by Bill Clem
“Suits me,” Drake said. “What about you, Jennie? You okay with that?”
Jennie nodded. “Sure. I’m so tired I could sleep in a tree.”
“Great,” Paul said. He began to load their things into the boat.
It had been easier being optimistic when he was in daylight, but as they plunged deeper into jungle darkness, Paul had to face the facts. It was unlikely anyone who didn’t know what they were doing could stay alive very long in this frightful place. And although Findley Drake had got them here in relative safety, Paul had his doubts they could get back.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Three thousand miles away, Phillip Baxter entered a spacious vestibule, hung with tribal implements and ornate masks that stretched along one wall of the room and seemed to cover every square foot of space. Adjoining it was a smaller library of medical history, complete with Baxter’s pride and joy, a collection of medical implements, some dating back to the fifth century. A few, crude by today’s standards but effective nonetheless, were some of Baxter’s favorites. These were encased in a bronze and mahogany chest that sat in the center of the room. Light, streaming through an octagon oculus, illuminated the large display and glinted off some of the sharp stainless-steel devices housed inside. Margaret Melvin, wearing a dark business suit, sat at a nearby desk going over a pile of papers.
Melvin looked up upon Baxter’s entry and gazed at him with eyes the hue of burnished steel.
“Well, have you found out anything?” Baxter asked.
“Only that they were seen driving toward Burlington early yesterday.”
Baxter plopped into a Louis the Fourteenth carved chair that was worth a fortune. He raked his hands across his skull. “We have to find them. Paul Grant found something.”
Melvin gave him an icy stare. “What do you mean ‘something’?”
“The diary. He got hold of it. He must have gone into the storage room in the North Hall.”
“I told him to stay out of there.”
Baxter sneered sarcastically.
“Well, obviously–”
“Obviously, it did little good. He could ruin everything with that.”
“Well, what do we do?” Margaret asked. “He could be anywhere. Meanwhile, the key to our future is in the hands of–“
“Not anywhere. But somewhere most people wouldn’t think to look.”
“And where is it that you think–“
Baxter found Melvin’s tone condescending and he didn’t like it one bit. “Margaret, Paul is a curious type. That’s how he found the diary in the first place. Where would you go if you found out something fantastic? And let’s not forget his frisky little accomplice. I think I know exactly where they are.”
Margaret’s face softened. “You mean... but how in the world–“
“Our friend, Mr. Cregg. But don’t worry, when he... strayed, I straightened him out with the minimum of fuss. I think it’s time we call Hans. Now, get me the phone,” Baxter said, reminding Margaret he was still in charge.
“Right away,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Blessed with a quiet night and no rain, the small boat rapidly covered the distance from Paratuba to the base of Mount Colina, where the Yohagi natives had their village. In the distant past, the mountain was an active volcano that protruded high above the jungle canopy, but it blew its summit off. Now the massif was covered with dense jungle vegetation and appeared as only a large hill that rose from the jungle floor.
Findley Drake anchored the boat to some mangrove roots and stretched his tired muscles. The morning was sticky with humid heat. Drake wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and knocked on the door of the cabin.
“Time to wake up, you two,” Drake called.
Paul Grant emerged form the cabin and gazed out at the jungle. His hair was wet. Sweat dripped off of his nose and chin and his shirt was soaked.
“It’s like a sauna in there.”
Drake nodded. “Get used to it. This is the thickest part of the rain forest. It’s gonna be that way from here on out.”
Jennie Bradford joined them a minute later, sipping a water bottle and fanning herself. “Morning, Findley.”
“Morning, Jen,” he said, reaching into his pack. “Here.” He tossed them each an energy bar and put one in his top pocket. “Breakfast. We need to get going. The Yohagi village is at least ten miles. Ten hard miles.”
They all started down a narrow trail away from the boat and into the perpetual gloom of the Amazon rain forest.
The jungle rose up on both sides of them. The air buzzed with the sound of cicadas. Drake looked back at the small boat. As crappy as the boat was, he knew it was their lifeline out of there. Despite his experience in this environment, his instincts told him going to see the Yohagi was a dangerous game. As a Peace Corps worker, he had avoided this part of the jungle whenever possible. Men, he thought, just didn’t belong here.
Somehow, though, he had let Jennie talk him in to it. He just couldn’t let her go hiking through the Amazon with Paul Grant as her only protection. Grant was likable enough, but he was no outdoorsman. That would certainly change by the time this trip was over, Drake mused.
Jennie walked alongside Grant, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the jungle. The air on the trail was hot and still, trapped between the huge trees that rose up on either side of it. The trees were thirty to forty feet high, covered in twisted vines. At ground level, in the darkness beneath the jungle canopy, huge ferns grew so thick they created an impenetrable barrier, a solid green wall. Drake thought: Good thing I’m with them. You could go ten feet off the path and be lost forever. You’d never find your way out.
Grant stripped off his shirt and wiped his face with it. Drake stopped him and shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The mosquitoes here are as big as praying mantes’”
Grant nodded and put his shirt back on.
Jennie, now in the lead, suddenly stopped.
