Insects: Braga's Gold

by John Koloen

  “That will help him but it won’t help us,” Duncan said, coldly.

  Braga holstered his piece, moved to face Duncan, raising himself on his toes so they saw each other eye to eye and snarled in Portuguese, “What can we do to help ourselves?” which the cook quickly translated.

  “Maybe we can use fire or water, or both, against them,” Duncan said, waving at his companions to join him. Boyd, Suarez and Paulo came quickly, followed by Cooper who stared at the ground with fearful vigilance, avoiding even a glance at the dying miners.

  “What’s the plan?” Boyd asked.

  “If we could turn one of those hoses on, we could use it to make a path to the other side.”

  “I don’t understand,” Grimaldi said.

  “It’s like a fire hose. I watched them use it on the hill. There’s plenty of pressure. It’ll blow them away and then we can run across.”

  The men listened in silence as Duncan outlined his plan. Cooper nodded encouragingly.

  Braga shook his head.

  “There’s not enough water,” Grimaldi said, translating for his boss. “That’s why they stopped. The pump is pulling up mud.”

  “If we don’t do something really soon, it won’t matter,” Duncan said, darkly. “We’re either gonna get incinerated by the fire or eaten by the insects. You can pick your poison or come up with a better idea.”

  111

  “Why don’t we just run for it?” Cooper asked. “If we run, we can be on the other side in seconds, right?”

  Everyone looked at Duncan.

  “If you say so,” Duncan shrugged.

  Cooper frowned.

  “I’m just trying to survive here,” Cooper said. “It seems like you want to fight them and all I wanna do is escape.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Boyd said urgently. “Whatever we’re gonna do we gotta do it now.”

  The diesel was in a drum near the generator and what remained of the kerosene was in a five-gallon galvanized can near the cook shack where Grimaldi used it to fuel lanterns. It would have been better had they a drum of kerosene and a can of diesel. Better yet, gasoline. Gasoline would be easy to light and stay lit, while the diesel, with its much higher flashpoint, was problematic. The kerosene was in between the two but like the diesel it required a higher temperature ignition source and might not sustain a flame depending on the amount of vapor produced, which they were in no way able to determine.

  While the others watched, Duncan poured a cup of diesel and a cup of kerosene in the sand, which immediately soaked up both. Using a butane lighter borrowed from Grimaldi, Duncan lit a piece of cardboard and held it over the diesel. The fuel lit briefly but died out as soon as he removed the burning cardboard. Testing the kerosene led to a similar result, though the flames were hotter and lasted a little longer once the cardboard had been removed. Everyone was disappointed.

  “How is that gonna help us?” Cooper whined.

  “It tells us we can’t just pour the fuel over the sand,” Duncan said.

  “Why do we even need a fire?”

  “I’m thinking that if we’re gonna run, it might be useful to somehow distract them. They don’t like to be around fire. If we can somehow start a fire on the sand, well, it might improve our chances.”

  Duncan asked Grimaldi to build a fire and directed Boyd to gather several pieces of deck board from scrapped pallets, over which he carefully poured a small amount of the fuels, allowing it to soak into the wood. Once the fire was going, he placed the wet end of the boards into the flames. Both caught fire quickly and continued to burn robustly after removal from the fire.

  While they weren’t certain what it meant, the men watched in silence, their mood brightening as the burning wood seemed to offer hope of escape. Then the questions arose and with them doubt.

  “How is this going to help?” Cooper asked.

  “Do we wave the boards at the bugs?” Grimaldi asked.

  “I don’t know,” Duncan said. “We have to figure it out.”

  “This isn’t some kind of experiment,” Cooper whined, his frustration coming to a head. “This is life or death.”

  “You know, we could soak a bunch of wood in diesel and throw it out there and light it,” Boyd said. “See what happens. See what the bugs do.”

  It didn’t take long for the others to rally around Boyd, who was waiting for Duncan’s response, hoping that his former mentor had a better idea. In minutes they’d collected a pile of lumber and were about to start dipping the pieces into the diesel when they heard the faint sound of an airplane engine approaching from the distance, stopping them in their tracks.

  112

  A low ceiling of dark gray and white smoke kept them from seeing the plane, but they could not ignore the familiar sound of the engine as it approached. Energized, their necks craned, they listened intently as the plane turned back in the direction from which it had come, the promising sound fading in the distance. Was the pilot going to land? Or, seeing only smoke and flames, was he flying away? It mattered a great deal to Braga, who listened, detached from what the others were doing, his focus on being the first to reach the airplane, which he wanted to believe would land. His gold was stuffed into his daypack, which was strapped to his back even when he sat in a chair. Since he had no idea what to do about Reptilus, he concentrated on what he was good at, taking advantage of others. Just like his miners, his former captives and the cook would do all the work while he would make the profit.

  “How far do you think we can throw the wood?” Duncan asked.

  “Maybe half way,” Boyd said. “Even then, that’s out there. And how much flame and heat we get depends on how much wood we throw. I just don’t think it’ll help.”

  Cooper, who had been eavesdropping, said, “Why don’t we vote on it?”

