Instinct

by Jeremy Robinson

  The man’s clearly Caucasian face caught Rook’s attention. What the hell is a white guy doing in the Vietnamese jungle? Thick and crudely cut brown hair hung in oily clumps just above his shoulders. A pair of glasses slowly slipped down his nose. He adjusted them, pointed to the river, and called out, “There! Do you see it?”

  American.

  His smiling face and occasional chuckle stood in stark contrast to the horrendous shouts of his still-unseen companion—the source of the tortured screams. But she wasn’t in pain. Far from it. The horrid sound was laughter. Though he had yet to see the woman as she stood on the other side of the rock the man stood on, it was clear these two were enjoying a nice day of fishing by the river . . . in Vietnam.

  Moving slowly—gracefully—the man’s companion walked forward and into the river.

  Rook flinched back so quickly he almost fell over.

  Bishop steadied him. “What is it?”

  “He’s . . . he’s fishing with Cha-Ka!” Rook’s voice was a loud whisper, still concealed by the roaring river and gleeful cheers of the woman.

  “Cha-Ka?” Bishop asked.

  “Sid and Marty Krofft,” Rook said. “Land of the Lost? Rick, Will, and Holly Marshall? Cha-Ka was a little caveman.”

  Bishop shrugged.

  “What, you didn’t watch TV on Saturday mornings?” Rook shook his head and handed Bishop the binoculars. “Look for yourself.”

  Bishop did.

  The woman squatted in the shallows. Her face, while smooth and pretty, was surrounded by a mane of brown hair that flowed from her head, cheeks, and chin like an ape’s. Her muscular chest was concealed by loose-fitting rags tied like a bikini. The flesh underneath appeared hairless. As was her midriff, backside, and thighs. But the rest of her . . . Rook was right; she looked like a tall cave-woman. Not quite as primal as the beasts that had mauled Knight and pursued them to the river, but not quite human, either. Her muscular build confirmed it. If not for the clearly feminine curves of her body, Bishop might have mistaken her for a lower primate, but she was clearly something more.

  Bishop put the binoculars down and looked Rook in the eyes. “I think we should avoid them. She doesn’t look like the others . . .”

  “But she’s related,” Rook said. “That’s what I was thinking, too. Someone’s been tinkering with Mother Nature.”

  Bishop nodded and motioned toward the fishing duo.

  Rook nodded.

  That guy.

  The woman’s screams reached a rapid crescendo. Rook peeked through the space in the rocks. A large fish was hooked on the line. With no reel, the man had to back up to pull the fish in. As the fish approached the shore, the girl splashed deeper into the water and pulled the line in. She dragged a large catfish out of the water, its shiny black body flapping madly. The girl then lifted the great fish up, clutched its tail, and brought it down like a club. With a wet splat, the fish struck stone. The wiggling stopped.

  For a moment Rook wondered if they’d stumbled upon some kind of lost world; a place untouched by modern man for so long that ancient creatures still stalked and primitive tribes fought for survival. But there were no dinosaurs here and this cavewoman couldn’t hold a candle to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s barbarian queen. Burroughs’s heroes never fell in love with something so . . . primal. They would have shot it on the spot.

  But the man. The enigma. His presence complicated things. Were there others like him? Would they have been safer on the other side of the river with the hulking hairy midgets? He couldn’t be sure. All he really wanted was to get the hell out of Vietnam.

  Screw the rest of the world, Rook thought, I already died from Brugada once. I can do it again. Let the rest of the world here figure it out on their own and let Cha-Ka and Rick Marshall live happily ever after.

  As he thought it, he knew it was a passing fancy, the whim of a normal person. But that wasn’t him. At his core he was Delta, and his mission was far from complete. And it wouldn’t be until they got away from these two and figured out what to do next.

  But a shifting breeze ruined any chance of going undetected.

  Cha-Ka lifted her head and sniffed, her very slender, very human nose crinkling with each breath. Then she casually leaned over and spoke into the man’s ear.

