Black Rain: A Thriller

by Graham Brown

  As he stared at the dead grub, Hawker guessed that the thing had met a similar fate. As soon as McCarter had dumped the canteen over it, the grub began releasing the base secretions, manufacturing them as a defense mechanism possibly in proportion to the amount of water hitting it. Only, without the water being acidic, the animal’s secretions had nothing to counteract, and its own defense mechanism destroyed it.

  He looked at Danielle, who nodded her agreement as McCarter began to summarize.

  “I believe the body in the temple entered Mayan mythology as Seven Macaw. And these animals, as the Zipacna. In the legend, only the wooden people were present for the deluge, but they both came from the same place—or time.” He glanced at Danielle. “And the rain—our rain—will do the same thing to these Zipacna that it did to the wooden people three thousand years ago.”

  Danielle had one more question. “And the natives?” she asked. “You think they know this.”

  “They know,” McCarter insisted. “They’ve always known.” He jutted his chin toward the forest. “For three thousand years they’ve been coming here in their wanderings. Always to this place, always in the dry season, guarding it, waiting for the rains to come and grant them absolution for the rest of the year. Eighty years ago, when Blackjack Martin took those crystals from them, they were waiting for the rain to come, praying for it out of spiritual dogma, out of sheer habit. Now, somewhere out there, they’re doing the same thing, only this time out of a desperate need. If we want to survive, we have to find them, we have to show them that we know, and beg for their help.”

  CHAPTER 44

  McCarter’s explanation struck a cord with Danielle. And twenty minutes later, she found herself in the rainforest, hiking with Hawker, McCarter and Devers, following a trail to the Chollokwan camp.

  Verhoven had volunteered to go in her place, both because the Chollokwan were a strict patriarchy and because her leg was injured, but Danielle had overruled him. To begin with, Verhoven’s hand was worse than her leg, and the jungle hike required almost as much hand work as walking. But more importantly, she had a feeling that this might be their best and possibly last chance to get out of the jungle alive. She wasn’t about to leave a moment like that to anyone else.

  McCarter would have preferred it otherwise, and said so. But with little choice in the matter, he could only beg her not to talk unless spoken to. The male-dominated Chollokwan society would not respond to it, he insisted. She’d agreed to let him do the talking, but this was still her show and there was no way was she staying behind.

  As they traveled along, the jungle thickened around them. They hiked through the rainforest proper now, not the edge of the clearing, where McCarter and Hawker had been before. Massive trees with overarching branches created the feeling of walking through a tunnel, while the tangled undergrowth hid scurrying things. It all seemed foreign to her now, as dark and sinister as the cave beneath the temple, and similar in many respects. And it created in her a low-level anxiety that seemed to grow stronger the farther they traveled from the clearing and its relative measure of safety, like the old sailor’s fear of losing touch with the shoreline.

  With great effort she forced the thought aside. The animals, McCarter’s Zipacna, were out there somewhere. And while Hawker had guessed them to be nocturnal, they knew from the attack on Kaufman, which had occurred just before sunset, that such was not entirely the case.

  After observing the grub in the ammunition box, Danielle concluded that it was not the daytime that the Zipacna avoided, but the daylight itself. The grub had cowered in the one corner that offered shade and when she’d covered half of the box with a rag, the thing had chosen the shadowed side no matter how many times she switched it. If she was right, then the animals could hunt in the forest twenty-four hours a day, for beneath the triple canopy, where the group now trod, less than ten percent of the sunlight made it through to the ground.

  Knowing this, Danielle kept her eyes on the move. She walked beside McCarter in a loose formation, her eyes flicking between the jungle, McCarter and the traitorous William Devers, who traveled a few yards ahead, unencumbered but unarmed. She half expected him to try something, but he seemed to know it would be suicide for him to run off into the jungle alone.

  A few yards in front of Devers, Hawker strode with a purpose. There was a strange rhythm to the pace he kept, moving briskly for many minutes, then stopping suddenly, before resuming the rapid walk. At each stop he scanned the jungle ahead and behind, sometimes pausing for agonizing minutes in complete silence and stillness, as if waiting for some spirit to pass over. At other times, he pointed out the marks that enabled him to track the natives—crushed plants, disturbed moss, churned ground. “A hundred white faces leave quite a path,” he said.

  Two hours of tracking and hiking brought them to an area where Danielle noticed a slight smell of smoke. As they continued, the leaves around them began to appear white, carrying a thin layer of fine ash, like dust on the furniture in an empty house.

  And then the natives were there.

  She grabbed McCarter and stopped him. There were two darkly tanned men directly ahead and three more off to one side. She guessed there were others still hidden in the brush, but she couldn’t see any. The stone axes in their hands were held high and their faces appeared harsh, their eyes seething with anger.

  One of them shouted something, which Devers did not translate, though perhaps he didn’t need to—it was spoken so violently it had to be a threat or a curse. Several others appeared from the forest and in a moment they were surrounded by a dozen Chollokwan men.

  It was now or never. “Talk to them, Devers,” she said. “Tell them we come in peace.”

