Invasive Species

by Joseph Wallace

  And then, “Yeah.”

  And then, straightening, his face lighting up, “Yeah?”

  He listened for another second, then said, “Hang on. Let me put you on speaker. There are people here who’ll want to hear this.”

  He pushed a button. The speakerphone kicked in just in time for Trey to hear a voice say, “—Gilliard there?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” Trey said.

  “Gilliard! Hey. Remember me?”

  A familiar British accent, nasal voice. Trey could see the storklike frame, the long, indolent face, the blue eyes like chips of glass.

  “Sure,” he said. “How you doing, Ranny?”

  Randolph Whitson, one of the countless field biologists whose paths had crossed Trey’s over the years.

  “You still at La Tamandua?” Trey asked.

  “Always. That’s why I’m calling.”

  La Tamandua Tropical Research Station, set amid the cloud forests below the peak of Monte Blanco in Costa Rica. Trey remembered it well from his single visit a decade earlier. The dense, wet forest had been filled with jewel-like poison dart frogs, iridescent birds, and foliage of more shades of green than even Trey had ever seen before.

  Ranny, a mammalogist associated with the University of London, had built the research station, beam by hardwood beam, and since then he’d rarely left. His specialty was bats, but by now he knew everything that lived in those forests.

  “Finally got a phone in there?” Trey asked.

  The crowing laugh came down the line. At the beginning, Ranny hadn’t allowed a radio or satellite phone to be installed on La Tamandua’s premises. Word was he’d chosen the station’s site, in a little valley, because cell-phone service didn’t penetrate there.

  “No effing way,” Ranny said. “I’m calling from Rio Viejo.”

  The small town an hour’s drive from the station.

  “And you drove all that way just to chat?” Jack asked. It was time to get to the point.

  “You kidding? We were running low on beer, and anyway it’s Graciela’s time of the month, so she needed some shit.”

  Over by the window, Sheila gave a quick blink and an unmistakable roll of the eyes.

  Trey didn’t bother to ask who Graciela was. With Ranny, there was always a girl. Always a different girl.

  “But I figured, long as I’m here, why not call? ’Cause I think I caught one of those buggers you’ve been looking for.”

  Jack rose onto his toes. “You just told me you’d seen one!”

  The laugh. “Saw it and caught it. Hang on.”

  Garbled noises over the line before Ranny returned. “Last time I was in here, somebody showed me that Wanted poster you sent around on the computer. Ugly bugger. Give me a bat any old day.

  “But then damned if I didn’t find your beast chewing through one of my mist nets maybe three mornings later.” A pause. “Most bats give up once they’re tangled in the net, but not this guy. He had determination, that one.”

  “And you collected it?” Jack looked like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Yeah.” Ranny seemed to hesitate, and when he spoke again his voice had a different tone. “Yeah. Tell you the truth, I didn’t want to go near it. Wanted to leave it alone, let it get away and go back to wherever it came from. But I knew you were on a kick for these guys, so I maneuvered around and squeezed it till it gave up and died.”

  A sound, maybe a cough, came down the line. “You didn’t mention the smell in your ad, I notice. That thing effing stinks. It’s bothering Graciela. So when are you going to come pick it up?”

  Jack said, “What? Send it to us.”

  “Yeah?” Ranny was laughing. “Sure. No prob. I’ll just stick it in a box and courier it up your way.”

  Jack growled at his tone.

  “Sorry, pal,” Ranny went on. “Maybe that’s how it works at your museum, but not here. Here we carry out our specimens. I’m not leaving for six more weeks, and there’s nobody else around.”

  When no one spoke, he said, “The way this thing smells, if you don’t come for it in the next two days, I’m putting it outside. And you know how long it’ll last in the wet here.”

  Trey was remembering how he’d felt the first time he’d encountered the thieves. He said, more quietly than he’d intended, “I’ll go.”

  Then, louder, “Ranny, I’ll be there by tomorrow night.”

  Sheila said, “Trey, no.”

