Mutation

by Roland Smith

  He didn’t have to tell them. They could see a fried monkey and a cooked parrot clinging to the mesh. Along the top of the fence, every thirty feet or so, were video cameras that swiveled as they passed. In between the cameras were small satellite dishes pointed up at the canopy.

  Luther wanted to shout “What is this?” But he didn’t because Butch would probably answer by shooting him in the back of the head. His only choice was to follow Wolfe’s silent lead, acting like it was as common to discover a seemingly endless electrified fence in the middle of a rain forest as it would be to find biting insects.

  They passed five more dead monkeys, several scorched birds, a toasted three-toed sloth, and some kind of dead deer that had made the mistake of munching a leaf too close to the mesh. After about a mile, they came to a stop in front of a small gate, barely distinguishable from the rest of the fence, with a small red light flashing above it. Butch punched in a number on a keypad attached to the gate. There was an audible click, a green light came on, and the gate swung open.

  “Don’t touch the frame as you enter,” Butch said, as if he didn’t care whether they touched the frame or not.

  They filed through, and the gate swung closed behind them. Butch punched in a number on a second keypad on the inside of the gate and the light turned from green to red. Once inside, the Trips visibly relaxed after they passed through the gate, breaking ranks and chattering in their strange language. It was clear that they felt safe now. Even Butch seemed more relaxed and almost cheerful.

  “Done deal now, Wolfe. Endgame. No escape.”

  Wolfe said nothing.

  “You can talk now,” Butch said. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. I’m happy to answer them. I’ll consider it a condemned man’s last request.”

  Wolfe continued walking without a word. Luther had a million questions, first among them: Where are we, and what’s going to happen to us? But he didn’t get to ask them because Wolfe broke his silence.

  “What is this place?”

  Butch laughed, sounding more like hyena snorting than an actual human.

  “The original Ark.”

  “World War Two,” Wolfe said.

  “Good guess.”

  “Cryptos Island had a similar fence around it when Ted and I started things up there. We took it down.”

  “Maybe you should have left it up to keep out unwanted visitors.”

  “Maybe,” Wolfe said casually.

  Luther was surprised at the tone of the conversation. Wolfe was acting like Butch was giving him a tour of a resort property, totally ignoring the fact that their wrists were tied, the tour guide had a gun, and his friends had clubs, spears, and blowpipes.

  “You’ve done some upgrades with the cameras and sat dishes.”

  “Gotta keep up with technology,” Butch said. “You know that better than anybody. Of course, when the technology fails, you’re kind of screwed. That’s when a good old-fashioned electric fence comes in handy.”

  “And an infinite number of people to keep the fence in good repair,” Wolfe said.

  “You got that right. You wouldn’t believe the number of man-hours it takes to keep the fence up and the juice flowing through it.”

  Luther suddenly realized what Wolfe was doing. He’s taking advantage of Butch’s good mood and milking him for information like a contented cow.

  “German made?” Wolfe asked.

  “Certainly not Brazilian or U.S.,” Butch said.

  “Nazis?”

  “They paid for it and helped build it, but they’re long gone now.”

  “What does Noah do here?”

  Butch snorted again. “A better question would be, what doesn’t Noah do here?”

  “Okay, then,” Wolfe said. “How long has Noah been operating down here?”

  “His entire life,” Butch said. “Noah Blackwood was born here. So was Rose.”

  This caused a hitch in Wolfe’s stride, which caused Luther to plow into his back, which caused Butch to pull his pistol and the Trips to raise their spears, blowpipes, and bows. Luther put his cuffed hands over his face and waited for the end.

  “No need for that,” Wolfe said.

  Luther peeked out between his fingers and found himself looking down the barrel of Butch’s gun. Four or five seconds passed; no one moved or breathed. It felt like four or five hours to Luther. Then Butch gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head, and the Trips slowly lowered their weapons.

  Butch glared at Luther. “Lucky,” he said. He shifted his gaze to Wolfe. “Stop again and you’re both dead. Walk.”

