is it?” she shrieked, her view of the body remained blocked by her brother and the tall grass.
“Someone’s had an accident,” he lied, turning and grabbing her hand, moving quickly away.
Wanti closed her eyes as she was dragged past the grotesque scene, only opening them again as she almost fell on the slippery path. Alarmed, they hurried towards their destination. Three kilo-metres from their first gruesome discovery they came upon worse horrors. Stacked on the side of their path were more bodies. Some had been young men.
All had been hacked to death with parangs .
The quiet terror of death caused Wanti to cry out. They broke into a run, fearful of being caught up in the nightmare of butchery. They slipped as they ran, now urged on by the possibility that they too would be slaughtered, running faster and faster until they fell in total exhaustion together down the slippery slopes into a small deep stream besides a field of near mature corn.
“Bambang. Save me, Oh Tuhan save me!” Wanti screamed as she struggled to claw her way out of the wet muddy bog. She continued to scream while Bambang unsuccessfully attempted to calm her racking sobs of fear.
“Djangan panik, Wanti! Don’t panic! It will be all right. Our grandpar
ents’ village is close by. Be calm, please Wanti, be calm. ” Bambang whispered urgently. He was terrified that they may be heard by violent marauders roaming nearby.
They sat wet, dirty, cold and afraid on the edge of the ladang . Bambang held his sister close, whispering soothing words of comfort while his own insides churned with fear. Hours passed and, after what felt like a lifetime, evening fell. But the darkness brought little comfort as Bambang could see the sky ablaze with night fires. He understood the terrible danger they were in. To proceed to the next village would invite certain disaster. To return home would be as dangerous as it was now apparent that the gangs had reached out as far as even the most isolated kampungs .
Bambang explained to Wanti that he had decided they should stay where they were until morning. Wanti cried, urging Bambang to take her home, but he refused.
“We’ll sleep here until morning and then the killers should be gone ,” he told her.
“I don’t want to go on Mas, please don’t make me go! ” she cried.
Bambang thought for awhile. “Tomorrow we will return home, ” he promised.
“Then we don’t have to go to Nenek’s village? ”
“No ,” he answered, “we’ll go straight home .”
She whimpered, trying to choke back the tears, petrified that her sobs would give their position away to the killers out there in the darkness. Exhausted, finally, she fell asleep in her brother’s arms until awakened by the sticky damp surrounds and discomfort of the Indonesian outdoors.
The two children stood exhausted, staring with disbelief at the carnage. Bodies lay twisted grotesquely wherever their murderers had cut them down, their life’s blood making curious patterns around their mutilated corpses.
Bambang vomited out of control, his stomach heaving long after it had emptied itself. Wanti had stood in shock, motionless, the full impact shutting down her mind to assist her to cope with the death that lay before her.
Her three sisters lay sprawled in the garden. Beheaded. Her parents had been hacked into pieces now almost unrecognizable as once being human bodies. As she turned, the carnage continued to be evident. Bodies. Everywhere bodies. Over there an infant no more than a few months. What was her name, Elly? Or was it Atun? No, it was not Atun for Wanti could see Elly’s body at the base of the brick wall against which she had been thrown. Death had snatched her from the hands of those twisted minds which had slaughtered over three hundred of her fellow villagers in this small kampung.
Their world had been destroyed.
Hours passed. Bambang led Wanti into the forest taking whatever food and clothing he could carry. His fear had now been replaced by hate and anger. His first concern was to secure a safe camp until the madness had ended.
As night fell they hid in the alang-alang, the long grass offering temporary refuge. They remained there, arms locked together in dread of being discovered until finally, exhaustion overcame fear and they slept.
A bird screeched loudly close by. Bambang awoke, startled. He turned his head slowly observing Wanti. His sister remained undisturbed, almost as if she had ceased breathing, her body was so still. He looked closer, panic rising in his chest. ‘ Oh Tuhan,’ he thought, ‘what if she is dead?’ He raised his right hand to her neck to see if she was still warm. His face twisted in horror as he recognized the disgusting slimy body of the lintah darah, the leech, attached to his hand. He jumped to his feet examining the rest of his body.
It was worse than he had feared! The bloodsucking worms covered his body. He moaned and writhed pulling at the disgusting creatures undressing as he wailed. Then he remembered his sister!
“Wanti! Wanti! Bangun, wake up, quickly!” he screamed.
Wanti jumped to her brother’s command, instantly overcome with fear, expecting to see the killers approaching. Seconds passed before she was sufficiently conscious to identify the reason for her brother’s panic. She screamed.
“Aduh! aduh !” she wailed pulling at the leeches stuck to her arms.
Hurriedly, they had both stripped, pulling, brushing, occasionally assisting each other until their bodies were free of the terrible sticky animals. They inspected their bodies thoroughly and discovered that there were ticks as well, full now from their bloody diet. They slowly checked again. Their mother had told them that once a tick had entered the body, certain death would follow. Bambang vowed to sleep away from the damp ground in future. Later, he could not coax his sister into bathing in the small kali , which flowed nearby, for fear of the slimy creatures.
They stayed in the jungle for several days on the assumption and with the hope that the marauding gangs would have left their district, having already destroyed all of the local kampung settlements. Their village was one of perhaps twenty in the area spanning a radius of some ten kilometres. Wanti wanted to remain hidden a little longer but Bambang had convinced her that they must seek help from the army detachment billeted at Kampung Kawi just twenty kilometres to the north.
Wanti had reluctantly agreed, insisting that they cut through the mountain forest to avoid running into the gangs. Her brother felt certain that the murderers would have moved in a direction away from the Army, not wanting to engage a well armed force.
He discovered his error the following day when they almost stumbled into their camp. His fear was so great, Bambang felt his bowels begin to betray him again. He turned, grabbing his sister, and fled, not once looking back to see if they had been detected. They ran for what seemed to be an eternity, oblivious to the direction their legs carried them. They rested. Wanti complained that her feet were tired and sore so Bambang agreed to rest there through the rest of that day. They were hungry, and nearing exhaustion but still they couldn’t sleep for fear of being discovered.
Bambang was not to know that this was not just one short spell of terror. Throughout the Archipelago, villages were raided and old scores were settled — the spark which ignited the countryside flared from home to home, village to village, town to town, and island to island until the number of dead blocked waterways and roads, corpses floating far out to sea where passing ships witnessed the bloated bodies by the thousands.
Muslims killed Chinese; Balinese killed Javanese; Sumatrans killed each other; and so the madness continued until one strong man emerged to take the country’s helm and correct the savage course it had taken.
The new leader, an unknown, acted quickly and managed to restore order. As the country’s leadership had been all but eliminated, General Soeharto assumed full control. He placed