by Nick Thacker
Julie watched as the flattened shape of a triangular tent unfolded from the bundle. Ben and Archie attempted to roll out the tent from Ben’s pack in a similarly practiced fashion, but lacked the flourish of Reggie’s throw. Eventually, all three tents were laid out on the ground in the small clearing. The bags each had two small poles inside, and Julie helped assemble one of them for Ben. Reggie was busy tying a section of climbing rope to a tree he had found at the edge of their clearing.
“These are brand new,” he said. “They are hanging tents, sort of a combination of hammocks and tents. They’re a little heavier than I prefer, and a bit big, but they’re pretty spacey inside, enough to cram four adults in each if you have to. They’re expensive, too, so I expect that you will take good care of them.”
Ben and Archie looked at Reggie incredulously. Julie herself was a little surprised by the statement, and she found herself eyeing the tents suspiciously. Carlo, who hadn’t said a word since his captain had been eaten, didn’t seem fazed by Reggie’s statement, but then again, Julie wasn’t even sure if he’d understood what he’d said.
“They’re called Stingrays,” Reggie said, completely oblivious to the stares he was getting from the group. “Tentsile makes them. Great company, and a fine product. I sell these back home — they’re a huge hit.”
“I’ve never slept in a hammock before,” Ben said.
“Well, you’re missing out,” Reggie said. “And these aren’t just hammocks, mind you — they’re like a little piece of insulated utopia. Protection from bugs and insects, not to mention weather.”
“And you think they’ll hold all of us?”
“I know they will,” Reggie answered. “Here, help me with this.” He stretched out a corner of the three-cornered tent and carried it to a tree across the clearing, then tied the end to another section of rope. Ben grabbed the third corner and walked toward another tree on the other side. “Each one can hold plenty of human weight, plus gear. I’ve stacked five of these babies up, one on top of the other, before. Fifteen people sleeping in a little tent tower in the middle of the jungle.”
Julie listened to Reggie and watched as he tied the knots to secure the corners of the tent to the tree. The man lit up as he talked about his equipment; he was clearly in his element. He wore the same characteristic smile as he tied and secured all three corners, showing Ben how to use the clasps. When all three corners were fastened, he tightened the tent’s lines and the first tent lifted off the ground.
Julie was impressed. The apple-green floor of the tent was about four feet off the jungle floor, safely out of reach of any of the unwelcome visitors she imagined might want to visit them at night. It looked very secure, and the ratchet-tightened lines seemed more than strong enough to hold them all. She watched as Reggie jumped onto one of the lines, holding onto the trunk of the tree it was fastened around, and threw the line of a second tent around it, five or so feet higher. He continued this process for the other two corners, and the second tent rose, suspended in midair above the first tent.
“It’s really cool and all,” Julie said, “but how do we get in?”
Reggie tightrope-walked across one of the lines and dove into the top tent. He reappeared a moment later and threw down to the ground a ladder made of nylon. Satisfied, he stepped out of the tent feet-first and descended the ladder.
“Any other questions?” He asked.
Julie shook her head. She couldn’t help but smile. It was really lucky we found you, she thought. She glanced over at Ben, who was leaning against one of the trees, looking at Julie. To anyone else, his face was unreadable. To Julie, it was judgment. She imagined what he was thinking right now.
You seem impressed with Reggie.
Do you like Reggie more than you like me?
I can keep us alive just as well as Reggie can.
She smiled at Ben, then turned and walked toward Amanda.
“How you holding up?” She asked.
Amanda frowned. “Everyone keeps asking me that,” she said. “How do you think I’m doing?”
Julie tried to hide her surprise at the outburst, but failed. “I — I’m sorry.”
She started to walk away, but then Amanda spoke from behind her. “No,” Amanda said, “I’m sorry. This whole trip, this ridiculous journey, it all seems so…” she struggled to find the words.
“Unreal?”
“Yes, exactly. I mean, only a week ago we were finalizing the study that I was going to submit to a few university research programs, and then…”
Julie returned to Amanda and grabbed her wrist. She didn’t realize until then how small and frail the woman seemed. “Listen, whatever happens out here, just know that we are with you on this. I know it’s not much consolation, but Ben and I have been through something similar.”
“No, that’s actually helpful. None of this seems real to me, I think. The boat, that crocodile thing, and Reggie, acting like nothing happened. And I’m the reason we’re all out here doing this.”
“You can’t think like that,” Julie said. “As much as you think it’s true, it’s not. This company that’s after us, if they’re who we think they are, isn’t going to stop until one of us figures out the solution to this puzzle. Even then…” Julie hesitated, not wanting to talk herself into a corner.
Amanda smiled. “It’s okay,” she said. “I get it. I might be naïve, but I see the writing on the wall. We are all out here chasing some weird anomaly, hoping to God it turns out to be something real so we don’t waste our time and energy dying in the middle of the jungle. Even then — even if we find something — they’re not going to just let us walk away from this.”
Julie nodded. There was nothing else to say. Amanda was right — none of them had any idea how they were going to get out of this alive. She watched Amanda’s eyes for another few seconds, noticing how much older they suddenly seemed. The woman was incredibly smart, but she knew how helpless and hopeless she felt.
