“Bring in the first one, would ya, Hank?” Steven said.
The man at the entrance came back with a local Fijian. The local was thin and older, with a wrinkled face and hands. The interpreter asked him something akin to “What experience do you have hunting?”
The man replied with, “I’ve been doing it since I was a child.”
“What’dya think?” Steven asked.
“Never met him before,” Mark said. “But he seems a little old for this, doesn’t he?”
“That’s what I thought. Bring in the next one, Hank.”
Hours passed like this. Hank brought in one at a time, and Steven asked a few questions then said, “What’dya think?” and Mark gave his impression. Almost every time, he had no impression but felt he had to say something to justify his hourly wage.
After three hours, they had chosen ninety-six men. Enough for two twelve-person shifts in teams of four.
Though he’d spoken on almost every man, Mark had never felt so useless in his life and again questioned why in the hell they would pay him for this. Maybe it was just a bribe for his silence, but they didn’t want to make it seem like a bribe. He guessed he would probably never know the real reason. But it didn’t matter. As long as he had enough to fight for his daughter, he wouldn’t ask too many questions.
Lunch was an enormous undertaking. The camp ate in shifts, though the majority of the workers were out in the oil fields and ate bagged meals there. A mess hall was set up complete with buffet representing every nationality of food, from Indian and Nepalese to Mexican and Greek. Mark got the impression the company wanted to do everything possible to keep their workers happy.
“Got some business to attend to,” Steven said. “Catch you later.”
Standing in the mess hall by himself suddenly transported Mark back to junior high school. The worst moment of lunch every day was when he’d gotten his food and had to find a place to sit. Most of the time, it was by himself. He had a feeling this wouldn’t be much different.
Settling on a burrito and side salad, he picked up his food then scanned the massive tent. Only when he was looking around did he see rafters. This wasn’t a tent at all but a hastily thrown together building covered with canvas wrapping to appear like a tent. Something potentially long-term that wanted to appear short-term.
As he inhaled deeply and walked to an empty bench, someone waved to him. Millard was sitting by himself as well. He looked so happy to see him, Mark couldn’t possibly have said no. He sat down across from him.
“Nice, huh?” Millard said.
“It actually is. When Steven said ‘camp,’ I was expecting tents in mud.”
“That’s not the way they do things. VN’s one of the top ten companies in the world that no one’s heard of. A major Indian corporation. The really big corporations, the powerful ones, no one really knows who they are. But they might know their subsidiaries. I read once that eighty percent of companies that make more than a hundred million a year are owned by only seven corporations.”
Mark took a bite of the burrito. The meat was tender and juicy. “That is a damn good burrito.”
“Everything’s good here, told you.”
“Lemme ask you something, Craig, do you have any idea why the hell I’m here? I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, and Steven couldn’t be happier.”
He shrugged and took another bite of his bloody pink steak. “Who knows? Some jobs here that one man can do have five people doing them. I think they’re covering their asses. Maybe they can say you’re their liaison to the native population or something.”
They ate in silence a moment before Mark noticed something on the man’s neck. “What is that? On your neck.”
“This?” he said, lifting the symbol on his necklace. “It’s Nehebkau. He’s the two-headed snake god they worshipped in ancient Egypt. They thought he guarded the entrance to the underworld. The name literally means the ‘harnesser of souls.’ So it has something to do with my profession, but honestly I just think it’s cool.”
“You’re really into your field, aren’t you?”
“Snakes? Oh, yeah. I love them. They’re the most worshipped animals in history. And the most mysterious. We don’t know as much about them as we like to think. You could have two people standing around talking and have a venomous snake, like a king cobra or a rattler, come by. They could completely ignore the closest person, slither right past them, and bite the other one. We don’t know why. The secret’s in their tongues, we think, but we just don’t know a lot about the tongue. There have been some suggestions in the literature that snakes can actually pick up on diseases, like cancer and HIV, just from licking the air around a sufferer. But again, it’s all conjecture. We just don’t know as much about them as we’d like. Like why they lost their limbs in the first place. It doesn’t make any sense.”
He took another bite of steak and chewed thoroughly before continuing. “Even in our own mythology, they’re mysteries. In Genesis, the snake tricks Eve into eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but nowhere in Genesis does it actually say Satan was the snake. That’s inferred from some things in the Book of Revelations, which was written centuries later. So in our founding myths we have the snake responsible for our fall and temptation, not Satan. Every culture has the same types of myth. The snake as something entirely unknowable.”
“Mark, I was wondering where you went.” Riki sat down next to him with a cola. She was wearing a hat with the VN logo emblazoned on the front and tilted up just slightly, revealing the features of her angular face.
“The doctor was just telling me about the mythology of snakes.”
She cringed. “Well, maybe I can convince you guys to talk about something else.”
“It’s not all bad,” Millard said with a mouthful of meat. “All our medical symbols are associated with snakes, too. From the time of the staff of Hermes and Asclepius from ancient Greece. We’ve seen snakes having healing properties in the labs, too. Some of the venom was once used to treat broken bones, and the bones actually healed faster with the venom than in the control group. Pretty impressive stuff.”