  At the same time, Ranny was saying, “Great. If I remember right, there’s a direct flight to San José from Kennedy at around six in the morning. Drive fast, and you’ll be here before nightfall.”

  “I’ll drive fast,” Trey said.

  Ranny laughed. “My man. Bring more beer.”

  He disconnected. Jack was already sitting behind his computer, clicking the mouse. After a few moments, he looked up. “Six twenty-five on LACSA. From Kennedy, like he said.”

  Trey nodded, but he was looking at Sheila. “What’s the problem?”

  “Those things,” she said.

  Jack raised his eyes from the screen. “Only one of them, and it’s dead.”

  “Come on, Jack,” she said, her voice suddenly harsh. “Give someone else credit for a little intelligence. We all know that where there’s one, there’ll be more.”

  Jack stared at her. His mouth moved, and Trey was sure—certain—that he was about to say something like, I guess it’s your time of the month, too, huh, Sheila?

  Trey didn’t let that happen. “Both of you,” he said, “pipe down.”

  Their eyes went to him. Neither of them looked happy to be interrupted, but it was Sheila who spoke. “Trey, you’ll be walking into too many unknowns. I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

  Jack said, “As opposed to his usual M.O.? We need that specimen.”

  Trey saw the wasp hovering just before his face, the others staring at him from the mouths of their burrows.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said.

  EIGHTEEN

  Costa Rica

  TREY DROVE FAST.

  He’d gotten an old black Jeep Cherokee at the airport rental counter in San José, dented and dinged and with chipped paint and a touch of rust. The agent had been apologetic. It was all they could find for him on such short notice, in a country filled with tourists seeking shiny SUVs equipped with air-conditioning and powerful sound systems to keep the smells and sounds of the tropics out.

  But it was just what Trey wanted, with plenty of power and four-wheel drive. These were the only requirements for a region whose roads were composed of mud, rutted dirt, turtle-backed all-weather gravel, and—worst of all—pothole-ridden asphalt that hadn’t been resurfaced in twenty years.

  Under dripping skies, he left San José behind and, weaving in and out of traffic, made his impatient way through the capital’s suburbs and onto the Pan-American Highway. Driving north past steaming volcanoes and lowering clouds punctuated by flocks of circling vultures.

  Trey had once planned to drive the entire extent of the Pan-American Highway. He’d begin up in Prudhoe Bay, above the Arctic Circle, and not end till he reached Ushuaia, Argentina, just north of Tierra del Fuego. Along the way, wherever he found something interesting, he’d stop. For a day or a year, he didn’t know, but always knowing he’d eventually get back on the road.

  At the Darién Gap in Panama, where for fifty miles the highway didn’t exist, he’d abandon his car and hike through the jungle to Colombia. There he’d buy a new junker, get back on the road, and keep going.

  That was the plan, but even as he made it, he knew it was impossible. What about the rest of the world? The Americas weren’t enough. He couldn’t drive everywhere he wanted to go. He’d miss too much.

  The whole way to La Tamandua, Trey drove faster than anyone should. The cautious to
urists goggled at him and swerved out of his way. Locals, keeping up on the rutted highway for a while in their old pickup trucks, laughed and honked their horns as they fell back. For twenty or thirty miles, a pair of men on Harley-Davidsons accompanied him, effortlessly keeping pace, a convoy, a motorcade, before peeling off.

  Why so fast? He wondered about this later. Because Ranny had told him to, threatening to destroy the specimen if he didn’t arrive by nightfall? Or because after days of sitting still in New York, he gloried in the chance to move?

  Yes. Those were both true. But not the whole truth.

  The other part: He was afraid.

  And when something frightened you, your only option was to confront it. To race toward it, not to hide.

  He sped past farms and villages and factories, leaving the highway and ascending on ever-smaller and rougher roads into the Tilarán Mountains. The Jeep bucking and plowing, sending up sprays of mud but staying on the road.

  Two thousand feet. Four. The old Jeep’s engine beginning to protest from lack of air. The clouds descending, billows of gray mist blown by a cold, fitful breeze.

