Mutation Read online

  That’s going to be one stinky trip, Marty thought. “Did you tell Luther?” he asked.

  “I just talked to him. He said he’d be happy to stick with the hatchlings.” Ted looked at Grace. “You’re on the chopper, too. Luther will need help.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because Wolfe doesn’t want you out of his sight,” Ted answered. “And I agree with him. After the hatchlings, you’re Blackwood’s primary target.”

  “He’s not down here yet,” Grace said. “There’s a chance he won’t figure out —”

  Ted interrupted her. “He’s going to figure it out, Grace.”

  “He didn’t find Wolfe or my mom in the Congo.”

  “True, but they weren’t in possession of the last two living dinosaurs on earth. And technology has changed everything. It’s a lot easier to find people now than it was fifteen years ago. You’re going with him. Wolfe’s not budging on that. You might as well go along with it.”

  Marty looked at Grace. Her blue eyes were completely neutral, which was usually a bad sign. He quickly looked back at Ted. “What about me and Dylan?”

  “I know you want to get to the jaguar preserve, and we could probably squeeze you into the chopper, but I was hoping that you and Dylan would give me a hand on the Rivlan.”

  Marty was eager to get to the preserve to find his parents. When someone, or something, wasn’t trying to kill him, he had thought of little else. He ran his hand along the Rivlan’s hull. He knew from experience that flying over a river in a chopper and riding on a river were two entirely different things. Riding aboard the Rivlan might be his only chance to see the real Amazon. And then there were the ultralights. He glanced into the other cargo hold where the crates were. He didn’t want to get too far from those.

  With Wolfe upriver, I just might be able to talk Ted into letting me take one out for a spin.

  “What would I be doing aboard?” Marty asked.

  “Like I said, I’ll be running fast during the night. Eight hours of that is going to wipe me out. If I don’t have someone to pilot the Rivlan during the day at regular speed, I’ll have to tie up so I can sleep. That’s going to slow my arrival at the preserve by days. You and Dylan would be the day pilots.”

  “But at the speeds you’re talking about, the Rivlan shouldn’t be that far behind the chopper.”

  “That would be true if we were talking about traveling in a straight line, but the Amazon is anything but straight. It meanders back and forth like a giant anaconda. And I’m anticipating mechanical failures. The Rivlan has never been in the water.”

  “What?” Marty wasn’t sure he had heard him correctly.

  “You and Dylan would be on the Rivlan’s maiden voyage.”

  “How do you know it will even work?” Grace asked, taking the words out of Marty’s mouth.

  “It’ll work,” Ted answered. “But there will be glitches. There always are. I think I’ve brought enough spare parts to take care of any eventuality, but I’ll be honest, if we have a breakdown, it could take me a while to fix it.”

  “Maybe I should ride on the Rivlan to the jaguar preserve instead of Marty,” Grace said.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Marty said. “You heard what Ted said. Wolfe has a lot on his mind. He doesn’t need to be worrying about you along with everything else.”

  “Are you sure?” Grace asked.

  “Positive,” Marty answered, but he wasn’t positive. He wanted to get to the preserve and start looking for his parents, but with Blackwood on the prowl, Grace would be safer with Wolfe. He changed the subject. “So what’s the latest from the preserve?”

  “You remember Jake Lansa?”

  “Sure,” Marty answered. “Dr. Robert Lansa’s son.”

  “Doc” Lansa was in charge of the jaguar preserve. His son, Jake, had been sailing to Australia when Marty and Grace had met him. Jake had taken Ted’s girlfriend, Ana Mika, and Laurel Lee out to the Coelacanth off the coast of New Zealand, where they’d caught the giant squid.

  “Jake’s back in Brazil now,” Ted explained. “He got to Manaus about the same time as Laurel and Ana. The three of them headed upriver with one of Doc’s biologists. They got to the preserve last night. Laurel and Doc are heading out into the forest as soon as they can get their gear together, to find that uncontacted tribe that might know about your folks.”

