by Nick Thacker
The man heaved, pushed off his knees, and stood up. He had recovered well, and quickly. He took one final breath and lifted his foot to march forward again.
And the chief jammed the two miniature daggers into Alan’s neck from behind. Ben saw, even in the darker moonlight, where they had appeared from. The chief wore bracelets on each wrist, and on each of these were fastened the two pointed strips of rock. He had a skill and control using them, and if Ben hadn’t been standing directly behind the chief he might have missed it completely.
Alan coughed, choking as the daggers swirled around inside his neck. The chief left them there, then leaned in so his head was resting almost on Alan’s shoulder, and spoke. The words were the same ancient-sounding language they’d all heard before, but the words were unrecognizable to Ben. The chief repeated the command, louder, then violently yanked the daggers from Alan’s neck.
Alan sank to the ground, hard. There was no water here to catch his fall, and there were no spearman to quicken the transition from life to death. He gasped for air, all the while holding his neck with slick, blood-soaked hands.
Ben stared downward at the gruesome scene, but couldn’t look away. He felt, in part, as if he needed to watch, needed the closure of it. He didn’t cheer it on, silently or otherwise, but he watched. It was not cathartic or therapeutic but it needed to happen, and Ben knew that. He’d orchestrated some of this man’s death, whether he chose to believe it or not, and the least he could do was watch it to the bitter end.
Another part of him realized the truth of their entire mission. He’d failed. He was no closer to understanding who the company or organization was that had been behind all of this, and Joshua didn’t seem to be confident either of them would find anything. He wanted all of this to be different, but there was no going back.
He’d learned that before, many years ago. He couldn’t ‘go back.’ There was no hiding, escaping, or withdrawing from his past. He’d withdrawn himself, but he’d never successfully escaped anything that he’d experienced, no matter how hard he’d tried. Today was no different, so he watched.
Alan gurgled once more, then died. The blood hadn’t gotten the message that its owner had stopped living, so it continued pressing out of him, filling and staining the ground around his head and torso.
Joshua was at the doorway. “Anyone want to give me a hand?” he asked.
His face showed a sign of shock when it registered who was waiting for him at the door, but the chief seemed uninterested and turned away, walking back to his people.
Ben turned to Paulinho. “Anything you can tell us about all of that?”
Paulinho’s eyes were wide. “I felt it,” he said. “I felt all of it. It was weird, like I said before. I just knew what they were feeling, and how they were planning to act. I knew they were surrounding us, but I understand their motives weren’t to harm us.”
“What about the chief?” Julie said. “That was weird, right?”
Paulinho shook his head. “It was a fair duel, two men, both unarmed.” Ben remembered seeing Alan drop his weapon just inside the door of the hut near the existing pile. “The chief would have had Alan sacrificed or killed anyway, I think. But he saw that the two men were already standing off, so he let it conclude first.”
“Fascinating,” Amanda said.
Archie nodded. “I could spend weeks out here, just studying them.”
“Well, you may have your chance,” Joshua said.
Everyone turned to him. He held up a shattered device from the pack Alan had been wearing, similar to an old cellular phone.
“Is that the way home?” Ben asked.
“It was,” he said. “Alan destroyed it.”
“Any chance he pressed the magic button before he did?”
“Doubt it.”
“Okay,” Amanda asked, her voice already rising. “What do we do?”
Ben looked at Paulinho. “You have to try to communicate with them,” he said. “It’s our only shot. Maybe they’ll give us canoes or rafts or something.”
“Yes,” Archie said, “we can head downstream, and the current will be quite easy to navigate. It shouldn’t take long at all to get back to Manaus.”
Paulinho was shaking his head. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t talk to them. It’s not like that. It is feelings, in a general sense.”
“Paulinho,” Amanda said. “We don’t have any other options.”
Crack! Ben fell to the ground as the gunshot rang through the air, unable to catch himself as he face-planted into the hard-packed dirt in front of the hut.
71
REGGIE SAW BEN JUMP AT the abrasive sound of the gun firing directly next to his ear. Ben had been standing off to the side of the group, deliberating with all of them, while Reggie had been sneaking up behind him. He’d waited for the right moment, then lifted the gun up so it was close enough to Ben’s ear to cause him extreme alarm without too much hearing loss.
It was a nasty prank, but it had worked like a charm.
Reggie offered Ben a hand, grinning. Ben didn’t return the expression.
“What the hell was that for?” Ben asked. His voice was louder than it needed to be, and Reggie couldn’t control his laughter.
“Sorry, I owed you one.”
“You could have made me go deaf!”
“Hardly, Ben. Besides, what were you going to do with this guy, anyway?”
Ben frowned, then turned to look at where Reggie was pointing. The last mercenary, the one Ben had elbowed, was lying on the ground, dead.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Like I said,” Reggie explained, “I owed you one.”
Reggie had already determined there was not a chance they’d be leaving anyone alive, and after the rest of the soldiers had been dispatched, he’d kept his sights on this one. They weren’t going to extract any new information from him — and anything he did know would be information Joshua already had.
