Hekura Page 9

  "Yeah, I did," Jeremy agreed.

  "We need to hurry up," Olivia said, moving closer to the group and pulling her mentor along by the wrist like a child.

  A familiar, blood-curdling cry rang in the distance. The beast that had mauled the tribesman the night before had returned. Or had never let them out of its sight.

  Something stirred in the brush ahead.

  "No one move," Bisari whispered suddenly, stopping and kneeling.

  They froze.

  Austin slowly withdrew his revolver and Jeremy followed suit: sliding the Cobray that had been dangling from a sling on his shoulder around his waist, gripping it firmly.

  The bushes ahead of them shook, but whatever creature was hidden within stayed out of sight.

  Bisari turned slowly toward the rest of the expedition, motioning for them to remain quiet and still. The brush moved again, and a waddling tapir emerged, snorting and shaking off the rain. Bisari visibly relaxed, smiling reassuringly at the others.

  The animal stood motionless, warily eyeing the crew until a dinosaur's cry broke the silence. The tapir beat a hasty escape, crashing into the underbrush and promptly disappearing.

  Christian reached a hand over his shoulder, clawing at his bag. The toy within continued its cry, the button pinned down by his other gear. He looked to the others in dismay.

  A wild shriek interrupted the toy's sound. Materializing from the shadows, a gargantuan, spectral figure cut across their path. Hairless, ape-like in its movements and built like a malformed gorilla, the creature's pallid body was painted in chaotic webs of blue veins, the vertebrae of its spine jutting out and pulling its thin skin taught. But perhaps most noticeable in the low light: its glowing eyes. Just like the animal that had slaughtered the tribesman the night before. Aiming another chilling cry in the crew's direction, the beast bowled Bisari to the ground and vanished into the gloom.

  Pivoting on a foot, Jeremy pulled his weapon's trigger, expecting to let loose a hail of .380-caliber slugs at the creature as it withdrew. The weapon's action clinked, the firing pin striking only air. Racking the slide, he tried the trigger again to the same effect. Dropping the magazine in a panic, Jeremy stared at the follower. Someone had emptied his gun.

  Dropping the magazine into the mud, the Brazilian cried, "Run, dammit!"

  No one contested his order. The entire expedition began sprinting, stumbling, hurdling toward a wide clearing void of trees—peeling away heavy bags and equipment as they ran. Bursting forth from the underbrush, they slid to a stop.

  A peal of thunder cracked overhead, a bright flash of lightning revealing an expansive concrete building before them. Like a derelict cold war bunker, the structure blended into the terrain like a rock overgrown with moss and climbing vines. The wall of immense concrete blocks, divided by dark seams where dirt had collected, rose thirty feet up before sweeping back, the spherical roof pock-marked and punctuated by rebar exposed when entire sheets of concrete had crumbled and sloughed off.

  On any other day, it would have been an incredible find—an explorer's dream. Today, it was shelter. And they needed the protection.

  "Get inside!" Bisari shouted as he followed the others into the clearing.

  Heavy rain blew down with renewed tenacity, drenching the crew. Olivia reached the building's entrance, a rusted steel door inset between two towering concrete buttresses. Though she attempted a firm grip on the door's handle, the rain had rendered it too slick. Austin, steps behind, slipped an arm beside her waist as he reached for the lever. Their eyes met briefly as they struggled together to free the latch. A chorus of beastly howls filled the jungle, their predators close behind and fast approaching. The door creaked noisily, fighting the movement.

  "That's wide enough; we can fit," Austin yelled, pushing Olivia inside and following close behind. One by one, they slipped through the opening and into an empty, dank corridor. Bisari, the last in line, stuffed a leg inside and had nearly gotten his entire body through the aperture when he was ripped, as if by the hand of a giant, violently into the outside air. His screams trailed into the distance, the cries of the beasts—a lingering humanoid laughter—echoing in the narrow space. Austin, revolver aimed at the door's opening, dared a look down at the translator's Yankees ball cap. Fresh blood spatter covered the white insignia.

  "Close the door!" Henri shouted. "There's no helping him now. Close it or they'll get us, too!"