  Neither Rook nor Bishop could hear the woman’s words, but they knew they’d been detected. Before either could slip away, the man’s voice boomed over the river’s roar. “Come on out. We know you’re there.”

  Both men froze. Neither wanted anything to do with the man and his hairy counterpart. But they were caught like a pair of Peeping Toms. The man didn’t sound angry or nervous, just in control. Master of his domain.

  Bishop spoke in a whisper. “I’ll go out. You stay down. They may not know there are two of us.”

  “I’ll go,” Rook said.

  Bishop shook his head. “You’ll do something rash and get yourself killed.”

  “And you won’t?”

  “You know me,” Bishop said. “I’ll hardly say a word.”

  Bishop stood up, his six-foot-tall body clearing the thick stones. He leaped up and over the boulders, landing like the Incredible Hulk on the other side.

  The man and strange woman took a step back. They were clearly expecting a local, perhaps a five-foot, half-starved man or woman. A gigantic Middle Eastern who looked like a professional wrestler was a rare sight in the Annamite Mountains.

  Then the man’s confidence returned. “My, my, aren’t you a strapping young man.”

  Bishop stood still, trying to glean what he could from the stranger’s face. His confidence seemed genuine. He wasn’t afraid of Bishop at all. Bishop remembered the raw, physical strength of the creatures they’d encountered in the tunnels and the way the woman here had smashed the catfish. If the woman standing before him now had the same strength as her more feral neighbors, the man had good reason to be confident. Judging by his use of “young man” and the crow’s-feet around his eyes, Bishop placed him around forty-five years old, but his muscle tone looked like an athlete’s. Bishop realized the man lived in this jungle, probably had for years.

  “You speak English,” Bishop said.

  The man’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “As do you.”

  “I do, too,” said the woman, though her voice sounded more like a young woman’s. Closer now, Bishop could see that while her body was like that of an adult, her face appeared younger, no more than twelve years old. “Father, tell him I do, too.”

  Bishop’s muscles tensed.

  Father.

  “He can hear you just fine, my dear,” the man said. He stepped forward. “My name is Anthony Weston. Dr. Anthony Weston. You’ll have to forgive her. She’s just a child.”

  It was Bishop’s turn to be surprised. “This is your . . . child?”

  “Yes.” Weston appeared confused for a moment. Then his face brightened. “This must be terribly confusing for you.”

  Weston turned his back to Bishop, walked past the girl, and sat on a rock behind her. She stood motionless between them. “She is not my daughter. She is my son’s, son’s, son’s daughter. My great-great-granddaughter. They all call me father, as I am the originator of their race. I am their Adam. Isn’t that right, Lucy?”

  The girl smiled.

  Bishop tensed. The man’s story was more twisted than he could have guessed. But it didn’t match up. This girl had to be at least a teenager. Then two generations before her . . . That would make Weston far older than he appeared.

  “How much do you weigh?” Weston asked.

  “How could she be your great-great-granddaughter?” Bishop asked, ignoring Weston’s question. “You’re not that old.”

  “Very observant of you. You’re U.S. military, right? But no ordinary soldier . . . Too smart . . . and too big for that.” The man thought for a moment and then voiced his conclusion. “You’re after the same thing those insidious Vietnamese soldiers are searching for, is that it?”

  Weston s
aw Bishop’s serious gaze hadn’t faltered. “Right, right. My age. I must be in my forties now. I stopped keeping track years ago. But this one here . . .” Weston tussled the girl’s hair, messing it up like an bona fide grandfather might do. “Lucy here is three years old.”

  Blood drained from Bishop’s face.

  Three . . . years . . . old.

  Weston scoffed at Bishop’s grimace. “Come now, you’re smart enough to see she’s not entirely human. They walk within two weeks of birth. Can climb trees at six months. Hunt at one year. They’re fully mature by two years. Most give birth before they are three. Lucy is my descendent, so she is part Homo sapien, but she is also something else, too.”

  Bishop looked across the river. “One of them?”

