by Alex Archer
Hammond cradled the ex-Marine’s body and followed.
Chapter 23
She was in a cave; she could tell that by the scent of the place, damp and fusty; beneath her fingers she felt rock worn smooth by water. She pushed herself up and her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Light was meager, coming from luminous lichen high on the walls. She couldn’t see the ceiling of the chamber; it stretched up as if to infinity. There were crude paintings of creatures she had no words for—monsters, grotesque beasts that resembled men only because they’d been drawn walking upright. There were bones, too, scattered on the floor like a child’s toys. Should she take the time to put them together?
She wasn’t alone. There was a man several feet away. He had long gray hair and looked like he might be a scholar, standing there studying her. He wasn’t dressed for the cave, as he was wearing a navy suit with a striped red tie and shiny black shoes. His companion was not dressed for this place either. A mere slip of a girl, she was barefoot and wearing old, ripped clothing. A most unusual pair.
Did she know them?
Father-daughter?
Grandfather-granddaughter?
Should she talk to them? She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She tried to approach them but discovered her feet would not move.
As she watched them, smoke curled up from the girl’s feet, and bright red flowers spread away. Not flowers, flames. The smoke grew thicker and she thought it would choke her, but it didn’t. She only smelled the musty scent of the old cave.
She wanted to scream at the man to help the girl. Her voice would not cooperate.
The elderly man did nothing except stare, and step farther away so the flames would not touch him. Again, Annja tried to move, and this time her feet glided forward over the smooth stone, the sensation against her soles oddly pleasing. One step, two, and then she was rushing toward the girl, intending to help her put out the fire. But in a heartbeat it had spread too quickly.
The girl was wholly engulfed, the blaze bright and fast, flaring white hot and then it was gone.
In its place a sword hovered, tip down. The Sword of Damocles?
“I’m dreaming,” she said. “This isn’t real.”
She opened her eyes and found only darkness.
Dark.
Dark.
Dark.
“Death is close to life,” someone had told her.
Was this death? Was death this lonely?
Instantly, she was not in a cave anymore, but she might as well have been given how dark it was. She felt damp ground beneath her. Her face was pressed against the forest loam. She pushed up and rolled herself over.
She wasn’t dead. She was confident death wouldn’t feel like this. It was neither heaven nor hell. She didn’t ache enough for this to be hell. It was a forest.
A sudden bang made her ask if the noise was gunfire. It was a familiar sound. If someone was shooting a gun, what were they firing at? There was nothing except utter blackness. What could they possibly see in order to shoot?
She breathed deep, pulling all the scents into her lungs. Plants, both vibrant and decaying, flowers, the musk of some animal, and blood. That latter scent was close. Was she bleeding? Sitting up and running her fingers up and down her legs and arms, she found a tear in her shirt and a tender streak where somehow she knew a bullet had passed by. It felt like the wound had closed. Still she smelled blood.
“Ouch.” There were needles in her. One in her back, one in her arm. She tugged them out and dropped them.
On her hands and knees, she explored her surroundings, finding the tendril of a knobby root, spongy fungus, bones of a bird.
Definitely a forest.
But it was so dark.
Was she blind? Was that why the world was so black? She panicked at that thought and scrabbled around faster, not knowing what direction she crawled in and bumping into things. Her head struck a tree. She felt around the trunk, papery, shaggy bark that pulled off in her fingers. She remembered the bark being red and that she’d drank it.
A cat snarled; it didn’t sound close, but it put her in more of a panic. Crawling faster, coming to another tree, she pulled herself up, tipped her head back. Water dribbled down and she opened her mouth for it.
“Ahhh.” Shuffling now, slow baby steps because there seemed to be roots and fallen branches almost everywhere. After a time she walked with more confidence, taking longer strides that brought her into a massive spider web, the sticky mass cocooning her. She batted it away, fought through it and started peeling it off her, feeling spiders run down her face and over the backs of her hands. She wasn’t afraid. Was that odd? That she wasn’t afraid of the spiders? A little farther, taking smaller steps again and holding her fingers out to avoid more webs. “What?” Her feet connected with something that yielded a little.
She crouched and explored it with her hands. It was a man, naked, a shaved head. He wasn’t breathing. Insects were crawling in his mouth and nose, and something had picked his eyes out. He smelled of being newly dead; his bowels had loosened. How did she know what new death smelled like?
There was a bullet wound in the center of his chest, and more bugs were feasting there, another wound of some sort in his shoulder. There was a hint of warmth to him, but not near as warm as a body should be. His limbs were stiff. Some warmth, and stiffness; he’d been dead probably eight hours, not more than twelve. How could she know that? Why would she know so much about death?
“Death and life are close,” someone had told her.
She thought the body should have made her nervous, freak out, but it didn’t. In fact, as the minutes flowed by, she started to relax. She was unfazed about dead bodies and spiders. What sort of person did that make her? A cat growled again, but a second joined it, creating a snarling chorus. There were two at least, maybe three, the sound was closer. Time to leave.
And go where in this dark?
