The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the top of the cage on São Rochelle and he knew that Ramiro Esteves was not
Part III
CONFLICT
Chapter 1
What is that incessant buzzing!
He waved a hand in front of his face. The buzzing continued. Constant in frequency. Not changing like a bug darting away from a slapping hand. Not a bug! Then what?
He opened his eyes, blinking in the dimness of the day. Morning or night, he wondered. Closing his eyes, he waited listening again to the continual buzzing. Tuning his hearing. Listening. No! Not a bug. Something made by man. He opened his eyes again and pulled back such as he could in shock. He saw bars. He was in jail! Jail? What the...! He sat up or at least tried to, falling back onto a solid floor or what he judged to be a floor. He looked side to side and then above. Bars. He tried raising his head and tried to look down past his ... his manhood. I’m naked! That fact was sufficient to overcome the inertia left over from the drugs – drugs he didn’t realize he had been given. He sat up looked and saw bars. Quickly but not as fast as normal, he rolled over and onto his hands and knees and raised his head to look … and saw bars. But this time the bars had a different shape and he realized that he was looking at a door. He blinked and looked above the door. There was a small screen displaying a green readout of some sort. He crawled forward and reached the bars. Raising his right hand, he grabbed a bar, vertical here, and started to pull himself up. Alternating left and right he pulled upward, straightening his legs until he was standing – not vertically because of the height of the cage but standing – staring at the readout:
05:16:57
05:16:56
05:16:55
It was a timer counting down. Counting down to what? He jumped back cracking his head on the cage top because there was a sudden movement over his head. Through years of practice, honing of reflexes, he dropped to a fighting crouch.
“Ha! Look zat idiot. He zinks he going to fight,” Ramiro said as he looked at Gerallt in the cage. The image that he saw was being broadcast by a drone that was sitting over the cage. He got up from his seat and walked toward the screen. “Take it down. I wantz to zee hiz face.”
The drone moved down to midway up the side of the cage. Gerallt had heard it coming and had pivoted to face it.
“I want to talk to him,” Ramiro said.
“That is not within the ability of this drone,” Horus answered. “They can record pictures as we are seeing and the sounds it hears, but it does not have the ability to talk.”
Suddenly Gerallt lunged right arm outstretched reaching for the drone, but his reach was eight inches– just eight inches – short. He stared at the drone and then looked around and up. “Welai chi yn uffern, (I’ll see you in hell), Esteves,” he shouted in Welsh.
The suddenness of his shout startled Esteves who stepped back from the screen just as he had when Gerallt had lunged for the drone. Esteves laughed. “Não se eu te ver lá primeiro, filho da puta. (Not if I see you there first, son of a bitch.)”
“What did he say to you?” Issaack asked Ramiro.
“I ‘ust zink he say ‘I’ll zee you in hell.’”
“In what language?”
Ramiro shrugged and answered, “Welzh, I thinkz.”
“And you told him he would be there first?”
Ramiro considered, shrugged and said, “Sim.”
“I return to see the cage unlocked,” Ramiro said and wandered away and out of the room. Issaack followed him out of the theater and waited until he and the two ever present guards were gone and said quietly, “Knife,” and went back into the theater.
When he was back and seated, the main screen was switching between the animals but Issaack’s eyes were on the screen where the human was.
The drone started moving slowly to the left. Gerallt’s eyes followed it and then he pulled his arm in and began to trail the drone. First to the corner and then to the middle of the door where the drone stopped and sat in the air just out of reach. Gerallt stopped, looked at the drone and then at the countdown:
05:14: 57
05:14:56
Movement and his eyes were on the drone, which was slowly dropping down … down … down. The drone stopped about six inches above the surface when it started kicking up sand. Gerallt looked at it and saw that the drone was bobbing. Up and down. Up and down. Staying at the down position twice as long as at the up position.
It’s trying to tell me something, Gerallt thought.
He crouched down and looked at the area under the drone. The light was fading but he could see something shiny showing at the surface. He looked at the drone and gave it a thumb-up and just like that, the drone disappeared above the cage.
The drones are friendly. I know that devil Esteves is behind this. But why ...
The stillness of the evening was shattered by a roar that one expects to hear only in the jungles of Africa. The sound was so terrifying that a chill ran down Gerallt’s back. He was a brave man. “Braver than most” his friends often said, and his enemies would agree. However, the eeriness of that roar shattering an otherwise quiet ... dawn … dusk … was enough put him on edge.
His head jerked to the right as an equally loud and terrifying roar broke the stillness with even more ferocity if that were possible. “Beth (What)?” Gerallt said unconsciously taking another step back. The first was a lion; the second, a tiger. The first was African; the second, Asian. Where am I?
Then, just as strangely as the first two sounds, came a third – the eerie sound of a wolf howling at the moon. Then – on its heels as though firmly attached – came the almost siren-like sound of a coyote howling, instantaneously joined by a second such animal. Then there was a cacophony of roars, none as loud as the first two but taken collectively they were enough to make a man even as brave as Gerallt shiver. He didn’t cringe, but he did shiver.