  Devers took a deep breath and then managed a few words. But there was no reaction from the natives. Beside her McCarter began to lower his rifle in a gesture of benevolence.

  Hawker shook his head.

  “Not yet,” Danielle said. “They’ll rush us.”

  Devers tried again, explaining that the people from the NRI only wanted to help the Chollokwan, not to fight with them. That they were waiting for the rains to return just as the Chollokwan were, and to help the rains along, they’d brought the crystals that had been taken from the Chollokwan so long ago. They would return them in exchange for help.

  Initially, the Chollokwan said nothing, staring blankly at the foreigners as if confused. Finally, the one who’d shouted began to speak. His words had an acerbic tone, and Danielle felt quite sure that the offer was being declined.

  Finally Devers translated. “His name is Putock,” Devers said. “He insists that he is not afraid of us, or of Western men. He says he has killed many before.”

  “That’s comforting,” Danielle said.

  “He says this question is not for him to answer and that—”

  Putock interrupted Devers with another shout, and then he and the other Chollokwan turned back into the forest.

  “He says the others will decide.”

  “What others?” Danielle asked.

  “The elders,” Devers explained. “The council.”

  She looked at Hawker and then at McCarter. This was what they wanted. They moved off, heading deeper into Chollokwan territory.

  CHAPTER 45

  Professor McCarter had been caught off guard by the native’s sudden disappearance into the bush. He rushed to catch up, reaching the others just as they arrived at the outskirts of the native encampment.

  The village itself sat beside the long curve of a broad stream, one wide enough to part the jungle and let the sun shine down over its waters. McCarter guessed the location to be a deliberate one. Not only did it put the Chollokwan in close proximity to a source of freshwater and fish, but it protected them from attack on two-thirds of their perimeter. The remaining section was guarded by sentries, groups of them on the forest floor and others perched in the trees. Seeing this, McCarter began to wonder if the Chollokwan had indeed stood guard on the ramparts at the Wall of Skul
ls.

  Between the sentries burned a long line of small fires, fifty or more spaced evenly in a long, curving arc that stretched to the water’s edge on both sides of the village, a barrier on the land, forming the front line of defense.

  The fires burned hot and filled the air with white smoke and the fine ash that they’d seen on the leaves some distance away. Stacks of wood lay behind them, which the younger members of the tribe were continuously adding to.

  The Chollokwan sentries acknowledged Putock as he approached and then sprang to their feet at the sight of the Westerners. Putock waved them back, said a few words and then the group of foreigners passed by, walking between the fires and into the village.

  McCarter strained to take it all in. The land itself was almost bare, stripped of anything that could be used as fuel for the fires. Only the larger trees remained. It was more of a camp than a village, the only structures being rickety shelters of animal skins and bundled wood. But then, the Chollokwan were nomads and when the time came, they would tear the place down and disappear, carrying their shelters away with them. McCarter wondered how long they would stay. Until the rains came, he guessed, or until the first wave of rains passed.

  As they followed Putock, they passed additional blazes. Around these fires lay the wounded and the dying, and around those victims gathered loved ones who mourned them.

  A pair of distraught women hovered over a recent, bloodied arrival, wailing in anguish at the sight. Other men with similar gashes were tended by more stoic guardians—mothers, sisters and wives long since cried out.

  All of the victims had been slashed and torn open, skin and muscle cut cleanly to the bone, or torn away in great chunks. Smaller wounds had been cauterized with the scalding heat of stone tools from the fires, while larger injuries were covered with dressings of mud and leaves. McCarter counted twenty badly wounded men and a dozen more that must be dead already. He wondered how many hadn’t come home from their sorties, how many had been taken by the Zipacna and hung in distant trees.

  Beside one of the dying, a woman and an older child sobbed. Not far from them, a three-year-old played. Too young to understand, the little boy danced around, chirping like a small bird, throwing a stone at the fire. It reminded McCarter of his wife’s funeral and their grandchild dressed for church, who just wanted to run and laugh. As he thought about the universality of life and death, it grieved him to consider the pain his group had helped cause.

  Putock led them past the wounded and brought the foreigners to the largest blaze yet, a huge bonfire near the center of the village, beside which sat a mountainous pile of wood.

  The envoys from the NRI stood beside it, enduring waves of heat and murmurs and stares from the Chollokwan crowd. As the number of onlookers grew, they pressed closer together, and McCarter soon felt claustrophobic, encircled by a human wall.

  After several minutes a stir went through the crowd, and the Chollokwan bystanders parted. The council of elders had arrived, as promised.

  The council numbered five, but of primary importance was the leader, a tiny man, slight of build to begin with and shrunken further with his great age. He moved with a grace born of caution and a frame twisted and bent like an ancient tree. Scaly, mottled skin covered his hands and face, and his eyes lay half-hidden behind folds of wrinkled flesh. He was called the Ualon, the Old One: the Great Father and leader of the tribe. The Chollokwan honored this frail man above all others. His decision would bind them.

  Before he would talk, the Old One inspected his guests. He stepped close to them, touching their faces in spots and some of their hands, judging them against a lifetime’s priceless knowledge.

