Exceptions to Reality (10 page)

When even the rugged, determined vehicle could advance no farther, Schneemann parked it on a rocky beach and broke out the packs. Covey struggled awkwardly with the shoulder straps and waist belt. Giant electric blue Ulysses and emerald-green Cairns Birdwing butterflies fluttered through the trees and over the stream. Each time one traversed a shaft of sunlight, a flash of unbelievable color exploded against his retinas. An effervescent column of soldier ants the color of key lime pie marched across the buttressing root of a nearby white cedar. A splotch of flaming orange skimmed the glassy surface of the stream, marking the quicksilver passage of a marauding kingfisher.

Covey could not remember when heavy sweat had coated his body. It mixed with the obligatory insect repellent to form a thin, stinking paste that clung to his hot, damp skin, smothering the pores. The German chose a direction seemingly at random and struck off, leaving the huffing, heavily perspiring Covey to follow as best he could.

The crowns of Alexandra palms burst overhead like frozen green fireworks, blotting out the sky. His hiking shoes kicked up leaf litter and mold, sending tiny black shapes with too many legs scrambling in search of fresh cover.

Schneemann paused by a patch of sunlight, his machete singling out a small, innocuous-looking plant with six-inch-wide, slightly pebbled leaves.

“Here is worst thing in the forest, my friend. Stinging tree. Those serrated leaves, they covered with glass spines. Glass! Each one is like a little hypodermic,
verstehen
? All full of a powerful alkaloid poison. Once they get in your skin, they stay there because they silicate composition, not wood. Each time you rub, or splash on cold water, or walk into an air-conditioned room, they release a little bit more poison. The pain can last six months to two years.

“I hear of one guy got a bunch all in his face. He went mad and killed himself.”

The warning was wasted on Covey, who had resolved immediately upon leaving the Land Cruiser to avoid physical contact with everything in the forest, be it dead or alive.

It rained all that afternoon and through the night, a heavy warm vertical deluge that their tent shed with admirable efficiency. Sitting in a steady downpour while simultaneously perspiring heavily was an experience Covey would gladly have done without. It inspired nothing but colorful language.

They crossed two more ridges, scrambling up slick rock and mud only to stumble and slide down the far side. Covey didn’t dare grab a tree or branch for support for fear it would bite back.

This constant drizzle was only a prelude to what Schneemann referred to as the Big Wet, the real rainy season. That could begin any day now, he declared jovially. His announcement failed to inspire Covey to greater effort.

When he lost his footing for the hundredth time and slid twenty feet downhill on the waterlogged, torn, butt-end of his pants, he finally cast aside the unnatural enforced stoicism under which he had been laboring for days. By the time the German reached him, Covey had removed his pack and slung it to the ground.

“Fuck this, Boris! I thought you knew where the hell you were going. I thought you knew what you were doing. You’ve been leading me around in circles like a prize porker so you can scam as much per diem out of my hide as you think you can get away with! I’ve got fungus growing between my toes, an itch in my crotch that won’t go away, my clothes are starting to stink on my back, and I think all the goddamn rain’s starting to affect my hearing.” Bending over and breathing hard, he rested his mud-caked hands on his knees while he stared up at the impassive German.

“I’ve had it with this,
mein führer
. You understand? You ‘versteht’ or whatever the hell it is you do?”

Schneemann seemed not to hear. His thick black brows resembled mating caterpillars as he intently scanned the opposite hillside. Finally he shrugged. “We got enough supplies to go another week.”

Covey inhaled deeply, straightened. “Fuck that. And fuck this country, too. It is my fervent hope that they log it to the ground.” Turning to his left, he spat out an earthy mixture of soil, rainwater, and saliva. Angrily snatching his pack from the mud, he started forward.

A dark, hirsute mountain, the German blocked his path, smiling down at him.

“What the hell are you grinning at?” Covey snapped.

The guide held out an astonishingly clean hand. “You forget our contract, my friend. One-third when we start, another when we turn back, the last when I set you down, all nice and refreshed again, in your fancy hotel in Port Douglas.”

