Last Man Standing

Chapter One 

He floated headless in a mist of tears. 

Even the river’s roar was not enough to mask the scream as overhead the Borneo midday sun skidded a brilliant reflection across the river’s surface.
Garrett clapped her hand against her mouth and squinted against the bright sun as tears washed her vision.  As if that would shift reality or change the fact that all that stood between Malcolm and anonymity was the San Diego Chargers’ logo on his torn, water soaked t-shirt. 

Malcolm’s smiling face flitted across Garrett’s  - his smiling, missing face.  She choked and her foot slipped, bringing her dangerously close to the river bank, and the body.

Around her the brush crackled and something screeched, the sound harsh and loud.  It would have sent chills to the uninitiated but it was only an insect, an oversize bug - an insect that might not be classified, unidentified.  There were so many and that was what had brought her here.  A scientific expedition that only hours ago would have had her excited by the possibility of discovery but now her guide was dead, headless.  That thought alone was preposterous even when the evidence lay in front of her.  She needed another focus before panic clouded everything.  And then she caught sight of Ian spewing into the tall grass that grew wild and untamed on the edge of the clearing.

"Ian!"

It was only the two of them – for now.  She and Ian – Ian who didn’t have the balls God had given her mother - all feminine screams and hysteria in a crisis.  Under other circumstances she’d feel sympathy. 

Her fingers trembled and she clenched them into her palms, nails pinching the skin and still it didn’t help.  Her thoughts jittered everywhere. 
There was no answer as Ian began to cry in large gulping sobs. 

“Christ on a stick!”  She didn’t know where that ridiculous phrase had come from but somehow the anger at Ian brought a momentary calm, a tangible place for her emotions to focus.  

“Ian!” she shouted, trying to use tough love, hoping that would bring him back from the edge.  They couldn’t afford hysteria.  They had to survive.  Small choking sounds came from the brush.  “C’mon, Ian,” she muttered, swallowing her own bile as it crept uninvited up the back of her throat.
 
Dead.

Only yesterday morning she had laughed with Malcolm over some inane joke one of the Iban had told him, something that related back to his heritage and the Iban's history as headhunters.

“Headhunters,” she whispered.  “Don’t be utterly ridiculous,” she answered herself.  There were no headhunters anymore.  Just tribal people who took great pride in a history that once had included headhunting.  Once, she reminded herself, no more.   Her gaze flitted back to the corpse, the corpse that was minus a head. 

I’ll be back before dark.  Keep to the river.  I’ll find you. 

Those were the last words Malcolm had spoken before heading out.