Free The Greystoke Legacy by Andy Briggs

going crazy.” Tarzan made no indication he understood. “You know? Back to my camp? Where I live?” Nothing seemed to register. “I need to go home .”
    â€œHome!” Tarzan barked the word and nodded. “Home.”
    Jane felt a flush of relief and nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, home. You can show me the way home.”
    Tarzan sprang to his feet and walked to the edge of the cliff, gesturing to Jane to follow. She reluctantly joined him, trying to ignore the sheer drop below. Karnath trotted over to Tarzan and leapt into his arms. He held him with one hand and pointed across the vista.
    â€œHome.”
    There was nothing but trees reaching all the way to the horizon. The apes below were either eating or playfully chasing one another. There were no signs of civilization.
    â€œ Mangani are family,” said Tarzan pointing to the apes. Karnath jumped from his hands and clung to Jane’s leg. She tried not to yelp as she wrestled the irrational fear that the gorilla was about to bite her. Instead it just looked at her with big brown eyes and bared its teeth in a rictus of a smile.
    â€œHome,” repeated Tarzan. Jane took a deep breath to subdue her frustration. This would be more difficult than she’d anticipated.
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    â€œDammit!” yelled Robbie as the machete twisted from his hand and dropped to the ground—narrowly missing his foot. His arm ached from sweeping the blade through the dense foliage as he dutifully followed the overflowing brook for a mile or so before it joined a river. He’d studied how Mister David hacked through thick vegetation and had used the machete himself on many occasions to trim the logs they had hewn down. But alone it was tough going. Several times Robbie had had to stop himself from wildly swinging the blade with his free hand outstretched, which felt a more natural motion. He’d heard many stories over campfires of people who had inadvertently slashed their own hand off.
    Robbie sat on some rocks that sloped into the river. He was unsure if this was the same tributary they floated the logs down, as it looked unfamiliar and there were several nearby. After traveling for two hours he was already exhausted, so took a long gulp of water from his canteen to quench his thirst. In his rush to get away he had only packed one water canteen and he was beginning to realize that was a mistake.
    He’d made the pretense of helping Esmée load the kitchen supplies into a crate, just in case they had to suddenly dismantle the camp, while secretly stealing provisions for his rescue attempt. Archie and Clark had gathered the loggers and were talking through their plan, but all Robbie could see was their total lack of action. He’d taken a heavy waterproof flashlight, a canvas sheet, firelighters, and a machete from a set of open supply crates. As an afterthought he stole a pistol from Clark’s cabin. He’d fired a rifle before, taking part in impromptu shooting ranges the workers would sometimes set up to relieve the boredom. He thought a handgun wouldn’t be much different and felt safer with it.
    The first half of the trek had been easy and had already taken him farther than Mister David’s initial circle of the area. All he had to do was follow the flow downstream and look for any likely places Jane could have washed ashore, or been forced ashore by her kidnappers. Robbie was quickly coming to the conclusion that Tafari’s rebels had nothing to do with Jane’s disappearance. For one, he was heading in the opposite direction from the rebels’ camp. Perhaps Jane had just got lost on her own? But in that case who had attacked the camp?
    That meant she was out here, all alone.
    â€œAlone,” he mumbled. The word stuck in his throat. Sophie had been alone when . . .
    He shunned the bad memories and desperately tried to think of a happy time with his sister. He recalled a perfect