Insects: A Novel (19 page)

65

Daniel Rocha called
Gonzalo Juarez first thing in the morning to see whether he planned to take his boat into the swollen Rio Negro and rescue Professor Azevedo. As it turned out, Juarez was working on his boat. The rain had let up, and while the river was running fast, there was less debris than he’d seen recently, and he did feel a responsibility since he’d agreed to pick up the group of Americans and was already two days late.

“Have you heard from them since we talked?”

“No, they haven’t called, and I haven’t been able to reach them. They’re in trouble; I told you that yesterday,” Rocha complained.

“I know, I know,” Juarez said, irritated. “My problem is I got no crew.”

Rocha paused before replying. Should he do this, or should he call authorities? The thought flashed through his head.

“You still there?”

“Yes, yes, I’m here. I’ll go with you if I can be of help.”

“That is the answer I was looking for,” Juarez chortled. “You know where I keep my boat?”

“What should I bring?”

“Enough for overnight. There’s a cabin we can stay in. Sleeping bag. Something to eat.”

Rocha wrote down the location of the dock and concluded it would be like a camping trip. He gathered a change of clothes, knife, food, water and other items from his apartment and stuffed them into the small backpack he used to carry books. He took a cab to Juarez’ boat and arrived just as the captain had started the engine. A cloud of black smoke rose from the engine room hatch, dissipating against the wood-framed roof that extended from the tiny wheelhouse to the transom.

After a cursory examination of the boat, Rocha had second thoughts.

“You have life jackets on board?”

“Of course. I’m not good swimmer. I have an inflatable. Hold four people,” Juarez stammered, struggling to find the appropriate Portuguese words.

Rocha boarded the vessel with his pack and sleeping bag.

“How long will it take to get there?”

“Three, four hours. We’re towing three boats, and you make sure they don’t smash into each other or fuck up the ropes.”

Rocha looked out over the stern at three battered aluminum boats tied to a cleat on the transom, their small outboard engines stored behind the wheelhouse

“How do I keep them apart?”

“You pull on one rope or other. Sometimes all of them. Depends on conditions, you know.”

“And what about these conditions?”

“Not the best, but better than yesterday. Hey, I can wait for better conditions. Maybe tomorrow.”

“No, we should go, they need our help.”

Juarez prepared the boat to leave the dock, and before putting the engine in gear, he motioned for Rocha to approach him at the wheel.

“You get seasick much?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t spent much time on boats.”

“Maybe you take seasick pill. Okay? You won’t have to worry. Believe me, you do not want to get seasick. You get so sick you can’t hold your head up. No, you don’t want to be seasick.”

Rocha took the Dramamine, struggled into an ancient orange life jacket and went to his post in the stern as Juarez slowly maneuvered the boat away from the dock and into the harbor.

66

“I’ll tell you
what,” Carlos Johnson said just after he woke, “that sleeping pill made all the difference. I think I slept through the night. What about you?”

“Mostly,” Cody Boyd said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “The thunder woke me up a couple times. But I’m okay.”

Poking his head out of the end of their home on the truck bed, Johnson saw a lake of murky, moving water as far as he could see. Mercifully, the rain had stopped.

“We’re gonna need a boat,” he announced.

“How deep is it?” Howard Duncan asked.

“Hard to tell. Looks like maybe six inches under the truck and maybe a foot or two everywhere else. The water’s really dirty.”

“And stinky,” Rankin said, holding her nose.

“Get used to it,” Boyd said.

“How you feeling, Steph,” Allison Peeples asked.

“Okay, I guess.”

“You were kinda freaked out last night,” Johnson said.

“Yeah, I kinda remember that,” Rankin said, apologetically. “I don’t know why.”

“We’re all on edge,” Duncan said.

“Did he see me last night?” Rankin whispered in Peeples’ ear.

Peeples nodded.

“Oh, shit,” Rankin said under her breath. “Just what I need. He’s gonna kick me out of the program; I know it.”

“Stop it,” Peeples whispered harshly. “He’s not gonna do anything. Just stop it. You’re not the only one who’s freaked out.”

