Springtime (Part 1)
(Meta note: this is a writing experiment. It is best described as: how would Stephen King do yiff? Comments appreciated.)
(Content warning: if you don't like attempted rape -- a lot of it! -- then you don't want to read this.)
Springtime
It was late afternoon when the truck approached a long, muddy hill after driving an endless dirt road in the Keinhal valley. Even calling it a road was a stretch; it was nothing more than a narrow stretch of plain that the GDF had built a foot up off the ground. It extended only a mile or two, from the edge of the valley to the aid station.
Torias, a young male lion who would never develop a mane, was alone at the wheel. His last assignment had been north of the arctic circle, recovering a nuclear warhead. He was convinced that the suit he wore would fail, and he would have a cancerous, short life. When that didn't happen, his new assignment -- driving supplies to the hyena tribes in the valley -- was a relief.
After doing it for months, however, to one tribe or another, he found himself bored on these long trips. He had dreams about working at the Global Council meetings, hearing all the important decisions being made even if his sole function was pouring someone's tea. Instead, he was to deliver supplies needed to sustain a group who had voluntarily renounced technology several hundred years ago.
Having arrived at the end of the road, Torias found himself at the most boring part of his mission. He saw that all of the tents had been set up within a hundred feet, closer to the aid station than the end of the road. Tribesman and GDF uniforms were already walking toward him. Torias, feeling ambitious, decided to save them a walk.
He drove the trunk right up to the edge, and went over, feeling the half a second of freefall before he landed with a heavy crunch. The truck kept trying to spin to his left, but he steered it right by digging ruts with short, sharp stabs at the break. One of them, however, was too sharp. Still 100 feet from the aid station, the tires dug into the soft mud, and the truck ground into the hill.
He heard the cargo clank to a stop behind him, and as he turned the engine off, Torias decided this was the furthest he was going. He sighed, and decided they would have to walk after all. As they came to the truck, Torias walked across the soft earth -- so soft his heavy boots made prints -- to the door of the large brick aid building, and knocked.
It was answered by a female wearing nothing but the traditional garb: two feathers on her head, jewelry on her ears, and leather chaps to protect her from the waist down. Being courteous, in spite of her earthly smell, he affixed his eyes on her feet, and said, "I would to speak to the Captain, please." He then looked up at her to see her reaction.
She nodded, and with a submissive gesture, stepped out of the way of the door. Even as he walked into the office, he heard hollering outside, as he expected that the supplies would suddenly unpack themselves. His job was to deliver them, and he did; if the truck was still intact, he wouldn't be in trouble.
She got out of his way as he strode past the large foyer, quite dusty and scarcely decorated, and went immediately to the right at a three-way fork toward the offices. As one would expect, the Captain's office was right in the front, first door on his left. Torias knocked.
He heard a loud response, but with a note of sleepiness rather than irritation.. Since it was in the language of the natives, he had no idea what was said.
He didn't have the gravel for it, but tried to imitate a drill sergeant in his reply. "Corporal Torias Burns with supplies, sir!" he called.
"Oh!" exclaimed the much deeper voice, "excellent! Stay out there. I'll be right out."
After he heard more talking, and then rustling of a uniform -- the Captain slept in his office? -- the door finally opened, revealing a tall lion who Torias assumed must the be Captain.
He has an angular face, sharp blue eyes, and a neck-long mane. However, the thing most surprising to Torias was the condition of his uniform: the undershirt was gone; the pants had been shredded into ratty looking shorts; and the long-sleeved grey shirt was converted into an armless tank-top, whose sole purpose seemed to hold the dot-and-bars insignia on his chest.
Torias was shocked. He was never one to go strictly by the book, but this seemed to be breaking its binding down the middle. The Captain was starting to look like one of them -- an honorable officer reduced to one of the creatures who used nothing more than a flint.
The shock was slowly superseded by a feeling of contempt welling up within him. If he were a general on inspection, he would declared that the Captain was thoroughly unbecoming an officer. He no longer reflected anything the GDF stood for.
"Papers, Corporal!" barked the Captain, interrupting his train of thought. The sharp, impatient voice reminded Torias that he hadn't made general yet.
"Oh, yessir," he murmured, taking them out of his pocket.
The Captain took them, and walked over to his desk to sign them. But in so doing, his foot let go of the door, which eased open to an even more shocking sight.
The desk the Captain signed those papers on -- covered with dirty dishes instead of paper -- was the only piece of furniture in the room except a row of cabinets along the walls. The rest of the roomy office was blank and undecorated except for two mats in the back of the room, one of which had a male hyena snoozing on it, close to Torias' age.
