See Jack Hunt (See Jack Die)

by Nicholas Black

  But of course, I'm standing in the dead center of the dead pool. This might be the index case.

  I take a deep breath and slowly do a circle letting my left eye numbly take in everything. I'm not being discerning. I'm open to every bit of information I can absorb. And I notice something of a pattern.

  The animals, as you spiral outward from the center, they are glowing brighter and brighter. This dog's barely got any color to him. Just a barely visible reddish-purple. And, despite my better judgement, I touch the body to discover that it's hardly warm at all.

  The hotter they are, the closer we are.

  The Jimenez boy, near the highway . . . he was really hot. That means, we were really close.

  Oh shit!

  They may have been so close they were watching. As they may be now.

  I whisper into my radio, “Juan, do a thermal scan of the surrounding area, as quick as you can. I think they may be trying to bait us.”

  72

  50 meters outside the Pool of the Dead.

  1 hour and 26 minutes later . . .

  Juan concluded that nobody was watching us, at least, at that time. We set up a small, nearly invisible, camp within sight of the dead pool. We dug a trench and used some camouflage vinyl tarp material to create an observation post. We then covered it with broken branches and loose soil so that it's easier for us to see them, than the other way around. Which, when dealing with evil, is really the most prudent way to go.

  He's set up several seismic sensors, so sensitive, he clams, that we can hear a bird fart at two hundred meters.

  What happens when birds fart? I asked him. Are there all kinds of bells and whistles?

  “No,” Juan whispers matter-of-factly, “the bird just farts. But we can see where they did it.”

  Of course.

  We have our weapons laid out in case they make a run in on us. Our goggles are on, but we're taking turns watching. If you stand watch too long, Juan tells me, you'll turn into a zombie that can't tell one thing from the next. Your eyes, he said, will play tricks on you.

  Our plan, that we've been whisper-forming for the last hour, is to try and follow whatever creatures are using this place as a feeding or dumping ground. We'll wait here until something supernatural crosses our path . . . or until the sun comes up. Then we'll have to get some breakfast.

  12:44 am . . .

  I'm on watch while Juan studies the seismic meter results. There's pretty much nothing going on, here. Animals don't want to get anywhere near this place. They're the smart ones, I think. Alarm, consternation, dismay, dread, fright, panic, terror . . . these are all things that animals instinctively feel, and base their decisions off of.

  We humans, we fight these urges. Look down on them as weakness of character and resolve. How far-off we stray from our roots.

  Juan perks up, pointing at something on the meter. “Hay algo . . . cerca de aqui.”

  I don't know if he can see my eyes looking nervously around. To explain my demeanor, the phrase, 'guilty as sin', might be appropriate.

  That thing can really pick up a bird fart?

  He looks at me incredulously, knowing what I've done, “Pinché, Yack. Cerra su culo.”

  “Well . . . all you eat is beans in this country,” I say as an excuse.

  He lifts up part of the vinyl camouflage covering and gives some ventilation to purge my indiscretion.

  2:01 am . . .

  I'm on the meter now, Juan's looking through the night-thermal goggles. He makes slow, calculated sweeps of the entire dead pool area, as well as to the outsides on our right and left where an ambush might arise.

  “Nada,” he says under his breath. “Mucho muerto, no vivos.”

  Nothing. Much death, nobody living.

  On the meter I see absolute flatline. This is less than nothing. This is nothing times 14.

  Maybe our sensors are broken, I whisper.

  “Son buenas, son nuevas.”

  They're good, they're new.

  I watch a small beetle walk by, carrying a piece of a dried leaf. Good for him. Must be a lonely place for this little guy. It's the first living thing I've seen. I point it out to Juan. Our new pet.

  “We'll call him, Juanito .”

  Little Juan?

  “Si, Juanito.”

  Alright, then. Little beetle, your name is now Juanito.

  But Juanito doesn't pay us any mind. He's got important things to do with that scrap of dead plant life. He's part of the natural course of things. Something dies, and other living things find a use for it. Life decays into death, which begets more life . . . and the drum just keeps on beating.

