With fruit raining down on them, Rix helped Andy dismantle his hammock and then find another, more suitable campsite. Within twenty minutes, the two had cleared a ten foot area and restrung the hammock from two trees. Once Rix left—after demanding Andy give him knuckles—Andy gave the hammock a test-drive. The underside was made of thin nylon, and the top consisted of mosquito netting and a rain fly. Andy entered through the zippered seam on the side.

Lying back, Andy couldn’t help but think back on Holland’s frightening lecture about snakes, scorpions, spiders, jaguars, wild boar, and the plethora of other deadly jungle inhabitants. And here he was, served up like a rotisserie chicken.

“One night,” he muttered. “One night.”

He slid out of the hammock, deciding he would head back to the main camp and see if he could help out with anything. Or, better yet, now that he was an expert in hammock stringing, he could offer his services. He imagined Farah struggling with her hammock, then him emerging from the brush, walking toward her, confident, self-aware, Rix-like, and asking, “Do you need some assistance?”

He laughed at the thought.

Yeah, right.

He started toward the main camp but quickly realized he didn’t know which direction the main camp was. He glanced at the three hundred and sixty degrees of green brush and tried to remember which way Rix had departed. He looked for evidence of cut brush, but between the two of them, they’d more or less hacked away at all the surrounding vegetation.

How long had he and Rix walked from his first campsite? One minute? Two? Why hadn’t he been more careful when he’d traveled to his second campsite?

But he supposed he’d been with Rix, so he hadn’t worried about it.

Andy began to backtrack in the direction he thought he and Rix had approached from, and after a couple of minutes, he recognized the two trees where he’d initially strung his hammock. He found himself letting out a deep breath, one he hadn’t even known he was holding.

He drew closer, then stopped. He sniffed. He didn’t smell the underlying musk from earlier, and on closer inspection, there were no leaves on the ground, and there was no evidence of the fruit the monkeys had rained down on them.

This wasn’t the area he’d cleared.

He turned around. And around. He cocked his head and listened for voices, but all he could hear were the erratic shrieks of the jungle.

His heart began to pound.

He glanced at the orange whistle around his neck, then shook his head.

No.

He’d been in the jungle for less than an hour. There was no way that he was going to blow his whistle and have to be rescued.

No way.