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" asked Torias with an edge in his voice.
The lion finished signing, before answering with a glare, "granted."
"May I ask how long you have been stationed here, sir?"
"4 years, 5 this summer."
"If I may be so bold, sir, I question the wisdom of such a long assignment."
The Captain smiled with barred teeth. "I expect you would, not having seen these wonderful hyenas for any more time than unloading supplies takes. You don't know them. You don't see how long their memory is. And that is why you might not make sergeant: you don't understand the way of the world for those different than yourself."
Torias bit his tongue as his blood boiled.
"You know," continued the Captain, "I think you are just in time to learn something about these people. Today is a festival of -- well, your supplies, actually. It's herbs that have special significance to them, and so on. So, I'm ordering you to stay here until tomorrow. Get an education, and loosen up."
Torias thought of his truck, and nodded. "Yes sir," he answered with grit teeth."
"Now, dismissed," yawned the Captain, "get out."
Torias walked out -- without saluting -- and closed the door behind him.
In the hall, as he was leaving, the hyena female asked slowly, "you find what you look for?"
He asked slowly in return, "who else is here besides the Captain?"
"Go left, see nurse," she answered.
He nodded, bowed, and went down the left corridor. It quickly opened into an infirmary, with one sleeping female patient, who was apparently pregnant. Why, he thought, does everyone sleep so late?
He saw a hyena, this time in a proper GDF uniform, walk in and look her over quickly before noticing him. Missing insignia, he didn't know what rank she was, and so addressed her with plain courtesy.
"May I speak with you a moment?" he asked, voice lowering as he looked at the sleeping patient.
She nodded silently, and took him back around the corner.
"The Captain has ordered me to... loosen up, and understand these -- hyenas," he sighed, more with resignation than disdain. "Apparently, I don't understand them, because I cannot possibly imagine anyone in his condition being fit for duty."
She was kind, but firm. "That depends on what the duty is. If the duty is to present a good face, then yes. If that duty is to negotiate with natives, then no. Suppose some chieftain shuffled into GDF HQ, who could read and write, and said he was the negotiator. He wouldn't be very good at his job, would he, if he showed up dressed like them."
"I disagree," Torias inserted, "I would expect that, and accommodate him."
"Precisely," she pointed out, "you wold accommodate him. If you need to accommodate him, he's not doing his job very well, is he?"
Torias said nothing. He saw the point.
"But the difference is," Torias argued, "that they have not sworn to uphold a set of rules."
Her voice changed after that. "If you need to actually swear to uphold a commitment to your extended family, because you'll forget, then you're not normal."
After that hard-edged remark, she started ignoring him, and walked back into the room with her patient.
Torias dared not follow her, because of a feeling of sanctity that about the room. When he felt it, he decided that feelings like that could do a lot, if directed on an extended family of sorts... but it still seemed abstract. His ignorance frustrated him, and he felt confined to this populated island, away from civilization for 24 hours. He decided to go outside, where it at least was sunnier, if a little cooler.
He stepped our the front door, and watched a large throng taking apart the crates with glee. All looked about the same: leather chaps, uncovered rumps, and feathers or animal skins around their chests or heads, depending on gender. It was very easy to tell males from females, even at this distance of several hundred feet, and it was the females he found himself looking at. He wished they were more civilized; he might find some of them attractive with manners that he understood.
The group seemed to be at least following general directions of a rather tall male with more jewelry than most, who Torias assumed was some kind of leader. He was watching the scene behind him when he heard a high voice he did not recognize.
"So happy, they are," it said, accent causing the vowels to be drawn out in the words.
Torias turned to see the hyena that was in the Captain's office in a compromising position. He had chaps like the others, but also some white bones or ivory pieces around his neck.
"You should also be," he added.
"Why?" Torias asked.
"Because that contains --" -- some long name Torias could not process.
"What?" he asked.
"Tonight is the beginning of spring," the male continued, "and that is the best time of year. Big celebrating will happen," he concluded awkwardly.
"I see," answered Torias, remembering his assignment, "the Captain says I should stay for it. Is there anything I must do?"
He smiled mischievously. "You can help by carrying the wood boxes."
"I will," answered Torias, with less enthusiasm than the Captain would probably have liked, "thank you for talking to me, --"
"Rehaman," he answered, with a bow.
Torias returned it, and then walked over to unpack the crates.
