Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

Survival Tactics by Leo P. Kelley

The wants of one may take care of the problems of others — and most economically.

The huge lizard stared up at Krenden with its round red eyes from beneath the wild tropical bush, its leathery tail twitching nervously. Krenden, salivating, crouched down and held out his hand as if in welcome while he made what he hoped was a coaxing sound by pursing his lips and sucking in his breath.

The lizard took a ponderous step toward Krenden, and then another, which almost brought its nose into contact with the staves of the stockade that imprisoned Krenden in the center of the aboriginal tribe’s equatorial village. Krenden raised the stone in his hand, reaching through the space between two staves, and brought it down.

The lizard thrashed about for a moment and then lay still. Krenden called out to the native guard outside the stockade, but the brown man, who was wearing only a bark loincloth and paint made from berry juice, ignored him. Krenden tried again, speaking this time in the native’s own language. Wouldn’t the man push the lizard just a little bit closer to the stockade? The thing had thrashed itself out of reach, couldn’t he see? The native stared impassively at the sky. Krenden gritted his teeth. He tied two twigs together with a piece of torn vine he found on the dirt floor of the stockade and, using the shaft he had made, at last managed to drag the carcass into his compound.

He bent down and seized the body of the lizard in both trembling hands. Then, performing what was now a familiar ritual, he slammed it against a rock, smashing its small skull. He carried the corpse to the fire he kept burning in the center of his prison despite the devastating heat of the sun. He skinned it expertly with the knife he took from the pile of sticks beside the fire and then spitted it. He added some withered palm tree branches to the fire and slowly turned the spit he had made. He cursed aloud as hot grease flew up to scald his skin in concert with the burning rays of the sun that had turned his naked body almost as brown as those of his captors.

Less than half an hour later, the roasted body of the lizard lay cooling in the only corner of the compound that was mercifully shaded. Krenden proceeded to devour it hungrily, bite by eager bite, spitting out the small bones which fell among the many others of various sizes already littering the ground at his feet, white witnesses to his necessary depredations.

It was then that the natives thrust the man into the stockade with him. Krenden had not had anyone to share his stockade in more than a week and he felt a surge of genuine joy mixed with intense relief as he turned to confront his new companion. He went to where the dazed newcomer, also a white man, sat slumped in the dust, his head cradled in his arms.

“Hello. My name’s Krenden. Yours?”

“Harley,” muttered the man, struggling to his feet and ignoring Krenden’s outstretched hand.

“What’s that?” Krenden asked as the man mumbled something unintelligible.

“I’m getting out,” Harley answered. “I’m getting out of here right now.”

“Don’t!” Krenden yelled, springing forward to seize Harley. As he struggled with the man, Krenden hastily explained that the natives, although they would not kill him themselves because killing was taboo in their primitive religion, would release the cheetahs they kept caged. The cheetahs, Krenden explained, were atheists, one might say. They would not hesitate, in their hunger, to kill.

“I’m sorry,” Krenden apologized, releasing Harley. “But the cheetahs would have—”

“Thanks.” Harley glanced in the direction Krenden was pointing and saw the rows of caged cats. “Thanks,” he repeated quietly.

“Those cheetahs are very much like this tribe’s concept of justice,” Krenden told his companion. He noted that Harley’s fat face had turned pale with what he clearly recognized as undiluted fear.

“What?”

“Their concept of justice, like the behavior of the cheetahs, is uncomplicated, direct, precise and economical,” Krenden said. “In most other known societies you’d be sure to find the customary trappings of judges, prosecutors, jurors and all the rest surrounding the workings of crime. But not here. This tribe is still living in the Stone Age. Arson, murder — all the crimes civilized people recognize, plus any other act they have designated a crime — merit the same simple sentence: death. You may not like or agree with their methods, but you have to admit they’re effective. No wasted motion, no legalistic rigamarole.”

Harley looked away. “I’m not interested in all that. I’m only interested in getting out of here,” he stated in a flat nasal whine.

“In our situation,” Krenden observed, undaunted, “there are two principal topics of conversation: one, escape; two, what brought us here. Forget the first for a moment if you can, and tell me why you’re here.”

Harley gave a brief, brittle laugh. “I was working as a safari guide for rich white hunters — some with guns, some with cameras — all with money. But the season was over — the rains, you know.”

“I know,” Krenden said, remembering the endless rains that had made him begin to feel like a fish.

“There was this guy I met in a bar. He said he’d been out here once. He said the natives had silver ornaments. He said they must have found a pretty rich vein out here, so I came out and took a look around. The guy was right. Only those monkeys caught me up in their tunnel about an hour ago.”

“A thief,” Krenden mused.

“What will happen to me?”

“Theft merits the death sentence, too — here.”

