Rogue Angel 47: River of Nightmares (8 page)

Everything changes.

Everything had changed.

Death is close to life.

The sword floated away, her grip weakening. Her fingers fluttered, not finding the pommel, even when she concentrated and called for it. Instead, she found a swarm of biting fish. She kicked and tried to surface, but her injured leg wouldn’t work, and instead she felt herself sinking. She thrashed more violently, battering the piranhas. The bites became fewer.

She sank deeper still and the biting stopped altogether. Likely the piranha were feasting on the caiman.

Lightheaded, deprived of oxygen, and her lungs on fire, Annja fought to stay alive. But the weight of the river pressed down on her.

Again she called for her sword, but couldn’t even sense its presence. Was she at the boundary of death? Was she about to discover whether the border of oblivion was fragile or hard as stone?

Would Joan of Arc be waiting to greet her?

Charlemagne?

“Be well, Annja.” Roux’s voice a memory that flickered.

Holding the last trace of air inside, she gripped a rocky ledge and frantically pulled herself up.

She crawled toward what she guessed was a cave. Please let there be air to quench the fire in my chest, she thought.

Joan had died in fire.

There was light ahead and she was getting closer to it; in desperation, she went faster. Caves like this could hold pockets of air, and that’s what she prayed for, air...and then a way out.

Yes!

Her head cleared the surface and she gulped in stale air that to her oxygen-starved lungs tasted so very sweet. Minutes...she’d been without air for minutes, had nearly drowned. Her head ached so much, and when she closed her eyes Annja saw white pinpoints. She took a breath and held it, then took in more, releasing it and then repeating the process.

Finally sated, Annja paused, listening. The water sloshed around her, against the walls of the cavern. She clawed the ledge and the wall to get herself upright. Leaning on an outcropping, she waited until the shakiness passed. When she called for the sword again, this time it came, forming in her hand, comfortable, an old friend returned. Her muscles bunched to keep a hold of it, and at last she let the tip down. She’d spent so much energy that the blade felt heavy and unwieldy.

Keeping her free hand against the wall, she edged toward the light to take stock of herself. The leg where the caiman had bit her looked horrible, the flesh in tatters. She could see the white of bone; it was only her iron will that let her walk on it. No wonder she felt so faint; she’d lost a lot of blood and would need an emergency room. If she didn’t possess such an amazing ability to heal, she would have died at the bottom of the river and be digesting in the bellies of the Amazon’s beasts.

Best-case scenario, she’d make it back to the
Orellana
and could use Wallace’s satellite phone to arrange for a helicopter to take her to a hospital. Worst case, she’d never make it out of this cave. She tore a strip off the cloth that had miraculously remained tied around her and used it to staunch some of the bleeding. The piranha bites were minor compared to the damage the caiman had done. She used another strip to make a bandage and cover the worst of the wound so she wouldn’t have to look at it.

Now to see about getting out of here. She padded forward and took in the details of an enormous cave. There was some sort of phosphorescent lichen high on the walls that kept the darkness at bay.

There was something else, too. Paintings! Primitive, but discernible, remarkably preserved, the colors—red, black, green and violet, all reasonably bright. They depicted amazing creatures. And there was more than just the paintings. There were bones!

The pain in her leg became inconsequential at the discovery of large skeletons that could well be the remains of mapinguaries and other animals she had no names for. The skulls were unlike anything she was familiar with.

“Incredible. This is wonderful.”

She’d need to get her crew down here to film this, and then she’d contact some archaeologist friends, and they could work the site together, expand the show’s series on the Amazon River. Ned could take stills of everything. It should be easy to get the necessary permits. Her mind spun.

There was so much to do! But first she’d have to get out of here. Get out of here and get mended. She stumbled, her leg throbbing to the syncopated beat the pounding in her head provided.

“So tired,” she muttered. The fight with the caiman had robbed her strength, the loss of blood compounding it. She tried to ward off the fatigue.

