“Fill your packs. Fast. The night is moving.”
This reminder of the Zenbu sobered them all and they slung the packs free and began stuffing them. There was more here than the entire cadre could have carried in a dozen trips, what would fit in the hunters’ packs would have to be enough.
She finished first and slung the heavy pack across her back. She pulled the pipe free, the weight good in her hands as she relieved the door guard to fill her own pack.
The girls were shaking with the anticipation of carrying home more food than the cadre had eaten in the last two months. By tomorrow, Diabutsu-den Cadre would discover the theft and everything would be gone, or heavily guarded. Did she dare risk another load tonight? No, the Zenbu were unforgiving of those who intruded upon their nightly rule of the streets of Nara.
This load, this one strike and then they’d be gone. Everyone was topping off their sacks, as reluctant as she to leave anything behind. The woman on the floor had stopped bleeding. Two long scars showed down her bare arm and another across her forehead. Who had this woman been to be locked here underground?
Ri noted the length of the leg chain. Not quite enough to reach the boxes. This woman was in sight of an impossible bounty of food, but was so thin that every rib was easily counted. She wasn’t a sacrificial. She was someone that Diabutsu-den hated so much that they starved her, yet kept her in a room filled with food just beyond her reach.
Ninka’s low whistle informed her that they were ready. They reclosed all of the lids, dusted their footprints from the floor and retreated beyond the wall hanging. Ri closed the door.
They trotted out with armloads of food in addition to what was on their backs. That was not good if a fight arose, yet she too had done the same without noticing. It was impossible to pass such bounty without taking, clutching, holding.
When they had climbed the steps, they found Koukou waiting in a dark corner, shivering in the cool evening air, but her eyes alert. Each hunter dumped their armload into the girl’s pack. The hunters were right. Whatever happened out here on the streets, they were the hunters of Tancho Cadre and they kept their problems to themselves. Ri’s armload completed filling Koukou’s pack.
She gave her a quick hug and pulled her into the second position in line. Ri too had once been a young chicken, though thankfully that had not become her name. The Zenbu must have slept in, because no one interfered as they ran for home.
The woman remained stuck in Ri’s mind. Who would the Diabutsu hate so much that they had to torture some old woman? Older than any Ri had ever seen. Old enough to give birth to a child now grown.
The answer hit her like thunder and she stumbled into a wall. Only Koukou’s hand saved her from falling.
Who could they hate more than the woman who had orchestrated the freedom of Tancho Cadre from the evil dungeons of the Diabutsu-den Cadre when Ri had been but a child.
Had Ri just killed her own mother?
# # #
Bryce rolled backward off the rail and entered the warm, South Pacific waters with a splash. He surfaced and looped his hands above his head into a giant ‘O’ to let Connie know he was okay. She remained a moment at the rail of her sixty-foot catamaran, white hull and silvered masts rocking gently on the low southern swell.
Connie’s well-filled bikini shone a blinding lemon-yellow, made even brighter by her sun-tanned, Mediterranean-dark complexion. Her dark hair was hanked back into a ponytail by the back loop of her mask. Her bright laughter revealed white teeth between lush lips. It was the only word for them. Lush. And soft. He’d studied that softness at length over the three months since they’d met at his eighteenth birthday party. His parent’s sixtieth, though he tried not to think about what Bryce Sr. must have done to arrange that timing.
Connie jumped straight in, one hand on her mask, and nearly landed on top of him. She bobbed up into his arms and placed a hot, salty kiss on his lips. But she didn’t stop there. Within moments his head swam most pleasantly in lazy little circles as she wrapped her arms and legs about him. Her tongue spoke of promises kept last night, and more after the dive.
He slid a hand down and grabbed her muscular, yet generous buttocks. They fit his large hands like they’d been made for each other. Her wasp waist spoke of the month-upon-month she sailed the high seas, and her breasts and hips spoke of generation-upon-generation being bred to bear children. Her body, combined with her sense of play had certainly helped Bryce forget his past, well at least some of it. In Connie’s arms, the memories let him be, even if they revisited him on the long night watches.
