by Graham Brown
Verhoven looked out toward Hawker in the distance. “All I know for sure is that everyone involved in that mess has died in one bloody way or another — shot and killed or blown to hell. Every one of those sons of bitches that Roche used, they’re all dead now.”
Verhoven turned back toward Danielle. “So, thinking what Hawk thinks, and knowing that I dumped him in the desert, I’d expect he’s got a bullet in that gun for me, somewhere.” He shoved one last cartridge into the clip he was loading. “And who knows, maybe I’ve got one for him too.”
Silence hung in the air, with Danielle and Verhoven staring at each other, until the radio squawked beside them. “Anyone awake back there?”
Danielle grabbed it. “Go ahead, Hawker. What have you got?”
“Missing bodies. Looks like those things dug up the men we buried. So much for putting on their uniforms.”
Danielle made a sour face. “Wasn’t really looking forward to that anyway.”
“Yeah, me neither. Looks like they took the animal I killed too.”
“Scavengers as well as predators.”
“Seems that way. Listen, we’re almost to the trees. Before we get in there I want to make sure the area’s clear.”
Danielle checked the laptop screen one more time; some of the pixels were beginning to drop out. “There’s nothing on the screen,” she said. “For whatever that’s worth.”
A double click let her know he copied and she turned back to Verhoven. She now understood Hawker’s anger with the system, with orders and those who gave them. “When this is over, let me talk to him,” she said. “Let me try to explain it. I owe both of you at least that much.”
CHAPTER 40
Across the clearing, Hawker and McCarter entered the rainforest, passing through the scorched zone, where the Chollokwan fires had blackened everything bare, and reaching the lush green section just beyond it.
Wondering about his own sanity, McCarter turned to Hawker. “Tell me why we’re doing this again?”
“Those things kept coming from this direction,” Hawker said. “It became predictable. And some of them lingered here after they left the clearing. I want to know why.”
“What makes me think you already know why?”
“I don’t know anything,” Hawker insisted, examining the trunks of several trees and then moving deeper into the jungle. “But I have a theory. Their bodies are somewhat like insects, they have exoskeletons, incredibly strong but with simple joints. They took the body of the one I killed yesterday, presumably to eat it. Most predatory animals don’t do that. A lion will kill its rival but it won’t eat the body. Neither will hyenas or tigers. Sharks will — in a frenzy, when they’re biting anything that moves — but they’re also known to swim away from dead sharks found floating on the surface, as if the bodies are cursed. They even make a type of shark repellent from an enzyme found in dead sharks, because it contains a compound that triggers the flight response.”
Hawker’s eyes went from tree to tree and then to the ground looking for tracks. “But ants will eat their own,” he said. “So will roaches and all the other bugs of this world. They’ll carry the dead back to the nest and tear them apart like an old car for spare parts. So maybe these things are like insects. And if that’s the case, then maybe they follow pheromone trails. Maybe they came in and out on this path because one of them laid down a trail and the others just followed without even thinking. In and out on the same line as if it’s the only road home, like ants who’ve found their way to the sugar bowl.”
As he listened to the theory McCarter had to smile, “It takes imagination to think of it that way.”
“I suppose,” Hawker said, moving to the base of another massive tree. “But if it’s the case, then maybe we can set a trap for them — rig up some of Kaufman’s explosives and set them off when the bastards show up for their midnight snack. And if we can do that, enough of that, then maybe they’ll go off looking for easier prey.”
“There are a lot of ifs in that theory.”
“Yeah, I know,” Hawker said, examining the gray bark of yet another trunk. “The main problem is, they only show up intermittently on the scanners, but they’re not invisible, they’re just cold-blooded …” He stopped, having found what he was looking for. “And vertical.”
McCarter’s eyes took in the tree in front of Hawker. The massive Brazil nut tree had to be ten feet thick at the base. It soared upward for two hundred feet or more, its branches spreading through three layers of canopy, supporting nests and orchids and different species of animals at various levels, though nothing appeared to be living in it now. Its branches blotted out the sky in a pattern of overlapping shadows and multiple hues of chlorophyllic green.
“Vertical,” McCarter said, looking up.
Hawker nodded. “When we saw them in the cave, they were climbing around on the ceiling. And the one that took Kaufman went straight up into the canopy. Vertical. But our defenses are set up to look for the horizontal, the man on the ground. The heat sensors can’t see these things at all and the motion trackers only see them when they drop down. That’s why they seem to appear and disappear. But if we can recalibrate the motion sensors and point them up in the trees at the proper angle, then we can spot them earlier, and do something about it. But to do that we’re going to have to know how high they climb.”
McCarter examined what Hawker had found, deep gouges running up and down the trunk. The grooves began at a point five feet off the ground and tracked straight up, deep claw marks in the living wood.
“They must scurry right up,” McCarter said. “Like a repair man on a telephone pole.”
“Yeah,” Hawker agreed, “and we have to get up there and see how high. Give me a boost.”
Reluctantly, McCarter laid down his rifle and put his hands together, interlocking his fingers. As Hawker stepped into the hold, McCarter boosted him up and Hawker stretched and grabbed the lowest branch, then pulled himself up.