  “There’s nothing to vote on,” Boyd said.

  Cooper felt dissed but didn’t have any ideas. He’d never been in a situation remotely like this and struggled to maintain his poise.

  “We don’t have much time,” he said anxiously.

  “We know that,” Boyd said, harshly.

  “Can you do anything about the fucking screaming?” Cooper shouted. “It’s driving me crazy.”

  Duncan and Boyd exchanged glances. They’d tuned out the suffering miners who were dying slowly, painfully, one of them within fifty feet of where they stood. It had been Duncan who prevented Braga from shooting them, believing that it was safer if the colony was occupied rather than sending out scouting parties in search of new victims, not that he knew that was what they would do. Not even he was certain of his heartless reasoning. It might just as well have been because he didn’t want to be responsible for more deaths. Despite the passage of years, he had not been able to free himself from the guilt over the death of Carlos Johnson during his first expedition. Others had died, but Johnson was a student and as such it was Duncan’s responsibility to ensure his safety, a task at which he had failed miserably.

  Approaching Grimaldi, he asked if Braga would use his revolver to end the men’s suffering.

  “But you said the bugs would come after us,” the cook said.

  “I’ve changed my mind. Besides we can’t stay here much longer. It’s time.”

  Braga was suspicious at first.

  “They just want me to use up ammunition,” he told Grimaldi.

  “I don’t think so. What would they gain?”

  Although he wasn’t privy to what Duncan and Boyd were planning, he was eager to flee, determined to get to the plane first with his gold and, if necessary, to shoot anyone who got in his way. Of course, if Grimaldi could keep up with him, he’d have a seat as well. But he wouldn’t wait for stragglers, not even for a friend. It was how he made most of his decisions, setting a goal and then heading straight for it regardless of obstacles or finer considerations. But he, too, was bothered by the persistent screaming of the dying men. Who would accuse him of a crime if he only hastened a certain death? He didn’t need
a lot of convincing, moved as close as he could get to his targets and then fired away, the first bullet tearing into the closest victim’s head. The second victim, lying just outside the truck, his face down in the sand, was silenced with a bullet in the top of his head. It took the last four bullets in the cylinder to end the misery of the two in the truck, but in little over a minute Braga had snuffed out four lives and reloaded.

  “There, it is done,” Grimaldi said to Duncan, translating for his boss. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  “Yes, you are now going to get us out of here.”

  113

  It was impossible not to watch Braga finish off his men. Cooper flinched with each shot as it tore into the victims. What they noticed almost immediately was how quiet their little part of the world had become. Encouraged by the increasing smoke, the monkeys and birds had retreated far enough that they could no longer be heard and the miners were no longer filling the air with their shrill agonies. But it wasn’t replaced by silence. They could now hear the wind overhead and at ground level the low-level, aggregated sound of an army of Reptilus chopping, gouging, tearing the remains of their victims and the scritching and scratching signaling the movement of thousands of the creatures, an unknown number of them hidden under the sand. Meanwhile, sparks and embers rained from overhead.

  All along the Americans had avoided Harden’s body, stepping around it, careful not to trip over it. The thought of burying him had come and gone so quickly that it was barely a memory, his face covered with a bandanna to hide the wide-eyed surprise that marked his last second. Drying blood from the hole in his forehead kept the bandanna in place. But now that the loud noises had vanished, they could isolate the muffled sounds of Reptilus, much closer than the riverbed. Cooper was the first to notice it as he was the most troubled by Harden’s body. It was his idea to bury him, to put his body out of sight and out of mind. But he didn’t do it. There wasn’t time. There were other priorities. But now he couldn’t get the sounds out of his head.

  “Can you guys hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That noise, like it’s coming from Brett. Is that what happens when people die? It’s like something is—I don’t know what.”

  Boyd and Duncan approached the body, lowering their heads, looking at each other with instant recognition.

  “Let’s roll him over,” Duncan said.

  “What?” Cooper said, revolted.

  With Duncan pulling Harden’s shirt sleeve and Boyd using a board to apply leverage to the dead man’s legs, they managed to turn the body onto its side. What they saw caused them to back off in disgust.

  “What the fuck?” Cooper said, jumping back and pointing.

  Everyone who was watching reacted as if turning over a rock and discovering snakes. The noise that Cooper had heard was suddenly louder, dozens of the insects burrowing up from underneath the sand into Harden’s body, their spindly legs twitching in the lifeless flesh.

  Cooper stood with his hands on his head as if preventing it from exploding, then backed away without paying attention to his footing, ending up on his ass as he tripped over a small pile of lumber. He lay there momentarily, staring at the smoky, yellowish sky, screaming “I don’t believe this,” over and over until Boyd extended his hand to help him up.

  “You don’t want to do that,” he said.

  “Do what, man?” Cooper said, agitatedly.

  “The bugs are under the sand.”

  Cooper stared at the ground around him, lifted one leg and then the other as if trying to limit his exposure to the sand.

  “Fuck,” Cooper shouted. “They’re all over now?”

  “I think we can assume that,” Duncan said, nodding toward Harden’s body. “We can’t stay here much longer.”