Mark noticed Riki squirming, so he changed the subject. “So how long have you worked for VN?”
“Oh, about a month,” Millard said. “I’m actually a professor at the University of Texas. They thought this would be right up my alley, and they were right. I can’t tell you how much my colleagues would shit their pants if they knew what I was doing here.”
“You didn’t tell anybody?” Riki asked.
He shook his head, his fork scraping the last bit of meat off the steak and separating it from the pale fat. “Couldn’t. But, and this is why I’m here, I get one. A small one, a baby if we can get it. Can you imagine? I’ll have an allegedly extinct species in my laboratory and get to raise it from infancy.”
Mark was about to ask what good that would do but stopped himself. He had known several professors in his time with the LAPD—they taught seminars on a host of subjects to police officers—and their sole motivation seemed to be publishing as much as they could. It led not only to tenured faculty positions but also to the much more coveted corporate consulting gigs. He had no doubt Millard thought this little endeavor was going to land him some serious cash and recognition.
Riki said, “So you’ve devoted your life to studying these animals, and you’re okay just killing them?”
He shook his head but in a manner that said she just didn’t understand. “Snakes, the species as a whole, will never go extinct. If this were lions or mountain gorillas, then yes, I would have a serious problem with it. But snakes are nature’s survivors. They were here four hundred million years before us, and they will be here hundreds of millions of years after. They reproduce at incredible rates. In Florida, about five hundred Burmese pythons got out of a shipping warehouse because of Hurricane Andrew. A few years later, we had a population of ten thousand Burmese pythons in the swamps of Florida. They were even ea
ting alligators. They’re perfectly adaptable. They can grow until the day they die, dependent on food supply and temperature. Because they’re cold blooded, the warmer the temperatures, the bigger in size they’ll get. And if it’s cold, they’ll stay small. Like the vipera berus, which can be found in the Arctic Circle. They’ll live even if this company kills tens of thousands of them.”
After eating half his burrito, Mark pushed the plate away. “Steven seems to think these particular snakes are the biggest in the world.”
“They are. I haven’t seen one yet, but I’ve talked to several of the workers that have. And if it’s true… oh, man. I just can’t even tell you how excited I am if it’s true.” He wiped his hands then his lips with a napkin and threw it on his plate. “See you guys later. I’ve got some preparations to make.”
“Sure,” Mark said.
“Odd little man,” Riki said when he had walked away.
“Loves his snakes.”
Riki glanced around. “I was in the administration tent after you guys had left.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“They’ve got two computers there. I looked at one of them, over the shoulder of the guy who was on it. Apparently it’s on some secure server and has a permanent chat and video window open for some VP of the company.”
He shrugged. “That’s not unusual.”
“You don’t think it’s unusual to have a VP on permanent chat? What could he possibly need constant updates about?”
“Money that’s being spent, probably. Who cares?”
“No, I don’t think so. That can be done with spreadsheets and email. Something’s going on here that we’re not being told.”
“We’re not being told anything, so that wouldn’t surprise me. I just want my money, to work for a month or so, and be done. I don’t need to know anything about what’s going on.”
“You don’t care if it affects this island?”
“Of course I do, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Leave that to the politicians.”
“I talked to one of the workers. Told him it was for the piece I was writing. I tried asking him about everything that was going on with the company, but he wouldn’t talk about that. All he wanted to talk about was the snakes.”
“What’d he say about ’em?”
“He said they’re not snakes. He thinks they’re demons sent by God to punish us.”
“Who knows? He may be right.”
25
The first patrols would be going out tonight at 9 p.m., and their shift would end at 9 a.m. They would eat all meals out in the jungle and handle all toiletries there. For twelve hours, no one in the teams would return to camp for anything.
At around seven, the sun began a slow descent back into the earth. For the first time since he’d come here, Mark actually felt anxious. It was one thing to sit in a tent and try to think of things to say, another to hunt for large animals in the jungle.
In his time in Peru, back when he thought he was going to live there, he’d seen plenty of anacondas and boas. One had even snatched a small child from the village in which he was staying. The snakes, some of the local villagers had told him, were like snipers. They picked a place to set up then didn’t move until prey approached. This particular anaconda had set up right outside the doorway of a home. When the boy stepped out to go to school, the snake struck. Some of the other children came by a little later and saw the snake eating the boy. The villagers killed the snake, but it was too late. The village felt it was an omen, and they blamed all the foreigners, including Mark.
He bounced around from village to city for a year or so then decided he wanted something more tropical with less crime. He had been mugged twice and his flat broken into more times than he could count. No alarm systems existed in the rural villages, and the villagers protected their own over the foreigners. So, he had come to Fiji. He’d seen a really nice photo posted on Twitter once and on a whim hopped on a plane.
