The Savage God

By Mike Ramon

A novelette. After a team disappears in the jungle while searching for the holy temple of a lost religion, another team follows in their footsteps. Soon, the trek will turn into a nightmare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Ramon
• Release date: Apr 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005060756

Mike Ramon

Born and bred in the Midwest.

Book preview

THE SAVAGE GOD

Mike Ramon

© 2021 M. Ramon

Smashwords Edition

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Cover image modified from an original photo by Nathan Snider

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Simon was gone in the morning. We’d spent the night with the others, the lot of us seated around a little campfire in a jungle clearing and eating our dinner while passing small talk. It was different from when we started out on the journey. Back when we started, when our faces were smooth and our jungle gear fresh and clean, our nighttime campfire talk was loud and boisterous, filled with jokes and stories from home. We must have seemed strange to the jungle animals out there in the darkness that encompassed the world away from the circle of light thrown by the flickering flames, us humans who had no business there, no right to be so loud and free in that harsh place. Then, only Winston was more reserved, his mind on the trek ahead and what he thought we’d find at the end of it.

As the days passed, as the jungle villages where we replenished our supplies became fewer and farther between, as our faces grew rough with stubble, and as our clothes became dirty and ragged, the talk grew quieter. Conversation, if it could be called that, became a series of monosyllables passed among us. No more jokes, no more stories about girls from our hometowns. Supplies were running low and tempers were rising. Two days before that morning – the morning when we woke up to find Simon missing – two of the natives, Dao and Trang, almost knifed each other after one accidentally knocked over the other’s pack. Winston was able to get between the men before they started poking holes in each other. The two men had steered clear of each other since then, occasionally throwing mistrustful glances at one another. Tinh, the oldest of the native guides and the one they seemed to respect the most from their group, had been off in the bush doing his business when the fight had gone down; he’d been displeased to rejoin the group and find out what the commotion he’d heard while squatting in the weeds had been about. He’d dressed the men down, and they’d had the good sense to look sheepish.

But I was talking about Simon, wasn’t I? Yes, that was it; the mind wanders at times. Simon seemed unusually distant in those last few days before he vanished. The previous evening, as we sat at the fire, Simon had gone off by himself, sitting at the very edge of the light, the dark of the jungle touching his back. Winston, Timothy, and I all took turns calling him back, telling him to join the rest of us. It wasn’t so much that we desired his company – we could all have done without that morose look his face had taken on lately – but the jungle could be dangerous, especially at night, and I guess we feared that a predator might just snatch him off into the dark if he sat there too long. He ignored our entreaties, never speaking a word. Martin seemed to share the feelings of the natives – the four of them that remained after leaving Quan at the last village we’d passed through (he’d developed gaping sores on