Covey gaped at him, blinking painful drizzle from his eyes. “You want money
now
? Here?”

Schneemann twitched slightly. “It is the contract, yes?”

“Shit,” Covey mumbled. He dragged out his shrinking packet of traveler’s checks and signed several over. Schneemann fanned them like a poker hand and frowned.

“I know you are a writer, Michael Covey, and not an accountant. This is a little short. One hundred US dollars short.”

Covey took a step backward. “That was going to be your bonus if we found the women. We didn’t find them.”

“I say I take you to where they live.” He made a sweeping gesture with his free hand. “This is where they live.”

Covey pursed his lower lip. “I don’t see no women—mate.”

The German’s expression darkened. “Don’t joke with me,
herr
writer. Especially about money, don’t joke with me.”

“Believe me, humor’s the last thing on my mind. You’ve spent a week dragging me through God’s own puke-green shithouse and you’ve enjoyed every minute of it.” He smiled nastily. “Now it’s my turn to enjoy something.”

Schneemann took a step forward, halted. “I could make you sign another check,
ya
. But maybe you bring charges. All writers are crazy like that. So have it your way, my friend. Maybe I see you again in Port Douglas. Maybe not.”

Without another word he whirled and started off, ascending without effort the slope they had only recently clambered down.

Covey yelled imprecations in his wake. “Yeah, that’s right, go on and leave me here, jerkoff! I can find my own way back, you Teutonic asshole! You think I can’t? You think I can’t? Just watch me, man!”

Schneemann did not reply. In a very few minutes the forest had swallowed him up.

It began to rain harder.

Screw him, Covey thought furiously. It was more downhill than up all the way back. Just keep heading east and eventually he would hit the road and then the ocean. He had a week’s worth of supplies in his pack and he wasn’t sorry to see the departure of the sauna-like tent. What the hell, he was soaked through anyway. His light sleeping bag would do him. And he was ahead a hundred bucks, maybe more.

As for inspiration, he couldn’t wait to get home and write down an account of his crazy experiences. His agent would be intrigued. A horror novel would be an interesting departure for his client. He could call it
A Stroll Through the Green Hell
—or had that already been used?

He had learned that when the sun went down behind the rain it got dark fast in the rain forest. Selecting a spot between the meandering roots of a massive tree, he tore down some broad pandanus leaves and improvised a roof. Highly satisfied in his righteous anger, he settled down to await the arrival of the dawn.

It took him two days to admit that he was lost. He was reasonably certain he was still traveling east, but it might have been northwest, or southwest. Or maybe not. The permanent, oppressive cloud cover and constant rain made it difficult to guess direction. Everything looked the same: every tree, every slope, every mocking, crystal-clear rivulet and stream. Sometimes he would find himself confronting a sheer drop-off or impenetrable vegetation and have to backtrack. There were no landmarks; only rocks, mud, and claustrophobic verdure.

So far he had managed to avoid the stinging trees, but between the inevitable slips and falls and the occasional inimical thorn bush he was pretty well torn up. In the dank confines of the forest, several of the cuts were already beginning to fester. There was a warm wet soreness under his heels where several blisters had popped. Yesterday he’d found a leech on his right ankle and in a paroxysm of disgust had unthinkingly and unwisely pulled it off. Despite his best efforts, the bite continued to bleed.

His hat was gone and so was much of his food. Several times exhaustion and desperation had overcome his pride and he had shouted out the guide’s name. If Schneemann was secretly dogging his footsteps, waiting for his client to admit defeat, the German was taking his time about it. Surely the guide wouldn’t simply abandon an outsider to fend for himself in dangerous country like this? No reasonable professional would do such a thing.

But a crazy man might.

There was a slight break in the trees ahead, barely visible through the rain. Covey angled toward it, hoping to find a stream that flowed east toward the sea. Perspiration blended with rainwater stung his eyes. His damp breathing came in long, labored wheezes now.

Someone jabbed a white-hot fishhook into his right forearm.

He howled and looked down at himself. Two narrow lengths of vine lay snugged against his bare, wet flesh. When he tried to pull away, they clung to him like green steel. Forcing himself to stand absolutely motionless, he contemplated the growth that had trapped him.