So while not exactly a world traveler or snake expert, he’d seen enough of them to know what they were like. Anacondas were relatively easy to kill if found. He’d even seen a villager in Peru kill one with his bare hands by lifting the snake at the back of the head and snapping its spine. Mark kept telling himself he had nothing to fear, but something about the jungle at night unnerved him.
He followed Steven to the open clearing where the twelve teams had gathered. Each was receiving instructions and their packs, checking their GPS, back-up maps, and flashlights. Mark waited around until Steven told him which team he would be on.
“You and me, brother,” Steven said with a wide smile.
The team consisted of Mark, Steven, and two native islanders named Qasim and Kapoor. There were enough people that neither Steven nor Mark should have had to go out, but Steven insisted it was part of his contract.
“It’s hard enough getting the lazy-ass islanders to work,” he said. “I’m not giving you up unless I have to. Besides, you don’t need to do nothing. Just point and shoot if you have to and only if you have to. I’ll do the actual killing; you just tell me if you see one of them bastards.”
Before the teams headed into the jungle, Riki ambled up to Mark. “Be careful,” she said.
“I will.”
“I got something for you,” she said. She handed him a little charm made of a smooth stone. “There’s a guy in a tent selling them. It’s a tortoise. It’s supposed to ward off snakes.”
“Well, not exactly what we’re trying to do, but I appreciate it just the same.” He slipped it into his pocket. The teams were heading off into the thicket of trees and vines. “How about we grab a drink when I get back?”
“Anytime.”
He grinned and turned to join his team.
They were on a relatively clear path, the same one used to come into camp, the only way in or out. They trudged single file for a good quarter of a mile before they broke off in different directions on different trails.
Mark followed Steven, and the two natives hung back behind them. He didn’t speak—none of them did—for a good long time, but Steven was whistling some song Mark didn’t recognize.
“You like Rascal Flatts?” Steven said from up ahead.
“Never heard them.”
Steven looked back. “Don’t they get music on the island?”
“We’re about five years behind the States, if the stuff makes it over at all.” Mark looked around. The sun was nearly set, and darkness was enveloping them. “Where we headed?”
“Each team is going in a different direction. We’ve cut out paths everywhere, so we’re just gonna find our path and head up.”
“That simple, huh?”
“Well, we’ll change tacs soon enough. We start with the low-hanging fruit. Any of them snakes on the sides of the trails, we take ’em out. Then we’ll work our way farther into the jungle. Kind of like a sweeping circle pattern. We’ll hit it all, don’t worry.”
“About how long you planning on being out here?”
“Long as it takes, I guess. At least until our damn workers stop disappearing.”
They hit a hill, and Mark pumped his legs as his thighs burned from the incline. “You keep saying disappearing, but they’re not disappearing, are they? They’re getting killed.”
Steven glanced back at him, his face a dim outline in the darkness. “Whatever you want to call it.”
Within minutes, Mark couldn’t see anymore without his flashlight. Steven had put on his goggles, but he didn’t want to do that just yet. He would use as much light as he could. Something about the goggles struck him as silly. Maybe the fact they had to use such advanced equipment just to find some snakes.
The carved-out trail wasn’t neat or clean. Men using machetes and probably axes had cut it through the jungle, just enough of a trail so they could follow it and not have to cut a new way, but certainly not easy. Several times, some sticky or sharp plant caught Mark’s arm, hand, or leg, and he’d have to tug it away.
As
they went farther into the jungle, the moon rose in the sky and the canopy thinned. The light was enough that Steven turned off his goggles and got out his flashlight. But the thicker jungle canopy farther in blocked the moonlight, and he put on his goggles again. This time, Mark did the same. The flashlight just wasn’t illuminating enough surface area for him to quit running into things.
The night vision goggles gave everything a bright green glow. The people around him were brighter than the trees and the ground, and he figured that objects giving off more heat were also giving off more light, or something like that. It occupied his mind to come up for reasons for it, and he thought about it a long time as they disappeared into the heart of the jungle.
Mark looked behind him. Qasim and Kapoor, their heads down, machetes in their hands to cut away any loose branches. Mark wondered why he didn’t get a machete.
Once complete darkness had fallen, with the canopy overhead hiding the moon, the jungle was about as dark a place as Mark had ever seen. He occasionally lifted the night-vision goggles and was just amazed at the blackness.
Steven pulled something out of his pocket. It resembled a harmonica, but he pressed a button on it and it gave off a low, rumbling-type sound.
“What’s that?”
“Something the Professor made for us. Based on some Native American tribe that used a wind instrument to attract snakes.”
“Does it work?”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
The device changed pitch every once in a while, but it only went lower. Then when it hit the bottom note, it began to climb again. The sound didn’t seem completely out of place here, and it soon faded into the background below Mark’s conscious awareness.
The bush thinned out enough that the men behind Mark stopped using their machetes. He could see ahead about fifty yards, and there was nothing but vines, bushes, and trees. They arched around in a circle, and Mark thought maybe the trails were cut as constricting circles with the camp at the center. That would likely be the most efficient way to secure the area around the camp.
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