It sniffed at my cheeks and hair, decided it knew all it had to know, and walked casually down to the water, stopping briefly to smell a single yellow flower protruding from a scraggly bush.
I laughed in astonishment, almost giddy not only to have survived the night but also an encounter with a large, wild animal.
The capybara whistled and grunted a series of rolling chirps as it approached the grassy waterway. From out of the jungle came six mud-smeared members of its pack. In a loose formation they entered the wet area, squeaking and purring, pushing through the thick duckweed and grass. Halfway across, the water came to their chins. I judged their passageway looked no deeper than my knees and, figuring they knew what they were doing, followed the rodents into the water.
No piranha chomping them up. Hope anacondas and caiman don’t wait for the last in line.
I slogged through the muck, feeling vulnerable, not wanting to lose sight of my new-found friends as they steered the way for me. The leader was a dark splotch in the mist as it reached dry land on the far side of the swamp. After the last of the noisy brown creatures had emerged from the water, they stood together, watching my progress, commenting in soft twitters to each other about the odd creature accompanying them. When I came ashore, they scattered into the bush, grunting and chattering, leaving me alone to find my way through another day in their world.
A large clearing lay before me, grassland stretching eastwards and downhill. Twisting the little metal key around a can of Spam, I considered straying from the wide trail to head cross-country towards the rising sun. The highway had to be out there somewhere. Anxious to get away from the thick jungle, I decided to chance it.
I passed a pile of cut logs. Rotten. Orange mushrooms and small ferns sprouted from the split wood. Nearby, some old horse manure lay scattered. Although the apparent lack of recent human activity was discouraging, I clung to the hope that I’d hear a cow moo or a horse neigh.
The sun rose two handspans as I hiked towards where I believed the highway to be. The grass around me crept uncomfortably taller and became thick with wide, skin-slicing blades. The ground turned soggy. Being constantly on the lookout for snakes and battling the suction of oozing muck unnerved me. I considered turning back but pushed on to investigate the sound of rushing water. The meadow that I had hoped would be full of grazing cattle and a clear way to the road turned out to be a dead-end promontory. Two wide rivers converged directly in my path. Cascading in from the north, whitewater rolled over high rocks, crashing and tumbling into the other watercourse, a mud-brown, slow, and murky nightmare.
Three very large caiman slept on a sandy beach across from where I stood. One languidly lifted its head, its prehistoric indolence interrupted by the arrival of two eyes rising up through the water midstream. The newcomer’s long crocodilian snout split the current with barely a ripple. The creature cruised a long stealthy minute, then disappeared back down into its family’s sunless hunting grounds.
Got to get out of here.
Chapter 16
I made it back to my discarded can of breakfast Spam near the chigüire crossing around noon. I had lost half a day’s progress in finding my way back to civilization.
Small saplings and large bushes began to interfere with the trail’s relative semblance to an underused vehicle road, giving it the appearance of an abandoned path. Or an animal track. Reaching a bank that overlooked roaring rapids, I was forced to turn into a steep mountain valley. Long and dark, it was unmistakably an entranceway into the deeper Andean wilderness. Cliffs rose on either side. Streams of water flew out from overhangs, falling a thousand feet through their own mist. A large jumble of granite, mudslides, and green forest stared back at me from the far end of the passageway. Shadowed ravines and towering hills layered themselves higher and higher, forming a solid mass that peaked into a forever blue sky. I sensed the near mountain was assigned to watch and warn, a sentinel for other, larger, more majestic shapes that stood behind it, challenging all who were about to enter their kingdom.
This is the wrong direction. This heads west. I’m trapped.
I took a long drink of water, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and wished I had matches for a cigarette.
I guess I’ll have to chance going back the way I came. Back to the truck, to Johnny’s dead body. To the jaguar.
As I retraced my route, I heard a low chuckle. The sound came as short spasms, strangling itself—rasping and low, a mechanical clucking hidden in someone’s throat. I stood still, eyeing the impenetrable bamboo, the tangle of vines, and the hidden spaces within the jungle growth.