“Death is close to life,” D’jok had told her.

How close to either was she? Could she heal from this devastating wound? Not on her own. Whatever enhanced constitution the sword provided her, surely wasn’t going to be enough.

“Marsha, Wallace.” No doubt they thought she was dead. Would they have the captainless boat turned around? Would she be stranded in a nameless village...provided she could get out of this cave?

Annja desperately needed to escape, let her crew know she was all right, and tell them about this unprecedented discovery. It would be the high point of their series, a ratings bonanza that would make Doug swoon.

Mourn for the captain and the villagers lost to the caiman, she would do that, too.

“There’s got to be a way. There—” High overhead she saw a gash in the rocks. She could swear light was filtering down. Her heart raced with hope. The wall was climbable, not easily, but Annja had free climbed scarier walls than this.

Her body had other ideas, however. A few more steps and she collapsed on a stretch of cool sand that fit her as well as an expensive mattress. She struggled to stay awake only for a moment. Then her exhaustion won out and she slept.

And woke...inside the shaman’s hut.

Chapter 14

Annja’s vision adjusted to the dim light, and she noted the details were the same as the first time she’d woken up, or rather thought she’d woken up—right down to the drinking glasses.

No trace of D’jok or the shaman, or the wound from the caiman. Her clothes were neatly folded next to her. She dressed and tied her tennis shoes, seeing that her skin looked black as ink.

Yet one more dream.

Where would this one take her?

Annja pushed back the curtain and stepped outside. It was twilight. Cook fires burned in the village. Soft sounds of birds and other animals could be heard. She tentatively walked down the path, listening for any screams.

“Annja! Dear God!” Marsha had been talking to D’jok, who was eating something charred on a stick—snake from the looks of it. Marsha reached into a sling bag, pulled out her video camera and aimed it right at Annja. “Wow. Oh, just wow. You’re blue.”

Annja crossed her arms and let a hissing breath escape, looked down, and saw that her hands were not black, like she’d thought inside the hut, but a shade of midnight blue. “Let’s see how this dream plays out.”

D’jok smiled warmly. “The huito,” he said. “It can turn the skin blue.”

Marsha giggled. “It’ll wash off, won’t it? D’jok, tell Annja that it’ll wash off.”

“Of course it will wash off. Two, three weeks, longer if you do not bathe each day. The blue takes you out of your world, Annja Creed. The color, the blindfold, the dreaming. It makes you aware. Was it a good dream?”

“I’m still dreaming,” Annja said flatly. “Actually, I’m having a nightmare, and I’m just waiting to see what happens next.”

“Oh, my lord!” Ned spotted her and started snapping pictures. “What happened to you?”

D’jok gave her a serious look. “The dream? It is over, Annja Creed. I promise. If you were not happy with the experience and wish to dream again—”

Annja’s stomach growled. She was famished. “No. I am not happy with the experience.” If this
was
real, if she
was
blue, filming the rest of this
Chasing History’s Monsters
special wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t go on film looking like this, despite Marsha continuing to record her. Doug would probably be furious.
Please let this be a dream.

It took several more minutes of D’jok’s convincing before Annja finally believed this was reality. The sounds of the village and the rainforest were not as intense as when she was dreaming, and the feel of her clothes against her skin, the air that played across her face was not so extreme, her senses back to normal. She couldn’t hear her heart. Emotions flitted behind her eyes—anger at herself, amusement, frustration. She shoved them down.

She’d surrendered an expensive watch to have dreams...the one was a pure nightmare, and to be turned a shade of navy.

“Can I get something to eat?”

“Yes. Yes. Of course, Annja Creed,” D’jok said. “The Americans...the ones living with us...they came back while you were dreaming. They are anxious to meet you, Annja Creed.”

Annja was not anxious to meet anyone. In fact, she considered returning to her cabin, but her stomach won out.

Captain Almeirão was near a fire pit, and he laughed when he saw her.

Ned took more pictures.

