Chapter 15: In The Same Night
The sunset was not much different in Thibodaux, Louisiana than in the steamy Colombian jungles. It blazed out in stoic defiance, burning the edges of land and sea as it sunk away. And in neither place did it offer any comfort.
Jelly, standing at the run-down operations' shack in the humid Louisiana dusk, stared at the empty hanger where Frederick's Cherokee should have been parked and smoked his cigarette. He unconsciously rubbed his hands together and kept glancing over his shoulder toward the road, half-expecting blinking red and blue lights to peel onto the dusty drive from Highway 90.
The brilliant pinkish-red that dissipated into scattered hues of yellow and broken orange appeared to hold his attention as he looked back toward the horizon, but in reality he only saw the empty runway, the grass freshly clipped and delineated between the border land of gently swaying trees, goaded on by the Gulf breeze.
He pitched the butt out in front of him and checked his watch. The day was played out. 7:43. They were now MIA, not far over and no big surprise considering the errand, but officially missing. He'd been chain-smoking behind the mike stand most of the afternoon once he’d chased the damn St. Martien off to his miserable wife. Listening on the radio. Hearing nothing. Jelly breathed out and scratched his cheek. He was glad tonight was Margaret's bridge club gathering; she wouldn't be back until after midnight and that was a good thing.
He flipped another cigarette into a standing position in the hard pack, and walked over to make sure he'd locked the slipshod door to the shack. He pulled hard, twice, grunted in satisfaction. He walked slowly across the dusty lot, his cheap tennis shoes already covered in dirt and deep grass stains, working the while in his pocket for the Blazer keys. He unlocked the door, climbed inside, and cranked the engine. The radio was tuned to KYOS in Houma and the middle, twanging licks of "Don't Take The Girl" played out its country heartache. He turned it down and drove out to the highway, already tasting the drink he’d soon hold in his hand.
Later that night, Lincoln stood alone at the roulette wheel. He'd already come out on top eight straight turns and his happiness was only checked by the thought of the lost sums he'd let slip away because of not betting it all every time. He had a hundred bucks riding EVEN now as his eyes attempted to follow the wildly ricocheting ball around and around. His hands clinched at the table’s edge, willing anything with the root of 2. Black 16 punched in with a solid knock and his eyes widened with the thrill of conquest. "Hotdamn!" he spat quietly, pumping his right fist once in the direction of the still-spinning wheel. He tried not to reach for the chips too soon after the dealer laid them down in the rectangle.
Feeling the inner wind of triumph, he pushed the whole sum over to BLACK. At two hundred-twenty up and the free whiskey racing around in his skull, how could he do anything else? He caught a few sideways glances from a group of college boys nickel-and-diming their way to nothing. Young punks, he thought. An older couple had just vacated their spot at the table and he pulled his chair closer.
The dealer, nonchalant as always, sorted and parceled out for several new-comers. He signaled to the players this would be his final spin, as he deftly fueled the wheel with a flick of his cuffed wrist. Immediately, the two college-aged students pushed their ante over to BLACK and Lincoln shot them a look to kill. Simultaneously, he cupped his chips in a moment of studied confidence and moved the whole bundle to double 0.
Green.
Green like money.
Green like envy.
His gaze went rock-hard and he thought for a moment the ball actually hesitated for a moment as he heard the surprise from the platinum blond sitting next to him, already on her fourth cigarette after a mere fifteen minutes.
He wasn't even looking when the ball clanked into place because he was summing her up for later. He knew without looking the play had to go his way due to the stars, the devil, or whatever such thing tugged his dick through life, but a whoop from the college boys brought his head quickly around. His hands began a violent trembling as the elated troupe high-fived and waited for their pittance to be paid out.
Goddamn BLACK 16 again. Impossible.
He choked back his rage and stood up so quickly the chair fell out from beneath him, spilling into the aisle. He never turned around as he left the casino, cursing every living fuck in the joint, mentally, as he went.
Frederick rifled through the backpack in search of his last dwindling carton of cigarettes. Finding the ragged edge of the box, he took it out. He up-ended it, letting the remaining few boxes fall into his hand. Two packs. Forty cigarettes. Motherfucker. He violently threw the empty carton away and stuffed one of the packs safely into the waterproof zipper-pouch inside. The other he mindlessly tore open. "No time like the present," he said, edging his voice with as much sarcasm as he could muster to blunt his stark reality.