  Juanito is gone.

  The seismic meter is still waiting to exhale.

  And Juan, he continues to make his scans.

  4:56 am . . .

  I'm back on goggle duty, watching everything in terms of its heat signature. As I make my visual sweeps I quietly ask Juan questions about how he got into this life.

  “Mis vecinos,” he says softly. “They were into running guns across the border of Columbia and Venezuela.” He shrugs, “When I got out of the army I was bored. I got into the family business. Good money. Exciting life. Y, yo tengo many stories to tell my kids.”

  You have kids!? I say, surprised.

  “Si. Dos hijas.” He then leans to his side and pulls out a small photograph of the two cutest little girls you can imagine. They have dark skin, green eyes and dirty-blond hair.

  I look at the picture, then to Juan, the picture, Juan again.

  He smiles, taking the picture, “They get the hair and the eyes from their mother, Mariana. She's Brasilian. Muy guapa.” he says, his eyebrows lifting up and down.

  But, if you have a beautiful family like this, why do . . . this ? You don't need this kind of heat.

  “Es en la sangre,” he says. He then tells me in his mixture of Spanish and English, that he needs the kind of release that this type of work provides. He likes fighting the battles that don't ever make it to the front page of the papers. He likes being one of the guys in the shadows. It's an addiction of sorts. He and Andy—Mr. Green—have been working together for nearly six years.

  Two months here, three months there . . . all bills paid.

  Tax free violence. They even accept corporate checks.

  It's not for everyone, he explains to me. It's lonely and dangerous, and reckless. But it's pure and has its own kind of honesty. The way of the gunslinger is not a life for those who want to leave a legacy. It's for those who want to make a difference.

  “Y tu, Yack. Porqué estas aqui?”

  And you, Jack. Why are you here?

  I'm a retard, I tell him. I woke-up in a hospital, stuck on stupid and I've pretty much been going full-throttle since then. I'm trying to save the world.

  “Me caes bien, Yack. Estas buey, pero me caes bien,” he says patting me on the shoulder.

  I like you, Jack. You're stupid, but I like you.

  5:35 am . . .

  Well, the sun is starting to turn the black sky into something liquid blue. This is the time between dogs and wolves, and the only thing we saw all night was Juanito cross back and forth with exponentially bigger pieces of decayed leaves.

  We're both yawning when we hear Mr. Green on the radio, “Has encontrado algo?”

  No , I tell him, frustrated. We didn't find anything.

  “Well . . . we did .”

  73

  Pool of the dead.

  6:16 am . . .

  Juan and I set-up two time-lapse, full-spectrum cameras. We hide them near a seismic sensor and do our best to obscure everything so that Evil doesn't trip over our gadgetry. If anything seismically significant occurs, the cameras will begin filming and an alert will be sent both to us, and to the office where Billtruck and Hal can try and figure out what's really going on.

  We don't yet know what Ricky and the others discovered. All I know for certain is that this place is haunting and quiet beyond explanation. I feel a bit gu
ilty about something Juan and I did this morning. He came up with this idea for an experiment, but we needed some living creature to test his theory.

  Well, the only living thing we'd seen, other than the two of us, was our little beetle friend, Juanito.

  Juan was interested to find out what would happen if a living creature crossed the invisible barrier that separated the forest from the dead pool There was an honest moment of indecision, but in the end, Juanito was chosen to be our unsuspecting participant. We selected him because of his dedication and diligence . . . and the fact that he was the only animated creature we had seen in this disenchanted forest.

  I felt that I should be the one to actually do it, just in case the offering of a living being might somehow give the offer er a curse. Seeing as I'm already cursed at the highest level, no half-assed, earthly curse it going to make much of a difference.

  We found Juanito carrying a small clod of dirt, probably mixing clay or something equally industrious, that all beetles and bugs instinctively know how to do. I delicately picked him up, my fingers careful not to crush his abdomens. I marked his spot in the grass. We'll either put him back when this test is complete, or give him a proper burial if he doesn't pull through.

