Insects 2: The Hunted

by John Koloen

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should just forget about it,” Boyd said, dismayed.

  56

  “I’VE NEVER BEEN in a nice hotel like this, Mister Howard,” Antonio Suarez remarked as he stood behind Howard Duncan, who pulled up Google Earth on his fifteen-inch laptop and located the village where Boyd said victims of blaberus had been found. Like many villages in the rainforest, it was located near a river but unlike other places he’d been, the terrain was rocky and rugged. Duncan had hoped that Suarez would be able to help him acquire equipment, but it became quickly evident that he had no notion of quality. His only suggestions were how to obtain gear cheaply from unlicensed vendors, likely of stolen goods. It was a deficiency he couldn’t hold against the guide, since he was not an equipment guy like Boyd.

  The way he had been planning the expedition was to explore the area near the village during the day and return at night to sleep. He wanted to avoid carrying camping gear into the forest, even though they would have access to ATVs. What preoccupied him the most was coming up with a strategy to actually capture specimens.

  The preferred mechanism would be to bait traps, set them out and let them do their work. The problem was, he had no idea how to predict where the insects would be. So little was known about their behavior that he could only speculate where they might be at any given time. Since his only experience with them was during a flood, he had nothing to go on in terms of how they acted on dry land except from the video Suarez had made of his former boss’s death. It was seared in Duncan’s memory. He could replay it in his mind just by thinking about it.

  Suarez’s video showed his boss in thick, tall grass surrounded by the man-eaters. He wondered how they chose locations and he assumed that, like ants, they used scouts to forage for food. Certainly, an entire colony wouldn’t travel en masse while foraging. That made no sense. The key, would be to find the scouts, which surely would not be large in number, and somehow get them to take the bait and step into a trap.

  Otherwise, if there were only a handful, they might be able to grab them. They’d need gloves for that, perhaps protection for their heads. Certainly, they’d need to wear sturdy pants and shirts and gaiters or another means to secure their pants cuffs. From a safety standpoint, assuming they faced only a small number of scouts, it was plausible that they could do their jobs with a minimum of risk. The downside was that they would sweat like crazy, breathing would be more difficult because of the headgear. And the clothing itself might make it more difficult to move freely.

  There are always tradeoffs between safety and getting the job done, he thought. Nothing is one hundred percent safe, and while he believed he would have no problem going into the rainforest with heavy clothing, others might think otherwise. Duncan had never seen Suarez in more than shorts and a T-shirt. Would he, could he, wear heavy clothing and still do his job? Perhaps they could start out with light clothing and then change into the protective gear when they thought insects were in the area. That might work.

  The other problem was finding at least one other person to join the expedition. He and Suarez weren’t enough, unless they were very lucky. Even so, he doubted Suarez would agree to wear the clothing, much less expose himself to the bugs, which meant he would be on his own in the field with no backup in case things turned ugly.

  Suarez liked the idea of hunting the insects during the day and sleeping in the village at night.

  “It’s safer that way,” he said.

  “That’s the idea. It also means we don’t have to carry much equipment so we can cover more ground.”

  When Suarez asked who else would be on the expedition, Duncan shrugged.

  “Don’t know yet. I’m still working on it.”

  “Mister Howard, I have cousins who could carry things. They don’t have a job so they’ll work cheap.”

  Duncan smiled. When it came to things he didn’t enjoy doing he often reverted to what was easiest to accomplish. Suarez was making it easy for him.

  57

  MANY WHO HAD worked with Nolan Thomas thought him to be prickly and impatient with subordinates and deferential to those above him, especially those who controlled his budget. During his years in academia while working on his own grants, he was regarded as a difficult man to get along with, even by his deans. Despite his reputation, he was sought after by universities enamored with his multi-million dollar grants. Institutions competed to entice him by offering to build laboratories and provide an unending procession of graduate assistants to carry out the grunt work. His millions would make any university look that much better in annual listings of the top research institutions.

  Since being recruited by a privately held company with myriad biotech projects, Thomas had become somewhat of a mystery to his former colleagues. He had published nothing over the past three years and was seen at few conferences. He shared little about the nature of his work, except that he was obviously interested in blaberus. His contract with Broken Tree Productions had been vetted by the company’s legal department. It was an unusual move insofar as many privately held biotechs treasured confidentiality to the extent that little was known about their work. Most of Thomas’s work was funded by the U.S. government. Once the agreement was signed, including blanket nondisclosure terms, Jason Gruber, an aide to Thomas, was embedded with the film crew as a liaison so that he was present for most production meetings. He had a habit of leaving when the meetings turned to purely technical issues.

  “My job,” he told the crew at one of the preproduction meetings, “is to keep Dr. Thomas happy, and failing that, keep him from using me as a punching bag.”

  Thomas attended several of the meetings to describe his plan of action and precautions they would take.

  “We want to avoid the mistakes made by the previous group,” Thomas said.

  Boyd winced at this, and felt an urge to defend himself, but held back. He wasn’t certain whether Thomas knew that he had participated in Duncan’s expedition. Perhaps it was just a throwaway line.