As soon as Hawker was in the tree, McCarter snatched up his rifle and checked the area around him. “How high are you planning to go?”
“As high as they went,” Hawker said.
McCarter glanced up as Hawker ascended through the branches. “How long do you think it’s going to take?”
“I’m not sure,” Hawker said. “Do you have an appointment or something to get to?”
“No it’s just … Never mind,” McCarter said, studying the jungle around him. He wasn’t too sure he liked the idea of being alone on the forest floor, but if the creatures used the trees to get around he certainly didn’t want to be up there either. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he mumbled to himself. “I can’t believe we’re out here.”
“We should be okay,” Hawker said. “I think they’re mostly nocturnal.”
“It’s the mostly part that worries me,” McCarter replied. “But that’s not what I’m getting at,” he added. “When I say out here, I don’t mean out here in the trees, with you, right now — although this certainly qualifies — I mean out here at all. We should have left when the Chollokwan threatened us. We should have left after the fire.”
“It would have avoided a lot of trouble,” Hawker agreed.
“Hell yes, it would’ve,” McCarter said. “I mean, what on earth were we thinking?” He shook his head. “Check that. I know exactly what we were thinking: We’re the big men, we have the guns, no one tells us what to do.”
Up in the tree Hawker laughed.
“You think I’m kidding,” McCarter said, looking up. “Well, I’m not. I’m dead serious.”
McCarter was acutely aware of the sudden wave of energy that had come over him. He felt hyper and agitated, intoxicated on a second wind like a child who’d eaten five chocolate bars.
“I’m telling you,” he continued, “we should have left that very day. We should have gone right back to that hotel, ordered up a nice bottle of scotch and hit the spa.”
Hawker chuckled. “You don’t really strike m
e as a spa guy.”
“You’re right,” McCarter said, realizing the flaw in his logic. “To hell with the spa — I’ll go right for the scotch. The point is, we should have left this place to the Chollokwan just like they wanted us to.”
“They did seem upset about our being here,” Hawker said. “Kind of makes me wonder why.”
McCarter was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Hawker stopped and looked down, shrugging as if it were obvious. “I mean, why are they so pissed off at us? I get it: we shouldn’t be here, we’re desecrating the land with our presence — the plague, or whatever we are to them. But so what? This place isn’t theirs to begin with, right? It’s a Mayan temple. One that’s been abandoned for a few thousand years. So why the hell do they even care?”
“Well,” McCarter began, “it’s probably because …” He paused, rubbing his forehead and refocusing his thoughts. “I would guess that it’s based on …”
This time he stopped completely. It didn’t make any sense. There was no reason for the Chollokwan to show interest in the temple, or to care about the NRI’s trespass. The temple was a Mayan structure, that was without question, and there was no indication the Chollokwan had adopted it as something of their own, no sign within the clearing of their presence or their use of the place. They even left it for months at a time during their nomadic wanderings, something usually not done with holy sites that required violent protection from inter lopers.
In fact, the more McCarter thought about it the less sense it made. The two groups were virtual opposites. The Maya were a civilization, structured and rigid — even here, in what was presumably one of their earliest incarnations. They built things and changed things. They changed the face of nature around them. They cut down the forest and civilized it.
Like all builders, the Maya painted themselves in the foreground, their temples, their cities and the stelae they carved; all of which was meant to remind the world of who they were and what they’d done. They were keenly aware of the passing of time and very intent on preserving their own place within it.
But the Chollokwan were diametrically opposite. They remained in the background, part of the fabric of nature itself, like the jaguar and the trees and the ants. They lived only in the moment, unchanged and isolated. Though they touched nature in some small ways, they did little to change it. As the saying goes, they left nothing but footprints.
McCarter looked up to Hawker. “They shouldn’t care,” he said.
“No,” Hawker said. “But they do.”
“Yes,” McCarter agreed. “They most certainly do.”
While McCarter considered the thought, he watched Hawker resume his climb, struggling to reach the point at which the animals stopped their own ascent. Hawker was at least fifty feet above and almost completely obscured by the foliage when he paused. “Nice,” he said, using a tone that clearly meant the opposite.
Try as he might, McCarter couldn’t see the object of Hawker’s concern. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s something up here,” Hawker announced, a certain flavor of distaste in his voice.
“What kind of something? A creature something?”
“No,” Hawker said. “It looks like a nest. It’s mostly dried mud and leaves.”
“Well, shouldn’t there be nests up there?” McCarter asked. “I mean, a lot of animals—”
“There’s a hand sticking out of it.”
McCarter’s face scrunched up. “Ah, yes,” he said. “That’s not good.”
“Watch out,” Hawker said. “I’m going to see if I can knock it down.”
McCarter stepped away from the base of the tree, to a spot where he could see better. Hawker was fifty feet above, kicking at an oval-shaped formation of dried mud. The nest was attached to the tree in the Y angle between the main trunk and a large branch. McCarter couldn’t see the hand, but the cocoon was large enough that it might have encased a man.
