The Furies (46 page)

Most of the men were wading through the deepest part of the channel when the piranhas struck. One of the guerillas thrashed in the water, shrieking in Spanish. Then two of his comrades joined in, flailing their arms as they struggled to return to the riverbank. Soon the water began to roil around the men and there was a frenzy of splashing. The Fountain protein had spread to the depths of the channel, its molecules seeping through the skin of the fish and inflaming their primitive brains. Then John caught a glimpse of a long black snake, thicker than a fire hose, coiling around the terrified waders. One of the men disappeared, his head pulled under the water. Then another man vanished. Then another.

There were screams in English too, from the Riflemen in the strait. The maddened piranhas swarmed thickly around the men, jabbing and biting and jumping out of the water. John spotted Percy splashing back toward the peninsula, but when he was just ten feet away from the riverbank he stumbled. As soon as he hit the water the piranhas surrounded him, tearing off chunks of flesh every time they struck his body.

John stepped farther away from the riverbank. So many men were dying in the strait that a bright red stain spread across the black water. He saw the piranhas feeding on another fallen Rifleman. He saw an anaconda drag another guerilla below the surface. And then he looked across the channel and saw Sullivan standing in the mud near the water's edge, gazing in dismay at the slaughter. For a moment John actually felt sorry for the man. Then Sullivan spotted him, and John could see the rage in his face, even from a hundred feet away. Although Sullivan couldn't have guessed the cause of this catastrophe, he definitely sensed that John was behind it. He reached into his jacket again, pulled out his Mauser and fired.

John hit the dirt and the bullet whizzed overhead. Sullivan fired again, and this time the shot came closer. John scuttled backward, trying to find some cover, but he was on open ground, with no trees or bushes or tall grass nearby. On the other side of the strait Sullivan stepped closer to the water and held his arm steady, tilting his head slightly as he looked at John through the Mauser's gun sights. But before he could pull the trigger, the river at his feet erupted in spray and a huge glistening reptile rocketed toward him. A black caiman, at least fifteen feet long, lunged out of the water and clamped its massive jaw around Sullivan's legs.

He screamed as the caiman's teeth sank into his calves. The reptile pulled his feet out from under him and he fell backward into the mud of the riverbank, dropping his gun. Then the caiman snapped its jaw to get a better grip on Sullivan's legs and started crawling backwards, pulling him into the river.

He would've disappeared under the water if not for Marlowe. The Rifleman sprinted forward and grabbed Sullivan's right arm. “I got you, Sully!” he yelled. “I got you!” He dug his heels into the mud of the riverbank and leaned backward, trying to pull Sullivan out of the caiman's mouth. At the same time, he looked over his shoulder at Comandante Reyes. “Help me, damn it!”

Reyes reluctantly came forward and grabbed Sullivan's left arm. He and Marlowe pulled together, but the caiman didn't let go. It snapped its jaws again, fastening its teeth on Sullivan's thighs. Meanwhile, Ariel saw her chance and gave Mariela another hand signal. An instant later all the women turned around and ran toward the trees at the top of the knoll. John felt a burst of relief as he watched them. Then he started running too, heading toward the place where the peninsula branched off from the mainland.

As he ran he kept his eyes on the other side of the strait. He saw the caiman shake its head fiercely and heard Sullivan shriek as the flesh tore off his thigh bones. Comandante Reyes lost his grip on Sullivan's left arm and tumbled into the mud. Marlowe kept his hold on the right arm, but the caiman was stronger. It crawled backward, pulling steadily on its prey and dragging Marlowe closer to the water's edge.
“Sully!”
he screamed, his face red and frantic.
“Hang on, Sully!”

Then Marlowe spotted the Mauser lying in the mud. While holding on to Sullivan with one hand, he picked up the gun with the other and fired at the caiman's back. The first two shots seemed to have no effect, but after the third shot the caiman twisted angrily. It snapped its jaw once more and gave a final tug on Sullivan's legs, pulling something loose. Then it retreated into the river while Marlowe dragged his unconscious boss away from the water. Sullivan's left leg, severed at the knee, spewed blood over the riverbank. Reyes, who'd retreated to higher ground, knelt in the mud and vomited.

