Hummingbird Salamander

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Through metamorphosis, P. omena learns to live on land. Adapts to a place so different from what it knew. Glands develop that enable direct oxygen diffusion without investment in lungs. The skin infused with capillaries creates a respiratory service for survival. It also easily transmits pollutants from the environment into the delicate interior.

  “To be porous. To see colors no human can see. To receive what we cannot receive. To be receptor. To be transmitter.” Part of Silvina’s journal I’d almost forgotten.

  The intimacy that salamanders have with their environment forces them to be sentinels of environmental change. Environmental degradation of air and water from pollution that dumps chemicals will distort and damage the pores of the salamander’s skin. Extinction of P. omena is attributed to habitat degradation. Extinction of H. sapiens is attributed to destroying its own habitat.

  There are no vernal ponds these days to which the road newts return. Those thousands upon thousands of years of return are gone. They are gone forever.

  By the time I found the little windy road up to the storage palace, it was dusk.

  An urgency possessed me. I had to make up for lost time. Silvina’s salamander had reached me late, which meant the letter had reached me late, too. Now the timing was off. Now my timing was off.

  If I was right about any of it.

  If this wasn’t just another game or test.

  [95]

  The road ended with the storage palace. Lights remained on, but the front door had been wedged open and the green plastic carpet shoved to the side for some reason. A squirrel darted out of the doorway and ran, panic-stricken, for the trees.

  No cars. No sign of anyone following me. So I went inside. Accompanied by my cane and an automatic rifle. I didn’t trust the Fusk gun for this one.

  The lights were on, but no one was on duty. Why would they be? The little door to allow access to the kiosk and counter lay ajar. I found the key to number 7 hanging on a hook. Everything was neat behind the counter, nothing out of place.

  The storage unit wasn’t my first guess about Silvina’s project. How could something so small contain something that must be so large? But I wanted to rule it out. Back to the beginning. Salamander back to hummingbird. What if something new lurked in the storage unit?

  But it was empty. But it didn’t matter.

  Even the chair was gone. Same moldy panel of wall. Same flickering light. Same emptiness.

  Came back out careful, watchful, sure I’d be ambushed at the doorway. Still no one. But night had overtaken the trees in that brief moment. The road gleamed with moonlight, mixed with shadow. A thick insect sound bursting forth, waning, bursting forth.

  On a moonless night, I might have waited. But I had that urgency that Silvina needed me, that I was late. Or, that I needed to stop her. Or, that it wasn’t clear to me. I wasn’t an ideal receiver. Just that I needed to find her … or the next message (terrible thought) as quickly as possible.

  My best guess, given the scope of the project, the funds put into it, was that whatever her secret was … she had hidden it behind the barbed-wire fence that sequestered the abandoned mining project. That up on the ruined mountaintop, she had built something or made something. Made it her headquarters. That the mining operation itself had been cover for another project altogether. What else could it mean?

  It had struck me in the car that it could mean Silvina was deranged, delusional. That I might be delusional, deranged. That Langer chased ghosts. That whatever Hellmouth Jack wanted didn’t exist, either. Scattering cigarette butts. Dressing up in a clown wig. For nothing.

  I left Shovel Pig in the trunk. Put on a backpack with food and supplies. Took the Fusk gun and my automatic rifle. Hid the rest of the arsenal under some leaves and branches to the side of the parking lot.

  Then, cursing, I opened the trunk again and took Shovel Pig with me. Stupid, superstitious, but it felt wrong to leave her behind. It just took time to empty her of what I didn’t need. All over the backseat of the car.

  The fence a little ways up from the storage unit was a beast. I’d brought bolt cutters, but some animal had dug underneath a section and it was easier to put on gloves and just dig it out more. Even so, I scraped up my back, almost torqued my bad knee. Great start, but I felt jaunty. Doing something physical. Far away from the farm.

  I started haltingly up the incline. It took a while to get used to the cane with the ground wet, sometimes muddy. Along not so much a path as a rut from rainwater flowing downslope. Bending at the knees like I was on a boat helped.

