by Nick Thacker
He didn’t want to think about it, but he knew the answer.
They need to know where we’re going.
He sucked in another breath of jungle air. Yes, this is good for me. He closed his eyes and tried to let the air wash the strange thoughts and feelings out of his system. He opened his eyes, turned toward the back of the boat, and saw Amanda standing on the deck.
Or, rather, he saw the backside of Amanda standing near the stern of the boat .
Her legs, long for her short stature and starkly pale against the deep greenish-brown of the jungle backdrop, were the first thing he noticed. He followed the woman’s form up to her back, loosely hidden behind a tank top that she had been wearing since they left the city. The shirt did its best to hide her back, but Ben immediately noticed her soft shoulder blades, perfectly shaded by the overhead sun. Her hair blew gently in the wind, each time lifting from its station and floating, then settling back down right where it needed to be.
He walked toward her.
He stepped up next to her at the end of the deck and leaned against the railing. The boat’s wake cut a perfect “V” through the water, reminding Ben how quickly they were moving upstream.
“Hey Ben,” Amanda said.
“Dr. Meron,” he replied.
“Please, call me Amanda.
“Right, sorry.” Ben wasn’t sure what to say, so he did what he did best — he stood there awkwardly, pretending to be interested in a small flock of birds that were squawking at each other from opposite sides of the river. He had the sudden urge to skip a rock, or at least to chuck one as far as he could. His mind wandered back in time to when he was much younger, when his father would take him out to the lake that had freshly thawed after winter to teach him how to skip rocks.
‘It all starts with the best rock,’ his father would tell him. ‘It’s worth spending half a day looking for the perfect rock, even though you’ll only get one throw from it.’ Ben always wondered if there was a deeper meaning in those statements. There seemed to be multiple layers of meaning in everything his father told him growing up.
After his father died, Ben made it a point to stop trying to decipher everything anyone ever told him and just take things at face value. He assumed that people meant what they said and said what they meant, and he did his best to do the same. He was never very good with people anyway, so he used the philosophy as an excuse to grow more and more reclusive as he got older. Still in his early thirties, Ben was fit and well- built and could take on most kids a decade younger. His job as a ranger helped him stay in shape, but every now and then he felt the creeping effects of time slowly wearing him down.
“So,” Amanda said, breaking the ice. Ben snapped out of the past and looked over at her. “How you doing?”
“Good, I guess. Been a while since I’ve been shot at.”
“Yeah, I read about all that Yellowstone stuff. You’re pretty much a national hero.”
“Not in this nation,” Ben said. He wasn’t sure if that was cocky or humble. “Besides, they got the story wrong. Reporters, you know?”
“Well, Paulinho filled me in on some of the details, but I’d love to hear the story sometime.” Ben couldn’t be sure, but he thought Amanda inched a little bit closer to him.
“Yeah, definitely.” He flicked his head back and forth, still apparently looking for a rock he knew didn’t exist. “How are you doing?”
“With what? My entire business falling apart, or my employees being murdered?”
“Sorry, I —“
“No, it’s fine,” Amanda said. “I’m not trying to be harsh. It’s just… fresh on my mind.”
Ben felt embarrassed for some reason, but Amanda continued, saving him the awkward silence.
“You know, I’ve always been pretty independent. That’s part of the reason I moved down here. I’d always wanted to start something of my own, but people thought I was naïve.”
“What people?”
“Parents, mostly. My dad and mom owned a restaurant for a little while, back home. They never came out and said it, but I always knew they thought I wasn’t cut out for entrepreneurship. Truth be told, I’m not. I just wanted to do research on my own terms. NARATech was a perfect fit — investors that want to turn the management burden over to someone else, a dedicated facility that was ready to go, and in a place that I’ve always wanted to visit.”
“Well, from what I’ve seen, you’re doing a pretty good job.”
“From what I’ve seen, we are all one small mistake away from death. And it’s all my fault.”
“It’s really not,” Ben said. “No one could have predicted this, and no one could have prevented it. This ‘investor’ you have is the same company that I’ve been trying to track down for months. They’re extremely powerful, very well-funded, and are able to stay well under the radar when they want to.”
Ben heard Amanda clear her throat, then she wiped her eyes. “What if this doesn’t lead anywhere? What if we’re chasing something that doesn’t exist, and we end up in the middle of nowhere with no way to call for help?”
Ben knew the questions were rhetorical, but he answered anyway. “Well, Reggie’s here. He seems to have a lot of experience with, uh, this type of thing.” He paused. “And, you know, we’re all here, for whatever it’s worth. Archie, Rhett, Paulinho. And me.” He glanced at her again, and she was staring at him. He quickly looked away.
“And Julie,” she said. It was more a question than a statement.
“Yeah, Julie.”
“She’s great, you know.”
Ben nodded. “I know.”
“I wish —“ Amanda couldn’t finish the sentence, whatever it was going to be. She sobbed, covering her face with her hands. Ben immediately felt himself leaning in toward her, unsure why he was reacting this way.
