Catalina jumped to her feet, aiming the Glock. There was another flash of lightning.
Micah yelled, “It’s the ants!”
Catalina saw a writhing mass of red insects moving across the ground, heading straight for them. “Didn’t we burn those fucks?”
Micah looked around. “We can’t outrun ’em.”
Catalina said, “What about climbing the tower?”
“Remember the depot? They’ll be up there in minutes and we won’t have any place to run.”
Faye tugged at Micah’s shirt, asking, “What about the bats?”
“They’ll be fine, honey.”
Faye yanked harder, shouting, “No, I mean… What about the bulldog bats?”
That’s when Micah caught his daughter’s drift. Pointing to the decrepit structure, he yelled, “Everybody, inside the building!”
Catalina asked, “But you said—”
Micah scooped up Faye, shouting, “Just do it!”
He ran in, with Catalina right behind. Four steps in she slipped, splashing down in the thick, urine-reeking muck. “What is this shit?”
“Exactly … but keep moving to the center.”
Micah banged his flashlight against a steel girder. The chorus of squeals grew louder, but nothing happened.
Micah yelled, “Wake up, you lazy bastards!”
The trilling increased, but nothing moved. He panned his light to the entrance. The first wave of ants was already coming through the door.
Micah shouted, “Remember when I said don’t fire the gun?”
“Yeah.”
“Fire it now!”
“At what?”
“In the air!”
Without questioning him, Catalina raised the Glock and loosed two shots into the air. The pistol’s roar was instantly drowned out by a shrill tone Catalina felt in her back teeth.
A second later, the air above them transformed into swirling black anarchy. A thousand bulldog bats, each with a three-foot wingspan, swarmed around them. A cluster of bats dive-bombed the trio, coming so close Catalina could make out their pug snouts and fangs.
Losing interest in the human intruders, the bats veered off—their echolocation having located more edible prey.
Catalina watched in amazement as the first wave of bats soared upward then descended in a barrel roll move, scooping up ants in their talons. A cacophony of ear-piercing trills rang out, signaling the rest of the cauldron.
Micah whispered, “That was the dinner bell.”
With a grace borne from millions of years of evolution, hundreds of bats swooped down from the darkness, snapping up their insect prey then ascending without losing speed. The ants’ vicious mandibles were useless against the bats, who routinely hunted scorpions without injury.
Micah lay on his back, watching as a second cloud of bats flew out the windows.
He yelled, “They’re going for the ones outside!”
Faye put her hand over his mouth, whispering, “Don’t yell, it’ll confuse their sonar.”
Micah spat, wiping away the bat guano her palm left.
Having no retreat instinct, the ants continued their attack, only to be plucked from the ground like grapes. Their thick exoskeleton offered no protection against the bats’ talons, which were strong enough to crush shellfish.
One swooping bat missed its target, becoming entangled in Catalina’s hair. She swatted at its three-foot wings until Micah wrenched it loose, releasing it. The bat soared aloft, performing an airshow worthy loop, then dove down to pluck an ant off Catalina’s boot.
A second wave of ants crawled through the doorway, but their oversized bodies became bogged down in the slushy guano. Others marched over their sinking brethren, making themselves easy prey for the bats. Within minutes the doorway was ant-free.
Faye leaned close to Catalina and whispered, “I told you they were awesome.”
Micah tapped Catalina and pointed towards the now cleared doorway. “Let’s move.”
They crawled to the doorway, mindful of the bats swooping around them.
Once outside they made a beeline for the old radio tower, running as fast as Faye’s short legs allowed.
Somehow sensing their escape attempt, the surviving pockets of ants formed up into pursuing regiments.
Catalina glanced back and said, “A whole whack of ’em are still coming!”
Without looking back, Micah said, “Good, it’ll be like a buffet table for the bats.”
He boosted Faye up so she could grab a vine. Wedging his body behind her to support her weight they climbed together.