It didn’t matter, she decided, away from here. Pick a direction. To her right, wherever that would take her, as it was away from the cats and the body. The cats were coming closer, growling, snarling, probably hunting. Leave the body for them; let the dead man serve a purpose. Overhead a nightbird cried, the tone long and beautiful. There was rustling in the branches, something small moving around, a bird perhaps? Likely it was nothing that would threaten her. She slogged forward, and fought against fingers that grabbed her from all directions, spiky, bone-sharp fingers that she realized were low-hanging tree branches. She forced herself to breathe slower. Count to twenty. She remembered numbers, at least.
Questions tumbled through her head as she crept through the blackness.
How did she get here?
How long had she slept?
Would there be an end to the dark?
Please, don’t let me be blind.
She thought she remembered other people, faces fleeting in her mind’s eye, women and men, the old man again that she’d seen in the cave in her dream.
Where was here?
Who was she?
She should know at least that last thing, right? A name. She needed a name. She had one, didn’t she? Didn’t everyone have a name?
Villages with no names. People with no names. Someone had said that to her.
Orellana came to the fore, a pretty word. Was that it? Was that her name? Orellana? It must be; all the other names that floated by belonged to men and did not make sense: Ned, Wallace, Ken, Hammond, Matt. Did she know them? Had they come to these woods with her? Had they brought her here? Abandoned her?
Her stomach felt empty. Thirsty and hungry, she tamped down those sensations. Getting out of here—wherever here was—came first. Get out of the dark.
She didn’t know how long she wandered, or if she was even going in a straight line. She supposed she might have been traveling in
circles, but she hadn’t come back to the body, hadn’t crossed paths with the big cats, and the trees she brushed against were different here—vines growing down all of them, some fragrant, some reeking. The noises were soft, birds, bats, frogs; nothing sounded large or threatening.
She paused and rubbed her legs, the muscles starting to protest. She’d been walking a long while. A thought came and she searched her pockets, thinking she might find something to trigger a memory. There was nothing.
Farther and a band of gray encroached on the blackness.
Farther, and she came to a break in the canopy, where meager light fell with warm, soft rain. She stood in the center of it, letting it wash away the dirt and sweat, drinking it. Her clothes were so plastered against her they were a second skin, the water seeping into her boots. The leather was sodden. Birds soared across the scant space of sky, charcoal smudges against the gray. The air was fresher here, and she sucked it in so deep she thought her lungs were full.
When her legs cramped from standing so still for so long she picked a tree and climbed it—not so difficult a thing. She’d obviously done this before. She intended to wait for the better part of morning to come when a little color would creep in, hoping the rain might stop. Though everything seemed so terribly wet and verdant that maybe the rain never stopped.
She was at the lowest branch when she saw something move across the small clearing. It was a snake, big and long. As it slithered across the space she guessed it was more than twenty feet long. Anaconda...that she had a name for it and not for herself was perplexing. She almost went down to get a better look; she wasn’t afraid of it.
Maybe she didn’t fear anything. Maybe fear was a choice, and she’d banished it.
She must have dozed because the next thing she realized the sky was a pale blue and the rain had stopped. Her back ached from the position she’d wedged into against the trunk, and her neck felt stiff. She worked out a kink and climbed down and decided that she’d travel in the direction the snake had slithered. The forest was dark, but not black like last night; some light filtered down. A place of shadows, then. Where it was brightest she found a tall bush with glossy green leaves and fruit. Something had been eating it; she saw pieces of the skin on the ground.
So hungry. When had she eaten last?
Once more, names infiltrated her thoughts—Orellana again, Amanda, Marsha, Joan. The last name lingered. Was her name Joan? She rubbed at her temples. Joan sounded good, but it wasn’t right. Orellana sounded better, like music.
What’s wrong with me? she wanted to shout, but stopped herself. Something inside told her to be careful. The dead man she’d found last night...she wondered if she could find him again. Maybe he held a clue to her identity and then she could figure out why she was here, and just where “here” was.
Food first. The fruit was sweet and juicy, reminding her of strawberries, but it wasn’t quite the same. The flavor was stronger because it was so fresh. She stuffed her face with it, and then pressed on, discarding the notion of searching for the dead man. Something bad had happened there, and she wanted no part of it.
Though she couldn’t remember anything, she knew that she revered life.
Death waited back the way she’d come.
Still hungry, she found fist-sized fruit growing on a prickly vine. The vines nearby had been stripped, and some of the trees had been tapped. There were places where things had been dug up, some sort of roots collected judging by the size of the holes. Edible? Who’d been doing the digging? For some reason the “who” mattered. For some reason the “who” made her hands itch.
She had to work to open the pod. Inside was a yellow gelatinous pulp. Hesitating only a moment, she dug her fingers in and tasted. Not as sweet as the red fruit, but equally delicious. There was a veritable banquet in the forest.
Rainforest.
Suddenly she had a better word for this place.
Amazon.
An even better name.
