Little Tiny Teeth (2 page)

“Yeah, sure, but-”

“Look, we’ll be in and out of it in less than a minute. We’ve spent more time arguing about it than it’ll take to get through the damn thing.”

“I don’t know…” Frank muttered, chewing on his lip. Although the oldest of the three, he was by nature the least assertive. “Theo?”

Theo’s shoulders rose in resigned submission. “What the hell, let’s do it. Arden’s the boss.”

“I am?” Arden said. “Hey, thanks for telling me. How about letting your brother in on it?”

Frank gave in too. His open face relaxed into a smile and he waved Arden on with a flourish. “Lead on, Macduff. Just walk fast, will you?”

The Chayacuro had followed at a hundred feet, slipping silently through the undergrowth and hanging vines like the jaguars they revered. They watched as the strangers entered the coca garden. With only a look between them and a barely perceptible dip of the chin from Jabuti-toro, each man pulled from his quiver a dart dipped in poison before they had left the village. A pinch of kapok was taken from each woven bag, moistened with saliva, and wadded onto the back end of the dart. This was partly to make it fly true, but mostly to stop up the hollow interior of the blowgun so that the coming puff of air would not pass uselessly around the dart but would instead propel it forward. The long tubes were lifted to their lips and aimed. Both men gathered in quick, shallow mouthfuls of air, and…

Ffft.

Ffft.

A Chayacuro blowgun dart is made by cutting away the leafy part of an ivory nut palm leaf, leaving only the straight, slender central rib, which is then whittled to a point with a few expert strokes. It is about ten inches long and not much thicker than a toothpick. If it were to appear beside a barbecue grill among the wooden canape skewers, no one would look at it twice. The poison into which it is dipped is a curarelike extract pressed from the skin of the poison-dart frog, Phyllobates terribilis, and is among the most potent poisons known to man. A bird struck with such a dart will fall paralyzed from a tree in ten seconds and be dead in thirty. A squirrel or small monkey will take three or four minutes to die, a sloth or tapir fifteen, a human being anywhere between thirty minutes and three hours, most of which is spent in total paralysis. Death results from asphyxia. Curare and its relatives are neuromuscular blockers that first turn the muscles limp and unresponsive, then paralyze them altogether. When the muscles that control the lungs are no longer capable of inflating them, the victim suffocates. It is a particular horror of curare poisoning that consciousness is not affected until very near the end. A human victim can think clearly and feel himself becoming progressively incapacitated, but is very soon unable to speak, to call for help, or even to gesture.

In the hands of a Chayacuro marksman, the dart can be accurate at over a hundred feet, a distance that it travels in a shade under one second. Once it leaves the blowgun, there’s no sound. An entire troop of monkeys can be brought down before they grasp the danger. Browsing animals who are narrowly missed continue their peaceful grazing, unafraid. But Chayacuro marksmen don’t often miss.

“Ouch,” Theo said. “Damn.”

Arden glanced at him and saw, to his horror, the slender dart protruding from the back of Theo’s neck. Theo, possibly thinking he was brushing off a stinging insect, reached for it and plucked it out. He and Arden and Frank stood staring at it for a second, then looked up at each other, their eyes frightened. All knew what it was. All knew what it meant. Theo uttered a half sob and flung it to the ground.

When a second dart struck Arden – but miraculously lodged in his backpack – they broke for the cover of the jungle.

“I don’t… think they’re… following us anymore,” Theo gasped.

They’re following us, all right, Arden thought, but said nothing. His heart was pumping crazily and he needed all his breath to keep going. The three Americans had been running for almost ten minutes, pushing clumsily through the jungle and hacking inexpertly away with their machetes when they had to. Moving along what they thought was a diagonal track, they should have reached the path by now, but if they had they must have gone right through it without realizing it. But there was no doubling back to look for it. All they could do was keep going in what Arden thought – prayed – was generally the right direction. The only one to carry a sidearm – a little Beretta semiautomatic – he had pulled it from his holster and now clutched it in his right hand.