He hesitated a moment, then reached out and put his arm around her. Amanda leaned in harder, pressing her body into Ben’s side before he could react. Her sobs became stuttered and she nearly forced him to hold her. She was smaller than he realized, and he had to stoop a bit to allow her head to fit in the nook under his chin. He wasn’t sure what to do next, and found himself stunned into inaction.
He heard a noise, a creaking stair, and lifted his head to see Julie standing at the top of the staircase. She turned her head slightly to the side, as if trying to decipher what she was seeing. She stared for a moment, neither of them speaking.
Then, slowly and deliberately, she turned and headed back down the stairs.
Chapter 29
Julie ignored Ben for the remainder of the day, even choosing to eat out on the deck on her own. Ben tried approaching her a couple times, but whenever she saw him coming she darted back the other direction. The boat was large, but it was far too small to hide from him forever, and Ben made it a point to continue tracking her down whenever he could, hoping to talk. Most of his day was spent outside on the deck, waiting for Julie to pass by so that he could follow her until she walked the other way.
That evening, the boat turned again and headed down another offshoot of the river, an even smaller feeder river. The canopy of trees combined above their head and closed out the sun, causing the night to set in far earlier than anyone had expected it would. They were now far away from the cities dotting the main Amazon tributaries, and the jungle had woken up.
Both sides of the river featured life forms Ben had only dreamed of. Monkeys chattered and hollered at one another, and birds of every color screamed overhead as they searched for food. He caught a glimpse of a snake, larger than any he’d ever seen, wound around the entire trunk of a tree as it slid onto a branch. The flora and fauna seemed otherworldly to him as well. Bright greens, yellows, and blues with hints of red every now and then could be seen poking out around the large backdrop of blacks and browns. The visibility was no more than a few feet into the jungle, though Archie and Reggie had come out earlier and taken their turns trying to spot water trails used by animals .
At o
ne point the captain himself came out to the deck and pointed at a mound of sticks and vines, piled high above the water at the edge of the river. He whispered something and Archie’s eyes grew wide.
“Anaconda,” he said. “They live inside those fortresses of sticks, sliding out into the water directly to stay hidden. That one is a big nest. Could be a 15-footer in there.”
Ben shuddered. He hated snakes, and only dealt with them if he absolutely had to. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could like the slithering, scaly creatures, especially ones that were as wide around the waist as he was.
“They’re mostly harmless,” Reggie said, as if that made the anacondas seem like warm, fuzzy teddy bears. “They eat mammals, but if you stay out of their way they’ll focus their attention on smaller game. Plenty of other monsters around here to worry about, but honestly it’s the small stuff that scares the crap out of me.”
“Like what?” Ben almost kicked himself for asking the question. He knew he didn’t want to know the answer. Back home the only things to really worry about were bears, wolves, careless hunters, and the cold.
Reggie turned to Ben and grinned. “Bugs, mostly. The kind that fight in packs, working together to bring down animals a thousand times their size. Species of ants you can only dream about, and specialized insects designed by the devil himself.”
“Do not listen too closely to him,” Archie said. “He’s always had a flair for the dramatic. He’s not wrong, but most of the life in the jungle is harmless to humans, as long as you are careful and watch your step. The rainforest doesn’t need to be anything more mystical and magical than any other place. Sure, there is more life per square foot here than anywhere on the planet, but that’s all it is — life. It wants to survive and thrive, just like you and me. Not everything wants to kill you, and even the lifeforms that can will only do so if they feel their own is threatened.”
Ben listened along as they all stared out at the tree line. Both of the other men seemed to have a profound respect for the natural world, a fact he found admirable. Many people he knew had no appreciation — no concept, even — that the world they were living in had existed far longer than they had, and had thrived without their meddling and help. The Amazon rainforest was no different, and in many ways more intense and more self-sufficient than any other place he had been.
The men swapped stories for a few more minutes until the sounds of the jungle took over. Ben left to take another walk around the deck, hoping Julie would pop up somewhere. He had completed an entire lap around and ended up at the same spot, only Reggie and Archie had gone down below. He was alone on the deck, and he stared silently into the trees for a minute. It seemed as if the jungle was pressing in on them, growing ever closer to the edges of the boat. He couldn’t believe a boat this size could travel so far up the narrowing river, but he did remember that Archie had explained that they were traveling during the flood season, meaning the river would be wider and deeper than normal.
Still, there would come a time when the boat would no longer fit through the tunnel carved out by the jungle canopy. He didn’t want to know what the plan was then, and he had not asked. He assumed, though, since there were no smaller canoes or boats of any kind on board, they would be walking the rest of the way. No one knew their final destination, which made the trip even more insane.
Ben just hoped they would find answers, wherever the clues led. He wanted — needed — to know what Drache Global was all about, and if it meant he had to travel completely up the Amazon River into an area of the world no one had seen in thousands of years, so be it.
The darkness of the jungle spooked him, and it didn’t help that the animals and critters had gone silent. He could now hear the lapping of the waves against the boat’s hull, but the night air, thick as it was, carried no other sounds.