  I had a map I’d hastily drawn from an online source showing Vilcapampa’s mountainside holdings. Predictable, that search engine maps of the area were blurred out and a decade out of date. But some of the topographical detail would help.

  It felt possible no one but Silvina and lost hikers had been up here in decades. I was looking for a building or a bunker or anything that suggested human activity. The land had been placed in an environmental easement, ironically enough, and in theory nothing had been built on it since the mining excavation.

  Just a half hour in, visibility changed. Fog came in and the moon tore at the edges of that, made the shadows more prominent, light rationed out. Patches of glistening reflections off the water onto leaves and branches, latticework that confused more than helped. I tried to just look down at the rough trail.

  Surprisingly soon the grass, leaves, and rutted ground turned into black, glistening gravel shot through with dying weeds. Not a road, but a kind of ruined excavation. A suggestion of prior rockfalls from above.

  The gravel widened, and I realized the trees below had grown high enough to hide the scar from below. Almost everything up here, except at the very highest elevations, was hidden from any angle below, especially since the gravel traced a wide path to the left to take advantage of a shallower slope.

  Animals had reclaimed the mountain long ago, despite the rips and scars. I could hear things moving through the tree cover to the sides and on the slope below me. Silhouette of a scenting raccoon. Bumbling path of a skunk.

  I had thought of the cane as a walking stick, but with this slant, the exertion was intense. Already, I was breathing heavily, and all the old, familiar pains had returned. My lungs felt compressed and weak. I couldn’t always keep my footing on the gravel. Perhaps someone more graceful could have.

  After a while, I realized I had lost all sense of where I was, except for the fact I was continuing upward.

  * * *

  Rain began again, soaking me. My legs ached from the sand-like exertion of walking on the gravel. This was a trek for a younger, fitter me. But this body was all I had. Swift, abandoned thought of turning back, waiting until morning. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t be sure of finding my way. Of not pitching forward down the slope and breaking my neck.

  Through the fog, distant, there came in time an echo across the gravel. Dismissed it as weird acoustics. The sound of a huge monster—me—dragging itself across the gravel, ever higher. But when I stopped to rest, I still heard it. Coming closer.

  I picked up my pace, at the risk of giving away my location with more noise. But whatever or whoever it was kept pace. Nothing good could come of this trajectory.

  When the fog lifted a little, ten minutes later, I could see a copse of trees ahead on my right. Stubborn defense against the gravel. Unwilling to capitulate. I reached it and hid behind a clutter of dead fallen trees. Anyone coming up the slope would guess I had hidden there. But it gave me a clear line of sight to send a bullet or two their way.

  I waited for someone to appear. Instead, the treacherous fog came back, rolling in from farther up the slope. Now I was lost in a welter of trees, unable to see anything downslope.

  A flat, thick sound. A bullet zipped past my neck and I hit the ground. Undid the safety on the automatic rifle, strafed the slope.

  Nothing. No sound. I’d missed, too.

  Weird panic. What if whoever it was didn’t know it was me.
>
  “Identify yourself!” I shouted—and rolled well to the side, to the shelter of a huge fallen tree trunk. The earth between roots smelled like bitter medicine.

  A spray of bullets, but far off to the left. The fog was doing strange things to the acoustics. Okay, so no mistake. They meant to shoot at me.

  I stood up behind the tree trunk, shielded by its ten-foot circumference of unearthed roots.

  Listened intent. Crack of a branch to downslope, to my left.

  It sounded so close, I emptied the clip in that direction. The bullets sizzled through the trees, into the trees. I heard a gasp, a scream. A man’s voice, I thought.

  I stood there a second. Listening again. Didn’t want to give up my position behind the tree trunk.

  Silence.

  Then a furious fire from my right, through the fog, bullets snapping into the roots, into the trunk, as I slid to the ground, unhurt. Another year of wood rot and one of those bullets would have reached me.

  My other clip was in my knapsack. And my knapsack was back where I’d been.