***
Torias did so as well, before too long. He didn't know a word of their language, but when he walked over and picked something up, he was pointed with finger and eye as to where things went. There were several categories, but the two most common herbs in bulk went outside a rather moderate tent, with lots of animal furs and things hung inside. It was vacant, its occupant presumably working somewhere else, but it had almost an aura to it that hold Torias it had to be a shaman or medicine man.
Either way, Torias did his work. As the last crates were brought to their final destinations, he saw the shaman return. She, it turned out, was the one who greeted him at the door to the GDF office. He was surprised that the spiritual leader of the tribe was a she, but was unsurprised by anything these natives would do -- or so he thought.
"Come," she offered him, as he just looked at her, "help me prepare."
He followed her, deciding that this was the best way to follow the Captain's orders and learn about these primitives. What she did, aside from a little bit of native mumbo-jumbo, was open the boxes -- which contained dried soybeans, of all things.
"Pleas fetch me wood for a fire," she asked, voice distant as she examined them all, and tasted one.
"Okay," replied Torias with a sigh.
He left, at least knowing what dried wood looked like.
"What she say?" asked Rehaman, who appeared from nowhere.
"Wood," answered Torias, "find wood."
"For the soup?" he asked.
Since it seemed to be without prompting, Torias answered, "yes. Tell me about the soup."
"Soup of Spring," he answered, as he found his firewood piled at the back of the GDF building.
Torias, somewhat tired from dragging those heavy boxes, let him grab the axe to split it.
"It is hard to say," he continued, "I am missing words. But, it is soup that shows the beginning of spring. Tastes terrible, but feels good."
"Feels good?"
The axe came down on the log, and it flew into pieces, barely missing the Captain's window.
"Whoa!" Torias barked, as he reflexively flinched, "easy! You're strong!"
"Thank you," Rehaman answered with a grin, and with an extra flex of his muscles, split the second just as hard.
"Understand," he continued, as Torias dared pick up the pieces as the hyena went, "that it has been a long, cold, lonely winter. Nothing to do but keep warm."
Torias remembered the native view of marriage and during the next swing, interjected. "I thought keeping warm was fun," he asked.
"No," answered the hyena sharply as he brought the axe down, "not in winter. Children will come. She runs out of --" some long name.
Was it the same long name as before?
"And children won't come, if you eat that?" confirmed Torias, trying to see if that was the plant leaves or the soybeans.
"Right," he answered, as he brought down the axe one more time. "She should be happy," Rehaman stated, as Torias gathered up the firewood, "give that to her," he directed.
"Thank you," said Torias. The hyena didn't answer, but watched him walk away.
Torias returned to the tent, to find her outside. She arranged the logs into a ring, added kindling, and started it with a rock and steel flint. He squatted by the fire, and watched her. So much for no technology, Torias thought to himself. Their purpose for living this way -- fear of technology -- was the one thing he remembered from basic training. But out of respect, he said nothing.
"What is the soup?" he asked her.
"Soup of Spring," she answered with a smile.
"What does that mean?"
"You wouldn't like it," she answered, "it tastes bad."
Another common remark, Torias noted.
"Does anyone like it?" he asked.
"They drink because it makes them feel good," she answered. But the smile on her face seemed slightly sinister -- it was enough to make Torias ask more.
"What's in it?" he asked, unable to keep from getting sharper.
She answered by getting a large kettle from behind her tent full of water, and then added things to it: a precise measure of soybeans, a small bag of herbs, and then several handfuls of dried leaves with a teardrop shape. She started whispering native words as she went, looking up at the sky once in a while. It seemed to have a greater significance, and Torias felt left out.
"Please," he asked, when she paused, "what are you saying? I wish to understand."
She sighed. "You cannot understand. You have not been through the long winter. You have been across the world instead, where it was warm."
As she got hotter, the water started to boil. "You will mistake what this means to us, and you will be hurt."
"Hurt?" Torias repeated.
"Hurt. You do not know how to relax. I can see it now, even sitting on your haunches. You never relax. You never give up. You will be hurt."
"I don't want to be hurt," he said, his jaw clenched to even say the words in the face of his pride an training, "so tell me how I can avoid it."
"You must leave."
"I cannot leave," he answered, "the Captain says I cannot."
Her eyes sharpened. "Then I will speak to your Captain."
She took a stone cup with her, half filled with the soup, still boiling. He could not imagine how her hand could survive the heat, but it did. They quickly went to the office, past the hyena with a group of other males chopping more wood, and up to the office door.
Rather than knocking, she called him. It had extra vowels in it, but Torias did recognize the word "Captain" in what she demanded, as she hid the cup of soup behind her back.
He opened the door, and upon seeing her, said something that sounded deferential.