“Just know that you’re not alone in this,” Julie said. “You’re in good hands here, with Reggie I mean.” She started to walk away, but Amanda stopped her.
“Hey,” the woman said. Julie looked back at her. “We’re all in good hands here with Ben, too. I mean, he’s a great guy.” Amanda’s eyes flicked back and forth, and Julie could tell she was struggling to find the correct words. “Not that… I mean, back at the boat…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Julie said. “Not your fault.” Julie said it, but she wasn’t entirely sure she believed it. The woman standing in front of her, for as small and fragile as she seemed now, was stunningly beautiful. Her hair fell in all the right places, providing a perfect frame for a face that was a mixture of youthfully cute and respectably gorgeous. Julie felt a quick flare of jealousy, but forced it away.
“You ladies ready to get some sleep, or would you rather stand by that tree all night?”
The sound of Reggie’s voice grated on Julie’s ears. She felt embarrassed, but turned and looked at the man. “No, sorry, we’re ready.”
Reggie grinned. “Good deal. Let’s roll. You two can share a tent, then Carlo and Paulinho, then Ben and Archie can have this bottom one.” He motioned at each tent as he explained who would be occupying each.
“What about you?” Julie asked.
“I’m going to kick it in a hammock,” he answered, pointing at a long, black hammock he’d tied just underneath the bottom tent. “Makes a better sleeping arrangement for me, personally.”
Amanda was already climbing the ten or twelve feet straight up to the top tent, and Julie waited until she was completely inside before she started up the ladder. Once inside, she was again surprised at how spacious the interior of the small shelter was. The ceiling was a few feet above her head, not enough to stand up in, but providing enough height to make the dwelling feel larger than it was. Julie found a blanket on her side of the tent, and she wasted no time getting comfortable.
She hadn’t even removed her shoes before she wa
s drifting off into a deep sleep.
39
“BEN, WAKE UP.”
BEN JOLTED upright in the tiny Stingray tent, causing the entire nylon structure to wiggle and writhe under his shifting weight. He rubbed his eyes and looked over at Archie. The older man snorted once, but seemed to still be fast asleep. Ben turned and looked at the small opening in the tent door that had been partially unzipped.
“Hurry up,” Reggie said. “We need to keep moving. Get him up too, would you?”
Ben rubbed his eyes again, tapped Archie and pointed at Reggie, then began making his way to the tent door. He slid out feet first, searching for the rungs of the nylon ladder. Finding them, he descended the ladder and hit the ground. He could hear Archie working through the same groggy procedure, working out tired muscles and a fatigued body, no doubt struggling even more so due to his extra decades of wear and tear.
Reggie had already rolled and packed two of the Stingray tents, and he was waiting near Ben and Archie’s to finish the third.
Ben stretched, attempting to force his body awake. “Reggie, come on,” he said. “It’s… what time is it?”
Reggie grinned. “Don’t worry about the time. Out here, day is night and night is day.”
“Seriously though,” Ben said, I’m too tired for riddles. What does that even mean?”
“It means you’ve only been sleeping for a couple hours,” Reggie said, still grinning. “Follow me.”
Ben saw the others — Julie and Amanda, Paulinho and Carlo — already waiting for him and Archie, the last to wake. Ben shook his head in disbelief, still surprised by how tired he felt, but he knew from experience that once he was moving and warming up he’d feel much better.
Archie finally made his way out of their Stingray and to the waiting group. “Anyone make coffee?” he asked.
Paulinho and Amanda smiled, but Ben was still too tired to be amused. Julie seemed to be in a daze, and Ben didn’t have the courage to see if she was still fuming at him for his interaction with Amanda back on the boat. He left her alone and waited to see what Reggie’s plan was.
“Actually,” Reggie said, digging for something from one of the backpacks, “Eat these. Helps with alertness, fatigue, hunger, pretty much everything. Be gentle — they tend to get me a little worked up if I get too big a handful.” He tossed the small plastic bag to Archie, who grabbed a small green leaf from the bag and popped it into his mouth. When he was finished, he passed the bag around the group. Ben reached in and took two leaves, pocketing one.
“What are they?” Ben asked, chewing the plant.
“Coca leaf,” Reggie said.
Ben stopped chewing.
Reggie laughed. “Perfectly safe, in small doses. 1% cocaine alkaloid per, typically. Which means it’s enough for the US government to lose their mind when it comes to importing it, so it’s damn near impossible to find… in the United States. But don’t get addicted; it’s an expensive habit.”
Reggie had the last Stingray down and Ben and the others did what they could to help him roll it and pack it into one of the backpacks, still wet from the river. Ben swung the backpack over his shoulder and closed his eyes, silently willing the little leaf’s drug to take effect.
He listened to the early morning jungle. It was still dark, but the animals around him were already beginning to get a head start on their day. He could pick out a few of the birds’ individual calls to one another, but most of the more distant noises seemed to be just a surround sound mix of jungle life. It was peaceful, but there was an ominous undercurrent to the high-pitched symphony — he knew that some of the birdcalls, as beautiful as they might be, weren’t the singsong melodies of courtship but instead the warning klaxons of imminent danger.