  Butch went silent. The cow had gotten cranky, which ended the tour, at least the narrative part of it, leaving Luther and Wolfe to fill in the blanks themselves by looking around as they walked.

  The compound was gigantic. Luther strained to see the fence line through the tangle to get an idea of the layout, but it seemed to have disappeared. The trail led them to a narrow, muddy road covered with wheel ruts, which meant there were vehicles inside the compound.

  That means there has to be a road leading here, which means civilization can’t be more than a gas tank away. Or maybe not …

  He’d seen satellite photos of the jaguar preserve and the surrounding area, and there hadn’t been any roads. The nearest town was a hundred miles downriver, and the only way to reach it was by boat, floatplane, or helicopter.

  But if they didn’t drive, how did they get the vehicles here? Who takes care of the vehicles?

  He couldn’t imagine any of the Trips crawling under a four-by-four to change the oil.

  Where do they get their gas? Their food?

  The answer to his last question lay around the next bend in the road. They came upon a huge clearing planted with fruit trees, vegetable gardens, and fields of grain and corn. There were at least a dozen people tending the gardens. The workers couldn’t miss them walking down the rutted road, but oddly, not one of them even glanced in their direction. The other odd thing was the sunlight. Now that they had emerged from under the canopy, it was as if the whole area ahead of them lay under a shadow, but there was nothing close to the road or the clearing to cast a shadow that big.

  Luther looked up. Two hundred feet above him, stretching as far as he could see, was some kind of barrier, but it didn’t look like it was made out of fabric. It shimmered, and seemed to undulate, or move, like a weird force field. This might explain why the area didn’t show up on satellite or GPS. Blackwood had invented some kind of new technology.

  Or else he swiped it from the Nazis. Luther shook his head. Don’t be stupid! There weren’t satellites during World War Two, or computers, or iAnything back then. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that Blackwood was a member of the Hitler Youth…. Luther shook his head again. Hitler was long gone by the time Blackwood was born, but there were Nazis running all over South America after the war, weren’t there? Didn’t a bunch of them go into hiding down here to escape prosecution? Luther wished he’d paid more attention during history class at OOPS. If Blackwood could make this compound disappear off the face of the earth, knocking out our satellite and cell signals was probably a cinch. Noah is more tech savvy than we thought. Wolfe and Ted underestimated him. We all underestimated him.

  The road ended at a lake that was maybe half a mile across. On its banks was a small village populated by men, women, and children. Unlike the field workers, they were very interested in the new arrivals. They were all armed with spears, crude knives, bows, and fierce threatening expressions, including the little kids, who had the fiercest expressions of all. The villagers formed two lines down to the lake. Butch pushed Wolfe and Luther down the aisle between them. Luther wasn’t sure what creeped him out more … the fact that the villagers all appeared to be triplets, or that they didn’t utter a sound as he and Wolfe passed by.

  Luther looked up. The shimmering sky shield stretched all the way across the lake, casting a dusky light over the water. Ahead of them, a small dock with a coupl
e of boats tied to it jutted into the lake. At the lake’s center was an island housing a large concrete building surrounded by rain forest.

  Butch pointed to one of the boats. “Get in.”

  Luther climbed in behind Wolfe and sat down on the bench seat near the bow.

  “We’ll be fine,” Wolfe said under his breath.

  For the life of him, Luther couldn’t think why Wolfe would say this. They were being held hostage by Butch McCall inside a former Nazi compound that no one knew existed.

  The motor started up and the boat puttered slowly toward the island.

  “Don’t look at me,” Wolfe said. “Nod if you can hear me.”

  Luther gave him a slight nod.

  “The motor is louder where Butch is. This might be our only chance to talk, but I’m going to do the talking. Don’t say anything.”

  Luther gave him another nod.

  “Butch would have already killed us if Noah wanted us dead. We’re okay on that front for now, but it’s important you don’t do anything to antagonize him.”