D’jok whistled and got the attention of two raggedy-looking Americans who’d been hunkered over the cook fire. The pair jumped up.

“You’ve been dreaming!” the young woman said, as she raced to Annja and thrust out her hand. “Wonderful! Did you see any dead people or—”

Annja endured the small talk, but avoided discussing anything from her visions. Her stomach continued to grumble, and it took three helpings of charred snake to quiet it.

Becca Mooney—“Moons,” and her companion Edgar dominated the dinner conversation. They looked similar—thin, sunburned, hair scruffy and hanging to their shoulders, both dressed in jeans and long-sleeve T-shirts. Edgar had a short, uneven beard, his hair was mud-brown. Moons had unnaturally black hair that was brown at the roots, like she usually dyed it for a Goth look, but hadn’t in a while.

“There’s a pharma camp about a half day’s walk from here,” Moons said between bites. “We came back from it an hour ago. We can take you there in the morning and you can get pictures for your television show. You can prove to the world how corporate greed is destroying the Amazon basin.”

“They’re certainly up to no good, the pharma, harvesting what should belong to this tribe. I don’t think they have the right permits,” Edgar said. “Baladi and F’yd—”

“—our people,” D’jok cut in.

“—haven’t come back yet,” Edgar continued. “They went with us and they should be back by now. Said they were going to look around a little more. But they should be here. It’s getting dark.”

“Soon, I hope,” D’jok said. Annja thought he looked a little worried.

“We’d still be there with them,” Moons added. “But the big guy kicked us out. Again. There’s something they don’t want us to see. I know it. He ran us off, didn’t notice Baladi and F’yd. Just us. Said he was gonna kick our sorry—”

“Because you couldn’t be quiet,” Edgar said. “He saw us ’cause you couldn’t shut up.”

Annja tried to focus on the other sounds, the Dslala conversations that she couldn’t understand, the clicking of Ned’s camera, the monkeys. The snake had been tasty, spiced with sweet pepper.

Marsha nudged Annja. “We could go with them, right? To this camp? Let me get some spare batteries and—”

“Doesn’t have anything to do with mapinguaries,” Annja said. “But we might find something for a sidebar.” She reached for a gourd D’jok passed her, sniffed, and then drank. It was some sort of fermented berry juice.

D’jok wagged his finger. “Not now, lady. This forest, with the night here now, you must stay. Leopards, jaguar. In the dark you would get lost. In the dark you might get eaten. Caiman in the dark, too.”

Annja shivered at the mention.

Edgar nodded. “Yeah, we can’t go back at night. It’s hard to see your hand in front of your face out there after dark, and the insects. You think they’re bad during the day? Out there, away from the fire at night, you might as well donate half your blood to the Red Cross. Have to go early in the morning. Maybe F’yd and Baladi are hunkered down somewhere, waiting for morning and feeding the insects.”

Annja took a fourth helping of snake. “All right, we can stay here another day. See if I can get some of this blue to fade, and the pharma camp might be worth a spot on the show.”

“Wonder if there’s enough makeup to—”

A glare from Annja cut Marsha off.

Two or three weeks? Had D’jok really said she’d be blue for two or three weeks?

She closed her eyes and listened to a nearby howler monkey. Why, oh, why, couldn’t this be a dream?

Chapter 15

Baladi and F’yd were still absent in the morning.

“The big guy did something to them,” Moons insisted. “Killed ’em, I bet.”

“We don’t know that,” Edgar countered. “But maybe we can poke around when we get to the pharma camp and—”

“How about you two just concentrate on your piece with Annja.” Ken went to work on checking the equipment. He looked at Annja. “We good?”

“We’re good.”

Ken leaned into Annja. “I looked through our supplies, nothing there to help you...all that blue. But maybe Wall, when he’s feeling better, maybe he can recolor whatever gets shot today. Some advanced photoshopping and you might be your peachy self.”

