Rise of the Elgen (24 page)

T
hat night I had a nightmare. I dreamed I was being chased through a dark maze by a beast. I never saw it, but I could hear its snarls and growling behind me, always just at my heels. The maze I was running through had hundreds of doors, but every one I tried was locked. I kept hearing my mother shouting out my name, but I couldn’t tell where her voice was coming from. I just kept running. When I was in center of the maze, I heard her voice coming from the very last door. Relieved, I opened it. Dr. Hatch was standing there. He started laughing. When he opened his mouth, his tongue was a snake, and its body curled around me, constricting me. That’s when I woke up.

It took me a moment to remember where I was. I could hear voices—two men speaking in Spanish. I looked out my window. In the moonlight I could see the men standing near the front of the bus. One was our driver, his face illuminated by a cigarette. The other
was a man I hadn’t seen before. I glanced over at Taylor. She was still asleep, and I could hear Ostin snoring behind me. I got up and walked to the front of the bus.

The man speaking to our driver looked up at me. He was carrying a machete.
“Buenos días, señor,”
he said.

“Buenos días,”
I repeated, which was pretty much the extent of my Spanish. I stepped outside with the men. “I’m Michael.”

“Yes, Michael. I know you from your picture. I am Jaime. Are your friends ready?”

“They’re still sleeping.”

“You must wake them now. They can sleep on the boat. We must soon go. Timing is everything.”

“Now?”

He nodded.

I climbed back on the bus and woke everyone. It was probably two or three in the morning, so, not surprisingly, no one was happy about the wake-up call.

As I headed back to my seat, the man with the machete walked onto the bus carrying a large sack over his shoulder. “Amigos,” he said. “We are going to hike through the jungle. There is much water. You must put on the galoshes.”

“How much water?” Zeus asked.

“You will not drown,” the man said. “It is just a few inches of water.”

“Drowning isn’t the problem,” Zeus said.

“Oh, yes, you must be Zeus. Forgive me. I have special boots for you.” He brought out a pair of waders that would reach nearly to Zeus’s chest.

Jaime walked down the aisle handing out boots, which we pulled on over our shoes. Then, following the man’s directions, we grabbed our packs and hurried off the bus to the trees on the other side of the road.

Stepping under the cover of the forest canopy, the man pointed his flashlight under his chin, illuminating his face. “I am Jaime, your guide. I will go much of the way with you. As we walk through the jungle, keep your eyes paled for animals.”

“Paled?” Ostin asked, yawning.

“He meant ‘peeled,’” I said. “What kind of animals?”

“The vipers, jaguar, and the anaconda. The big snakes like the water. I am told that some of you are more powerful than these things—I do not doubt it. But your electricity will not save you from a viper strike, so please follow me. I was born in the jungle. I know its ways.”

He pointed the flashlight ahead of us, and we lined up behind him in single file. I brought up the rear with Zeus, who was moving cautiously. Jack and Abigail were in the front, behind Jaime, who had given Jack a machete to help widen the trail. McKenna walked in the middle of the group. She lit up her head to illuminate the path for us but stopped after a few seconds because of the millions of insects attracted to her light.

About five minutes into the hike Taylor asked, “What’s that sound?”

“Crickets?”

“No, it’s a buzzing sound. Like electricity.”

“It’s me,” I said. “I’m like a human bug zapper.”

We were walking under a canopy of leaves so thick that we might as well have been inside a building. Our group made for an interesting sight, our glow lightly illuminating the forest around us.

After twenty minutes or so, Jaime stopped for us to rest. We gathered in a small half circle. As Jaime looked at us he said,
“Increíble.”

“What?” I asked.

“You, you . . .” He struggled with the word in English. Finally he said,
“Son fosforesentes.”

“You glow,” Ostin said.

“I wish to show you something,” Jaime said. He pointed to a nearby tree with his flashlight. It was maybe twenty feet tall, slender, with narrow leaves.

Wade walked up to it with his hand outstretched. “This one?”

“Don’t touch it!” Jaime said.

Wade stopped.

“It is the tangarana tree. You will notice that there are no trees around it.”

“That’s kind of weird,” Jack said.

“I’ll show you why. Watch.” He tapped his machete against the tree’s trunk. Immediately a swarm of red-and-black ants covered the tree’s limbs. “The tangarana ant,” Jaime said. “They have a friendship.”

“A symbiotic relationship,” Ostin said. “The ant’s a symbiont. Like Dr. Hatch.”

The man glanced at him, then continued. “The ants protect the tree and the tree gives them shelter. The ants will attack animals who come too close. They will even kill any plant that tries to grow near it. The natives used to tie their enemies to the tree. The ants would eat them alive.”

“That’s horrible,” Abigail said.

Jaime shrugged. “War is horrible.”

He turned and we started walking again. A few minutes later there was a loud screech, which echoed around us.

“What the heck was that?” Ostin said, his eyes wide with panic. “It sounded like a pterodactyl.”

Jaime smiled. “That is the
mono aullador
—the howler monkey. It is loud, yes?”

Suddenly something swung from the darkness toward us. A bolt of lightning flashed across our heads, and the animal dropped to the ground.

“You electrocuted a monkey,” Ian said.

“I didn’t know what it was,” Zeus said. “It attacked us. It had it coming.”

“You shocked a cute, furry little monkey,” Abigail said.

“He’s not little,” Zeus said.

Jack laughed, and Zeus looked at him. “You going to give me grief too?”

Jack shook his head. “No, dude. I would have roundhouse kicked it back into the tree. You just got to it faster.”

