Hell's Gate(18)

The first thing he saw was the body of a man, sitting with its back against the far wall. MacCready was reminded of a balloon that had lost most of its air—and he also knew that this was not far from the truth. He had once seen a water buffalo collapse and die in the tropical heat. For whatever the reason, rather than removing the huge carcass, the villagers merely stepped around it, most of them giving the putrefying meat pile an increasingly wide berth as the days passed. Some of them, however, had not paid attention and one day the water buffalo paid them back—with interest. After swelling with internal gases for seven days, the buffalo exploded like a bomb, spraying several horrified villagers with a slurry of liquefied flesh. In the tropics, the special effects of death were often more than even a biologist could bear. MacCready knew that something similar had occurred in the hut. The man’s torso, inflated by bacterial gasses, had popped. About a week ago, MacCready guessed. The explosion phase was over, thankfully. These days, the Balloon Man was sinking quietly into himself.

He peered into the man’s mouth, locked now into a silent scream—gums drawn back, teeth blackened from an eruption of blood that appeared to have gushed onto his chest. The scientist knew that the Balloon Man’s mouth had taken on a new role—as a convenient portal for the insects that came and went and laid their eggs.

Ten days. Definitely.

Even the scent of death had become more subtle—a cloying mixture of decayed meat and vegetables that the zoologist hated more than any other smell. And yet, beneath this stench, there was something else—something familiar.

It smells like flowers, and he was momentarily reminded of his mother’s favorite scent, a perfume called Field of Gardenias.

MacCready aimed his flashlight away from the corpse, but the rest of the room looked no better. The man’s entire family lay dead on woven pallets. No sign of struggle. Killed in their sleep? Is someone experimenting with poison gas?

But the bodies were lying in pools of black, tarry matter. Glued to the floor in their own dried blood. No. Not poison gas. Something else.

MacCready shivered. “Is this bad ju-ju, or what?”

He was answered by a barely perceptible rustle, like parchment, fluttering in a breeze. He glanced up at the nearest “curtains.” There was no breeze.

The rustling ceased, and there came to him a grim certainty that the sound had come from the far end of the hut. From the dark. Instinct told him that if he aimed his flashlight there, whatever it was would be gone. Would that be so bad? The scientist resisted the urge to stare, an ineffective means of viewing objects in the dark. Instead, he watched from the corner of his eye—the closest thing to “night vision” that humans possessed.

Something moved: a shape barely discernible from shadow, accompanied by a dry scuttle across the wooden floor. Then silence.

Now MacCready did aim his flashlight. The beam partially illuminated a wall of simple bamboo shelves tucked into a recessed corner. Too small for a hiding place but still, an inner voice screamed, “Ambush!”

MacCready backed slowly out of the doorway and down the ladder.

I’m being watched.

On the ground, he kept the light aimed at the doorway and slowly lowered one hand toward the holstered Colt.

The moment his hand touched the gun butt, something shot through his body—a vibration. An energy burst, MacCready thought, even as an adrenaline rush prepared him to face a threat—whether real or imagined.

GO, something told him. An unstoppable message that spread through his nervous system like a wave.

MacCready backed away from the hut, aiming his pistol alternately at each of its two openings, pausing just long enough to pick up his pack, just long enough to—

GO!

He tightened his grip on the strap and ran—dangerously fast if he wasn’t careful. But in those seconds, his only concerns lay in obeying the GO command and in putting the greatest possible distance between himself and whatever had been watching from the hut.

GO. The word repeated itself again. Is it only in my mind, or is this real?

The forest was a maze of shadows, and he strode quickly over fallen trees and through thorny scrub that clutched at his pants as he went. Yet something drew his gaze upward. Watch the canopy, he told himself.

MacCready shook his head. Yeah, and fall on my ass. But the feeling would not go away. There’s something up there—watching me.

Once, when he stopped for a sip from his canteen, he did look up—and swore that there were shapes peering back at him. He even drew his flashlight and turned the beam upward—but whatever had been there was gone.

An hour later, he still had not found the road to Chapada but he stumbled into a smaller clearing—a tree-fall gap. No huts. No bodies.

MacCready went down on one knee and tried to catch his breath. What the f*ck was that all about? he thought. First the spiderweb, then a mad dash through the forest. The scientist realized that he had lost control—twice.

Is this how it starts? Madness?

“Shit,” he said, quietly.

Then, as he had done on hundreds of other nights, R. J. MacCready lit a small fire. Yet on this night, for the first time, he sat awake beside it until sunrise with his pistol drawn. And he did not look up.


Outside Chapada dos Guimar?es, Central Brazil

JANUARY 21, 1944



* * *




After bushwhacking for the better part of a day, MacCready climbed a muddy embankment on all fours and stood atop what was clearly a raised dirt road. The fact that it looked more like a raised streambed than a road didn’t bother him at all—relieved as he was to be standing in the open, and in sunlight.