Looking up at the swirling cloud of bats, Catalina asked, “What if they get full?”
Faye chimed in, “Bulldogs have cheek sacks to hold extra food.”
Micah added, “She’s right, they’ll chow down like a fat guy on Thanksgiving and still come back for more, and there must be a thousand of ’em.”
The pursuing ants began climbing the tower. Bats broke rank from the cauldron, diving for the vulnerable prey. With each strike a bat snatched an ant in its talons, crushed it and stuffed the meat into its cheek pouches without losing speed. They dive bombed again and again in a gluttonous feeding frenzy.
Micah set Faye on a high platform then reached down to give Catalina a boost.
Once she was on the platform, Catalina said, “Pretty slick thinking for a TV hack.”
“You should be thanking Faye; my only plan was run like hell.”
By now the sun had set. The flashing lightning illuminated the swirling cloud of bats—a sight both hellish and beautiful.
Catalina said, “It’s like sitting inside a tornado. They never even touch each other.”
Faye waved to their airborne saviors, shouting, “Thank you!” Then she dug into her pocket. “Remember when I said I did something bad?” Micah nodded. “Well, I remembered that when we were on the boat you were really excited about this thing.” She opened her hand. Resting in her palm was Batista’s precious meteorite fragment. “I forgot about it till you started wondering why the monsters were following us.” Handing it to Micah, she said, “I’m sorry. Maybe if I hadn’t stolen it all those bad things wouldn’t have happened.”
Micah stared at the fragment for a moment then smiled at Faye. “Not your fault, princess, there was no way you could’ve known.”
Slipping an arm around Faye, Catalina said, “Your dad’s right. He has more degrees than a thermometer and even he didn’t figure it out.”
Faye added, “It sings you know,” and she explained how the fragment vibrated and hummed before the monster attacks.
Micah studied the fragment more closely and said, “So it’s like a LoJac on a car. That’s how the Anomaly knows where to send its protectors. Too bad we can’t hand it back to Batista. He deserves it.”
Catalina said, “I’d like to feed it to him.” Then she turned her attention to Faye. “You know, kid, that’s a lot of bat poop on your face, mind if I clean some off?” Using her T-shirt she started wiping the worst of it away.
Micah bounced the fragment in his hand. This tiny specimen, the size of his finger, could prove every one of his theories, reopening the doors to those hallowed halls of legitimate science. A game changer—a life changer.
And with all his might he hurled it into the darkness, feeling like a giant weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He scanned the ground below, relieved to see the remaining pockets of ants shrinking by the minute.
Lightning flashed across the sky, and Micah stiffened—the old man was back.
The wizened ancient stood in the midst of the ants, bats swirling around him, completely unmolested. He stared back at Micah then held up his hand, as if showing him something.
The lightning passed, plunging the area back into darkness.
Micah grabbed Catalina’s shoulder, pointing down. “Look, do you see him? Down there!”
“Who?”
“Wait for the lightning, you’ll see him.”
There wa
s another flash of lightning, but all they saw was dying ants.
Micah sat back, muttering, “Never mind,” but he knew what he’d seen.
#
Within an hour the rain stopped, and the rainforest came alive. Faye drifted off to sleep with her head in Micah’s lap. He and Catalina sat quietly, listening to the symphony of insects, birds and unidentifiable animal calls drifting through the night air. From their high vantage point, they could make out the full moon through the surrounding trees. Most of the bats had returned to the roost, their bellies and cheeks stuffed with ants. A few still swirled around, occasionally zipping to the ground to snap up a survivor.
Micah said, “Those are some fat and happy bats.”
Gazing up at the moon, Catalina said, “This place is so surreal.”
“True. Maybe someday God will get around to finishing it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The local tribes have a saying, ‘God never finished the Amazon,’ and maybe they’re right.”
“That doesn’t sound like the agnostic ‘science can explain everything’ guy I know.”
