by Roland Smith
Noah laughed.
She turned her attention to Wolfe. “Is this the bad man?”
“Yes,” Noah answered. “His name is Travis Wolfe.”
“Why are you trying to hurt my dad?”
Wolfe was having a hard time breathing. It was like going back in time and meeting Rose when she was a little girl, like seeing his own daughter, Grace, as she might have looked a few years earlier. Noah eyed him with a broad grin, obviously enjoying his horror.
“I’m not trying to hurt your dad,” Wolfe managed to say.
“Well, if you do, you will have to deal with me,” she said.
“Then we have no worries,” Wolfe said. “What’s your name?”
“Violet Blackwood.”
She didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care, that he was handcuffed or that his wrists were bleeding.
“I saw you sitting in the cage this morning between the bearcat and Nine,” she said.
“I didn’t see you,” Wolfe said.
Violet looked at Blackwood.
“Go ahead,” Blackwood said. “You can tell him.”
“We have cameras,” Violet said. “A lot of cameras. I watched you on a monitor. You barely moved.”
She had just answered one of his questions. The cameras were not infrared. She’d missed the bearcat training session. It suddenly occurred to Wolfe that Violet was Blackwood’s big reveal, and that their conversation would likely be over soon. He needed to find out as much as he could before he was put back in his cage.
“I noticed something strange in the sky over your compound as we were brought in,” he said to Noah, trying not to stare at Violet. “Some kind of strange shimmering.”
“I was wondering if you’d seen it,” Noah said. “It’s a cloaking array, which is another reason I had to venture out from the compound. As technology has advanced, I’ve had to find ways to conceal ourselves better. I’ve never been worried about aircraft. No one flies over this area at low levels. But I was concerned about satellites inadvertently discovering us. Hence the cloak. We can also detect aircraft with it. That’s how we found your sister snooping around in the helicopter. In addition, I bought up all the land for miles around the compound as a buffer, including Dr. Lansa’s jaguar preserve.”
“He obviously didn’t know that,” Wolfe said.
“No. He thought the land and his research were being paid for by a wealthy benefactor. The man who funded his preserve actually works for me. I control everything and everyone down here.”
“What about Marty and Grace?” Wolfe asked.
Butch’s expression soured at the mention of their names. He looked at Blackwood. “Has Yvonne caught them?”
“I hope so, for her sake,” Blackwood said. “After we finish up here, I want you take some men outside and find out what’s going on. They should have been here by now.”
“Don’t worry,” Butch said. “I’ll round the others up. Comms still down?”
“Yes, and we’ll stay dark until we have captured, or eliminated, the ones who are still at large.”
“That makes it kind of hard,” Butch said.
Noah’s eyes narrowed. “It’s up to you to make it work, Butch.”
“No problem,” Butch said.
Wolfe watched Violet during this exchange. She was paying close attention to what Noah and Butch were saying, and she obviously understood what they were talking about. But she appeared unfazed by their plan to kill people.
“I want to keep the ones below,” Violet said.
“I thought you told me you were getting bored with them,” Noah said.
“I was getting a little bored with Timothy and Sylvia, but now that they have company, things have gotten a lot more interesting. The old man was asking if there were carrots. You should have seen the look on his face when he found a bunch of carrots in one of the rooms. He nearly jumped for joy. I’m going to send some fertilizer down so he can grow his own carrots.”
It’s like a dollhouse for her, Wolfe thought. But instead of dolls, she’s playing with living, breathing human beings. She doesn’t know any better.
“They spent a good part of last night talking about how to escape,” Violet continued. “I love it when they do that. So far they haven’t come with up an idea that will work.”
Wolfe realized that if Blackwood had gotten his hands on Grace when she was young, she would have been playing the same twisted game.
“That’s because there is no escape from below,” Noah said. “Are you sure you want to keep them around?”
“Please!” Violet threw her arms around Noah’s neck again.