Ben knew part of this paranoia was based in his own fear of their situation, and his growing level of discomfort as they journeyed farther and farther from civilization. He chided himself for the feeling, knowing that most of his life he’d been consumed by nature, feeling more at home in the presence of tall trees and deep, silent woods, but he also understood that there was another reason for feeling unsettled: they were being hunted.
So far, the mercenary group behind them had stayed behind them, allowing them to pass through the first few legs of their journey undisturbed. But Ben knew it was only a strategy to wear them down; it was meant to terrify their group and keep them guessing at when — and from where — the next attack would come.
And it was working.
Ben couldn’t help but feel the overwhelming pressure mounting. He felt as though his blood had been pushing through tighter and tighter veins, and the intensity of every moment here was growing to be too much to bear. He wondered how the others felt. Paulinho, a good guy, but nevertheless unaccustomed to being out in the elements like this. Amanda and Julie seemed only slightly more comfortable. Archie was doing his best to keep the rest of them — and probably himself, as well — in high spirits, but Ben saw through the veil, knowing that it was only a temporary tactic.
The only two members of the group that seemed to be at ease, or at least unshaken, by their situation were Reggie and Carlo, their boat crew’s only surviving member. He knew Reggie was a basket case, trained by years of combat and specially-designed exercises to master his emotions, but he wasn’t sure Carlo even understood what was going on. Archie had spent a few minutes discussing their situation with the man, but he genuinely seemed disinterested in the whole affair.
The group began walking, following Reggie through the side of the clearing and quickly reaching the thick, dense jungle once again. Reggie wasn’t using the machete he had hanging at his side, instead pushing aside branches and bushes gently, as if he was trying to move quietly.
Ben picked up on the hint and tried to step softly. He was a large man, thick and muscular from many years living outdoors, but he had honed the skill of moving through forested areas silently. He’d developed the ability while learning to track bears, rabbits, and everything in-between. On one occasion he’d even had to find a human — a young boy who’d run off from his parents and gotten lost in the woods.
Here in the rainforest, however, he was way out of his element. This forest did not respect his attempts at stealth the same way the woods back home did. For every twig he accidentally snapped beneath a foot, the forest would echo the noise and reverberate it throughout the surrounding area. He could hear the cooing sounds of smaller monkeys, high above him, watching him through the darkness, and the clicking of millions of insects searching for a late-night snack. Every step he made through the jungle seemed to ignite a chorus of noises, all watching him, awaiting and calculating his next move.
It added to his paranoia. He wondered what other — larger — creatures were out here, and which ones were hungry enough to strike. He couldn’t tell if Reggie would be any help in a situation like that, or if he’d even see it coming. He remembered the caiman’s attack, and how… helpless he had been.
“What are we looking for?” Ben asked.
Reggie stopped, turned around, and looked Ben up and down. “This,” he said, pulling aside another branch, as if pulling back a curtain on a grandiose stage. He stepped forward and out onto a shelf situated slightly higher than the ground in front of them, providing a perch above the entire area.
Julie gasped.
The clearing in front of Ben was long and narrow, broken up by only a handful of shrubs and bushes, and stretched a half mile from their location to the other side, where the trees grew together once again and formed a tight, impenetrable wall.
The tallest of the Amazonian trees at the edges of the clearing connected back together in most places, far above their heads, creating a gigantic bubble of empty space surrounded by forest. It was an amazing sight, larger than any atrium he had ever seen. Even in early morning darkness, with nothing but moonlight poking through the slats between branches and casting long shadows over the entire space, it was a beautiful scene.
“It’s wonderful,”
Amanda said. “Like a postcard.”
It did, indeed, look like something out of a magazine, or a wall calendar. It was staged so perfectly, their view framed better naturally than any professional photographer could manage artificially.
But there was something still off about the scene, something Ben didn’t realize for a few seconds.
“Is that smoke?” Amanda asked.
Ben squinted, trying to see what the darkness had done so well to hide.
“I think it is,” Paulinho said. “Should we get down there?” he said.
Reggie was already moving forward, jumping down the slight grade that led to the floor of the amazing jungle atrium. Ben and the others followed once more, their pace quickened by the desire to learn what lay at the opposite edge of the great clearing.
“Any idea what it is?” Julie asked.
Ben struggled to make sense of the gently rising smoke, darker than the dark shadows of trees behind it, rising from the base of a larger rock outcropping.
No.
It wasn’t a rock outcropping they were staring at. The base of the trail of smoke emanated from a structure, the remains of a building that had been scorched down to nothing. His senses immediately went on high alert, and he didn’t need to hear Reggie’s answer to know what lay ahead.
“It’s the hospital,” Reggie said.
40
BOTH OF THE LARGER BUILDINGS — the main hospital and research station, as well as the smaller staff barracks — had been burnt to the ground, and there were square sections of smoldering rubble in two additional spots.
“Storage sheds, I’d guess,” Reggie said, kicking blackened wood and charred debris out of the way. “Looks like napalm, or something similar. There’s hardly anything left. They must have done it last night, around the time the boat sank. Very efficient, too. No explosions.”
