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Back Jungle Up Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
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  63. Author’s Note

There was a soft crunching from all around them, then suddenly several tribesmen emerged from the forest. They were clad in red loincloths, had yellow war paint striped down their faces, and their muscles were long and lithe. Several had different colored cloths tied around their biceps. Each carried a seven-foot spear with a razor point.

The Nsé-Eja.

One tribesman shook his spear at Patrick and shouted several words in his native tongue.

“What are they saying?” asked Patrick.

“I don’t know,” said Martin.

More tribesman emerged from the forest until there were twenty spears around them. A tribesman with a rim of white hair and three lines of yellow paint beneath each eye rushed forward and jutted his spear in Gina’s face.

Gina’s heartbeat thrummed against her ribcage.

“I think he wants you to drop the gun,” Martin said.

Gina released her grip around Bill’s neck, then she slowly lowered her hand and set the gun on the ground.

Another of the tribesman picked up the gun. He turned it over in his hands and carefully inspected it. A moment later, several of the tribesmen began yelling at them, prodding them toward the forest from where they had emerged.

Patrick said, “I think we should go with them.”

Gina didn’t think they had much of a choice.

46

46

jungle
august 23, 1:24 p.m.
days since abduction: 18

When I was twenty-nine years old, I attempted to do an Ironman triathlon. Not the real one, not the one in Hawaii, but one of the half ones. It was in Atlantic City, which was an hour’s drive from where I was living in Philadelphia at the time. The race was a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1-mile run. Added up, it came to 70.3 miles, and they gave you a big “70.3” sticker to plaster on your car. That is, if you finished.

I never got the sticker. Or the T-shirt. Or the Clif Bar.

I’d been running for most of my life, and the few bike rides I’d taken were easy enough, but I was nervous about the swimming portion. My sister was swimming collegiately at the time, and she helped train me during the six weeks leading up to the race. When race day came, I was ready.

Or so I thought.

Surprisingly, I knocked the swim out in twenty-five minutes and then hopped on the $3,000 bike I’d splurged on. I had only trained on the bike five or six times beforehand, and never for more than twenty miles. I had just assumed that if I was in great running shape, I was also in great biking shape.

It turns out that isn’t how it works.

I made it through the first of the two twenty-eight-mile loops around the city with no problem. But around, oh, mile forty, my quadriceps started to cramp up. It took me two hours to finish the last sixteen miles.