“Sure,” Ben agreed, nodding absently. “You’re right. Let’s go get him.”
There was a brief pause as the two boys appraised one another. An unspoken conversation passed between them. In most matters, Ben was completely unreadable, but when it came to his pursuit of the opposite sex, he was almost laughably transparent.
“What?” Ben snapped.
“You suck,” Auggie said with a defeated smile.
Ben shrugged, unable to conceal his mischievous grin. He pressed the RECORD button on his camera, and Auggie sighed dramatically as he followed him across the room. Ben had almost reached the bar when one of Cooper’s girls, the smaller of the two, glanced up at him with curious interest.
There was nothing remarkable about her. Fair-skinned and fragile—not at all like her exotic-looking friend. Swept back from her forehead in a high ponytail, her chestnut hair was textured with shades of blonde and burgundy. Two long strands had escaped the ponytail, curving down across one eye, giving her a slightly disheveled look that somehow worked for her. Cute, he supposed, albeit in a wholesome, girl-next-door kind of way, as though she had just missed the mark of being beautiful.
From behind the camera, Ben stopped and brought a finger to his lips in the universal gesture of secrecy. The petite girl watched with cool amusement as he crept up behind Cooper. Ben puffed up his chest and inhaled. “Hey, asshole,” he said in a domineering baritone, “you flirting with my girlfriend?”
Cooper’s shoulders tensed. For two or three seconds he simply sat there, not moving, not even breathing. When he finally summoned the courage to turn around, his features softened into a look of recognition. “Hey!” He breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “I’ve been looking everywhere for… you… guys.” His eyes found the camera and he stared into the lens, a deer frozen in headlights.
Ben zoomed in on Cooper’s guilty face. “Yeah, I can see that.”
Cooper quickly changed the subject. “Let me, ah, introduce you to my new friends.” He gestured toward the taller of the two girls. “This lovely lady,” he said, snaking an arm around her trim waist and pulling her closer, “is Doctor Janie.”
In tight white shorts and a pink halter top that hugged the curves of her large breasts, Janie was a vision to behold. She had just finished taking a sip of her drink, and had to cover her mouth with one hand to keep her drink from spilling out. “Sorry,” she said, dragging her fingers across her glistening lips. She smiled, and her teeth were chalk-white. “Nice to meet you!”
“And this lovely lady,” Cooper said quickly, putting his free arm around the petite girl’s shoulders, “is Doctor Brooke.”
Janie gave Cooper a playful slap on the shoulder. “Why ‘doctors’? Why not sexy nurses?”
Cooper looked at her with mock disgust. “That’s the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard! This is the modern age, my friends, where women have the freedom to do anything we manly men can do.”
“Manly men?” repeated Janie. The two girls looked at one another and giggled.
Inspired, Cooper pressed on. “Oh, keep laughing, ladies. You just set the women’s movement back, like, a hundred years.”
Still giggling, the one called Brooke turned her attention to the young man standing beside her. “Okay,” she said, “I have to ask. What’s with the camera?”
Ben had forgotten that he was still recording, and now he glanced down at the camera in surprise. “Sorry,” he said, shutting off the power and placing the camera on the bar with care. He turned to her with a friendly smile. “I’m Ben.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, smiling back at him. He was ruggedly handsome, with dark features and a well-defined chin. When he smiled, his blue eyes crinkled at the corners in a way she found absolutely irresistible.
Ben turned slightly to accommodate the awkward-looking young man who hung at his shoulder. “And this is Auggie.”
Auggie gawked at her uncertainly. At last, he stepped forward and extended his hand. Brooke thought this was charming, and she accepted the gesture with a nod. “Nice to meet you,” she said, shaking his hand. Her eyes danced back and forth between the two newcomers. “Well,” she said in a melodious voice. “Would you boys like a drink?”
Ben turned to Auggie with a sly grin; same to say Fuck the plan. Auggie opened his mouth to decline the invitation, but he was already too late.
“We’d love one,” Ben replied. Brooke seemed pleased by his answer, and she shifted her chair over so he and Auggie could move closer to the bar.