  Weston’s face showed true surprise. “You’ve seen them?”

  Bishop nodded.

  “And have they seen you?”

  Bishop nodded again.

  Weston pursed his lips and nodded his head, mulling something over.

  Bishop interrupted his interlude. “What are they?”

  Weston looked up as though startled. “Huh? Oh. The wenches. That’s what I like to call them. Though I suppose they are responsible for everything good in my life now.” Weston leaned back and crossed his arms. “I came here in 1995. I’m a cryptozoologist and came to the Annamites in search of new species. I expected to find wild pigs or antelope, but I found them, the Nguoi Rung. The forest people. Even I had written them off as the creations of superstitious villagers before I stumbled upon them here in the mountains. After discovering their group, I watched them for a week, observing their hunts, tool usage, and customs. I knew from the beginning that they were something more than apes. They were unique in the world. Intelligent, but not human. Then they found me out. Chased me down.”

  Weston shifted slightly at the memory. “I thought they were going to kill me, and they nearly did. But that was not their intent. One after another, those in heat . . . had their way with me, starting with Red, the dominant female. Then they left. Two days later they returned for me. I had a fever and a foot in the grave. It seemed odd to me at the time, but they brought me back to their cave and restored my health. When the fever abated, two more had a go. But as I struggled less, their bites became more gentle, and drew less blood.” Weston motioned to several scars on his shoulders.

  “Over time I discerned that all of their males had died inexplicably. They were simply carrying out their genetic urge to mate and propagate the species. Being the right size and appearing as close to one of their males as any creature they had ever seen, they took me as one of their own. I became their alpha male, studying them as I lived among them. When my first daughter was born I realized we shared a common heritage. How else could they bear my children?”

  Weston stood and stretched. The story was coming to an end. “I began exploring the cave systems and came upon the most incredible find.”

  “The bone city,” Bishop said.

  Weston again looked surprised. “You’re quite lucky to have made it out of the necropolis. They’ve taken residency there since their banishment.”

  “Banishment?” Bishop asked.

  “They’re old and unintelligent. What they did to me was unthinkable. Unforgivable. I can’t stand the sight of them. And they were holding the kids back.” Weston picked up a stone and skipped it on the river. “But where were we? Ah, yes. The necropolis is the tip of the iceberg. What I discovered was nothing short of a miracle. The Annamite Mountain range has been described as a modern-day Noah’s Ark. In a way, that couldn’t be truer. You see, the Nguoi Rung are the ancestors of a civilization that developed here hundreds of thousands of years ago. Homo sapiens evolved and lived among the Nguoi for thousands of years, interbreeding and peacefully coexisting. But humanity became violent and warlike. Pushed the Nguoi east. They fled as far as they could and settled here. For thousands of years their civilization blossomed. When humanity reached the East, into Asia, the Ngoui retreated to the mountains, lived in seclusion, and slowly died out for lack of resources as humanity encroached. What remains of them, some twenty-five females, are what natural selection has left us with after so many generations of hiding and hunting. Savages with a spark of intelligence. A spark that is much brighter in their offspring. But they are all that are left. They are the last . . .” Weston looked into Bishop’s eyes. “. . . of the Neanderthals.”

  Neanderthals? Bishop’s stunned expression was impossible to mask.

  Weston smiled with delight that his revelation had made an impression. “But with my help the species is making a comeback and is reclaiming the land that had been theirs long before the first human learned to speak. Which, I’m afraid, is bad news for you . . . especially given your size.”

  Just as Bishop’s mind began to pull back the curtain of the veiled threat, Weston’s voice issued a quiet order to Lucy. She sprang up from the rock in an instant, bouncing off a second rock, and dove toward Bishop. She moved like lightning and Bishop’s broad body made an easy target. He managed to bring his fist around, catching the girl in the gut, but not before she swept her outstretched, sharp-clawed fingers deep into his throat, cutting through arteries, windpipe, Adam’s apple, and spine.

