Amazonia Page 20

  "Hurry up," Frank mumbled. He had a fist clenched to his belly.

  Okamoto climbed to the far side and out of the water. He turned with a grin. "It appears to be safe."

  "For now," Kouwe said. "We should hurry."

  "Let's go!" Waxman ordered.

  As a group, they splashed through the waters. Frank held Kelly's hand. Nate helped Anna Fong. "I'm not a good swimmer," Anna said to no one in particular.

  The Rangers followed, guns held above their heads.

  On the far side, the party climbed the steep slope. With wet boots and the mud still slick from the rains yesterday, trekking was treacherous. Their progress slowed. The tight group began to stretch apart.

  Jorgensen appeared out of the gloom, night scope in hand. "Captain," he said, "I've checked the other stream. The waters seem to have calmed. I don't see any more of the creatures."

  "They're out there," Nate said. "They're just not in a frenzy any longer."

  "Or maybe now that the fires have died down, they fled back to the main river channel," Jorgensen offered hopefully.

  Waxman frowned. "I don't think we should count--"

  A sharp cry interrupted the captain. Off to the left, a body slid down the slick, muddy slope. It was a Ranger. Eddie Jones. His limbs flailed as he tried to break his fall. "Fuck!" he screamed in frustration. He tried to grasp a bush, but its roots ripped out of the thin soil. Then he hit a bump in the slope, and went cartwheeling, his weapon flying from his fingers, and landed in the stream.

  A pair of Rangers--Warczak and Graves--ran to his aid.

  He popped out, coughing water and choking. "Goddamn it!" He clambered to the stream's edge. "Fuck this jungle!" As he straightened his helmet, more colorful obscenities flowed. He climbed out of the stream.

  "Smooth, Jones...very smooth," Warczak said, running his flashlight up and down the man's soaked form. "I'd give you a perfect ten in the jungle slalom."

  "Cram it up your ass," Jones said, bending to finger a rope of sticky algae from his pant leg. "Ugh."

  Corporal Graves was the first to spot it: something moving atop the other man's pack. "Jones..."

  Still half crouched, the man glanced up. "What?"

  The creature leaped, latching onto the soft flesh under Jones's jaw. He jerked. "What the hell!" He tore the creature from his neck, blood spurting. "Ahhhhh..."

  The small stream suddenly frothed and burst forth with another dozen of the creatures. They leaped at the man, attacking his legs. Jones fell backward, his face twisted in agony. He hit the stream with a loud splash.

  "Jones!" Warczak stepped nearer.

  Another of the creatures leaped from the water and plopped in the wet mud at the corporal's feet, gill flaps vibrating. Warczak scrambled backward, as did Graves.

  In the shallow stream, Jones writhed. It was as if he had been thrown in boiling water. His body jerked and spasmed.

  "Get back!" Waxman yelled. "Everyone uphill!"

  Warczak and Graves were already running. From the stream, more of the creatures leaped and bounded in pursuit.

  The group tossed caution aside and scrambled up the slope, some half crawling on hands and knees. Kelly's legs suddenly went out from under her. Her muddy hand slipped out of her brother's grip. She began a deadly slide.

  "Kelly!" Frank called out.

  But Nate was a couple yards behind her. He caught her one-handed by the waist, falling on top of her, holding his shotgun in his other arm. Manny came to their aid, hauling both back to their feet. Tor-tor paced anxiously back and forth behind him.

  The Brazilian waved the jaguar ahead. "Move your furry ass."

  By now, the three were the last of the group. Frank waited a few yards up.

  Only Private Carrera was still with them. She stood and sprayed a jet of fire behind them, her flamethrower roaring dully. "Let's pick up the pace," she said tensely, backing up the slope, herding them upward.

  "Thanks," Kelly said, her eyes swiveling to encompass the entire group.

  Frank met them and took his sister in hand. "Don't do that again."

  "I'm not planning on it."

  Nate kept a watch behind them. He met Carrera's gaze. He saw the fear in her eyes. This momentary distraction was all it took. One of the creatures sprang at the Ranger from the surrounding underbrush. It had slipped past her firewall.

  Carrera fell backward, fire spitting into the sky.

  The creature had latched onto her belt, but squirmed for a meatier purchase.

  Before anyone else could react, a sharp crack split the night. The creature was flung away, the two halves of its body sailing high. Both Carrera and Nate turned to see Manny snapping his short bullwhip back into ready position.

  "Are you just gonna sit there gawking?" Manny asked.

  Carrera scrambled up with Nate's help. The group sped up the hill. At last they reached the summit. Nate hoped putting the rise between them and the amphibious creatures would be enough.

  He found the others gathered on top.

  "We should keep moving," Nate said. "Keep as much land between us and them as possible."

  "That's a good theory," Kouwe said. "But putting it into practice is another thing altogether." The shaman pointed down the knoll's far side.