  Luther nodded, but he wasn’t convinced. Raul hadn’t antagonized Butch, and look where it had gotten him.

  “Everyone is looking for us,” Wolfe continued. “They’re not going to stop until they find us. Eventually, they’re going to stumble across this compound.”

  Luther had to bite his lower lip to stop himself from saying “Like we just stumbled across it seventy years after it was built? Butch led us here!” Wolfe was treating him like a little kid, which is what adults always did when they were scared out of their wits. Noah Blackwood was not a step ahead of them, he was a hundred miles ahead of them. It was almost as if he had lured the entire Cryptos crew down here. What better place to get rid of them than at a place that didn’t exist?

  “What I’m saying is that we need to cooperate,” Wolfe whispered. “Or at least appear to cooperate. That’s our only —”

  The boat rocked to one side as a large head burst out of the water with a mouth full of what looked like a thousand sharp teeth and twenty feet of armored body behind it. The creature’s jaws snapped closed with a harsh sound as loud as a firecracker. Butch swerved the boat so they didn’t collide with it.

  “Nessie!” Luther shouted. He couldn’t help himself. He looked back at Butch, expecting to be shot, but Butch had his hand on the tiller and an actual smile on his face.

  “Not quite,” he shouted above the noise of the engine. “Giant alligator. You think you’re the only ones who have cryptids? Noah Blackwood invented cryptids. The only reason these monsters are still here and not at one of the Arks is that Noah hasn’t figured out how to get the behemoths out of here.”

  “There’s more than one?” Luther asked.

  “The lake’s full of them.”

  Luther turned back, but the giant gator was gone. He looked at Wolfe, who was scanning the lake.

  “Interesting,” he whispered.

  “You think?” Luther whispered back.

  Butch maneuvered the boat alongside the island’s dock.

  “Out.” He waved his pistol at them. “And no funny stuff.”

  Luther didn’t know about Wolfe, but he wasn’t in a funny mood, and with their hands tied on a remote island patrolled by a lake full of monsters, what could they do?

  Butch tied up the boat and hustled them along the dock and up a short set of stairs to a dirt path. The path led up a hill through thick rain forest and ended at a cement two-story building that looked like it could withstand a nuclear blast. Its sides were covered in creepers and vines, giving it the appearance of an ancient ruin. A humming sound emanated from somewhere inside, loud enough to make it feel like the ground was vibrating. They stopped in front of a foreboding steel door. It was twenty feet square and looked to Luther like the kind of door you only passed through once, because you never came out again. A pair of cameras above the door frame whirred in their direction and scoped them like sights on a rifle. He wondered if Noah Blackwood was staring at them from the safety of his Seattle Ark, and gloating.

  Butch punched in a code and the door slid open like a giant elevator, revealing a long, dimly lit, concrete hallway. It looked like a World War Two version of Noah’s underground warren at the Seattle Ark. The humming had gotten louder. Luther figured it was coming from their power plant.

  But where do they get the fuel to power it?

  “Keep your eyes open,” Wolfe whispered. “Memorize everything. Try —”

  “Shut up!”

  Butch pushed them inside. The door slid closed behind them.

  Marty stopped and pulled his Gizmo out.

  “What are you doing?” Grace asked.

  “Checking my email,” Marty snapped. “What do you think I’m doing?”

  Grace was surprised at her cousin’s outburst. Marty was sarcastic and smart-alecky, but never snappish.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Let me think … Everyone we know is either dead or missing, including my parents and my best friend. We’re relying on a pair of dinosaurs to lead us to Luther, and trying to outsmart a platoon of killers using a bot, which I can’t fly back to check on them because then they would know that they aren’t following a couple of dinosaurs. Oh … And Ted is broken down on the Amazon River with a retired FBI agent, who’s probably fishing because there’s nothing else for him to do.”

  “Is that all,” Grace said, smiling.

  He gave her an angry glare, and for a second she thought it was going to stick, but it morphed into a lopsided grin.

  “Yeah,” he said. “So things aren’t too bad.”

