Primeval Waters

by William Burke

  The old man didn’t kill her. Instead, he kissed her, his lips delivering a mouthful of bitter-tasting berries. Almost immediately she felt a dim spark of life coursing through her fractured body. The old man repeated the process over and over, disappearing for hours only to return with another kiss of life. She lay there, feeling stronger but still as helpless as an overturned tortoise.

  One morning, at sunrise, a ten-foot caiman crawled out of the river, advancing on her.

  She thought, Death has arrived.

  But life also came, in the form of a twenty-five-foot anaconda. Her protector slithered out of the water, battling the caiman until its coils finally crushed the life out of it. Once the caiman was dead the anaconda took up a silent vigil. As it lay sunning itself, the queen stared into its black eyes, certain it was Boiúna’s messenger.

  The old man returned, feeding her more berries and rubbing a poultice on her broken limbs, all under the watchful eyes of the anaconda. Within days she grew strong enough to pick her own berries, gorging herself on the fruit, feeling her bones knitting together. Eventually, she was able to hobble a few feet without collapsing.

  The old man silently observed her progress then slipped away into the forest. As soon as he was gone, her serpent guardian slithered into the river, its sacred mission complete.

  At nightfall, another unlikely savior wandered out of the brush. It was a donkey. The animal was filthy, with ticks feeding on its hide, but its leather bridle indicated it had once been decently cared for.

  The queen stroked its filthy coat, noting a row of partially healed claw marks on its back.

  “It looks like you tussled with a jaguar. You’ve traveled a hard road to find me, little one.”

  The burro raised its ears in response. A sign of trust.

  After a few agonizing attempts she managed to mount the donkey, who accepted the burden without protest.

  Queen Caveira gazed up at the stars to get her bearings, whispering, “So, little one, where shall we go?”

  Her answer was written in the sky. Dancing among the brilliant stars was a serpentine ribbon of blue light. The queen stirred the donkey forward, following the sign.

  Days later, she arrived at the crater lake, where Batista’s yacht waited.

  Upon boarding, she discovered that the electronics were damaged beyond repair. She tore them out and did some rewiring. After hours of toil, the engines rumbled to life. The bilge pumps went to work, pumping out excess water. She navigated the yacht to shore, tying it off to a tree stump, and began to explore.

  Below deck she discovered a case containing four brand-new AK-47 rifles—a significant improvement over her old arsenal.

  The main saloon was a luxurious wreck. Paintings in broken frames lay across the floor. A row of glass display cases had been reduced to splinters. A conquistador’s helmet lay among the shards of glass.

  She said, “My new ship even comes with a crown,” while admiring her reflection in the shattered glass.

  Picking through the wrecked galley she uncovered tins of gourmet anchovies and white tuna belly, washing it all down with a bottle of warm Dom Perignon. Satiated, she sat back, pondering how she’d come to possess Batista’s yacht, when something occurred to her.

  After some frenzied rooting through cabinets and hatches she finally uncovered a hidden steel box. It was packed with gold coins, American dollars and Brazilian reais—it had been the pig’s escape package. Feeling content, she slung an AK-47 over her shoulder, popped another bottle of champagne and retired to the main deck.

  Two haggard, nearly naked men staggered out of the jungle, cautiously approaching the yacht. Both froze at the sight of a woman wearing a conquistador’s helmet and brandishing an assault rifle.

  Looking them up and down, Queen Caveira said, “You two look like a couple of drowned rats.”

  “We’ve been hiding in the jungle for days; the Morte Tinto are everywhere.”

  Raising the rifle, she said, “The Morte Tinto resurrected me from the dead, so if you harm them, you’ll answer to me.” She cocked the rifle to punctuate her point. “Is that clear?”

  They both nodded mutely.

  “Are you sailors?”

  “Yes.”

  “Done any pirating?”

  With a broad grin, one replied, “Sure, before we signed on with that bastard Batista, may he rot in hell.”