  When we near the edge of the pool, where the grass and everything else living seems to stop, I look at Juan. He crosses himself, “Vaya con dios, Juanito.”

  Go with God, Juanito.

  And then he lowers his head in respect.

  I kneel down and extend my arm past the barrier as I release Juanito. And the second he touches the black soil below, I start counting.

  1 . . .

  2 . . .

  He's walking in circles, trying to figure out where he is. Oh, by the way, watches and compass readings are impossible inside the perimeter of the dead pool. Juanito, he looks drunk, fumbling for a direction.

  3 . . .

  4 . . .

  Juanito is crab walking, kind of veering right. He'd never pass a sobriety test in this condition. Especially in Texas. Although, maybe in Washington, D.C.

  5 . . .

  Turning, twisting, spinning.

  6 . . .

  7 . . .

  “Esta borracho?” Juan asks. I shrug, watching the little fella spin in elliptical paranoid orbits, like he's tethered.

  8 . . .

  This beetle's more tanked than Robert Kennedy. Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Nick Nolte, Lindsey Lohan . . . they look like spokesmen for MADD compared to Juanito.

  9 . . .

  10 . . .

  Wait a minute . . . he's shaking violently. Almost vibrating. Quivering. And as I say, Eleven , he pops. Cute little Juanito explodes, half of his body still twitching as the other half lets out a bit of steam and liquefied guts mixture.

  “Hijo de puta!” Juan says as he takes a step back.

  Son of a bitch!

  Eleven seconds. That means something.

  I reach my hand down and pick up the hot, semi-smoldering halves of Juanito. 11 seconds and he pops. Heat death, like he'd been cooked in a skillet. Well, that certainly explains why nothing else wants to be anywhere neare this place.

  At least, not for 11 seconds.

  I glance over at Juan, trying to figure out how much he weighs, and if the same time constraints apply to non-cursed humans as they do to beetles.

  Juan? I ask.

  “ No way , Yack. No fucking way!”

  Just your hand, and only for a few seconds, or until it gets too hot.

  “Estas loco?” he barks as he turns around.

  According to the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Psychological Illness . . . yes. Matter of fact, by just about every measure of what crazy is, I'm it.

  “Vamos al hotel, Yack. Deja las cameras mirar este pinché lugar.”

  Let's go to the hotel, Jack. Let the cameras watch this fucking place.

  We grabbed our bags, our guns, and our misconceptions, and headed back out of the forest to where Mr. Green and the gang were supposed to be waiting.

  But we were more than a bit surprised by who was waiting for us.

  74

  Cotopaxi Mountain, Ecuador.

  6:33 am . . .

  We see people. Not the people we were expecting, though.

  I'm not sure who called who, or witnessed who, or warned who, but there are eight guys here waiting for us. They look familiar.

  Juan snorts, “Los pinché gringos de ayer . . . en el bar,” Juan says under his breath. He's still got his machine gun on his back, he drops the bags to the wet morning grass, not yet reaching for his weapon.

  These are the same goons that escorted father Pete into the bar at Hotel Antonio when he was making his thinly veiled threats.

  Mercenarios, I say with tired disappointment.

  Juan nods.

  I hope he's got a plan, because I sure don't. I still have a pistol on my side, its comforting weight pulling at my waist. Thing is though, I know I can't reach it before these guys cut us down. And then there's the harsh reality that I've never actually fired a gun.

  These guys have guns. They're most likely used to using them. And even though they aren't pointing them at us, they're anxious to use them. Out here in the middle of nowhere, with just the wind to tell the story . . . we'd disappear and that would be that.

  I don't know the play, here.

  One of the catholic mercenaries steps a few paces forward, “I'll be needing all of your equipment, please.” At least he's polite about his armed robbery.

  I explain to them, We can't do that. This is all property of the World Health Brigade . Not ours to give. You guys understand, right ?

