Insects: A Novel (24 page)

“Five, four, three, two, one,” Duncan counted quietly, and then leaning over the side of the truck, gently emptied a cup. Then he tossed a splinter, and a wall of flames erupted just in front of the insect’s raft, which disintegrated as it hit the fire.

Almost immediately, bugs started raining down, most of them hitting the water, but some of them landing on the hood and cab roof. Cross and Duncan brushed off the ones on the roof but could do nothing about those on the hood. Within moments, they scurried into the cab, which Johnson abandoned quickly, retreating to the bed. While he worked the light, he managed to set it in a position that kept most of the light aimed at the forest and not straight down into the water. Even so, it illuminated about half the area than it had when Azevedo controlled the lamp.

Once again, the bugs were taking over the cab, and once again Duncan tossed gasoline inside and lit it. With bugs in front of them and threatening them from the side, and running out of gasoline, Duncan looked at Boyd and shook his head.

“This isn’t gonna work,” he said matter-of-factly. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“What about the professor?”

“I’m thinking about us. We’re gonna die if we stay here.”

“What are we gonna do then?”

“Steer the truck off the road and into the current. Maybe it’s deep enough that we’ll be carried along. I don’t know what else to do. We could all go into the water, but when we run out of light, we’ll be blind. We won’t even know where the bugs are.”

“I don’t know if I can reach the pedals the way the fire is eating up the interior.”

“Then I’ll do it. There’s no time to waste.”

Duncan took a step toward the driver’s side of the bed, but Boyd deftly swung himself into the cab, put the truck in gear and muscled the steering wheel enough that the wheels started a modest turn. He hoped to keep it from tipping on one side or the other.

“Brace yourselves,” Duncan shouted. “Grab onto to something and hold on. If we get dumped into the water, stay where you are and duck under. The bugs can’t swim.”

“Neither can I,” Hamel said, nervously.

“You won’t have to. It’s not that deep.”

The truck got halfway down the side of the road before it started to tip to one side. It didn’t help that the water was pushing hard against it. Clouds of steam burst from under the hood as the truck descended into the soft muck, the passenger side wheels rising out of the water. Without so much as an “Oh, my God,” the truck went over on the driver’s side, sliding several yards before coming to a stop in deeper water that covered half the vehicle. The engine sputtered into silence. The lights were still on but dimmed significantly when the engine quit.

Using a flashlight, Duncan counted heads. Boyd climbed out of the cab for the last time and made his way to Duncan. Because the truck tipped so slowly, everyone got off safely, but gear they weren’t carrying in their clothing was scattered and floating away, and the gas can had disappeared though the air reeked of gasoline vapors.

They had lost the high ground and no longer had any way to see the bugs from a distance. Since the truck had come to a stop with its front end pointing away from the current, he moved to the front where the others joined him. Exhausted and soaking wet, no one talked as they huddled together like penguins. Whether because they could no longer see the oncoming insects or felt protected by the truck, an unexpected calm settled over the group. Duncan used his flashlight to illuminate the passing current, which continued to carry insect rafts and parts of them downstream.

Then the screaming started. It came from the other side of the road. Suarez immediately tried to bolt, but Duncan stopped him.

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“The professor needs our help.”

“It’s too late. He wouldn’t want you to help now.”

“I can end his misery. I watched poor Javier die this way. I cannot do it again.”

“You can be killed too, you know that?”

“Besides, we need you, too,” Boyd said. “You’re our guide; you’re the only one who can get us out of this place.”

Suarez took a deep breath and was about to break free when Duncan pointed his flashlight at a raft of insects passing less than fifteen feet away, the air above it teeming with jumpers.

“You think you can survive that after what you’ve seen?” Duncan demanded.

Suarez shrugged, and Duncan let go. The guide watched the insects until Duncan doused his light. They were enveloped in near total darkness, able to make out forms but not details. But the screams got worse as each began to imagine what was happening to Azevedo. And then, perhaps five minutes after they had started, the screams diminished and then stopped. There was one more outburst, and then only the sound of the interminable current. Duncan made a mental note of the time. One twenty-six a.m.