  With a reluctant shove, Austin slammed the door and locked it in place with a forceful turn of the five-pronged handle, bathing them in utter darkness.

  "Well this has gone right pear-shaped, hasn't it?" Austin muttered as he slammed an open palm against the door angrily.

  "Did you see the way that Bisari guy got ripped out of the door? What the hell kind of animal has the strength to do that?" Christian asked.

  "Didn't you see it? It was some kind of white ape," Jeremy replied, hands fumbling inside his pocket for a fresh magazine for his Cobray.

  "Apes are known to be twice as strong as humans, but no ape could have done what I just saw," Henri said, his voice wavering.

  "I thought apes were like five times as strong as people," Christian argued.

  Austin withdrew a handful of glow sticks from his pack and began cracking and shaking them each in turn, letting the live ones drop to the concrete floor.

  "That was disproven several decades ago. It's a myth," Henri replied.

  "Who the bloody fuck cares how strong an ape is?" Austin snapped. "It wasn't a bleeding ape; we all saw that. Whatever that…thing was, it just murdered our translator, my friend, and now we're trapped inside a cave without communications and with limited food and water. Can everyone just belt up for a minute?"

  Olivia saw that he was hurting, scared like the rest of them, angry at losing another friend so shortly after the plane crash that had taken two others, confused about what to do next, and likely feeling responsible for urging them to continue on with the expedition. She knelt beside him and, although hesitant at first, rubbed his back gently. His shirt was soaked through with rain and clung to his skin.

  "It’s going to be okay. We’re safe for now. We’ll figure something out."

  Looking at their surroundings cynically, he replied, "I’m not so sure."

  NINETEEN

  Jeremy pulled Austin aside as the expedition filed into the complex. Resting a hand on his partner's shoulder, he whispered, "Someone messed with my gun."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It was empty when we got attacked. That gun hasn't had an empty magazine in it for years. You know my saying about unloaded guns, right?"

  "An empty gun is either a liability or a paperweight."

  "Exactly."

  "You thinking one of the others may have done it?"

  "It sure as hell wasn't the natives, man. Someone trying to sabotage us?"

  "So it had to be one of them: Bisari, the old duffer, the yank, or Olivia."

  "Could've been you, too." Jeremy added with a half smirk.

  "Funny. But there are only four people, one of whom is dead, who could have sabotaged your gun," Austin said solemnly.

  "Bisari needed us in order to get his money. It wouldn't have been him," Jeremy said, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked toward the glow where the rest of the expedition stood.

  "Could have been Olivia, I suppose. She didn't want to go on with the journey," Austin added reluctantly.

  "Yeah, but she did agree to continuing on. She obviously wants to find that plant. It must have been that little bastard Christian, thinking he was pulling a practical joke or something. He had the opportunity when he stayed behind at the camp this morning."

  "I don't know about a joke, mate. There's been something dodgy about this group from the onset. I think we may very well have a mole in our midst. I mean, when the sprog dropped the phone into the pit? Tell me that didn't look planned. He accidentally destroys our only means of communication, hoping we'll have to turn back. And setting the toy off
just when it gave our position away to that…thing back there?"

  "But why would he sabotage us like that?"

  "I don't know. Maybe Hygeia's competition got their hooks in him. Maybe he's homesick and wants to end the expedition prematurely. I don't know. But this trip has gone straight shambolic; we're about snookered, mole or no."

  "I still don't understand about half of what you say."

  "But you get the general thrust of it, right?"

  "I do." Rubbing his hands against his pant legs, Jeremy nodded toward the group and said, "You watch my back, and I watch yours, right?"

  "Always, amigo," Austin replied, slapping his friend on the shoulder.

  As the two men rejoined the others, Olivia turned away, pretending not to have heard their conversation.

  "I suppose we ought to scope this place out—see what we’re up against," Jeremy said as he ran his outstretched fingers along the concrete walls, awash in a multi-colored chemical glow. Wet with moisture and green with mildew, the stifling smell of mold permeated the air.

