Michael Vey 9, page 17
“I wish we were,” Taylor said.
“We were what?” McKenna asked.
“A protected species.”
I glanced over at her. “I’ll protect you.”
She smiled. “I’ll protect you back.”
“Do you know what the most dangerous animals in the Amazon are?” Ostin asked.
“Man,” I said.
“Besides us.”
“No, but I’m guessing you’re going to tell us,” Zeus said.
“There are the obvious predators—the caimans, anacondas, piranha, and jaguars—but the more interesting ones you might not have heard of.”
“Can’t wait to hear,” Nichelle said.
“The Brazilian wandering spider is the world’s most venomous arachnid, which is why part of its scientific name, Phoneutria, means ‘murderess.’ Its bite can lead to paralysis and death.
“Then there’s the bullet ant, which isn’t as much deadly as it just makes you want to die. Its sting is thirty times more painful than your average bee sting, and the pain can last for twenty-four hours. And the thing is, it will sting you over and over until you get the message.
“They call it the bullet ant because soldiers who have experienced being shot by a bullet and being stung say its sting is at least as painful as the bullet.”
“I wish someone would shoot me through the ears with a bullet right now,” Nichelle said.
“The entomologist Justin O. Schmidt created a stinging pain index, and the bullet ant was ranked at the top. He described the pain as pure, intense, and brilliant—like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail in your heel.”
“That certainly is descriptive,” Ian said.
“But, ounce for ounce, the most dangerous animal is one you’d never suspect. It’s the tiny poison dart frog. It’s barely the size of a human thumb, but it carries enough toxin to kill ten adult men.”
“Then I’m glad I’m not an adult man,” Nichelle said.
“That’s not what I—”
“I know,” Nichelle said. “I know.”
I was really feeling my fatigue. If it hadn’t been for the Amacarra’s power water, I likely would have already collapsed. We were about a half mile from where we had left Tara and the tribe, when Ian suddenly stopped. He had a frightened look on his face. He walked around in a circle saying, “It can’t be.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“The Chasqui are everywhere. They’re armed to kill, and they have portable RESATs.”
“Where do we go?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We’re surrounded. They’ve completely encircled us. It’s like they know exactly where we are.”
“How far out are they?”
“About a quarter mile. They must have known where we were going.”
“Or they’ve been tracking us,” I said. “Like they did before.”
“How?” Taylor asked. “We got rid of our disks.”
I thought a moment, then said, “Jack. Check your clothing.”
Jack reached into his pockets, then patted himself down. “Nothing.”
“Show me your arm,” Ian said.
Jack pulled up his sleeve and put out his arm.
“Both arms.”
He held them both out.
“Right there,” Ian said, pointing to Jack’s left arm. “That lump is an RFID. It’s like Hatch used on his Glows, but smaller. Amash was guaranteeing you couldn’t escape.”
Jack looked panicked. “I just thought it was a hematoma, you know? Just another lump after they beat me.”
“That’s why they weren’t chasing us,” I said. “They were letting us run into their trap.”
“These guys are smarter than the Elgen,” Ostin said.
“That’s not encouraging,” I said.
“Cut it out of me,” Jack said.
Ian said, “It’s too late for that.”
“No, it’s not,” Jack said. “This ain’t over.”
“Jack’s right,” I said. “If we somehow escape, they’ll still just track us with it.”
“Cut it out,” Jack said again.
I took the Chasqui knife from my belt. “I’ll do it.”
“It’s subcutaneous,” Ostin said. “It’s just under the skin. You don’t need to go deep.”
I set the point of the blade against his arm, hesitated, then pulled it back. “I’m too shaky for this.”
“I can do it,” Nichelle said. “I have a lot of experience doing this.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I handed her my knife.
“We’ll need to sterilize the blade,” she said. “Anyone have something?”
“I have heat,” McKenna said.
“That will work.”
McKenna grabbed the end of the blade and heated it up. “That will do. Let the blade cool.”
“I got a little water left,” Cristiano said.
“You’ve been holding out,” Nichelle said.
“Yes.” He poured some over the blade.
“All right,” Nichelle said, waving the blade in the air to cool it off. She looked up into Jack’s face. “I wish Abi were here.”
“Me too,” Jack said.
Nichelle took a deep breath. “Ready?”
“Just do it.”
She inserted the blade about an eighth of an inch into his arm and made a straight quarter-inch incision. Jack clenched his jaw as blood streamed down his arm.
“You can push it out,” Ostin said. “Squeeze it. Like a zit.”
Jack pinched the skin on his forearm, and a dime-sized metal disk popped out. It was covered in blood. “That’s the traitor.”
He was about to throw it, when I stopped him. “Wait, let’s do what we did back at the zoo.”
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“You mean put them on the monkeys again?” Ian said. “Because that didn’t work so well last time.”
“That’s because the monkeys wouldn’t leave the zoo,” I said. “We’ll use a wild bird this time.”
“There are macaws in that tree over there,” Taylor said.
I looked over. About fifty feet from us, there was a colorful flock of birds in a tree. “Taylor, can you reboot them?”