The jungle was alive with noise, and the sound of rushing water became more pronounced the closer we got to the river. The trail started to decline, and once we reached the riverbank, the trail
dropped steeply to a dark, slow-moving river. The river bubbled at its crests, illuminated by a half-moon’s glow.

Below us was a riverboat with a striped canvas top, the sides covered in plastic. A Peruvian man was sitting at the back of the boat, manning the engine.

“This boat is what the gold miners use,” Jaime said. “It will not cause suspicion in the night. But you must all stay quiet. We do not know who we will encounter on the river.”

“Do the Elgen patrol the river?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said.

One by one we boarded the boat. Jack and Jaime helped everyone on, except Zeus, who stood alone on the top of the embankment looking down at the boat. “Really, man. I don’t do boats.”

“Quit being such a prima donna and get on the boat,” Jack said.

Jaime hiked back up to see what was keeping Zeus.

“I don’t do boats,” he said to Jaime. “I’ll take my chances on the road.”

“You have no chance on the road,” Jaime said.

“You don’t understand. If I fall in the water, it will electrocute me.” Zeus looked into Jaime’s eyes to make sure he understood the seriousness of his circumstance. “My electricity will
kill
me.”

Suddenly Jaime started laughing, softly at first, then louder, growing into a great, echoing chuckle.

Zeus’s eyes flashed with anger. “Shut up! Why are you laughing?”

“Amigo,” Jaime said, “I do not mean to disrespect, but look.” He held the flashlight out over the water near the bank, revealing several bright orange reflections, slightly oval like cat eyes. “You see, amigo? Many caiman. The river is full of caiman and piranha and anaconda. If you fall in the water you die anyway!”

Zeus looked at him for a moment, then said, “Oh.” He walked down the bank to the boat.

Taylor swallowed. “Caiman, piranhas, and anacondas?”

I just shrugged. “Come on. This is the easy part.”

Zeus carefully climbed over the bow, sitting at the opposite end from Jack and Abigail. I thought we all looked miserable and afraid.
I remember once seeing a World War II picture of paratroopers sitting inside the fuselage of a plane waiting to jump, wondering if they would live to see the morning. I guess that’s how we felt.

Jaime unlashed the rope from the tree, then pushed us out from the shore while the other man revved up the outboard engine, pulling us backward into the flow of the river. Taylor laid her head on my shoulder. No one had anything to say.

T
he journey up the river seemed like a strange dream. It took two men to operate the boat—Jaime, who lay across the bow watching for drifting logs, and Luis, who sat back at the engine, quietly watching over us. Both banks of the river were walls of trees, creating a narrow, overgrown corridor that stretched for hundreds of miles through rain forest until reaching into the heart of the massive Amazon itself. There were occasional breaks in the trees, revealing small clearings for huts or illicit mining camps.

The boat’s long benches were covered with dark vinyl pads and the ten of us stretched out on them, overlapping our heads and feet. The inside of the boat was lit with a warm, green luminance from our glow. I looked around at my friends. McKenna, Wade, and Abigail were asleep. Jack was awake, sitting near the engine, opening and shutting a pocketknife. Ian was leaning over the side watching the
water. Ostin, who was lying near Taylor, was still trying to get comfortable. When he turned to his side I saw something move across his back—a hairy tarantula about the size of my hand.

“Ostin,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Don’t move.”

His eyes widened. “There’s something on me, isn’t there?”

“Don’t move. I’ll get it.”

“There’s a massive, hairy spider on your back,” Taylor said.

“You didn’t have to tell me,” Ostin said.

“I’ll get it,” I said. I pulsed as I grabbed the tarantula. There was a loud snap, followed by a wisp of gray smoke. I threw the spider over the side of the boat into the dark water.

“Spiders,” Ostin said. “I hate spiders.” He shuddered, then lay back down.

I slid to the front of the boat near Jaime. “How did you get involved with us?” I asked.

He leaned back a little. “Let’s just say I do not like the Elgen. They come to my city and they change everything. We live in fear now. Their guards walk our streets. They have all the power. If they want something you have, they take it. There is nothing you can do. Even our policemen fear them. We know danger. The jungle is dangerous. It will take your life, even your family. But it is fair. It only takes from those who do not respect it. The Elgen take what they want.”

“Did the Elgen take something of yours?” I asked.

Jaime slowly nodded, his eyes dark with gravity. “They took my son.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. The Elgen need no reason.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too,” he said softly. “I am very sorry I was not there to protect my son. I was working for the Elgen. It was my right to die before my son.” Jaime looked at me with a deep sadness. “I must tell you something I learned as a boy.” He looked around. “We are jungle people. From my boyhood I was taught its ways. My father
taught me the vines and roots that will save your life from a viper bite. And he warned me never to go into the jungle without a machete. There are many dangerous animals in the jungle. In the water, the electric eel, the caiman, and piranha. On the land, there are the vipers and the jaguar and puma. But the most dangerous lives both on land and water, it is the anaconda. They grow ten meters and longer, yet they are fast. Even the caiman and jaguar fear the grown anaconda.

“One day my father taught me this lesson. He said, ‘Jaime, if you are ever in the jungle without your machete and you are to meet an anaconda, do not run, it will catch you and eat you. This is what you are to do. First, you must look directly at the snake. It is frightening, but you must look at it. It will freeze like a tiger does as it stalks its prey. While it is frozen, you must slowly move yourself, very, very slowly, to where the sun is directly above your head. The jungle is on the equator, so the sun is often high in the sky. The snake will not want to lose its dinner, so it will keep following you, slightly turning. But the snake does not have eyelids, so as it looks up at you it is also looking into the sun and it will burn out its eyes. When its eyes are white with blindness, you may just walk away.’”