Right now, Auggie had one of the unrolled socks draped across his shoulder, ready to be used as a tourniquet or bandage as soon as the spike was pulled. “I have it right here,” Auggie assured him. Then he turned shyly to Brooke, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground, rubbing Ben’s hand. “Maybe you should sort of get behind him,” Auggie suggested. “You know, in case he faints.”
“Me, faint?” Ben said from behind his teeth. “I’ll bet you a beer that you pass out before I do.”
Auggie grinned humorlessly. “I’ll take that bet.”
“You’re gonna lose.”
“Not if you lose first.”
“I have a motherfucking tree sticking out of my motherfucking leg. I think I already lost.”
“Well, since you put it that way, I guess you owe me a beer then.”
Ben smiled at him, grateful for the distraction of some gallows humor.
Meanwhile, Brooke had repositioned herself behind him, putting her arms around his shoulders and cradling his head against her chest. Bending her neck, she placed a loving kiss on his forehead and smiled at him encouragingly. They looked at one another for a very long time. She did not want to be here. She did not want to witness this impromptu surgery, or see him suffer, but in the end she stayed—for him.
Caressing her cheek, Ben’s eyes wandered across her face. Lips cracked and bleeding, eyes ringed with dark circles, hair lank with oil and knotted with leaves, Ben thought it was still the loveliest face he had ever seen.
“Hey,” he said, smiling up at her.
Her fingertips danced lightly over the thick stubble on his chin. “Hey,” she whispered back.
“I was just thinking of how bad it’s gonna suck,” he said, chuckling, “that I’ll have to go back to physical therapy again.”
Brooke pressed her lips together in a counterfeit smile. “Don’t be such a wimp,” she sniffled, trying hard not to cry.
Ben was about to tell her that he would be fine, that the pain was really not so bad at the moment, when he caught of flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye.
“Coop.”
Cooper had spent the last five minutes pacing back and forth, tossing his hands in the air and muttering to himself, but now he stopped at the sound of his own name. He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“Stop,” Ben grunted. “Just stop. You’re freaking me the fuck out.”
Standing guard down by the water’s edge, Oscar looked on in silence. Over the course of the last few days, he had grown quite fond of the Americans. But now, watching the others tend to the injured leader, with his calm humor and stoic attitude, Oscar discovered a newfound respect for them as well. In a strange way, the terrible events that threatened to pull them apart had also brought them closer together. Oscar had never been good at articulating his feelings—or words in general, for that matter—and for the first time he felt a sense of kinship with the turistas. His only brother was dead; these four Americans, along with Ernesto, were the closest thing he now had to a family, and he would do anything to protect them.
Puffing out his cheeks, Ben took several quick breaths, steeling himself against the coming pain. “Okay.” He nodded as though answering a question. “Let’s do this.”
Brooke picked up a stick and held it above Ben’s face. “Bite down on this,” she said.
Ben opened his mouth and she placed the stick between his teeth like a horse’s bit.
Ernesto wrapped his slender brown fingers around the end of the shard. He tilted his head toward Ben. “Mmm. Ready?”
Ben nodded. “Do it!” he growled around the bit.
Ernesto did.
Ben winced in anticipation, but there was only a strange sort of tickle as the spike slid up and out of his flesh. Ernesto sat back on his legs, examining the oversized splinter in the dusty light. All told, the branch was close to eight inches long from shaft to tip, the last three inches stained dark with blood. There was a pause, a brief one, in which everything seemed frozen, as though time had come to a sudden, grinding halt. No one seemed to move or breathe. Spitting the bit out of his mouth, Ben began to chuckle. He opened his mouth to say something, some crude joke that would lighten the mood, when a white flash of pain exploded before his eyes and his fingers clawed the earth in agony.
Ben Sawyer’s scream echoed through the forest, and the others—even Ernesto—looked away.
Forty-one
The sunlight felt good upon their faces.