She said something else Torias couldn't understand, but it made the Captain look at him, and smiled that same grin she had when discussing the soup. He answered with a shake of his head, and said something in reply. She replied by throwing the soup on his armless shirt.
"Aaaah!! Shit!!" he yelled, which Torias definitely understood.
Burning, he took it off, and threw it on the floor at his feet. "What was that for!!"
"Let him go!" she demanded, "you know what will happen to him!"
"He deserves it!"
"You call yourself an officer!? Revenge!?"
"Fine! He can go! Corporal, back to headquarters at once!"
"Yes sir!" he answered with a smile and salute, not wanting to think about what she was referring to.
He returned to the truck, only to find that the wood choppers had taken a break to play in it.
"Hey!" he yelled in his drill sergeant voice, "get off!"
Still laughing, they got out of the drivers, seat, off the hood, and out of the cargo hold, respectively. As he got in, and activated the computer on the console, they all got into a line and did a bad salute.
He started it -- and nothing happened. Click, clunk. Click, clunk. After the third try, he saw them suppressing giggles, and decided he knew what happened.
He got out, and glared at them, without saying a word -- they couldn't understand him anyway.
"Your technology hard to use," said one, and then they all ran off -- slowed down considerably by laughter. Torias almost found it funny, until he opened the hood.
He found a huge crack in the control circuit for the engine, a lightning bolt that sliced through the 5 by 9 inch board from top to bottom. He was about to go hang them when he saw that it had actually been caused by a piece of the engine itself having come undone from its mounting, and stabbed it. They weren't strong enough to do that -- but gravity when he hit that hill would be.
His anger melted into a feeling of dismay and disgust.
"Shit," he sighed to himself, his military training leaving him.
This kind of truck was supposed to not be vulnerable to this kind of freak accident, according the manual. He wouldn't be in this position had he not quoted the rulebook to the Captain. He was told by the shaman-ess that his training would make him get hurt. What would he do now?
He had no idea; he stared into space from the front seat of the truck, as he watched them getting more and more pots on a boil, all under the watch of the shaman-ess. Everyone who had a pot must have given it to her this day. More and more came in from the surrounding area as the sun sank lower in the sky. They seemed to have forgotten all about him. He wished it would be true forever.
From 150 yards, he watched them come, some starting on the soup he had worked on. It was finished, he presumed. As everyone had pooled their pots for her, so did they pool cups, bowls, skins, and every other container that would tolerate the heat. Not everyone was given some; he wasn't quite sure who, but based just on body shapes and who he liked to look at, that the females were getting the soup and the males were waiting.
Soon, pups of every age and height were being rounded up by various females who joined the growing throng at the pots for some soup. He saw many of them being pushed away from the soup, others learning not to drink the hard way -- a taste, and then a spit.
As the male elder Torias saw before re-appeared, he began to get the attention of the children one at a time. Several males, after discussion with each other, also lined up behind him. He was speaking in a loud voice, syllables coming so fast that Torias could barely hear them. The children seemed excited as the males got torches and led them all out of camp.
As twilight fell, and the males began getting their soup, as the females spread out, Torias remembered the computer. Surely the truck's computer would have a manifest of everything he was carrying. He opened it, and discovered that the soybeans were genetically modified. Their specific change: increased estrogen ten-fold. Birth control.
Not liking the sound of that -- how would a tribe celebrate getting birth control? -- he kept reading. There were many other herbs, but the second largest in quantity was cocoa leaves. It was a source of caffeine -- and a small dose of cocaine. As this information sank in, he saw a group of males amid the many all drink their soup in unison, and then breathe as if they had been given new life. They went off in a hunting band.
It took only moments for everyone to walk away from the soup, and begin wandering in different directions, like a game of hide and seek. Torias stomach knotted, with the sense that anyone who was found would have something very bad happen to them. Was he fair game?
***
All he needed to know, in answer to that question, was to see wander across two females jogging toward him. With the moon now in the sky, as even twilight began to fade, he might be able to see them as beautiful -- but he was duty bound not to interfere with the natives in matters so fragile as their gene pool. More than that, they probably smelled terrible.
He stood up, heart starting to accelerate. He wasn't quite sure what he would do, but he stood there, and let them come to him, just to see what they would do. Their eyes and hips meant it needed no translation. Any attraction he might have experience from seeing them afar left him when they got close; their fur was dirty, and they smelled like mud and sweat -- unflattering to anyone in the civilized world.
What did they choose to do? Just saunter up to him, and ask a very suggestive question he did not understand.
