Cuyuni/Mazaruni Jungles
Guyana 
Monday: 

The mining camp was hidden deep in the heart of the Cuyuni/Mazaruni jungles of Guyana, miles away from the nearest town of Isseneru. Locals called these areas the wild west, but with its lush rain forest, murderous swarms of mosquitoes, prowling Jaguars and heavy rainfall now pounding the trees and earth below, there was nothing western about the place.

Having just run under the main tent, Andrew was drenched to his skin. He laughed as he watched the heavy rainfall beat down on the clay mud. It was a manic laugh, brought on by the hunger and fever taking hold of him.

He looked around the dilapidated mining camp and his colleagues bundled on pallets under tents while afflicted by varying stages of malaria. He looked down at a pallet just a few feet from him under the main tent, in which a man slept fitfully and wondered, where did it all go wrong. 

As if to answer his unspoken thoughts, the main tent flap was pulled aside and Boarensky, the Russian camp supervisor, emerged. A huge, rotund man with a flushed face, he stretched and yawned, then looked around at his tormented workers. 

Andrew looked on in undisguised hate as the Russian kicked the nearby pallet. The occupant moaned, too weak to protest. Boarensky chuckled and spat to the side. Then their eyes met.

"What you looking at boy?" Boarensky growled in his slightly accented English. His eyes gleamed as he took a step forward. Two keys on a silver chain swung from his neck. Andrew, the camp's deputy supervisor, squared his shoulders as no other mere worker could.

"At one of the worst bosses I've ever seen. You've put everyone on starvation rations while you eat your fill. The men are sick with malaria and after two weeks we've found over 20 ounces of gold, yet you will not radio for help or let them go. Did I miss anything?" 

Boarensky looked stunned, as though he could not believe someone still had spark left to defy him. He casually leaned against the tent post to light a cigarette. It was then that, as his shirt shifted, Andrew spotted the handle of a beretta pistol poking out of its holster. 

"Am I keeping them here? They free to leave anytime they want, no?" Boarensky waved around at the thick, foreboding forest that surrounded their camp, as though their homes lay just beyond the trees. With only two ATV's in camp, limited fuel and the nearest town miles away with little to no road connecting it, their homes were never further away than now. 

Just then, there was a rustling from the nearby bushes and Kairo, their Indigenous Indian guide emerged. He ran under their tent with his jersey covering his head. He sat down and nodded to Andrew, before staring pointedly at Boarensky. Visibly uncomfortable, Boarensky muttered to himself in Russian before retreating back into his tent.

Once the tent flap closed, Andrew braced against a tent post as the nausea he was holding back hit him. He threw up, his vomit cascading out as if a dam had burst and splattered on the ground. Then he rose up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"You are ill," Kairo said, in his stilted English. "You have contracted malaria, just like the others."

"Maybe. But we're in the middle of nowhere, the mining company won't send a shift change for another two weeks and." Andrew tilted his head to the tent entrance. "He has all the radios locked away. So there's not much we can do."

"You are wrong. There is much you can do. Can you not see? The spirits are punishing all of you because he." He pointed to the tent flap. "Is among you."

Andrew stared at Kairo, suppressing his urge to laugh out of respect. He liked the stolid Indian. Despite his icy demeanour and his tendency not to mix with the other miners, Kairo had befriended him and his wife since they arrived at the camp, even sharing his iguana with them. 

But for the non-believer in Andrew, there was no such thing as spirits. There was life and work and death. Everyone was obligated to live a good life, not because of hope in some afterlife, but because it was the decent thing to do. His wife Sondra, who worked in the camp as a cook, would have been even more sceptical and less restrained in her laughter.  

"With all due respect Kairo-"

"Look around yourself!" Kairo was impatient. "There are fifteen of you. Three of you are critical. Eleven are sick but fighting it, including you and Mrs Cooper. And the boss is as healthy as an ox?"

Kairo stood up and made sure to look him in the eye.

"Boarensky has blood on his hands. He has done unspeakable things. He is protected, but the spirits cry for justice. Blood must be paid with blood."

And Andrew could not say with certainty if the chill he felt at that moment was because of the damp clothes clinging to his body.