Titanoboa Read online

  Riki ran into her tent and zipped up the flap. She backed away from the entrance and nearly stumbled onto her back. She stood quietly and listened to the cacophony of shouting, screaming, and gunshots. Her hands were trembling so badly she gripped one with the other and tried to steady them.

  A tearing sound filled her tent. The zipper on the flap was opening, and someone stepped through. One of the men that had stood near her tent and stared at her. Behind him were two of the others. They zipped up the tent behind them.

  Riki backed away. She turned to run somewhere, anywhere, but there was nowhere to go. Two of the men grabbed her and forced her to the ground. She kicked and scratched, but they pinned her arms down while the other held her legs. The man that had stepped in first stared down at her, a smile exposing yellowed teeth. He slowly unfastened his belt and released his zipper.

  The flaps to the tents opened with hardly a whisper. The men focused completely on Riki, but she spotted the movement and turned her attention toward the flaps.

  The serpent’s head was massive, the width of a couch. Its tongue whipped out of its mouth silently only once before it discovered what it was looking for. Its body followed through the entrance and seemed to never end. Black with red speckles, it shimmered in the light of the tent’s single lamp.

  The man pulled down his pants just as the serpent slithered across the floor like water, wavy and flowing quietly. The head, close to the floor, shifted beneath the man then spun around as though made of clay. The mouth opened, and it jolted forward like lightning.

  Fangs sank into the man’s stomach and genitals. The man’s face contorted into an expression of pure pain and terror. He tried to pull away and screamed as blood spewed from the corners of the snake’s mouth. The more he struggled, the more flesh tore away from him.

  The snake lifted him up and flipped over, the man upside down, the fangs embedded between his legs. He screamed such a guttural, desperate cry that Riki wanted to cover her ears.

  The serpent’s full body slid into the tent, filling the entire space. The tail end wrapped around the man’s chest and head, muffling his screams at first then stopping them completely as a series of loud crunches emanated from within the writhing mess of flesh.

  The body flopped on the ground, and the man’s head turned completely around, staring up blankly at the roof of the tent while his stomach lay against the ground. The serpent coiled around and opened its prodigious mouth. The lower portion took in the man’s head, and it slowly worked down the body.

  The two men holding her down froze in place. They had all watched the bloody carnage unfold in front of them and hadn’t moved. It seemed to take place in slow motion, but really the entire incident lasted no more than a few seconds. The serpent killed with such efficiency, its movements appeared smooth and planned, as though the entire kill had been foreordained and the serpent merely executed nature’s will.

  The men jumped up and sprinted out of the ten, leaving Riki on the ground by herself. She crawled backward, as far from the snake as she could get. When she felt the back of the tent, she slowly got to her knees then her feet. At a snail’s pace, she eased out of the tent, past the gargantuan animal in front of her.

  The sounds it was making as it swallowed the body were something out of nightmares. Wet, hissing, sucking noise. Some sort of slime covered the body as it entered the throat, and the snake’s eyes were staring forward, ignoring her completely. She sneaked past it.

  Down the path to the administration tent, she saw one of the men that had held her down. A snake had torn his head off with a single bite and was swallowing the headless corpse. But another man ran by, and for some reason, he diverted the snake’s attention. It regurgitated the corpse and slithered after the man that had run past it with a speed that shocked Riki. The snake moved as though it were swimming, an effortless wave over the ground that curved its body into an S.

  The coils wrapped around the man and lifted him into the air, crushing him to a pulpy mess. The snake would have no trouble swallowing him, as he was now little more than a liquefied sack of meat. Riki sprinted away. She was numb, her mind a blurry mess of sensations and impressions but no thoughts, as if her reasoning mind had shut off and the only thing left was a blubbering mess of instinct.

  She ran in a sea of darkness speckled with only the occasional lamp light. It reminded her of running through neighborhoods as a kid. She’d run through darkened streets, and then streetlights would light everything up for about twenty feet before fading to darkness again. Direction wasn’t something she possessed right now, no sense of which way she was going. Occasionally she passed crowds of men, and at other times, she was by herself, running past empty tents like a city of ghosts.

  She rounded a corner and saw with horror that the Jeeps usually lined up as transportation for anyone who needed it were gone. The last one’s taillights were just barely visible as it sped up the road then disappeared.

  The wind was blowing, and she stared at the spot where the Jeep had been, her hair whipping her face. A heavy feeling started at her head and worked its way down into her chest and guts, past her hips and into her legs. The feeling was resignation, a deep resignation that told her she was going to die here.

  But she decided she wasn’t just going to lie down and let it take her. She scanned the area around her, found the closest path into the jungle, and dashed toward it, disappearing into the trees without looking back.

  39

  The trucks arrived, and Mark only woke because someone shook him. He opened his eyes and roused Millard. The men were walking into camp. Mark climbed out of the truck and stood for a moment, orienting himself. He felt groggy and weak, the pain from his injuries beginning to throb again. The first stop back in civilization would have to be the hospital.