Even though the moon was out it was practically invisible above the canopy, and he couldn't be sure if it was the smell of rain in the air or just its fetid, persisting embrace left behind. Things were not good. He pulled a cigarette from the hard-pack and stuck it into the corner of his mouth while he rummaged around in his front shirt pocket for the lighter. He couldn't get it to strike until the fourth try and in the cupping glow of his hands he noticed how pruned his fingers were, as if he'd been soaking in a warm bath for most of a lazy day. He smirked and dragged deeply, careful to only touch the filter so he wouldn’t get the tobacco wet.
He leaned back against a tree trunk, cushioned by the thick moss that grew around its base. By the time he chunked the butt away his mind had calmed. But the fucking night was still thick and hot.
"Well, what's the plan?" he said. Jelly would think by now something was wrong but what the hell could he do? On runs like this you were on your own. He wiped away the salty crust of sweat that furrowed his brow.
He needed a plan. If he could get into Bogota, he'd most likely be able to get to a motel and phone Jelly. He could already hear the conversation in the back of his mind, pathetic as it was. "Uh, yeah, Jelly," he'd say. "I’ve been shot down in the jungle, the plane is toast, I’ve just walked fucking miles through the goddamn jungle, and right now I'm in a little dick-fuck motel praying the local militia doesn't come and kick the fucking door down for the cocaine I've got in my backpack." But, of course, the pretty comedy would not end there. Not by any means. "Oh, and by the way,” he’d continue along. “I also gotta let you know Paul's dead. That’s right, dead. And the monster I told you about? One of the guys I was doing the job for? Well, he’s roasting his heels in Hell right now too. And when his brother finds out I’ll probably be next in line. However,” and here was the paycheck part, “Aside from these minor set-backs, everything's just fine. Couldn’t be better. I was just wondering, the reason I’ve called you in fact, if you could wire me enough cash to get the fuck out of Bogota? Realize I really don’t want to put you in a spot, but blah...blah...blah.”
Yeah, a real fucking comedy, you had to admit.
A real hoot.
He brushed a hand across his face, trying to clear the bastard tsetse flies away. The oppressive, humid-damp wrapped around him closer. He checked his watch after striking the lighter repeatedly and straining his eyes to mark the hands in the fog underneath the glass, even though he already knew it could be no more than twenty minutes since last time.
Well, not bad. Quarter after nine. Almost three whole minutes earlier than he'd expected. He groaned, shook his head to send the flies reeling, and pulled up the mosquito-netting he had bunched up on his lap. He pulled it over his head. Pulled down his hat and stuffed his hands into his pants' pockets. Then he eased back to a semi-reclined position. If he managed to sleep it would be a miracle, but if he didn't his strength would be gone soon. "So go to sleep, motherfucker," he whispered, and lay there with his eyes wide-open.
Just southeast of Frederick, and on an interception course with Santo and his men, Quimlicu squatted around the small fire they'd built. He had n
oticed the broken branches and narrow trail on the way to the campsite, and figured they would catch up to the chimpanzee group early the following day. Tonight they had to get the arrows ready. But in the back of his mind he had noted the boot marks and adjusted his thinking.
Very carefully Quimlicu peeled back the leaf fragment and stabbed the pointed stick into the moist skin of the Kokoa frog trapped in the funnel. He pulled it free as the frog kicked and held it over the fire. The skin began to glisten as if sheened in sweat. Quimlicu picked up one of the many arrows lying at his feet and rubbed the bone tip along the side of the dying frog. The spindly legs kicked very weakly now, and Quimlicu carefully placed the primed arrow in a safe place beside him.
He picked up another arrow and began rubbing it over the dead frog. Each one would poison up to thirty shafts but Quimlicu usually threw them into the fire after ten or so because it was best to be sure. Around the fire the other warriors began carefully unwrapping their bundles and priming their arrows too. With a precision quiet, a chant floated into the humid air and their heads began to bob with an internal rhythm which continued to grow as the fire licked at the minute, charred bodies they cast into its depths.
Within hours they would leave the smoldering fire and make their way through the pitch-black terrain, weaving along trails that existed mostly in their minds, their eyes laconic and half-lidded, still stinging with the strong hallucinogenic drugs they would soon blow violently into one another's noses when the arrow-readying ritual was done.
Santo initially suspected a mosquito had slipped in around the mesh. He came awake with a quick, startled jump, his legs kicking out, but then freezing just as suddenly. He blinked in the darkness, trying to see, but when he instinctively brought his hand up to brush at his nose he knew immediately.