John turned away from them and kept running. He couldn't watch anymore. He had to get back to Ariel and make sure she was safe. For obvious reasons, he couldn't wade back across the strait to the tip of the peninsula. He had to take the long way around the lagoon.

Soon he reached the canvas tents of the guerilla camp, which was empty and silent. All the guerillas were in the water, either dead or dying. As John ran past the camp, though, someone burst out of the last tent with a knife in his hand. The man lunged at him, fast as the caiman, and grabbed John's arms from behind. Then he used the knife to cut the rope binding his hands. John looked over his shoulder and saw it was one of the Amazon tribesmen, the one Sullivan had slapped. Bowing his head in respect, the man pointed inside the tent he'd just come out of. Leaning against its central pole were three AK-47 rifles.

John darted into the tent and grabbed all three guns. By the time he came back outside, the tribesman had vanished into the rain forest. John offered his silent thanks, then charged toward the peninsula.

The lagoon was still frothing as he ran along the strip of land surrounding it. Corpses bobbed and drifted this way and that, nudged by the schools of piranha feeding on them. He hoped to hell that Ariel and her friends had stayed away from the water. As he approached the wooded knoll near the tip of the peninsula he saw two prone bodies lying at the water's edge, half-eaten corpses that had drifted onto the riverbank. Then he saw a third body farther away from the water, but this one was alive. Comandante Reyes lay facedown in the dirt, his arms and torso slashed in several places and his shirt soaked with blood. Ariel bent over him, holding the pocketknife to his throat, while Mariela tied his hands behind his back using the same rope that had formerly bound his prisoners. The other women crouched in the brush nearby.

Their heads turned as John came near. Ariel spun around, ready to attack, her tear-streaked face contorted in anger. Then she recognized him. Her mouth opened but no words came out. She dropped the knife and ran into his arms.

It was a brief embrace, though. After two and a half seconds she took one of John's assault rifles and handed another to Mariela. “We still have to deal with Marlowe,” she said. “He's on the other side of the trees, and he has the Mauser. I heard him fire a shot a minute ago.” Raising her rifle she headed for the tip of the peninsula. John and Mariela followed her while the other women remained hidden in the brush.

The three of them crept silently under the knoll's trees. When they reached the kapok they took cover behind the trunk and peered around it. Both Sullivan and Marlowe lay faceup on the riverbank, halfway between the kapok and the water's edge. Sullivan's face was as white as paper. He'd died in the mud, bleeding out from his severed leg and the other wounds from the caiman attack. Marlowe was dead too, but he hadn't been killed by any of the jungle's animals. The ground under his head was saturated with blood and his right hand still clutched the Mauser. He'd shot himself in the mouth.

John stepped out from behind the kapok and approached the corpses. He saw nothing in Sullivan's face. The man looked empty, deflated. But Marlowe had clearly died in despair. He'd lost his master, his reason for being. He couldn't fight anymore and he couldn't surrender. He couldn't go on.

In that moment John knew the rebellion was over.

EPILOGUE

The rainy season in the Amazon was particularly bad the next year. In April the Yarí rose so high that it inundated the south bank at the bend in the river. The floodwaters swamped the peninsula and the area where the guerilla camp once stood. But by that point the tents had been taken down and carted away. The Furies had already moved to the network of caves that honeycombed Monte Mariposa, the tall hill south of the river.

The relocation had gone more smoothly than anyone could've imagined. Ariel had led the effort from the very first day, organizing the women from the Caño Dorado expedition as they took over the guerilla camp and turned it into their headquarters. She inventoried their supplies and set up a rotation for guard duty. Then she retrieved the expedition's radio equipment and reestablished contact with the Furies in North America. Over the next few days Ariel worked like a demon, and John started to worry about her. He wondered if she was working so hard just to stop herself from thinking about her mother and Cordelia. Then it occurred to him that the opposite might be true. Ariel, he suspected, wanted to honor the loved ones she'd lost. By preparing her family's new home, she was carrying out the last assignment Elizabeth had given her before they left for South America. And when Ariel needed to select a code name for the refuge, she chose Mariposa—Spanish for butterfly, Cordelia's favorite symbol.