The swamp eventually led them to the mighty river, and now they were gathered on a small peninsula, a thin strip of sand that curled out into the water like a bent finger. Engorged by the recent storm, the water had risen several feet along the shore, and scores of branches and leaves and entire trees sailed past them, overtaken by the brown swell.
“How’s your leg?”
Squinting into the light, Ben shaded his eyes with his hand. Brooke was sitting cross-legged on the sand, her face angled toward the sun with a look of extreme serenity. Soiled and torn, her T-shirt and hiking pants were in ruins. She had attempted to wash her face in the river, but only managed to smear the dirt around, leaving streaks like war paint across her forehead and cheeks. Surrounded by a halo of golden light, she reminded him of some pagan goddess, some fallen deity cast down from the heavens. Her calm composure only strengthened his resolve to keep her safe, to get her out of this mess, and he wished, more than ever, that he could just snap his fingers and whisk her away from here—whisk them all away from here.
“Oh, I think I’ll live,” he replied with his usual good-natured grin. He patted the side of his thigh. Farther down his leg, the pants were shredded open, and Auggie’s sock was fastened around the wound. A red circle had blossomed on the makeshift bandage, but the bleeding was beginning to slow. “See? Good as new.”
There was a hard block of silence as they sat looking at one another, no one wanting to broach the forbidden subject. Until at last, Cooper did.
“Those things… they’re not people.” He glanced around challengingly, as though daring someone to contradict him. When no one did, he continued. “They aren’t human,” he said at last, and this otherwise simple statement sent vibrations of fear rippling throughout the group. Had he been up and pacing as he had done before, talking in riddles and half-finished sentences, they could have dismissed his words as so much gibberish. But Cooper was sitting calmly, his eyes clear as the day, and the cold certainty in his voice frightened them. They listened intently. They were not just watching but staring at him now, as though mesmerized. And in a way they were mesmerized, for he was finally able to put to words what they themselves had refused to acknowledge to one another.
“They aren’t human,” he repeated, nodding. “But I think they were human once...” His stopped to push the hair back from his face. “And I know how completely fucking crazy this sounds, but hey, you saw them. You smelled them. Those things—” Cooper gestured toward the verdant jungle, and they could not help but to look, afraid of what they might see looking back at them from the permanent gloom of the vegetation. But there was nothing there, of course, just endless fathoms of green.
“Those things are not alive,” he continued. “Not in the way we think of it, anyway. So I’m just gonna toss all my cards on the table and say it, okay?”
There was a collective silence as they held their breath.
Don’t say it! Auggie pleaded silently. Don’t you dare say it!
“They’re—”
But Cooper never delivered the forbidden word.
He felt a strange rattle within the hollow of his chest, a wet rattle, followed by a painful contraction of his abdomen. Then something slimy and thick seemed to leap up into the back of his throat, making it difficult to breathe, and he doubled over coughing. From somewhere in the trees, a bird screeched like a banshee, as though trying to complete the appalling revelation.
“Are you okay?” Ben started to get up but Cooper waved him away.
Still gagging,
Cooper turned his head and spit a glob of yellow mucus onto the sand. Wiping his mouth, he looked at them dizzily. “I know it sounds crazy,” he went on in a raspy voice. “Believe me. I think it’s crazy, too…” Now losing his train of thought, he could continue no further. He stopped, suddenly feeling both relieved and exhausted. So Cooper never said the dreaded Z-word; he didn’t have to. His omission was just as effective, perhaps even more effective, for it forced them to accept, in a private and personal way, what each of them already knew to be true. He’d said enough, and now it was his turn to listen and for someone else to speak.
Now the that the cold light of truth shone upon them, there was no denying what they already knew, no matter how irrational it might seem. Cooper was right: it did sound crazy. But compared to what? There were Felix and Felipe, who were both dead; and Janie, who was snatched from her tent in the middle of the night; and now shadow people were chasing them through the jungle. Yes, it sounded crazy, but so did everything else.