  Millard stumbled out and onto his back. He groaned, still half asleep. Mark helped him to his feet, and they followed the rest of the men back into the thicket of tents. But something was different.

  No conversations, no music, nothing. The wind through the tents, shaking the electric lamps, debris fluttering on the ground… but no people.

  The rest of the men, roughly fifty of them, were debating what to do. Mark didn’t understand what the problem was until he happened to look into one of the tents. Something on the floor appeared at first like a ball, or perhaps crumpled-up clothing, but with streaks of red on the side. He took a step closer. A human head, severed from the body with the ragged flesh of the neck hanging off the bottom.

  Mark backed away slowly. He didn’t have the strength to react properly. Didn’t have the inclination to spend any energy thinking about what it meant or what could’ve happened. He just wanted to get Riki and get out of there as quickly as possible.

  The men were talking loudly, and the volume was increasing. It continued for a few moments before the argument turned to shouting and then, seemingly out of nowhere, men began to run. Mark heard a sound he would never forget, a hiss so loud and long it vibrated his bones, as if the earth itself were blowing air through some great cavern.

  The snake slithered between the tents expertly, shooting one way then another, rounding the posts as though it were an obstacle course it’d gone through a hundred times. It was much faster than the men, much faster than any man Mark had ever seen. A blur of movement rocketing through the camp as though it required no effort to move.

  Mark couldn’t take his eyes off it as it slithered into a crowd of men, and they screamed one horrible shriek in unison as they realized someone was going to die.

  As that snake targeted its prey, another came from the opposite side. It wrapped itself around one of the men so quickly, his legs were still kicking as the serpent raised him into the air. The man screamed only for a moment before the coils wrapped around him, and no part of him was visible anymore.

  “They’re attacking in unison,” Millard mumbled. “They’re working together. Snakes don’t do that.”

  “What the hell are they?”<
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  “I don’t know.”

  Another hiss from another direction, and another, and another. The snakes were pouring in from all sides. Mark and Millard hadn’t gone far enough in to be part of the trap, and they both instinctively backed away. The two men broke into a run back to the truck.

  Seven trucks had carried all the men back, and all seven were there, but no drivers. Mark checked the first truck for keys but didn’t find any. He ran from one to the next, but none of them had keys. The drivers had taken the keys with them.

  The screams were at fever pitch now. Mark looked back and saw an ocean of slithering flesh. Blackness was surging into the group of men. The snakes left them only one route of escape, and the men took it. But as they did so, more of the animals seized them from dark corners. A trap perfectly laid and executed.

  “Come on,” Mark shouted. At first, Mark wasn’t sure where they were going to run, but there were only two places: up the road to try walking back to the city, or hiding in the jungle. The road seemed too exposed, at least for now. They would be out in the open and, having seen how quickly those serpents moved, he had no doubt one could be on them in a few seconds.

  They dashed for the thicket of trees.

  Mark couldn’t tell how long he ran. Everything hurt, and the pain dulled his reasoning and memory. All he could focus on was the pain. The acid in his legs burnt as though they had been skinned and had rubbing alcohol poured over them. His lungs felt as though they were about to explode, and his mind was a numb, blank canvas of fear and confusion.

  The shrubbery scraped his skin, but he barely felt it. It was like the sensation of being anesthetized then having the doctor tug on his flesh. He knew something was happening but couldn’t exactly say what.

  Millard was doing better. Fear had given him strength, and he was running far ahead, so far that Mark couldn’t see him anymore. Just heard his boots crunching the dead foliage and his body sliding past the shrubs and bushes.

  The darkness was enveloping, welcoming. He wanted to crawl into as dark a place as he could find and not move. To lie there for days on end and just be left to himself. Away from the jungle and Steven and the whole damned world.

  A realization came to him then, though he hadn’t put it into words. Not until he came to a small clearing did his conscious mind realize what his unconscious had picked up a while ago. He couldn’t hear Millard anymore.

  “Craig!” he shouted.

  No response. Nothing but the wind of a storm still off shore. The wind was making the trees shake as though they were reaching for him. They swayed toward him then relaxed before their long, gnarled arms reached for him again.

  Mark snapped his head to the right as he heard a scream. A pleading, horrible scream. A man’s voice, begging and infantile. The voice of someone in the clutches of something greater than himself, shown something he wasn’t meant to see.

  Sprinting toward the voice, Mark shouted, “Craig!”

  Through the trees and a rough patch of bamboo stalks was another clearing. He didn’t know Millard well enough to care for him, but the thought of being out here alone in the dark was unbearable. As he thought it, he felt guilty and ran even harder.

  Another scream, cut short.

  Mark came upon the small clearing and thought it was empty other than the trees, but one of the great black masses in his peripheral vision was not a tree at all.

