BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  “Enough of this nonsense!” I said as I got to my feet. “Nobody needs to apologize to anyone! Cassandra and I came of our own free will. In any case, I’m convinced that we’re going the right way to find that fucking Black City. And if we find it, I’m sure we’ll find your daughter. Don’t you dare doubt that.”

  The professor took off his glasses and wiped his tears on the sleeve of his tattered shirt.

  “Thank you for your support, Ulysses,” he said as he put them back on. “But I’m still sane enough to realize this has been a terrible mistake. Besides, we’ve lost our gear, not only the GPS but also the Iridium phone. And that was our only means of communication with the outside world.” He raised his eyes and tried to sound firm. “So the best thing we can do is turn around tomorrow and go back the way we came. We’ll figure out a way to return to civilization, then we’ll wait for the other rescue mission to—”

  “Are you kidding me?” I interrupted. I could not believe what I had just heard. “You want us to turn back after we’ve gotten this far? Just like that?”

  He looked at me, speechless.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “Now that we’re so close we can’t just give up!”

  “Close to what, Ulysses?” he said, spreading his arms wide. “We don’t even know where we are!”

  “We don’t, but he does,” I pointed at the Menkragnoti who until now had not said a word.

  “Iak not know,” he said after a moment. “Iak only go in direction you say… Iak not here before.”

  “But we are near Morcego territory, aren’t we?” I said. “That’s where the city of the Ancients is supposed to be, isn’t it?”

  Jack Fawcett’s grandson remained silent as he poked the campfire ashes with a stick and looked away toward the darkness that surrounded us. The only sound was the crackling of the fire and the distant roar of a howling monkey, echoing in the night.

  The growing silence in a jungle that was supposed to be crowded with thousands of animals was most disquieting.

  It was a totally unnatural silence. It was contained, tense, expectant.

  That was the right word: expectant.

  It was as if all the creatures of the rainforest, down to the last one, knew that something terrible was about to happen.

  Something that we knew nothing about.

  Something that perhaps they had already seen before.

  “Only Menka tamú so silent,” Iak said looking around. His tone spoke of a deep primitive fear. “Only great fear silence the forest.”

  33

  The following morning was even less uneventful than the day before. Except that Cassie noticed a pair of tiny marks on her left ankle as she was putting on her socks before getting off her hammock.

  “Pinches mosquitoes,” she grumbled as she scratched off the tiny scabs. To her surprise, two threads of blood flowed out. “La gran—”

  Our Menkragnoti friend went over to her. After studying the wounds for a minute he said, “No mosquito. Last night you feed vampire.”

  We all laughed at this.

  “How odd,” the professor said amused. “I thought the fellow with the cape and the fangs I saw last night was a tax collector.”

  The joke passed Iak by.

  “You laugh because vampire drink blood of woman?”

  Cassie’s smile froze when she realized the Menkragnoti was not joking.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Vampires come at night when you sleep.” He mimicked a bat with his hands. “First they bite then they drink your blood with tongue. You not realize but they feed off you.”

  Cassie’s face paled under her tan.

  “Oh my God!” she muttered dropping onto her hammock. “Disgusting! Just the thought of some filthy animal feeding off me… Yuk!”

  “You not worry,” Iak said patting her knee reassuringly. “But you sleep always with boots. I give you herbs so they not come to you again. If not, they come every night and drink all your blood.”

  One of the unexpected advantages of the sparse animal life in that part of the rainforest was that the trees we came across our way were practically intact and loaded with fruit. Mangoes, guavas, passion fruit, and cherimoyas were just waiting for someone to pick them. This we did at every chance.

  Something else that caught our attention in the territory we were now going through was the gradual change in the terrain. The level plain was giving way to a succession of hills and ridges of different sizes. But we did not have to climb them as we always found an easy way around them.

  Besides, for some reason the floor of the forest was friendlier, free of bushes and underbrush, so that we could walk more freely among the huge silk-cotton and rubber trees without needing to use the machete. As a curiosity, Iak showed us how to extract the white sticky sap from the rubber trees.

  Because of this we were walking with less painstaking care, wary only of not stepping on any snake which might be hiding in the fallen leaves. The professor walked beside Iak at the front, bombarding him with questions about the days Valeria had spent at the village. Cassie and I followed without saying much to each other—in my experience, the best policy as it meant we would not end up arguing.

  “What if Eduardo’s right?” she said suddenly.

  “About what?”

  “You know,” she said without taking her eyes off the ground. “About making a mistake in going into the jungle without really knowing where we’re going.”

  “We’re going to Z,” I said at once. “To the Black City of the ancient ones or whatever you want to call it. We’re looking for the professor’s daughter.”

  “Come on, Ulysses.” She raised her head and pierced me with her green eyes. “You know there’s practically no chance of us finding that pinche city. That it’s probably just a myth like El Dorado or Shangri-La.” She paused and clicked her tongue. “But even if it does exist, we still don’t know for sure if Valeria and her people are there. Maybe in the end it’ll be us who need being rescued.”

