All I wanted was to get up that tree, grab the ropes, reach the balloon, and escape from that hell.
“Hurry up!” Cassandra shouted. “They’re right behind you!”
I looked down and saw that the Morcegos had gotten over the explosion. Driven by an overflow of murderous rage, they had taken up the chase again.
I reached the level of the first branches and for a moment felt optimistic.
But then a powerful reek of putrefaction reached my nostrils, and I knew without needing to turn around that those remorseless creatures were at my heels.
With a renewed effort I grabbed the next branch, then heaved myself to my feet so that I could stand on it and reach the next one.
I was moving in darkness, tearing my clothes, scratching my skin, aware of the danger of slipping, falling, and breaking my skull. But this was a race against death, and there was no second place on offer.
Then beyond the crown of the tree I saw the silhouettes of my friends hanging from the balloon. For a second I wondered why they made no move to open fire on my pursuers.
It took me a moment to remember, grimacing to myself as I did so, that we had thrown the weapons overboard to lighten our weight.
But there was no use in crying about it.
Salvation was very close.
Unfortunately, the Morcegos were even closer.
Spurred on by the proximity of those snarling cries, I climbed up what I prayed would be the final branch of that apparently endless tree. It was a long thin branch, nearly vertical. I feared it might not hold my weight and would end up breaking.
Even so, I went on with my desperate climb. When I reached the end I saw a slipknot holding together a bunch of leaves. Taut from the pull of the balloon, it seemed on the brink of coming apart.
Cassie yelled once again, to warn me that they were only a couple of feet behind me.
Imagining a claw grabbing my ankle at the last minute, I reached for the rope, slipped the knot, and held on with both hands.
I held onto that rope with all I had left. Immediately the balloon began to rise, while I struggled not to let go.
I had saved myself by a hair’s breadth. Breathing out with relief, I looked up at Cassie and saw her return my smile… a smile that froze on her lips very fast.
She was looking behind me. I followed her gaze and saw what had made her expression change.
A Morcego had climbed to the top of the tree and was level with me, only a few feet away. He was getting ready to pounce on me.
I saw him flexing legs and arms to gather momentum. I was sure the distance was nothing for those powerful muscles. All I could do, for my part, was keep hold of the rope that was connecting me to the balloon. With my additional weight, it was rising much more slowly than before.
The Morcego fixed his enormous black eyes on me. Braying with rage, he leapt with his arms open ready to catch me.
But the ancient gods of the Black City seemed to have decided that I should live another day. At that moment, a gust of wind made the balloon drift a foot or two to one side. Not much, granted, but enough to ensure that the Morcego, unable to correct his course in midleap, found himself suddenly grasping empty air just inches away from his prey.
Unfortunately, while the Morcego arced through the air on his way down to the distant ground, in the course of one of his desperate gestures he managed to graze my right calf with his claws.
As if I had been cut not with claws but with four scalpels, my calf began to bleed from four clean gashes.
Ignoring the lacerating pain, biting back a cry, I managed to climb up the rope to my harness. Panting from the effort, I scrambled into it and fastened the straps. Then I tore one grimy pant leg off and tied it round my thigh to stop the bleeding.
It was only then that I dared look down.
Hundreds of black demons seethed below us in a delirious frenzy, like a scene from some painting by Bosch: growling, howling, roaring angrily, with their eyes on the patched-up flying bundle which was carrying us. They must have been as astonished as I was that our unlikely escape (worthy of Baron Münchhausen) had succeeded.
99
We rose fast into the air above the tallest trees, definitively safe at last from the Morcegos.
The sun gave out a final blood-red ray, as if to remind us of all the blood which had been shed in those mere four days we had spent in the Black City. Just at that moment I became fully aware of the fact that I had survived… against all odds.
This should have been a moment of happiness, but there was not a single gesture of victory or cry of exultation.
On the contrary, the three of us were sunk in a deep and sad silence.
Cassie was hanging in her harness at the front of the balloon (I noticed she was holding the little red backpack in her lap), the professor was in the middle, and I was at the end, behind everyone. So luckily what I had in front of me was the professor’s back, which meant I did not have to face him. There was no way I could have managed it.
Motionless, his face in his hands, my old friend was immersed in a pain I could not even begin to imagine.
As we flew over that sinister rainforest, I couldn’t avoid hearing his deep uncontrollable weeping. The horror of seeing a daughter die in such an abominable way could hardly be compared to anything else in the world.
There was nothing that could be said to comfort him. Least of all by me. Yet I had been there, and the gun Valeria had used to take her life had been in my hand when she pulled the trigger. And he was my friend, so what the hell!
“Eduardo…” I said in a low voice. “I… I’d like to…”
Despite the growing darkness I could see Cassie turn to face me with her finger on her lips as she shook her head.
She was probably right. So I fell silent, watching how we moved slowly further away from the silhouettes of the pyramids standing out above the trees like gloomy stone islets, and all visible trace of the Black City faded away into the shadows.
