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

His palms started to sweat, and his entire body started to tingle. The dam was close to bursting. He closed his eyes and did one of his calming exercises: naming characters from The Simpsons.

“Homer . . . Bart . . . Lisa . . . Maggie,” he said, taking a deep inhale between each name. “Marge . . . Mr. Burns . . . Ned Flanders . . . Smithers . . . Barney . . . Ralph . . . Millhouse . . . Groundskeeper Willie . . . Grandpa Simpson . . . Chief Wiggum . . . Apu . . . Troy McClure . . .”

He named characters for another long minute until his heart rate felt almost back to normal. He opened his eyes, let out a deep exhale, and said, “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. You’ve got this. We’ll just retrace our steps back to our campsite, and then we’re all good.”

He started back in the direction he came. He walked for one minute. Then two. Then three.

Where was his campsite?

He spun in a circle. The slow drip of panic returned, but this time there was nothing he could do to stem its tide. His heart fluttered. His skin prickled. His chest heaved. The wall of green began to close in on him like a giant green fist.

He was on the verge of blacking out, and he fell to his knees. Andy pulled the whistle up from around his neck and with one of his few remaining breaths, he blew.

TWEEEEEE!

TWWEEEEEE!

TWWEEEEEEEE!

13

13

rio orthon
august 14, 2:45 p.m.
days since abduction: 9

Lunch consisted of the snacks Vern and I had picked up at the market: dried plantains, Brazil nuts, and chicharróns (basically, fried pork rinds). A combination of sweet, salty, and savory. Though to be honest, I’d covered myself with such a thick layer of insect repellent that everything I ate tasted of DEET.

In addition to spraying myself from head to toe with the insect repellent, I’d slapped on a wide gray fisherman’s hat and sunglasses to help combat the equatorial sun’s intense glare on the water.

Carlos was now manning the outboard, and Juan Pablo was playing some game on his early-model iPhone. Vern made a little bed for himself between the benches and was lying against his backpack, his knees pulled up to his chest and his maroon hat over his face. Camila had found her way over to him, and she was snuggled into his side.

Over the past six hours, the river had widened, narrowed, widened, and narrowed. Presently, it was at its widest: over two hundred feet. We’d lost the last of the tour boats two hours in, and other than an empty canoe tangled in the vegetation of the narrowest stretch of water, we hadn’t encountered any signs of human life since.

Carlos kept the boat thirty yards from the shoreline to our right, close enough to hear the howler monkeys above the din of the motor.