  "Couldn't agree more," Henri said, grabbing his belt and tugging his pants higher on his hips. Austin smirked. The old man, despite his portly form, had a dauntless attitude he couldn't help but admire.

  Together, they went room to room, each of the same approximate size and each mostly empty. Anything of value had been stripped from within over the years, likely by Bisari and other curious or desperate locals.

  Walking side by side, Olivia spoke quietly to Austin. "You're wrong about us."

  "Come again?"

  "I overheard what you and Jeremy said. You're wrong. My team would never do anything to endanger anyone's lives. I don't know how Jeremy's gun got emptied, but I promise you, it wasn't any of us."

  Embarrassed that she'd heard him, and attempting to quickly recollect what exactly he'd said to his friend in confidence, he replied plainly, "You and I both know that's a load of cobblers. Who else besides your crew would have had the access or the inclination to do such a thing?"

  "I don't know. Bisari, maybe."

  Austin stopped abruptly and locked his jaw as he turned to look at Olivia. As the rest of the crew continued walking down the hallway, it became too dark for either of them to see each other. But she could feel the anger emanating from him and hear his breathing increase in tempo.

  "Don't you dare. You've got some stonking goolies to accuse a dead man, and a good friend of mine, no less, of sabotaging our equipment," Austin said, his voice low and bitter.

  Olivia backpedaled, seeing she'd inadvertently struck a nerve. "I'm not saying for certain it was him, I'm just saying it wasn't any of my people."

  "That math doesn't work. That leaves you, me, and a handful of tribesmen who not only left us a day ago, but also wouldn't know how to operate a gun if they had a translator and a two-day lecture. Admit it: Someone on your crew is trying to throw a spanner in the works."

  "You're wrong."

  "We'll soon find out, won't we? I only hope it doesn't take us all being killed before you're convinced I’m right." With that, Austin turned and stormed toward the front of the procession.

  Entering one of the rooms diverging from the long central hallway, the party stopped as a subtle glow shined from within.

  "Who's there?" Henri shouted, stepping back as Austin entered the room, gun drawn. Standing near the light, his hardened features illuminated, the Brit said calmly, "Doctors, I think you should see this."

  The walls had been lined with open, rusty animal cages. The glow emanated from a pile of decaying animal bones inside one of them.

  "Judging by the three toes on the rear feet and four toes on the front, I'd say this is a Hydrochoerus…" Henri stopped, staring at the wall as he tried to recall the rest of the specie's name.

  "Capybara," Austin mumbled as he looked at the researcher doubtfully.

  "Um, yes. Very good, Mr. Stewart, very good indeed. I had no idea you were a student of zoology."

  "I'm not. But I know an overgrown squirrel when I see one."

  "So I guess I'll be the one to ask the obvious question," Christian interrupted, stepping closer. "Why is it glowing? I mean, should we be standing so close to it?"

  "Something is causing the bones to fluoresce…" Henri conceded.

  "Is it radioactive or something?" Christian said, nervously leaning away from the light.

  "No, Christian. I sincerely doubt that it would be radioactive," Henri said.

  "How can you be sure?"

  "I can't. But radioactive decay doesn't produce visible photons—that's a Hollywood portrayal. If in the next few hours we begin losing our hair and vomiting, I'll gladly rescind my assertion."

  Olivia stepped closer, leaning over the skeleton. "Could it be an oxidative fluorescent enzyme of some kind, Henri? Some sort of bioluminescent reaction?"

  Whether it was a result of the adrenaline still pulsing in her veins from the attack or a sense that she was finally able to contribute her specialized knowledge to the expedition, she felt overcome with excitement by the discovery of the glowing bones.

  "Luciferase, perhaps?" Henri suggested. "Like that found in the Photinus pyralis?"

  "Fireflies," Olivia translated without looking up.

  "It's been inserted into organisms successfully before," Henri said, turning to the other members of the expedition as he took on the air of a professor standing before his students. "It's commonly used to assess the transcriptional activity in cells transfected with a—"

  "Henri, they don't understand you," Olivia said, so close to the skeleton now, her features glowed.