“I guess there’s still a shred of poetry left in my soul. It’s just that the rainforest has such extremes of beauty and terror.”
Catalina said, “But you seem right at home out here.”
“Well, my folks taught me enough to get by.”
Catalina eyed him for a moment before asking, “So what’s your real story? And I don’t mean the one the TV people cooked up.”
“They didn’t have to cook up too much. My dad was a geologist and my mom was an ethnobotanist, so I spent my childhood traveling with them. Africa, South America, wherever their research took ’em.”
“Sounds like every little boy’s dream.”
“Yeah, playing in the jungle all day, getting home schooled in tents at night. Of course that meant no real school, no friends and no senior prom. I barely even saw a television until I went to college.”
“And graduated with honors if my dossier was correct.”
“Yup,” he said, sounding wistful. “Your intel was good.”
“Then how’d you wind up on television being a—”
“A joke to the scientific community? Well, let me tell ya, it took some doing. On one of my research trips in Peru I found a unique meteorite sample, like the one Batista recovered. It led me to form a theory about intelligent alien origins. I published a paper on it, and let’s just say my peer review was … unkind. It cost me my grant money, my academic standing and ultimately my marriage. To add insult to injury, some museum threw away my sample, claiming it had no value.”
“Ouch!”
“I was flat broke when some publisher paid me to turn it all into a paperback book full of woo-woo speculation and hearsay. That got me on some talk shows and pretty soon the TV people were knocking on my door waving a checkbook.”
“So that’s how you became TV’s science stud?”
“Yup, one minute I’m doing legitimate research and the next some TV executive’s got focus groups rating how my ass looks in safari shorts.”
Caught off guard, Catalina burst out laughing.
Micah said, “I hated it, but it was the only way I could self-finance my research.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, your butt was tailor-made for safari shorts.” Catalina saw that her compliment caught Micah off guard. “What? I’m a trained observer.”
After a brief silence, he asked, “So, is Catalina your real name or just your spy alias?”
“Come on, what lunatic would pick Catalina as an alias? Using your real first name means one less lie to remember.”
“From what I’ve seen you must be a Jason Bourne type, out kicking ass and toppling dictators.”
“Believe it or not, I’m usually assigned to intelligence monitoring since I speak Portuguese, Spanish, French, Arabic and some preschooler Hindi.”
“How’d you pick up all that?”
“Mostly by hanging around the house. My dad’s Brazilian and my mom’s from Equatorial Guinea. That alone adds up to about five languages.”
“So where’d you grow up?”
“I was in Guinea until I was seven. Then President Nguema decided to do a little … ethnic cleansing. After months of hiding we made it to a refugee camp. My folks couldn’t decide between staying in Africa or going to South America, so they compromised.”
“To where?”
“Lincoln, Nebraska.”
“Nebraska!” Micah couldn’t help laughing.
“Hey, don’t knock us cornhuskers. Like most immigrant parents they had my life all mapped out. Finish college, become a high school teacher then marry a nice man and have kids.”
“And?”
“I started out fine. You know, mathlete, good grades, state finals in gymnastics, plus all those languages.”
“I’m guessing something went haywire.”
“I rebelled and joined the army. My folks didn’t look too fondly on the military, which makes sense considering their life experiences. Since I spoke all those languages the army shipped me to the Defense Language Institute, out in Monterey, where I also picked up a black belt in Combatives.”
“You’re a fast learner.”
“I was a mixed race, immigrant kid, living in snow white Nebraska. Trust me; you learn to fight.”
“So how’d the spy thing happen?”
“One night, I entered a base fighting tournament, where some woman I’d never seen before kept whipping my ass. But I kept getting back up. Turns out she was a CIA recruiter, testing my determination. Next thing you know I’m out of the army and training at Langley.”
“That’s pretty impressive for someone who’s only, what, twenty-five?”
“I wish. I’m thirty-four. Even half black don’t crack.”
