The Creation: Let There Be Death (The Creation Series Book 2)

by The Behrg

  But the trees weren’t the only things guarding the tunnel entrance. Between each of the rooted trunks, bands of Venezuelan guards were huddled together, their weapons pointed toward the opening in the hill.

  “There’s too many,” Father Shumway said.

  Grey counted at least fifty, and there could have easily been more, blocked from their view by the large wooden sentinels. They were far enough away that the soldiers hadn’t heard their arrival. Grey couldn’t tell if the men had similar night vision apparel or not. A few smaller groups of men were moving through the jungle towards those stationed in front, backup arriving before it was even needed.

  “They’re close. Just inside,” Chupa said, glancing back at the screen. “We should make them feel welcomed.”

  “And how do you propose that?” Father Shumway asked.

  Instead of answering, Chupa opened the driver’s door, glancing over at Grey. “Come,” he said.

  Reluctantly, Grey joined the man, climbing out of the vehicle. He trampled over brush, making his way to the rear where Chupa had already climbed up onto the jeep’s open hatch, the back window shattered.

  “Oh my god!” Grey stared, slack-jawed, at the arsenal Chupa was digging through.

  “Hold this.” Chupa handed him an assault rifle with some kind of super scope attached to its top. “And this.” This gun was shorter, its barrel thicker than PVC piping, though equally as heavy. It’s end, Grey realized, could be pulled out, making it as long, if not longer, than the first one.

  Chupa continued handing down artillery guns, each as unique as the previous one. Grey had to stack them against the back of the Jeep, leaning up from the brush. Lastly, he handed Grey a medium-sized crate, a heavy son-of-a-bitch. Grey let it down onto the ground with a crackling of plants beneath.

  “Careful,” Chupa said, leaping down to join him. He lifted the lid of the crate, tossing it out into the jungle. Inside were rows of grenades. “You see. We make plans once we know what we’re facing, not before. But it doesn’t mean we come unprepared.”

  He shoved one of the larger tubular guns into Grey’s chest. “What, we’re gonna take on fifty men by ourselves?” Grey asked.

  “No. We are going to kill fifty men by ourselves,” Chupa answered.

  “I’ve never fired a gun before.”

  “Good. Because you’re not firing a gun. Guns require accuracy. But a grenade launcher must only be pointed in the right direction. Do you know which is the right direction?”

  Grey wiped at his face with the back of his hand, sweat dripping now down his fingers. “Uh, towards the soldiers?”

  “See, you will do just fine.”

  Machine guns rattled ahead of them in the trees, Grey instinctively ducking and hiding behind the jeep. Father Shumway appeared from the other side of the vehicle. “You need to see this,” he said.

  “Are we too late?” Chupa asked.

  “Not that,” the priest said. “There are two groups of soldiers out there, not one. And the smaller group is hunting the larger.”

  Verse XLV.

  The sky outside erupted with noise. Flashes of light breaking through the darkness, if only for a moment. Men’s screams filled the air, quickly joined with the cries of the surviving women and girls, gathered together. Machine guns fired on an endless loop, broken only by the sound of additional explosions.

  “There’s our sign,” Dugan said. “Kendall, come with me!”

  They crept up the staircase, slipping their feet between disposed bodies. As they neared the top, both of them got down, slithering forward. Kendall held one of the girl’s bodies in front of him as he moved; even in death, they could be of use.

  It took a moment to dial the goggles in with the further distance, but the world before them had broken into chaos. Groups of soldiers surrounded the staggered kapok trees outside of the mine’s entrance, far more men than Dugan could count. Several of the groups were firing away from the mine back into the woods, but most still had their rifles pointed at least in their general direction. Not all of them were equipped with night vision apparatuses, in fact within each group only one or maybe two had anything beyond their sense of hearing to indicate where they should be firing.

  And yet their results were apocalyptic.

  Of the girls who had made it to the top of the staircase, freedom ringing in their minds and escape on their tongues, not one had made it any further. Their corpses lay scattered in a half-arc around the mine’s entrance, body temperatures growing cold.