“What is it?” Drake asked.
Jennie turned slowly around. The color had drained from her face. She pointed with her right hand to a spot a few yards in front of them.
“Anaconda,” Drake said.
Jennie instinctively backed up a few steps and held onto Paul’s arm. Drake gazed at the snake. It was at least thirty feet long and as big around as a man’s waist. Its mouth was agape and protruding from the jaws was a small boar.
“That’s disgusting,” Paul said.
“I agree,” Drake said. “One thing’s for sure, though. He won’t bother us. You could actually step on him right now and he could care less. When feeding, they’re helpless.”
“Good,” Jennie said, “let’s get out of here.”
The last ten years had been a period of intensive reptile study, with most of the attention going to snakes. It had long been thought that large snakes, such as the Anaconda and other constrictors, would hang out in trees and wait for unsuspecting victims, including humans, then drop from overhead and strangle them until they were unconscious. Then they’d swallow the victim whole.
It’s true there are many documented cases of big snakes swallowing humans, but all the humans were infants. And all were taken from a point of origin on the ground. Most of the time, a native mother had left her baby unattended while she washed clothes at the riverbank or ran some other errand, returning to find it gone, and then seeing the telltale signs of an Anaconda swimming through the water.
Tragic to be sure, but the fact is, an Anaconda cannot swallow a full grown human. And the reason is simple. Despite the fact that their jaws drop open to three times the size of their body, a human’s shoulders are just too wide to accommodate the mouth. At least, so far. Still, Drake had a great respect for large snakes. Especially ones as large as this. And Drake knew one other fact. Sometimes big jungle cats stalked snakes and caught them at their most vulnerable: While they were eating.
“We better go,” Drake said.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Paul, having never been in a rain forest, was fascinated. The jungle was different than what he’d imagined it to be. He was totally unprepared for the scale–the gigantic trees soaring over his head, the trunks as broad as a house, with thick snaking moss-covered roots. To move in the vast space was like being in a huge cave: the sun was completely blocked. He also didn’t expect the Amazon basin to be as dense as it was. They had to hack their way through many parts of it. Still, in a surprising way, it seemed barren and silent–there were occasional birdcalls and cries from monkeys, but otherwise profound stillness settled over them. And it was oddly monotonous. Although he saw every shade of green imaginable in the foliage and creeper vines, there were very few flowers or blooms. Even the occasional orchids seemed pale and muted.
He had expected rotting decay at every turn, but that was not the case. The ground underfoot was often firm and the air had a neutral smell.
Paul would have to agree with Baxter’s description from his diary, fifty years earlier: “Overhead, the wide-spreading branches absolutely shut out the daylight... We marched in a feeble twilight. The dew dropped and pattered on us incessantly... Our clothes were heavily saturated with it. Perspiration exuded from every pore, for the atmosphere was a sauna...
Paul found himself thinking of it as an enormous, hot, dark womb.
By noon, the heat was stifling and the foliage was so thick that Drake used a machete to cut a path for them to follow. About two hundred yards through the jungle, they came upon a path. It was a clear trail, even though overhanging branches hung just feet from the ground.
“How much farther?” Paul asked.
“I’d say a couple more miles. This path is probably one of the Yohagi hunting trails.” Paul wondered if he was about to be taken off and roasted for some pigmy’s dinner?
The next sound he heard, however, was that of someone yelling. In English! All three of them froze, strung out in single file. Drake wheeled around.
Then a voice sounded nearby: “Get that other batch loaded, too.”
Paul gazed out from behind an overhanging branch. Two hundred feet ahead, he saw the source of the voices.
As he watched, natives emerged from the trees, carrying canvas bags on their shoulders. They were speaking English, but it was hard to make out what they were saying at this distance. Most of it seemed to be directions being shouted by a tall blond man. The man looked familiar to Paul, but he couldn’t remember from where.
Then it dawned on him. He yanked Baxter’s diary from his backpack. He gazed at the yellowed photo from 1938. Then he fixed his eyes on the blond man in the distance.
It was... but, no... that was impossible!
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Drake motioned to Paul and Jennie and he began to backtrack on their path. They had traveled about ten feet when, from the bushes ahead, someone emerged.
He was a dark-skinned man about three and a half feet tall, thin-chested, wearing only a loincloth. In his hand was a wooden spear twice his size. His lips were stretched over round discs that made them look like two small saucers. Drake recognized him immediately: Yohagi.
The man turned his head toward the jungle behind him and yelled. “Dai, nou go, thi re, waitman.”
Drake had no idea what it meant, but he was sure the word waitman definitely meant white man.
For a moment, the three of them were too astonished to move. Then, from the jungle on both sides of them, other natives emerged.
Drake whispered, “Here’s your Yohagi tribe.”
Without expression, one of the natives stepped forward and stared at Jennie. He grabbed a handful of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. He turned to the other natives.
“Di sa tite waitman.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Jennie said.
“I think he likes you,” Drake said.
One of the natives, an old man with a collection of bone necklaces hanging off him, stepped forward. He gestured for them to follow him.
