Whirlwind

by David Klass

  Prisoners! Women and kids. They reach out through the bars of their cell with desperate hands, and beg in a dozen different languages for food and water.

  I sprint three or four steps past their cell and then stop and slowly turn back. I was once a prisoner in this very dungeon. I had the same empty stomach and the same desperate eyes. Even in my haste to find P.J., I can’t ignore their suffering.

  The massive door to their cell is locked and bolted, and the ancient steel bars are more than two inches thick and deeply rooted into the stone floor.

  As I stand there examining the lock from the outside, the women and kids wave even more desperately, their voices rising in panic. I figure they’re probably misinterpreting my hesitation as a lack of interest.

  One thin little girl of eight or nine catches my eye. She’s not moving or shouting, just squinting up at me with terrified eyes.

  I figure I must look pretty scary with battle scars all over my body and blood running down my face. I reach up and wipe away some blood with the back of my hand, and give her a tiny smile.

  Her eyes grow still wider in horror. It dawns on me that she’s not scared of me, but for me.

  I duck quickly to one side, and a club as big as a baseball bat smashes into the metal where my head was a second ago. The blow would have killed me.

  I dive away as a hulking guard takes another vicious swing and just misses. I bounce off a side wall, somersault high over his head, jump on his back, and slap on a choke hold from behind.

  The big man bucks like a bull and snaps like a gator, but there’s no escape. He runs backward into a wall, trying to knock me off, but I take the hit and increase the pressure. He soon sinks to his knees, gasping.

  His face starts to turn red and he goes into final contortions. As he twists wildly, I get a look at the side of his face. I know this man!

  He was the biggest of the trio of guards who led me to the candirú chamber. His struggles lessen, and I can tell he’s at the edge of blacking out from lack of oxygen.

  I let him slip to the floor, and stand over him so that he can see my face. The side of my bare foot presses into his windpipe. I let him breathe just enough to keep him conscious. “Look at me,” I shout at him. I point to my face. “Look at me! Do you remember who I am?”

  He can’t understand my English, but he looks up, and I see a glint of recognition in his eyes.

  “Where is she?” I ask him, miming long hair and a girl’s figure. “La senorita? P.J. The girl I love. Mi amor. Is she down in the candirú room?” I point downward. “Or up in the private dungeon wing?” I point upstairs. “Tell me where she is or you die.”

  I increase the pressure on his throat and he gags and raises a shaking finger to point upward.

  I’m not sure what to do with him. If I let him live, he’ll probably sound the alert and then find a weapon and come after me again. But I can’t just kill him in cold blood.

  I reach down and grab hold of his uniform and drag him to his feet. He’s almost too dizzy to stand, gasping in breaths of air and trying to shake out the cobwebs. I judo-throw him ten feet so that he crashes into the bars and sinks back to the floor.

  Twenty arms reach for him. The guard screams as vengeful women grab clumps of his hair, starving children’s fingers latch onto his ears, and the gnarled hands of tough old women secure his legs. He writhes, but there are too many of them and he can’t break free. Other hands reach through the bars for the big key ring on his belt.

  I take off down the hallway, confident that the prisoners will free themselves and mete out justice to their jailer.

  I’m running through darkness again, but this time I know where to go. I reach a flight of stairs and take them four at a time. Even a jaguar would be impressed by these bounds. At the top, a long corridor unfolds like a black ribbon. I fly down it at full sprint.

  Smoke is in the air—someone must have set the prison on fire. Voices echo from far off, triumphant yells and agonized screams. The women and kids must be using the key ring to free other prisoners, and when the swelling mob encounters jailers it sounds like they exact swift revenge.

  There are no more flights to climb and no more hallways to traverse. I’m at the top now, the penthouse of the penitentiary. The corridor terminates fifty feet ahead.

  At the very end is a blue circular door. It looks like the entry hatch to a rocket.

  I reach for it, and recall with a shiver the similarly shaped black door to the candirú chamber.

  89

  The blue hatch is open and I push into the chamber.