“Yes, yes, all right,” Noah said, laughing, then fixed cold eyes on Wolfe. “What should we do with this man?”
Violet stared at him, unblinking, without an ounce of compassion or sympathy. “I don’t care,” she said.
“I guess the verdict is in, Travis,” Noah said. “Sorry it didn’t go your way. We’ll carry out your sentence soon.” He looked at Butch. “Put him back in his cage, then go out and get the others. I want this finished before the end of the day.”
Butch jerked Wolfe to his feet and pushed him toward the path. Wolfe glanced back at Violet. She was watching him with ice-cold blue eyes. Blackwood’s eyes.
* * *
The cages had been hosed out during Wolfe’s absence. There was a pile of fresh meat in the feed dish inside his cage, and another in Nine’s. The bearcat’s meat was gone.
Butch punched in the code. Wolfe only managed to catch two numbers before Butch shoved him through the opening.
6-6 …
The steel door slammed closed behind him.
“Get you anything to make your short stay more comfortable?” Butch asked sarcastically.
If Wolfe thought that dropping on his knees and begging would persuade Butch to let the others go, he would have done it.
“I’m good,” Wolfe said, smiling, resuming his position on the platform at the back of the cage. “Thanks for asking.”
“I don’t know when the old man is going to kill you, or how he’s going to do it,” Butch said. “But I guarantee when the time comes, you won’t be so cheerful.”
“You’re probably right,” Wolfe admitted. “But there’s no point in going there until I get there.”
“How about that Violet?” Butch asked slyly. “She’s a real piece of work, isn’t she? Makes Noah look like a saint. He got her right this time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he let her kill you. I’d be disappointed, of course. I’ve been wanting to kill you for years.”
“I’ve always wondered about that,” Wolfe said. “Why didn’t Noah just have me killed after Rose died? It’s not like I have tight security. He could have pulled the trigger on me anytime he liked.”
Butch shook his head in disgust. “He had this harebrained idea that you were the only person on earth who could find cryptids, when in fact you’re just lucky. If he’d let me look for cryptids rather than follow you all over the world, I would have gotten him all the genetic material he ever needed a long time ago.”
“That’s debatable.” Wolfe jumped off the bench and held out his shackled wrists. “Cut these things off and let me out of here. We can settle this right now. Just you and me.”
“Tempting,” Butch said. “But I think I’ll pass.” He started to walk away.
“You’d better start thinking about what’s going to happen to you after I’m gone,” Wolfe shouted after him. “Without me, Blackwood won’t need you.”
Butch hesitated, then continued walking.
Worth a shot, Wolfe thought, resuming his seat on the bench. He looked at his neighbors. Nine stared at him like he wanted to eat him. The bearcat stared at him like he wanted to be fed.
“One or the other, or maybe both, of you are going to get your way,” Wolfe said.
Nine shifted his fiery eyes to the path leading to their cages. The bearcat turned his vicious hybrid head in the same direction. Someone was coming down the path, altho
ugh Wolfe couldn’t hear or see anyone. His years in the field had taught him to pay close attention to the animals around him.
Nature’s sentries. They see and hear things we can’t.
A few seconds later, Violet came around the corner, obviously in a hurry, staring straight down the path, looking neither left or right. As she passed his cage, she reached out with her left hand and shoved something through the mesh. It dropped into the water bucket before he could see what it was. He jumped off the bench, but by the time he got to the front of the cage, Violet was gone. He looked down at the bucket. Shining up at him through the water was a knife. Probably the same knife Noah had used to crack open his soft-boiled egg. It wasn’t sharp. He would have preferred it if she had slipped him the lock code.
But it’ll do.
He allowed himself a small smile. Apparently, Violet was not the clone Noah thought she was.
And she’s a far better actress than Grace or Rose.
“What’s up with them?” Dylan asked.
He was referring to the hatchlings. They had circled back two hours earlier, but instead of forging ahead again, they had stayed close. So close, in fact, it was hard not to trip over them as they made their way up the path.