Boyd saw that Peeples was upset and was about to say something when one of the doors of the cab opened and quickly shut. The entire truck seemed to shudder. Duncan pulled the rainfly on the cab end of the bed and saw that Antonio Suarez had joined Professor Azevedo on the front seat. Azevedo was sitting in the passenger seat while Suarez sat behind the huge steering wheel. Duncan knocked on the cab’s rear window and motioned for Suarez to roll down the passenger window. He leaned toward the passenger side.

“Professor, Antonio, did you sleep well?”

“Well enough,” Azevedo said, his voice harsh and gravelly. He cleared his throat twice. “Not bad, considering.”

Suarez nodded in agreement.

Little rain was reaching the ground through the canopy, so Duncan pulled back the rainflies. He got his first good look at the forest. Where a road had been yesterday, there was now a lake. Tall grass poked through the water like a patchwork of green islands.

“What now?” George Hamel asked. When no one responded, he asked again, only louder.

Duncan eyed the group crowded together on the truck bed. Most were looking at him as if he had answers. If they were properly prepared, if they could all carry their own weight, if they were certain about where to find high ground, the answer would have been obvious. But everyone who paid attention could see there were few certainties, other than those that worked against them, such as the flood. Leaning to the side of the cab, he asked Suarez if he thought the flooding would get worse. The guide shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know, Professor,” he said.

“How about a guess?”

“The water will get deeper.”

“How much deeper?” Hamel asked, who stood behind Duncan and could hear Suarez’ soft voice.

“I don’t know.”

Duncan shot Hamel a critical look.

“How’s he or anyone going to know how deep it’s gonna get?”

“I don’t know,” Hamel said. “You got a problem with me asking questions?”

“No, of course not,” Duncan said defensively. “It’s just that nobody knows what’s going to happen with the weather, okay? It’s not like we have any information about how much rain is coming down and where.”

“So, what you’re saying is basically we’re shit out of luck.”

Duncan sighed and cut off the conversation by asking Boyd to measure the depth of the water under the truck. Using a small tape measure attached to his keychain, he dropped barefooted onto the road. The water rose above his ankles.

“About six inches,” he said, walking cautiously to the front of the truck where he took a second measurement. “Yep, six inches all around.”

Suarez pressed against Azevedo as Boyd grabbed the steering wheel and pulled himself into the driver’s seat. The keys were in the ignition. Looking at Azevedo and Suarez, who were looking at him, he turned the key. The engine sputtered. He turned it again. The engine sputtered and backfired loudly. It startled the people in the cramped truck bed.

“What the fuck?” stammered Johnson.

“Is someone shooting at us?” Hamel said, jokingly.

Boyd sat back in the seat, his hands grasping the steering wheel. He turned the key again.

“It sounds like it wants to start,” Johnson said. It didn’t.

“Who knows anything about truck engines?” Boyd said loudly.

“I know something,” Suarez volunteered.

“Great. Why don’t you try to get it started? I’m not sure if it’s got any fuel.”

Boyd climbed from the cab onto the bed while Suarez popped the hood and started poking around.

“You know, Doc,” Boyd said to Duncan, “we were talking last night about the bugs and what we could do to protect ourselves if we run into them.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too. I think the best approach is to avoid them as best we can.”

“What if they showed up here? How could we avoid them? We’re sitting ducks here, and unless the engine works, who knows how long we’ll be stuck here?”

Duncan had no rebuttal. He’d focused his attention on finding high ground and had let the threat of the bugs fade into the background. But he knew that wasn’t a successful strategy though he hadn’t formulated any defense that would protect them. From what he’d seen over the past several days, he felt they had some sort of swarming intelligence and that they seemed to behave like ants, sending out scouts to locate food, and somehow signaled the colony. From the video that Suarez had shot of his boss, he saw that the bugs surrounded their prey before attacking and then attacked from all sides at once, thus making it impossible to defend oneself. The only strategy he could think of was to run, but how successful would that be with hundreds of the creatures attacking every orifice, the eyes, and other soft targets? He wished he had a better understanding of their capabilities but was willing to listen to any ideas.