  “Jason here has studied what we have learned from the media coverage of the tragedy that befell these people,” Thomas said.

  “That’s right, thank you, doctor. There is, of course, a lot of misinformation and speculation fanned by the media to boost its sensationalistic appeal. What I’ve boiled it down to is that they were ill-prepared for what they encountered and made several decisions that in retrospect may have led to greater loss of life than was necessary.”

  Boyd exhaled silently, struggling against the impulse to respond. Involuntarily, he shook his head several times. Gruber asked if he was upset. Boyd looked up at Gruber and shook his head once.

  Gruber explained that he thought the group’s leader had underestimated the size and lethality of his quarry and that he needlessly endangered everyone as a result. Boyd wondered whether he was baiting him. Did he even know he’d been part of the expedition?

  “Was it irresponsible to enter the forest at the end of the wet season? It would seem so. Did they truly understand how dangerous their situation was? Apparently not, otherwise how could you explain why, after finding a human victim, they did not turn back and alert the authorities?”

  While Gruber continued his critique, which was being recorded, Boyd found himself fabricating rebuttals that he didn’t share with the group. To his irritation, he found that he couldn’t easily dismiss Gruber’s extensive and unpleasant assessment. Mistakes had been made, that was undeniable. At the same time, nobody on earth at that time knew of the insect’s lethality. When Gruber finished, he looked at Boyd.

  “Do you have anything to add, Mr. Boyd?” Gruber asked.

  Boyd glanced at the others sitting around the table. Everyone was looking at him. Carl Murphy grimaced, fearing an outburst. Joe Robinson watched, expecting to see fireworks. He’d noticed Boyd’s discomfort as Gruber spoke and relished it like someone watching the start of a fight.

  “Not really. My experience was different, but then I was there and you weren’t.�
��

  Fearing discord, Murphy asked if anyone had questions for Gruber, making it clear by the tone of his voice that he didn’t want to hear any questions.

  “Yeah, I’ve got one,” Robinson said, smiling at Boyd. “How again are you going to prevent what happened to Cody from happening to us?”

  Murphy’s expression changed quickly. It was a good question. Everyone turned their attention to Gruber.

  “We’re still working out the details, but I can tell you that safety is a prime consideration, unlike the previous group. Their leader let his ambition get in the way of safety, resulting in tragedy. That’s not going to happen to us.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” the videographer repeated.

  “Well, you already know about the flamethrower. That was Carl’s idea. I tried it. It was scary to use but effective. The insects get too close, we spray them with fire. We will also incorporate protective clothing. And we’ve got insecticides.”

  Murphy smiled and nodded approvingly after Gruber finished.

  “That’s very reassuring,” Murphy said. “Any other questions?”

  “Just one,” Robinson said, raising his hand. “When do we start?”

  58

  BOYD WASN’T HAPPY with the way the video project was going. He didn’t like the criticism from Gruber, he didn’t like the deception proposed by the producer to convince Duncan to embed a film crew with his expedition. He liked the idea of a flamethrower. It was the one item he wished they’d had when they were stranded on the truck. That, more than anything else in Gruber’s critique, he found to be helpful. Without testing, he had no confidence in insecticides.

  Murphy took Boyd aside following the meeting to ask how things were going with Duncan.

  “Is he onboard?”

  “Not yet,” Boyd said distractedly, still mentally reviewing what Gruber had said.

  “You know, we need to make this happen. It’ll make all the difference.”

  “I know, I know, I understand. I’m still working on him,” Boyd sighed uneasily. “He wants to know what’s in it for him.”

  “Well, it’s a chance to exonerate himself, don’t you think?”

  “That’s bullshit. He doesn’t need to exonerate himself. He did as well as anybody could’ve done under the circumstance, I don’t care what that egghead Gruber says. He wasn’t there and neither were you.”

  “Don’t get pissed at me,” Murphy cautioned. “I didn’t say it and, you know, that’s his opinion. Maybe exonerate isn’t the right word. Maybe you can just explain it better. You know, a show like this could bring him a lot of positive publicity, which I’m sure is lacking today. I mean, is he holed up in some dive hotel somewhere?”

  “No, nothing like that” Boyd said. “He’s getting his expedition ready, and I’m not sure I should say this, but he wants to hire me back.”

  “Really!? Huh,” Murphy said, taken aback. But his mental wheels turned quickly. “You know, that might not be a bad idea. Do you think he’d go along with it if you’re with him?”

  “That might work,” Boyd said.

  “You still wouldn’t tell him how we might end up using the footage, right? You’ll still be working for us so, you know, the nondisclosures are still intact. You can’t really talk about the finished product.”

  “Yeah, you know, I hate this part of it. It’s not my nature to lie like that.”

  “Well, don’t think of it as lying. In this business, lying isn’t really lying. People expect you to hold back, if for no other reason than really, until we’ve finished filming, we don’t actually know what we’re gonna do. That’s the thing about reality shows, you can’t really predict outcomes. It’s a lot like life that way. It’s reality.”