  Of course I knew she was right. But if there was something that I had learned in a life linked together by coincidences and unfulfilled certainties was that if we turned around at that point, I would never stop thinking that perhaps the answer was just a few yards away.

  “You may be right,” I said. “But even so, I think we should go further. You know… just in case.”

  We had stopped at a clearing to eat some of the fruit we had picked up on the way when thunder nearby shook the ground. In a matter of seconds it began to pour as if the Almighty had decided to flood the Earth again.

  The roar of the downpour crashing against the tops of the trees was deafening. Soon the violent rain pierced the covering of vegetation, and in a moment we were as wet as if we had taken a shower with our clothes on. There was no time to build a shelter, so we decided to run for cover to the nearest hill, where the forest was thicker and we would have more protection.

  Iak ran in front, opening a way with the machete. We followed, covering our heads with the enormous leaves of a banana tree, which turned out to be very little use. We climbed the hill, holding on to whatever we could to keep ourselves from slipping. Halfway up, under the relative shelter of a palm tree, we found an opening thirty feet or so above us which could have been the entrance to a cave. Unfortunately, a vertical wall of stone covered with lianas made it impossible to reach.

  “We could use the lianas to help us!” I shouted over the roar of the rain.

  The professor looked at me as if I had suggested that he should dance in his underwear.

  “Would you rather stay here and go on getting wet?” I said.

  “Let’s find someplace else!” he said.

  I knew about my friend’s fear of heights, but I was in no mood to argue.

  “Okay! You wait here while I go ask for a taxi.” Without giving him a chance to answer I patted his shoulder, then grabbed a liana that disappeared way above, and started to climb. I knew perfectly well that both Cassie
and the professor had the strength and ability to follow. As for Iak, I was not in the least worried about him. He had immediately grabbed another liana and was climbing beside me, quickly passing me and reaching the opening before any of us.

  When I reached the cave I saw a kind of shelf or terrace in front of it which would make a fine lookout point. The cave itself was about six feet wide and seemed to continue deep into the hill. I decided to leave the observation for when the rain stopped and concentrated on helping the professor climb the last few feet. I offered my hand to Cassie but she refused it with an offended slap. The three of us huddled in the shelter of the big cave.

  Iak had gone into its depths, presumably to check that no dangerous animals had had the same idea.

  “Iak!” the professor called after a few minutes had passed and the Menkragnoti had not returned. “Where are you?”

  From the half-light at the entrance, just where the sunlight reached but not the rain, we looked toward the far depths of the cave as if into a dark well, expecting to see Iak’s silhouette at any moment.

  But he did not appear. Neither did he answer our calls, although in any case the roar of the rain behind us did not guarantee that our shouts reached any further than our mouths.

  “Do you think something’s happened to him?” Cassandra said at last.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “He must be making sure there’s no snakes.” I nudged her. “Or vampires.”

  “Don’t be a jerk!” she said. “He could be hurt.”

  “What if he’s come across a jaguar?” the professor said in a worried voice.

  “Jaguars don’t live in caves, Doc,” I said impatiently. “It’s bears that do, and there aren’t any bears here.”

  “Or maybe he came across the Morcegos these Menkragnoti are so afraid of,” Cassie said. She was also worried.

  “Stop it, both of you. Let’s not panic,” I said. “You sound like a couple of day trippers in a horror film. We’ll wait here till he comes back. I’m sure nothing’s happened to him. Or do you really think a monster is going to suddenly come out of the cave and eat us?” I forced a smile.

  Before I had finished talking, we heard quick steps and heavy breathing echoing in the darkness, coming toward us.

  34

  The three of us sprang to our feet. Iak came running out of the shadows brandishing a piece of bright yellow material. I could not identify it until he got closer. To my surprise I realized it was a modern—and expensive—raincoat, made of breathable nanofiber membrane. This was an item of clothing that you could only get in specialized shops selling trekking or mountain-climbing gear.

  We looked at each other with the same thought in our minds, stunned and trying to make sense of the implications. The professor was already beginning to smile, ready to spell out the definite clue we had just found. Cassandra noticed something that made her reach for the raincoat and spread it out for all of us to see.

  “Híjole,” she whispered with her eyes wide.

  “What the heck…” the professor muttered.

  The coat Cassandra was holding up was torn cleanly at the back. Parallel lines ran from the top down. Perfect slashes, as if made with a sharp razor.

  Only, there were four of them.

  “What animal could’ve done this?” I asked Iak with a shiver.

  “Not know,” he replied, uneasily. “I never see this thing before.”

  “It must be a jaguar,” Cassie said. “There’s no other animal here with claws that could tear something like this.”

  Iak spread his fingers over the cuts. Together they were wider than his hand.

  “Hand of jaguar not so big.”

  “No way,” Cassie said. “Then it must be an enormous jaguar. Obviously it wasn’t a macaw.”

  I ran my fingers along the edges. “The thing is, the cuts are too clean for claw marks.”