Auggie thought: One drink. That’s it. One drink, and then I’m going back to the room to get some sleep. Those two bozos can stay out all night for all I care, but I’m leaving after one drink.
Ben squinted at the tiny girl. “So…are you two really doctors or—?”
She laughed hard at that, with her head all the way back and her hands squeezing her knees. It was a fearless kind of laughter, without a trace of self-consciousness. “No,” she said. “We’re just students, actually. We came to study the macaw population, in order to see how their habitat is being—”
Seemingly out of nowhere, a bartender appeared, ready to take their order. He was a stout Peruvian with wide-set eyes and a small black moustache that crouched under his nose like a caterpillar. He stepped up behind the bar and waited.
Auggie glanced from one girl to the other. “May I ask what you’re drinking?”
Janie smiled around her straw. “It’s called a Blue Alligator. It’s totally delish.”
“What’s in it?” Auggie probed.
Cooper grunted. “Who cares? Just order one.”
Ben twirled his finger in the air. “Let’s make it a round for everyone, then. Five Blue Alligators, please.”
The bartender nodded and began to mix the drinks. When he returned, he placed the glasses on the bar, each one garnished with fruit and a tiny umbrella. He smiled at Ben. “Your room, sir?”
Brooke leaned across the bar. “You can put it on my tab, Adolfo.”
Ben shook his head. “Hell, no. I insist.” He turned to Adolfo, who was waiting patiently behind the bar. “You can charge that to Room 10.”
Adolfo produced a slip of paper and jotted down the information. A patron at the far end of the bar caught his attention, and he hurried off to make more drinks.
As Ben distributed the drinks, Brooke called over to the long-haired boy. “Hey, Cooper, I like your friends.”
Cooper lifted his glass in a silent toast, as if to say I told you so.
When Adolfo was gone, Ben plucked the umbrella from his drink with a look of displeasure and placed it on the bar. Brooke watched him, smiling. She raised her glass and the others followed suit. Janie let out a whoop, and they all touched their glasses together.
Ben and Brooke gazed at each other intently as they drank.
“Well?” asked Brooke. “What’s the verdict?”
Ben smacked his lips. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”
Her attention shifted to Auggie, who was scrutinizing the strange blue cocktail with a look that bordered on appreciation. “Do you like it?”
Auggie thought for a moment and then nodded. “It’s very good.” There was a pause as he took another sip. “What’s in this again?”
Laughing, Ben gave him a good-natured slap on the back that nearly knocked him over the bar.
Brooke raised her glass in the air and smiled. “Welcome to the jungle, boys.”
Seven
Sixty miles upriver, far removed from the sounds and smells of the humans, a family of capybaras had emerged from the forest to luxuriate in the sweet grass and aquatic flowers that grew in profusion along the water’s edge. Hovering just above the river, the moon spilled its wintry light across the narrow sliver of beach, and the barrel-bodied rodents and their shadows stood in stark relief against the white sand. A dozen or so males were wading through the shallows in search of food, while several females stood onshore watching over the pups. The little ones weaved in and out
of the herd, whistling and purring in their baby voices, while the adults watched them play with a kind of stoic patience.
In time, the little ones grew tired of this dizzying game, and they stopped to suckle from a large female who happened to be standing nearby. Pushing and shoving, they jockeyed for position, wrestling for a taste of her precious milk. All around them the jungle was a garden of sound, alive with the syncopated rhythm of nocturnal creatures and their ritual wanderings, and the capybaras were blissfully unaware that death was close at hand.
A jaguar had spotted their movements from the opposite shore, and had swum across the river, positioning itself on the edge of the jungle as it searched for the perfect place from which to strike. Roughly six feet long from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail, the well-muscled cat slid gracefully through the shadows, slinking forward with its head down and its belly low to the ground, concealing itself within a leafy hollow that skirted the finger of sand where the capybaras frolicked. The jaguar’s usual prey of monkeys, capybaras, and caimans had become scarce as of late, and its rosette-covered pelt stretched tight over its stocky frame, revealing the ripple of each muscle, the articulation of each bone. In its weeklong quest for food, the adult male jaguar had slimmed down to a nimble one hundred and eighty pounds, and the undernourished cat was hungry to the point of madness.