Micah grinned at the newfound knowledge that Catalina was age appropriate; a ridiculous notion, given their slim chance of survival.
Catalina said, “This is only my second field assignment, but I never imagined anything this bat shit crazy.”
“That’s appropriate, since we’re covered in actual bat shit. Don’t worry; they’ll be treating you like 007 when you get back. I mean, look at all the stuff you uncovered. A free energy source, criminals inside the rare elements trade, plus Batista’s practically a Bond villain.”
Catalina asked, “Speaking of villains, who’s this latest bunch of killer clowns?”
Micah gave her a quick rundown of his pirate adventures, including his emerald mine ruse, while tactfully omitting his sexual liaison.
Catalina chuckled. “I leave you alone for a couple of days and you’re off playing pirates.”
Faye squirmed for a few seconds, whimpering in her sleep. Micah stroked her hair, whispering, “It’s okay, honey, go back to sleep,” until she drifted off. “Catalina, thanks for looking after my little girl. If it hadn’t been for you—”
“No sweat. Faye’s pretty sharp, probably gets it from her old man.”
“Trust me, the brains all come from her mom’s side. Crazy thing is that I only get her two months a year, but I’ve managed to pack in a lifetime’s worth of emotional trauma.”
“Don’t dwell on it. Better to focus on getting our sorry asses home. Is there a plan?”
“At first light we get moving. Grab some fruit or anything else we can eat as we go. Then maybe we can slap together a raft, though how we can go back to civilization against the current is beyond me.”
Catalina said, “If we can reach anyplace with a phone, I can call my people. They’ll come get us, but you’ll probably be interrogated for a while.”
“I’ll take life in Guantanamo Bay if it gets Faye home safely. All we have to do now is avoid the pirates, the Red Death and Batista. But we won’t get anywhere without some sleep.”
Gazing up at the brilliant moon hovering above the endless rainforest, Catalina said, “Totally surreal.”
“Yup, Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore
.”
“It was Nebraska, smart ass. Don’t make me throw your ‘looks good in safari shorts’ ass off the tower.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Micah bolted awake at sunrise, confused and uncertain of where he was—a natural side effect of exhaustion, hunger and waking up atop a vine-covered tower. Despite his exhaustion he recalled a vivid dream, where the old man had been sitting next to him holding the meteorite fragment. He looked down at Faye, her head nestled in his lap, snoring peacefully.
A moment later, Catalina awakened, stretching like a cat across the steel platform. “Is it morning already?”
“Just about. I’m gonna climb down and scout the area.”
“Want me to tag along?”
“Nope, I know what I’m looking for.” He stroked Faye’s hair. “Can you keep an eye on her?”
“Goes without saying. Hey, at least the rain stopped—” She fell silent, awestruck by the sheer majesty of the rainforest stretching out before them.
The red sun had barely risen above the endless rainforest. Low-hanging fog lay across the trees. A symphony of bird calls and howling monkeys filled the damp air.
Seeing the look on her face, Micah said, “A sight to behold, ain’t it?”
“Just unbelievable.”
“Not to dampen the mood, but how many bullets have you got left?”
Catalina ejected the Glock’s magazine. “I used the last two waking up those bats.”
“That’s a drag, but you can’t argue with the results.” Micah stood, stretching his back, groaning, feeling more like sixty-seven than thirty-seven.
Watching him, Catalina said, “If you say you’re getting too old for this shit, I’ll throw you off the tower.”
Micah laughed and said, “Back in a few.”
Once on the ground he did a fast recon, seeing no signs of ants, pirates or native tribes. He walked a hundred yards out, where he spotted some wide leafy plants and sipped the cool dew collected in the leaves.
Feeling refreshed, he moved on, until he came to a narrow path dotted with the hoof prints of Brazilian tapirs. The bashful wild pigs weren’t a threat, but further on he spotted human footprints—all barefoot.
Primeval Waters Page 20