He shuffled around until he was in an upright position. Off to the right ebbed the faint glow of the fire. All pitch dark around the perimeter. He waited a minute more for his eyes to adjust. Cursed quietly in the darkness. A gentle swaying overhead of rustling limbs. The much darker outline of the stretched tarp overhead became gradually apparent, and Santo tore away the thin screen of netting around his body in a motion not far from panic.
He hissed into the stillness, trying to get someone’s attention. A feeble groan carried back, followed by carelessly loud smacking. Then, a sound of another man rolling over. Santo balled up the netting and placed it by his side. He pulled the zipper down on his thin, waterproof facet and opened the pocket so it would afford easy access to the pistol and knife. "Attention!" he hissed again, frantically. Only another loud grunt as Santo tried to examine the denseness, attempting to ascertain which direction, if any, the danger was coming from.
He eased through the tent flap and made his way to the center of the camp. He crab-crawled over to the closest hump and punched the man soundly in the ribs. The man uttered a muffled groan and sat up. Santo pushed him toward the other humps. "Attention! Attention!" he repeated frantically.
As the group began to come to their senses other sweating forms began pushing out of the darkness along the border regions. They moved like the jungle itself, pouring from the wet ground and oozing forward, their naked bodies glazed with the salt of their exertions. They spoke not a word but each knew where the other was and at what second the assault would begin. They gazed with snake eyes into the trampled clearing, seeing the men groggily shaking themselves out, puzzled at the heated disturbance from their leader.
Even from his spot in the darkness Quimlicu could see him, and felt a kinship that had nothing to do with sympathy or mercy. They had been quiet as creeping death, but one could not fool the inconspicuous bugs and frogs with their defense zones of monotonous droning until something eased into it. Then all around silence; men were haughty in their self-awareness compared to the insect's need for total awareness at every minute. Quimlicu knew what kind of men these were, soldiers. Opponents even though he bore no personal grudge.
There had been no fresh game in the village for most of the last moon, and what had been brought back had stunk with festering sores. An epidemic had spread through the stomachs of the village children. The Men in White Skins had made their interest in the corpses’ of monkeys brought to camp, and also of the poison from the frogs. There had been no latent sickness since the trading had begun, and these before them were not of the same stripe.
Quimlicu had smelled them from almost fifty feet away, at the point where the bugs had stopped their repetitious symphony.
And no one, not even Quimlicu himself, heard the bowstring stretch when he pulled it back and held it on set. He steered it forward, as if it was already lodged deep inside the tall one's throat. When he let go it left a snap in the air, and Quimlicu's eyes widened in the darkness, surprised at the unexpected, instinctual start from his intended target. The man was indeed good. But it didn't prove to be enough; instead of his throat, the razor-sharp slice of filed bone thunked into Santo's chest and tore up through the smooth side of his jugular vein. It was an immediate, deadly hemorrhage.
Santo struggled briefly when he hit the ground, vaguely aware of a shower of sparks that rained around him when his arm landed in the fire. He could feel nothing, grappling there by the edge of life itself. A quickening quiet descended as the ringing in his ears died out. He could smell burning flesh, but he was more concerned with the mild whispering he seemed to hear, although he could make out no words. His lungs became sodden and heavy and the rest of the paralysis began to push down, smothering everything. His eyes started to bug out, and suddenly the jungle was not so dark after all. Shapes moved around him and he dreamed of footsteps approaching while some lost figure struggled vainly off to his left. His lungs began seizing up, and his eyes blurred and cleared with the steady pounding in his chest.
Someone squatted down close and placed a warm hand on his forehead. Santo's last thought was as a child's. Simple and short: “What is this new thing?”
The two leader’s eyes locked then, alone since the rest of the party was busy laying several of the convulsing souls to rest. Quimlicu, however, saw no point in letting this one's essence slip away unobserved. Great might was passing away and he prepared himself to breathe it in.
He could sense the soul shifting below him.
Quimlicu anticipated its exit and squatted lower, down to the gurgling chest. Not far now...
He grabbed the man's head with both hands and held it so they were only inches apart. The man’s eyes were fading now, glassing over like a fish’s as his mouth moved, soundless. And then he was dead. No crack of lightning, no startling insights. Just dead.