Birds sang, a woodpecker banged. The choked laughter, silent now, lay in my mind, repeating itself. I listened and watched, machete in hand, hoping I had mistaken the call of some innocent creature for a different threat.
Doctor Steel. He’s here. I know it.
The wary fear that had been with me since I left the scene of Johnny’s murder shifted. The air itself rippled with cruelty. The natural hunger of a hunter faded in comparison to the unknown motivations of this new presence. An alien delight in pain, the same Steel had radiated from the alley in New York and on the cabin path in the Poconos, attacked my senses.
The atmosphere felt knife-like—each step now not only a step lost in a wilderness, but a step in a world where demons roamed.
I had to keep moving.
The chigüire marsh came into view.
And the opposite shore.
God, if it hadn’t been so frightening, it would have been beautiful. The artist in me wanted to paint that color, that grace, but instead, I ducked, instinctively calculating my options as I relived the inspirational vision.
The brilliant orange and white fur with sharp black rosette patterns stamped across its back proclaimed defiance to the surrounding world of green. Spreading up its neck, the spots thinned into smaller specks peppering its face before disappearing at the edge of a whitish muzzle.
Beneath the dazzling color, compact muscle defined every move. Everything about her—somehow I knew it was female—legs, chest, jaws, paws—spoke with a supreme ability to pulverize me.
The bowling ball size head remained bent to the ground, sniffing as it pawed the area where I had camped overnight.
Its teeth were slightly bared. Her tail snapped decisively.
She’ll be alert to me soon, maybe already is. I can’t risk another look.
What do I do?
Run? Hide?
For a crazy moment my cousin Richard was handing me his BB gun, and I was popping a hole through a jellyfish.
Shoot? With the pistol? No. The rifle.
The jaguar’s, what… two hundred feet away? What if I miss? What if it charges at me? Can I hit a moving target?
It’ll slow down in the water. Christ, the rifle’s strapped to my knapsack. I gotta be quiet removing it.
Kill?
Quick, quick, decide.
She’ll see me when I get up to aim.
What if…? Maybe it’ll turn around. Can I kill that cat if it’s not attacking? Can I pump a bunch of bullets into an animal that is just wading across the water? How many bullets do I have?
I have to kill it, or it’ll kill me.
Kill me?
She’s hunting me. I gotta outdistance it.
Staying crouched, I scurried back the way I came, aware of every clink and clunk of the knapsack, my boots, and—Oh God—the tinkle of chains on the metal canteen tops. I removed the rifle from its nesting place and eventually broke into a run, carrying the long gun and machete while trying to dampen the sound of the canteens double-thumping against my thighs.
From the trees came screeching cheers, some raucously rooting for me, others damning me as a stranger, tattling on my dash through their territory. A hoo-ha-ha chorus echoed shrilly, climbing deeper and higher into the forest. I imagined the cat
had crossed the marsh, so I kept looking behind me, flinching as shadows leaped at me. Each stride I took was too slow, too noisy, not long enough, landing in mud or grass too slippery for a quick escape. Each breath I desperately sucked in, I knew, was heard and gauged by the hunter stalking me.
The thunder of the rapids sounded ahead, and I tried to determine where the trail cut up into the mountain jungle. I didn’t understand how what happened next happened at all, but suddenly a wild-haired man stepped out from some bushes in front of me. I recognized him from Bellevue Hospital. He was tied into his straightjacket, and his mouth flapped up and down with words indistinguishable from the caws and screeches and rattle-tat chitterings surrounding me.
The trail opened right next to him. I pushed past some ferns onto the shadowed upland valley path. The madman’s jabbering exploded into a repetitive mantra.
“Jumpjumpjumpjumpjump.”
Then he was gone, and I felt an anxious flurry of confusion at being left alone by my own hallucination. There was no time to linger in hope that he’d return to explain what the entire strange occurrence had meant.