“Maybe they’re hungry and want us to feed them,” Grace suggested.
“We’re fresh out of raw, bloody meat,” Dylan said.
“I don’t think they’re hungry,” Marty said. “I think they’re nervous. I think something up ahead might have scared them.”
“Like what?” Grace asked.
“Whatever it is, it can’t be good. Before this, they weren’t afraid of anything. I think we should stop and send the dragonspy ahead to scope things out.”
Marty had been flying the bot along their back trail to make sure Yvonne and her men weren’t sneaking up on them. So far, he hadn’t seen any sign of them, which was making him nervous. He couldn’t imagine Yvonne would stop chasing them. Something must have happened to them.
But what?
He was tempted to fly the dragonspy all the way back to camp to pick up their trail, but that would take time. And now there was the problem of the nervous dinos. He took his pack off, sat down, and leaned against a moss-covered tree. Grace and Dylan joined him. The hatchlings rooted around the forest floor for grubs, but didn’t stray far.
Weird.
He slipped the spyglasses on. He was getting used to them, but they still seemed to work better when he was stationary. It didn’t take him long to figure out what had frightened the hatchlings. A hundred yards ahead, he spied the skeletal remains of a fried monkey hanging on what looked like a fence.
“Uh-oh.”
“What?” Grace and Dylan asked simultaneously.
He zoomed in on the gristly primate and showed them on the Gizmo.
“Is that a human?” Grace shrieked.
“Way too small,” Marty said. “I’d say it is, or was, a spider monkey. See how long the arms are?”
“What happened to it?” Dylan asked.
“The more important question is why is there a chain-link fence in a supposedly unexplored section of the rain forest?” Grace said.
“I’d say that we’ve arrived.” Marty flew the dragonspy along the fence’s perimeter, passing by a couple more dead monkeys, a three-toed sloth, several birds, and a rusty sign with large red letters and a swastika.
ELEKTRIFIZIERT!
“I take it that’s not Portuguese,” Marty said.
“German,” Grace said. “But it might as well be Martian. I doubt any of the indigenous people out here can read in any language.”
“Guess we know why the hatchlings are nervous,” Dylan said. “They might have gotten shocked.”
“It’s lucky they weren’t killed,” Grace said. “What is this place? Can you get a closer look?”
Marty flew the dragonspy along the fence until it came to a gate. He drew back and found a road leading up to the gate from the inside. “Tire tracks,” he said. “And there. Footprints.” He zoomed in on the gate again and found a keypad, a camera, and a flashing red light. He looked at Grace. “Think you can pick that?”
Grace was an excellent lock pick. For years, Marty had been begging her to teach him, but she’d refused.
“It’s a keypad,” she said. “There’s nothing to pick. We need the code.”
“I guess we’ll have to find another way inside. I’ll fly the perimeter.”
“Before you do that, let’s see what’s on the other side of the fence,” Grace suggested.
Marty flew the dragonspy along the rutted road and came to a clearing where dozens of people were tending fields, orchards, gardens, and livestock.
“They all seem to be working in threes,” Dylan pointed out. “Weird.”
“I think it’s weirder than that,” Grace said. “Zoom in on one of the groups.”
Marty zeroed in on a trio of women throwing feed to a huge flock of chickens.
“Whoa,” Dylan said.
“Triplets,” Grace said.
“Identical,” Marty said. One of the women swatted at the dragonspy and nearly took it down. “And they’re quick.”
He flew the bot over to a group of kids who were maybe seven or eight years old, pulling weeds in the massive vegetable garden. Three girls in one row. Three boys in the next row over. All identical triplets. He flew over to the livestock pens. The cows, sheep, and goats were being tended by three groups of older men. There were some variations between the groups of triplets, but not much. Zooming from face to similar — really, identical — face was making Marty a little dizzy. He flew the dragonspy back to the road.
