Page 1

Beneath the canopy of the rainforest, the ground is alive.

Leaves move seemingly of their own accord as the mammals of the tropical wilderness – spiny rats and coatis and agoutis – shuffle across the forest floor.

Armies of ants march with purpose, swarms of beetles scuttle over the fallen branches and rotting vines.

Today, they are unified: they move as one, with a single mission, each organism compelled like a zombie army in the same direction.

They advance towards the motionless figure lying under a hasty scattering of leaves and mulchy earth, a body so broken that it seems beyond all repair.

The foliage beneath her head is gradually turning a deeper shade of crimson as the blood oozes through the back of her scalp, soaking through her hair, making it dark and matted, before it seeps into the damp earth.

Her hands unfurl from the tight fists they have been curled into, revealing a crumpled photograph inside them.

A deep crease runs through its middle, and the face of the person in the picture is slightly faded, as though fingertips have caressed its outline, tracing the image over and over until the colours have begun to wear away.

The jungle’s creatures are curious; greedy, now that they have found her.

Their steps are careful at first. But soon they will rush in with wildness, with abandon.

After that, a wake of vultures will begin to form, circling overhead.

When they have waited long enough for her, when they are ready to devour her, they will swoop down, one after the other, over and over, leaving nothing but a heap of bones scoured clean by fast beaks.

Her eyes loll open, glassy, unfocused. But she is not dead; not yet – she is hanging to life by a scrawny strand.

I want to live , her desperate eyes tell the animals and vegetation around her, attempting to communicate her anguish in the silence.

Her eyelids flutter closed, open again, each movement laboured. Her breaths are shallow; they are becoming slower.

A croak emerges from her throat – a last, desperate call for help; a cry to the rainforest, to the creatures surrounding her. To anyone who happens to be out here in this wilderness with her.

But there is no one; not any more.

And even if there were, it is too late.

They can do nothing for her now.