Crouched low to the ground, its powerful hindquarters twitched with coiled tension, and its long tail began to flick anxiously from side to side. Licking its lips in anticipation, the jaguar’s yellow eyes followed the pudgy brown rodents with keen interest as they pranced up and down the sandy beach.
The nursing female, followed by a single bleating pup, had wandered away from the group in order to sniff the different varieties of vegetation that sprouted along the edge of the jungle proper. But before she reached the terminus of the beach, she stopped suddenly, and the lone pup, taking advantage of her idleness, pressed its snout against her rounded belly in search of milk. Facing the trees, she sat back on her haunches, brown eyes scanning the tree line, ears twitching as she listened for anything that might wish to do her or the little one harm. But the jungle was deceptively calm. With the youngling still nuzzling up against her underbelly, she sniffed her way along the sand, moving closer, ever closer, to the dark curtain of the jungle. She had just stopped to nibble on some young ferns when the trees came alive.
Leaping through the air, the jaguar exploded from the shadows in a fury of claws and teeth.
Barking in alarm, the capybaras scattered and fled into the river. Much like hippos, they were excellent swimmers, and had the ability to stay submerged for several minutes at a time. Galloping toward the water’s edge, the female nudged the pup ahead of her in a desperate attempt to flee.
They had almost reached the water’s edge when the jaguar crashed down on top of her, burying its claws into her thick flanks. There was a squeal of terror, and then pain, as her legs collapsed beneath the crushing weight of her attacker. Snapping its head forward, the jaguar bit down between her ears, driving its sharp canines through the skull and into her spongy brain, instantly rendering her immobile and silent. In her last glimpse of life she saw the little one splashing into the shallows in the supreme chaos of terror. Then her brown eyes went dim as the life ebbed from her body.
Relaxing a moment on top of the still warm body, the triumphant feline panted heavily in the humid air, its muzzle stained red with the blood of its kill. Then it lifted the bulky carcass into its mouth and carried it across the sand toward the privacy of the trees, eager to satiate itself on the succulent, fatty flesh.
The jaguar had almost reached the tree line when it sensed a presence. Muscles tensing, it froze, yellow eyes darting across the dense vegetation with a combination of curiosity and alarm. Something was out there; the jaguar could sense it, just beyond the screen of trees. After a few seconds, the big cat dipped its head, lowering the dead capybara onto the sand with something akin to tenderness.
Licking the blood from its jaws, the jaguar gazed intently into the jungle, sniffing the air for some sign of the interloper. Its heightened olfactory senses registered a human smell, but there was something else, some overpowering scent that gave the jaguar pause—something it associated with the unmistakable stink of death. Blinking slowly, the troubled feline looked down at the carcass, considering. Should it defend its only food source, or retreat into the river and the safety of the opposite shore? Before it could decide, its ears detected a sudden movement in the jungle, and by then it was already too late.
A shadow detached itself from the trees. A shadow that walked with the upright bearing of a human. The jaguar had encountered humans many times; poachers, fishermen, explorers, even tourists. But this strange, stealthy thing was unlike any human the jaguar had seen before. Whiskers twitching, the starving cat was preparing to defend its kill when something made it reconsider. Retreating slowly, it turned toward the river and found itself surrounded. A row of shadows stood on the margin of sand, blocking the way to the water. Ears flattening back against its broad head, lips peeling back to reveal its bloodstained teeth, the jaguar flexed its powerful shoulders, digging its claws into the sand in preparation for the fight.
As the apex predator of the rainforest, the jaguar had not known fear for many, many years—not since its mother was killed by a group of poachers who coveted her valuable pelt, and the jaguar, just a cub then, had escaped into the woods, frightened and alone. The years of its life had slipped unheeded through the corridor of time, and the jaguar had no recollection of that day, no memory of what it was like to be a defenseless, motherless cub. Although it did not remember fear, the instinctive hunter recognized its presence in an instant. Baring its teeth, the jaguar growled from somewhere deep within its throat. But the sound, which should have sent any living creature running for its life, did not deter the things that were not human.
