She had not slept soundly. The discussion around the campfire the night before and the stillness of the night had forced memories of how her parents had died to rush out of her brain. A few weeks earlier she had turned an awkward and lonely twelve. She had been playing by the campfire with a doll her parents had somehow had delivered to their remote camp. Her parents had been beside her, discussing the latest developments in their studies when they had heard the noise of booted feet crashing through the jungle and the cries of the men, which grew louder as they approached. Somehow her parents had known the clamor meant trouble. They had secreted her in a small belowground food locker they had built weeks earlier to protect their supplies from an assortment of wild animals. Even now she could still smell the wetness of the earth and the ripe fruits in the shelter as they had slipped the plywood deck over her. Hear the rustle as her father draped a tarp over the wood and then the vibration of something heavy dropping into place above the locker.