  He drove through the town of Rio Viejo, where Ranny made his phone calls. Then turned onto the all-weather road that ended at the lip of the forested valley where the field station was located.

  The ten-hour drive had taken him barely seven. It was time for him to confront his fears.

  * * *

  THE CLOUD FOREST as dusk neared. Low, gnarled trees whose branches hung heavy with mosses, and air plants. Philodendrons and vines climbing up moisture-slick trunks. Clouds sweeping through, coating every surface with droplets that caught the light and gleamed like gems.

  A forest out of Middle-earth.

  Trey parked the Jeep beside a battered Nissan—Ranny’s, he assumed—in the little dirt lot carved out of the brush beside the road. If you wanted to visit the station, you left your car here and hiked down a wet, muddy trail for two miles. If this felt like too much, you were welcome to turn around and go home.

  Ranny didn’t want it any other way. His goal, he said, was to keep the riffraff out.

  Trey climbed out of his car, then reached back in for his daypack. Before he’d taken ten steps, his skin, hair, and clothes were slick with moisture. As he walked, sure-footed as always on even the wettest, steepest trails, he heard a distant bellbird give its ringing “tonk” call from a treetop and a troop of black howler monkeys welcoming nightfall with their roars.

  Eventually he spotted a brighter patch ahead: the clearing where La Tamandua stood. As he approached, he realized that the station was silent, its generator off. No music, no voices. Through a mist-streaked window, he could see a lamp burning inside, but no sign of movement.

  Shifting his flashlight to his left hand, he walked forward and pulled the door open.

  A puff of warmer air wafted out. Trey breathed it in. It was stale, carrying the odors of overripe fruit, cigarette smoke, and bug repellent.

  And the bitter smell of the thieves.

  Trey would always know, would always hate, that smell.

  * * *

  THE THREE ROOMS—a dormitory-style bedroom, a den/office/living room, and a laboratory—were empty, of humans and anything else living. But they hadn’t been empty for long. No more than six or eight hours.

  The light Trey had seen from outside came from a goosenecked lamp that craned over Ranny’s desk. Even as Trey looked at it, it flickered, reaching the end of its battery backup. He turned it off.

  The dirty plates in the sink had once held rice and beans. What was left was congealed, but not yet petrified. Yesterday’s dinner or today’s breakfast.

  There were two plates. One had held more food, eaten more messily, the second a smaller, neater portion.

  In the station’s dorm room, containing a half dozen cots, two had been pushed together. The room smelled of perfume and sweat and sex.

  Ranny’s clothes were piled haphazardly on shelves and slung over a rack in the corner of the room. A woman’s clothes—Graciela’s clothes—were more carefully folded or hung neatly on the rack. She’d brought a large variety of short skirts and colorful slacks, halter tops and sleeveless blouses.

  Trey left the laboratory itself till last. It was modest, one of the smallest Trey had seen, but that made sense. All Ranny needed here was a ready supply of collecting equipment and the materials to preserve the specimens. More in-depth study could wait for his occasional trips back to better-equipped laboratories in England.

  A half dozen bats in various stages of preservation sat on a work table. Amid specimens of insectivorous leaf-nosed and foxlike fruit-eating bats, Trey recognized a vampire bat, its size, oily fur, and squinting grin distinctive even in death.

  None of the bats occupied pride of place on the table, though, the spot right in front of the chair. A small wooden box, perhaps a foot long by six inches wide and the same again deep, sat there. It was open. Its top, waiting to be nailed on, lay beside it.

  But there was nothing inside, amid the white-foam packing material that would protect the specimen in transit. Just a depression in the foam, about three inches long. Skinny. Insect shaped.

  What had happened to the specimen?

  Trey took some air into his lungs. Somewhere outside in the forest, a large branch cracked and fell to earth. It made a sound like a gunshot or the breaking of a mast just before the ship goes down.