  He looked at the bandage around Danielle’s leg, touched the wound on McCarter’s shoulder, the bloody gash etched on Hawker’s cheek. “Warriors,” he said in the Chollokwan language.

  The Old One and his fellow council members took a position across from them. Both groups sat down and the crowd closed ranks around them.

  A cracking whisper came from the ancient man’s throat, his words forming slowly in the strangely labored Chollokwan tongue.

  Devers translated. “He says that the seers have foretold the arrival of the ‘West Men’ and that there would be a struggle between the ancient and the new. He says his father told him this when he was a boy, and now it has come to pass.”

  Devers had used the term “West Men,” but McCarter suspected it was one of his own invention, as there was likely no English translation for the Chollokwan word that described outsiders. He was patently aware that to the Chollokwan the NRI team had in fact come from the East, from Manaus, downriver.

  He looked at Danielle. She nodded.

  “Tell him we’ve not come here to struggle against them,” McCarter began. “Tell him we’ve come here to ask for their help and …” McCarter bobbed his head slightly, “to return what was stolen from them, probably in the time of his father.”

  “You’ll have to show him the crystals,” Devers said. “The warriors didn’t seem to understand me, and I think they may have a proper term instead of a description.”

  Devers turned to speak and Danielle pulled out the box she had reacquired from Kaufman before his demise. From it she produced the Martin’s crystals. She handed them to McCarter as a murmur of surprise surged through the crowd.

  The Old One leaned closer to inspect the crystals. “Ta anik Zipacna,” he said, which Devers translated as: The eyes of Zipacna.

  McCarter reeled from the statement. It told him he was right, these simple nomads were the descendants of the Maya.

  “Zipacna are the Stealers of Life,” the Old One explained. “They are the Takers of Men; the Plague, the Zipacna are the Many Deaths Who Walk the Night. All these names are for the Zipacna.”

  No further explanation was needed.

  The Old One raised his hands outward to indicate the entire tribe. “The People come to watch for the Zipacna, to see if they rise from the pit—from the depths of the stone mount. It has been more than the time of many great fathers since they were seen. Yes, always they have slept until now. Until the West Men set them free. Because of this, the Great Sky Heart is angry, the rains will not fall.”

  Sky Heart. McCarter thought the Mayan term was “Heart of the Sky,” a term that described the gods, the chief god in particular, Hurricane.

  McCarter addressed the Old One directly. “The rains would kill the Zipacna,” he said. “If the Black Rain fell it would save the People.”

  Now the Old One stared at McCarter, perhaps reeling in the same way McCarter had only moments before. His eyes were open wide, their luminescent brilliance no longer hidden by the curtains of skin. McCarter had used the words “Black Rain” because they were an integral part of the ancient legend—what he didn’t know was that the Chollokwan used the same words to describe the first heavy rain of the season.

  Here they would wait, until the falling of the Black Rain. The heavy rains would tell them it was safe to leave the clearing and the stone temple behind. In most years there was so much rain, even in the dry season, that they had to arbitrarily choose which particular storm would be counted as the Black Rain, but in certain years, especially El Niño years like this one, the choice would be clear.

  McCarter could see the essence of this on the Old One’s face and he felt an opening. He watched as the frail body turned and conferred with his council before speaking again.

  “He wants to know what kind of help we request,” Devers said. “And what kind of help we believe they could give us.”

  “Tell him we want to leave the jungle. We were asked to leave before and now we will, but we need their help to make the journey. We offer the crystals, the Eyes of Zipacna in exchange for this help.” McCarter held up the box again. “Tell him we wish to return to our homes, to a place beneath our own sky.”

  The other elders whispered among themselves but the Old One did not consult them. He looked at McCarter and spoke, his words flowing through Devers.


  “Many who journey do not return to their homes.” He pointed to the river. “The water flows strongly.” He made a fist. “The current takes men away. To return home one must fight against the power of the stream. For some this is too much. For you,” he said, waving a hand over the NRI group, “it will be too much, it seems.”

  “But the current flows to our home; the river will take us.” McCarter replied this way, though he guessed that the statement had not been meant literally. “It was the journey to this place that was most difficult for us.”

  “Then you must go,” the Old One said. “With or without help, you must leave.”

  As the Old One spoke, McCarter’s heart sank. He had assumed that the crystals held a high place in the Chollokwan beliefs, and from the way the elders stared at them, he believed he was right. But it seemed practicality forbade them from rendering assistance. As McCarter guessed, the able-bodied would not be wasted on escort duty for strangers and foreigners, and that, McCarter feared, meant doom for their small and dwindling party.

  As McCarter fell into silence, Hawker whispered to Danielle, “This isn’t exactly going well.”

  She leaned over to McCarter. “Don’t give up,” she said, quietly. “We’ll never get another chance at this.”

  “I don’t know what else to say,” McCarter replied.

  “Make something up.”

  “Like what?”

  “Offer them guns,” she said. “We’ll give them rifles and bullets if they’ll help us.”

  McCarter shook his head. “What good would that do? It would just be a trick.”