79

It was one-forty
the next time Duncan looked at his watch. For about fifteen minutes, things had settled down enough that Peeples started to complain of feeling cold. Standing was itself a challenge in the debris-filled water. Unknown objects assaulted their legs as they steadied themselves against the current. Every several minutes, someone switched on a flashlight or headlamp to see what was around them. Sometimes they saw insects, and sometimes they didn’t. Hamel wondered optimistically whether most of them had passed them by, but there was no way of knowing without better light. The flashlights penetrated the darkness no more than fifty feet, some of them much less. Always, they were looking for signs of insects.

As time passed, their fear began to subside as they caught glimpses of bug rafts moving away from them downstream. These were smaller than the ones that had collided with the truck but, without weapons to defend themselves, the size of the raft didn’t matter. The gas cans had washed away. Most of their equipment had disappeared underwater, and all they had was what they were wearing or carrying. They had nothing they could use to bat the insects away. Even so, they were breathing easier, and some felt the worst had passed and that when dawn came they would be able to settle on their next move. Some rested on the truck’s front bumper and tried to steal some sleep. A couple of others leaned against the hood, including Boyd, who stretched his torso across the rusty hood in a fitful effort to find a position that would help him rest, if not sleep. Eventually, he gave up and simply leaned against the truck.

Hamel and Cross had started a conversation about the water level and whether it was starting to decline. Hamel maintained that it was while Cross said she couldn’t tell. They asked Duncan what he thought.

“I can’t tell. If it is, it’s not much. But I don’t think it’s getting any higher.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Hamel asked.

“I suppose,” Duncan said absently. His energy had run down, and he found himself stifling yawns and bracing himself against the truck to steady himself. Even though they were exhausted and uncomfortable, listening to Hamel and Cross talk quietly about normal things suggested that the worst was behind them.

“I just wish I hadn’t lost the camera,” Hamel said.

“Me, too,” Boyd agreed. “‘Course, I wish I was in a comfy bed somewhere, anywhere.”

“I’ll tell you what I wish,” Rankin said, “I wish I had a bottle of booze.”

“Well, as long as we’re wishing,” said Johnson, “I wish we’d find a boat that will take us out of here.”

“I wish we had some food,” Peeples added.

“I wish Professor Azevedo was alive,” Suarez said solemnly.

Silence came over the group as the guide had punctured the delicate bubble of growing optimism. Chagrined by the guide’s heartfelt reminder, they started looking inward, or at least quietly savored what some saw as a downhill glide back to civilization. That was until Johnson aimed his light on the endless flood and what looked like a log floating nearby that turned out to have a tail propelling it.

“My God,” Hamel said, “is that an alligator? Now we got alligators to deal with? What the fuck!”

“It’s a caiman,” Suarez said. “We don’t have alligators in Brazil, just caiman.”

“Aren’t they worse?” Hamel asked.

Suarez took his machete out of its sheath as he watched the creature glide darkly in the water.

“Why is he doing that?” Hamel asked anxiously.

“Just in case,” Duncan said.

“In case of what?”

“In case it takes an interest in us. From what I’ve read, they’re mean SOBs,” Boyd said.

Duncan cautioned everyone to remain still and quiet.

“Keep your light on it,” he said to Johnson.

Johnson followed the caiman with his headlamp until it was gone. Conversations started again.

“I wonder if there are others,” Peeples said.

“I would think so,” Duncan said. “After all, they live here.”

“I wish we hadn’t seen it,” Hamel said.

“Why?” Cross asked.

“Well, now it’s just one more thing to worry about. Now it’s the bugs and the caiman. What’s next, piranha?” he laughed uneasily.

“There are piranha in these waters, I’m sure of it,” Johnson said. “But, you know, they don’t usually attack people.”

“Not usually?” Hamel said.

“Contrary to popular belief,” Peeples added, “they have such a bad reputation because when they do kill someone it gets blown out of proportion, like with sharks. Don’t tell me you didn’t learn anything about the rainforest before we started this trip?”

“No, not really. I came just to keep Maggie company.”