With the arrival of the true darkness of night, the stars invaded the sky like an army of disciplined glowworms, and at the same time the solid land disappeared utterly as if we were flying over empty space with nothing below our feet.
The professor’s disconsolate weeping gave way to a more stifled moaning with the occasional tormented groan, and finally to a series of sighs which stopped when he fell asleep at last in his harness.
For some reason, although I had hardly slept a wink the last two nights, sleep evaded me until early morning. I only managed to relax when I began to hear the familiar noise of animals waking up in the jungle, which had the soothing effect of a lullaby.
It was the final sign that we had left Morcego territory behind us for good.
Needless to say, the homemade balloon leaked hydrogen so that every time I had opened my eyes during the night I had the impression that the horizon was higher than before.
About midnight I estimated that our height had decreased noticeably, but still the wind pushed us on at fifteen or twenty miles an hour in a northwesterly direction. We were still six or seven hundred feet above the tops of the trees, illuminated by the comforting light of a huge moon which now shone over the infinite expansion of Amazonia with her cold steely light.
It was hours later, with the coming of daylight, that Cassie noticed some yellowish lights blinking on land about half a mile from us on the route we were following. We realized two things: that they were fires lit by human beings… and that we were going to pass them by.
I had no means of getting our clumsy zeppelin to descend, and I was very aware that this might be our first and last chance of rescue.
It was exasperating to see how we were coming closer and closer to those fires—which we could now tell came from a small village of wood and tin beside a wide peaceful river—and to know there was no way to stop our uncontrollable journey, which could easily take us several miles further.
“La gran chucha!” Cassie cried in frustration. “We’re going
to pass it by!”
“This damn pile of junk may take hours to lose all its gas,” I groaned as I looked at the belly of the balloon. “Who knows where we’ll end up!”
“Why didn’t you think of a landing system?” Cassie said. “This is really stupid!”
“Oh, forgive me, milady. Next time I’ll put in a minibar and reclining seats!”
“Don’t be a jerk! You should’ve thought of it before.”
To our surprise it was Professor Castillo who raised his voice over ours. “Cut it out!” he said, coming out abruptly from his lethargy. “The last thing we need to do right now is to start an argument.” He looked at both of us. “Can’t either of you think of a way to get us down?
An eloquent silence was our only reply.
“I know what we have to do,” Cassie said at last. “Except that I don’t know how.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s obvious. We have to make the hydrogen come out faster. The only problem is we’ve no way of doing it.”
Hanging from my stirrup, I looked up and decided there was only one way of doing it. “In that case,” I said with my teeth clenched, “we’ll just have to make one up.”
Although I had spoken to myself, they both heard me and turned their heads back. I took out my knife. Holding it high, I looked at them questioningly.
Guessing my intentions, they said nothing, and that was enough for me. Without getting out of my harness I heaved myself up the cord that joined me to the balloon. I wrapped my left leg around it and managed to free my right hand in order to wield the knife which I was holding between my teeth. I gave a final glance at my flying companions, who were watching spellbound, and in the face of their resigned expressions, raised my arm over my head and made a long cut in the parachute cloth. Hydrogen began to gush out immediately.
Once I had done this I let myself down again to my hanging position and was pleased to see our altitude lessening.
At first it was just as I had expected, but then somewhat faster than I would have liked… and in a matter of seconds we were losing altitude much faster than I would have liked.
To put it plainly, we were not descending: we were plunging.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I muttered as I guessed what was coming. “Please fasten your seatbelts, fold your trays, and put your seats in the upright position.”
The balloon stabilized its descent at a steep forty-five degrees. The canopy of the rainforest was coming closer at an increasing speed.
Far in front of us, I guess alerted by our voices, a couple of villagers poked their heads out of their huts, looked up at the early morning sky, and watched in awe as an unclassifiable flying vehicle hurled directly toward their village as a punishment from the sky.
They probably concluded that we were a group of shabby Martians in a cut-price flying saucer, about to land.
Not land, but bury itself more likely.
Ever faster, we were falling as though on a roller coaster where we knew there was no final upturn that would keep us from crashing into the ground.
The only thing that kept me hoping we would not end up like purée was the possibility that the balloon would get caught on the crown of one of the great trees that surrounded the area in front of the village. We were heading straight for it. If we got caught we would stay hanging there, possibly with some bones broken, but alive after all.
But when we were some thirty feet from the trees I realized that was not going to happen either.
We were going to pass the treetops, barely grazing the tallest ones with our feet, but we were not going to get caught in them.
We were definitely going to crash.
“Wrap up your legs with your arms and try to roll as soon as we land!” I yelled.
They paid no attention. As if hypnotized, the three of us watched the reddish earth getting ever closer. I knew that my advice was as useless as suggesting they flap their arms in order to gain altitude.