  He looks uneasy in his suit, this guy. Like when you put sweaters on your pets and they squirm around uncomfortably. This guy would probably rather be wearing camis, a toga, or maybe even a pink dress. Anything but this black thug suit that makes him look like he doesn't have a neck.

  “I'm not asking you,” he commands. “ . . . I'm telling you. We're going to be taking all of your equipment. Once we've established that none of your film, tapes, or recordings of the area are viable we will give you your equipment back and the church will pay for any damages as a result of our handling of your equipment.”

  Are you serious? Did you have to memorize all of that just for this?

  He narrows his meaty eyes at us. But I'll take it as a yes.

  “I'm not going to ask again,” he says, repeating the tough guy phrase that everybody seems to be saying these days. His men begin to shuffle, putting their hands in the kinds of places that guns usually linger. Their jackets look just a bit less itchy than their trigger fingers and shifty eyes.

  Juan, I ask, what's our move?

  And Juan's got this half-grin on his otherwise expressionless face. “Yack,” he says. “Tu sabes cuál es mi color favorito?”

  “No,” I answer delicately. “I don't know what your favorite color is.” And I'm not really sure what his angle is. What the hell is he . . . oh .

  Then I see several glowing red dots floating around beefcake's chest. They kind of shake and vibrate, crossing each other occasionally as they paint his upper chest a glowing red. Death dots. He's marked for lead.

  Meathead looks down his muscled chin at the dots the lasers are making and he very slowly and respectfully lifts his hands. He calmly explains to his stout friends to do the same.

  8 catholic mercenaries.

  16 hands in the air.

  And silently, without warning, Mr. Green, Mr. Blue, and Ricky appear from the brush wearing these coats that have all sorts of green and brown burlap strips and strings, netting, and bits of indigenous vegetation woven in to the clothing.

  They're dressed like plants . . . shrubbery with machine guns.

  Foliage packing 9mm., full-metal-jacketed, plus-P ammunition.

  This is nature with an attitude.

  Without words the men are searched, disarmed, and placed face down in the rock-laden grass while their hands were zip-tied behind their backs. An
d while all of this is happening, I'm sitting back wondering if they would let me borrow one of these guys to re-perform our earlier experiment.

  Juanito made it 11 seconds.

  Juan sees me considering this, my eyes speculative, and he says, “No, Yack.”

  He's right. I can't become these men. I'm supposed to be fighting evil, not adding to its net effect.

  Mr. Green turns, pulling the hood off of his head, and I see his nearly white, blue eyes. They look vacant and dangerous, again. He lowers his voice, “We picked these dickheads up on a conference call, planning to discourage our investigation. We've been here for hours.”

  What now?

  “We'll drop them off at the nearest local police station, and have them investigated for a few days, at least until we sort this all out.”

  “Para Juanito!” Juan says.

  For Juanito!

  Ricky looks at me quizzically, shakes it off, and then says, “You're going to be interested in what we found out.”

  Good, I say. Because we didn't see a thing. We killed a beetle, but that's about it.

  “This place is dead, Jack. Billtruck confirmed that last night when the satellites did their pass. But this isn't the only site on the mountain.”

  What?

  75

  Las Montañas Hotel.

  9:36 am . . .

  “We've been looking at the pictures,” Ricky explains as he lays out several satellite images. They look to be thermal as well as normal photographs from space. I'm surprised how good the detail is . . . from freakin' orbit!

  He points with a pen and hands me a magnifying glass, “That's the dead pool area you guys staked-out last night. See there, where the foliage changes from grass and boulders to trees and dense canopy?”

  My right eye looking through the magnifying glass, I could be a bird flying just above the tree line. This is so crisp it's scary. I look up, “Can they see with this quality . . . anywhere?”

  “ Yeah ,” Ricky says as if I just asked if the sun was coming up tomorrow. As if I'm asking him what two and two equals. Like I just asked him if pizza was good. “Of course,” he adds. “That's the power of technology. It starts in some weapons lab, and a few years later, we all get to benefit. See, war is good.”