“Where’d you come from?” Julie asked.
Reggie just flipped his head back a bit, as if that was all the explanation needed. “Back there. Ben ran away and didn’t invite me to the party.”
He looked over to Ben to see if he got a rise out of him, but Ben was busy trying to shake the ringing sound out of his head.
“I didn’t hear any gunfire, and I hadn’t seen anyone in ten minutes, so I started walking over. The villagers came out of nowhere, but they didn’t even stop me. They were all heading here, so I followed and stopped a little ways away, until the chief did, uh, that.” He nodded toward the bloody mess of Alan on the ground. “Sorry I was late.”
Reggie reached out his hand and offered it to Ben. Ben hesitated, but a moment later grabbed it and came closer.
“Thanks, man.” Then he stopped the handshake, still gripping Reggie’s hand, and added, “but you’re still an asshole.”
Reggie let out a verbal chuckle. “Don’t mention it.” He turned to the rest of the group, including Joshua at the doorway. “Now, how are we getting out of here?”
72
JULIE’S HEART WAS POUNDING, AND she wasn’t sure if it was from Ben’s kiss, their terrifying experience in the Amazon, or the fear that remained surrounding how they would get home.
Maybe it was a little bit of everything.
They’d spent the night in the huts, after a round of silent hand-signal negotiations between the villagers and their group had determined that was what was intended. She’d slept well, a quick, dreamless sleep, even though the moment she woke up she felt the wave of insecurity envelop her once again as she realized they were, still, stuck in the middle of the world’s most remote jungle.
She turned to Ben, who was snoring next to her, and watched him sleep for a minute. He stirred, somehow aware that he was being watched, and he sucked in a breath of air and saliva, then opened his eyes.
“You really are cute when you’re asleep,” she said, grinning down at him.
He squinted at her, deadpan.
“I’m great, aside from a back that feels like it’s been rolled over by a cement mixer and a headache that makes me think I’m being lobotomized. Not to mention my shoulder.” He rolled over, wincing at a sore spot on his side as he massaged his shoulder.
“You’re a baby.”
Ben’s mouth widened in mock surprise. “Are you being serious? I shot people! Give me a break.”
Julie laughed again, then rolled on top of him before he could react.
“What are you —“
“How about a little jungle fever?” she asked.
“That’s — what? That’s not what that means,” Ben said. “You’re frisky this morning,” he added.
“Sorry, just… there’s been a lot, you know?”
Ben nodded. “I know.”
“You guys really gonna do that here?” a voice said from deeper inside the hut. Reggie sounded groggy, his voice much deeper than normal. He coughed a few times, then stretched and stood up. They’d fallen asleep in two huts — Ben, Julie, and Reggie in one, Paulinho, Amanda, Archie, and Joshua in another. They didn’t have any sort of bedding, and the floor of the hut was the same dirt and grass that existed in the rest of the valley, so they’d slept in their clothes. The trees out in the valley were too far apart to hang the Stingray tents, so they’d decided against trying to sleep outside. Reggie and Ben had used their packs as pillows, but Julie had been too exhausted to care.
Julie was already standing as Reggie walked toward the front of the hut, and she reached a hand down to Ben to help him up. She knew it was mostly just a kind gesture, as he had 100 pounds on her, but he grabbed her hand anyway and sat up.
She had aches and pains as well, and she worked to sate them. She pressed against the knots in her back and sides, massaging them with knuckles and the bottom of her wrists. Ben was still sitting, playing with his hair. It had gotten oily, and he was tousling it around as if it would make a difference.
“You take forever to get up,” she said.
“Again, I shot people,” he said.
“How long are you going to use that excuse?” she jibed.
“However long I can, and then a little more,” he replied without hesitation.
“Hurry up. We need to see how Paulinho did.”
Last night, after the chief had ‘sacrificed’ the leader of the mercenaries and their lodgings were negotiated, Paulinho had attempted to get an audience with the chief and some of the warriors and villagers to see about transportation out of the valley. It was clear the tribe no longer considered any of them a threat, but trying to break the language barrier to ask about boats or rafts proved to be an almost impossible task.
Reggie and Archie had urged Paulinho to draw stick figures in the mud, while Amanda still thought there might be a way to communicate with the tribe using nothing but Paulinho’s mind. Julie and Ben thought it was hopeless, and had gone to bed.
The sun was cresting the top edge of the cliff at the far side of the valley, and the waterfall’s mist was casting a long, thin rainbow over the entire scenic display. In short, it was breathtakingly beautiful. Julie hadn’t been able to fully appreciate the geologic artistry that existed here, so she stood outside the hut and took it all in. Her phone was back at the hotel in Marabá, along with their luggage and rental car, so she had no way of capturing the moment digitally.
Ben was behind her, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back to him. She smiled, still in awe at the beauty surrounding her.
The moment didn’t last, however. She realized suddenly that there was a pall cast over the picturesque landscape — the nature was stunningly gorgeous in the morning light, but there was something her eyes had chosen to ignore about the scene.
The bodies.