“You’re gonna use what we say, right?” Moons turned to Edgar. “I look okay?”

Nice,
he mouthed.

“You’re gonna get our message out there, right? That the pharma is up to no good? The world needs to know what goes on in places like this. I know it’s not just them, there are other companies, loggers. But they’re here and we’re here, and...we have to do something.” Annja admired that Moons spoke passionately. “Maybe the big guy killed F’yd and—”

“Let’s go.” Annja set her hands on her waist. She’d like to investigate the missing tribesmen, but the Dslala could do a far better job searching for their own in a rainforest they were familiar with. “I make no promises on what we’ll use.”

“Not her style to make promises,” Marsha cut in. “Be happy we’re doing this. Be happy Annja dyed herself blue or we’d be onto the next village chasing monsters.”

Annja shook her finger at the camerawoman. “Edgar, Becca—”

“Moons.”

“Moons. We’ll follow you into the rainforest as you point out some of these valuable plants. I’ll try to sell my producer on the notion of a companion segment about the rainforest being endangered, a webisode if nothing else. The station’s website gets thousands of hits because of our interactive content. Listen, you can’t come across as starry-eyed tree-huggers or militant eco-rights activists. You won’t be taken seriously, and Doug won’t use the content. Let the situation speak for itself, and I’ll have an easier time getting it on the air.” Annja really did want to convince Doug to use a piece like this, as she sympathized with the threats to the rainforest. Moons and Edgar’s concern was infectious.

Moons bobbed her head. “Okay. Okay. I get it. And it’s not like the world doesn’t know this place is in deep trouble. I mean, there are magazine articles, blog postings. documentaries. But more exposure will help, and you have so many fans all over the world, Annja. People who don’t watch the other stuff...well, they watch you. And maybe those are the people who will end up helping us make a difference.”

Edgar added, “You’re friggin’ famous with your Chasing Monsters of History.”

“Chasing History’s Monsters,”
Marsha corrected.

“Yeah. So this would help,” Moons said.

“Big-time,” Edgar said. His grin was lopsided and endearing.

Annja swirled her index finger in the air and Marsha started recording the pair as they walked.

“We’re ruining this amazing, beautiful country,” Moons said matter-of-factly. Annja thought she had a good, strong voice. Amanda wouldn’t have to finesse the recording much. “Before outsiders came here, like Orellana that your boat is named for, there were probably five million indigenous people. Five million. Conquest, disease, most of the tribes were wiped out. Statisticians are guessing about five hundred tribes remain. Five hundred thousand indigenous people are all that’s left. Sounds like a lot, huh? Not when there were five million.”

The forest provided its own music, though Annja suspected Amanda would lay a soft, new age track behind it, something with drums to simulate the cadence of walking. There were parrots squawking, people talking, water lapping at the river’s edge. It was wonderful, but something felt...unsettling. Annja had the sensation they were being watched. Maybe a big cat, curious. Maybe something else. She’d learned not to dismiss such trepidation.

“Speaking of millions,” Edgar chimed in as he followed a path toward Annja. “There’s more than two million square miles of Amazon rainforest, the diversity of plants and animals incredible. No richer ecosystem on the planet, and we’re destroying it. Me and Moons are doing what we can to help. We’ll leave when we catch a ride on the last boat that passes by when the tributary dries up. Hopefully by then we will have gained a better understanding and can pass that along to others.”

Annja stayed behind Marsha and her camera, but knew the mic would pick her up. “On
Chasing History’s Monsters’
trip to the Amazon, we encountered Becca Mooney and Edgar Schwartz, recent college graduates who have been living with some of the indigenous people to learn more about the problems facing the rainforest. Becca, what drew your interest here?”

“Actually, it started as a vacation last summer. We did the tourist bit first, starting in Belém with a cruise, did some birding.”

“Fantastic birding, actually,” Edgar said.