  “What do you mean by uncontacted?” Grace asked.

  “A group that has never had contact with the outside world. And finding them is not going to be easy. Uncontacted tribes are usually uncontacted because they don’t want to be contacted. When Wolfe gets there, he’ll head out with a guide who works for Doc. Everyone else will be sticking around camp, including me, as support for the expedition. If they get into trouble, we’re the cavalry.”

  “But instead of horses, we’ll have an ultralight,” Marty said.

  Grace gave him an eyeball roll, which he completely ignored.

  Ted smiled. “So you saw the crate.”

  “I sure did,” Marty said. “And I wouldn’t mind taking it out for a spin.”

  “You know how to fly?”

  Marty nodded. “I’ve had lessons.”

  “When?” Grace asked.

  “Skydiving camp.”

  “That hardly counts,” Grace said.

  Ted laughed. “It actually does count. The most important skill for an ultralight pilot is to know how to use a parachute.”

  “Until you hit the top of the canopy,” Grace pointed out.

  “That’s a problem,” Ted admitted. “And it can hurt.”

  “Speaking of parachutes,” Marty said. “When do we make the supply drop?”

  Ted looked at his watch. “Several hours. Early evening in Brazil. We’ll try to drop the supply canisters as close to camp as we can, then head into Manaus to unload. You two might want to get some rest. Once we get there, we won’t have much time for that.”

  Jake Lansa was amazed at all the additional lines Flanna Brenna had strung through the canopy during his time away from the jaguar preserve.

  “You could go at least five miles in any direction from camp without touching the ground once,” Jake said.

  “Seven point five miles,” the redheaded woman replied, jumping off the platform and disappearing into the thick green tangle.

  Jake had been following his father’s botanist girlfriend along her web for the past several hours, trying to get his “canopy legs” back by taking short runs on the zip lines. He was now standing on a platform readying himself for a two-hundred-yard run, trying to remember everything he knew about long zips.

  “It’s just like riding a bike,” he whispered as he waited for Flanna to let him know that she was offline.

  “All clear!”

  A flock of blue-and-gold macaws exploded from the tree to his right, screeching off into the canopy. He snapped his harness on to the line and looked down. He could barely see the ground through the broad leaves and thick vines.

  “Just like riding a bike,” he repeated, and stepped off the platform into a void.

  He knew immediately that it was nothing like riding a bike.

  Too fast!

  He was completely out of control. Flanna had a bungee block breaking system at the end of each long run. He hoped it would slow him down. It didn’t. He hit the block. The bungee snapped like a piece of twine. He slammed headfirst into a branch as big around as he was. He heard his helmet crack. He dropped like a rock. Everything went black.

  Stars, he thought. How odd. You don’t see stars in the rain forest. The canopy blocks the sky. And why am I hanging here? Where am I? What happened?

  He shook his head trying to clear the fog. He regretted the move immediately. It felt like someone had inserted a hot poker into the center of his brain. He threw up, which was a little awkward, and messy, upside down. At least he thought he was upside down. He couldn’t see. There was something in his eyes, which he hoped was not vomit.

  “Oh my God! Jak
e! Are you okay?”

  He could hear Flanna shouting somewhere above him, but he couldn’t see her. He reached a gloved hand up to his face to wipe away whatever was blinding him. He looked at his glove. It wasn’t vomit; it was blood. A blurry-looking Flanna was working her way down to where he was dangling like a spider monkey.

  “You’re tangled,” Flanna said.

  What was that phrase Marty O’Hara and his friend Luther had used?

  “Duh du jour,” he said.

  “At least your sense of humor works.” Flanna was now perched ten feet above him on a landing platform. “I’m going to throw you a line. Can you manage to tie it to your harness?”

  “I think so.”

  She dropped the line. After a couple of awkward attempts he managed to snag it, but it seemed to take him forever to attach it to the harness, as if he’d somehow forgotten how to tie a knot.