“So, do we have any alternatives?” Hamel prodded. “If we start walking, and the water continues to rise, we might end up with no place to sleep. We might even lose people, especially if we have to stumble around in the dark.”

“I was thinking that maybe that shed over there might have some gasoline in it. We might be able to use gas to defend ourselves. I mean, the bugs can’t be immune to fire, right?” Boyd said.

Duncan nodded in agreement. He looked across the clearing to where Boyd was pointing toward the shed.

“How you gonna get there? You don’t know how deep the water is, and you can’t even see the bottom,” Duncan said.

“I know, I know,” Boyd sighed quickly. “It’s just that we can’t just sit here. If we can get the truck running and there’s fuel in the shed, maybe we’ll have a chance. I’m hoping there’s gasoline there, not just diesel. Diesel would be good for the truck, but it doesn’t burn like gas. We can really light those suckers up with gas.”

Duncan was skeptical but agreed that they had little choice. They were one step from desperation. They were running out of food and water purification tablets. Without Hamel’s sleep aids, they might not even be able to sleep. And he had a limited supply.

“I don’t like the idea of you going alone,” Duncan said.

“I’ll ask Johnson.”

“No,” Duncan said emphatically. “I’ll go with you.”

67

Boyd and Johnson
made their way to the shed as quickly as they could. Duncan stayed behind at the urging of Maggie Cross. The water was nearly up to their knees in most places, and they were fully engaged in the moment, each carrying a machete. They had only their imaginations to work with, and that accounted for Boyd’s inordinate fear of giant snakes and Johnson’s mindless fear of being eaten alive by piranha.

The double doors of the shed, constructed of steel panels that were now mostly covered with rust, were open. The water flowing in and around it glistened with oils and gasoline.

“This is toxic,” Johnson said as they approached, using sticks to keep their balance. The dirt floor had turned into mud, making it difficult for them once they got inside. Fuel cans, crates, and tools were scattered about, and petroleum fumes were present but not bothersome.

“We need diesel for sure,” Boyd said, pulling out a rusty eight-liter can. He managed to unscrew the rusty cap and sniffed its contents. “Gasoline here,” he announced, holding the can up.

“We should stack the good stuff somewhere,” Johnson said.

Built on a slightly higher elevation than the surrounding forest, the floor was under a half foot of slowly swirling water. Johnson pulled a small table from a corner of the shed and set it upright near the entrance. He leaned on it to bury the legs in the mud and then Boyd set the fuel can on top.

“Let’s put something heavy on the top,” Boyd said.

“Yeah, it’s a little wobbly.”

Boyd pulled a small rusty sledgehammer from a pile of debris and laid it on the table and continued checking cans and drums for fuel. It took only a few minutes to find three additional eight-liter cans, two of which they determined were at least half full of diesel fuel. The fourth can was empty.

“You know what would be great,” Boyd said, “if we could find a sprayer of some sort.”

“A sprayer?”

“Yeah, you know, like for pesticides. We could use it like a flamethrower.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, why not?”

“Well, first of all, a sprayer is not a flamethrower. How would you ignite the fuel? Hold a lighter up as you spray? Good way to self-immolate.”

“Yeah,” Boyd said grimacing slightly. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“You know what we could use?” Johnson asked rhetorically. “Torches, or better yet, flares. I wonder if there’re flares here. You would think they’d have flares, wouldn’t you?”

“They’re prolly under water, but they got lanterns,” Boyd said, pointing to several banged up kerosene lanterns hanging from nails pounded into the wood frame. He grabbed one, held it near his ear and shook it.

“It’s got fuel,” he said happily.

“Let’s take a couple.”

“What about kerosene?” Boyd asked.

“I’ll bet they’ll burn diesel. I don’t think there’s a big difference between kerosene and diesel.”

“You know, I was just thinking, there might be flares in the truck.”

“Could be.”

In addition to the fuel cans, which they placed on the table, they added a small pile of hand tools and rusty machetes, ignoring discarded chainsaws that were piled in a corner. They used rope they found in the shed as shoulder straps to hold their machetes. Johnson carried two cans and Boyd the third as they left the building and started the trek to the truck, leaving the empty can and lanterns behind.