The King of the Franks part 7

I had nothing.  They took the tape recorder, pads, pens, passport, phone, money.  The road was not signed.  I had no idea of my exact location.  But it mattered little; I was the only one around.   

There was just the gentle slope of the hills, and in the near distance, the lush green mountains covered in a frothy mist.  Beyond that fringe of vegetation, the highlands, the salted deserts, the border.   

I continued to walk north.  I imagined we had traveled three fourths of the nation, and now my best shot for a telephone in a country at peace was some thirty kilometers north, in a border town.   

As the sloping forest encircled me, the world became an arena for sound and smell.  Monkeys squawked in the overhead boughs; a type of flower, blood red and pungent, was in crazed bloom all in the underbrush.  I walked on.   

The tropical day slipped into dark, and quite suddenly it was night, and a penetrating chill invaded the forest, brought down from the mountains, I supposed, for I could smell the odor of ice and snow, breaking through this screen of vegetation, water, and blooming, imitable life.   It was then that I heard the trucks.  I realized, very quickly, that the rebels had been following me.