  A blast lit up a group of soldiers, men scattering while others fell.

  “They’re fighting each other?” Kendall asked.

  But Dugan knew there was more than one party converging on their location. He had been the one to send the invitation.

  “There’s no way the general has that many men. Where the hell’d they come from?”

  Dugan slithered back, lowering himself below the top steps, cognizant of the pinging of bullets ricocheting off rock or striking flesh and tissue that moments ago had been living.

  After a moment, Kendall joined him. “You don’t seem surprised. What aren’t you telling us?”

  “I made a call.”

  “A call? From in here?”

  “Not a phone call — a decision. And it looks like it was the right one.”

  “How bad is it?” Rojo called up.

  “Get up here, Dugan’s confessing,” Kendall said.

  Dugan glared at the man, though it was lost behind his goggles. “Confessing to saving your life?”

  “Now you just sound like Zephyr.”

  Rojo came up with Faye by his side. She maintained her distance, keeping the larger man in between Dugan and her, though she looked more concerned with the women at their feet than the conversation.

  “What? What are we looking at?” Rojo asked.

  Dugan wasn’t sure where to start. “The general said something to me the other night. Just before he tried to kill me. The first time. He said … We were not the highest bidder.”

  “For what?” Rojo asked.

  “The Shaman,” Kendall said.

  “Exactly. We shouldn’t be surprised he was selling our information on to someone else.”

  “That muku,” Rojo muttered.

  “But that’s not all, is it?” Faye said.

  Dugan wished he could see her without the goggles. To look into her eyes and see what the Shaman had done to her — what she had become. She looked so cold; distant. As if she were merely observing life rather than participating. There was so much he wanted to say to her, questions to ask, but it would have to wait.

  “I took a chance. I didn’t know if, well, whoever this group was, if they were already here or if Gutierrez was going to contact them. If they weren’t here, they wouldn’t be coming, not with what the Shaman’s done. But if they were …”

  Rojo’s face dropped and he looked at Faye. “You set the tracker to an open source. The tranquilizer’s beacon.”

  Dugan nodded. “I did.”

  “You led them right to us,” Rojo said.

  “I did what I had to do to create a distraction, a distraction that just might save our lives.”

  “But not the lives of these women,” Faye said.

  “That’s no distraction, you brought a war down on us,” Rojo said. “Chupa’s probably dead! And that’s on you.”

  An explosion seared the night, white light briefly interrupting the darkness.

  “Well let me ask you, Dugan, now that you’re being all honest with us,” Kendall said. “Now that the Shaman’s cured your daughter, are you just going to hand him over to them?”

  “No.” The answer couldn’t have been more resolute. “I made him a promise. One I intend to keep.”

  I will unravel what is done. If you fail to deliver your promise.

  The Shaman’s threat still hung in Dugan’s mind.

  “We get out of here, I’m out,” Kendall said. “Done. Keep your voodoo witch doctor and all your
muku promises. I won’t be another Chupa or Zephyr, another chump left to die.”

  “Every one of you knew the risks.”

  “In fact, don’t call me Kendall anymore. Call me … Steve.”

  “Steve?” Rojo started laughing.

  “What?”

  “That’s your real name? Steve? What, are you gonna be an accountant now?”

  “Shut up.”

  Another explosion rocked the cavern, dirt sprinkling down.

  “It’s time. Oso …?” Dugan’s words died as quickly as they had formed, for while the small group of women were still gathered at the bottom of the stairs, both of the natives were gone.

  Verse XLVI.

  Rather than lead Takushkansh’kan up the stone steps to their purported rescue, Oso — as he was called in this chapter of his life — had taken advantage of both the darkness and commotion, guiding their captive instead back into the tunnels. He knew it might be his only chance to speak with the man one on one. The man who had chosen the Makuxi tribe over Oso’s own ancestors. The man who was not a man.

  He also knew it might be his only chance to speak.