The first order of business was deciding what to do with Comandante Reyes. Mariela and a few of the other women argued in favor of executing him, but Ariel overruled them. Reyes was still in shock, traumatized by the slaughter in the lagoon, and Ariel realized he could do a useful service for the Furies. Before she released him she described the horrible way he would die if he ever returned to the Yarí River. When Reyes rejoined his comrades in the FARC insurgency, he told stories of a family of
brujas
in the jungle who could summon caimans and anacondas to attack their enemies. As a result, the guerillas kept their distance from the Furies' refuge, and the Yarí became the most peaceful river in Colombia.

The second task was extending an olive branch to the remaining Riflemen. Ariel opened negotiations with the men in western Minnesota who were holding Grace, Claudia, and Gower as hostages. She told them what had happened to Sullivan. She gave them the details about the Fountain protein, explaining how it would addict and poison them. And she promised full amnesty to all who laid down their arms. The Riflemen didn't respond to the offer right away. There was a fair amount of hemming and hawing. But in the end they accepted her terms. The men were leaderless, penniless, and on the run from the law. Although the FBI had suspended Agent Larson, the bureau was still investigating the strange incidents in northern Michigan and still on the lookout for the Riflemen. They had no choice but to return to their mothers and sisters.

Then Ariel organized the gradual migration of eighteen hundred Furies from Canada to Colombia. Over the next six months they came in groups of ten to twenty, flying on commercial jets from Toronto to Bogotá. Pretending to be tourists visiting southern Colombia, they traveled by chartered bus to San Vincente del Caguán, where they boarded the skiffs that carried them downriver. And they brought supplies with them: food, medicine, laptops, and a whole lot of money. Once they arrived at the bend in the Yarí, Ariel put them to work. They made the cavern inhabitable and built water wheels for generating electricity. They constructed new laboratories underground, and a new library as well, and began the process of transferring their Treasures to it. In the deepest chamber of the cavern they built a crypt for Elizabeth and all the other Furies who'd died. Ariel made special arrangements to exhume Cordelia's body from her hastily dug grave in Wisconsin and bring it to South America.

Outside the entrance to the cavern the Furies cleared the trees and brush that had filled the huge bowl at the summit of Monte Mariposa. Then they divided the fertile land into sloping fields and planted corn, beans, manioc, and yucca. They also built a compound of huts aboveground, at the very center of the bowl, enough to house a few dozen people. To the outside world, they would pose as a New Age commune, a bunch of hippies from the United States and Canada who'd decided to establish their own utopia in the Colombian rain forest. Ariel liked this disguise much better than the Amish one. She enjoyed wearing the peasant blouses and tie-dyed skirts that were part of the subterfuge.

Although the Chief Elder was now Grace Fury, who'd automatically ascended to the position after Elizabeth's death, many of the Furies started to believe that their true leader was Ariel. She was involved in every aspect of the relocation, and she was more likable than either Grace or Claudia, the other council member. After a few months Grace felt compelled to recognize Ariel's contributions by offering her the third seat on the Council of Elders. Ariel accepted the offer but insisted on two conditions. First, she convinced Grace to make the council an elected body within five years. Second, she received permission to marry John Rogers.

John did all kinds of work during the construction of the refuge—carpentry, welding, stonecutting, cooking—but the job he loved the most, strangely enough, was farming. He got a big kick out of planting the seeds and watching the crops grow. And his favorite partner to work with was Gower, who'd had enough of being a guardsman and wanted to give agriculture a try. In the evenings the two of them would work side by side, weeding the rows of bean plants and chatting about baseball. John was trying to get Gower interested in the sport. Sometimes Ariel would join them and talk about watching Lou Gehrig and Bob Meusel play, and Gower would become thoroughly confused about which players were alive and which weren't.

On the last evening of April, though, John was working alone in the bean field when Ariel stepped out of the cavern to join him. She walked slowly along the edge of the field, then turned and made her way down the aisle of dirt between two bean rows. She wore a skirt tie-dyed with gorgeous starbursts, explosions of yellow and orange and red, and a loose peasant blouse that stretched expansively over her swollen belly and enlarged breasts. She was seven months' pregnant and still getting used to walking with the extra weight. When she reached John she took his hand and they walked together across the field, heading up the slope that led to the rim of the bowl. They liked to sit on a stone ledge at the rim and watch the sun set over the rain forest below.