  "Ah, right. Well, essentially," he said slowly, "Luciferase is a luminescent enzyme that researchers have synthetically replicated and used to determine if red blood cells are breaking down in a test subject, and can even be used to uncover blood trace at crime scenes. It's naturally found in some deep-sea creatures and a few species of mushrooms, if I'm not mistaken," he said, looking to his mentee for confirmation.

  "Freaky," Christian said, backing up further until he leaned against the room's far wall.

  "This place does kinda look like a laboratory." Jeremy said, only half listening as he watched the hallway, cradling his weapon against his waist as though soothing a frightened child.

  "Hard to say for certain. But it was definitely used for research of some kind," Henri said as he waved his glow stick into a corner. "Notice the many shards from broken glass beakers—you can tell that this one was from an Erlenmeyer flask—the racks that once held test tubes, and the pipe coming out of the wall where someone set up an emergency eyewash station. For being in the middle of the jungle, this looks as though it had very modern amenities. Electricity, plumbing—"

  The staccato drip of moisture echoed from somewhere in the complex.

  "You know what those bones remind me of?" Christian said, looking at the ceiling thoughtfully. "The eyes of whatever it was that killed the tribesman last night."

  "I doubt…well…you don't suppose…" Henri said, redoubling his scrutiny.

  Walking along the room's perimeter as the researchers continued to discuss their findings, still gripping his revolver firmly, Austin came upon a row of potted plants, buried beneath a nest of brown, dead leaves. Rainwater dripped through a crack in the roof and pooled in the stainless steel planter. Red, broad leaves, growing in a rosette pattern. Snapping one of the shoots off, he held the leaves up to the light. He shouted excitedly to the others, gesturing toward the wall of plants as he absently stuffed the piece into his pocket.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong, Doctors, but aren't these the plants you're looking for?"

  After a cursory inspection, Olivia holding the leaves delicately with her fingertips, face inches from the plant as she scrutinized them, she smiled and nodded excitedly.

  "I'm almost certain this is it. It has all the telltale indicators."

  "Dieu merci," Henri said, nudging his glasses down his nose as he leaned toward the planter.

  "We'll wa
nt to run a few tests; after all, it is possible this is merely a lookalike, but…" she said, her voice reflecting her exhilaration, "this is very, very promising."

  "We can go home," Jeremy said as he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer. "God knows I'm ready."

  Austin admired the symmetrical dimples in Olivia’s cheeks—like parentheses framing her vibrant smile—as she hugged her mentor. Opening her eyes, she turned her smile to the pilot. But the smile quickly vanished as she glanced over his shoulder.

  "What? What's wrong?" he asked.

  She pointed to the wall behind him.

  Though deteriorated, the familiar symbol of a woman holding a snake stared back at them.

  Hygeia Pharmaceutical's logo.

  TWENTY

  Sitting in what had once been the facility's cafeteria or dining room, Jeremy and Austin worked together to fix the satellite phone using the remains of an old telephone receiver they’d found dangling from a wall.

  "This would go a lot more quickly if I had more than a toy light to see with," Jeremy complained, sliding the glow stick closer to his work. "Why didn't you bring a flashlight instead?"

  "Says the fella who dropped his bag at the first sign of trouble," Austin teased. "Glow sticks don't require batteries and don't have electronics that can malfunction or rust, they're waterproof, and they're small. We're lucky I had them. When these run out, we're going to have to get creative, or start playing Marco Polo."

  Henri and Olivia sat nearby at a makeshift table assembled from a locker door propped upon plastic milk crates. The researchers sifted through moldy paperwork they'd found stuffed in a row of overhead cabinets.

  "I had a flashlight," Olivia said. "But it's in my bag."

  "You lost your bag, too?" Austin asked.

  "Dropped it when we ran."

  "So we have even less supplies than I thought. Dog's bollocks," the Englishman said. "We're in real trouble. I don’t know about you all, but I could eat a horse and chase the jockey, I'm so hungry."

  "Let's not dwell on the doom and gloom aspect of our current predicament," Henri offered. "We all know how dire the situation is, and we’re working to fix the phone. Let’s be patient."