I already had my eyes fixed on the wooden hut we were going to hit at more than thirty miles an hour, when over its palm roof I focused on something I had completely overlooked.
The river.
If we fell in the water we could still save ourselves.
Except that if we went on the way we were going, we would be about sixty feet short of it.
There was nothing to do.
“The great chingada’s got us…” Cassandra said.
Or perhaps there was…
I looked at the knife I still had in my hand. Without thinking twice, I pressed the blade against the cord that fastened me to the balloon.
At that moment I was only thinking of saving Cassie and the professor, whose lives were more valuable to me than my own.
When we were already above the last of the trees that surrounded the village, with no time to say goodbye or give any warning, I cut the cable and dropped into emptiness. I hoped this would help them gain the extra few feet they needed to reach the river.
Then, brutally and methodically I proceeded to hit each and every one of the branches of that endless tree on my way down to the ground…
… and that is the last thing I remember of that morning.
I did not wake up until the afternoon, in the bottom of a canoe rowed by a pair of indigenous men. Every single bone in my body hurt as if I had been run over by a bulldozer.
100
I spent the next few days either sedated or unconscious, so that I only have sketchy memories of that time.
I remember being in a canoe, and then being carried on a stretcher through a thick forest, waking up on the deck of a ship, listening to the purring of the engines in contrast to children’s voices. I also remember the sympathetic smiles of the nurses when they moved me to change my sheets, asking me how I felt that morning… And in every one of those images, the faces of Professor Castillo and Cassie looking on me with ill-concealed worry.
I remember looking in a mirror and not recognizing myself: my face was purple and cut all over, bandages and strips of gauze covered my bruised body, and my left arm was in a sling.
I heard a doctor say I had been lucky and that it was a sheer miracle that I had survived a ninety-foot fall with just a dislocated arm, a concussion, a couple of torn ligaments, and six fractured ribs.
Crazy luck, I thought as the doctor recited in Portunhol a list of things I had to be careful about in the following months until my ribs had healed.
Shortly after, that same morning, I found myself in the elevator of the State Hospital of Santarem on my way to the ground floor to meet my two friends.
I hobbled to the waiting room on a crutch. When they saw me appear they jumped to their feet and ran to hug me as if they had not seen me in years.
“Careful with the ribs…” I started to say trying not to get them broken again.
They simply ignored me and crushed me until they were satisfied, then took a step back to look at me from top to toe.
“You look good,” Cassie said, lying through her teeth. She was wearing a light flowered dress that showed the bandage covering the bullet wound in her shoulder.
She did look good. In fact, not only healthy again but tanned as if she had been sunbathing. Her skin had a lovely golden color which contrasted with her blond hair and those emeralds she had for eyes.
“Can you walk?” the professor asked. He also looked like a new person. There was a sparkle of vim in his eyes, and he seemed full of energy and determination.
I did not know how, but I was sure Cassandra had contributed to the miracle. And also to the casual tropical clothes he was wearing, totally different from his usual reluctantly-retired professor’s attire. He had lost his glasses in the river when the balloon crashed, and the ones he wore now were modern and more colorful.
My desperate maneuver had worked after all.
Once I was gone, the balloon had moderated its fall due to the decreased weight and had finally crashed in the middle of the river on the other side of the vi
llage.
Although the blow had been violent, the difference between crashing in the water or against an adobe house is that in the first case you live to tell the story.
And there they were, both smiling in spite of everything.
During the previous days when they had come to visit me at the hospital, there had only been one opportunity when I tried to apologize to Eduardo for being unable to prevent what had happened to Valeria.
To my surprise, he interrupted me in midsentence to assure me that he had seen the whole thing and was grateful for what I had tried to do. He also asked me to not mention it again.
Cassie had been there too, and she had nodded almost imperceptibly to let me know that it was all right and that I should let it go for now.
I still could not imagine how deep the pain for his daughter’s horrible death might be for my old friend, but I understood that it would be a long and complex process. Any words of apology or comfort would only cause him more distress.
I decided not to mention the subject again unless he brought it up himself.
“Look at this,” Cassie said. She handed me a printed piece of paper which brought me back from my own thoughts.
“What is it?” I asked looking at a photo taken from the air of a wide expanse of rainforest.
“Look carefully,” the professor said pointing at a spot on the picture.
I needed a moment to identify a winding blue ribbon as a river and then, following Cassie’s finger, to make out a series of straight lines which were hard to distinguish at first but then impossible to miss.
The lines formed an irregular five-pointed star on a canvas of vegetation, with the unmistakable shape of a pentagon inside it. Exactly like the one we had seen so often in the Black City.
I took my eyes off the piece of paper with amazement on my face.
“Is this—?”
“Exactly that,” the professor replied, pleased.
“We got it from Google Earth,” Cassandra said. “I just entered the coordinates we had and… ta-da! There it was, unmistakable and impossible to miss once you know what you’re looking for.”
BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 44