This Green Hell

FOURTEEN

Alex had slept little during the night. His mind had refused to shut down, and he didn’t know whether the images he’d seen were the result of an overactive imagination, or whether he was receiving some sort of forewarning about Aimee’s current predicament. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to ignore the throbbing in his head.

He realised Garmadia had slowed and was closely watching Saqueo and Chaco. Both boys were moving ahead cautiously, peering left and right into the jungle.

‘Why are we slowing?’ Alex asked.

Garmadia motioned with his head. ‘These are animal trails we are following, Captain Hunter. There are no people here, no tracks or paths. We could be the first people to walk along here in many years, and we need to be cautious as it is the beginning of the wet season. This area is honeycombed with subsurface limestone caves. The more water that passes below us, the more chance there is of a new cave opening up. The caves can be very deep and can swallow a platoon whole.’

More caves and underground lakes, thought Alex. Just great.

Up ahead, Saqueo yelped in surprise as a small striped pig belted from the undergrowth, shot between his legs, then slipped back through the vines and fern fronds. Chaco leapt after it, pulling a small blade from his belt and shouting excitedly to Saqueo who yelled something angrily in response. After a second of indecision, the older boy ran off in pursuit of his brother, leaving Alex and the team stranded on the narrow trail.

Alex heard the boars before they broke from the jungle.

Razorbacks, he thought, marvelling at their size. Wild boars were only introduced to South America in the early twentieth century, but already their population had flourished. There were stories of full-grown male boars weighing up to 800 pounds. The larger of these two was more like 600 pounds, but a terrifying sight nonetheless, with long yellow tusks curving up either side of a long blunt head, and a coarse coat that looked as though it was fashioned from wooden spikes and splinters. Alex thought it looked more like a hair-covered rhino standing in the gloom of the undergrowth.

Maria pulled Michael behind the HAWCs, whose hands immediately went to their sidearms. Time seemed to stop for a few seconds as the elite soldiers and two wild animals contemplated their next moves.

A squeal from deeper in the jungle pulled the massive animals’ heads in the direction the baby boar had bolted. Both leapt into the forest, bulldozing a path in their haste to reach their off-spring. Alex dropped his pack and sprinted after them. He knew the damage these beasts could do to a man, let alone to the two boys in their path.

He caught up to the female quickly, his long powerful legs easily keeping pace with her. Her head reached the top of his thigh and Alex watched her powerful shoulder and neck muscles bunch as she knocked undergrowth out of her way. The male was still hundreds of feet in front, and the more dangerous of the two, but Alex decided he could reduce the threat by dealing with them one at a time.

He really didn’t want to kill either animal for protecting its young, so he lifted his arm up high and brought his armoured fist down on the flat forehead of the charging animal. The ceramic plates of his gloves, coupled with his enormous power, felled the animal immediately. Its 340-pound body brought down a small tree before it slid to a halt.

As Alex increased his speed, he heard Saqueo’s voice yelling frantically and saw the boy sitting high in a tree. He slowed long enough to guess at Saqueo’s meaning — he was screaming and pointing down the path. Alex could hear the massive male boar smashing the undergrowth out if its way up ahead — it must have been almost upon the smaller boy.

Alex leapt forward as he heard a shrill scream.

In another few paces he broke into a clearing that was totally free of any vegetation. The sunlight boiled through to the ground, creating a low mist over the bare, and strangely dry, earth. He spotted the boy — Chaco stood at the centre of the clearing — and the boar had already commenced its charge. The outcome was going to be catastrophic for the youth.

Alex knew he couldn’t make it to Chaco, but he could make it to the animal. He lowered his shoulder, increased his speed and headed on a collision course with a creature made of material a lot tougher than human flesh. Chaco screamed, and Alex heard another yell that he realised came from his own throat as he collided with the boar. The thud of the impact and its shock wave made the boy sit down hard. The boar must have sensed Alex’s approach for it had managed to turn its head just enough to get a tusk into his upper arm; blood spurted onto the ground at Chaco’s feet. But the beast had taken the full force of Alex’s weight, which, combined with his velocity, was sufficient to roll it into the thick ferns, where it lay still.

Alex got to one knee and placed his hand over his torn arm. It hurt like hell, but nothing was broken. It was the pain returning to his head that concerned him more.

He lifted the boy to his feet. ‘Are you all right?’