I dodged along the thin, overgrown path—twisting around roots, diving beneath limbs, tearing through snarled vines. Overhanging trees and bushes crowded close, slapping at my face and arms. A long-leaved plant carved a gash on my already scabbed-up cheek. When I reached up protectively, a thin bloody line ripped open across several fingers.
I didn’t pause. I couldn’t pause. The jaguar might not use the path but cut through the dense thicket, so I was running with all I had, not caring about the noise anymore, still gripping the rifle in one hand, the machete in the other. Then, from out of nowhere, I heard the wild man in the straightjacket hiss, “Jumpjumpjump”, and instinctively, without doubting or disbelieving his command, I threw myself into the air, hurtling downhill over a shallow root-entangled embankment. I sensed, more than saw, the thickest root burst upwards. Inside my head, Cecilia was screaming hysterically about a three-step snake just as something heavy struck me from behind and yanked the straps of my knapsack backwards. While I was still in flight, a fat thump bounced against the back of my leg, then bumped again, and in a flash of clarity, understanding the screeching in my mind, I swung the machete sharply up behind me at a foreign heaviness tugging at my waist. The desperate upswing sliced through the meat and smacked apart the bone of a horror that clung to my backpack.
A massive, brown, headless thing, spurting red gobs, flipped across my shoulder and landed in the path ahead of me. I crashed alongside it, about six feet from where I had leaped, struggling to keep my balance because the thing, the dangerous part of the thing, was still struggling to let go, to bite, to live. Blood was splattering from the head, which had become entrapped by its fangs in the thick canvas of the knapsack.
Then something rigid hit my back.
I’m dead.
I leaned backwards, ripping off the pack in one terrified but precise shrug. I split the head of the snake with a quick chop, then stepped back, wary that either section of the viper would come back to life.
One... two… three. The air coming into my lungs was hot and putrid, but I savored each breath along with my frantic heartbeat as I assessed my condition. I took three steps. Another three. No bite had punctured my skin. No instant death in my bloodstream. I was alive.
Prying the mouth from the tough weave with the machete gave me further fright. I could see wet venom on the material. My hands were covered with scratches and open cuts that the dead snake’s poison coveted for a final revenge. I poured water on the knapsack, then ground mud into it with my foot. Deciding not to investigate the bag until I could wash it thoroughly, I stepped past the brown, leaf-patterned body stretched along the path. The monster was three inches thick, about five feet long.
Had I ever been closer to being killed?
Drake and Gus. The Poconos.
I screamed, challenging Doctor Steel and his menagerie of killers. “Fucking nine thousand dollars.”
My body shook as I sliced the machete menacingly at the plants and vines surrounding me. Scooping up the Polaroid camera that had jarred loose from the top of my pack, I angrily snapped a picture of mangled viper parts lying in messy pools of red.
I counted out the development time, waving the camera and my machete in a rage. “This picture is all you’ll get for nine thousand fucking dollars, Steel, you goddamn reptile-tongued creep.”
When I pulled the photograph, instead of seeing the image, I saw myself standing in a wild land railing against unknown powers.
What am I doing? I still have to deal with the jaguar. Move.
Chapter 17
How many more times could I delay my death?
Mountain walls jutted up on either side of me, narrowing the valley. I couldn’t help but think I had been steered into another of Doctor Steel’s traps. Was I a threat or a toy to him? How could I stop him? The bolts of energy surrounding Pigeon and Steel in that puzzling altercation in Monster Alley leaped into my memory. How could I hope to end his deathly harassment if he could withstand that onslaught of god-like power?
I entered into the shadows cast by the massive cliffs and ridges. The path became steeper, climbing alongside the tumultuous river on my right. The water tumbled and spit past me. Numerous waterfalls gushing out from cliff sides high above kept the air moist with spray. Nothing could be heard but the river’s constant drone of chaos as it bashed against rock on its way to join that slow muddy water where the caiman slept and hunted.