“Whatever they are,” spat Ben, “whatever you want to call them, I don’t care. What I do care about is how to avoid them. And, if it comes down to it, how do we kill them?”
“They’re fast,” Auggie stated simply. “And they’re strong. But we learned something about them—”
Ben gave him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
“Well, for one, we know they don’t like water. Maybe they can’t swim.”
Ernesto was nodding. “We will stay closer to the river, uh-huh. Where is safe.”
“What else?” asked Ben.
“They can communicate with each other.” Brooke shuddered as she recalled their primitive vocalizations. “Those weren’t just random noises they were making; it was a language of some kind.”
Auggie nodded grimly. “These things,” he said, using the only word he could allow himself to say. “They’re not like the ones in the movies. They can run and climb and think—”
“How do we kill them?”
Ernesto gestured toward his spear, which was jutting out of the sand beside him.
“And if that doesn’t work,” Ben said coldly. “We’ll do exactly as they do in the movies. We’ll smash their fucking heads in.”
In spite of the fact that he did not understand English, Oscar had been following their exchange with interest, trying to translate the tone of their voices, their expressions, their body language. Now he turned to Ernesto for an explanation. In a muted tone, Ernesto relayed the gist of their conversation.
When Ernesto had finished, Oscar sat thinking with his head bowed to the sand. When he lifted his head again, there were tears sliding down his cheeks. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated a moment, and then uttered a string of words that seemed to end in a question.
Ernesto paused a moment and then answered him with a grave expression.
All at once, Oscar began to sob, his shoulders rolling forward as his large body trembled and shook.
“What is it?” asked Brooke, standing. “Why is he upset?”
Ernesto studied the river for a moment, thinking. Then he turned back to the group. “He does not want his brother to be like them.”
Lowering herself onto the sand, Brooke put her arms around Oscar’s shoulders. He lifted his boxy head, the good eye focusing on her face, the lazy eye drifting toward the river. Both eyes had the same look, though, and that look was complete and utter hopelessness. Leaning into her, he wept against her chest, giant paws latching themselves around her in a child’s embrace. Words tumbled out of his mouth, and then he fell silent, blubbering softly against her shirt.
Ben watched all this from the other side of the circle, and he was ashamed by the flame of jealousy that seemed to ignite in the pit of his stomach. He turned to Ernesto. “What did he say?”
“He say…” Ernesto bowed his head, unable or unwilling to meet their eyes, “he say he saw Felipe last night…”
“What?” Ben’s voice jumped higher in surprise. “Where?”
The diminutive Peruvian scooped up a handful of sand, let the grains slip through his fingers.
“He say he saw Felipe in the dark… walking with the dead people.”
Forty-two
After leaving the peninsula, Ernesto guided them back into the green encroachments of the jungle where they followed the river for several hours in search of a place to bed down for the remainder of the day. Eventually, they discovered a ferny hollow not far from the river, and Ernesto directed them to build a maloka, or hut, beneath the natural arch of a fallen tree. The sun was now directly above them, and the humidity squeezed the sweat from their bodies as they sluggishly scouted the area in search of palm fronds and branches with which to construct their temporary shelter.
Wielding the knife, Ben began the now-familiar process of cutting leafy boughs and fan-like ferns. While he gathered the stock, Cooper carried the cut vegetation and delivered it to Auggie and Brooke, who were busy weaving the walls and roof of their shelter. Though their movements were painfully slow, they worked with an efficiency borne out of necessity, and it was not long before the maloka was completed.
After, Ben divided up the last of the protein bars into even squares and handed out the sorry rations with a look that said, You’d better enjoy this while you can. They were running dangerously low on food, and soon they would be forced to rely entirely on whatever they could forage from the jungle—grubs and flowers and unripe bananas and God only knew what else. They had already sampled these items and, save for the bananas, which were stringy and bitter but not entirely inedible, they did not relish the thought of trying them again. So they savored every last crumb and drank water from the vine to wash down their daily sacrament while Ernesto carved a new brace of spears to replace the ones they had lost. High morale did not come easily in the jungle, especially at night, and he wanted them to rest as long as possible before the sun went down and—
***
Darkness came to greet them.
