Titanoboa Read online

  The road cut right through the island. Mark didn’t actually know how big the island was. Wikipedia stated 806 square miles, but the sheer mass of the land had never dawned on him. 800 miles wasn’t a piddly little place.

  The road descended steeply, and the Jeeps rocketed down the decline. Mark strapped on his seat belt and held on to the roll bar placed overhead.

  “You’ve never been out here?” Millard, the herpetologist, said.

  Mark was about to ask how he could tell but decided he didn’t really care. Instead, he tried to focus on not letting go of the roll bar as they hit a pile of rocks that sent the Jeep tipping to one side before slamming back down into its upright position.

  “This is so exciting,” Millard said, apparently speaking to Mark but possibly to no one. “Do you realize we’re going to see a creature from the Paleocene epoch? Do you have any idea how rare that is?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “The Paleocene is the ten-million-year period after the extinction of the dinosaurs. The reason it’s so exciting is that we have no idea what existed at the time. Think of that. We don’t know what large species was on land for ten million years of the earth’s history. I mean, we just have no clue. Discovering titanoboa was the first time we were given a glimpse into what lived then. And now we get to see one in person! It’s enough to make me orgasm.”

  Mark looked to him. “Over a snake?”

  Millard shook his head. “Not a snake, the snake. The biggest snake that’s ever lived. And it’s right here, living on this island for fifty-eight million years. It’s a miracle of nature to have survived. It’s counter-evolutionary to lose your limbs, but snakes used it to become one of the most successful species that’s ever lived. They’re amazing creatures. I actually started out studying amphibians in the Pacific Northwest, but I switched to snakes when I learned more about them. They’re perfect creatures. No remorse, no pity, no sadness or fear… they have nothing but the urge to kill and reproduce. Some of them even regurgitate their meals just so they can kill again. Isn’t that cool?”

  Mark looked out into the piercing darkness. “That’s just grand.”

  As they rode up a hill on the opposite side of the valley they’d just crossed, dozens of lights glimmered, spread out over a small series of hills and the valleys in between. Some of them were moving. They were electric lanterns.

  The Jeeps rumbled down the road toward the encampment. They passed men on either side of the road, two of them smoking and all of them with rifles slung over their shoulders. Guards.

  As they passed the first line of security, the second line came into view. A series of trenches were dug into the jungle floor like France during the First World War. The only way over the trenches was the single road over which they currently drove. Past the trenches, they arrived at the tents. These didn’t look like any tents Mark had ever seen. Some were as large as houses. Between them were parked vehicles or men sitting around campfires playing cards, eating, drinking, or otherwise wasting time. Some of them gave the Jeeps cold stares, and some didn’t even bother to look up.

  The Jeeps parked near a particularly large tent, and Steven hopped out. He helped Riki out by grabbing her at the waist and lifting her down. A slight twinge of jealousy stung Mark, and he felt foolish for it. He had no claim to her or anyone else. Everyone was free to do as they pleased, and Steven was certainly more than welcome to court her.

  Even as the words rolled through his mind, he didn’t believe them. He was jealous, no two ways about it.

  Steven came over and slapped his back. “Welcome to Tent City, Marky Mark.”

  23

  The enormous tent was an administration building of sorts. Inside, Mark was expecting cots and sleeping bags. Instead, he saw desks, chairs and a television. They sat at a conference table, and a man walked in behind Steven. He was thin, with a balding head and a weaselly appearance. Not underhanded, but literally like a weasel.

  “So glad you two will be joining us,” he said. He placed thick reams of paper in front of them then iPads next to the paper. “These are our standard employment contracts, along with their electronic counterparts. You’ll be reading and signing both tonight before we get any work started.”

  The man began going through what the papers contained. Mark almost immediately lost interest. He zoned out somewhere around “Failure to Disclose Pertinent Prior Statements in Any Record” and came back for a moment under “Arbitration Venues at the Discretion of the Company.” Basically, he figured, the entire contract was set up to screw him in the event of a dispute. But it didn’t matter, because there wouldn’t be a dispute. He just wanted his money and to be on his way. They could have however much time they wanted in exchange.

  The meeting must’ve taken two hours, and by the end, Mark’s upper back felt tight and sore. He signed the papers then the electronic copy and stretched his arms over his head. The weaselly man said, “Welcome to VN,” and shook both their hands. Then he left the tent with the papers and iPads tucked under his arm.

  “Who was that guy?” Mark asked Steven, who had been lying on a desk reading a book the entire time.

  “From legal. Don’t actually know his name. The company has more lawyers than any other type of employee except the field workers. Come on, I’ll show you your tents.”

  Mark grabbed his single duffle out of the Jeep and followed Steven and Riki. He grabbed one of Riki’s two suitcases from her, and Steven got the other.

  When Steven had called it “Tent City,” Mark assumed he was using hyperbole, but he wasn’t. The camp was spread out like a city. The streets, just the passageways between the tents, intersected with each other in perfect harmony, and the intersections bore little signs with names. It was set up so that workers could find anyone else in the camp immediately if they needed to. Many of the workers were local Fijians, but many were not. Mark heard a plethora of languages, from what he guessed was Serbian all the way to Italian and French. They had been recruiting all over the world.

