"How long have we been walking now, Travis?" Jessica asked me, with a sign of fatigue on her voice.
"Almost twenty minutes…" I responded to her, after I looked at my watch that showed the time 11.42 a.m.
"You are not thinking to turn on the flashlight now?" She asked again.
"Maybe later, when the time is exactly twelve o'clock." I replied.
It really had been nearly twenty minutes of crouch-walking deep inside the jungle before Jessica brought up if we should turn on the flashlight since it was darker than it was outside in the grassy meadow. To be honest, it did not have any significant outcome when I put on my glasses again since I could not see anything further than six to seven feet clearly due to the dark sky and dense vegetation covering our heads. Although, if I had been given the option, I would still choose to venture in the darkness with my glasses on rather than walking through a heavy downpour without it.
"You know what, never mind." I said to Jessica again. "Let us just turn our flashlights on."
I then immediately stopped and took out my flashlight and turned it on, finally giving ourselves a source of light. The sudden dazzle from the flashlight blinded me a little bit for a short moment, and when it was gone, Jessica already had her flashlight turned on as well. Billy however, who was in the middle between me and Jessica did not take out his flashlight. She asked him why, and he responded by saying that two was already enough to provide a decent light source for us to see.
"And besides," Billy said, "we have to remember to save the battery since there is absolutely no telling if we will be able to find any houses with a decent electrical port."
Jessica nodded in response, and I also did not object any of his words since it perfectly made sense. We then continued our journey again, no longer walking in nearly complete darkness as I continued to hope that there would be no more sudden and unexpected alert from any of the aliens. As I kept on crouch-walking, I slowly began to notice the significant changes of our new surroundings.
The first thing that I noticed right away was the presence of so many banyan trees, with nearly all of them with large and thick trunks, and their countless long aerial roots hanging down and dancing slowly because of the rain water. If I were to guess the age of the banyan trees, I would say that they might be over a hundred years old.
I had to admit that had I not noticed that there were so many banyan trees around us, I would think that the rain water from the heavy downpour was blocked by large leaves, where in fact they were being flowed down through the aerial roots after they fell on the treetop. It might also be the reason why it was a little less noisy than it was on the grassy meadow even though the downpour had become worse.
The second thing that I noticed was that there was not even a single sign of any form of a dirt road, indicating that it had not been an area of a nearby population in the past. Since the spread of the bushes on the ground also seemed to be uneven, I began to speculate if there actually had not been any person who had ever stepped foot on the jungle, at least not in several hundreds of years.
If it turned out to be true, then it would definitely make the jungle technically an untouched jungle. I would not be surprised about it since the trees and other vegetation there were very different from the forests that we had passed before in the first place. Finally, not long after that, I came across the third thing about the jungle that confirmed its significant difference from the rest of the other areas that we had come across earlier.
It was none other than the color of the exposed soil that I came across as I continued on crouch-walking, which was nearly black, and an indication that the soil was very fertile. I recalled that the color of the soil of the areas that we had passed so far were either yellowish or light brown. Even the seemingly fertile soil where Jessica obtained her first artifact was still rather pale in comparison to the current soil.
With all the three things came to my mind, I quickly supposed that the jungle we were currently in was definitely of an untouched one. I also came to notice that the soil was not slippery in the slightest, another indication that a soil was fertile, and a characteristic that was absent in most of the areas we had passed before.
"You seemed to be looking at our surroundings with great details, Travis." Billy suddenly said from behind me.
"Well, it does not look like this jungle share any similarities with the other forests that we have passed before, do not you think?" I responded to him as I continued on looking.
"Yes, and I am beginning to wonder why it is considerably less noisy in here than it was when we were in the meadow." he continued, "But maybe, you have already found out the answer to that."
"Do you see that aerial roots?" I replied, as I pointed my right hand towards one of the hanging roots. "Apparently instead of falling down on leaves, the rain water flowed down the hanging roots after falling on the treetop, dampening the noise in the process."
"Glad I am not the only one who have thought about it." he chuckled, before complete silence then fell upon us as we proceeded deeper into the jungle.
I began to wonder if Billy would attempt to contact his Commander General any soon, since I believed we had gone pretty deep inside the jungle, and supposedly made ourselves relatively safe from any imminent threat. Then again, I also thought if we should first find a spot for us to shelter ourselves from the downpour. The idea of finding an abandoned shack might be out of the option since we could safely assume that no one had ever lived in the jungle in the past, however finding a cave might still be possible.
"Wait, what is that over there?" Jessica suddenly pointed her flashlight towards something big laying on the ground on her left direction.
At first, I was not sure about the large object, but when we decided to take a look at it at a closer distance, it turned out to be some sort of a very large rock, with one of its side had a hole caved in quite deep inside. As we had finally reached right in front of the rock, I realized that the hole was wide enough for the three of us to shelter for a while.
I could not describe the shape of the rock in much detail since it had an extremely ununiformed shape – a rounded one end, and a sharp-edged end on the other, however I could still be sure of its size. It had roughly thirteen feet of width, and perhaps ten to eleven feet of height. The space that the hole made, caving inside the lower part of the rock was perhaps close to four feet in depth. I was wondering on how such a shape could be formed naturally, but nevertheless I quickly brushed that thought aside as we could barely wait any longer to shelter ourselves.
In the end, we managed to cover ourselves from the seemingly everlasting downpour, even though we were practically pretty cramped inside. As I had thought earlier, the moment we went inside the hole, Billy immediately pushed the buttons on his watch, beginning to contact his commanding officer. Jessica then shortly after took out her bread from her bag, beginning to eat her lunch.
With the two of them occupied at something, I suddenly remembered that I had yet to contact Commodore Quentin again. I quickly began to initiate contact with him through my watch, hoping that he would be able to fill me with new and vital information. I had to admit that by that time, I already felt a serious fatigue in my body, but I also knew full well that I should not give in at that moment just yet…