“Visited native villages and watched some of their ceremonies. But that was all part of a tour package we’d found advertised in the college newspaper, one of those go here-to-here-to-here things that fit with our student budget. Caught a game, too.” She pointed to the logo on her gray T-shirt. It was a green and black soccer ball and the shape of Brazil across the center of it. Edgar’s T-shirt featured a harpy eagle, a rare Brazilian bird of prey.

“At one of the stops we heard about the deforestation, the exploitation,” Edgar said. “We were biology majors, so it hit home for us.”

“Hit hard. We came back in December, right after we graduated. Yeah, took four and a half years for Edgar, six and a half for me, not the so-called standard four-year degree for either of us. But Edgar...his story is he didn’t take enough hours during a spring semester. My story? I worked full-time all the way through, and when you do that you can’t take enough hours in
any
semester ’cause there aren’t enough hours in the day.”

Edgar draped his arm around Moons’s shoulder. “Our visas are good for another seven months, so we might go elsewhere along the river until our money runs out. But after that, it’ll be off to Virginia where we’ll knock on the Nature Conservancy’s door and try to get full-time jobs. With luck, the Conservancy hires us and sends us back here, but—”

“We’ll go pretty much anywhere in the world if it means making a difference,” Moons finished. “We have to do something to help the balance.”

Martha shifted the camera. “Balance?”

“Yeah, balance. Man and nature, there’s a delicate balance between the two, and in a lot of places it’s out of whack,” Edgar explained.

Annja continued to listen as the two talked and walked and periodically turned around to face the camera and point at various plants. She swatted away swarms of gnats and was mentally editing the piece, deciding which parts to cut because the pair went on a little
too
passionately here and there. She was distracted though because she still had the sensation of being shadowed. Maybe someone from the Dslala village was following out of curiosity...but she doubted that would raise the hairs on the back of her neck. Her companions, however, were at total ease.

“There’s an operation nearby we’re having fits with.” Moons frowned as she shifted directly to the pharma camp. “It’s a pharmaceutical company, even the head honcho is here.” She paused. “Can you cut that sentence out? Let me try again.” She straightened her shirt and looked all serious. “Dillon Pharma is about a half-day’s walk from the Dslala village. They’re stripping some of the most valuable plants in the area, the ones the Dslala harvest rely on. Edgar and me have been chased out of their camp several times. All we want is to see their permits...and they’ve refused. If we can prove they’re not here legally, we can catch a boat to the city and alert the authorities. Instead of us running, it’ll be Dillon’s researchers who will be the ones chased out.”

Marsha clicked off the camera and cradled it in front of her. “Let’s get closer to this camp, so I can get footage of damaged trees, something to illustrate your point.”

The moss covered ground had give, like one of those old-time dance floors with spring. But unlike those flat dance floors, this ground had slopes, cliffs and hills and was interrupted by a waterfall that Annja spotted through a rare gap in the trees. Receiving nine or more feet of water a year, the ground was always moist, and the going was slow because the tree roots spread across the ground rather than growing deep into it. Walking was a bit of a chore, but Annja relished the exercise. Her younger camerawoman, however, was obviously starting to tire.

Two hours later, Edgar announced they were close.

Marsha, huffing and rubbing the fronts of her legs, asked to stop for a moment. “When we get back to New York, I’m gonna start hitting the gym.” She pulled up the video camera and squared her shoulders. “All right, guys, point out some of the plants Dillon Pharma is interested in.”

“Dillon Pharmaceuticals Ltd., actually,” Moons corrected.

“Like this?” Edgar pointed to a thick vine that had wrapped itself around a tree trunk. There were other vines on a nearby tree, but what was left of them were all high up and dying, the lower portions obviously removed.

“Barbasco,” Moons said. “You can see where these vines have been harvested. Here and here and here. All harvested by Dillon because the Dslala don’t take all the vines on any one tree. They know how to conserve. But Dillon doesn’t care. To them it’s all about the green—and I mean money, not plants.”

