Titanoboa (6 page)

9

The Bastion Hotel was a cream-colored building in the heart of Vusa. Its three flags outside represented India, Fiji, and the United States. A doorman was letting people in and out. Mark nodded to him as he held the door open. As he walked inside, he wondered whether to tip the doorman for something like that. He would Google it while he was in here and see.

The clerks,
a man and woman dressed in suit coats and dark pants, stood behind the counter. He vaguely recognized the man but not the woman.

“Hi, I’m looking for some information about William Gilmore. He went by the name Billy Gilmore. I was wondering if you perhaps remembered him?”

The woman rolled her eyes and returned to whatever she was doing, but the male looked at him sternly and said, “You’re with that woman, aren’t you?”

“His sister?
Riki?”

“I don’t know who she is. But she came in here shouting and acting like a crazy person. We were thinking about calling the police.”

“What was she shouting about?”

“That we
were hiding something. As though I would care about some American tourist enough to hide information.”

The way he said
“American,” Mark could almost see his revulsion. Only a sliver of the island’s population shared his attitude. Without American tourists, they would all be working in factories or fishing, and most people recognized that and were grateful. But some people simply blamed the United States for all the world’s ills, whether it was true or not. People just needed someone to blame, and America happened to be the dominant world power right now. Mark wondered if Rome had been blamed for all the world’s problems as well, or France or the British Empire. He had a feeling being on top brought many detractors.

“What happened to him
, exactly?” Mark asked, ignoring the smugness.

“How should I know? He checked in one day
, and the next he was gone.”

“Was he staying here with anybody?”

“Yes, a woman.”

Mark opened a note-
taking app on his phone. “Do you remember her name?”

“I can look it up, but I won’t.”

He knew why. He took out his wallet and laid a ten-dollar Fijian bill on the table. The bills used to have pictures of prime ministers and queens of England, but fish, seagulls, and depictions of government buildings replaced them. “The name?” he asked.

The man looked at the ten. If he took
it and gave him the name, Mark might leave and not ask any more questions. So he should ask for more. But if he asked for more, and Mark said, “Forget it,” and left, he wouldn’t get anything.

Finally, the man took the bill, stuffing it quickly into his pocket before turning to his computer.
Only a moment passed before he said, “Rebecca Langley.”

“She still here at the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“What room?”

The man stared at him blankly. Mark laid another ten on the table.

“Room 217.”

“Thank you for your help.” Mark jogged up the rickety stairs to the second floor. The building itself was old, but the interior was well cleaned and painted. The rugs were all spotless, and the furniture looked new. The hotel appeared like a comfortable place for a tourist to stay, but something was a little off about it. He didn’t know whether it was the staff or what, but something just didn’t quite sit well with him.

He knocked
on Room 217’s door. No answer. He tried again then stepped to the side and waited a couple of minutes. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and peered through the gap between the door and the floor. No movement inside. She wasn’t here.

B
ack downstairs, the man was helping someone else. Mark wandered around the lobby, staring at some of the paintings up on the walls. The clerk became free a moment later, and Mark approached him. “How much to call me when she gets in?” he said. No use in circumlocution.

“Twenty,” the man said. Mark
laid a twenty down on the counter and wrote his phone number on it with a pen.

“I’m a private detective trying to find out why Billy Gilmore disappeared, in case you’re curious.”

The man shrugged as he put the money in his pocket. “Doesn’t really matter to me.”

10

Marlene Hallwell lay on the lounge chair, soaking in as much sun as possible. Her boy was playing out in the surf, picking up handfuls of wet sand and flinging them into the ocean as far as he could. She glanced down at him to make sure he was all right. It was still early, and most people liked to come out in the afternoon here. The sun stayed over Kalou Island seemingly forever. Last year when they were here, she remembered watching one sunset at a good fifteen minutes past ten p.m.

Timothy ambled up the beach, wiping wet sand off his palms on his shorts. He flopped down next to his mother and sighed. Marlene knew what was coming next. The cry of every ten-year-old in the world:
“I’m bored.” Sometimes she felt like her primary duty as a mother was to make sure her son was entertained. She didn’t remember it being like this when she was a child. Back then, kids had imagination and could entertain themselves. But the world had been a different place then. You could actually let your children outside to play without too much concern about them being kidnapped or killed.

But now the world was something else entirely.

“Mom, I’m bored.”

“So go swimming.”

“I did. I’m still bored. There’s no other kids here.”

“They’ll be here later. It’s still morning. Go make a sandcastle or something.”

“A what?”

She fumbled in the sand next to her chair until her fingers wrapped around her iPhone. “Here, play a game.”

“What game?”

“Timothy, I don’t know. Occupy yourself. I can’t entertain you every second of every day. Go take some pictures or something to send back home to your father.”

He sighed again. But he must’ve figured that was at least something to do, so he rose and walked off.

Timothy glanced back
at his mother after a few minutes. She was still lying on the chair, tanning herself. The past four days they’d been here, that seemed like all she wanted to do. That, and go out to bars at night and leave him in the hotel room. He didn’t even know why she brought him along. He thought it had something to do with an order from a judge, but he wasn’t sure what that meant. Every year, he visited her for two months in the summer, and every year, they travelled around for two months. He got the impression that she didn’t want to be home with him because she was scared of something. Maybe even of spending time with him. Though why she would be scared of him, he couldn’t possibly understand.