  “Really?” she snorted. “Since when are you an expert on wild animals?”

  “We lived together for almost a year, remember?”

  By her expression I knew the comment had not amused her one little bit. I knew she would find a way to make me pay for it sooner or later, with interest.

  The rain, which had been pouring violently over the jungle like a bombardment a few minutes before, seemed to be slackening fast. There was even a tentative ray of sunshine through the clouds to announce the end of the storm.

  Avoiding Cassandra’s gaze, I turned to the professor and said, “The main thing is that unless it turns out to be a crazy coincidence, this raincoat proves your daughter’s expedition came this way.”

  There was a shadow of worry on the professor’s face.

  “Yes, that’s true,” he said as he stared at the four parallel slashes in the raincoat. “But what could’ve happened to them?”

  “Come on, Professor,” Cassie said, “don’t even think about it. Anything could’ve happened.” She held the raincoat out to him. “And anyway, if you look closely you’ll see there’s no blood in the cuts. So nobody could’ve been wearing it at the time.”

  “That’s true,” he said with obvious relief. Then he looked at Iak and asked, “Where did you find it, my friend? Was there anything else beside the raincoat?”

  The Menkragnoti shook his head.

  “Iak not see. Find right there,” he said pointing at the thick darkness at the end of the cave, “but not see nothing more.”

  To make sure, we walked a little further in with the faint light of my lighter, looking for signs of who could have been there and when. But after ten minutes of searching in the shadows without finding any other trace, we concluded that some animal must have dragged the jacket in. Some monkey had probably found it somewhere else.

  “The strange thing is,” the professor said as we walked back to the entrance of the cave, “that there don’t seem to be any monkeys around.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “The further on we go the fewer animals we see.” I turned to Iak, who was looking at the raincoat once more. “It’s kind of odd, don’t you think? Particularly seeing as there’s plenty of food here.”

  The Menkragnoti had his eyes fixed on the yellow raincoat for a long time. When he finally looked up, he said in a whisper, “This land of death… land of Morcegos. Animals hide from them.”

  “Land of death, you say? Doesn’t seem that way to me,” I lied through my teeth as I pointed outside. “This looks more like Paradise!”

  “Wait a minute,” the professor said, suddenly interested. “You say this is Morcego land? Then that means we’re not far from the Black City, are we?”

  The blue-eyed native shrugged his shoulders.

  “Iak only know that city of ancients in Morcego land and Morcego land, land of death.”

  I had been scratching my week-long beard, lost in my own thoughts, without paying attention to what the Menkragnoti was saying.

  “I was thinking that some monkey might’ve brought the raincoat here, but it couldn’t have found it very far away. This means that if Valeria took another path following the coordinates in the journal and passed by this cave—”

  “We’re near the coordinates of Z!” the professor concluded enthusiastically.

  At that moment we heard Cassie’s voice from outside the cave.

  “You may be right,” she said as she looked at the horizon without turning around. “You may be right…”

  More intrigued by her tone than her words, we walked out onto the terrace in front of the cave that overlooked all the surrounding area.

  The rain had stopped, with a few sporadic rays of lightning breaking through the clouds to illuminate small patches of the jungle. As a result, the raindrops that clustered in the tops of the tallest trees sparkled like sequins. From our privileged lookout some way above the canopy of the forest, we could see a landscape studded with small hills or ridges of different shapes and sizes, covered by trees and scattered in apparent chaos as far as the eye could see.

  Cassie pointed at a spot about
a third of a mile from the base of the cliff we were looking out from. She raised her arm up to the horizon and whispered,

  “There’s something there.”

  I followed her finger and finally noticed a strip of trees that looked somehow different, as if the vegetation there were less thick than in the rest of the jungle. At first I thought it was a river bed, because it wound around those mounds as a watercourse would. But there was something strange in that course… something that did not make sense. It took me a few minutes to identify it, and it baffled me.

  The striking line of trees Cassie was pointing at, which ended abruptly, about a couple of miles away, was absolutely, unmistakably, and inexplicably straight.

  35

  Forgetting all about eating, resting, or any suchlike trivialities, we climbed down the cliff using the same lianas and vines we had used on our way up. Once we could feel the ground under our feet, even though we slipped and slid on the soapy recently-formed mud, we went downhill till we reached its foot.

  As soon as we were on level ground again, we set out toward what we had seen from the mouth of the cave. Once again we moved in single file as we followed the course I had previously set with Jack Fawcett’s compass. Inside the jungle you can easily lose your sense of direction, and without an old and reliable compass—modern GPS systems don’t work under the jungle canopy— you end up walking in circles, or even in the opposite direction.

  Every time the wind shook the tops of the trees dozens of feet above our heads, a shower came down on us and the puddled ground around us. Small threads of water, as though from half-closed taps, ran down the trunks of the thickest trees.

  “A decent shower at last!” I joked as I looked up and spread my arms. “High time I got rid of all this mud!”

  “Suit yourself,” Cassie said at my back, “but I prefer the mud to the mosquitoes.”