Chaco quickly wiped tears from his dirty face, and looked from Alex to the still hindquarters of the giant boar, then back at Alex. His eyes were wide in disbelief and his face broke into a smile. Saqueo was yelling to them from the edge of the clearing, his jubilant chant blocking out the sounds of the jungle all around them. ‘El capitán Hunter es Super—’

The boy’s words turned to a scream. Alex felt the ground tremble and turned quickly, but there was no time to avoid the boar’s charge. Recovered, it raced towards them, its small red eyes filled with a murderous rage.

Alex only had time to pull Chaco behind him and hold up an arm, hand out flat.

The impact was like an explosion — then the ground gave way and they were falling — Alex, Chaco and 600 pounds of furious mammal plunging through a thin crust of limestone into a shallow pool of water thirty feet below.

As Alex hit the water, he remembered Garmadia’s warning about the caves: they can swallow whole platoons. No wonder nothing is growing here, he thought.

Unfortunately, Alex wasn’t the first to his feet. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs and tossed him through the air to smash against the slick wall of the large, bowl-shaped crater. He heard the boar squeal in rage, the sound eardrumshattering within the small cave, then came Chaco’s voice calling his name.

Alex groaned in pain. A melon-sized piece of stone fell from the ceiling to splash into the water beside him, and he glanced up at the hole above. They had come through at a weak point, but the whole canopy could only have been a few feet thick. He knew the entire roof of the cave was in danger of shaking loose, and any loud noises could result in them being buried alive under tons of stone.

The boar was gouging the shallow water with its head, throwing up plumes of liquid as it worked itself into an even greater rage.

Chaco had climbed onto the base of a stalagmite and was trying to shinny up the slippery stone as he would a tree trunk. For every foot of the water-smoothed stone he climbed, he slid back down the same amount. He yelped in frustration and the beast turned its head, trying to locate the sound. When it found Chaco, it charged.

Alex reached into the water and retrieved a fist-sized rock to throw at the maddened creature. It bounced off its shoulder and thudded into the wall, where it exploded, causing dust and smaller fragments of stone to rain down on them from the ceiling. Alex reached for his gun, then had second thoughts. He couldn’t chance the discharge echo bringing down the entire roof. Instead, he pulled out his longest Ka-Bar blade; the lasersharpened black steel a deadly tusk of his own.

By now Chaco had managed to climb about six feet above the water and was hanging on grimly. The boar tried to climb the base of the stalagmite, its blunt mouth open and showing rows of dog-like canines at the front and flattened yellow crushing molars deeper in. Alex knew what it wanted: wild boars were omnivores and meat made up a large part of their diet.

The sharpened hooves skidded again and again on the slick stone, unable to get purchase. Chaco slipped down a few inches and yelped. The beast opened its mouth wider. Alex needed to act.

The boar heard him running towards it and turned its head, uttering an ear-blasting squeal that would have frozen any normal man. Alex heard Chaco’s wail as he and the beast came together in a thud of flesh and bone that echoed around the small cave. Alex had enormous strength, but he was easily outweighed by the boar, and its thick neck and shoulders gave it immense power. He drove his blade deep into the band of muscle across the beast’s shoulders, but, as the animal tossed its head in pain and surprise, he lost his grip on the knife.

He grabbed the creature by its two, foot-long curved tusks and tried to keep its jaws away from any soft tissue on his body. Its crushing maw was easily capable of pulverising bone or tearing free large chunks of flesh. Though Alex planted his legs and strained with all his energy, the creature’s huge bulk pushed him back again. He skidded a foot as the boar started to gain traction, and remembered something his father used to say when he was a boy: Catching a tiger was easy; deciding what to do with it after that is the hard part.

The blade wasn’t far from his grip, but he would need to release one hand to reach up for it. He knew he was quick enough — then he could aim for a more vital area of the boar.

Just as he was coiling his muscles to act, there was an explosive splash behind him.

‘Cuidado! Allí viene el jabalí!’

Chaco’s high-pitched voice was frantic, but Alex was locked in a death struggle and couldn’t chance looking at the boy to try to work out what he meant. I really hope you’re telling me that my friends have arrived, he thought. The boar dipped its head and lifted it quickly, nearly wrenching itself from Alex’s grasp.

The boy was yelling again. ‘El otro, el otro.’

Alex knew only a little Spanish, and by the time he’d registered the words, the other one, there came a crushing blow to his back that forced all the breath from his body and pushed him into the face of the male boar.

