Slayers (Jake Hawkins Book 1)

by Matt Rogers

  Sam moved methodically from table to table, destroying every last piece of equipment until Koji’s genetic makeup was nothing more than history. Felix crossed the room so that he stood over the seven mercenaries. He kept his Snowdog clenched tight between his palms. Slowly, he severed their bindings.

  “Get out of here,” Felix snarled, jabbing them each in turn with his Snowdog. “I’m letting you go because I’m the better man. But you don’t get food, or water, or weapons. And don’t even think about trying anything. I could pull this trigger for half a second and you would still all be dead.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mabaya said as he stood up, dusting his wrists off. “This is forgotten now. No grudges. Quentin’s gone. Our loyalty ends when the money dries up.”

  Felix hesitated, then tossed Mabaya a small canister full of water purification tablets. “One soldier to another. Now go before I change my mind.”

  The men skulked out the door, wallowing in their defeat. They cradled their injuries as they left. At the doorway, Mabaya turned and gave Felix a quick nod. Whether it was out of gratitude or simply a meaningless gesture was hard to tell. He was gone before Jake could figure it out. He watched the empty doorway with apprehension.

  “What is it?” Felix said.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Jake said. “Maybe we should have killed them.”

  “Those days are over for us,” Felix said. “It sounds good in theory, but I’d like to see you try and live with yourself after murdering seven helpless men. It just doesn’t feel right. Seventeen years ago we would have done it without batting an eyelid.”

  “Well, we’re not exactly helping them by sending them out there with some tablets.”

  “At least now I don’t feel responsible for their fate.”

  *

  They set off at six a.m., leaving the makeshift laboratory in a pile of mangled rubble. Sam had made light work of the delicate gear. Nothing would be recovered.

  They hiked up out of the valley amidst the warbles and cries of waking birds and set off north. The heat was near unbearable, a hell of a lot higher than the past two days. It was no less humid. Within five minutes, Jake was sweating.

  The bugs seemed to come with the heat. They swarmed in clouds. The insect repellent did its job for the most part, but he still ended up with dozens of mosquito bites dotting his forearms. He was grateful for the malaria shots Felix had given him back at the house. The pain had been worth it. It was impossible to tell which of the thousands of insects flittering around was carrying a lethal disease.

  After a few hours of travel, the trees began to grow further apart.

  “Napo River’s coming up,” Thorn explained.

  Sure enough, three or four kilometres later, they happened upon a wide dirt track. The trail was naturally formed. It led them along the top of a steep slope running down towards the bank of the Napo. Jake could see it from the track. A twisting, snaking body of murky water wide enough to fit twenty boats side-by-side, the Napo was a welcome sight. At least it was something different, not just another never-ending row of trees. The trail gave them much-needed room to breathe.

  He began to get a sense of just how big the Amazon was. The distance they had covered so far had shown them nothing more than a grain of sand on the beach that was the rainforest. The whole thing spanned entire countries. It was a daunting concept.

  “Are you two afraid of death?” Jake asked as they trudged along the trail.

  Sam and Felix looked up, momentarily perplexed. They had been travelling in muted silence for the better part of the morning.

  “What?” Felix said.

  “Are you scared to die?” Jake repeated. “I am. I can’t really handle it sometimes.”

  “Everyone’s scared of death, brother,” Sam said. “I remember when I joined the Delta Force. It was terrifying. I was always thinking: what if a stray bullet hits me? Will my brain be able to comprehend what’s happening, or will it just be like that,” – he clicked his fingers – “and over.”

  “It makes me want to throw up,” Jake said. “When I woke up and saw the slayer standing outside my tent. When I was running from Koji. Sometimes I just want to curl up into a ball and give up. Sometimes that seems easier.”

  “It gets easier to control,” Felix said. “We’re almost numb to that feeling now. Sure, we still get that shiver down our spine, but it’s just about priorities. Being scared gets you nowhere in a kill-or-be-killed situation.”