Quimlicu heard plenty of noise behind him but paid no attention to it. He breathed in deeply and placed the dead man's head back on the ground. He knocked the smoking arm away from the fire. Gazing all the while at the empty face and its mysteries. Quimlicu put his ear to the chest and listened, trying to put distance between the noise in the background and the ultimate silence he was attempting to tap. Were those faint voices he heard, even now retreating like thick syrup?
He touched the arrow to see if it still hummed. It did not but Quimlicu's heart was racing. This one had been different, imbued with a greater life force than he had ever seen. There had been no screaming or yelling, just a mute realization that was soon finished. The second the arrow had left the bow, the man had summed up his short future. Quimlicu had felt it when he heard the arrow punch through the flesh. But there had been something else too.
A terrifying image of an empty being, walking, suddenly drenched him in a blast of horror like a fell wind and he rocked back on his heels.
Frederick was startled awake by all the screaming he heard coming from very close by. He sat up quickly and for a disconcerting moment he thought he was suddenly back in Vietnam. What the hell? he thought. That was no goddamn animal for sure. He scrabbled to the side of a large tree and tore the 9mm loose from inside his jacket.
There, again. Voices actually, but nothing he’d hea
rd before. Not even a language, really, as far as he could tell. He brought the gun up with both hands, then squeezed as deeply into the mossy trunk as he could. His mind was still muddled with sleep. The darkness surrounding him was pit-like and stifling, seeming to lull him into unconsciousness. But the dizziness and pounding heart were real enough.
Now, now...
He felt like cotton dipped in black ink. The shouts out there began taking on a chant-like quality, oozing out of the distance with a slow, rising beat. Deeper black separated gradually to take on blurred and preternatural shapes of branches and ground cover. Frederick suddenly felt the urge to cough and shoved his dirty sleeve into his mouth to fight the sensation away. Be cool, motherfucker. One sound and it’s your last.
He squatted down, pulling the moss to the side like a curtain as he squinted into the night. He panned the area with the 9. His eyes continued to adjust but he could still not tell who or what was making the sounds or where they were coming from. The chanting began to pick up volume. "What the fuck?" he said. He felt around, trying to collect any articles he might have dropped. He didn’t want to leave anything lying around. One thing was certain though: it was not the tagging party of drug-runners out there in the darkness. No chance. Even though Frederick could not make out a single thing in the ominous chanting, Satan's own entourage could not have sounded any stranger.
Then it hit him. "Goddamn Choco's," he whispered. He closed his mouth tightly until it was a line below his nose. A tremor-tension ebbed and flowed in the muscle beneath his left eye. He had flown the Colombian jungles for the better part of five years and he knew the land regions and its inhabitants. He also knew about the poisonous frogs and the importance they played in the Choco Indians' hunts. "Christ Almighty," he whispered again, his mind flashing through scenarios. But supposedly they stuck to the higher climes. Supposedly…
He breathed in slowly through his nose, vaguely aware again of the 9 in his hand. Time to go, he told himself. For the first time since starting awake his mind was calm enough for rational thought.
How far away are they? he wondered. From the muddled, sometimes piercing yelps that passed to him on the breeze, he placed them at no more than a quarter mile, though, of course, this estimate could be wildly wrong. Only one thing was certain: they weren’t right on top of him as he’d first suspected. But what was the deal with all the yelling? They had to be clearing the jungle for a mile around. Strange. Frederick hefted the backpack to his shoulder, thankful he’d had enough sense to grab it before burrowing into the moss. A cursory inspection with his free hand convinced him that it was not open and spilling out what he had left onto the wet ground. The cocaine inside made the picture a little clearer. He’d been right to high-tail it. Manuelo couldn't let it go...
The Indians were most likely howling over a little late-night surprise they’d delivered to a bunch of drug-dealing flunkies. Frederick stood up and situated the pack so that it would ride easy. Maybe this was something good. At least they wouldn’t be after him anymore.
As he tried to steer clear of the noises, very gradually he became entangled in an immense growth of vines, armed with temper-quality thorns. He fought to keep the jagged, coughing discomfort firmly in his chest so as not to let on his position, and picked slowly at the obstacles in front of his face, arms, and legs. The moonlight shrunk to spider-webbing tendrils and he felt the ground begin to go soft again; the sluggish water lapping around his ankles while he groped, afraid of what might be nestled down in the stinking mud. But a flashlight was out of the question. He could still make out the voices, although he was glad they were lessening in pitch with every inch that he forced into the practically surreal briar patch. Every move brought on another prickling warning.