  He quickened his pace until he was walking next to Riki, who was listening to Steven talk about the layout of the camp and how long it took to set up.

  “This is enormous,” he said.

  “This is nothing. You should see the tent cities these guys had set up in Pakistan when they thought they had a good reserve there. Probably ten thousand people. There’s maybe six hundred here.”

  “I can’t believe this island has that much oil sitting underneath it to make this worthwhile.”

  “These guys don’t waste money, Marky Mark. If they say there’s oil here, there’s oil here.”

  They looped around a large block of tents and reached two side-by-side, gray canvas with electric lanterns hanging from the doors. Steven pointed to one with his chin and said, “Yours, Marky Mark.”

  “My name’s Mark.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You keep calling me Marky Mark. My name’s just Mark.”

  “It’s a compliment. I love that one song Marky Mark did. Don’t be so uppity.” He looked at Riki. “Next door is yours. Latrines are right over there, one to every ten tents. Toilet paper in the tents. Showers are up that way to the north and only run from six in the morning until eight, so if you want a spot, you gotta hurry. Breakfast is at 8:30 sharp in the mess hall. Just follow everyone else; you can’t miss it. Any questions?”

  Mark didn’t say anything. He had about a million questions, such as why the hell would they need him to hunt snakes if this company could afford a setup like this, but he kept them to himself. He had a feeling he wouldn’t get a straight answer anyway.

  He opened the flap to his tent and stepped inside. The space was dark, and he assumed they expected him to bring the lantern in, so he did. The tent was clean, no clutter or debris. One cot in back, a hot plate up front, and nothing else. A strap dangled from the top, and he figured out he was supposed to hang his lantern from it. After doing so, Mark took a deep breath and sat on the cot. His head was sti
ll throbbing from the vicious blow he’d received, and he thought if he ever saw those two gorillas or the man sitting on the bed again, he would have more than words for them.

  Finally, more than the pain, he felt the exhaustion that came with age, the kind that slowly crept up. No one saw it coming, and then one day they realized they couldn’t do the things they used to do and were left asking why.

  The flap opened, and Riki stepped inside. “I see yours is as luxurious as mine.”

  “Believe it or not, it’s not the worst place I’ve stayed in. It’s even better than some of the apartments I’ve had.”

  She sat on the ground across from him. “Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

  “I’m actually pretty impressed. There aren’t natural clearings this big in the jungle. They had to clear this whole area, flatten it, and then set all this up. This wasn’t easy. Or cheap.”

  “They don’t care about either. Not when it comes to profits.”

  “So they just offered you a writing job and didn’t think it was weird that you jumped on it so fast, huh?”

  “Well, it did come with a salary boost.”

  “How much?”

  “Didn’t you read your contract? We’re not allowed to say.” She smiled.

  “I never was good at fine print.”

  “They offered me ten thousand a week.”

  He whistled through his teeth. “I think I settled too quickly on a couple hundred bucks an hour.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Don’t you think it’s weird they would offer us jobs at all? I mean, they could hire whoever the hell they wanted to hire. They don’t need either of us.”

  “I don’t know. I think they figured we were going to find out everything anyway. Or maybe Steven really did want us along, and he pushed for it. It is strange, though, I’ll give you that. Can I ask you something and you promise not to get mad?”

  He grinned. “Whenever anyone says that, it means they’ve done something rotten to me and I can’t react.”

  “Promise first.”

  “Okay, I promise I won’t get mad.”

  “I followed you around. Just before I hired you. I wanted to make sure you weren’t some shyster that didn’t know anything. You mad?”

  He shook his head. “Only that I didn’t notice you. I’m getting soft. So what’d you find out?”

  “Well, I saw you drop off a sack at the elementary school. I saw you do it two days in a row. What were you dropping off?”

  “Oh, that. Just a little thing I do. A favor for someone.” It suddenly dawned on him that he didn’t know how long he would be out here. The contract, the one section he had paid attention to on length of commitment, stated they worked six days on, two days off. The boy wouldn’t be getting his lunches. Maybe he could place a call to his secretary to drop them off.

  Mark knew what it was like not to have money to eat. He’d had that feeling as a youth when his father was laid off then only found work at a gas station part-time. Dinner consisted of peanut butter and government bread. One day, Mark had gotten a bag of chips at school with money he now knew his mother had scrimped and saved for. It was the first bag of chips he’d had in over a year.

  After some bullies pushed him down, one of them grabbed the bag of chips. He shoved a bunch in his mouth, laughing, then tossed the bag to another of the bullies who did the same. By the time they finished, nothing was left.

  The pain Mark had felt as he stared at the empty bag on the playground was something he’d never experienced before or since. Humiliation, sadness, betrayal, and above all, rage. A rage that he couldn’t control. That night, as he lay in bed, he plotted revenge on each of those boys. The meanest things he could think of.