The female razorback had obviously regained consciousness and had come in search of its mate, leaping down into the sinkhole. Now it joined the battle, and Alex found himself sandwiched between two stinking pigs, both determined to rip him to pieces and probably devour the remains.

The female’s massive teeth clamped around his upper arm and started to grind together. Alex yelled as pain burst through his body in a red-hot wave. He had to let go of the male or the flesh would be ripped from the bone of his arm. His body was on fire: his arm burned, and his ribs were agonising bands across his back. But nothing was as intense as the inferno of rage that consumed his brain.

He yelled into the male boar’s face and, with a massive burst of strength, twisted his hand sideways, snapping off its deadly tusk and swinging it up and into its eye. Any thought of sparing the creatures’ lives had evaporated the moment the rage had taken him.

The male screamed in pain and threw its head up and away. It gave Alex enough time to swing his free elbow around and into the side of the female’s snout, stunning it long enough for him to pull his arm free and turn to grab its head. In one motion, he swung the 350-pound beast around and brought its body down on the back of the male. The weight of the female, combined with massive G-forces, flattened the male boar into the water.

Alex leapt at it, pulled his knife from the male’s shoulder, and used the hilt like a club as he punched down with all his strength onto the centre of its skull. The deep crunch bounced off the walls of the cave and the massive animal didn’t pull its head up out of the water again.

Still, Alex continued to rain blows down on the broken skull until the head was a flattened mat of coarse hair, shattered bone and gore. The limestone smell of the cave was replaced by the coppery scent of blood.

The female hobbled over to one side of the underground chamber, its frame bruised and battered after the encounter with Alex.

For Alex, a red haze blurred everything. He turned to the smaller animal, the black blade still in his hand, and felt a mix of triumph and exhilaration at the thought of delivering it the same fortune as its mate. The boar turned and faced the wall, standing quietly — probably not wanting to see the alpha predator that was about to bring its death.

Alex gripped the blade harder. Kill it. Tear it in two! a voice screamed in his head.

He lifted the blade; he would bring it down in the centre of its head. Penetrate the skull and brain in a single powerful blow. No, that was too quick, he wanted the beast to feel pain. He would disembowel it first.

The boar grunted and lowered its blunt snout even further.

Alex took another step closer to the animal. While it lives, it’s a risk. Kill it. Exterminate it, annihilate it… The voice was getting louder. Alex put one hand up to his head and pressed his knuckles into his temple.

The red haze engulfed him. Images flashed through his mind like a movie projector stuck on high speed. Who is that? Hammerson’s Monster. Kill it…now!

Over and over again the voice roared in his head. Alex felt outside of himself, a spectator watching from a back row as squeals and screams bounced around the walls. Fists rose and fell time and again. Like machines, blurring with speed and ferocity. The warm, coppery scent intoxicated him, but then came the more disgusting odours of freshly torn flesh, viscera, and opened bowels.

The squeals stopped but the screams continued. Alex blinked as blood stung his eyes. The screaming was coming from behind him, not from the boar. He looked down: the beast was barely recognisable. Its limbs and flesh were rent, but not by a blade…more as though it had been torn apart.

Alex looked down at his hands: they were soaked in blood. He could see grazes and cuts crisscrossing the skin the gloves didn’t cover.

No witnesses. The boy…finish it.

‘No!’

He screamed the word aloud, feeling a shock wave pass through his body as he rebelled against his subconscious. The chaotic storm of impulses in his mind started to calm and his breathing slowed. He knew he should feel revolted by what he had done. Instead, he felt a sated glow deep inside that troubled him.

Chaco slid down from the stalagmite, but when Alex looked at the boy he flinched and wouldn’t come any closer.

‘I’m okay now,’ Alex said, holding out his hand and motioning the boy nearer.

Instead, Chaco moved to the cave opening and looked upwards, then quickly back at Alex, fear on his ashen face. Then he called out his brother’s name, his voice watery and tremulous.

Alex glanced down and caught sight of his reflection in the still water around his legs. He grimaced at the mask of blood and gore that stared back at him. He kneeled down and washed his face and chest, and rubbed the mess from his gloves. He got to his feet and stood for a few moments, staring into the darkness. What were the military doctors doing to him in his medical sessions? Why was he becoming more like this — enjoying the blood and the death, even revelling in it? He would speak to Hammerson, and to the doctors, Graham and Marshal, when he got back. This time, they would answer him, or else.

‘Sam, are you reading me?’