While listening to this, Boyd thought he’d detected movement from the opposite end of the truck. Was it a snake? As long as he couldn’t see it, he could block it out of his mind, but now he sensed something in the dense darkness that sent a shiver down his back. Switching on his headlamp, he reflexively stepped back from the truck as the light revealed insects jumping not fifteen feet from where he stood. Others did the same as they realized what was happening.

“My God!” Rankin shouted, stepping back awkwardly and falling butt-first into the water. Johnson grabbed her arm and pulled her upright.

Everyone had taken several steps back from the truck and watched the bugs jumping in Boyd’s light.

“Move back, everybody move back,” Duncan commanded.

As they backed away, Duncan and Johnson used their lights to lead them while Boyd kept his light on the bugs, which didn’t take long to reach the hood of the truck. At this point, only a handful were jumping, as they swarmed.

“I think we’re safe in the water,” Duncan said. “They can’t swim.”

The group gathered around a thick stand of trees, about fifty feet from the truck. Without the truck to partially block the current, they were exposed to its full force and had to find ways to maintain balance against it. Duncan switched his light off to conserve power and Johnson did the same. Boyd’s light was starting to dim, and when he switched it off they were again swallowed in darkness.

Fear had returned, and panic was not far away. It was nearly three a.m. and imaginations were once again running amok as some whispered about all the things that could kill them. Rankin felt something nibbling on her calf, and she screamed and started kicking her legs.

“Something’s biting me!” she screeched.

Johnson put his headlamp on her and pulled her toward him. Squatting so that only his head was above water, he felt around her legs.

“Nothing there,” he said reassuringly, standing.

“I felt something,” Rankin insisted, “but it must be gone now.”

“It’s was probably leaves or something floating by,” Johnson said. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

“I wanna be gone now,” Peeples said.

“Don’t we all,” Cross agreed.

Duncan and Boyd kept their eyes on the truck. Illuminating it intermittently, they saw that the bugs were forming a raft near the bumper. It started slowly but grew quickly, machinelike in efficiency. In less than twenty minutes, the raft had expanded to at least four feet in diameter. The larger it got, the more bugs jumped.

“We gotta find something, a stick, a branch, anything to fight these things, or push them away,” Duncan whispered to Boyd.

He asked Suarez if he could climb one of the trees they were clinging to and cut some branches. Suarez understood immediately what to do and shimmied up a tree and started hacking with his machete, dropping several branches on the heads of the people below. It wasn’t until this started to happen and Duncan once again had his light on the truck that the situation became clear to everyone.

People scrambled to grab the branches out of the water. Some were covered with leaves and too flexible to use as a prod. Others were sturdier and could be used to push the raft away, except they weren’t very long. Hamel took several steps back in the darkness and leaned against a tree about ten feet from the group. Seeing this, Cross shouted, “George, where are you going?”

“I’m getting out of here,” he shouted and tried unsuccessfully to climb the trunk.

Everyone was stunned at how quickly the raft moved toward them when it broke away from the truck. Only seconds remained before it would reach them. Already bugs were falling into the water within a body’s length of the group. There was no longer time to prepare. As the bugs floated within arm’s length, Johnson, using the longest branch that he could find, jabbed at the raft, trying to push it away. It was like poking a stick into an ant mound. The air filled with buzzing and bugs, and within seconds Johnson screamed, dropped the branch and ducked underwater where he pulled at several bugs that had landed in his hair. Whether they were dead or alive he didn’t know as he tore out strands of hair, squashing the hard-shelled bugs. He dove into the water without taking a deep breath and was able to stay under only briefly before breaking the surface, brushing against the edge of the raft, gasping. Seconds passed, and he dove under again. This time his head and shoulders were crawling with bugs. He tore at them as best he could, but there were too many of them and, while they were vulnerable in the water, it took a moment for them to drown, during which they lacerated his scalp and upper back. Running out of breath, he pushed himself along the bottom with his legs, hoping to break surface away from the insects. But he was disoriented and couldn’t see the bugs from underwater. When he surfaced, his lungs empty, he gasped and sucked in great gulps of air, along with bugs. He felt them slide like huge lozenges into his throat.