  Queen Caveira said, “Oh, he will.” Then she tossed each man a gold coin, proclaiming, “You may join my crew. Grab some food in the galley, then get all the broken glass cleaned up. After that, one of you pluck the ticks off my donkey.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Address me as queen!”

  After a bit of nervous hesitation, one asked, “But, Queen, where are we going?”

  With infinite calm, Her Highness replied, “Nowhere. This is my new domain. You’re welcome to rob and kill any intruders, but the Morte Tinto and this lake are under my protection. Now get to work!”

  The half-starved men slipped below deck. The queen relaxed, gazing up at the sliver of blue light dancing across the starry sky. After all her hardships, Boiúna, sacred god of the river, had led her here, providing a ship, guns, money and men. In return she swore to protect its domain. And if she got to rob and murder too … well, that was just a bonus.

  A sixty-foot-long serpentine shape rippled across the peaceful waters of the lake, crossing in front of the yacht before slipping beneath the surface.

  Queen Caveira held up the bottle of champagne, declaring, “Life is good.”

  God save the queen.

  * * *

  Read on for a free sample of The Found World

  Or find more great Creature Features at www.severedpress.com

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I always wanted to write a novel about a contemporary Odyssey with new dangers and monsters lurking around every bend in the river. This was inspired by my early love of films like Jason and the Argonauts and the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and my later appreciation of literary works like Heart of Darkness. My sincere thanks to Severed Press for having the faith to join me on this voyage downriver.

  Creating that fictional journey required a great deal of research, as well as input from experts. I want to especially thank Alican Kilinc, Naval architect and marine engineer for his nautical expertise. I owe my knowledge of pirate go-fast boats, cargo ships and Multi Cat barges to him.

  I’m also grateful to Ken Darrow, MA for making it look like I paid more attention in English class. I can’t thank him enough for his diligent proofreading and editing work.

  I invite you to visit my website williamburkeauthor.com where I’ll be posting articles about Amazon River pirates (who are nothing like my fictional ones), prehistoric Amazon monsters, terrifying modern rainforest wildlife, and other entertaining stuff.

  I want to thank all the people who read my previous novel Scorpius Rex. Your great reviews and high customer ratings led to this book being published. I promise that Scorpius Rex’s heroes Dave Brank, Goon and Emily will all be returning in an upcoming adventure.

  On a final note, please DO NOT attempt to make a giant Tesla Coil using the instructions in this book! You’ll die, while causing a citywide blackout in the process.

  AUTHOR BIO:

  Primeval Waters is William Burke’s third novel, following a long career in film and television. He was the creator and director of the Destination America paranormal series Hauntings and Horrors and the OLN series Creepy Canada, as well as producing the HBO productions Forbidden Science, Lingerie and Sin City Diaries. His work has garnered high praise from network executives and insomniacs watching Cinemax at 3 a.m.

  During the 1990’s Burke was a staff producer for the Playboy Entertainment Group, producing eighteen feature films and multiple television series. He’s acted as Line Producer and Assistant Director on dozens of feature films—some great, some bad and some truly terrible.

  Aside from novels Burke has written for Fangoria Magazine
, Videoscope Magazine and is a regular contributor to Horrornews.net

  He can be found at williamburkeauthor.com

  His YouTube Channel is http://www.youtube.com/c/BillBurke

  His Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/pg/williamburkeauthor/

  THE FOUND WORLD

  The man sitting alone at the center of the middle bench seat of the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter barely looked out either window at the jungle foliage as they landed a few hundred feet from the clearing made for the carnival. Six heavily muscled commandos in tactical gear sat three across on the bench in front of him and the one behind. Up front sat the pilot and the also-heavily muscled commander of the paramilitary troop. The man’s name was not Lathrop, but that is what he went by when on assignment. The mercenaries were under his nominal command, but they were not under his employ. The people he worked for had contracted these “soldiers,” much to his dislike. The fact that they were paid by the same entity didn’t mean he had to sit next to the beasts, however.