Alex’s communication was immediately picked up by his second-in-command at the surface.

‘We’re at the edge of the clearing, boss. Been here for a while, wondering how to get you back up to us. Captain Garmadia’s warned us not to get too close to the edge of the hole as it may collapse the entire area on top of you. What’s going on down there? We’ve heard plenty of shouting and squealing. I hope you aren’t anywhere near those giant bacon trucks that went after the boys.’ Sam paused for a moment, then said more quietly, ‘Are you okay in the cave, boss?’

Alex smiled grimly in the dark. Sam was only a few years older than Alex but acted more like a big brother some times. He knew of Alex’s distaste for dark caves following his Antarctic mission beneath the ice; Alex had been one of a few survivors but ended up with deep psychological scars that still woke him up in sweats and violent rages. Aimee Weir had also survived — Alex often wondered what her burden was.

‘Yep, I’m fine, Uncle. The pigs are…gone.’ Alex looked at the mountains of flesh bleeding into the water.

‘Kid okay?’ Sam knew about Alex’s rages too; how, when they took him over, it could be extremely dangerous for anyone close by.

Alex looked at Chaco, who stood silent and still like a small ghost at the rear of the cave. ‘Yeah, he’s fine too. Just reckons it’s time to leave…like me.’

‘How you want to do it?’ Sam asked. ‘As I said, the captain here gets real jittery if we step out into the clearing.’

Alex looked up to the cave ceiling. ‘How much rope have you got? We’re about twenty feet down under a lip of weak limestone — some areas more solid than others. You’ll need to stay well clear — at least forty back.’

‘We’ve only got about forty feet of rope overall. We need to tie it off to one of these tree trunks, or sink a ground anchor, then run it across the open space and drop it down to you — I reckon we need about sixty at least. I could crawl across and try to anchor it a bit closer to the edge, but that’s about it.’

‘No, stay clear; the roof’s already raining down on us in some areas.’

Alex heard Sam check with the CDC scientists for more rope. The reply wasn’t promising. Then he heard Garmadia’s voice speaking Spanish, probably to Saqueo.

‘Hold for five, boss,’ Sam said. ‘Garmadia has an idea.’

While he waited, Alex held his hands up under the column of light pouring into the cave. Where they had been cut and battered moments ago, they were now streaked with pink scars. He grunted to himself and looked at the boy. Chaco was shivering in the dark, his thin arms wrapped around himself.

After another moment, Sam came back online. ‘Seems this jungle is a toolbox as well as a lunchbox for the locals. Saqueo has brought some vines that look like intertwined horsehair, and plenty strong too. Should give us an extra thirty feet. Be on its way down to you in two minutes.’

Alex nodded to Chaco and pointed to the hole in the ceiling. ‘Time to go, son.’

The boy wouldn’t move. Alex swore softly. He recognised shock when he saw it.

‘Was it that bad — was I that bad?’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, kid. I guess I’m not a superhero, after all.’

Sam’s voice: ‘Heads!’

The rope, tied to a fist-sized stone, came hurtling into the pit. Alex shot out a hand and caught the rock before it hit the water.

‘Good work,’ he called back. ‘We’re coming up.’

The climb was harder than he’d anticipated. He had to bind Chaco to his back, as he kept trying to break from Alex’s grip. Now he hung there motionless, but continued to call to his brother. In addition, their combined weight caused a sawing motion on the broken edge of the roof. The rope started to smoke and fray, and pieces of stone rained down on them — some the size of a truck tyre. Alex tried to keep the debris from the boy’s exposed head, batting the stones away, but that meant having to suspend the climb and hang one-armed. As they got closer to the lip, more stones broke away, many striking Alex on the shoulders and face.

He felt the boy wriggling on his back, then the rope he had used to bind him loosened. The boy had freed himself. The fraying rope could not be used a second time, so Alex reached around quickly with his free arm and grabbed Chaco as he started to slide away. He flung him upwards and out through the opening.

As he no longer had to protect the boy, Alex could concentrate on climbing, and the slight loss of weight meant he reached the top of the hole almost immediately after Chaco. He saw the boy was already up and running to his brother, who grabbed and hugged him. The small boy cried and chattered rapidly, and Saqueo frowned and stared over his head at Alex.

Alex wiped his hands on his pants, then slowly bent to retrieve and wind up the rope. Another great day at the office, he thought, as he walked over to a grinning Sam Reid.