  Looked at one way, all he’d learned from his search was that the two of them were out. It was nearing dusk, the time that Ranny would have been stringing his mist nets between the trees of his study area. Setting his traps for the bats he hunted and studied. Graciela could well have accompanied him.

  Trey could just wait here, and in an hour or so they’d return.

  That was the fantasy. But Trey knew better. He knew the reality was different.

  He was going to have to go look for them.

  He found the station’s first-aid kit and put it into his daypack. Near the front door was a row of pegs, three of them holding hard hats with attached headlamps. He took one and put it on.

  Last, he went looking for the weapon he knew would be there. It was standing in the shadows by the laboratory door: a shotgun, unloaded, cleaned, oiled, not recently used. The ammunition—a box of #9 birdshot shells—was in a supply closet in the corner of the room.

  Trey took the gun and a handful of shells with him and walked out into the cold, dripping forest.

  NINETEEN

  THE ABRUPT TROPICAL dusk had fallen while Trey was inside. Rain pattered on the leaves above his head, and every once in a while a bigger drop struck his hard hat with a thump.

  The bellbird had fallen silent, but in the wet darkness crickets and glass frogs had started calling. A gigantic beetle, nearly as big as Trey’s hand, buzzed slowly past. It had two bright green lights shining like headlights from the front of its thorax.

  The air was growing even colder. Trey knew that temperatures here could dip into the forties at night, a far cry from the sticky heat of the lowland rain forest.

  Trey remembered the trails from his previous visit—he never forgot a trail he’d hiked—but, radiating out like spokes from the field station, they would have been easy enough to follow anyway. The shotgun under his arm, he searched one trail, then retraced his steps and headed down the next.

  When full darkness fell, he had no choice but to turn on his headlamp. He hated using lights. They were like neon signs: For everything you spotted, a hundred things spotted you.

  The beam turned green leaves gray. Shadows moved at the corners of the light, and small, unseen creatures rustled through the wet foliage at his feet. The howler monkeys roared again.

  Staying patient, he moved slowly along each trail, looking for evidence that anyone had been there. Recently crushed leaves or bent stems, kicked-up leaf litter. And on the fift
h trail, as he stepped into a small clearing caused by a tree fall, he caught just a whiff of the thieves’ odor. That was all, and then it was gone, chased by the breeze.

  He turned the lamp’s beam this way and that, but could see nothing in the harsh light. Lifting his gaze, he saw that the mist had risen and a half-moon had emerged from hurrying clouds. That was enough. He reached up and turned off the lamp.

  At first the darkness seemed absolute. He was blind.

  Amid the forest’s rustles and calls, he waited as his eyes gradually adjusted to the diffuse light of the moon and stars. When he could see the movement of a small gray salamander across the trail ten feet away, he knew he was ready.

  He turned slowly in a circle in the middle of the clearing, searching for anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary. At the same time, he listened beyond the sound of the night insects and the whisper of the breeze through wet leaves.

  Three times he turned before he saw it: the tiniest glimmer, detectable only through the corners of his eyes. Not the light cast by the stars or moon or the cold luminescence of a colony of forest mites. A gleam from the ground at the far end of the clearing.

  And movement, too. A brief, flickering shadow obscuring the light.

  Trey walked toward it.

  The glow grew brighter as he approached, but only slightly. The feeble illumination it cast revealed drooping leaves, a gray-brown tree trunk, a vine twisted around the trunk like a snake. And a large, slumped form he couldn’t make out yet.

  He knew what it was, though.

  The light he’d glimpsed was a flashlight’s beam. Like the lamp in the field station, it must have been burning for hours, because by now it was so weak that he could see the coil itself flickering inside the bulb.

  Ranny was lying on the ground, the flashlight attached to his belt.

  Trey reached up and turned on his headlamp. The scene before him sprang into full relief, black shadows erupting. A great curassow, unseen in the foliage above, gave a harsh croak and lifted off from its roost, heavy wings making a rushing sound like the wind. The diamond-bright pinprick eyes of dozens of spiders gleamed from nearby trunks.