  The optimistic Marty was back. “That’s what I was thinking,” Grace said.

  He sat down and turned the Gizmo on. Grace joined him on one side. Dylan sandwiched him on the other. The little screen came to life. The dragonspy was perched on a branch about twenty feet above the ground, looking down. Something moved below it. Marty zoomed in.

  “Three-toed sloth,” he said.

  Its long moss-colored hair and slow-motion movement made it almost invisible.

  “What’s it doing?” Grace asked. “I thought they were arboreal.”

  “That means tree-dwelling,” Marty informed Dylan.

  “I know what arboreal means!” Dylan said.

  Marty grinned and looked back at Grace. “Potty break,” he said. “They come down once a week to poop.”

  “Wow,” Dylan said. “That’s constipated.”

  “No kidding,” Mary said. “Especially when you consider that all they eat is vegetable matter.”

  “Speaking of which,” Dylan said, “we haven’t seen any dino poop in miles. They’re running on empty.”

  Marty continued stare at the sloth. “They carry their babies on their backs. When the baby gets older, they give their territory to them and find a new one for themselves. I’d guess this takes a while, because they’re slowest mammal on earth. But the weird thing is, they can swim. They use those long-clawed arms to stroke across —”

  “Can we get back the people trying to kill us?” Grace interrupted.

  “Oh yeah, those guys,” Marty said. “The problem is that I don’t exactly know where they are. I think they’re somewhere behind the dragonspy. But if I fly the bot back to them for a peek, they’ll think the hatchlings are within catching distance.”

  “So?” Grace asked.

  “So …” He thought for a minute. “So, I guess you have a point. Even if they figure out that the tracking tags aren’t in the hatchlings anymore, they’ll have no idea how we’re moving the tags around. They don’t know about the dragonspy. It’ll blow their minds.” Marty looked at Dylan. “What do you think?”

  Dylan shrugged. “Your plan to lead them off a cliff probably isn’t going to work. Might as well try to drive them crazy. If nothing else, it will be fun to watch.”

  “First I have to find them,” Marty said. “And we won’t be able to watch them for long. We need to keep looking for Luther and the others.”r />
  He gave the three-toed sloth its privacy.

  * * *

  Yvonne wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold up. She felt as though the rain forest was slowly melting her. She was covered in scratches and insect bites. Salty sweat stung her open wounds, and she was certain that some of the nicks were going septic. But this was not the worst of her problems. Her legs felt like they were rooted to the ground, and every step she took was an agony of cramped muscle tissue. She began to think that Noah Blackwood had sent her to the rain forest to be walked to death.

  The three men with her were also covered in sweat, bitten, and scratched, but it seemed to have no effect on them. They moved through the painful tangle, laughing and joking with one another as if they were spending a casual day at a park.

  “You sure your telemetry gear is working?” Spike asked.

  “Yes,” she said with effort.

  “Then I take it your hatchlings are birds.”

  “They’re not birds.”

  “It would be helpful if you told us what they are so we know what to look for.”

  Yvonne stopped walking, not sure she had the breath to move and speak at the same time.

  “We’re following their signal, not their trail,” she said slowly. “Obviously, they’ve taken a different path from ours. The last time I looked, we were gaining on them.” She took her tracking antenna out, grateful for a chance to stand still. She held the antenna over her head and looked down at the small screen. The hatchlings were on the move again. She was disappointed until she realized that they were moving toward them. “Look!”

  The men gathered around her. The hatchlings were less than a mile away, moving rapidly in their direction.

  “Spread out,” Spike ordered. “We’ll set up a picket line.”

  “Tranquilizer guns,” Yvonne said. “Aim for big muscles so you don’t damage vital organs. You harm a hatchling, you’re dead.”

  And I’m dead, too, she thought grimly as she took up a position behind a fallen tree.

  “What about the people with them?” Spike asked into her earpiece.

  Yvonne had never set up an ambush in her life. What am I doing here? I’m an animal trainer, not a soldier.