  “I guess that’s our mindset,” Sam said. “You’ve got the whole rest of your life to be scared. Sometimes you just have to do what you don’t want to do.”

  “I can’t just shut it out.”

  “Of course you can’t. But look at it this way. You or I could die anytime. In the next few seconds, even. One wrong footfall and you can slip off the edge of this slope and break your neck. Eventually, everyone dies. Doesn’t matter when, in the grand scheme of things. You’re dead a lot longer than you’re alive, brother.”

  The conversation ended there. Jake admired the philosophy behind Sam’s reasoning, but he couldn’t bring himself to just feel that way. No words would prevent that feeling from returning. And he hated it.

  Once again, they lapsed into silence. He listened to the rustling of leaves on his left, and to the steady flowing of the Napo on his right. A glance over the edge of the slope proved Sam right. A fall would produce so much momentum it would be practically impossible to stop.

  He thought of Zoe. It twisted his stomach to not know where she was. Was she safe? He hadn’t even known her a full day, and yet he felt … something. If she was dead, he would break down.

  Jake had promised he would come back for her. He pondered over whether it was possible, and if he would ever see her again. Even if they got Wolfe back, it would be an arduous journey out of the Amazon. Zoe was low on the list of the group’s priorities. But right now he could think of nothing else. He needed to see her again.

  The peace and quiet was interrupted by a low growl to their left. Felix, who was leading the trio, froze in his tracks. Jake and Sam stopped too.

  “Jaguar,” Felix whispered. “Stay quiet.”

  Jake’s pulse quickened. He was suddenly far away, running through the jungle, and there it was in front of him. But it hadn’t been a jaguar; it had been Koji. Nothing more than a manifestation.

  This one was real.

  As Sam came to an abrupt stop, the sole of his hiking boot skidded across a fallen branch. Jake looked down. The entire branch slid off the edge of the slope and began to cartwheel, end over end, down the hill. He swore under his breath. The branch made it less than halfway down before it collided with a short tree, growing out of the dirt at almost a right angle. The impact broke the silence.

  The growl became a roar.

  Jake squeezed his eyes shut, wincing at Sam’s ineptitude. When he opened them, there was a blur of movement from within the rainforest. Then something burst out into the open and landed nimbly between Felix and Jake.

  It was a jaguar, that much was for sure, but it was like no jaguar Jake had ever heard of, and certainly not what his imagination had conjured up yesterday. Its muscles were oversized, freakishly unnatural. It was also completely hairless. And white. Pale white.

  “It’s been bitten,” Felix said, his mouth dropping open. “Archfiend…”

  He was right. Jake noticed the skin around the jaguar’s mouth had curled back inside. Its canines had sprouted through the flesh. Its eyes were bulging, bloodshot and red. An enormous purple bruise was blotched over one half of its face. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He didn’t know the slayer virus could affect animals.

  None of them had time to unhook their Snowdogs, too distracted by the fearsome sight in front of them. Their machetes weren’t easily accessible, having been stowed away in their packs after they had happened upon the dirt trail.

  They were unarmed.

  The jaguar fixed its gaze on Jake, its nearest target. Unblinki
ng eyes sized him up. Assessed him as prey. He gulped back fear. What the hell am I supposed to do? he thought. He couldn’t outrun it if it decided to attack. He couldn’t fight it. He couldn’t distract it.

  It pounced. Not in the way that slayers pounce, but in the way that jaguars pounce. Different to how the manifestation had pounced. Front paws outstretched, rear paws used to propel itself off the ground.

  Jake leapt sideways at the exact same time as the jaguar lunged forward. His timing couldn’t have been any more perfect. He hadn’t been trained to fight jaguars, but through relentless practice his reflexes had been sharpened to almost superhuman standards. He tumble-rolled out of the way. One of the jaguar’s paws snagged on his hiking pack. Moving with the ferocity of someone facing imminent death, he reached up and unclipped the chest strap holding the pack to his body. Instantly, he realised his mistake.