  “Secured,” he was finally able to say.

  “Are you sure?”

  He stared at the knot for several seconds before he was able to confirm that the knot was indeed secured.

  What’s the matter with me?

  “I’m going to right you so you can grab the zip line.” Flanna sounded like she was speaking to him from the bottom of a steel barrel. “Once you have the line, you’ll have to untwist yourself to free up the pulley. I can’t tell if it will be clockwise or counterclockwise.”

  Jake wasn’t quite clear on the clockwise/counterclockwise thing, but he did understand that in order for her to reel him in he had to free the pulley. He began twisting himself around.

  “That’s the right direction,” Flanna said. “Keep going.”

  Every couple of rotations, he had to stop and wipe the blood out of his eyes.

  “I guess the helmet didn’t do me much good,” he said.

  “The helmet saved your life,” Flanna said. “A couple more twists.”

  Finally, the pulley popped free. Flanna reeled him in like a fish and helped him onto the platform.

  He sat down with his feet dangling over the edge. “Feels good to have something solid under me.”

  “I bet. Do you know what happened?”

  Jake shook his head. “Ouch!”

  Flanna smiled. “Better use your words.”

  “I’m not sure what happened,” Jake answered, keeping his head very still. “I guess I started out too fast and snapped the bungee brake.”

  “Too much time on the ocean and not enough time in the trees?”

  “I guess. How bad is it?”

  “I need to take off what’s left of your helmet. Hold your head steady.”

  He did, but it still hurt as Flanna popped the helmet off. She took out a package of antiseptic wipes from her backpack. “Head wounds always look worse than they are.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “This is going to sting.”

  She was right. The gentle dabbing felt like a blowtorch on his forehead. When she finished, she leaned back and squinted at the wound.

  “Well?” Jake asked.

  “The bleeding has stopped for the most part. I don’t see any gray matter leaking out. No permanent disfigurement. You’re going to live. But I’m going to have to put in a stitch or two.”

  “You’re a botanist,” Jake pointed out. “Not a plastic surgeon.”

  “I’m all you have, unless you want to stitch it up yourself.”

  “Have you done it before?”

  “Yep, and I’m pretty good at it, too, but we can’t do it up here. My medieval medical instruments are back at camp.”

  Flanna got out her first aid kit and bandaged his forehead while a group of golden lion tamarins watched from a safe distance. Jake’s head still throbbed, but by the time Flanna finished he was feeling better. He pulled himself to his feet, swaying a little.

  “Is that the tree or me?” he asked.

  Flanna laughed. “Probably a little of both.”

  “Are we taking the zips back?”

  Flanna shook her head. “We’ll go the old-fashioned way. On our feet. You don’t have a helmet, and it might be best for you to stay on the ground until the gash heals. If you’re not careful, it will go septic. The rain forest is the perfect environment for infection.”

  Jake grinned. “So you’re grounding me?”

  Flanna returned his grin. “That’s right, mister.”

  Jake’s mother had died a couple of years earlier in a tragic accident. It had taken a while for him to get used to his dad having a girlfriend, but now he assumed she would one day be his stepmom, that is if she and Doc could ever get out of the rain forest and end up in the same place at the same time. Flanna and Jake were always teasing each other about her being Jake’s stepmom — a situation that was going to be a little weird for both of them when it finally happened. Flanna was about ten years younger than Doc. She would always be more of an older sister to Jake than a mom.

  What would have been an hour-long trip on the zip lines was going to take them three or four hours on foot.

  Flanna got an odd look on her face and scanned the surrounding canopy as if she were looking for something, or someone.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know,” Flanna said. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but the past couple of days I’ve had this feeling that there is somebody else out here. That we’re being watched. Ridiculous, I know. A case of the jungle willies, but I can’t seem to shake it.”

  Jake hoped that if there was someone watching, they hadn’t seen his bonehead collision with the tree.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Flanna asked.