“What are you doing?” Grace asked.
“Getting back on track. A bunch of triplets. Bizarre, but who cares? We’re here to find our friends, not to study anthropological anomalies.”
“Did you just say ‘anthropological anomalies’?”
“You’re not the only one who knows how to use big words,” Marty said, feeling unduly proud of himself.
He continued to fly the dragonspy down the road and came to a lake, a village, and a large group of indigenous men, all triplets. These ones were not carrying shovels, hoes, or pruning shears. They were wielding bows and arrows, blowpipes, clubs, and spears. Their bodies were covered in jaguar tattoos. Their teeth looked like they had been filed to sharp points. Towering over them was Butch McCall.
“Guess we’re in the right place,” Grace said.
Butch was leaning against a World War Two vintage truck, talking to the warriors. Except for his black eye, he looked like he had completely recovered from Ted Bronson’s beating.
“And those guys aren’t farmers,” Dylan said.
“No kidding,” Marty agreed.
“Get in closer so we can hear what they’re saying,” Grace said.
Marty shook his head. “I doubt they’re speaking any language you know. And if I get too close, Butch will spot the bot.”
“He doesn’t know about the dragonspy.”
“He kind of does,” Marty said. “He saw it at the Ark, but didn’t know what it was. If he sees it again down here, he’ll figure it out.”
To make certain Butch didn’t see the bot, Marty flew even farther away.
“What’s that?” Dylan pointed. “Some ancient ruin?” A two-story building choked with jungle vines sat on an island in the center of a lake.
“I’d say more like World War Two,” Marty answered. “Unless the ancients knew how to mix and pour concrete.”
“I know this place!” Grace said.
Oh boy, Marty thought. The last time Grace had claimed she knew a place was in the Congo. It turned out that she had actually been born there, and lived there until she was a toddler, but she couldn’t have possibly lived on two continents at the same time.
“Umm,” Marty said, wondering if the heat, humidity, and exhaustion had finally gotten to her.
“My mother’s journals,” Grace said.
“I read your mo
ther’s journals and there was noth —”
“You didn’t read the journals you soaked in rhino pee,” Grace said. “They were filled with sketches.” She pointed at the Gizmo screen. “Sketches of this island, the building inside and out, the village along the shore, the people. I thought she was drawing Lake Télé, or how she wanted Lake Télé to look in the future. But she wasn’t. She was sketching this place from memory. She came here.”
“You didn’t happen to see a code for the gate in the journal did you?”
Grace shook her head. “There weren’t any sketches of the fence.”
Marty looked at Butch looming like a giant over the triplets. He was obviously explaining something to them. Every once in a while they nodded their jaguar-spotted heads and lifted their weapons into the air.
“What do you want to do?” Dylan asked.
Marty had a plan, but he wasn’t sure if Grace and Dylan would like it. He wasn’t sure that he liked it.
“Someone must be monitoring the cameras above the gate and along the fence,” he said. “We need to find that person and get them to open the gate so I can use the dragonspy to steal the code. Then one of us has to get inside without them knowing it.”
“One of us?” Grace asked.
Marty explained his plan. They took it better than he expected.
* * *
Butch had to go over his instructions several times before he was certain the men understood what he needed. Noah’s Warriors, as they were known within the compound, were smart and tough, but a little slow in understanding the subtleties of a mission. They had been carefully selected over generations to seek and destroy any target they were given. The word capture was a difficult concept for them the grasp. But he had to admit they had done a magnificent job the past couple of days by bringing everyone in alive for Violet to play with in the dungeon.
Violet, he thought with a shiver. She creeped him out worse than Nine did. He turned his attention back to a set of triplets who were asking him something about the hatchlings. Their singsong language was hard to follow with all three of them chirping at the same time. He waved the two warriors on the right to be silent and pointed at the man on the left to proceed. They wanted to know if they could kill the hatchlings if they got violent.
