward embrace, he asked another hunter to accompany them home.

Then, clearing his mind of the horrific event in order to prepare for the task at hand, Logan directed the hunters to lash together a gurney using a lattice of vines and bamboo poles. This done, they rolled Gato's limp body in banana leaves, gently positioned it on the gurney, and began the arduous journey back to the village. An occasional sob and muttered curse rent the air as they slogged along. Otherwise, only a disquieting mist dominated the morning air.