He frowned. He knew enough about wildlife to know that animals became eerily quiet when they sensed danger. The jungle, over the last days, had seemed to grow comfortable with the boat’s travel, so he knew it wasn’t their presence that had alerted it.
He looked left and right, examining the top deck to see if someone else had entered. Seeing no one, he decided to make one final sweep of the top deck before heading back inside for the night.
He reached the second level and was about to continue down to the bottom when he heard a small noise. It was a gentle scrape, the sound amplified by the boat’s hollow interior. He stepped off onto the second level and began walking toward the noise at the stern.
Night had fully reached this area of the world, and the jungle, silent as it was, was based in almost complete darkness. Ben considered going back down to see if there was a flashlight in his pack, but decided against it. It’s nothing . He wanted to believe the noise was just something random, a squirrel or something of the sort landing on the deck and scurrying into a hole somewhere.
But his instincts were on high alert, and he began to feel the adrenaline pounding. The scraping sound, quiet as it was, was deliberate. That much he knew.
He reached the stern and turned to the right. The scraping sound came back, this time even fainter. But it sounded close.
Just below him.
He flung his upper body far over the edge of the railing, trying to get a decent look at the lowest deck of the boat. Maybe someone was walking around for a nighttime stroll before bed.
Ben knew it wasn’t the truth, somehow. The noise was human-caused, but someone walking around would not have been in the same spot for that long. Someone was sneaking around, and he intended to catch them.
He wondered if he could jump to the bottom deck from here, or if he would miss and simply land in the water, alerting whoever it was that they had been caught and allowing them time to get away.
He stretched even farther over the railing, and saw a black boot. He could see just the sole of the shoe, thick and deeply ridged. Another instant passed and the boot disappeared.
A moment later, he heard the splash .
Whoever he had seen had just launched themselves over the edge of the boat and into the wake behind it.
“Hey!” Ben yelled, turning around and starting toward the stairs. It was a good fifty feet to the staircase, but he made the trip in just a couple of seconds. He bounded down the stairs and onto the lowest deck, and ran immediately toward the back of the boat. He squinted, trying to see in the darkness, but it was useless. Night had set in, removing any hope he had of trying to see who the person was, or where they were. He thought he could hear the sound of swimming, but it was far off in the distance by now.
He watched for another few seconds, then heard footsteps above him. He walked back toward the stairs, ready to explain what he had seen to the rest of the group.
Before he reached them, a massive explosion threw him forward against the wall.
Chapter 30
The boat groaned beneath him as boards and supports buckled and collapsed, and the air was immediately filled with thick, acrid smoke.
He coughed, but the boat was still shifting dramatically, preventing him from even getting up to his knees. He turned his head just enough to see the rear section of the lower deck falling beneath the black waters.
Shit.
Reggie was at the top of the stairs, holding on with a white-knuckle grip.
“Ben! Is that you?”
Ben pulled himself up using a railing from the staircase. He knew the boat was taking on water, and fast. “Yeah, it’s me. There was someone else down here, they planted explosives on the engine compartment.”
Reggie uttered a muffled string of expletives, then turned again to Ben and took a few steps down the stairs. “Here, give me your hand,” he said. “We need to get everyone to the top deck before we go under.”
Ben reached up and allowed Reggie to help him up the stairs, which, at this angle, seemed more like the rungs of a ladder. He reached the next level and leaned against the wall as he caught his breath. Reggie was already rummaging through a closet a few paces a
way, tossing out whatever flotation devices he could find. There weren’t enough for everyone, but Ben carried a few life preservers back to the stairs and prepared to climb up.
When he turned around to see about Reggie’s progress, he was stunned to see that the closet was already taking on water, and Reggie was standing up to his ankles in the murky brown liquid.
“Take whatever you can up with you,” Reggie said. “I need to try to get our packs from the room.”
Ben knew the room would be mostly underwater at this point, but he did as he was instructed and carried up the flotation devices and coil of rope Reggie had tossed him.
The remainder of the group, aside from Reggie and Rhett, was waiting for him. He also noticed that Captain Garcia was absent.
“Where’s Rhett?” He asked.
Amanda and Paulinho, holding his side, both shook their heads.
Archie Quinones stepped up to Ben and helped him with the life preservers. “He must still be down below,” Archie said. “Where’s Reggie?”
“Still down there,” Ben said. “He’s trying to find the backpacks. If anyone’s still down there, Reggie will grab them.” Ben said the words, but he wasn’t sure he believed them. Someone had sabotaged their boat, and then swam to shore. Ben had seen them do it. If, by some strange twist of fate, it had been Rhett or the captain, Ben knew they wouldn’t still be waiting around belowdecks.
The thought chilled him, and he forced it out of his mind for the moment. They would deal with the saboteur in time, but right now they had more pressing matters to concern themselves with.
Archie started passing out the life preservers, but Ben pulled him back. “Hold on,” he said. “Let’s use those to keep the backpacks afloat. I’m assuming we can all swim, right? These will just slow us down. ”
Archie nodded in agreement, and he and Ben began tying the flotation devices together using the rope. “It’s crude, but it will do the job. One of us can tie it to our leg and pull it behind us.”