  Without realising, his evasive roll had taken him to the very precipice of the dirt track, only half a step from the slope. The jaguar had caught his pack, unintentionally halting his fall. His stomach lurched as he slipped out of the straps and skidded off the edge.

  There was no way to halt the descent. He landed feet-first on the dirt, but the momentum of his fall carried him head over heels. So began a cartwheeling, uncontrollable tumble down the slope. He tried scrabbling for a purchase, trying to grab hold of something, anything, but there was no use. A blur of browns and greens was all he could see. It was a rotating kaleidoscope of chaos.

  His world suddenly stopped turning, in a blast of pain. A tree trunk slammed into the small of his back and he bounced off it and grimaced as his spine crunched. But the impact had slowed him enough to shoot out a hand and latch onto the bark. He jerked to a halt.

  His legs were almost suspended in thin air. They were scrabbling against the dirt. He found no purchase. The pain in his arm reached an agonising level. His entire bodyweight was resting on his jarred shoulder, which was now screaming for relief. He couldn’t hold on much longer.

  He glanced down and saw that he had fallen down most of the hill already. The slope didn’t go on much further before ending in a row of fearsome-looking thorn bushes, forming a barrier between the hill and the river bank. Even from here he could see the huge brambles, glinting in the midday sun. If he hadn’t halted his fall, he would now be punctured from head to toe.

  Letting go was unavoidable. There was no other option. His arm couldn’t take much more. The fingers he had hooked into a crevice of the tree trunk were straining to keep hold, and trying to switch arms would send him tumbling head over heels. He listened to his pain tolerance. It gave him maybe three seconds to do something before he let go of the tree involuntarily.

  No. Earlier than that. His fingers slipped and he dropped away from the tree.

  Just as his stomach fell, a man came skidding through the dirt above. It was Sam. He jammed his feet into the earth, slowing himself down, and reached out with both arms in two separate directions. One latched onto the same handhold that Jake had used. The other wrapped tight around Jake’s forearm.

  “You okay?” Sam gasped. The acrobatic move had placed him in an uncomfortable position. His upper body was straining from the exertion, stretched out in a T-shape between Jake and the tree. They both hung there, grimacing from different pains.

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “Where’s the jaguar?”

  “Felix is keeping it preoccupied.”

  “If it doesn’t kill him first.”

  There was a shout from above. It was distant, but sounded something like “look out!” Sam craned his neck and peered up the slope.

  “You’re gonna have to jump,” he said.

  “What?”

  Jake tilted his head so that he could see past the tree trunk. The jaguar was bounding down the slope towards them at breathtaking speed. It was keeping its balance with ease, heading for them in big, bounding strides.

  “Get a running start, brother,” Sam said. “If you clear those bushes, you can get across to the other side of the river.”

  “They can swim too,” Jake said, panicking.

  “They can run faster.”

  Jake shook his head in disbelief. The jaguar would be on them in seconds. He didn’t have a choice.

  “Ready?” Sam said.

  Before Jake could nod, Sam released his forearm and swung round behind the tree. Jake felt that familiar stomach lurch, like the drop of a roller coaster, indicating he was falling forward. He did his best to straighten up and took two giant leaps down the slope, almost hyper-extending his groin in the process. He covered the ten-metre gap in those two steps and pushed off. It was a huge leap. Branches from the surrounding trees whipped at his face as he soared through the air and then the mud rushed up to meet him and he hit it hard, with a wet splash. Brown sludge fountained out in all directions.

  He rolled to his feet and stumbled away from the tree line.

  The jaguar followed a second later.

  It bounded over the bushes and slid to a stop in the mud on all fours.

  Run! Jake’s brain screamed. It snarled at him, standing ten paces away, tensed up, ready to pounce. He didn’t waste another second. The Napo River beckoned. He pivoted on his heel, launched off the mud, and dived into the water, arms stretched above his head.