With a final tongue-lashing that left him breathless, she pulled her mask into place and rolled over backwards to dive below the rocking surface. He seated his regulator between his teeth. His mouth tasted of air hose and Connie. He rolled over backward and began his descent after her.
The wreck was much farther down in the clear South Seas water than it first appeared. He was at twenty meters before he reached the coral-encrusted stump that was all that was now left of the mast. The barkentine had lain here near the atoll since the 1800s and its form was more coral than wood. A brilliant orange-and-white striped clown fish studied him from the safety of her yellow anemone, perched atop what must have once been the wheelhouse.
He looked back along the length of the deck. Then lost his regulator as Connie’s hand slid up the leg of his shorts and grabbed him from below. He spun away, replaced the regulator in his mouth, and managed to clear the hose without swallowing too much water.
She shot away, circling beneath the bowsprit where it still stuck upward waiting for a favorable wind it would never find. He tore after her, but she disappeared through the open forehatch.
He lost her in the vast interior, until a flash of yellow through a yawning hole in the hull told him that she was no longer inside. It may have been this hole, made on the nearby atoll reef, that had sunk the ship. The coral had grown so that while Connie’s slender form might pass, his own shoulders, filled out from three months of sailing, would not.
He turned as if he hadn’t seen her and headed away from the hole until he was well out of her view. He swam toward the exit, but it was no longer there. He’d gotten turned around in the dimness of the interior and couldn’t locate it.
He didn’t want to turn on his handlight, so instead he slowly circled the space that must have been one of the deep holds, looking for the stairway he’d come in by.
A high whine, that he realized had been bothering him more and more, now became loud and clear. Incoming powerboat. Big one. Most folks this deep in the South Pacific still traveled by sail.
By the time he freed himself, Connie was nowhere to be found. He swam clear of the wreck and looked up. The dual hulls of the catamaran were dwarfed by a massive hull nearby. Only the WEC and tour companies had such massive craft and the hull had a lean, nasty length that convinced him it was the former.
He was halfway back to the surface, checking once more for a flash of yellow bikini around the wreck when the concussion hit him. His ears thudded so hard he blacked out for a moment. When he came to, he was floating above the wreck. He looked at the surface above him and there was nothing. In the distance he saw a shadow that might have been the departing WEC destroyer.
Bryce surfaced in the middle of some flotsam, none of it bigger than his hand. Little flakes of sailcloth and clothing singed about the edges floated around him. Not a scrap of yellow anywhere.
The big boat was nowhere in sight and the catamaran had ceased to exist altogether. Bryce swam aimlessly back and forth for some time. He knew Connie’s money came from her distribution of some of the more esoteric psychoreactive drugs, but she’d never involved him. He didn’t even know where she kept the stuff, or if there had been any aboard at the moment.
The twenty-six year old woman had reveled in teaching him to play and love, to sail and dive, no more, no less. Now she w
as gone. He thought briefly of trying to use the authorization of Bryce Sr.’s identity to track and save her, but knowing the WEC modus operandi she was probably aboard her boat when it went up.
He was having more and more trouble breathing and his eyes were burning with tears. He reached up and banged a hand against his mask. He flipped the mask up and rubbed at his eyes irritating them even more with the salty seawater.
Why couldn’t he breathe? His chest was so tight he couldn’t draw in any air. He was going to die with a tank of air on his back. He shook his head.
Think, Bryce. No air on his back. He spit out the regulator and took a deep, shuddering breath. He dragged in another breath and a mouthful of seawater then hacked it out of his lungs. One hour of air. An hour ago he’d had a floating home, an incredible lover, a place to be. Now he had an empty breathing rig and a few dozen scraps of sail and fiberglass deep in the South Pacific.
