Flight of Freedom

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 2

Chains of Captivity

I suddenly see dead deer corpses falling from the skies. A rope ladder is hovering a few feet away from me. I lunge for the ladder and I get hoisted up to the safety of the helicopter. I look down below and see the alligators tearing apart the ten or fifteen dead deer which were thrown down to them. The river is now red with the blood of the deer. The doe eyed- creatures were now being savaged by the hungry reptiles. It is a sickening sight to watch the bodies of the animals being ripped apart as the river is now filled with deer carcasses.

The Search and Rescue Forest Team, who come to my rescue in five specially built large helicopters have saved me from becoming part of a reptilian feast. Captain Horace Johnstone has a large crew of ten men and women. He asks his Staff Doctor Raffles to check me to make sure that I was not injured or in a state of shock.

“Where are you going to in this wilderness?” asks Captain Horace Johnstone.

“I am doing research on the boundless imagination of a human being. I am following a yellow road, which takes on different shapes and forms, as it takes me ahead on my journey and points me in the next evolutionary step of the imagination of a person.”

“That sounds interesting. I hope that you find the destination you seek,” said Captain Horace enthusiastically.

“I plan to find the yellow path and once again continue on my quest,” I said.

“Maybe you could write a book about your discovery so that we can all have an idea about the limits of the human imagination,” said Janis a member of the team, with a smile on her face.

One of the team members a man called Joe, was looking through his binoculars and spotted a long yellow trail starting at the foot of a mountain range and it goes up the side of the mountains and disappears into the thick vegetation.

“Be careful of the tribes which live over there, as they are usually suspicious of outsiders entering into their territory,” said Mike, the team scout and tracker. He handed me a panic tracker, which I could use to beep the rescue team if I needed their assistance in case I got lost or captured.

I was given a parachute and dropped off above the yellow trail.

Parachuting down to the forest trail was a new and exciting experience for me, as the air rushed past me and I plummeted to earth at great speed. It seemed to me that I was not moving at all, when in fact I was falling to earth at great speed. I pulled the chute open as I was falling and managed to get a bit of a rough landing close to the side of the mountain. I found the yellow trail of wild yellow flowers and started to follow this natural pathway into the mountain pass.

The Trek up the Mountain path was a rough and tough trek. I walked the first few miles with great vigour, until I got tired and had to rest for a while. It was now getting dark, so I set up a tent and lit a fire. I had a few cans of beans and spam, which I now opened and ate heartily. The sound of the crickets and other jungle insects could be heard. The night skies did not have any stars that night. The darkness was inky and black, so the fire-light of the campfire was a comfort to me. I went into my tent and zipped myself into a sleeping bag and dropped off into a deep sleep.

It must have been about four hours later, when I awoke with the sound of wolves baying. I looked up and saw that the moon was shining brightly, it was the night of the full moon. I then heard the sounds of leaves rustling in the distance, as if one or more creatures were moving around in the night, possibly hunting for a meal. I decided that it would be a better idea for me to sleep on the tree branches which were broad and could support me as I slept. I moved fast, packing up my tent and moving my pack up a tree nearby, where I was going to sleep that night. It is a good thing that I moved from my camping site, as a pride of mountain lions, came into the clearing where I was camped only twenty minutes ago.

The Mountain lions, could smell the scent of a human in the breeze and kept sniffing till they saw me in the tree. A few of the lions tried to climb the tree but failed. They decided to lie down in a circle around the tree, where I was camped.

The next morning when I woke from sleep the Mountain Lions had all disappeared, they were like ghosts which I had imagined during the night. I got down the tree and resumed my way through the forest. I suddenly heard a faint cry and moved towards where the sound was coming. I reached an area in the forest, where there was a large patch of quicksand and a young teenage girl was struggling to keep her head above the sand as it slowly but steadily kept dragging her down, the more she struggled to free herself.

“Stop struggling and stay still,” I told the girl in her native tongue. I was surprised that I could speak her language. That is the power of imagination, I thought to myself.

