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Alona’s Quest for the Golden Tree
Chapter 23: The Search
I HAD HALF a mind to roll my eyes and ask, “What was it this time?” Except I was too frightened to do so.
Promptly extinguishing the light, Ate Rachel crept behind the large buttresses of bamboo grasses that concealed our position, to peer beyond it.
Unable to contain my curiosity, I left my patient to see what it was.
Under the light of the moon, we saw a body on the ground. Our eyes grew wide.
Three men were clustered around the body, each carrying long weird-looking stick. The stick was made of metal, with a gaping hole in its pointed part. One of it was smoking.
I frowned.
Did it catch fire? Why was it smoking?
I elbowed Ate Rachel, to ask what she thought it was. For the second time that day, there was a look of terror plastered in her face.
“Why –”
“Sshh!” she whispered in terror, pressing my mouth shut.
One of the men kneeled down, checking the pulse of the fallen victim.
I breathed in relief. I was sure these people will help the injured man.
The man, after several minutes of inspection, made the thumbs up sign.
“Survivor, this guy eh,” commented another man, his lips twirling in a smile. He was big with black bushy beard. When he smiled, there was a dazzling glint in his teeth.
Another man, noticeably bonier than the first one and much younger, mopped the sweat off his forehead. He spoke in a wheezy voice.
“B-boss.”
There was tremor in his voice. He cleared his throat to shake it off.
“Boss,” he repeated. “Aren’t we overdoing it?”
He refused to look at the eye of the man he called “Boss”.
“Do you think so?” the big man chuckled.
The young man seemed to release his breath, encouraged by the man’s genial tone. “We are told to clean up the mess. Aren’t we done now?”
“Indeed,” agreed the man. For a while, he looked genial. But then, his whole expression changed, throwing the boy a sharp look that could cut through steel. It was chilling. “I don’t think so.”
The young man looked like he swallowed his tongue whole.
“How old are you, boy?”
“S-sixteen,” he answered.
“Ah,” said the man, as if that answered everything. “So young. You have not lived as long as I am, see. If you would, you would be thorough in your job too. Clean.”
I frowned. What were they talking about?
“Do you know why we were hired?” he asked again.
The younger man shook his head. His hands quivered.
“Because we were the cleaners,” the big man replied, answering his own question. “We clean up messes. We clean up troubles.”
The young man swallowed.Â
“They were too nosy, too curious. Of course, they should be cleaned.”
“Why do we need to do this? We could just frighten them into hiding. Scare –”
“Shut up.”
 It was a simple command. But the young man shut up immediately.
“Good,” chuckled the big man, his grin returning. “Now, shall we finish here so we could find the other one?”
The younger man nodded grimly. In one smooth movement, he struck the fallen man. Hard.
I blinked. We could not ask these people to help the injured man behind us, then.
I averted my eyes. Beside me, Ate Rachel swore.
That was a very bad reflex action.
“What’s that?” inquired one of the men.Â
The men were expert hunters. They had the ears of foxes and wolves.
We froze. Ate Rachel and I exchanged panic-stricken looks.
What are we going to do?, I mouthed, panicked.
I don’t know, replied Ate Rachel.
“There’s someone here,” we heard the big man shout. “Search for it! Now!”
Footsteps thundered to several directions. Grasses and hedges were thrown brusquely around.Â
We stood frozen, hands gripping each other strongly.
“Boss,” called one of the men. “There’s something here.”
Ate Rachel’s face drained of color. Tears leaked from her eyes. I felt hot wetness coursed through my legs. I must have urinated myself.
Two footsteps descended upon us.
(c) 2016, Herbel Santiago