It arrived as it always did in the jungle, with the fleeing of daylight through the trees and the sudden deepening of shadows. The bright, cheery birdsong was replaced with the rising crescendo of insects and frogs. Fast asleep inside the flimsy maloka, the Americans did not witness the day’s descent, nor did they awaken at the throbbing rhythm of the alien chorus. When at last they did wake up, it was to the sound of Ernesto calling softly for them to gather up their things again.
“How’s the leg?” Brooke asked, helping Ben put on his backpack.
“It’s good,” he replied. She was silent, so he added: “No, really, it’s fine.”
But before they resumed their nocturnal passage, Ernesto brought them down to the riverbank. The water rippled darkly, shot through with streaks of silver moonlight. As they watched, Ernesto climbed over a small drop and lowered himself through the tall grass to the water’s edge. Boots landing with a wet slap, he crouched low to the ground, the spear held out before him in a defensive posture. A cluster of birds was luxuriating in the shallows, and they fluttered away in a storm of beating wings. Eyes surveying the water, he dropped to one knee, scooped something into his hand, and climbed back up the bank to show them.
Now they were slathered in mud from head to toe; this was Ernesto’s idea. Ocultación, he’d explained to them, gesturing with his hands and then demonstrating how one can apply the claylike earth as a sort of mask. They had watched him, nodding. The others did not know this Spanish pronunciation, just as Ernesto did not know its English equivalent, but the meaning was clear enough. So they’d done as he’d instructed, helping one another apply the rich brown mud to their faces, arms, and clothing.
After, they regarded one another with a combination of satisfaction and fear. The familiar features were gone, buried beneath the thick layers of clay. Their eyes bulged at the sight, for they looked nearly as frightening as the creatures that were stalking them.
The night passed slowly, as all nights in the jungle do. The moon had plumped toward fullness, transformi
ng the forest into a world of extreme contrasts, and soon their eyes adapted to its otherworldly glow. Ernesto’s idea to follow the course of the river seemed a good one. The trees and bushes that grew along its banks, while not exactly sparse, were spread far enough apart to allow easy passage. At some point they happened upon a cluster of large moss-covered stones that gave the impression of an ancient fort or foundation, and not even Auggie gave these ruins more than a cursory glance, for it was far too easy to imagine the people who once lived there… and to wonder what had become of them. And it seemed likely, only too likely in this world where anything was possible, that the spirits of the ancients still dwelled there, searching for a few more souls to keep them company on the lonely path to eternity.
On occasion, they heard signs of wildlife—a chirp here, a squeak there—and more than once their hearts froze at the sound of movement, only to hear the telltale patter of hooves, the stir of leaves as some small woodland creature bulled through the underbrush ahead of them. Travelling swiftly through the black and white landscape, the six humans found their rhythm, moving with the fluidness of shadows.
They continued all through the night, beyond the point of exhaustion, beyond the point where their muscles trembled and their feet burned with blisters, beyond the point where conscious thought became abstraction. In the absence of awareness, their bodies became machines, working faster and with greater efficiency than they would ever have imagined. They had resigned themselves to the punishing journey, and now it mattered little if they had five miles or fifty miles ahead of them; they were determined to push forward, even if it killed them—and there was little doubt amongst them that it probably would.
Forty-three
Cooper was in a bad way. After making a perfunctory attempt to scrub away his mud mask with some damp leaves, he plunked himself down against the trunk of a giant Ceiba and did not get up. Arms and legs trembling in the throes of a high fever, his half-painted face sparkled in the early morning light, and his once blond hair was plastered to his head in filthy clumps. As the light gathered strength, Cooper squinted up at them, eyes sunken and watery, hands folded neatly on his lap. “How did I get here?” he asked in a childlike voice, and smiled at them dreamily.
Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno Page 20