“Help me, please. I will stop moving, I don’t want to die,” the young teenager replied in a trembling tone.

“Hold onto this vine,” I told her as I clung onto a nearby tree, which had long vines growing out from its gnarled branches.

“You are not going to die,” I said, “not if I can help you.”

The girl clutched on the long thick green vine for dear life. I started to reel the vine in slowly, so that the movement was smooth, I could now see that the quicksand was still, as the girl lay on her side. I rolled a long branch beneath her body, so that her back was resting on it. The girl’s feet slowly came into view, as she now lay flat on the sand. There were no shoes on her feet, which was good. In a gradual slow motion I pulled the young teenager out of the quicksand onto firm land. The girl was shaken and scared from the experience.

“What is your name and where do you stay?”

“My name is Sharene. I stay a few miles from here. I came to collect some berries to take back home for my two young brothers,” she said pointing to a basket of berries which lay on its side a few feet away.

The girl known as Sharene took me to her home, which was not in a clearing in the forest, but in the tree tops of the forest. The thick forest canopy provided the Tree People of Zamaray, the best protection from the elements and safety from the wild animals which hunted on the grounds below.

The girl had lost her parents, who were killed by the wild savages who always attacked the tree people of Zamaray. The young Sharene and her two young brothers were taken care of by the young widow Marita. I met Marita who was a young dark haired, dark eyed woman of around thirty and who was so happy to have Sharene safely back with her.

“This man saved me from certain death,” the young Sharene told her foster mother Marita.

“What is your name?”, she asked me.

“Logan,” I said.

“We are so grateful to you, Logan. You are welcome to stay in our village for as long as you need to,” said the beautiful Marita.

The village in the trees was a lovely habitat. It was so ecologically friendly and the people respected the trees which had given them a haven for centuries. It was a symbiotic relationship between the trees and the tree people of Zamaray.

It was agreed by the Elders of the village that I was to be married to the young widow Marita and that I would be allowed to take care of her and her family. We got married the next day and the Tree people of Zamaray celebrated with food, wine and song. On the night of the wedding as the celebrations were in progress, the trees and the Tree people of Zamaray were attacked by the Wild Savages of Kiminit.

The wild savages shot arrows and killed several of the tree people.

“Marita, get Sharene and her two young brothers,” I told my Bride, “we will get killed if we stay here.”

Marita went to look for the children and she brought the young Sharene and her two young brothers who were crying in fear, as the trees burned and people were climbing trees and swinging past to escape death at the hands of the wild savages of Kiminit.

“Logan, we need to get to the tree at the center of the forest, from there we can use the secret cable car to escape to another part of the forest to safety.”

I took both the young boys in my arms and followed Sharene and Marita as we all ducked the flaming arrows, which were flying all around us, like a scene from a Robin Hood movie.

We reached the cable car, which was already filled with women and children, who were fleeing to safety. I placed the two young boys inside and managed to push both Marita and Sharene into the vehicle as well, before the doors started to shut. There were too many people on the escape pod.

“You carry on with the children, Marita. I will come back and find you in the woods. Don’t worry, I will be back soon. Take care of yourself and the children.”

“Remember the forest, remember how you got here, remember how you left here, remember me and you will find me and the children,” said Marita with a smile on her face.

Somehow, it seemed that Marita knew that I would find her and the children, when I had completed my mission.

As the escape vehicle moved away from the trees to soar above the sky to the next cluster of forests miles away. I suddenly felt a piercing pain in my left shoulder and the back of my right leg. I looked down to see an arrow embedded into the leg and there was one sticking out dangerously from the side of my left shoulder. Thick dark blood was now oozing out from both wounds.

I looked up at the escape vehicle and got a glance of Marita looking at me with shock, as she and the children moved out of sight to safety.

I next felt my body collapse beneath me, as I stumbled, I could feel my limp body, fall off the tree branch, the air was rushing past me, I was falling, falling, falling…….