Slipping the snorkel into his mouth, Bryce began kicking his feet toward a distant atoll. The taste of Connie’s final kiss hadn’t quite been washed away. A hint of it clung to the side of his tongue. For a long time.
Chapter 6
Seven days after Jaron crossed north over the Sierra de Curupira mountain range, the Orinoco River valley began to feel familiar once again. A Venezuelan subspecies of white cockatoo with its distinct head feathers swooped by and he stumbled to a halt.
He was home. His two years over the mountains in the Upper Amazon River had taught him many of the variations of flora and fauna. But he’d missed his birds. Only the great scarlet macaw had accompanied him south, the others had stopped well before he crossed the mountains.
It was impossible, but even the trees began to look familiar. Harold swooped down out of the sky to land on his shoulder.
“Off visiting old haunts, my friend?”
Harold answered with a simple chirrup and began preening Jaron’s lanky hair. Keeping it trim with just a machete had been difficult, but Harold liked caring for its shaggy length and had learned quickly when he was pulling too hard.
It was not until he stumbled to a halt in the clearing that Jaron knew where he was. Somehow he’d come upon the old Orinoco Ecological Station without realizing it. After the WEC’s attack, he had given the place a wide berth. But now it was changed. The wide perimeter clearing was now a clutter of low fruit trees and Ceiba and paranut saplings. The buildings were obliterated by a swarm of vines that had climbed the vertical walls and spread across the roofs to grab at the sunshine.
Two buildings had fallen. He stared at the second with a dreadful curiosity that fluttered lost about the depths of his stomach. If he were to clear the rubble, would two skeletons lay there? Had the last of his family been left to rot and feed the jungle?
A third structure was shaky and might fall if he breathed upon it. The fourth and last stood strong despite being enmeshed by thick ivies. And he couldn’t place what the building might be. He pulled out his machete and Harold fluttered off to perch on a nearby mango tree.
The blade sliced through the two-year old foliage dropping sections of vine that would root where they landed and try again to climb. He had dug two feet into the thickest of the coverage when his arm jarred and a sharp, ringing tone elicited a squawk from Harold.
Jaron inspected the blade carefully. A great round notch now marred the cutting edge. It would take hours and hours to hone out the worst of it on a river rock. He nearly turned away in disgust, but decided to take one look at what had damaged the one essential tool of his survival. With a sharp tug, he pulled the vines to the side. The bright nick in the metal handrail shown like a diamond in the rough rust that coated it.
He knew where he was. How many thousand times had his hand wrapped around that very spot as he went in and out of the laboratory that was more his home than where he slept. He’d grown up playing on the floor at his parents’ feet until he could be trusted with the instruments and flora and fauna that always covered the worksurfaces.
Jaron cleared the rest of the doorway and shoved inward. The panel swung begrudgingly aside, angry at having been left alone so long. Lights glowed dimly revealing the desiccated remains of several plant species and a few injured bats and parrots he’d been trying to heal. He certainly hadn’t done well by them.
He tapped the keyboard with a grimy finger. Odd, his hand had seemed clean enough when he’d washed in a crossing stream just two days before. One of his own research reports glowed from the viser. An unfinished journal submission, in his sister’s name of course, on the near-symbiotic relationship between losies and macaws in the jungle mid-story. What absolute drivel. The relationship he’d so carefully recorded existed due to a commonality of food source, nothing more.
How awful had his prior work been? And the fools who had approved his research under Isabel’s name? Pitiful. One could not sit in a comfortable station and learn anything about the jungle. One had to tramp forth and live in its heart. Only by clear, dispassionate observation could one reach a true understanding of the wonder of nature.
The lights faded and the viser blanked out once more. The solar roof was too densely covered by vines. He’d clear them tomorrow.
For now, with evening approaching, he’d better find a place to sleep. And maybe some of his old friends would come to roost with him and Harold among the treetops.