  Ever.

  Back in the tunnels, before Takushkansh’kan had healed Dugan’s daughter, he had touched Oso. Taking hold of his throat. His neck. And Oso had felt the change immediately.

  As light pressed through his eyes, driving into his skull, he had felt his crude tongue spawn new cells, growing where it had once been removed.

  But the healing had been incomplete — and to such a degree that Oso wondered if it hadn’t been intentional. Despite the Shaman’s touch, he would always have difficulties with speech, but the Shaman had granted him the capability that Oso had stripped from himself in a prideful fit of rage so long ago.

  As blasts echoed down the halls from outside, Oso forced the Shaman against the tunnel wall, pinning his arms on either side of him. He stared into those ancient eyes; wells, not of compassion or understanding, but misshapen cruelty.

  “You must stop this …” Oso’s words sounded harsh, foreign to his own ears. The very movements of his mouth and tongue unfamiliar to him.

  “It is too late.” Takushkansh’kan spoke in the Pemoni dialect, though Oso had never claimed the tribe in front of the man. “You cannot stop it now. Closed petals have already begun to open.”

  “Then I will pluck them from their stem.”

  “You may … but you cannot pluck an entire forest. It has leapt … beyond me.”

  “Then I will speak with him. As Inktomi has. You cannot help me.”

  The Shaman’s face seemed to sink further into itself. “He, too, has leapt beyond me …”

  “Then we are finished.” Oso took a step back, though it wasn’t the conversation he was talking about.

  The Shaman understood, bowing his head slightly. “The division of the tribes was not as you envision.”

  The man’s ability to read past Oso’s thoughts to the center of his heart was frightening. “You abandoned your own people.”

  “I saved my people!”

  “By choosing the Makuxi?”

  “Yes! I laid the curse at their feet — not ours. You cannot see. Your father —”

  “Is dead.”

  “Yes. By your hands. You are the one who has forgotten his people. Shedding the blood of your brethren. Bedding instead in the web of a spider.”

  “At least the spider marches forward to sink its teeth in and does not attack from behind.”

  “No. The spider is the cleverest of all. Spreading its invisible threads to catch its prey unaware.”

  “And yet you sought him. Inktomi. Why? You mean to destroy him?”

  “No,” the Shaman answered.

  Oso glanced back toward the tunnel from which they had come. “What is it He wants? In exchange for the healing of Inktomi’s daughter?”

  “This you already know.”

  And Oso did. But he felt there was more to that promise, more that was required than simply bringing the Shaman’s people out from the shadows and back to the world. There had to be more.

  “There is,” the Shaman said, his eyes once again filled with sadness.

  “You will never be free,” Oso said. He meant it as a question, but the question refused to come out. “You cannot help us.”

  “Hope lies in the one … who can deceive a god.”

  Oso took a step back, almost faltering. Inktomi, the name chosen for Dugan. The Spider. It was no coincidence. In the ancient myths of the Pemoni clan regarding the creation of the world, there was no serpent in a garden whispering lies to a gullible Adam and Eve. There was a spider, who spun a replica of man from its web, convincing the Creator to bestow its final gift not upon its intended recipient — Man — but an inanimate object. Thus death was born, the gift of eternal life sinking into a literal web of lies.

  “He means to make Man,” Oso said, finally comprehending.

  The Shaman nodded slowly. “After His image. You must help Inktomi … to play his role.”

  “Ni’hasa,” Oso said, using the word for “devil” in the Pemoni tongue.

  The Shaman nodded. “Yes.”

  “Mankind’s only hope is in a devil. In evil?”

  “Do you call a fox evil for killing a rabbit to survive? Do you call a kapok seed evil, for destroying the ground upon which its roots stretch? Gods are not good or evil … they simply are.”

  Oso brushed the locks in his face back with one hand. “Inktomi is no god.”

  “Then teach him to become one.”

  Verse XLVII.