"Sonofabitch!" he exclaimed as a particularly long, wooden edge dragged a rut down his arm. He immediately cursed himself again for the outburst and hunkered down, straining his ears to listen for any changes in the fading rhythms. The fucking Indians were hardly people from the stories he'd heard and read; they had noses like bloodhounds and fucking ears like a desert fox. He pictured himself being riddled from every blind spot by bone-tipped arrows, drenched with poison.
Several moments passed and nothing.
And it was just as he pulled the sleeve free from the bush that he heard the noise.
He froze immediately, his finger hard on the 9mm’s trigger. He squatted lower still, dragging with him what seemed to be at least half of the jungle. The pack's straps dug in tightly across his shoulders but he paid no mind. Another noise off to the left...the wet popping of a branch turgid with water.
He very much wanted to pull his feet out of the mud; he had a clear picture of a huge, coiled snake sliding over damp branches, suspended among the trees, Frederick's smell catching on the flicking tongue and calling it silently on.
Just before the smell caught him full in the face, his adrenaline kicked over to full. The new, gluey stench caused his gorge to rise as he peered frantically into the darkness, his mind clicking quickly through a list of possible suspects. But what the hell smelled like that?! Whatever it was was getting closer, and with its next sound the moon broke provincially from behind a cloud and drilled through an opening in the canopy so that it turned the area into an odd dreamscape.
Very clearly, off to Frederick's left, an eye flashed like a coin reflecting in a pool, the body behind it wrenching itself along as a misshapen shadow. A solitary eye, muddied whitely as if from a malignant cataract, which jerked suddenly in his direction. Its attendant, swollen body stood no more than twenty-five feet away and was even now beginning to wade further into the fortress of thorns. Toward him…
Frederick bolted upright, forgetting about the Choco warriors as he broke the chain that held the flashlight around his neck. Instantly, he had it out and on, landing the smooth cylinder of light in the direction of the figure. He had never been a religious man (even in the midst of Vietnam he’d never bent his will), and he placed even less relevance on the realm of the occult, but his mouth dropped open at the lurching shape thrashing through the roped menagerie of thorns. Hell didn't seem an impossible proposition anymore. Not with this nightmare loose.
What could without a doubt only be Samuel Franklin's head was now an inexplicable mass, swollen horribly on one side, and a thick patch of bristled hair that crowned it (woven haphazardly with assorted jungle debris) formed a sort of terrible halo. A baleful, muddy stare leeched out of the hideously puffed eye which gave the appearance of being split near the crusted nose. The skin twitched on the face as if from something digging underneath that was much worse. There was no expression.
The dead man lurched at the light, reminding Frederick of the Frankenstein monster portrayed so woodenly by Boris Karloff in the old horror flicks. Christ, it would have been comical except for the fact that it was real. The clothing tossed about in lengthy strands, spraying the area with the soiling stench of urine, dried blood, decomposition.
Frederick stood still, dumb. He held the flashlight fixed on the demonic figure pushing violently closer and closer. For just a moment he was glad he'd gotten so deeply into the briars, but then it dawned on him that it was hardly slowing down the dead man coming toward him. It wouldn't be long now. "I gotta be fuckin dreaming," he whispered soundlessly.
A grotesque seeping hiss issued out in waves from the remains of the approaching body, and Frederick decided that real or not, it was time to get the fuck out. With the heat of the burning eye drilling into his back he slashed through the tangled, thorny brambles and vines. One razor-sharp end ripped at his forehead, along the edge of his hairline when he tried to duck lower, as he strained ahead, feeling the resistant tearing of his clothing. Then the backpack caught for a terrifying second (a second in which Frederick, disembodied, saw the phantom take hold of it and violently spin the two face-to-swollen-face), and with the next footstep everything thankfully gave way.
The vines, the thorns (though not as swiftly as everything else), an
d the ground beneath his feet fell away. The air whooped out of his lungs as his right leg slid out from under him. And he began the slide. He was soaked to the skin in seconds, sliding away into God only knew what.
There was no time to scream and he went silently. The moonlight suddenly sucked up into the night as he careened over half-submerged rocks and fallen limbs, all the while clawed at by the ever-present thorns. He started off roughly feet-first but a root soon slung him around, first sideways and then head first. He couldn't tell if the pack was still on his back as he slid off into the darkness but wondered vaguely about what he would do about it anyway.