There was no doubt in his mind about the Chayacuro being on their trail. In the early morning hours, once the godawful dawn racket from the birds and howler monkeys had died down, a tropical rainforest was very quiet. Sounds traveled a long way, and several times he had picked up the Indians’ voices, frighteningly calm and monosyllabic. Unlike the Americans, they were in no hurry. Unlike the Americans, they knew what they were doing. Besides, Theo’s increasingly dragging feet were making enough noise to be heard down in Iquitos.

“Maybe… maybe they just… wanted to… scare us off,” Theo managed, following it with an “Uff!” as he tumbled headlong over a fallen trunk.

Sure, Arden thought grimly, and maybe they forgot to dip their darts in poison. And maybe your poor gray face and your uncoordinated movements – this was the third time Theo’d fallen – are just in my imagination.

“Jesus, Theo,” Frank said. “You have to watch… where you’re going.” He said it with a kind of teeth-clenched jauntiness, trying to convince himself – to convince all of them – that there was nothing the matter with his brother aside from simple, frightened clumsiness.

Theo knew better; Arden could see it in his eyes as he and Frank pulled him to his feet.

“Well, let’s go,” Theo said, but he just stood there. His speech had slowed perceptibly now and was more mumble than words. He could no longer put his lips together. His system was shutting down. “Oh, hell, I need to… I need… lie down.” He sagged against Frank.

“Theo,” Frank said urgently. “You can’t lie down. Come on, we have to keep going.”

“B… bud… I can’t… I can…” His eyelids were drooping; saliva ran down his chin.

Frank wiped it away with his fingers, his eyes filming over with sudden tears. “Theo, you can make it, we’ll get you there, bro.”

“Don’t worry, Theo, we can do it,” Arden said. “Come on, buddy.”

Quickly, they each hooked one of Theo’s flaccid arms over their shoulders and got going at as close to a trot as they could manage. Theo was as inert, and as frightfully heavy, as a corpse.

“Artificial respiration,” Arden panted, as they struggled on. “Get him… to boat… artificial respiration.”

This was mainly for Theo’s benefit, if he could still hear them. As they all knew, if artificial respiration could be applied until the effects of the toxin receded, the victim could recover, and Arden wanted him to know they hadn’t forgotten.

“Right,” Frank said brightly. “We’ll take… turns. All… have dinner in Iquitos… tonight.” But his eyes were rolling back in his head and he had begun to stagger with Theo’s weight. He was more delicately built than Arden, and he was clearly in agony, at the very end of his rope.

As was the stronger Arden. His lower back shrieked with pain, and every breath drove shards of glass into his lungs. His legs were beyond pain; he was no longer running, only driving each leg one excruciating, slogging step at a time. How many more could he force them to take? And were they really getting any closer to the boat, or were they going deeper into Chayacuro country?

Again, seemingly from a few hundred feet behind them, came a casual, softly spoken syllable or two of the Chayacuro language.

Frank slowed, struggling for air. “Can’t… carry… anymore!” he groaned. “Got to… put him down.”

Arden wouldn’t have been able to haul Theo much farther either, and it was with mixed guilt and relief that he slipped out from under Theo’s arm and helped Frank lay him gently on the mossy ground.

Frank crouched beside the supine, inert body and looked up at Arden. “We have to hide him. We can’t let them…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. “You take his legs. I’ll take-”

“Are you out of your mind?” Arden cried in a hoarse whisper. “They’re right behind us. Do you want us all to die?” He was tugging at Frank as he spoke. “Come on!”

Frank resisted, slapping angrily at Arden’s hand. “He’s still alive. He can hear us.”

Theo’s eyes were open, though unmoving. He could see them too. But there was nothing they could do. Hauling him farther was out of the question. “The hell with you then,” Arden said, straightening and turning away. “I’m going.”

“Wait! I’m coming, I’m coming!” Frank bent quickly to kiss Theo’s forehead. “Don’t worry, little brother, we’ll be back for you,” he said, choking on the words. Tears dripped from the end of his nose, but he let Arden drag him to his feet.

They had hurried on for only another minute or so before they stopped dead at the sound of Chayacuro voices carried on the still, heavy air; not the laconic syllables they’d been hearing till now, but an excited jabbering.

Frank squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, God, they found him. Oh, please, no.”