He looked at the countdown clock again:
05:01:00
05:00:59
05:00:58
He looked at the sky all around and then back at the clock:
05:00:24
05:00:23
Midnight, he thought. And then what? No need to ask. He knew. The doors will open, and those animals will be loose as I will be. Then ... it’s the best man – or beast – for himself.
Chapter 2
It was 11:30 p.m. Thirty minutes until the cage doors were to be unlocked and the predators freed; the billionaires were beginning to gather in Vulcan’s Roost’s theater. Like all the rooms in Vulcan’s Roost, the theater was made from containers. In this case, two containers each eight by twenty set together long side so that the room was sixteen by twenty on the outside and fifteen by nineteen on the inside. The north wall was all LCD television screens. In the room were three rows of three seats and a three-foot aisle on the left side looking at the seats. Each seat was a leather recliner set within four feet of space side to side and five feet front to back for reclining leaving a narrow one-foot aisle for passage if the person reclining didn’t feel like being nice. Each seat was motorized. They were set on a tiered floor with the first row floor level, then a rise sixteen inches to the next level and the same to the third row.
As might be suspected, Ramiro had claimed the middle of the front row seats and asked (demanded actually) that Issaack sit next to him, Issaack choosing the seat by the aisle. The other front row seat was left vacant. Ramiro had been in the theater for some time with the screen showing Gerallt, now lying on the floor asleep – at least it seemed so.
“So zere iz a betting pool?” Ramiro said.
“Yes,” Issaack replied. “Didn’t you get the message?”
“Yes, I want to place a bet.”
“Certainly,” Issaack said. “What is it?”
“Can I place two?”
“Yes. The pool is a tontine, did you understand that?”
“Tontine? I donz’t underztand.”
“The last one standing wins.
With the understanding that the last ‘one’ can be two or more if the contest is considered a draw.”
“Two or more?”
“Certainly. Let’s say the coyotes become a team as we all suspect that they will, and they are the survivors.”
“I would likez to zee zat.”
“So would I. Now what are your bets? You know that the entry fee is one hundred thousand per entry.”
“Sim. Sim. Eu entendo (I understand). I wantz the hyena and za grizzly and … the man.”
“That’s three entries. Three hundred thousand dollars.”
“Sim. Eu entendo.”
“Fine, Deposit the money in this account,” and Issaack handed Ramiro a card with the instructions.”
“How do I know itz zafe?”
“Trust.”
Ramiro looked at him with a strange look – an untrusting or nonbelieving look. Then his lips twitched and broke into a grin, not a friendly grin but a grin.
“Sim. Truzt. Eu confio em você (I trust you),” he said punching Issaack in the chest. “’Uzt like you truzt me. Você confia em mim.” And he laughed what was definitely an evil laugh and the rest of the Bundle looked at him and, to a one, frowned.
“You’re betting on the hyena?” Siegfried said from his seat behind Issaack, having come in just in time to hear him place the bet.
“Sim. He iz a ferocious beazt. Very ztrong.”
“We’ll see,” Siegfried said.
“Assim, you too. Tell me how we able to zee all the animalz at same time,” Ramiro said to Siegfried and Issaack.
Issaack replied, “We had a drone for each beast tracking it from about one hundred feet in the air. It is tracking the predator’s GPS signal. If we want it to get closer, we tell Horus or if Horus sees that something exciting may be happening, he tells us.”
“Zat’s a lot of people to fly the drones. Who are zeze people.?
“Horus.”
“Horuz. Zat computer? It iz flying all zem? What? Fifteen of zem?”
“Yes. Fifteen of them counting … your entry, whoever he is.”
“Who iz not important.”
“Well, maybe not to you but …”
“Countdown to midnight,” Horus interrupted, and silence reigned in the theater and if Horus hadn’t been talking, one could actually have heard a pin drop, especially with the acoustics of the room.
“10… 9… 8…”
All eyes on the screen which had been broken into sixteen pieces. Fifteen of them were two by three-foot sections: two columns of four on the right, one column of four on the left, two at the top connecting the columns. The remainder was six by nine foot screen which at the present time was displaying the frontal view of the human who was lying on his side.
“Do we have to see him from that angle?” Gloria said. “It has to be degrading.”
And as she spoke the angle changed to the view from the front of the cage – in fact they all changed so that the angle of view was about 45º and maybe twenty feet away.
“… 3 … 2 … 1 … 0,” and all the cage doors opened.
The human was on hands and knees instantly and crawled out the door. The tiger was out the door in a flash, as were the two coyotes, the wolf, the lion, caracal, hyena, and cougar. The jaguar, black leopard, snow leopard, grizzly and black bear each stared at the open doorway and then exited. As each one cleared the cage, the door closed. The only two not completely clear when the doors closed were the grizzly and the human who appeared to be digging. The grizzly turned and swiped a paw at the gate and then moved on.
“What he doing?” Ramiro asked.
“I don’t know,” Issaack answered just as the screen went dark.