  Nathan stared. From this height, the stream below shone silver in the moonlight. Groaning, he realized it was the same stream they had been avoiding all along. Nate turned in a slow circle, recognizing their predicament. They had made a fatal error.

  The small waterway they had crossed a few minutes ago was not a feeder draining into the larger stream, but actually a part of the same stream.

  "We're on an island," Kelly said with dismay.

  Nate stared upstream and saw that the flow of the waterway split and ran around both sides of the knoll. Once past the hill, it joined to become a single stream again. The party indeed stood on an island, in the middle of the deadly stream, water all around.

  Nate felt sick. "We're trapped."

  2:12 A.M.

  WEST WING OF THE INSTAR INSTITUTE

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Lauren O'Brien sat at the small table in the communal galley, hunched over a cup of coffee. At this late hour, she had the place to herself. All the other quarantined MEDEA members were either asleep in their makeshift bedrooms or working in the main labs.

  Even Marshall had retired to their room with Jessie hours ago. He had an early morning conference call with the CDC, two Cabinet heads, and the director of the CIA. He had eloquently described the meeting as "a preemptive strike before the political shitstorm hits the fan." Such were the ways of government. Rather than attacking the problem aggressively, everyone was still pointing fingers and running for cover. Marshall's goal tomorrow was to shake things up. A decisive plan of action was needed. So far, the fifteen outbreak zones were being managed fifteen different ways. It was chaos.

  Sighing, Lauren stared at the reams of papers and printouts spread atop her table. Her team was still struggling with one simple question. What was causing the disease?

  Testing and research were ongoing in labs across the country--from the CDC in Atlanta all the way to the Salk facility in San Diego. But the Instar Institute had become scientific ground zero for the disease.

  Lauren pushed away a report from a Dr. Shelby on utilizing monkey kidney cells as a culture medium. He had failed. Negative response. Up to this point, the contagious agent continued to thwart all means of identification: aerobic and anaerobic cultures, fungal assays, electron microscopy, dot hybridization, polymerase chain reaction. As of today, no progress had been made. Each study ended with similar tags: negative response, zero growth, indeterminate analysis. All fancy ways of saying failure.

  Her beeper, resting beside her now-cold cup of coffee, began to buzz and dance across the Formica countertop. She snatched it before it fell off the table.

  "Who the heck is paging me at this hour?" she mumbled, glancing at the beeper's screen. The Caller ID feature listed the numb
er as Large Scale Biological Labs. She didn't know the facility, but the area code placed it somewhere in northern California. The call was probably just some technician requesting their fax number or submission protocol. Still...

  Lauren stood, pocketed her beeper, and headed over to the phone on the wall. As she picked up the receiver, she heard a door open behind her. Over her shoulder, she was surprised to see Jessie standing in her pajamas, rubbing at her eyes blearily.

  "Grandma..."

  Lauren replaced the receiver and crossed to the child. "Honey, what are you doing up? You should be in bed."

  "I couldn't find you."

  She knelt before the girl. "What's wrong? Did you have another scary dream?" The first few nights here, Jessie had awoken with nightmares, triggered by the quarantine and the strange environment. But the child had seemed to adjust rapidly, making friends with several of the other kids.

  "My tummy hurts," she said, her eyes sheening with threatening tears.

  "Oh, honey, that's what you get for eating ice cream so late." Lauren reached out and pulled the girl into a hug. "Why don't I get you a glass of water, and we'll get you tucked back into--"

  Lauren's voice died as she realized how warm the child was. She reached a palm to Jessie's forehead. "Oh, God," she mumbled under her breath.

  The child was burning up.

  2:31 A.M.

  AMAZON JUNGLE

  Louis stood by his tent as Jacques strode up from theriver. His lieutenant carried something wrapped in a sodden blanket under his arms. Whatever it was, it appeared no larger than a watermelon.

  "Doctor," the Maroon tribesman said stiffly.

  "Jacques, what did you discover?" He had sent the man and two others to investigate the explosion that had occurred just after midnight. The noise had woken his own camp mere minutes after they had settled in for the night. Earlier, at sunset, Louis had learned of the discovery of the Indian shabano and the fate of the villagers. Then hours later the explosion...

  What was going on over there?

  "Sir, the village has been incinerated...as has much of the surrounding forest. We could not get too close due to the remaining fires. Maybe by morning."

  "And the other team?"

  Jacques glanced to his toes. "Gone, sir. I dropped Malachim and Toady ashore to scout after them."

  Louis clenched a fist and cursed his overconfidence. After the successful abduction of one of their soldiers, he had grown complacent with his prey. But now this! One of his team's trackers must have been spotted. Now that the fox had been alerted to the hounds, Louis's mission was far more complicated. "Gather the other men. If the Rangers are running from us, we don't want them to get too far away."

  "Yes, sir. But, Doctor, I'm not sure the others are fleeing from us."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "As we paddled up to the fire zone, we saw a body float out from a side stream."

  "A body?" Louis feared it was his mole, dispatched and sent downriver as a message.