“Not necessarily. They-” Arden’s voice died in his throat at the unmistakable chunk of a machete chopping into something that didn’t quite sound like wood. “I’m sorry, Frank.”

Frank turned stricken eyes toward the sound and actually began to stumble blindly in that direction.

Arden grabbed him by the collar. “What the hell are you doing? There’s nothing we can do for him now. Come on, snap out of it. We have to keep going.”

Frank let himself be turned around by Arden and goaded into moving forward again, but he was like a man in a trance now, going wherever Arden pushed or pulled him. They had thrown off their heavy backpacks – the precious bag of seeds now hung from Arden’s belt – and they were crossing a less thickly overgrown area where the going was easier and quieter, and they were less likely to be overheard.

But the same was true for the Chayacuro.

“ Oh!” Frank exclaimed as a dart struck him in the soft, V-shaped space just below the left ear and behind the jawline. “Oh, no.”

Like his brother before him, he plucked it out and threw it away. As with his brother, it made little difference. Half paralyzed already, perhaps with grief or despair, he stumbled after Arden into a heavier, more concealing thicket, but made it only fifty yards before collapsing in a heap across Arden’s legs, sending them both sprawling. Arden got quickly to his feet, but Frank lay where he was. One trembling hand reached up to Arden.

Arden recoiled from it as if it were a snake. The skin on the back of his neck tightened instinctively against the prick that must surely come at any moment. “Frank-”

Instead of a dart, a slender, naked Indian burst out of the brush only five yards from them and froze, staring shocked and open-mouthed at them. He carried an immensely long blowgun, longer than he was, but he was only a youth, thin and unmuscled, Arden saw, no more than twelve or thirteen.

“Hahhhh!” He shook the blowgun at them.

Arden, in a sort of dull shock of his own, raised the Beretta and shot him in the chest, then shot him again as he crumpled with a sigh.

Whether Frank was even aware of what had happened was unclear. His gaze was loose and unfocused. “Arden, don’t leave me here,” he said thickly. “I can make it. Just help… just… uhh…”

Arden turned and fled, but quickly came to a stop. Hesitating for only a moment, he ran back to where Frank and the boy lay. The boy’s eyes were open, staring at the sky. A pool of blood was spreading out from under his shoulders, but the two black holes in his chest were almost bloodless.

“Arden…,” Frank said, his eyes shining. “Thank… thank you. God bless you… I knew… I knew you wouldn’t…”

Arden tried not to look at him. He snatched up the bag of seeds that had come untied from his belt when the two of them had fallen and dashed back into the jungle, toward the river.

August 12, 1976

Mr. A. K. Chua

Executive Vice President, Research and Development

Gunung Jerai Industries Sdn. Bhd.

Level 3, Amoda Building, No. 22 Jalan Imbi

Kuala Lumpur

Dear Mr. Chua:

It was a pleasure meeting with you in Miami earlier this week. I hope that you (and the Hevea seeds) had a safe flight back to Kuala Lumpur.

As you requested, I am putting into writing the tragic events that attended the securing of these seeds.

On August 4 of this year, having acquired the thousand blight-resistant Hevea brasiliensis seeds which we had contracted for (plus another two hundred as backup in case of spoilage), my companions, Theodore and Franklin Molina, and I were attacked without provocation by Chayacuro Indians as we returned to the boat that we had left on the Amazon for the return journey to Iquitos. The first sign of them was when Theo was struck in the neck by a poisoned blowgun dart. A second dart hit my backpack.

We immediately fled toward the boat, which we believed to be some two miles farther on. For several hundred yards we hacked our way through the jungle with the Indians in pursuit some distance behind. When Theo was no longer able to run, or even walk, Frank and I carried him between us for a few hundred feet more, until it became inescapably apparent that he was dead. With our own strength failing and the Indians closing in, we had no choice but to leave him and continue our own escape.

A few minutes later, Frank was also hit by a dart, and at once showed signs of hysteria. I was unable to stop him from running wildly off through the jungle in what I was sure was the wrong direction. Nevertheless, I ran after him, catching up to him only when he stumbled and fell. At this point, one of the Indians suddenly appeared, brandishing his blowgun. I managed to shoot him just as he was about to release another dart.