Chapter 3
Some of the sounds continued for a short time, but he couldn’t tell how long because darkness blacked out everything except his hands in front of his face. When the last of the animals – he knew not what type – quit its lamentations (which is what it sounded like) the night became quiet. Amidst the deathly quiet, he turned his ears into auditory receptive mode and lay still in the middle of the cage trying to pull in even the smallest, the quietest of sounds. And one came, and once it came and had been identified, it was there for him all the time. Waves, small waves, gently lapping – not on the sand of a beach but ... rocks. Wherever he was, it was near a large body of water because it had waves. And the shore of where he was ... was rocky. Not a rock-strewn beach but rocks. Piled together – big rocks – not stones. Big rocks. And it all came together. All those little pieces of information that had been gathered since that first meeting in Cartagena. Rumors of a zoo being amassed by some organization. A zoo like none other ever seen – at least not by mortal man. The zoo of which he had been hearing was better than any zoo those Romans ever had because it had animals from around the modern world. Yes, the Romans had animals from around the world, but their world was nothing compared to what the world had become. And this zoo by all reports was a zoo of the most dangerous kind of animals – predators. It was a Jurassic park of animals of the present, not mythical cloned remanufactured animals but actual living animals born from wombs of mothers. This must have been what that meeting was about. But why? To kill him? Hell, if Esteves wanted him dead he could have killed him easily. But no – that sadistic bastard wouldn’t let him off that easily. He wants to see if he could survive a gauntlet of a type never conceived of before. But where was this zoo … where could someone encage without cages ... an island. And, not just any island. Possibly São Rochelle, the island off the coast of Brazil where someone was developing something. Rumors always have some truth to them. He had never been able to put it together. Probably because it didn’t seem important but now that it was a matter of life or death – his life, his death – it became important.
Esteves was behind this. But there had to be others. There had to be someone who was working with or for Esteves yet almost certainly was helping him. He knew no one who could – would – work with that … that diawl (devil.) And why would anyone who was working with that diawl help him?
Now he was certain that what was in the sand outside the cage door was a knife or something akin to a knife. Maybe just a piece of metal but something ... Argh! Something clutched at his gut, painfully clenched its paws around his intestines and was squeezing, squeezing, forcing, twisting … He backed into a corner of the cage and squatted the best he could before relaxing his bowels and letting whatever needed out so badly out and whatever it was didn’t argue. Emptied and suddenly exhausted he moved away to the center of the cage and lay down to rest and gather his thoughts.
Click. Clink. Clack. He was alert after the first sound, knowing what it meant – the cage doors were unlocked. That meant that those predators were free. And they would be hungry just as he was. They would be hunting … and he was the quarry. He was their prey.
He scrambled to the door on hands and knees. It was open, and he crawled out placing his right hand out about where he thought the drone had been blowing dirt away. He felt something and dug with both hands. The door pushed against his side and not just with the push of a freely swinging door. This door was trying to close – and then it would be locked tight preventing any ingress. Somehow they – whoever they were knew that he was out of the cage.
“What he doing?” Esteves asked.
“I don’t know,” Issaack answered just as the screen went dark.
“Ze Picture,” Esteves screamed. “We Muzt Have Ze Picture!”
“Horus, what’s wrong with the human camera?”
“I don’t know. Working on it.”
But in fact nothing was wrong. The picture was black to prevent Esteves from seeing the knife.
The knife in his hand, Gerallt had moved off from the cage. He hadn’t wanted to. He had planned on using the cage as refuge for the night. He had pictured himself in the middle of the cage as lions and tigers and bears tried to reach through the bars to make him their meal. Now with that option going, he was racing for the hill
he had seen before darkness enshrouded everything. Now it was pitch black with a cloud cover and he couldn’t see where he was going. The predators, however, could see in the dark – at least some of them could. Those that hunted in the night could. Those that hunted in the day probably couldn’t. But when you’re hungry, you hunt and Gerallt felt that they would be hungry.
In the darkness, things were just shadows. To his right there was something. Big. Rectangular. He moved slowly toward it, not knowing if it was alive or … what? He reached out a hand and touched it. Cold … at least cool. Not alive. He moved closer. A rectangular surface. Tilted. Looking up. Just a bit. He ran his hand over the surface. Smooth. Like glass. Looking around, he made out other similar shapes nearby. There must be twenty of them. All appeared to be pointing in the same direction. Then he knew. Solar panels. He had been right. He was on an island that someone was using for something requiring electricity.
A roar in the distance startled him out of his thought. Can’t stay here. Have to move. And he started out again. And almost immediately encountered another object. This one rectangular with a round top. He felt it. Smooth on one side. Depressions on the other. He felt further. Fingers feeling. Letters. Words. A tombstone. Again a roar in the distance. Must move. And he started again. Moving faster. Hurrying.
He felt himself falling forward. He hadn’t felt anything hit him and so he must have tripped on something. He held the knife firmly in his grasp and kept the hold as his hand hit the ground. No sooner than he was down, he was up and warily circling around looking. The fall had disoriented him but, truth be told, he had no idea whether he was running toward the hill he had seen or parallel to it. Although he didn’t see anything out there, he felt that something was there.
The caracal Hyma was hungry. But her quarry was much bigger than she. And she wasn’t about to waste her energy on something she couldn’t kill. So after watching for a moment, she slunk off into the darkness in search of something more her size.
Predator Island Page 21