  If Lathrop had been given his druthers, it would have been himself and the pilot in a much less ostentatious mode of travel. His tasseled attaché, which matched the tassels on his pair of Bolviant Verrocchios, was his weapon of choice. It was loaded with ammunition—contracts and legal papers that served as modern letters of marque, enough to take down entire governments if his employer wished. But not just ammunition: within the galuchat attaché case were untraceable bearer bonds each worth millions of dollars and pre-signed deeds to properties in Dubai and Tokyo worth even more. It contained carrots as well as sticks.

  Lathrop had once been asked by a contracted assassin why he didn’t simply take a few for himself and disappear. Lathrop laughed and told him that owning every single piece of property in Hong Kong wouldn’t be worth losing his life, which would be lost horribly, once his employer found him again. And—make no mistake, he told the assassin, who was erased from existence once his mission was completed just for asking the question—his employer would find him again in short order.

  Just like they had found Brett Russell, the man he had come to see. This man used to work for Lathrop’s own employer before he uncovered a shocking truth, but then went underground, promising to exact retribution one day. This didn’t bother the Organization; one man, or an army of them, or even a nation full of oath-sworn revengers couldn’t do any real damage to those pulling the world’s strings.

  What did bother them was losing a man of Brett Russell’s talents. He once liberated an entire mining village while simultaneously fighting what the Organization believed was an actual living Spinosaurus in the depths of the Congo rainforest. He was the perfect candidate to help them secure an asset so valuable that made the entire contents of Lathrop’s galuchet case look like bag of glass marbles. The Organization would have him hand over the attaché in a second if Brett Russell would accept it for the job.

  But they knew he wouldn’t. All the wealth in the world meant nothing to a man wanting only revenge. So, the man not really named Lathrop would offer him revenge.

  He allowed the commandos to exit one side and come around to slide open the door on the other side for the others to get out. He stood on the soft dirt, the heels of his astronomically expensive buffalo-hide shoes sinking half an inch or so. They would need to be discarded after this adventure, he thought, but others would be waiting for him when he stopped in New York on his way back to Geneva. It would amuse him to have his man drop the old pair of $2,000 shows into a box at the Goodwill. Maybe he’d see a hobo wearing them next time he was in the city and chuckle to himself that the bum could have bought himself a car to live in.

  A small beetle almost immediately alit upon the right lapel of his bespoke Ermenegildo Zegna suit, which made Lathrop very nearly smile; the bug had good taste. He swept it off and looked at the spectacle drawing cheers and excited gasps from the loose crowd of farmers and their lead-poisoned children. He believed he was near the “city” of Ipixuna in Brazil, a settlement of about 17,000 and one of the most difficult to reach anywhere in the Amazon rainforest, which was saying something.

  To the Organization, however, nothing was terribly difficult to reach. To get Lathrop and the troops to the spot outside Ipixuna, the 12-seat S-76 was dropped out of an enormous Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane, having first been loaded onto an automated Chase XCG-20 glider, which descended to and leveled off at 5,000 feet, at which time it was slowed to stalling speed. At that moment, a radio signal was sent to set off the bay door’s explosive bolts, which blew off the hatch and allowed the Sikorsky to slide out, its rotors already in motion. The glider crashed somewhere nearby and the helicopter flew the thirty miles or so to the target location, this godforsaken bit of swampland where the idiot carnival was set up to entrance the dullards hired to destroy their own habitat. The Organization had no hand in that, but Lathrop thought it sounded like something they would do if it suited them.

  Some 200 feet ahead was a dome made from chain-link fencing, the onlookers gathering around its perimeter. The two dozen spectators turned and glanced briefly at the sight of a massive helicopter unloading black-clad soldiers carrying assault weapons and a polished white man wearing intentionally incongruous city clothing, but then turned back. Whatever was inside the 200-foot diameter of that fenced dome must have been compelling, indeed. Lathrop knew what was inside the dome: Brett Russell. God knew what he was doing, but it was enough to make sustenance farmers walk away from their crops in the middle of a spring day perfect for planting.