  The animal was upright, standing about ten feet high, most of its body coiled on the ground beneath it. In its mouth was the body of Craig Millard. The serpent lifted its head with the body in it and opened its mouth, allowing gravity to do the work. The body slid down its massive gorge and disappeared into black. The snake closed its mouth, motionless a moment, as though enjoying its meal, then the head tilted forward and the eyes fixed on Mark. In the dim light of the moon, it could almost be beautiful. Its sheer size made it appear like something not from this planet or time, something that had traveled from somewhere else to make its presence known. But in that beauty was pure horror. The lidless eyes, black and soulless, that held Mark, took him in as though he were nothing more than raw meat. The body that had begun to uncoil in anticipation of a chase, and worst of all, the horrible tongue that whipped out as though taunting him to get away.

  Mark didn’t wait for it to move first, didn’t try to conceal his presence in any way. He simply turned and ran. Fear had completely taken over now, and he became painfully cognizant of the full impact of his predicament. He was lost in the dark with something that lived in it.

  The serpent regurgitated Millard’s body. Mark glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the wet, lumpy mass flop to the ground as the snake uncoiled completely and shot after him like a torpedo through the sea.

  Mark pumped his legs. He dashed between the trees and the shrubs like an expert but couldn’t really see them. He avoided masses of black; other than that, he could do nothing but run. His legs were throbbing with pain, and his lower back sent a radiating heat through his hips. He pushed through the pain and kept pushing his legs. He wouldn’t look behind him, but somehow he knew it wasn’t far. He could feel it.

  The camp was nearly empty. Most of the men were gone, and the few remaining were running around like wild chickens. Mark made it only about thirty or forty feet in before the serpent whipped around and appeared in front of him like some apparition. The snake reared up, reaching over fifteen feet, maybe more. It let out a hiss that sent shivers through Mark, the sound resonating deep in his bones. Some ancestral warning sound buried deep in his DNA.

  A truck rumbled to life, and the tires kicked up wads of dirt as it raced for the road back to the city. The snake’s head whipped around, catching the lights of the truck, the movement, and the vibrations in the ground. Mark stood perfectly still.

  The snake rocketed after the truck.

  Mark sprinted back into the jungle, but he had nothing left. No strength, no heart, no will. Only the dim awareness that he was still alive, and had to keep it that way for as long as he could, remained.

  He collapsed onto the ground, heaving and panting, knowing that was as far as he was going to get.

  40

  The sound of carnage was not something Mark had ever thought he’d hear again. He had heard gunshots most of his adult life, even a shootout in the street by two rival gangs, something that sounded like he was in the middle of a war. He’d seen dead bodies in gutters and slumped over their cars’ steering wheels. He’d seen young housewives butchered and dumped in the canyons surrounding L.A. as though they were refuse, and he thought he’d gotten away from it all. That this island had been his sanctuary, and all of that would slowly fade into the background then go away.

  It hadn’t gone away. It was right behind him. The screams of dying men, gunshots, the panicked scatter of men that knew they were going to die. Mark listened to it all but didn’t have the strength to do anything about it. Even to save himself.

  He rolled to his back, about the only thing his body allowed him to do, and waited for the inevitable.

  A blur of memories followed. He remembered the day his daughter was born, the happiest day of his life. He remembered taking her home from the hospital and the smell of her that only parents of newborn babies knew. Her first words, her first steps, none of which Mark actually saw but had to watch later on his wife’s phone.

  The bad memories came to him, too. The slow, painful separation of him and his wife. Both of them seeing what was coming but unable to avoid it. Mark wished he had been better able to discuss what he was feeling and how they could fix it. But neither of them had the words, and the relationship continued to sink so far that they eventually weren’t speaking with each other. And then there was nothing left but the divorce.

  Mark remembered his mother, too. Sometimes she cooked, not often but sometimes, and she’d let him help. Put in a pinch of that and a dash of this. Turn the oven on, get the drinks out of the fridge. It had meant nothing to her, just a distraction for her s
on so he wouldn’t plop down in front of the TV, but those few moments alone with her took the place of the deep conversations they had never had. The ones that taught him about love and life, about death and women and joy. They never had those ones, never even came close, but they had their cooking.

  He hadn’t thought about all the memories stored away in four years. The island life had been so joyful and calm that reminiscing about times past wasn’t necessary. He had no need to move on from the pain of the past, because just living here soothed the ache.

  “Mark!”

  He opened his eyes, unaware that he had even closed them. Stars, planets, and distant galaxies draped the sky. A speckled and shimmering blanket covering the earth. It astounded him for a moment before he felt hands on him. He pulled away, his gut instinct to fight even though he had accepted his death. But the hands were soft and gentle. His gaze drifted up and caught a milk-white face in the gloom. Riki.

  “I thought you were…” He didn’t want to think about that anymore. Not with her right there.

  “You need to get up, Mark. Get up right now.”

  “I can’t. You go. Run as far and as fast as you can. Go.”

  “No.” She slung his arm over her shoulders. “Stand up! You are not going to die here. We are not going to die here, you hear me?”

  She didn’t have the strength to lift him, but she sure as hell was trying. Her body flexed and strained under his weight. Slowly, he began pushing with his legs, and before he knew what was happening, he was on his feet and moving through the jungle again.

  His steps were calm and measured, light. The more he moved, the more his strength and will returned to him. He would live. He would live for his daughter, he would live for this island, and he would live for her.