  It’s large and windowed, and in daylight must offer views of the compound and the surrounding forest stretching away to the horizon. Now it’s dark and gloomy.

  I glance out the bank of windows nearest me, and glimpse the battle raging below.

  I turn back to the shadowy chamber. In the center of the room, a figure stands motionless, towering from floor to ceiling. Is it a statue? A giant guarding his tenebrous lair? I step forward cautiously and realize that whatever it is, it’s not standing, but rather suspended from the ceiling.

  Something moves above me, and the room starts to grow cold. I feel the whoosh of wind and the damp of rain. A segment of the roof is retracting! Starlight filters down, and I reexamine the large figure. It’s not a statue, nor a giant standing guard. It’s P.J., hanging from the ceiling!

  She’s dangling upside down from chains, so that her long hair brushes the floor. She moans very faintly. She’s alive!

  I run to her. And then I hear an ungodly sound.

  It’s a rustle above the roar of the wind. A whisper that is at once delicate and deafening because it portends the approach of something dreadful.

  Lightning flashes and I see them fly down at us through the opening in the ceiling. Red eyes, muscular and lithe ratlike bodies, gleaming teeth. Bats!

  I remember reading that there are nearly a thousand different kinds of bats in the Amazon, including the only true vampire bats in the world. They sleep by day and hunt by night, and their preferred food is mammals.

  I can’t fight them, can’t swat them away. There are too many of them—there must be twenty thousand! I wrap P.J. in my arms and hold her tight.

  The stench of them is noxious! Their bodies are wet and cold! They cover my face, crawl through my hair, nip at me with razor-sharp teeth to draw blood, and then lap it up with tiny tongues.

  There’s nothing I can do. I hear myself screaming, and P.J. is screaming, too.

  I force my mind to work. Loathsome as these bloodsuckers are, they are also nature’s creatures. I remember the way it felt to hold Kidah’s torch, and how, for a few moments, I was one with all the animals of the rain forest, big and small, cuddly and repulsive.

  I clutch P.J. tightly and try to shut out the pain and horror of the bat attack, and to recapture that feeling of being an integral part of the rain forest quilt of life.

  When I held the torch I felt the jaguars prowling through darkness, the monkeys swinging in the trees, and the ants and beetles in the grass and ferns. We were all linked together, all joined with a common cause.

  Now I open my mind up to the bats. I feel their hunger for blood, their joy at being part of the feeding swarm, the sonar that allows them to zero in on us. Instead of being repelled by them, I reach out to them and try to touch their essence.

  The rain forest is their home. They have as much to lose if it vanishes as anyone. We are all part of the same web of life, and if it is frayed and destroyed no cave will be deep enough to shelter these bats, and no midnight will be dark enough to shield them from destruction.

  For a moment I feel myself fractured into a thousand pieces, wheeling and darting around the dark chamber on thousands of tiny wings.

  And then I’m Jack again, and the black cloud dissipates, like smoke blown away by a strong wind. Off they go, through the roof aperture, and P.J. whimpers in my arms.

  “It’s okay. They’re gone,” I tell her. “And I’m tak
ing you home.”

  She cries out again, with words. “Jack, he’s here!”

  A man enters the room through the blue hatch door, and pauses to shut and lock it. Then he turns to face us.

  I recognize the colonel, even though he’s significantly altered. The shock of white hair is the same, and the muscular build, and he watches me with the same black eyes. But this is no librarian on steroids. This is unmistakably the Dark Lord!

  “You did well with the bats,” he says, and his voice is mocking. “So the old charlatan taught you some tricks, and now you’re the sorcerer’s apprentice? If I were you I would make myself disappear.” His voice hardens. “I warned you not to find Kidah. I spared your life. I ordered you to leave the forest forever.”

  “And then you sent your men to ambush us,” I remind him, stepping protectively in front of P.J.

  He doesn’t appear to even hear me. “But you didn’t listen,” he continues, advancing toward me. He no longer walks like a man. He scuttles, and his arms and shoulders twitch as his legs move. “You found Kidah and revived him. For that you and your lady friend will pay in blood.” He’s more spider than man now, and he looks hungry.