Annja touched one of the vines; the blue skin of her hand was pretty next to the green foliage. She grimaced and pulled her hand back when she saw that Marsha was recording her. The vine had felt smooth and tough, like the stem of a big sunflower. “What do the Dslala use this for?”

Edgar took a turn. “To help them get by in the dry season. ’Cause, yeah, there is a dry season despite all the rain now. It’s basically when the river’s down and fishing is tougher. They pound the roots until it turns into this sap that looks like milk. They dump it in a stream and wait. The sap is a toxin that messes with fish respiration, stunning them.”

“They float to the surface, and the natives scoop them up.” Moons pantomimed the action. “I suppose used in a certain way the toxin might have some medicinal value. Or maybe some sort of sleep remedy.”

“And this tree is the annato.”

“Achiote,” Moons corrected.

“Fine, achiote.” Edgar made a face.

Annja spun away, certain she’d seen someone or something mirroring their path. But the shape melded into the green, frustrating her.

“Look there,” Edgar said. “That fruit, spiny and not very tasty. I know, I’ve tried it. I’ve tried to eat just about everything here. It’s the seeds Dillon wants out of that fruit. They’re used as food color and in cosmetics all around the world, and now they’re researching medical applications. Some of the natives use it as face paint, sometimes they streak their hair red with it. Moons used it once, but it didn’t show up much since her hair is so black.”

The pair continued to talk, Marsha kept recording, and Annja drifted back. She’d heard something, a branch snapping. Leaves rustled, but not from any breeze. The plant growth was so tight here the wind couldn’t reach down. The air was still. She stared toward the source of the sounds, seeing a darker patch of green...maybe a man...maybe one of the tribesmen who’d gone in search of F’yd and Baladi...maybe something else. Maybe more than one man or creature was dogging them.

Edgar fingered a low-hanging leaf. “Basically, what everybody should know, is that rainforests cover a little more than ten percent of Earth’s land area. More than half of the world’s species of everything—plants, animals, insects—live in rainforests, but things are going extinct because of interference from us. We’re killing species, and in the end it’ll kill us.”

Marsha began to speak, but what sounded like two gunshots rang out.

Annja and Marsha pressed themselves against a tree trunk. Annja reflexively opened her hand, waiting a beat before calling the sword, but in the same instant it started to form, she banished it, hearing Moons giggle.

“Nobody’s shooting at us,” Edgar said.

“Possumwood tree.” Moons gestured east and up.

The tree was massive, and Annja couldn’t see the top of it.

“That one’s probably a hundred feet tall.” Edgar started looking on the ground.

Another sharp bang sounded!

Marsha recorded Edgar as he prodded something with his foot. There were three more bangs in rapid succession, silence, then the howl of a monkey and the squawk of a big blue macaw that landed on a low branch and regarded them curiously.

Annja glanced at the canopy, and then back to where she’d earlier heard a branch snap. She still had the definite feeling she was being watched.

“Here. Over here.” Edgar picked up something that resembled a gourd, about the size of a big apple. It was cracked open and stuffed with seeds. “When these pop—and they do when they’re ripe—it sounds like a gun going off.”

As if the tree wanted to illustrate the point, Annja heard another succession of bangs. Again she thought she saw something moving—someone maybe—from the corner of her eye. Two shapes this time.

“The tree can shoot these things a few hundred feet,” Moons said. “Besides the pods, Dillon’s interested in the tree’s sap.” She rested her hand against the trunk, smiling sadly for Marsha and her camera. “The Dslala dip their darts in it and use it as a mild poison when they’re hunting. But Dillon’s looking at it as medicine. They’re tapping the trees around here.” She indicated a few places on the trunk and pulled her finger away, liquid glistening on it. “Tapped today, I’d say. And the one over there is dying, looks like it’s been tapped dry. See?”

It reminded Annja of tapping trees in the northern United States for the production of maple syrup, but the operation she’d seen there was easier on the trees. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

“Speak of the devil,” Moons said.