  Thick green. It was all he could see. The river enveloped him. Its silence was impressive compared to the sound of the rainforest and the roaring of the jaguar and the squelching of his boots through the mud. All the chaos was replaced by nothingness. Instantly cut off. He floated still for a second, savouring the stillness. Then he came up for air.

  As his head broke the surface and the water cleared from his eyes he noticed the dive had taken him further away from the bank than anticipated. The jaguar was in mid-air. It was flying at him with the power only a jungle predator could exhibit. It had leapt from the shoreline and its eyes were locked on his.

  Jake took a huge breath of air and duck-dived back underwater. Once again, the silence resumed. He bucked until he was upside-down and kicked hard, once, twice, three times. That was all he could manage before there was a great, muffled whump from above. The noise encompassed everything, but he saw nothing, for he was staring down into the deep blackness. It was there, though, just above his feet.

  Something swiped at his foot, a glancing blow, a paw against his boot. It knocked him off-balance.

  A sudden need to get away from this monstrous creature filled his senses.

  It was a primal instinct.

  And there was only one way to go.

  Down.

  He kicked hard and fast, his body filled with tension. It didn’t feel like he was going anywhere. The bleak green surroundings were the same. But the colour was changing. As he descended, swimming strong, holding his breath, the shade of the surrounding water deepened from green to dark green to black. It was difficult to continue. He had to shut out the rational voice in his head screaming at him to turn around, to cease swimming down into the black abyss.

  His hands plunged into thick, grimy mud. He had reached the riverbed. He opened his eyes and concentrated hard. Attempted to pick up any hint of his surroundings. It was impossible. A few slivers of light penetrated down to the depths of the river, just enough to make out the riverbed sloping down into the dark.

  He waited it out. The last time he had timed how long he could hold his breath had been almost a year ago. He had lasted just under two minutes. But now he was stressed and panicked, air bubbles escaping from his lips as he floated deep beneath the surface. Through blurry eyes, he saw the rippling surface far above.

  There was a shape moving down towards him. A black smudge, that grew bigger and bigger until it was right on top of him.

  The jaguar. It had followed him down.

  It swiped out. Jake somersaulted back, spiralling around until his legs were over his head. The movement was awkward, clumsy. His arms dragged through the mud. Something hard and round brushed over his fingertips, roughly the siz
e of an egg. Instinctively, he seized it. Whatever it was, he could use it as a weapon. There was a soft chink that echoed through the water as he wrenched it out of the riverbed. Something small fell out of the object. Jake raised the egg in front of his face, straining his eyes, begging them to work.

  It was some kind of a metal ball, almost archaeological with age. The words “F GMENT TION GR NAD ” were etched into the side.

  The jaguar swam for him in slow motion but he didn’t care. The reality of the situation dawned on him.

  He was holding a fragmentation grenade.

  And he had just unintentionally pulled the pin out.

  Whether the ancient explosives would work was anyone’s guess, but he didn’t want to be around to find out.

  The jaguar opened its jaws and lunged for him. It was rabid, he deduced. The virus had messed with its brain, just as it had with Koji. He was going to have to outsmart it.

  He reached out, pushing his arm through the water, and shoved the grenade down its throat. Not used to being submerged, the jaguar clamped its teeth down a second too late. Jake’s hand whisked out from within its maw just before it was severed.

  He turned and swam for the surface as fast as humanly possible. He had to get away before the grenade went off. If it did.

  The water lightened. He had probably been under for two minutes. He was getting closer to the surface, but his lungs were screaming for air. They were throbbing, pumping, constricting his chest. The tightness had exacerbated to an unbearable magnitude.

  He wasn’t going to make it.

  The pain consumed his whole body.

  His arms and legs hurt.

  Everything hurt.

  Darkness crept in.

  He took one last double-footed kick.

  Sunlight burst across his vision as he broke the surface and sucked in an enormous lungful of fresh air. The pain lingered for a second before subsiding. He looked out at an almost peaceful scene. The river was lapping gently against the shore. Treetops rustled in the breeze. A certain calmness had settled over everything. Not for long.