  As the girl fell to the rocky shoreline, gasping for breath, chunks of Bishop’s destroyed throat splashed into the river. Bishop fell to his knees. His head tilted back and then fell to the side, connected only by a thin wisp of flesh and spine. As his body fell back, his hand stretched out an open palm, then fell limp. With a splash, Bishop’s big body landed in the shallows of the river.

  Weston stood above the body and petted the girl’s head.

  Lucy looked up at Weston. “Why, Father?” she asked, more curious than remorseful.

  “He was too big.”

  “Red?”

  Weston nodded. “We can’t let her have children again.” He pushed Bishop’s body out into the river, which swept him away. Blood plumed into the water from Bishop’s open neck. Weston looked down at Lucy. “The fish will thank us.”

  With that the two turned and left, Lucy carrying the dead fish, Weston the fishing pole. They didn’t give Bishop’s body a second glance.

  Behind the rock wall that hid him from view, Rook’s body shook with rage. He’d heard everything . . . seen everything. Only Bishop’s final act—his outstretched palm, which could have just as easily been an involuntary death twitch—had kept him firmly rooted in his hiding spot.

  He clenched his fists as the image of Bishop’s throat being ripped apart replayed in his mind. No one could recover from that. Not even Bishop. Rook crept back into the shadows of the boulders that lined the river.

  He waited in silence, controlling his breathing, his anger, like he’d seen Bishop do so often.

  When he was sure no one was watching, he began scaling the cliff wall, all the while making a mental checklist of everyone he needed to introduce to a bullet, or any other sharp object he could find. Hell, blunt objects would work just as well. Whether or not Rook would get his revenge was uncertain. The mission still took precedence and he wouldn’t let Bishop’s death be in vain. Reconnecting with the team and getting Pawn and the blood sample out of the jungle and back to the States were still the priority. If Weston, or Cha-Ka, or any of the “old wenches” happened to get in the way—or remotely close to the way—Rook wouldn’t back down.

  THIRTY-SIX

  QUEEN’S EYES OPENED and saw nothing but black. She’d been knocked unconscious during the brutally efficient attack. She could see specks of light filtering through holes in the hood over her head. The smell of rotting fish filled her nose with each breath. She wasn’t sure if it was from the hood or her captor’s body—a body she was now inspecting without moving a muscle.

  The shoulder beneath her was broad. The gait felt long and the steps were heavy, punishing her stomach with every jolt. The back was interesting—covered in thick hair.

  A man, Queen thought.

  But
something was off. First, there was too much hair. Even the hairiest Italian didn’t sport a back patch that thick. Second was the attack itself. She’d done battle with the best the world had to offer and always came out on top. These guys had not only subdued her, but King as well. Killing them with a firearm would have been impressive enough, but capturing them without firing a single shot—she found it hard to believe possible. Yet here she was, being carted around on the shoulder of a fish-smelling monster of a man. She had infinite respect for the way they’d done it, though. The sheer audacity of attacking armed soldiers with nothing but bare hands had been her solo claim to fame for years. But these guys . . . they made her look bad.

  Queen’s competitive nature kicked in. If these guys thought they could beat her at her own game, let them try again. She wouldn’t hide behind a gun next time. That had been her mistake. That’s what allowed them to take her so quickly she never got a chance to see them.

  Keeping her body loose like a rag doll, Queen listened. She could hear the footfalls of several others up ahead, but none behind. They were at the back of the pack. Somehow calling them a pack seemed more appropriate. While she recognized the body holding her as part human, its animal quality was hard to ignore. Her mind returned to the village of Anh Dung, remembering the creatures they encountered there. Then the attack on the VPLA camp, the hoots and cries echoing through the forest. Definitely not human. A rare twang of nervousness filled Queen as she considered the idea that they were not dealing with human beings . . . again.

  Then one of them spoke and erased her fears. “Hurry. We are far behind.”

  The voice was feminine . . . and to the left.

  “Father will be pleased with our find,” said the man holding her, his voice deep and strong. “They know our speak.”

  Queen came to three very quick conclusions.