  The next day at school, he was planning what he was going to do at lunch when one of the lunch ladies approached him. She told him she had seen what the boys did and turned them into the principal. Then she took out a bag of chips from her purse and gave it to him.

  All the rage dissipated as though a hole had opened somewhere on his skin and let all his emotions pour out. A single act of kindness stuck out to him in an entire childhood of pain. He wanted to give those moments to someone else.

  “Mark, you okay? You spaced out on me a little.”

  “Sorry. Just thinking about something that happened to me a long time ago.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not important.” He inhaled deeply then slapped his thighs. “So, what do you think we gotta do to get some food around here?”

  24

  The cot was surprisingly comfortable to sleep on. It dipped lightly like a hammock and at times felt as though it weren’t touching his skin at all. Mark slept well past shower time and even breakfast. He was still soundly snoring when Riki poked her head into his tent and said, “Mark? You getting up?”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled. The camp, considering how many people were around, had been quiet most of the night with the exception of the Jeeps that occasionally rumbled by.

  He swung his feet over the cot and rubbed his eyes then twisted his back from side to side. Riki was dressed in canvas shorts and a button-front shirt.

  “What’s the plan?” Mark said.

  “Steven wants you to help him in selecting the hunting parties. He thinks you’ll be able to tell him who’s lazy and who’s not.”

  “Considering I don’t know ninety-nine percent of the people they’ve hired, I don’t think I’ll be much help.”

  “Well, at least act like it. Don’t forget you’re on the clock.”

  That’s right, Mark thought. He hadn’t remembered they were paying him hourly through the night. The only time he wouldn’t be billing them was on his days off. Hell, for two hundred fifty bucks an hour, he would skip rope for them if they wanted him to.

  Mark stepped outside and took in the camp for the first time in daylight. The tents seemed to spread out for miles, like some ancient army camped out before their enemy’s walls. Dense jungle surrounded them on every side. The morning fog still hung in the air like ghosts, drifting away as the sun rose.

  He looked one way then the other. A small line had formed in front of the latrines. He waited behind some men speaking French. They were grizzled men, hands permanently blackened from a lifetime of labor in oil fields. Their beards were scruffy, and redness tinted their skin. Probably from too much sun or exposure to chemicals.

  When his turn came, he was expecting something disgusting, but the latrines were actually clean. He urinated then found a station of disposable toothbrushes set up with toothpaste dispensers. He brushed his teeth, washed his hands with a hard, industrial soap, and went back to his tent and changed his clothes. He wore old jeans and a long sleeved shirt with a Dodgers baseball cap. He tied a black bandana around his neck then coated the exposed parts of his skin with the insect repellent.

  By the time he was through, his stomach was growling, and he wondered if he could still find something to eat. He walked the opposite direction from the latrines. Steven directed a crowd of men around the camp. He appeared a natural leader, confident and strong. Steven looked like the kind of guy people wanted in charge. The kind that could make the tough calls without flinching. Mark had always lacked that quality. He felt too softhearted for leadership positions like that.

  “Hey,” Mark said.

  “Ne sa bula,” he said with a smile. “I say it right?”

  “People just say ‘bula’ for hello. ‘Yandra’ is good morning.”

  “‘Yandra’,” he mumbled a few times. “Anyway, you ready to go?”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “We’re gonna be setting up hunting parties of four men. That seems to be the ideal number here. We’ll have twelve of the four man parties out at all times, twenty-four hours a day.”

  Mark looked at some men dumping supplies out of Jeeps. “You want to hunt at night?”

  Steven grinned and reached down to the pile of equipment. He picked up a pair of binoculars with an elastic cap attached and tossed t
hem to Mark. It was light and sturdy.

  “Night vision goggles,” Steven said. “Be as bright as day.”

  “What exactly are we going to be hunting these things with?”

  Steven lifted what looked like a black machine gun. He held it up like a trophy and said, “This here’s the POF P-415 in Spec Two. It is one of the best hunting rifles ever made. Running just a little over ten thousand dollars. You ever fired one?”

  “No.”

  “It’s like coming, brother. Wait ’til you try it.”

  Mark stood by as Steven ordered more men around. It appeared they were gathering together the equipment the twelve teams would need then loading them into packs. They’d thought of everything to carry with them: knives, mace, an MRE, sticks of honey, canteens of water, flares, flashlights… Just about anything anyone needed for the jungle, except insect repellent.

  “You got insect repellent, don’t you?” Mark asked.

  “We got some in the camp, yeah.”

  “No, you have to have it with you in the jungle, and it’s gotta be constantly applied. You’ll sweat it off in less than twenty minutes.”

  Steven wiped sweat off his forehead. “We’ll get some more, then.”

  After the men packed up the supplies, Steven informed him they would be going to the administration tent to interview the candidates they’d selected for the hunting parties. The hunting parties were being paid time and a half with a thousand dollar bonus for every snake killed.

  Mark sat in one of the cushioned chairs on a panel that consisted of him, Steven, and someone he’d never seen before. Possibly an interpreter. One man stood at the door with his hands in his pockets, staring outside the flap of the tent.