  Dugan cursed beneath his breath, their search for Oso and the Shaman coming up empty. Kendall returned from the mine, shaking his head, which left only the battlefield strung out before them. But when could they have snuck past?

  With the Shaman, he supposed, anything was possible.

  Hugging the mine’s wall at its entrance, Dugan rose, searching the grounds for a sign of either native. With the swarm of heat signatures from so many soldiers moving between trees, it was impossible to tell who was who. At least he hadn’t spotted their corpses lying on the ground, their glowing light beginning to fade.

  “Anything?” Rojo shouted, standing at the opposite wall and looking out.

  “No. Though I have Oso’s goggles, so I don’t know how far they could have made it.”

  Shots rang out though with less frequency, pauses coming between each swell. One of the groups out there was quickly eliminating the other. Dugan was fairly confident it was not Gutierrez and his men. Fortunately the ensuing war had shifted the focus of that firepower away from the mine, with only an occasional round sinking into the ground nearby.

  “If we don’t move now we’re not gonna have a chance,” Rojo said.

  “Bring everyone up,” Dugan shouted, knowing Rojo was right.

  “Move!” Kendall’s voice sent several of the women scrambling up the stairs.

  “If we can get behind that rise at our ten o’clock we might be able to squeeze past without being seen,” Rojo said.

  Dugan nodded. It was as good a plan as any. He stopped the women before they marched out into the open, gathering the group together in a huddle. Only Faye remained outside the circle.

  Kendall was the last to join, muttering under his breath. “Zephyr never trusted that muku. Guess he was right all along.”

  Dugan kept his thoughts to himself. He still trusted Oso, but where the hell had he gone? “How far’d you go back in the mine?”

  “Far enough,” Kendall said.

  A stray bullet streamed past, striking a rock wall behind them.

  “We’re gonna move out, together,” Dugan said, repeating his words in Spanish for the women. “And Faye …” Dugan pulled the goggles from his head, plunging himself back into darkness. He held them out, beyond the circle. “You’re wearing these.”

  “I don’t need them.”

  “You’re wearing them!”

  After a moment, she snatched them from his hand.
<
br />   “Stick together,” Dugan said.

  “So … everyone hold hands?” Rojo asked.

  Faye spoke in Spanish, telling the women to take hold of each other and that whatever happened, they were not to let go.

  “Alright, this ain’t a junior high dance,” Rojo said. “Grab hold of whoever’s next to you. We’re moving! Now!”

  “I got you, Dugan,” Kendall said, latching on to his forearm. He heard Rojo breathe something similar to Faye, and then they were moving up the last few steps.

  Two swaths of light flashed out in the woods, one after the other, silhouetted bodies flying with the twin explosions. Men shouted — some commands, others in the throes of death. The sound of automatic weapons firing increased in both intensity and number.

  The chain of people, of arms intertwined, broke almost immediately. Dugan didn’t know if someone had merely tripped or if they’d been the victim of a random shot, but a body fell, causing those behind it to tumble over. Hands instinctively let go, brought up to brace against an impact that couldn’t be seen but would certainly be felt.

  Dugan slammed into a body, his elbow crooking into someone’s face, then he rolled off and got back to his feet in a crouched position. Over the shouts and cries for help, he listened for movement. But of those who had returned to their feet, they were all moving in different directions.

  “Faye?”

  There were too many women, too many voices all falling one on top of each other. With every gunshot Dugan felt himself tense. He had been in plenty of battles, but never before had he felt so completely helpless. A sitting duck with no idea of where the next shot would come from. Or when it would be aimed at him.

  Someone brushed up against his side and Dugan grabbed hold of the person, spinning them around. “Faye?”

  The girl screamed and Dugan immediately shoved her off. Just another lost soul wandering in the dark. Another hand brushed against his chest.

  “Dugan!”

  It was Kendall.

  “This way!”

  He heard Rojo’s call in the distance as they raced toward it. Leaves and brush whipped at him as he moved, the occasional blast disorienting rather than helping. More men screamed, and Dugan knew that at any moment the next bullet would find him.