2. Pigs heads and murder on Balak? Lord of the Flies? Yes, though not enough, yes, and yes. There would have been more severed heads if the expedition had sanctioned the trapping and slaying of the enormous wild boar that invaded our camp. Meat-hungry, protein-starved fools had many ideas of making bacon from these bad-ass big pigs (including using them for sport in the big-pig rodeo event we were never allowed to stage). But apparently pre-emptive strikes weren’t allowed (we could kill them only in self defence). Even when one of the camp dogs was lacerated by boar tusks defending the camp one night, we weren’t allowed to falsify evidence about our suspect big pig, and go into the jungle with parangs and sharpened sticks. One of our number, ex-army Rich, even had the camo clothes and face paint, and knew how to survive a charge from the biggest of the boars, grown huge from feasting on our bio waste pit. You kneel down and dig in a sharpened stick pointed into its path and it chugs along and impales itself.
As for the murder, all but Rich were mown down in the murder game – everyone has a mission to kill someone else at a certain location with a given implement, and if successful, gets to take on their victim’s mission, until there is only one survivor – a simple game of assassinations. Personally, I took out Sarah with a josstick by our new bench, before Alex killed me with a box-jellyfish by one of the small boats. She didn’t last long after killing me though – the victim becomes a ghost and can assist the remaining. After manhandling her into a hammock, Larium John could finish her off with a mattress.