  I pulled out the Fusk revolver. Hesitated. Too late. It felt too late to fire back. Didn’t think they’d be in the same place.

  I was staring in the middle distance when a shape loomed up from the side, not ten feet away. Staring in the other direction. But I couldn’t help a gasp. The figure turned, shot, hit my arm. I screamed, dropped the gun as I fell.

  He shot again, but I was already rolling as I fell, throwing the cane at him, so he flinched and had to duck. By then, I had closed the distance. I smashed into his midriff, swatted his gun from his hand, still burning up from the bullet lodged in me.

  I don’t think he expected me to do that. I don’t think he expected I would come toward him.

  Langer.

  * * *

  It was brief and brutal. Langer had no experience with close-in combat. I used my weight to crush him beneath me. He bucked, tried to get away, punched me in the face. I punched him back. We said nothing, made no threats or pleas. What would we have said? There was only the moonlight, the shadows, the vapor rising off our bodies, our thick, rapid breathing. Langer tried to punch me in the kidney. Didn’t care. He brought his legs in and kicked me in the belly. I guess he thought soft meant soft.

  But as he did, as Langer thought I would crumple and he would pick up his gun and end me, I hugged his shoulders, brought his torso close. Changed levels as he reacted. Twisted his legs to one side as my weight landed there, off his torso. Langer fell back, with a surprised, squeaky sound, something having popped in him or me. I wanted him to be gone from this Earth. I wanted him to be out of my fucking way. More than anything I’d wanted in a long time.

  We thrashed from forest onto gravel, frenzied. Langer tried to dislodge me from around his waist, beat at my back, and it was just like a gentle tap, tap, tap to me. Tried to gouge out my eyes, but I moved my head and bit deep into his thumb. Brought his other hand to his side to pull out a knife and with his bitten hand punched me on the top of the head.

  While I tried only one thing. I braced myself and half rose with Langer in my grasp, and as he flailed, I brought him down on his side with such an impact the air left his lungs. Went for a choke hold from behind. Held Langer tight, his back against me, his throat pulsing, trying to shout but gasping instead. My legs were wrapped tight around his legs, to keep him motionless. I hoped my bad leg would hold. Langer began to concentrate on breathing, trying to pull my arm away.

  I thought I had him. I had him.

  But he managed to reach his arm around and get to the knife and stab me in the bad shoulder just as the bad leg gave way. I could feel my choke hold shift. Another second and I’d lose that position. Langer would be on top of me or straddling my side. Stabbing and stabbing until I was dead.

  I bought some time clubbing him with Bog. Opened a cut on his head before he managed to smash it from my grip. My treacherous fingers.

  But there was the slope. Literal last ditch. The leverage of one good leg. I used my weight to roll and let gravity do the rest, keeping the choke hold, loosened, as we rolled and rolled back down the gravel slope, bruised and torn by the sharp black pebbles and our own momentum. Dizzy with it.

  Knife gone flying. I saw it kick back up slope. A glittering glint lost in the haze.

  Langer shouting now. Incoherent, bucking, trying to get free, even as the slope pummeled us.

  The difference between us: I didn’t give a fuck what came next so long as I kept my weight on him, kept my arm around his neck.

  There came a crack and smack that knocked me half unconscious and I lost my grip on Langer. He’d landed up against another dead tree, me facing him. Washed up on this strange shore of moss in the moonlight. I could smell only the fresh, rich smell of the cedar trees. Blood in my mouth. Felt like a brick had been thrown through the back of my skull.

  I heard a weird sound. Langer.

  “Don’t destroy it,” Langer was mumbling through the gash in his mouth. “Don’t destroy it.”

  I lay there too tired to reply or to move. Drifting in and out of consciousness. Getting colder and numb, but not caring. In the end, it was too much. I had limits. I wanted an end, but I couldn’t get to my feet to get to the end. Something essential to standing knocked out of me.

  The stars above blurred, came back into focus, moved in odd acrobatic orbits. Thought I saw the knife still spinning, falling toward me. The thick black hilt. The silver, shining blade.