# # #
Hour upon mind-numbing hour Suz had scrolled through the evidence of her father’s destructions. Records of troop decimations had left data holes like uncovered manholes in the street, you’re walking along just fine and then suddenly, nothing. Whoosh! You’re gone and that’s the last anyone hears of you.
It was easy to select for all the places where data had dropped abruptly to zero in a home or business. It was harder to pick out the ones that were the actions of her father’s WEC troops and his campaign to cleanse the human race. People moved. Businesses failed. The WEC murdered. All three left the same footprint in the world of data.
Maybe she should give up this plan, but it was the only one she’d come up with so far. Find someone that her father hadn’t completely destroyed, and help them out. Place quiet, careful patches upon a society that was being torn and shredded from within by her rabid parent.
Suz stopped. Had she just missed something? Scrolling upward through the data revealed over a decade of increasing activity and then three to four years of flatline. No data. But there’d been a break in the pattern. She’d simply missed it in the downward scroll.
There. A tiny blip, but a blip nonetheless. After two years of zero activity, there was a small surge of data. She called up the detail. A small ecological station in the South American rainforest. Biological journals were being viewed at a surprising rate by a single user.
The detail on the user. According to the WEC’s databases, whoever the reader was, she’d been dead for two years. Jackpot. Someone had come back from the dead and was studying trophic relationships, whatever they were, from the center of the jungle.
The woman’s record noted that she resisted questioning during criminal investigation regarding an unregistered family member. Perhaps this wasn’t someone risen from the grave of the deep jungle. This could be the unregistered. It was hard to imagine anybody avoiding that particular requirement of modern society. Where had the unregistered been for two years without the need to access transport, credit, or communications? Of course, safe in the heart of the jungle.
Whoever this person was, she was a survivor. A fellow survivor. It was time Suz sent a little help her way. What did someone living alone in the jungle need? More titles flashed onto her screen: “Mid-story Abiotic Relationships of the Upper Amazon,” “Feeding Criteria of the Venezuelan Losie,” “Evolution of Lecythis.”
This unregistered survivor was continuing their research. Perhaps they needed a research assistant. It only took a half dozen searches to find the perfect person. A Minsk Uni
versity biologist might find it odd to have his grant request changed from Ecuador to the Upper Orinoco River in Venezuela, but no grad student would turn down a grant. And Suzie’s soft heart wanted to send a young man to the woman of the jungle. Suz wondered if Robbie Enlara might have an interesting spring.
# # #
Bryce groped his way up the creaking stairs. Beach sand on the warped, wooden slats grated beneath his sandals, scratching at his nerves like a beginner’s violin bow. He banged through the screen door to get out of the sunlight and was washed by the heat of the kitchen.
“’Bout time you showed up, lover boy.”
“Yea. Yea. Yea. Perry. That’s me.”
Bryce’s bloodshot eyes adjusted reluctantly to the indoor light. The small kitchen was crowded as usual. A couple of sous-chefs were chopping something green loudly off to the side. And Bryce was going to have to kill Jimmi if she rattled one more pot in the steel sink.
“So, which one kept Brycie up all night this time? The blond or the brunette.”
“The redhead.” He’d actually been with the blond but he was damned if he was going to make it easy for Perry to harass him about another tourist. And it wasn’t the blond anyway, it was the drinking afterward, to wash the foul memories from his brain enough to sleep.
The Old Bastard now offered running commentaries on everything he did, in bed or out, and it was getting damn annoying. The old memories were so close to the surface that they no longer needed a trigger to activate them. High school conquests in bathroom stalls were mixed right in with Suzie’s conception and Celia’s clawing throes before she jumped out of his parent’s bed and into James Wirden’s. It was far, far too much information.
Perry loomed up before him. His broad shoulders filled the room, a massive finger came out of nowhere and pinned Bryce against a walk-in freezer like a thrown saber pinning the villain to the wall behind. His dark eyes were narrow, and his broad face was quite red.
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