He snapped a few photos of the ocean then grew bored of that. Behind them was thick jungle.
He just couldn’t resist the draw of the tall trees and the multicolored plants, so he walked up to the edge of the jungle and stared inside. His mother wasn’t even paying attention. He began fighting his way through the shrubbery in search of a cool picture.

The great reptile lay on the jungle floor. The soft leaves that had fallen gave it a comfortable sensation on the underside of its belly, though in reality it cared little for comfort.

Coiled around itself, it rested its massive head upon its back. It was perfectly, deathly still, something unique to its species. And though it didn’t have the brain capacity to understand such a thing, it even knew how to stop its heart for several moments at a time, an evolutionary adaption that made it part of the background of any environment. Prey might just happen by without even noticing its enormous girth.

The forked tongue
, its great sensor, whipped out of its mouth. More sensitive than the eyes, ears, nose, and touch of any human being, it could detect the motions, scents, the beating of its prey’s heart, and even whether the prey was diseased. It knew all things instantly in one powerful burst of information whose sole purpose was to tell it whether the prey was edible or not. That was the perennial question it asked itself through its existence. The only thing that gave its life any meaning or purpose.

The tongue sensed something. It sent packets of information to
a brain no larger than an apple. Warmth was nearby. Warmth, movement, and the smell of perspiration. Something was alive and coming toward it.

The predator didn’t move.
Its stillness was the weapon most suited to taking down prey. It would strike, its teeth tearing into flesh and bone. The more the prey struggled, the more the teeth dug in. Its backward-pointing fangs were meant for capturing prey like a bear trap and not letting go. Then it would do something so unique, nothing else in nature even resembled it.

The prey was almost near. One more whip of the tongue
, and the predator knew the prey was smaller than the food it was used to but still edible.

Timothy stopped a moment and looked around. He had walked into the jungle and thought he would just turn around and walk straight back, but that hadn’t worked out
as he’d planned. When it was time to turn around and go back, he walked for a long time, thinking everything looked familiar. But he’d walked much farther out than in. He wondered if he had gone in a circle. Whatever he’d done, he was lost.

“Mom!” he shouted. “Mom!”

He shouted several times, but his calls went unanswered. He couldn’t even hear the surf anymore, which meant he wasn’t near the beach. That was the key to getting back. He had to hear the water then walk toward it. So he picked a direction and walked.

The jungle shrubbery grew thick
, and the path he had been walking on narrowed. Luckily, it wasn’t that late in the morning, so the sun overhead was really bright. The trees above him sometimes blocked it out and shaded him, but mostly constant sunlight bathed him. If not for that, he would be really scared. But right now, he just wanted to find his mom and not think about anything else.

As he trudged through the vegetation, the path eventually disappeared. He was now trying to walk through thick
plants that wouldn’t give way when he pushed on them. Having cut himself on two of them, he decided the best thing to do was to return to the path and try another direction. This wasn’t leading anywhere.

After a few minutes, the path widen
ed, and the dirt hardened so he could walk on it without having to fight. As it became easier to walk, his fear began to go away. He couldn’t be that far from the beach after all. He just had to keep walking, and he was sure he’d come across the ocean again. Or maybe back to town, and then someone could go and get his mom.

He kept his head low, running his hand along the bushes on the side of the path, when he heard something. He thought it
might be some plane way up in the sky. So he raised his head and looked up but saw nothing except deep blue.

The sound,
something like a soft exhalation of air, or maybe air let out of a bicycle tire, grew louder. Closer. He saw only jungle. When he started walking again, the little hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He didn’t know the sensation, had never felt it before, but he intuitively understood what it meant. He was in real danger, and his body had already picked it up when his mind couldn’t.

He
walked faster, keeping his head down. The classic childhood defense. Pretend it wasn’t there and, with any luck, it would go away. Whatever it was.

Timothy picked up the pace.
Once beautiful, the red and yellow flowers, the intense green leaves on the trees and the thin vines that dangled from them, now seemed dark and ominous.

“Mom!” he shouted again. But
he received no reply.

He slowed a little, debating which direction to go. The sound was so close it was almost next to him. And he realized something just then
. The sound wasn’t following him. He had been approaching it.

A
slow whisper just behind him. He froze. His stomach tightened, and warmth trickled down his legs. And something else was there on his leg. Something black and slick. It emerged from between his ankles and softly curled around his calf. The surface of the thing was smooth, almost like silk. But when it tightened, the muscle quivered beneath. And the thing kept tightening and tightening.

Timothy turned just as he heard a loud hiss and blackness took him.
He knew it had pulled him into the air because he didn’t feel the ground underneath him anymore. But he hadn’t seen anything. Just a flash of movement, and then his body on fire.

The pain mostly
centered in his back and chest. A piercing, fiery pain that shot through him so fast it astounded him. He screamed, but it was muffled.

T
he blackness frightened him most. No light was coming into his eyes, though they were open. A single, horrific thought entered his mind: he was inside something.

T
he tightening around his leg now spread to his body. Around his chest, hips, throat, and legs. It seemed like it would never stop. As if it would tighten and tighten until it simply cut through him. But he didn’t have time to focus on the tightening because he was hearing another sound now. Not hearing, not really, more like feeling. A series of snaps that began in his legs and ran up through the rest of his body, accompanied by a fiery agony that nearly made him black out.

Timothy had broken his arm before when his bike crashed onto a curb. He had never heard a bone break and thought his mother was exaggerating when she told him his arm was broken.

But now he knew what that meant.

H
is last thought was of his mother as every bone in his body simultaneously shattered, and his heart exploded.