“It’s not fair!” Harley howled.

Krenden shrugged, running his eyes over his companion’s thick torso and several chins. “Fairness,” he said sadly, “has nothing to do with it. This is not civilization — at least not as we know it. It’s a whole new ball game here, and they,” he said, pointing to the natives moving about the small village, “make the rules for the players.”

Harley grunted something and wiped glistening beads of sweat from his forehead.

“We have only ourselves to blame,” Krenden continued. “We should have minded our own business.”

“But it’s not fair, dammit! They got no right to all that silver. What do they do with it? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing important, anyway.”

“They fashion their idols from it. Their gods — and devils,” Krenden explained.

“That’s what I said. Nothing important.”

“It’s important to them.”

“They’ve got more statues and altars — all of them silver — than you can count. What do they want with all that stuff?”

“I was an anthropologist,” Krenden said dreamily, “a long time ago. I was part of a team studying the tribe’s social structure, their language — that sort of thing. There were three of us — my wife, myself and a guide. We learned that these are a people who conserve every item of possible value. Their environment, as you know, is a very harsh one. The elements are their enemies. Twice, we determined, their entire village was wiped out by storms, so they have learned to conserve. They find a use for everything. Everything has a function in their scheme of things. Nothing is wasted.”

“They’re stingy, you mean.”

A wan smile creased Krenden’s face, momentarily disguising his impatience. “Stingy? Just a label. No, they’re not stingy. It’s all a matter of conditioning. With their conditioning-experienced over countless generations — they became a people who conserved. Call them insecure, if you like, but not stingy. They’ve got whole — you could call them warehouses — stuffed full of canoes they’ve made, thatch for their roofs... You name it, they’ve stored it. It makes them feel safer just to know the stuff is there. For them, it’s a simple matter of survival tactics.”

“They’re vicious little monkeys!” Harley roared, evoking no response whatsoever in the stone-faced guard outside the stockade. He stripped off his sleeveless shirt.

“How’d you get in here?” he asked Krenden.

Krenden shrugged. “I killed my wife.”

“You what?”

“I killed my wife. The man I hired to guide us was, I finally discovered, guiding her in directions I didn’t like. By killing her, I destroyed something — someone — valuable, in the eyes of the natives. I’d broken one of their major taboos — the edict against killing.”

“But why should they care? It was none of their business.”

“It happened here in their village. Their gods demanded punishment for my crime. So they put me in here, and here I’ve been ever since — for the past five months.”

“Didn’t anybody come looking for you?”

Krenden shook his head. “My wife and I planned to spend at least eighteen months here living with the tribe. The private foundation that funded our expedition will have no reason to suspect that anything is wrong for a long time yet.”

“You know something?” Harley moaned. “I’m scared.”

Krenden gave him a pitying glance. “Everyone who comes here is.” He placed one hand on Harley’s shoulder, letting it slide down the man’s arm which seemed almost boneless beneath its corpulence.

“There have been others?”

“Yes. Other natives poaching on the tribe’s territory, escaped convicts from the penal colony down river. Yes, there have been others.”

“Listen, Krenden. Maybe together, you and I could—”

Krenden shook his head and looked away. “No one escapes once he’s put in here,” he stated flatly. “We all stay here until we die sooner or later from the heat, the poisonous insects, the cheetahs — whatever.”

Harley studied Krenden’s gaunt frame, the lank hair, the strangely lurid and yet sad eyes. “That word they got painted on that piece of bark right outside,” he began. “What does it mean anyway?”

“Bogindo? It’s one of their words.”

“Yeah, but what does it mean? I don’t know their language like I guess you do.”

“Killer-of-his-kind,” Krenden answered evenly.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up again.”

Krenden waved Harley’s apology aside. “The keynote of their culture, as I’ve said, is definitely economy. It even, affects the structure of their language. One of their words usually means several things. Take bogindo, for example. It means killer-of-his-kind, as I said. But it also carries other shades of meaning. It also means murderer, slayer, butcherer and executioner.”

Krenden’s eyes glowed oddly. “Executioner,” he repeated softly, as if savoring the word. Suddenly, he dropped to his knees and thrust one thin hand into the pile of sticks beside the fire. Moving like a dancer dreaming, he rose with the long knife in his hand and swiftly plunged it into Harley’s heart. A soft, startled cry, a miniature protest, escaped from Harley’s lips before he sank lifeless to the ground at Krenden’s feet.

Outside the stockade, the guard continued to study the fleecy clouds in the sky.

Later, when it was over, Krenden banked the fire and removed the spit. He returned the knife to its hiding place in the pile of sticks.

He really had to hand it to them, he decided with bitter admiration. They’d even found a use for their bogindo — and a way to feed him without unnecessary expenditure.