Hours had passed since I had seen the jaguar. Though my major concern was to separate myself from her, my progress was slow as I watched for snakes that could look like roots or leaves or vines. The trail, just a ribbon for animals to move into or out of the high valley, was barely visible.
At one point, the path crested onto a pile of loose rocks. Picking my way across the landslide debris, I smelled smoke. Just a whiff, but my hopes leaped. Looking westward across a series of hills and valleys spread out below me, all I could see were green treetops. A hawk swooped rapidly down from the mountain that dominated the far skyline. Off to the south, a blue ridge darkened to purple as the sun descended.
I dreaded nightfall, positive jaguars were night hunters.
As if to strengthen my odds of survival, I hefted the rifle into a more comfortable grip. When had I become friends with my weapon? I had never fired it and had no idea how many bullets were in it.
The path disappeared in an area of thin trees with sparse undergrowth peppering a gentle downhill slope. In a shallow ravine, where stone pebbles shone at the bottom of a clear stream, lay a metal bucket. It was cracked and filthy, rusted out where the handle had once fit.
Smoke and a bucket.
With a prayer, I hoped I would soon see humans. Following the stream, I came to a clearing with three structures in it. The next few minutes were spent hunched down, studying the buildings and watching for signs of habitation. The smallest hut was a pile of caved-in timbers with no roof. There was a lean-to of thatched palm leaves huddled near a ring of blackened stones. A shredded automobile seat with soggy stuffing and rusty springs sat by the doorway of a log hovel with a corrugated metal roof.
After entering the settlement, I felt as abandoned as the ramshackle dwellings. Nobody was around and probably hadn’t been for a long time. I called out “Hola” half-heartedly as I kicked at the dead campfire. There was no sign of ash or burned wood.
Investigating the area, I found two sticks nailed together in the shape of a cross stuck in the ground, plus a thriving grove of a dozen banana trees. A thin black snake slithered past the lean-to. I guessed it to be a quick little killer, so I kept my distance and the machete ready until it disappeared into the jungle.
The dark interior of the largest shack smelled of disuse, a place where three-step vipers and scorpions plotted and jaguars set traps. Behind the one-roomed buil
ding sat six bamboo cages of varying sizes. They appeared fresher and sturdier than the shambles around me. The wood was weathered but not splintered. Rope used to tie the pieces together wasn’t rotten.
So somebody must pass through here. The main drag through town looks worn.
I piled up the cages, using them as a step stool to hoist myself onto the metal roof. It held my weight. Yes, a jaguar could leap up, but being off the ground and away from overhanging branches came as a thankful relief.
I blew out a long sigh, drank from a canteen, and, not knowing whether the snake venom was still active, decided to leave my knapsack untouched. The rifle, pistol, and machete lay next to me, easy to grab.
Studying the map of Venezuela, I calculated that if my understanding of kilometers was correct, then thirty or forty miles to the west was another highway, but I would have to go straight over the roof of the Andes to find it. I had no idea what elevation the peaks reached in this northernmost cordillera or how much further the valley I was climbing was passable. The range I had spotted earlier looked formidable. Now that I had left the foothills, Johnny’s prophetic comment about keeping the mountains to my left was no longer meaningful. My hopes of hugging the base of the Andes, until I found a way eastwards or came to the northern road, had dimmed when I had been forced west into the valley. There was no way from my simple road map to tell exactly where I was.
I’m somewhere between the highway on the plains, that the jaguar and rivers keep blocking my approach to, and the long valley road in the mountains. Probably a lot more rivers and jaguars between here and there too.
For the first time since Carlito had pulled his gun on Johnny and me, I intentionally lay down to rest. A tiny star shimmered above me. Then another, and another, added its twinkle to the darkening purple-black sky.
I might die.
Teresa, I remember not being able to see the stars from our rooftop. It’s because they’re all here. Couldn’t see them in paradise with you. Found them here in hell.
Magic (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 2) Page 9