Drake felt a chill as they trudged forward. Jennie glanced at Drake and he said, “It will be all right.”
It was most chilling about being herded through the jungle by indigenous natives. Drake was aware of their fascination with the white man. They rarely, if ever, saw one. They lived in a different, secluded world.
But it was their world now.
The natives kept them at a steady pace as they walked deeper still into the dark and trackless interior of the jungle. They walked for another half hour, never pausing or hesitating. Soon, Drake smelled smoke as they arrived at a clearing beside a stream.
The village!
A half-dozen low round huts were lined up in a semicircle. The natives were all milling around outside in the afternoon light, some women preparing roots and berries, some roasting small monkeys on the crackling fire. A few small children stood about, arms wrapped around their mother’s legs. Men sat about smoking on long pipes.
The native that had led them here stopped at the edge of the village and motioned for them to wait. Drake watched him disappear into one of the huts, then return a few moments later. He touched Drake on the arm and grunted, pointing toward the hut with his spear.
“I guess this means he wants me to go with him,” Drake said.
Paul glanced over and said, “I thought you speak this jungle talk.”
“Not Yohagi. It’s completely different than the tribal languages I’m familiar with.”
“Guess you’ll just have to wing it,” Jennie offered.
The native led the three of them into the clearing, stopping Paul and Jennie near a group of women grinding some kind of flour. A little girl crawled between Jennie’s legs and gazed up at her. She giggled and ran back to her mother’s leg. Other natives received them with broad smiles and odd grins.
Preliminaries concluded, Drake was taken into the center hut. He smiled tentatively at Jennie and Paul as the small native closed the thatched door and left him alone inside, staring into the face of...?
Chapter Forty
Phillip Baxter shut his office door behind him and leaned against it. He was glad to finally be alone. He walked around the office slowly, trying to focus his thoughts. He still had an hour before he was supposed to call Hans, but he wanted to know what was going on. Where was it? Baxter had thought of everything except for a nosey Health Inspector and a curious nurse. Which meant what? His undoing?
Baxter sighed. We all have a dark-side. That place where our subconscious sometimes takes us. Whether or not we embrace it is a matter of choice. Most don’t, instead choosing to leave their undiscovered half alone, tucked conveniently away like some retarded distant cousin no one wants to acknowledge.
That choice, however, is always subject to change.
Phillip Baxter stood in front of the full-length mirror, staring at himself. A few more lines had appeared at the corner of his eyes. His skin was dryer than normal. The time was near. It had been over a year since his last ‘treatment.’
The critical question—do they know?—was one he hadn’t had a chance to ask. He just assumed they did.
And if they did, what could they do? Tell the authorities? There were no authorities there—if indeed they even were there.
Hans was the only true authority there.
Which meant... what?
He shook his head. He was having trouble concentrating. The truth was, Paul Grant and Jennie Bradford, as naïve as they might be, had stumbled onto Baxter’s secret and now threatened his very existence. He couldn’t bear the return of Charles Baxter.
He stared deeply at his reflection. He felt as if he were going to be ill. A wave of dizziness passed over him. His stomach churned.
Soon, the moment passed. He took a breath. On introspection, Baxter realized what he saw didn’t really surprise him. He had lived like this for decades. Human beings, he thought, do not think in the long term. They don’t see the slow degradation of their own bodies. But Phillip Baxter aka: Charles Baxter, PhD, h
ad seen it all too clearly many years before and, had lived it and lived it, and lived it again, and again, and again.
He would never die!
Chapter Forty-One
Two hours later, Drake emerged from the hut. Paul was relieved to see Drake in one piece.
“He’s asked us to stay for dinner,” Drake said.
“Which one of us is the main course?” Paul asked.
Drake laughed. “They’re not cannibals. It’s a long story. The chief confided in me.”
“I thought you didn’t speak Yohagi?” Jennie said.
“I don’t. He speaks English. Broken English, to be sure, but good enough to understand.”
“And?”
“He says the tribe used to be cannibals, but then lots of them started getting sick and dying. Especially the children. The white man came from America and told him it was from eating the brains of their enemies.”
“Isn’t there a real disease from that?” Jennie asked.
Paul nodded. “Yes, it’s called Kuru. It’s been studied extensively by the CDC and WHO. It’s similar to mad cow disease.”
“Anyway,” Drake continued, “they said, even though they are no longer cannibals, there still are in the jungle. A man he referred to as ‘The Viper’, a big blond man. They say he kills people and drinks their blood. He mixes what they call ‘Haya’ root with it. It prevents Kuru. That’s how the chief discovered it. He found if he gave it to the sick, they recovered. He believed it was a sign from the Gods, so he ordered his tribe to stop eating the enemy. Now they just eat game. He says this ‘Viper’ sends in scouts from another tribe to steal the children and use their blood.”
“So,” Paul said, “He’s using the blood of the natives and mixing it with the Haya root? For what reason?”
“For the fountain of youth,” Drake said. “The chief told me it could cure virtually anything. And it prevents aging.”
“That explains everything.” Paul said. “Baxter, Melvin, all the residents of Harbor View must be using it. But how does he get it?”