  I struggled to my knees, stared at Langer. He gave me a weak smile. He was delirious. His eyes weren’t right. Or his expression wasn’t right.

  “I loved her,” he said. “I loved her. I love her.”

  I wanted to tell him that was pathetic. That he was delusional. I meant to tell him that when I should’ve said “I know.” Because what was he in that moment but stripped down to the truth?

  But we didn’t have time left to talk, anyway.

  Langer’s head split open. The blood spatter slapped against my boots, my pants. Whatever was left hung down lopsided. So that’s what happens next I remember thinking. A bullet in the brain. A bullet to the brain. The recoil from the gun burned in my ears. Made me fall to the side. I winced, waiting for me next.

  But my time didn’t come.

  Above me, Hellmouth Jack loomed up out of the shadows, looking just as he had in the bar centuries ago in New York. A peculiar anticipation on his face. Something akin to excitement. Or greed.

  He had a Glock trained on me.

  “No slacking, slacker,” he said. “Time to rise and shine. Jack and Jill have to go—up a hill.”

  [96]

  We waited until early morning. The fog had turned to drizzle. The bullet had just grazed my arm. I didn’t even bother to stop the bleeding. My shirt would stanch it in time. My head felt better. A dull ache. A dull ache, too, that I was a prisoner.

  “He always talked too much,” Hellmouth Jack said. But I didn’t much care that he’d ended the man who’d tried to kill me.

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  He was squatting on a tree stump a good ten feet away. Wary. The way I’d brought Langer low wouldn’t happen to him. Smoking a cigarette, Glock in the other hand, vaguely trained in my direction. Not as bad as my husband, but in the new light he didn’t look great. Either he’d been dyeing his hair before or the gray had just begun to come out around the temples. Subject to current events. Smelled the alcohol on him even from the ten feet. Rum, not whisky.

  Langer’s remains lay among meadow grasses thirty feet farther down the slope. Neither of us had suggested burial.

  “Called in a last favor with Homeland Security. I knew you weren’t going home home. Drone triangulation on your car when you parked at the cabin to talk to your beloved husband.”

  A trap, then, and I’d walked into and through it, and here we were.

  “Homeland Security still exists?”

  “Not by that name. Just their drones. Do you know how many secret
drones lacerate the sky these days? They’ll outlast us all. Form their own civilization.”

  “Thanks for saving me,” I said.

  He smiled at that at least, even if grim-faced. His voice had such a flat certainty to it. A clipped certainty. So unlike the flirt at the bar or even him over the phone.

  “You did me a favor, bringing all the bad actors out of the woodwork so I could get at them. But, in the end, it didn’t much matter to me who took care of who. So why get involved.”

  “What if I’d swallowed the key?”

  “The key? Oh—the clues? Good idea to bug both the cabin and the house, as it turns out. Once I knew the letter existed, I got the gist from your lovely stepmother. Just recently.”

  Flare of anger.

  “She’s not my stepmother. Did you kill her, too?”

  “My, the things we worry about at the end of history. No. I didn’t have to—she was happy to tell me.”

  To be expected. I felt more betrayed by Hellmouth Jack. That didn’t make sense, meant I’d relaxed too much into the banter of our conversations.

  “I’ve always been more discreet than Langer anyway,” he added.

  “Langer was the last one, wasn’t he?”

  “Last what? Lone ranger? Anger management counselor? Inept courier?”

  “Last member of Contila. Of any note.”

  “True. Contila membership has become very elite in recent months. But there’s one left.”

  “Who?”

  “Silvina, of course. And she—or her ‘child,’ her pet project—is up here somewhere, isn’t she?”

  I said nothing.

  “Surely you, too, have looked askance at that hit-and-run report. Surely you, too, would like someone to find her ashes in the ocean and run a DNA test?”

  I said nothing. Didn’t want to help him. Didn’t want to be complicit that way. I felt his gaze would warp the discovery. Irrational, but I’d just found where Silvina had existed in my life, the compass point. I wanted that kept pure.