  Jake rubbed his head. Aside from the throbbing, he felt fine. “I’m good to go.”

  “Well, go slow so your head doesn’t start bleeding again.”

  They roped down to the ground and started the long trek back to camp.

  Aboard the sailboat, on his way to Australia, there had been nothing but open sky and 360 degrees of horizon. In the rain forest there was no sky, no horizon, and little light penetrating the thick canopy. He’d missed the shadowy rain forest, and he was glad to be back, but he wasn’t sure being on foot right now was the best way to get back to camp. Every step he took hurt his head. He was lagging farther and farther behind his future stepmom.

  About an hour into the painful walk, Flanna came to a sudden stop. She was fifty yards ahead of him. At first he thought she was waiting for him to catch up, but there was something in her posture that told him it was something else.

  “What the matter?” he called out.

  “Jararaca,” she answered quietly.

  Jake froze. One thing he hadn’t encountered at sea was venomous snakes. The jararaca, or fer-de-lance, was one of the most venomous snakes on earth. It was also one of the most aggressive. Flanna took a very slow and deliberate step backward, then paused. Jake wanted to rush forward and help her, but there was nothing he could do for her. If he ran up and disturbed the snake, it might strike.

  Flanna was wearing long pants, but they weren’t snake-proof pants. Everyone at the preserve had them, but they rarely wore them because the pants were too hot. She wasn’t wearing boots, either. Sneakers worked a lot better when you were zip-lining and climbing the slippery canopy. Flanna took another tentative step back. Jake couldn’t see the snake from where he was, and there was a good chance she couldn’t see it clearly, either. The fer-de-lance blended in almost perfectly with its surroundings. It was lucky she’d seen it before it struck.

  If she’d seen it before it struck.

  The horrible possibility moved him up the game trail closer to her. “Are you hit?”

  Flanna stopped in midstep. “No, but there are two of them,” she said, her eyes forward. “Aggressive, ready to strike. I’m just trying to get out of range. Make sure there’s nothing behind me. I don’t want to trip.”

  Jake quickly scanned the path behind her. “You’ve got two roots coming up four steps behind you. A big one and a little one. I’ll tell you when
you’re on them.” He zeroed in on her muddy tennis shoes. “Step!”

  Flanna hesitated and felt the root with the heel of her shoe.

  “That’s the small root,” Jake said. “The bigger one is about eight inches behind it.”

  She carefully negotiated the second snag.

  “It’s clear all the way to me,” Jake said.

  She continued moving backward, then turned around about ten feet before she reached him.

  “That was close,” she said, perspiration pouring down her face. “A fine pair we make. You smash into a branch, and I nearly step on a pair of mating fer-de-lances.”

  “They were mating?”

  “I think so, and they weren’t too happy about being interrupted.”

  Jake pulled out his water bottle and handed it to her. She took a couple of sips and passed it back.

  “Guess we’ll have to circle around,” Jake said.

  “A wide circle,” Flanna said. “I’ll take lead. I have a pretty good idea of where they are.”

  The snake encounter slowed Flanna way down. Jake was easily able to keep up with her now. They got around the area where the snakes were and found the path back to camp.

  “Have you noticed anything odd about Raul since you got back to camp?” Flanna asked after a while.

  Raul was a native they had picked up on their first trip upriver. He had helped them track and capture their first jaguar. His entire body was covered in jaguar rosettes.

  “He’s always been a little odd,” Jake said.

  “The past few days he’s been unusually quiet and a little surly.”

  Jake shook his head and regretted it immediately. “He seems okay to me,” he said after the throbbing subsided. “Maybe he’s upset because he has to stay in camp and wait for Wolfe, instead of going ahead with Doc and Laurel.”

  “Maybe. But he must have understood the reason for it. This Travis Wolfe can’t be expected to head off into the rain forest by himself.”

  Jake laughed, and added that to the growing list of things he shouldn’t do. His head felt like it was going to fall off his neck.

  “You okay?”