There were villagers lying everywhere, dead. Facedown, women and children as well, cast around the valley as if they’d been grains of salt sprinkled haphazardly down by the hand of a giant. Some of the huts nearby were smoking, burning slowly and providing the area with a campfire-like smell. The lake was the only part of the area that appeared to be untouched, the gentle lapping waves hitting the shoreline the same way they had for millennia.
Julie looked around, trying to bring back the feeling of wonder she’d felt a moment ago, but it had passed. Now she saw the valley for what it really was: the smoking, charred husk of a once-fantastic civilization. At least half of the people who had, only hours ago, called this place home were lying lifeless on the ground.
Villagers were hard at work, some moving bodies to large piles at the sides of the valley. Others were using thick vines to pull down the few trees in the area, the ones that bore the golden fruit. She had to look harder to ensure her eyes were telling the truth, but it was true.
“Ben, they’re cutting the trees down.”
He didn’t respond.
Paulinho arrived, a pained smile on his face. She’d admired his smile days ago, in Marabá, when it had the wide, lighthearted appeal of a man without worry. Now it was tainted, a smile that only offset a small amount the tired look in his eyes.
“Morning, Paulinho,” she said, ignoring her mind’s interpretation of the man’s facial expression.
“I hope you slept well,” he said. “We have boats.” He turned and pointed to a path leading to the lake on the other side of the valley. There were four canoes sitting there, small but sturdy-looking.
She frowned. “Paulinho, that’s fantastic. Why are you upset?”
He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “I — I am not sure,” he said. He dropped the smile. “It’s this, I believe. All of this. These, at one time, were my people. But that isn’t relevant now, compared to the devastation we’ve brought them.”
Ben released Julie and stepped up to Paulinho. “Hey, Paulinho,” he said. “We didn’t bring this. They did. And they’re not here anymore.”
Paulinho nodded once, but his eyes fell. “Still…”
“We’ll fix this,” Archie said, who’d suddenly emerged from the hut next door. He was followed by Joshua and Amanda. “We’ll make it right, somehow.”
“I already have some ideas,” Amanda added. “The research we can do now will help them strengthen their minds, giving them more of an advantage out here. We can —“
“No,” Paulinho said. “No, they don’t want that. They want — they’ve always wanted — nothing from us. They’ve tried for centuries to stay out of the way, living here and dying here, in the jungle.”
Joshua looked around, and Julie watched his face. He was trying to make sense of the villagers, watching them work. “Why are they tearing the tress down?”
Paulinho spoke immediately, anticipating the question. “It’s their tree, meaning that it’s not only the basis for their city and entire way of life, but it belongs to them. To them it is a possession they all share. They’ve had to adapt and move to survive, like any other group, but their tree has always been a unique advantage. That’s why they can’t let the fruit or leaves — any of it — leave El Dorado. Where they go, the tree goes, to be replanted and grown somewhere new, and when they leave a place behind, they remove any remnant of the tree and its fruit.”
"It’s the only place on the planet with these specimens,” Archie said. “Remarkable.”
“And El Dorado is wherever they are,” Julie added. “So they’re leaving?”
Paulinho nodded. “Yes, they must. There is no other alternative.”
“But we’ll always have a way to get back,” Amanda said, stepping closer to the Brazilian man who had acted as their unexpected liaison for the past day and touching his shoulder. “Paulinho, you have their blood, which means you have their memories. We’ll be able to find them, no matter what.”
He nodded, then took the final step forward between himself and Dr. Amanda Meron. She was shorter than he was, so her head naturally fell backward as she peered up at him. He didn’t hesitate. He darted forward and pres
sed his lips to hers. She raised her hands to resist at first, then dropped them to her sides and leaned in to the kiss.
Julie smiled, the juxtaposition of the moment against the background of the villagers toiling away not enough to keep her from beaming.
“Come on,” Reggie said. “Way too much kissing around here. Shouldn’t we be testing those boats?”
Amanda pulled herself away from the taller man. “Give us just a minute. We have some catching up to do,” she said.
73
BEN’S HAND WAS SWEATING, BUT he didn’t dare move it. Her fingers were wrapped tightly between his, clenched into a death grip. He wasn’t sure he could move it, even if he’d wanted to. He’d originally grabbed her hand as their plane left the Manaus airport, ostensibly because ‘he hated taking off.’
It was true he disliked flying, but he was starting to come around to the fact that he actually disliked not being in control. Ben was a man who wanted to control not only the situations that he — either purposefully or inadvertently — found himself in, but also control those situations that weren’t even possible to control.
Love was a great example of that.
As Julie’s head rolled sideways and found the perfect-sized nook between Ben’s head and shoulder, he inched backward in the uncomfortable airline seat and tried to make the best of the situation.
It wasn’t hard. Besides having zero control over the pilot’s and copilot’s decisions far up in the cockpit, the situation he currently found himself in was something he couldn’t have designed for himself in a million years. He was more in love with the woman sleeping on his shoulder than he’d ever dreamed possible, and it didn’t hurt that he was more attracted to her than anyone he’d ever met.