In a blur of speed, they closed in on the crouching feline, attacking all at once. Slicing the air with its massive claws, the jaguar was driven to the ground beneath a swarm of bodies. The shadow figures overpowered it with ease, ripping and tearing at its tough hide with their scalpel-like claws. Rolling across the sand, the jungle cat released a womanish cry of pain, before something long and sharp punched through its mouth and into its brain cavity, and its body went suddenly limp, its tail still swishing the air in the final throes of death.
Across the river, several capybaras bobbed to the surface of the water, watching from a safe distance. The beach was mostly quiet now; the jaguar lay motionless upon the white sand. Strange new predators had surrounded the corpse and were presently feasting on its muscular flesh. The capybaras did not know the nature of these creatures, but, unlike the jaguar, they were well acquainted with fear. Slowly, quietly, with their noses and eyes hovering just above the waterline, the surviving capybaras swam away to locate the rest of their scattered herd.
Eight
One after the other, the cocktails went down with ease, and the two groups began to feel a growing kinship toward one another, the natural camaraderie of strangers in a strange land. Even Auggie seemed to loosen up a bit, although he could not stop himself from glancing at Ben’s wristwatch every few minutes as he anticipated their morning departure growing inevitably closer. As the conversations flowed with the alcohol, Ben discovered that Brooke and Janie were also heading to the research center the following morning, and on the same boat. The news spread quickly, and the mood was soon elevated from simple cheer to drunken jubilation. As if by magic, another round of drinks appeared, and Janie raised a rambling, drawn-out toast to the Three Princes of Serendipity, after which she leaned over and boldly kissed Cooper on the mouth while the others rolled their eyes and suggested they get a room.
As Janie and Cooper paired off, Brooke, Ben, and Auggie slid over to a secluded corner of the bar, where they chatted about their recent travels. Brooke offered them an abridged version of her time in Peru, barhopping in Cusco and backpacking
along the Inca trail, an experience Ben had longed for, but which Auggie had argued vehemently against, citing an array of health issues and physical maladies he had never mentioned before. From there, she went on to describe her near-death experience on “the world’s most dangerous road” in Bolivia, where her driver nodded off at the wheel.
“That was crazy,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “If Janie and I hadn’t screamed at him to wake up, we’d probably be dead right now…” Her eyes trailed off into the darkness as she relived the moment in her head. The memory still had a surreal quality, like something from a vivid nightmare.
“Wow,” Ben said, trying to bring her around. “Where else have you been?” Brooke turned her heart-shaped face toward him, and in the lamplight he saw that her eyes were a brilliant shade of green.
“Sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”
“I was wondering where else you’ve been.”
As Brooke recalled her adventures in Southeast Asia, a brief stint in a volunteer program in Africa, a semester in Austria, it became increasingly clear that she was far worldlier than they. As she spoke, Ben studied her features. He noticed how she always paused for breath before she spoke, lips curling sensually to reveal a slight overbite, then the smile growing gradually wider, showing more and more teeth, accentuating her high cheekbones. He could not help but to imagine what it would be like to kiss that smiling mouth, those plump little lips. At length he decided that he no longer begrudged Cooper for sneaking off from dinner to stake his claim to Janie, sexy as she was, for it was the winsome green-eyed girl who truly captivated Ben.
***
The celebration ended with the two groups parting ways at the bar. The girls were staying on the opposite side of the lodge, in an unobtrusive corner normally reserved for staff members. There was the obligatory round of hugs, followed by a few departing words and the usual “goodnights,” and then Cooper and Janie added an exclamation point to the end of the evening by kissing like teenagers in the middle of the lounge while a dozen or so barflies looked on in amusement. It was Brooke who finally coaxed the two apart, taking her friend by the hand and all but dragging her away.
Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno Page 6