  No sooner had Grimaldi explained what was happening than Braga stood on one of the chairs, a look of terror twisting his face. Watching this, Cooper took a position on another chair, his eyes glued to the area around the chair’s legs. Duncan realized that the moment had arrived where they had to make their escape, even if it killed them.

  114

  “Can you do something about that?” Cooper said, eyeing the wriggling bugs protruding from Brett Harden’s body.

  “What do you want me to do?” Boyd said, while gathering boards.

  “Turn it over, or something. I can’t stand looking at it.”

  Boyd shook his head disapprovingly.

  “Don’t look at it, then.”

  Duncan was studying the riverbed. From what he could see, the colony hadn’t advanced much farther than their victims making it look as if there was a safe route to the other side. But he knew better. The insects they couldn’t see had burrowed under the sand, waiting to launch themselves at their next victim. Boyd joined him after dropping the boards near the diesel drum.

  “What do you want to do?” Boyd asked.

  “It’s not gonna work,” Duncan said, glumly.

  “What’s not gonna work?”

  “None of it. I don’t see how anyone can get from here to there without being attacked.”

  “What choice do we have?”

  Duncan sighed deeply, his face lined and puffy from lack of sleep, his eyes reddened by smoke. Boyd had never seen him in such a seemingly deflated condition.

  “You’re not giving up, are you?”

  Duncan turned away from the riverbed, taking in the campsite, making note of how small it was and how the river had carved a channel two feet deep around it, wide on one side, narrow where it met the steep hillside. If only there wasn’t a fire. Escape would be a simple matter of scrambling up the rocky slope. It would be in the opposite direction of the plane but at least they would be free of Reptilus.

  “What’re you looking at?”

  Duncan shrugged.

  “I wish things had worked out differently,” he said, wistfully.

  “It’s not over yet,” Boyd said. “Maybe we should just run for it, you know, like we did that one time.”

  “Not everyone made it.”

  “Most of us did.”

  “It was different. There weren’t as many of them,” Duncan said, intent on finding a better solution. Duncan stroked his stubbled chin, smoothing his whiskers, looking back and forth from the hillside to the opposite bank.

  “If we had enough rope, we might somehow tie one end to one of those palm trees over there and somehow attach it to that slope, we might be able to get to the other side.”

  Boyd didn’t know what to make of it. Was Duncan grasping at straws or simply delaying the inevitable?

  “Even if we had enough rope, there’s no time.”

  “I was just thinking out loud,” Duncan said. “If we could throw it far enough, and if your guide is still out there, he could tie it to a tree and—”

  “We could never throw the rope far enough,” Boyd said crossly. “No matter what we do, someone has to get over there first and if he doesn’t make it someone else has to do it. We should just make a run for it, protect ourselves the best we can.”

  “You’re right,” Duncan said. “I just wish I hadn’t wasted so much time coming up with plans that won’t work.”

  115

  The men gathered around Duncan as he described the simple plan, though questions abounded. Should they run en masse or separately? Would the bugs be more likely to attack a group or individuals? Where would they start and where would they finish? What if they got to the other side and were covered with insects? What if one of them fell? Would anyone help him?

  “It’ll be every man for himself,” Duncan said. “I don’t think it matters how we do it.”

  “So, if someone needs help we just leave him, is that it?” Cooper asked, warily.

  Duncan nodded.

  “There’s no other way.”

  “Can we take anything with us?”

  “That’s up to you. We’re gonna get only one chance. The longer it takes to get across, the more exposure you
’ll have to the bugs. Whether that matters, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we’ll surprise them,” Cooper said, hopefully.

  “That’s possible. Like I’ve said, I’ve never seen this kind of behavior in Reptilus, so whatever I say it’s just a guess.”

  “An educated guess,” Boyd added.

  “Assuming we get to the other side but all we’ve got is the shirts on our back, how do we make it back to civilization?”

  “Depends on the plane being there.”

  “And if it isn’t, what then? If we leave our stuff here we’ll be lost in the jungle without water or food,” Cooper said.

  “You’re thinking too far ahead,” Boyd said. “If we don’t get outta here, you won’t have to worry about what happens next.”

  Grimaldi listened to the conversation with trepidation as he translated for Braga. Overweight, out of shape and afflicted with osteoarthritis in his knees, he was certain he would be bringing up the rear, fearful that he would make an easy target for the subterranean tormentors.

  “Why can’t we do the hose thing?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Not enough water,” Duncan said.

  “But I thought we were going to use fire.”

  “If we had gasoline, maybe it would work. But we don’t.”

  Grimaldi lowered his head dejectedly. Braga had formed a plan for himself even before Duncan had finished. He would position himself in the middle of the group, which he felt would give him the best chance of escape. It would only take a few seconds to get to the other side and he was confident he could keep up with the others. And there was no way he would leave his pack behind. In addition to the gold, he carried Boyd’s satellite phone, their phones, wallets and several bottles of water and the snack bars that he’d confiscated from the Americans.

  Suarez and his cousin grabbed machetes, Cooper stared at the ground beneath his feet, expecting any moment to be attacked, while Grimaldi clung to his knives.