  The dome itself had been erected in such a way that some jungle trees were almost entirely within it, full of weird rainforest creatures that Lathrop, frankly, could do without ever encountering. He spent his days in Geneva, one of the most civilized places in the entire world. His friend the beetle had been a novelty; one just didn’t encounter insects where he conducted Organization business. That said, a poisonous monkey or spitting lizard would be more than a novelty and would constitute something entirely unwelcome on or near his person. He might have to ask one of the commandos to remove it for destruction, and he preferred not to ask anything of the thugs if it could be avoided.

  When Lathrop finally made it to the fence, the farmers parting more in suspicion than awe at his appearance at the dome, he saw what they were all gaping at: inside was the man whom he knew to be Brett Russell. There weren’t going to be a lot of Caucasians this deep into the jungle, making it easier to identify the man he was looking for—this was fortunate for Lathrop, because the man inside the caged area was almost unrecognizable as the man in the photograph he had been given by the Organization. The Russell in the picture had been a man in the field locating and, when necessary, fighting cryptids that usually turned out to be “only” giant bears, undiscovered killer condor-like birds, and that dinosaur in Congo: lots of muscle and hard as hell. But what Brett Russell was now made the old Russell look like an agoraphobic accountant. Lathrop had never met the actor they called “The Rock,” but he imagined Russell looked like what The Rock was 5’ 11” instead of his ridiculous 6’ 5” and had earned his muscles by fighting man-eating monsters instead of lifting free weights with personal trainers.

  Russell’s muscles, as impressive as they looked, weren’t for show—they couldn’t be. This was because inside the dome, standing in the waist-deep brown water of the inlet dug to drain from the main river a hundred feet, the man was wrestling with—Lathrop literally had to blink a few times to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing—a black caiman crocodile. It wasn’t the 16-foot monster that full-grown adults were, but the adolescent was at least 10 feet long, bigger than most man-eaters in the world already. It was huge and Russell could barely keep his gigantic arm around its neck as it thrashed and tried to take him apart.

  Lathrop’s mouth actually dropped open, and he looked at the farmers on either side of him for confirmation that he was seeing what he was seeing. But they didn’t look away from Russell being thrown around as the caiman tried to flin
g him off and escape through a submerged gate in the fence that led back to the river. (There was a man, probably the fight organizer, squatting just outside the fence with his hand on a handle for the gate; he must have been the one who would let the monster back into the river once the fight was over, one way or another. This told Lathrop that Russell didn’t intend to kill the animal, which agreed with the dossier he had read on his target.)

  The black caiman may have been trying instead to fling him off and then kill him, which it could do easily if it could get Russell got in front of his giant maw. Alligators and crocodiles, Lathrop knew, worked to tire out their prey by spinning and thrashing; if Russell got too tired to hold on, it would be the end of him.

  It seemed impossible that this wasn’t the first time the man had fought for a few Brazilian reals … but it also seemed highly unlikely it was the first time, since it looked like he was the one who was getting his enemy too tired to fight and not the other way around.

  As Lathrop looked closer, he could see that Russell had anchored himself onto the caiman’s back with a strap, so it wasn’t quite as impossible as it looked. It still looked completely impossible to him, but maybe not so ridiculous as to be entirely unbelievable. Russell had his arm under the strap and this helped him get his flesh raked open by the spines on the giant animal’s hide. He also had black sleeves, really long black gloves, almost all the way up his arms that, Lathrop was sure, kept him from being sliced open by the rough skin of his enemy.

  The equipment, however, seemed to be there just to make it possible for Russell to last long enough to get tired and be ripped to shreds by the croc. The fact that even with all the thrashing, the caiman hadn’t been able to get Russell into a position where he could bite him in half was testament to the power of the mountain of muscle the man had become. And not just muscle, of course—the way Russell moved with the animal showed that he knew what he was doing.