As Hawker kicked at it, mud began to flake off and crack. McCarter stepped back farther to avoid the debris that was raining down. After a half-dozen shots, the entire thing broke free and went tumbling earthward, hitting the ground with a loud crunch.
While Hawker continued his investigation in the tree, McCarter moved to the fallen cocoon. With a stick, he began to pry away the caked mud, and before long he could see the man’s face and his upper torso. He recognized the clothing as the same fatigues Kaufman’s men had worn. He pried another large chunk from the man’s chest and then stopped. He thought he’d seen the man’s arm move.
He blinked and stared, careful not to interfere. And then it moved again. A slight move, like the man was signaling.
CHAPTER 41
Grabbing his radio, McCarter signaled for help. “Danielle,” he said. “We have a problem. Bring the medical kit. Hurry!”
McCarter’s call brought a near-panic-stricken reply from Danielle. “Why? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Um … ah … nothing has happened,” McCarter mumbled, realizing how his message must have sounded back at the ranch. “Nothing bad anyway. Well, not too bad. Well, actually kind of bad.” He stopped and gathered his thoughts. “Hawker and I are both okay,” he clarified. “But we’ve found someone else who might need your help.”
There was a brief delay and then Danielle replied that she was on her way.
As Hawker began his descent, McCarter examined the man more closely. He prodded and poked for a minute, but saw no more movement. He touched the man’s skin. It was cold, and McCarter realized that the man was, in fact, quite dead.
When Danielle arrived a moment later, a quick inspection told her the same thing. “This man is pretty much beyond hope, Professor.”
“I know,” McCarter said, sheepishly. “I was confused. His arm moved. It moved twice, actually. I thought he was … you know … alive.”
From the lowest branch Hawker jumped down. “Good thing he was dead,” Hawker noted. “Because that fall would have hurt like hell.”
Together, Danielle and McCarter cleared away the rest of the encasing mud, revealing two large holes bored in the man’s chest. Cutting his shirt away revealed a group of blackened bulges under his skin. They’d seen those wounds before, on the body of the Nuree man found floating in the water.
This time, however, there appeared to be movement in the swollen bulges, little displacements running like quicksilver, back and forth under the skin.
“Gas bubbles,” Danielle guessed. “I bet the movement of these bubbles tugged on the skin and caused his arm to flinch.”
McCarter was relieved. “At least I’m not crazy,” he said.
Danielle put on a pair of latex gloves and pulled out a scalpel blade.
“What are you going to do?” Hawker asked, sounding slightly nervous.
She looked up at him. “You wanted information, right?”
“Are you a surgeon or something?”
“No, but one of my degrees was in microbiology. We dissected all kinds of things.” Without waiting she sliced into one of the bubbles. It split open with a pop and a small amount of blood squirted out. Hawker stepped back.
Danielle looked up. “Are you all right?”
“Just trying to stay out of your way.”
As Hawker stepped back, Danielle repositioned the man’s arm; it moved freely. “That’s strange,” she said. “Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet.” She looked the body over. Like the man in the river, there appeared to have been little decomposition at all.
With a hypodermic needle she drew blood and deposited it in a test tube. Next she examined the damage done by the punctures; they went through a rib and deep into the chest but not out the other side. A controlled punch. Again, just like the man they’d found in the river. She began to think that Verhoven’s guess might have been correct; perhaps the Chollokwan had tied the Nuree man up as a sacrifice to the animals. But then why hadn’t he struggled against the rope? And why, after throwing him in the river, did they tie stones t
o his feet and a floating log to keep him from sinking? Had the Chollokwan really dragged him there and sent him down river as a warning to the Nuree?
She went in for another sample, and spotted something moving in the remnants of the blister she’d just lanced. She pulled back, watching. “That’s strange,” she said.
“There’s not a lot here that isn’t strange,” Hawker said, “so maybe you could be more specific.”
She smiled but didn’t reply; instead she used a pair of tongs to extract a slimy, gray object from the man’s chest cavity. It resembled a leech, but with two long tendrils trailing that remained attached to something in his chest.
She put the parasite down without cutting the tendrils and went for the connection point, a major blood vessel just above the man’s heart. Cutting out a section of the artery, she pulled the bloodsucker free.
The leechlike parasite wriggled impatiently against the grip of the tongs. The tendrils released the section of artery and began snaking back and forth, curling in on themselves like a pair of miniature fire hoses that had broken loose. They seemed to be searching for something.
“What is that?” McCarter asked.
“I’m guessing it’s the reproductive form of those animals,” she said.
Hawker looked even less enthusiastic than before. “A larva?”
She nodded. “Deposited as a parasite.”
Hawker’s face wrinkled in disgust. “Are you sure?”
“No,” she said. “But it seems likely. Many species reproduce through parasitic means, insects especially. Wasps in particular. They sting other insects, paralyze them and deposit their eggs. In such cases the host lives while it is consumed from the inside.”
“More insectlike traits,” McCarter noted.
Danielle pointed out the thin, veinlike tendrils, which were longer than the larva itself. “I’d bet it’s been feeding off the nutrients in his bloodstream. Its own waste gasses probably caused those bubbles.”