  Jacques unrolled the sodden blanket in his arms and dropped its content to the leafed floor of the jungle. It was a human head. "We found it floating near the remains."

  Frowning, Louis knelt and examined the head, what little there was of it. The face had been all but chewed away, but from the shaved scalp, it was clearly one of the Rangers.

  "The body was the same," Jacques said, "gnawed to the bone."

  Louis glanced up. "What happened to him?"

  "Piranhas, I'd say, from the bite wounds."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Pretty damn sure." Jacques fingered the scarred half of his nose, reminding Louis that, as a boy, his lieutenant had had intimate experience with the voracious river predators.

  "Did they feed on him after he was dead?"

  Jacques shrugged. "If he wasn't, I pity the poor bastard."

  Louis climbed to his feet. He stared out toward the river. "What the hell is happening out there?"

  Ten

  Escape

  AUGUST 14, 3:12 A.M.

  AMAZON JUNGLE

  Atop the island knoll, Nate stood with the other civilians, ringed by the Ranger team, which was now down to eight members. One for each of the civilians, Nate thought, like personal bodyguards.

  "How about using another of your napalm bombs to clear a path through the buggers?" Frank asked, standing near Captain Waxman. "Roll it down the slope, then duck for cover."

  "We'd all be dead. If the heat blast didn't fry us, then we'd be pinned down between a burning forest and the poisonous bastards."

  Frank sighed, staring out into the dark forests. "How about your grenades? We could lob them in series, creating a swath through them."

  Waxman frowned. "It'd be risky to deploy them so close to us, and no guarantee that it would kill enough of the bastards among all these tree trunks. I say we hold the hill, try to last until daybreak."

  Frank crossed his arms, little pleased with this plan.

  Around the knoll, occasional fiery blasts from the flamethrowers ignited the night as Corporal Okamoto and Private Carrera maintained sentry posts on either slope. Though it had been half an hour since sighting one of them, the beasts were still out there. The surrounding forests had gone deathly quiet, no monkey calls, no bird-song. Even the insects seemed to have died down to a whispery buzz and whine. But beyond the reach of their flashlights, the leaves still rustled as unseen lurkers crept through the underbrush.

  Night scopes focused on the surrounding waters revealed creatures still hopping into and out of the stream. Nathan's earlier assessment seemed to be accurate. The creatures, gill-breathers, needed to return to the waters occasionally to revive themselves.

  Nearby, Manny knelt in the leaf-strewn dirt, working by flashlight. Kelly and Kouwe stood behind his shoulder. Earlier, Manny had risked his life to dash into the forest's fringe to collect one of the beasts stunned by a blast of flame. Though partially charbroiled, it was a decent specimen. The creature was about a foot long from the tip of its tail to its razor-toothed mouth. Large black eyes protruded, giving it a nearly 360-degree view of its surroundings. Strong articulated limbs ended in webbed and suckered toes almost as long as the body itself.

  As the others watched, Manny was performing a rapid dissection. The Brazilian biologist worked deftly with a scalpel and forceps from Kelly's med kit.

  "This thing is amazing," Manny finally mumbled.

  Nate joined Kelly and Kouwe as the biologist explained.

  "It's clearly some form of chimera. An amalgam of more than one species."

  "How so?" Kelly asked.

  Manny shifted aside and pointed with his thumb forceps. "Nathan was right. Though its skin is not scaled like a fish, it definitely has the breathing system of an aquatic species. Gills, no lungs. But its legs--notice the banding on the skin--are definitely amphibious. The striping pattern is very characteristic of Phobobates trivittatus, the striped poison-dart frog, the largest and most toxic member of the frog family."

  "So you're saying it's some mutated form of this species?" Nate asked.

  "I thought so at first. It looks almost like a tadpole whose growth was arrested at the stage where gills were still present and only its hind legs had formed. But as I dissected further, I became less convinced. First, and most obvious, is that its size is way out of proportion. This thing must weigh close to five pounds. Monstrously gigantic for even the largest species of dart frog."

  Manny rolled the dissected creature over and pointed to its eyes and teeth. "Additionally, its skull structure is all misshapen. Rather than flattened horizontally like a frog's, the cranium is flattened vertically, more like a fish's. In fact, the skull conformation, jaw, and teeth are almost identical in size and shape to a common Amazonian river predator--Serrasalmus rhombeus." Manny glanced up from his handiwork. "The black piranha."

  Kelly leaned away. "That's impossible."

  "If this thing weren't right in front of me, I'd agree." Manny sat back. "I've worked wit
h Amazonian species all my life, and I've seen nothing like it. A true chimera. A single creature that shares the biological features of both frog and fish."

  Nate eyed the creature. "How could that be?"

  Manny shook his head. "I don't know. But how does a man regenerate a limb? I think the presence of such a chimera suggests we're on the right trail. Something is out there, something your father's expedition discovered, something with a distinct mutating ability."