  I should be terrified, but I’m not. My knees should be knocking and my voice should be quaking, but anger comes to my rescue.

  “That’s right, I defied you,” I answer him, curling my fingers into fists and settling into a fighting pose. “Listen to those screams outside. Your army is being destroyed as we speak. Your buildings are on fire. Your power in the Amazon is smashed. As for P.J., the only way for you to ever hurt her again is to get through me now. So why don’t you stop mouthing off and take your best shot.”

  If a tarantula can smile, that’s what he does. His eyes ignite like twin black suns. “Gladly,” he whispers. And he charges.

  90

  The last time we fought, I threw the best kick of my life at him, and he grabbed my foot in midair. His speed and strength were superhuman.

  I want him to believe I’m angry enough to make the same mistake again. My defiant words and insults were intended to make him think I’m so blinded by my own fury that I can’t think straight. I lower my head and charge at him as if I’ve gone completely berserk.

  But I know what I’m doing. The only way to beat this guy is to use his own power against him.

  We come together hard, and his charge knocks me backward. Instead of resisting, I give way. As I fall back, my hands grab his arms and pull him down with me, so that I incorporate the force and momentum of his charge in my spin. My knees come under his chest, and at the right second I kick him up and away. Spider man goes flying fifteen feet and cracks into a large window.

  The back of his head smashes hard into the thick glass pane, shattering it. The impact would stun almost anyone. The Dark Lord falls to the floor, but he pops right back up. A shard from the broken pane must have cut him. He’s bleeding, and he doesn’t look pleased.

  He comes at me again, and I have no more tricks up my sleeve, so I try to knock his head off with a straight right. It’s a good punch, but he ducks it and grabs me.

  It’s my turn to fly through the air, and instead of a window he tosses me into a stone wall. I hit it and feel my spine crack, and then I black out for a moment. P.J.’s screams bring me back. “Jack, he’s coming! Jaaaaackkkk!”

  Sure enough, he’s advancing at me through the gloom, ready to finish me off. I climb back to my feet, but something is broken on my right side and I can’t stand up straight. I move hunched over, holding my side.

  His mouth opens. His teeth have disappeared. Long fangs glint. He’s going to rip out my jugular and enjoy every bloody throb. There’s no way I can stop him.

  I back up to the window. Feel the cold air. This is the pane his head struck and shattered!

  I get an idea and glance down. Shards of broken glass glint on the floor. He springs at me, and I bend, scoop up a glass shard in my hands, and stab upward.

  I aim for his throat, but he turns his head and I only succeed in slicing him open from ear to jaw.

  The Dark Lord staggers back with a bellow of pain and rage. “I will make you wish that whore of Dann never gave birth to you,” he growls, and comes in for the kill.

  I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. He’s a blur, coming right at me, and there’s no time to get out of the way. I try a kick, but he blocks it with such force that he breaks my right leg.

  I collapse, screaming in pain, and crawl away from him across the floor.

  The Dark Lord laughs. “Where are you going, young one? You do remind me of your father sometimes. He screamed and tried to crawl away, also. But I had my fun with him, and we’re just getting started here.”

  P.J. sees my agony and screams, and he turns and smiles at her. “You’re next, my dear. Wait your turn.”

  He steps toward me again, and this time I’m absolutely helpless. I roll away as far as I can, till I hit the wall. And then I just lie there and wait for him.

  He stands above me, enjoying my fear for a long second. “So,” he says, “this is the Prince of Dann, the light of the world, the beacon of hope?” Then he reaches down. But before his fingers close on me, all the lights in the chamber suddenly blink back on.

  As if guessing what’s about to happen the Dark Lord whirls around, just in time to see the blue hatch door explode inward.

  91

  Kidah steps into the room.

  “So you’ve come,” the Dark Lord whispers, and there’s fear and fury in his voice.

  “Yes, I’ve come to stop you,” Kidah answers calmly. “This world has enough problems of its own without a monster like you.”

