Afreakuh podcast (Geist)

(Sound effects mixed by Geist. Music is "Insect Royalty" by Primal Scream.

-Geist)

The jungle, rank with rot and death and rebirth, shaded the convoy of old trucks and clunky battle wagons as they slogged forward, backward, they didn't care, somewhere through the mud. There was no sound along the path save the purr of strained fuel cell engines and the slosh of rubber on wet earth. The birds were all gone or eaten, the apes and howlers had long ago been slaughtered. The trees were still there only because they were some of those luckily spared by the unrelenting machine of mankind's consumption.

The drivers and soldiers they were driving were entranced by the flora, the drip and sweat that rolled off the palms, the rejuvenation and natural process around them. These men and women came from the deserts, of the natural and urban varieties; only in the videos and books of the old days did such greenery brighten their view. Some of these soldiers were guns for hire straight out of the bleak and rolling dunes that now encompassed the angry and dying world, unable to scrape a living out of the few cactus and roots that grew in the sand. Others emerged, impoverished and oppressed, from those dark slums of humanity's own creation, furious, introverted, ready to release their inner hate of unfair society on the next passing thing that cared.

In joining the war, though, all were after a sort of equality they couldn't attain in life. All were given guns. All were given speeches. All were stuffed into truckbeds and ordered to shoot their ideological opposites between the dunes and in the jungles and across the savannas. If it was deemed more efficient, as it often was, they were even permitted to use their hands. Besides, ammunition was hard to make from what little metal and petroleum was left in the world. And they were, if anything at all, frugal killers, these humans.

They never wondered why they did it. The war had long subsided into bitter, bloody, and fluctuating stalemate in other places no longer worth fighting over- a ravaged and chemical-strewn America, a burning Europe, an abandoned Middle-East. It was seen as a privilege, an honor to still be fighting; it was almost an affirmation that they had what it took to survive. Superiority here had always been judged through trial by fire, their leaders said. Now, when the rest were put under the lick of the flame, they burnt away into the ash they really were.

Afreakuh, they all would chant. Afreakuh forever.

Slowly, the luscious dark green of the world lost its luster, and was blotted out by the desert. The Sahara spread further south. Central America became a smog-blotched and bullet-ridden no-man's land in a continental bloodbath between the oil-hungry North America and greedy South. The Himalayas lost their snowy caps for the first time from whenever time started. Entire nations disappeared. New ones emerged, only to be engulfed in flames the next day. Nationalism was no longer sufficient to survive; banding together created the chance of getting killed for someone else's vices. Survivalism reigned for God knows how long. No one recorded the time. No one cared. The time was now. The date was today. Nobody could tell you otherwise unless they had a gun to your head. That wasn't too often.

These drivers and soldiers in the jungle came from all over the hell-bent world. White and black, men and women, Christian and Muslim left their differences at the door when money and a daily ration were involved. Few spoke the same language, let alone spoke to each other. The result was warfare that more resembled an orgy of various shades of blood and angry shouted languages than a tactical game of organization. Those who died went without ceremony or acknowledgment. Those who lived got the paychecks of those who died. Everything worked out just fine.

The trees swayed unusually, and the lead truck stopped. The soldiers yelled and shouted at the driver, a short Russian who kept trying to explain he had seen something. Eventually, a small contingent of soldiers had gone off the path to try and find the source of the disturbance.

They crept in a line silently, letting the blackness of the canopy envelop them. After a few minutes, only their padded footfalls could be heard. After ten, nothing but the engines again.

Half an hour later, a lone woman burst out of the forest, tripped, and landed face-first in the mud in front of the lead truck. She righted herself, fell down again, and sat in the middle of the road, tears washing away the grime on her face. The short Russian tried to figure out what language she spoke, asking her in French, German, Swahili, then his own native tongue, what had happened, why she was crying, where were the others.

She didn't understand him, but sat in the mud of the road, her olive-green uniform torn, bloody, and stained, a broken rifle slung uselessly over her sagging back, and continued to yell, in English,

"Five more paychecks! For me! For me! All for me!"

Then the darkness lit up with the light of twenty rifles and the jungle was alive with sound once again.