He simply, and coldly, replied, "no."
The taller of the pair said something, and then reached for his shirt button.
"Teschamueinshup," she teased, a word making an entire sentence to them.
"No," he repeated, even more sharply, and slapped her hand away.
While she looked sorrowful, Torias barely managed to see the attack from the shorter at his side. She jumped on his shoulder, and tried to bring him to the ground, but he saw her and expected the weight.
"No!" he shouted, as he rolled her into a fireman's lift and threw her down on the hyena in front of him.
He started walking away, but they got up, and started toward him.
Torias walked faster. They matched him.
So, Torias started running, straight toward the GDF aid station.
But as he approached it, another four hyenas -- presumably female, it was hard to tell at this distance in the bad light -- stood in his way, the same look on their faces.
Apparently, Torias thought to himself as he turned 90 degrees toward the main camp, they won't take no for an answer. Perhaps this was why he would get hurt, according to the shaman-ess.
Now he had six of them behind him, and they could run pretty well. He was glad to have kept in shape, or he would surely have been caught: their festival meal. The difference was, he wouldn't be killed before they enjoyed him.
He ran toward a small range of trees, which was too small to be a forest, but possibly large enough to hide in.
The moment he entered it, and stopped to catch his breath, he heard a voice beside him: "Teschamueinshup."
"No!" he answered, and pre-emptively punched the muzzle that spoke it, starting into a jog.
As he dodged trees, he could hear the footsteps fast behind him on the muddy ground behind him. When it was almost too dark to see the trees, he suddenly stopped and darted behind one. The steps kept going.
When he heard them finally stop and turn, as more from the six came from behind him, he looked at the tree, and struggled to climb it.
The bark was hard, and it scraped up his uniform on his way up, as well as scratching up his arms and hands. At least there were boughs low enough it was possible to climb, even though it took most of his upper body strength. Adrenaline motivating him, he managed to get up into the foliage by the time he heard the footsteps arrive at this tree. Hanging by his elbows on a branch, he paused to listen. What would they do? Would they find him?
The tense silence lasted second after second, before it finally broke. The feet padded away, with resignation he could hear, until they decided to start chasing another bit of wild game. Only when they faded did he feel a hand touch him.
He almost lost his grip flinching so much, but the voice was male. "It is myself, friend," Rehaman said, "take my hand."
With the hyena's help, he was pulled to his feet and then sat, still breathing heavily, on the wide branch that easily accommodated them both if they sat close together near the trunk. It was a little awkward, with the hyena leaning against the trunk, and Torias slouched toward him due to the steep branch angle. But, it was safety, and it at least let Torias relax.
"They will pursue every male to no end," said his friend, answering the question Torias did not bother to ask.
"How do you tell them 'no'?" Torias asked.
"Until the sun rises, they will not listen," he answered. "They will wear any male out by morning. If you are not excited to see them, they hold you down and use your hands or your muzzle."
Torias cringed; the thought of smelling them and touching them repulsed him.
"You do not like them," added Rehaman awkwardly, reacting to the face Torias made at his own thoughts.
"I can't stand to think about it," he answered, focusing instead on his current safety.
"Well they will not find us here," he said.
Torias sighed -- and did his best to tolerate to body beside him that smelled like dead leaves.
He leaned back against the tree, scooting closer to the trunk, and closed his eyes. A moment later, he felt the hyena beside him shift too. And then a hand appeared on his opposite shoulder.
And then, breath on his neck.
"Huh?" gasped Torias, as his eyes popped open -- and saw the hyena snap from affection to surprise.
"Huh!" Rehaman repeated, in an equal gasp. "Don't you like me?"
Torias suspected that his friend was using the wrong word. "You are my friend," he answered.
"Dear friend?" Rehaman asked.
Based upon the look in his eyes, and the position of his arm which hadn't changed, "no," answered Tolias.
"Please," asked the hyena, wrapping the arm tighter, and pulling the lion's face toward his own.
"No!" demanded Torias, the smell being weaker, but the feeling all wrong, "no!"
He was forced to escape: he elbowed the hyena in the nose -- making him his former friend, he thought -- and seeing nowhere else to go, jumped.
His landing, however, was not nearly as elegant. His 15 foot fall landed on his feet, then twisted his left ankle, then brought him to his right knee. He screamed, and an instant later, knew that he would surely be found by the ravenous hyenas.
He forced himself to stand and with his left leg barely under his control, and throbbing in ever-growing pain, he hobbled for his life in the first direction he faced. He could see, from here, that it would be a long time until sun up.
To be Continued...