  The Dark Lord has no answer for that except an all-out attack. He forgets about me and runs right at the wizard. It’s like a tarantula charging a tiny white mouse.

  But the mouse doesn’t give an inch. Kidah stands his ground, and raises a hand. A white light shoots out of his palm and zaps into the Dark Lord. It seems to cling to him, to play about him, to grow brighter and brighter.

  The Dark Lord shrieks in pain and begins rolling around on the floor, as if trying to extinguish the flames. But whatever is consuming him cannot easily be put out. The more he rolls around screaming, the brighter the light seems to burn.

  Eko runs into the chamber, just in time to see the Dark Lord go into his death throes. His screams reach a pinnacle of agony, and then he curls up and shrivels into himself. But he doesn’t die. He transforms.

  Where a man writhed on the ground, a black spider the size of a basketball stands defiantly. It shakes out its bristly legs, and peers at us with its eight chilling eyes.

  Kidah shoots another white light at the spider, but it dodges to one side.

  “Don’t let it get away!” Eko shouts, and throws a silver knife at it. Her knife severs one of the spider’s eight legs and it hisses wildly, and then runs to the windows.

  It crawls up the pane that was shattered during our fight, and squeezes out the crack. It scuttles down the other side of the glass and drops off into the night.

  “It’s wounded. We must hunt it down and kill it now!” Kidah declares. He hurries to the window and touches the glass with both palms. He doesn’t push it hard, but the thick pane explodes outward. The wizard turns to me, raises one arm in farewell, and then turns back and jumps out of sight into the darkness.

  Eko is left alone with us. I can tell she’s in a hurry to join the chase, but she runs over to me. “Jack, are you okay?”

  “I’ve been better,” I tell her. “Help P.J.”

  Eko takes a few precious seconds to free P.J. from her chains and get her upright again.

  My high school girlfriend and the Ninja Babe are finally face-to-face.

  “Thank you,” P.J. whispers.

  “You’re welcome. I’m Eko.”

  “I know who you are,” P.J. tells her. “And I know what you want.”

  Eko looks back at her, and then glances toward the broken window. “I feel for you,”
Eko whispers. “You can have him back for now, but in the end he is destined to be mine.”

  She runs to the window in four long steps, puts her arms out in front of her, and dives into blackness.

  92

  Two sleek outboard canoes hum down a river toward the lights of the small city ahead.

  P.J. is nestled in my arms. She hasn’t slept since we left the colonel’s compound, which was thoroughly destroyed in the battle. I haven’t slept much either—it hurts when I lie down, it hurts when I roll over, and it even aches each time I breathe.

  I guess we both have some healing to do.

  We haven’t discussed the battle or speculated about whether Kidah tracked down and destroyed the Dark Lord.

  We just hold each other tightly and let the canoe carry us swiftly down the wide, pitch-black channel.

  It’s a beautiful and hypermodern craft, from the colonel’s own private collection. The powerful outboard motor eats up the long miles. I can steer it and hold P.J. at the same time. She feels very good in my arms.

  In the canoe behind us, Gisco and Mudinho ride together. As the lights of the city glimmer closer, Mudinho slows their canoe and Gisco raises a paw in unexpected farewell.

  I wave back, and ask him telepathically: Aren’t you coming with us?

  I may catch up with you eventually, Gisco answers. But this loyal lad saved my life, and a dog always repays a debt. In a little village by a mountain lake there’s a mother living in grief because her eight-year-old son was stolen by drug bandits. I’m going to help bring him home.

  I understand, I tell him. I hope you find her. It’s a noble thing to try. Godspeed.

  Yes, a truly selfless errand of mercy, Gisco agrees. But I do hear she’s the best cook in her village. Mudinho says she can do things with roast pork that are miraculous, and her chicken with pumpkin seeds is beyond compare. So off I go on my mission of self-sacrifice. Au revoir.

  They veer off one way, and we go the other. Mudinho steers their canoe with his right hand and waves with his left. Gisco watches me with sad eyes and then stands on his hind legs and blows a kiss at P.J.