It wasn’t a stinging tree, thank God. Inspecting his arm, he made out two parallel sets of backward-curving thorns running along the underside of each vine. These natural hooks were deeply embedded in his skin. Little bubbles of blood rose from the spot where each thorn had penetrated. They continued to swell until rain washed them away.

To his horror the vines seemed to contract around his arm even as he was studying the phenomenon.

“Don’t move.”

The voice startled him and he jerked involuntarily, sending fresh agony ripping through his flesh. Trembling slightly from the pain, he forced himself to stand motionless.

She glistened in the rain, naked and supple as a cream-colored seal. Her auburn hair was neatly combed and unmatted, though the rain made it stick to her exposed skin. She had deep, dark eyes and a slim, though mature, body. Her mouth was small and moist, and her leonine muscularity reminded him of slow-motion film he had seen of professional marathon runners.

Transfixed by both pain and surprise, he stared as she gently disengaged first one vine, then the other, from the meat of his upper arm. She offered him a half smile.

“Wait-a-while.” Gripping it carefully by the edges, she held up one vine for closer inspection. He flinched away. “See? The thorns are barbed. Once you’re hooked, the only way to free yourself is by backing up slowly. Move in any other direction and the barbs only dig in deeper.” Her smile widened. “It’s also called lawyer’s cane.”

A shaken Covey sat down and felt gingerly of his injured arm.

She eyed him with palpable curiosity. “What are you doing out here?”

He tried not to stare at the raindrops slithering down through her breasts and crotch. “I was looking for you.”

Her smile vanished and she peered around anxiously. “Why?”

He managed a filthy grin of his own. “I’m a writer. I was looking for inspiration for a new book.” When he lifted his arm, pain lanced through him and he winced. “I think I should’ve stuck to rewriting my old ones. My name’s Covey. Mike Covey.”

She was watching him closely. “No one told you my name, then?” He shook his head, momentarily too tired and too full of self-pity to care about much of anything else. “I’m Annabelle.” She looked to her right. “That’s my daughter, Leea. Leea, come say hello.”

The girl was a slightly taller version of her mother, only blue-eyed and with hair that verged on the color of night. When her mother called to her, she was sitting in a nearby tree, her legs dangling from a thick lower branch. As an exhausted Covey looked on, she lowered herself to the ground with an effortless grace and agility that was breathtaking.

Had she been there all along? he wondered. Would she have watched in silence as he’d torn his arm to pieces trying to free himself? She slowed as she approached, while the mother regarded him with a strange mixture of curiosity and sadness.

“Where’s your home?” he asked. “Do you have a lean-to or a cabin out here, or something?”

“We build shelters when and where we need them. We move around a lot. Is this how you find your inspiration, by asking questions?”

“I can’t say, not having found any yet.”

Shading her eyes, she tilted her head back. “Soon the afternoon rain will begin. The Big Wet is coming. If you don’t get out of the forest before it starts, you’ll be stuck in here till March.”

As he sat and watched, the two women quickly and without a single tool cobbled together a passable shelter out of the forest material at hand. When Annabelle directed him to crawl inside, he did not object. He was too worn out to object to anything. Then they left.

Just as he had decided they didn’t intend to come back and he would never see either of them again, they returned bearing armfuls of fruit. There were also large, white, fat insect grubs the taste of which, despite his hunger, he felt obliged to decline. Using fingernails and teeth, they peeled the various fruits as deftly as any monkey.

Later, with his belly full and feeling considerably better, he lay back against the gray rock that formed the rear of the shelter and gazed out at the monotonous scree of falling rain. As always there was no need for a fire. To make conversation he asked the woman about the rain forest. She had an answer or explanation for everything. Sensibly he did not try to inquire about her past or how she came to be in her present situation.

“I need to find certain plants to treat your wounds,” she told him the next morning, “or you’re going to develop some severe infections. A couple have already started to ulcerate.” Crawling to the shelter’s opening, she glanced back in at him. “Don’t try to go anywhere.”

“Fat chance of that,” he murmured.