“I’ll try. They’re pretty far away.”
“I can help,” Nichelle said.
“You’ll have to catch the bird before it hits the ground,” McKenna said. “So it doesn’t break a wing or something.”
They walked closer to the tree. “Here we go,” Taylor said.
Her rebooting worked better than she’d thought it would, as all of the birds and a sloth fell from the tree. Ostin and Nichelle did their best to catch the birds but only caught four of them. McKenna caught the sloth. The two birds that hit the ground got up onto their feet, then flew back up into the tree.
“I wish I could keep you,” McKenna said, setting the sloth on the ground.
“We only need one bird,” Nichelle said, letting one of the birds go. It flew back up into the tree. Ostin still hung on to his two birds.
“Wait,” Taylor said. “If Jack has a tracking device, maybe Tara and I do too.”
“Do you remember them giving you a shot?” I asked.
“No. But neither does Jack. They had the RESAT so high, I was unconscious much of the time.”
“Let me see your arm,” I said.
Taylor held out her arms. I ran my fingers up them. There was nothing.
“They’re not necessarily in her arms,” Ian said. He looked her over. “Do you feel anything foreign on your body?”
“There’s something on my hip.” She pulled her pants down on one side, exposing a small lump.
“There it is,” Ian said. “You have one.”
Taylor winced. “I thought it was a bug bite. Hurry, cut it out.”
“Nichelle?” I said.
Nichelle came over, wiping Jack’s blood off the blade on the inside of her shirt. “McKenna?”
Nichelle held on to the knife as McKenna heated the blade again. Then Nichelle crouched down next to Taylor. “I’m sorry.”
Taylor gritted her teeth. I took her hand.
“This is going to hurt,” Nichelle said. She poked the blade into Taylor’s hip. Taylor squeezed my hand so tight, I thought she might break my fingers.
“Done.”
“Will you take it out?” Taylor asked.
Nichelle pinched the skin around her hip. The disk, along with blood and tissue, came out. “Got it.” Nichelle held the disk up in the palm of her hand.
McKenna came over and hugged Taylor. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m okay,” she said.
The blood kept streaming down her hip, soaking up in her underwear.
“We don’t have any gauze, do we?” I asked. “Or a clean cloth?”
Cristiano looked inside the pack. “Nothing.”
“Do you want McKenna to cauterize it?” Ostin asked.
“You can do it,” Taylor said to me.
I put a single finger over the incision and slowly brought up my electricity. I could smell the blood burning. I took my finger away. The wound was yellow with red edges. The bleeding had stopped.
“What about you, Jack?”
His arm was covered with blood. “Go ahead.” I put two fingers over his wound and pulsed. This time I could hear the blood sizzling. He jumped back from the jolt, then looked down at his arm. “That worked.”
“Guys, we’ve really got to hurry,” Ian said. “They’re getting close.”
Ostin was holding the macaws by their talons, like a farmer would carry a chicken. He handed one to me, then one to Taylor.
“Don’t let them bite you,” he said. “They can crack open nuts with that beak.”
“I’m rebooting them again,” Taylor said.
“How are we going to attach the disks?” Cristiano asked. “We do not have any tape or glue.”
“Tree sap,” Ostin said. “Give me your knife.” He looked around for a moment, then said, “Perfect.” He walked over to a tall mushroom-shaped tree. “The sangre de drago tree. Its latex sap is legendary. The natives use it as a liquid bandage.” He stuck his knife into its trunk and cut off a swath of bark. The sap beneath was red, like blood.
“It’s a very strong adhesive.” He scooped out a glob of latex and brought it back to us. “We’ll do Taylor’s bird first.” Ostin scooped a quarter-sized gob of the sap and put it onto the scarlet feathers between the wings in the middle of the bird’s back. Jack handed Ostin the RFID, and Ostin pressed the disk into the goop.
“Now let it go,” Ostin said to Taylor.
Taylor tossed the bird up into the air. It let out a loud screech, stretched out its wings, and flew back to the top of the tree with the other macaws.
“Now your bird, Michael,” Ostin said. He did the same with the tree sap. Nichelle brought the disk over and pressed it into the sap.
“Fly away, little decoy,” she said, throwing the bird up into the air. The bird likewise flew up to the flock.
“They’re just sitting there,” Nichelle said. “Like those stupid monkeys.”
I threw a lightning ball up near the branch. The flock flew off.
“People, we’ve really got to go,” Ian said.
“We need a place to hide,” I said. “If they’re chasing the disks, they’ll walk right past us.”
“Over there,” Ian said. About a hundred feet from us was a massive lupuna tree. Its trunk was more than twenty feet in diameter, and its roots were more than eight feet high, providing an almost cave-like space to hide.
“That will do,” I said. The cavity in the tree was nearly fifteen feet wide and spread out from the opening, so we could hide around the sides of the roots without risk of being seen.
About five minutes later Ian said, “Here they come.”