  59

  WHILE BOYD MET with Duncan to convince him to cooperate with the production company, promising to help outfit his group and accompany him into the rainforest, Nolan Thomas wasted little time getting into the field. Slim and tall, dressed in khaki with a kayaker’s floppy hat, he looked the part of a naturalist. From the start, they shot video, capturing B-roll and supplemental footage when they weren’t focusing on Thomas or one of his assistants.

  In addition to his four assistants, Thomas was accompanied by field producer Carl Murphy, soundman Jack Walker and videographer Joe Robinson. Missing was the mercenary. Murphy explained that there had been a problem with his passport and that he expected him to arrive any day. “At any rate, we got his flamethrower and Jason here can handle it.”

  Because of the limited seating, only one villager joined the group as a driver and guide. Murphy drove the second ATV.

  Using the ATVs, the group retraced the route to the human remains and then hiked to the carcasses collected by the village’s youngsters. They rested on a hill from which they viewed an uneven, rugged landscape dense with palms, towering mahogany and balsam. Monkeys screeched as they moved about the trees. On the ground they heard rustling as animals made their way invisibly through the vines, understory trees and shrubs that cluttered the ground inchoately.

  “What are we looking for?” Murphy asked as Thomas surveyed the shadowy forest.

  “You know, it would have been so much better if the kids had just left the carcasses where they found them.”

  “Kids will be kids,” Murphy said, drawing an annoyed grimace from Thomas.

  “Not helpful,” he said.

  “Maybe there’s more that the kids didn’t find,” Murphy suggested. “An airplane could’ve crashed here and we wouldn’t know it. You can’t even see the ground.”

  “You could be right. Too bad we didn’t bring one of them with us. Maybe we should fan out and look around,” Thomas said, nodding toward Murphy’s crew.

  “Dr. Thomas, we’re not allowed to help you. Our job is to document your expedition.”

  “I’ve only got my people to help?”

  “Sir, you signed the contract. It stipulates…”

  “I know what it stipulates,” Thomas griped.

  The scientist directed his assistants to move down from the hill in different directions while he watched from higher ground. The footing was difficult as they tripped over vines and stepped over debris while the videographer and soundman moved from one to the other, recording their futile efforts. This went on for an hour as the assistants slowly moved farther and farther away, zigzagging back and forth, their eyes glued to the ground.

  “Sooner or later something has to pop up, don’t you think?” Thomas said.

  “I hope so. That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Dr. Thomas, Dr. Thomas,” Greg Covelli, one of the assistants, shouted from the distance, barely visible from his boss’ hilltop perch. “I’ve found something.”

  “What is it?” Thomas shouted.

  Covelli pulled something from the ground and held it in the air.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a monkey, I think. Nothing left but the hide and the skeleton.”

  Thomas directed his assistants to return and after examining the carcass he looked at the guide, who sat at the base of the hill smoking a cigarette. Looking at the mound of bones, he asked, “Where are the hides?”

  “Pardon me?” Murphy said.

  “The hides. We find one monkey and its hide is intact. Where are the hides for these?” Thomas asked, pointing at the bones.

  “Maybe the kids took ’em?”

  “I wonder why,” Thomas said, examining the monkey carcass. “You see, the hide is torn up. I doubt it would have any value in this condition.”

  Murphy shrugged.

  “Maybe he knows,” one of the assistants said, nodding toward the guide.

  Using an app on his phone, the producer parsed a question in Portuguese.

  “Onde estão os couros?” Murphy said, haltingly, holding and pointing at the carcass.

  “Eu não sei,” the guide said.

  “He doesn’t know,” Murphy said. “I think that’s what he’s saying. Do you think it’s importa
nt?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s something we should check out.”

  “Maybe the kids could tell the hides were worthless and got into a competition to see who could find the most bones,” Murphy said. “When I was their age we’d…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Thomas said curtly. “Let’s go down there and see if we can find more carcasses. This could be a larger killing field than we imagined.”

  60

  HOWARD DUNCAN WAS not inclined to go along with Cody Boyd’s pitch about embedding a camera crew into his expedition. Meeting in his hotel room, the middle-aged entomologist shook his head.

  “The last thing I want is unqualified people getting in the way,” he protested.

  “They’re not unqualified. They’ve done all kinds of shoots all across the world. They’ve been in war zones,” Boyd countered.

  “What do they know about entomology?”

  “They’re not entomologists,” Boyd said, exasperated.

  “They’ll get in the way.”

  “They won’t get in the way. They’ve been doing this for years.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s in the contract,” Boyd said, pointing to a manila folder that he’d placed on the combination dresser-TV stand when he arrived. “All they will do is shoot video.”

  “No makeup and stuff like that?”

  “None. They aren’t working for you. By the same token, they aren’t going to help you either, unless it’s a life or death situation.”

  The room consisted of a full-size bed, matching dresser, desk with chair, nightstands and an upholstered armchair. Boyd sat on the edge of the bed facing Duncan, who stood with his back to Boyd while looking out the large plate glass window. Turning to face Boyd, Duncan stepped to the dresser and grabbed the folder, leafing through it before taking a seat in the armchair, the folder in his lap.