She walked farther and came to a stream, orange-like fruit growing on vines that draped from branches into the water. Tiny monkeys played along the branches; watching her and quickly losing interest, they resumed their game. A bird the color of the fruit regarded her curiously and made a shrill sound.
She took off her boots and sat on the spongy bank. The light was even brighter here, the morning aging, and her heart seizing up when she saw her feet and hands. They were blue.
The panic she’d felt the night before returned and doubled, her throat tightening. She’d looked dark in the clearing, her hands dark when she’d foraged for fruit. But blue? She was ill, maybe dying.
Fear seized her, but she pushed it away.
She was not sick. She felt good. There was another explanation.
She gulped in the air and scrubbed at herself. People were not blue. She might have no memory of herself, but she knew people did not come in this color. Maybe she was dreaming. Dreams could feel real, couldn’t they? But this would be a nightmare.
No fear. She chose not to be afraid.
“Someone came this way.” It was a man’s voice. She jumped up and grabbed her boots, whirled toward the voice and listened. “She came this way. I was certain she was dead. She got hit by the poison dart, just like Matt. Two darts in her. Why the hell didn’t the poison kill her? The poison took Matt and he was healthy as a bear.”
“The poison should have killed her,” a second man said.
“Matt had her beat in body weight by probably forty pounds.”
“Maybe she didn’t get as big a dose.” This from the second man. “But you told the boss she was dead.”
She moved behind a fern, staying in the stream, knowing there’d be no tracking her in the water. How did she know that?
“Yeah, I told the boss she was dead. She should be dead.”
“Then she is dead, Ham.”
“Like hell. Here’s her footprints. And here, she stopped to eat.”
She moved farther up the stream, quiet, listening, wondering how the men knew her...and did she in turn know them?
“Don’t you get it? We just have to tell Dillon she’s dead. Regardless of whether or not she’s really dead, we have to say it. He’s paranoid. He’s going to send all of us out here looking for her. Can’t have her running to the authorities, he’ll say. And if he has us all out here, how are we going to get our treasure? And how are we going to make obscene amounts of money if we’re not getting the treasure?”
She could tell the men had stopped. She stopped, too, breathing shallowly, feeling a snake float by at her ankles and forcing herself to be still.
“I don’t like lying to the boss.”
“And how is it lying, Ham? If she’s not dead now, she’s going to be. A woman by herself in the rainforest. Caiman, snakes, leopards, you name it. Oh, those pretty little frogs. Those frogs’ll kill you quick as anything. Something’s going to get her. If she’s not dead now, she will be before the day is out.”
“All right. All right, she’s dead. We’ll tell Dillon she’s dead. He’s going to want to see the body, though. We’ll have to come up with a story.”
“That’s my Ham. We’ll say we didn’t find much of her, animals had gotten to her. And we tossed the pieces that were left in the river. Not enough to bring back. We’ll haul Nate’s bug-riddled carcass back, and the native, too. Two bug-infested corpses. That ought to satisfy Dillon, you think?”
“All right, we’ll say we didn’t find enough of her to bring back. I’m thinking I like the sound of that. I want Nate buried, like Matt. He deserves that. He doesn’t deserve ending up in the belly of some critter.”
“Okay, Ham. I’ll help you bury him.”
Ham. The man’s name was Hammond, she remembered that much.
She also remembered that she most certainly didn’t like him.
Chapter 24
Roux had lived enough centuries and been to enough places that nothing really set him aback anymore. But the village he waded ashore to came close to doing just that. Few of the villagers wore clothes, and none of them appeared to speak English, French, Portuguese or any other language he tried...until finally a pair of Americans emerged from the forest. He talked the captain into tying the boat to a tree and waiting.
“For as long as it takes,” Roux said. “I will pay you well, no matter how long this takes.”
The captain agreed and settled back to nap.
“Yeah, we know Annja Creed,” Moons said. “You her father?”
“No.”
“Grand—”
“I’m a friend.”
“She’s awesome, Annja. Interviewed us for her television program. She’s going to get the plight of the rainforest out there. She’s going to help us spread the word. She’s gonna help us bring down Dillon Pharmaceuticals.”
Edgar elbowed her. “Annja said no guarantees.”
Moons gave him a dirty look.
Roux endured their explanation of Annja going to the pharma camp with them. The woman—Moons she said her name was—struck him as a teenager, though he could tell she was in her mid-twenties. He politely listened while they expounded upon how badly the men at the pharmaceutical camp were hurting the rainforest by overharvesting. Then when they came up for air, he asked, “Where is Annja now?”
Moons and Edgar shrugged.
“I know she’ll be coming back,” Moons volunteered. “She stayed when the boat left, put her stuff in D’jok’s hut, then took off into the forest, probably going back to that awful camp. We didn’t see her leave, otherwise me and Edgar would have went with her. We went anyway, but she had a head start. Couldn’t find her. Didn’t see her at the camp, and we knew not to get too close. It’s a big forest, and—”
“You could just wait with us,” Edgar suggested. “She’ll come back. You involved with her television show? Are you that producer Doug she mentioned?”