We could hear the scuffling of boots through the forest’s dense foliage as the line of Chasqui advanced. They were moving at a brisk pace when their advance abruptly stopped. The sound of their boots was replaced by shouting.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Ian said, “They’ve closed the ring. They just met up with the soldiers coming in from the other sides. I don’t know what he’s saying, but one of the captains is shouting and pointing at the other two soldiers. Man, he is, like, red in the face. Now he’s pushing one of them.”
“He is blaming the other soldiers for letting us slip by them,” Cristiano said. “The other soldiers are defending themselves. They say no one went by them and something must be wrong with the trackers.”
The Chasqui’s shouting continued.
“Now what’s going on?” I asked Cristiano.
“The most important Chasqui boss commanded one of the groups to go back and find us. He said that his soldiers and the other group will go after the other one.”
“What does that mean?” Nichelle asked. “The other one?”
“What other one?” I asked.
Taylor said, “It’s Tara. If we had trackers, she will too. She’ll lead them to the Amacarra’s village. The Chasqui will find her, then slaughter the tribe. We need to warn them.”
Taylor was starting to leave the tree when I grabbed her.
“Not yet,” I said.
“They’re going to get Tara and the Amacarra.”
“And we’re outnumbered and outgunned. They’ll kill us first, then slaughter the tribe, along with Tara. We need to let them divide up. Then we’ll go after them.”
32 Not What They Expected
The soldiers divided into three groups. Two of the groups went off in different directions; the third, with the commander, just stayed in place.
“What are they doing?” I asked Ian.
“I have no idea.”
Ostin said, “They might be planning to flank the tribe, so they’re giving the other team time to get ahead.”
About five minutes later the commander called his men to attention. Then they started off southwest toward the Amacarra camp.
“I think you were right,” I said to Ostin. “Ian, can you see the other group?”
“They’re too far,” he said.
When the main group was out of sight to all of us except Ian, we came out of our hiding place and went out after them. We had hiked for about a half hour when, in the distance, we heard gunfire.
“The second group must have found the Amacarra,” I said. “What do you see?”
“Our group is engaged now. They’ve started shooting too. It’s too dangerous to go in after them.”
We veered south to the side of the troops to see what was happening. The gunfire became more intense, and there were hundreds of rounds fired, including automatic weapons and machine guns. I felt sick inside. The Amacarra with their blow darts were no match for the Chasqui firepower. The idea that the Amacarra—an indigenous people who had been here for centuries—were going to be completely wiped off the face of the earth made my stomach sick.
We could only hope that the Chasqui would capture Tara instead of killing her. Then, at least, we’d have a chance to try to save her.
As we climbed the hill that overlooked the Amacarra village, the gunfire stopped. Tears welled up in my eyes. I figured we were too late. But when I came up over the pinnacle, I couldn’t believe what I saw.
33 An Unlikely Victory
I hadn’t seen the Amacarra village from this vantage point since the first time the tribe had brought me there. The thatch huts were still mostly standing, though several had holes blown into them, and straw and mud plaster littered the ground like a tornado had passed through. Two of the huts were on fire, and dark plumes of smoke climbed up through the jungle canopy. The astringent smell of gunfire still filled the air, along with the white lingering smoke of shells.
There were bodies scattered all over the ground. But they weren’t Amacarra. They were Chasqui. The bodies, on both sides of the camp, were uniformed Chasqui soldiers lying in pools of their own blood. It was an unmitigated massacre. They had killed themselves.
“That makes no sense,” Ian said. “It looks like they shot each other.”
“Their argument was getting pretty heated back there,” Jack said. “They clearly hated each other.”
“Not so much to turn on each other,” I said.
There was still the sound of crying and groaning, evidence that a few of the soldiers on the ground were alive. One of them was able to get to his feet, but he fell again within a few seconds. A few stopped moving.
“It looks like Gettysburg,” Ostin said.
“I didn’t know you were there,” Nichelle said.
“I’m talking about how historians described it.”
Then, from the shadow of the trees, the Amacarra tribesmen stepped forth with spears or clubs in hand. They quickly finished off what was left of the living Chasqui. Entering the clearing next to the chief was Tara. She was leaning against a pole, but she was on her feet.
“It’s Tara,” Taylor said. “She’s walking.”
“Oh, I see what happened,” Ostin said. “Very clever.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Ostin turned to me. “Tara made the Chasqui look like the Amacarra to each other. They thought they were fighting their enemy, but they were only fighting themselves.”
“Brilliant,” I said. “I’m going down.”
“Just don’t spook them,” Ostin said. “They still have those blow darts.”
We all walked out of the jungle into the clearing. The chief saw us first. “Michael Vey!”
“Tara!” Taylor shouted. She ran to her, and the sisters embraced.
The chief said, “Did you witness this amazing miracle?”
“Just now,” I said. “It was Tara?”
“Yes. Her special power. She made them look to each other as they truly are, the enemy.” He looked at Jack. “You have someone new with you. You saved your friend?”
“Yes. We saved him.”
“I am very happy for you. This is a day for us to always remember, to share stories for our children’s children’s children. The day of the great miracle, when the magic of the Tara, the lyang gwang, prevailed against the demons. We will have a great feast this night to celebrate.”
“We would like to sleep first,” I said. “We are exhausted.”
