“Are you okay, Dr. O’Brien?”
Lauren didn’t hear the nurse. Her mind was too full of a horrifying realization: Jessie had the plague.
11:48 A.M.
AMAZON JUNGLE
Kelly followed the line of the others, bone tired but determined to keep moving. They had been walking all night with frequent rest breaks. After the attack, they had marched for a solid two hours, then made a temporary camp at dawn while the Rangers contacted the field base in Wauwai. They had decided to push on until at least midday, when they would use the satellite link to contact the States. Afterward, the team would rest the remainder of the day, regroup, and decide how to proceed.
Kelly glanced at her watch. Noon approached. Thank God. Already she heard Waxman grumbling about choosing a site for the day’s camp. “Well away from any waterways,” she heard him warn.
All day long, the team had been wary of streams and pools, skirting them or crossing in a mad rush. But there were no further attacks.
Manny had offered a reason. “Perhaps the creatures were local to just that small territory. Maybe that’s why the buggers were never seen before.”
“If so, good riddance,” Frank had voiced sourly.
They had trudged onward, the morning drizzle drying slowly to a thick humid mist. The moisture weighed everything down: clothes, packs, boots. But no one complained about the march. All were glad to put distance between them and the horror of the previous night.
From up ahead, a Ranger scout called back. “A clearing!” It was Corporal Warczak. As the unit’s tracker, his scouting served double duty. He was also watching for any physical evidence of Gerald Clark’s passage. “The spot looks perfect for a campsite!”
Kelly sighed. “About time.”
“Check it out!” Waxman said. “Make sure there are no close streams.”
“Yes, sir! Kostos is already reconnoitering the area.”
Nate, just a couple steps ahead of her, called forward, “Be careful! There could be—”
A pained shout rose from ahead.
Everyone froze, except Nate who rushed forward. “Damn it, doesn’t anyone listen to what I tell them?” he muttered as he ran. He glanced back to Kelly and Kouwe and waved an arm. “We’ll need your help! Both of you.”
Kelly moved to follow. “What is it?” she asked Kouwe. The Indian professor was already slinging his pack forward and working the straps loose. “Supay chacra, I’d imagine. The devil’s garden. C’mon.”
Devil’s garden? Kelly did not like the sound of that.
Captain Waxman ordered the bulk of his Rangers to remain with the other civilians. He and Frank joined in following Nate.
Kelly hurried forward and saw a pair of Rangers on the ground ahead. They seemed to be fighting, one rolling in the dirt, the other striking him with the flat of his hand.
Nate ran toward them.
“Get these goddamn shits off me!” the Ranger on the ground yelled, rolling through the underbrush. It was Sergeant Kostos.
“I’m trying,” Corporal Warczak replied, continuing to slap at the man.
Nate knocked the corporal aside. “Stop! You’re only making them angrier.” Then to the soldier on the ground, he ordered, “Sergeant Kostos, lie still!”
“They’re stinging me all over!”
Kelly was now close enough to see that the man was covered with large black ants, each about an inch long. There had to be thousands of them.
“Quit moving and they’ll leave you alone.”
Kostos glanced to Nate, eyes burning and angry, but he did as told. He stopped thrashing in the brush and lay panting.
Kelly noticed the blistered welts all over his arms and face. It looked as if he had been attacked with a burning cigarette butt.
“What happened?” Captain Waxman asked.
Nate held everyone away from Kostos. “Stand back.”
Kostos trembled where he lay. Kelly saw the tears of pain at the corners of the man’s eyes. He must be in agony. But Nate’s advice proved sound. As he lay, unmoving, the ants stopped biting and crawled from his arms and legs, disappearing into the leafy brush.
“Where are they going?” Kelly asked.
“Back home,” Kouwe said. “They were the colony’s soldiers.” He pointed past a few trees. A few yards ahead a jungle clearing opened, so empty and bare it looked as if someone had taken a broom and hedge clippers to the area. In the center stood a massive tree, its branches spread through the space, a solitary giant.
“It’s an ant tree,” the professor continued to explain. “The ant colony lives inside it.”
“Inside it?”
Kouwe nodded. “It’s just one of the many ways rain forest plants have adapted to animals or insects. The tree has evolved with special hollow branches and tubules that serve the ants, even feeding the colony with a special sugary sap. The tree in turn is serviced by the ants. Not only does the colony’s debris help fertilize the tree, but they’re active in protecting it, too—from other insects, from birds and animals.” Kouwe nodded to the clearing. “The ants destroy anything that grows near the tree, trimming away stranglers or climbers from the branches themselves. It’s why such spots in the jungle are called supay chacra, or a devil’s garden.”
“What a strange relationship.”
“Indeed. But the relationship is mutually beneficial to both species—tree and insect. In fact, one cannot live without the other.”
Kelly stared toward the clearing, amazed at how intertwined life was out here. A few days back, Nate had shown her an orchid whose flower was shaped like the reproductive parts of a certain species of wasp. “In order to lure the insect over to pollinate it.” Then there were others that traded sugary nectars to lure different pollinators. And such relationships weren’t limited to insect and plant. The fruit of certain trees had to be consumed by a specific bird or animal and pass through its digestive tract before it could root and grow. So much strangeness, all life dependent and twined with its neighbors in a complex evolutionary web.
Nate knelt beside the sergeant, drawing back her attention. By now, the ants had vacated the soldier’s body. “How many times have I warned you to watch what you lean against?”
“I didn’t see them,” Kostos said, his voice pained and belligerent. “And I needed to take a leak.”
Kelly saw the man’s zipper was indeed down.
Nate shook his head. “Against an ant tree?”