Jon Evans - Swarm

I held my hands up in an I-surrender way. “I don’t even want to know.”

Rather than take my shoes off I had Lisa carefully cut the legs free of my jeans. “Please be especially careful,” I said, as she worked the knife around the inside of my legs. My own body had noticeably grown less puffy over the last couple of days too. “Do they have to be short-shorts? I’ll look like I’m cruising the Castro.”

“Maybe you should be quiet and not distract the woman holding a razor-sharp blade inches from your precious genitals,” she suggested.

Once we had finished reinforcing our improvised vessel we had nothing left but the ragged remnants of our clothes, her knife and gun, and my wallet and phone. I stared at that paltry pile stacked on a rock by the side of the river. In that context they looked like artifacts of a civilization from another world.

“The gun might still work,” Lisa said beside me. She had taken it apart and cleaning it as best she could. “But with all the mud and rain I can’t be sure. And if we go over, it’ll definitely be useless. So will your phone.”

A bad thought occurred to me. “We’re going to fucking freeze on that thing. That water is cold.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure the rapids will kill us first.”

I gave her a look.

We stood in silence for a long moment, staring at the flimsy creation we intended to ride down this surging mountain river into the unknown. Our raft was about six feet long and four wide, profoundly uncomfortable and studded with countless splinters. To guide it we had two longish, flattish post-like trunks, equally unsuitable for poling and paddling. Whitewater rafting regularly killed people with expensive custom-built rafts, lifejackets, helmets, professional equipment and trained guides. Our plan was utter madness.

But it was too late to turn back; we had sacrificed our clothes, we were committed. The sun had descended behind the western hills, a bite had entered the mountain air, and I was already shivering. Another full night up here without shelter or fire and hypothermia would get us.

“Look on the bright side,” she said. “It’s almost a new moon.”

“That is almost by definition not the bright side,” I pointed out. “We won’t be able to fucking see anything.”

“Neither will they. Do you think we should tie ourselves down to it?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

We stared at each other.

“This is completely batshit insane, you realize,” I said.

“I know. What can I say. Crazy times call for crazy measures.”

“Right.” I bit back a lament about ever having left California. I already knew Lisa felt awful about having brought me here. No need to twist that knife.

We sat beside our raft, and as the sun set we huddled shivering together, partly for warmth, partly just to hold each other against what we were about to attempt. I closed my eyes.

Then I felt Lisa’s entire body stiffen against mine as if shocked by a thousand volts.

I knew without opening my eyes what had happened. They had found us. We had done our best, we had tried our hardest, but it wasn’t enough, the fates and stars were against us. It was almost a relief. At least now we could stop running.

“Uh,” Lisa said in a strangled voice, “uh, James?”

There was terror in her voice, but something else, too, a kind of what-the-fuck astonishment that penetrated my despair. So I opened my eyes.

And my jaw fell open, too, as I gaped at the gigantic dark mass of flesh coming out of the river towards us, via that strange muddy hollow in the riverbank. Its monstrous, bulbous body was the size of a car. It had fangs the size of my forearm set in its wet pink maw. I was so exhausted, and the beast was so out of place, that for a moment I thought it some horrific mutation, or even an alien invasion.

Then I recognized it; but that recognition did not make the sighting any less surreal. We held each other tightly and stared motionlessly as the impossible creature wallowed out of the river, staring at us balefully. We held our breath. After an endless moment it adjusted its course just enough to veer around us, close enough that I could have reached out and touched its wet hide. Finally it disappeared into the jungle.

Slowly we began to relax.

I said, disbelievingly, “Was that a hippopotamus?”

Lisa nodded.

“No,” I said, “no it wasn’t, it couldn’t have been, they’re not native to South America, they’re African.”

“Escobar,” she said. “The drug lord. The drug lord to end all drug lords, Forbes named him one of the ten wealthiest men alive, he singlehandedly brought the Colombian state to one knee. He brought hippos to his private zoo, and after he died, after we hunted him down, they escaped and started to breed. That must have been one of their children.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty.”

“Welcome to Colombia. It’s hard for people who haven’t been here to understand, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he mostly writes nonfiction.”

I nodded slowly. “Maybe it was a good omen?”

“I don’t know. Maybe so. Let’s hope.”

We waited. The streaks of clouds turned crimson, then cotton-candy pink, then pale again. A star appeared in the sky, and another.

“James, if we don’t make it, or even if we do, I’m really sorry,” Lisa said in a low voice. “I just want you to know that. I’m so sorry.”

I impulsively kissed her forehead. “You’re not responsible. It was bad luck.”

But it hadn’t been. Someone had set us up. The ambush at the school had been intended for Sophie, I was almost sure of it, and somehow related to Michael Kostopoulos. But there was no sense speculating now.

“You ready?” she asked.

I nodded. She kissed my cheek and got up. I followed her lead. I was already half-numb with cold, almost fell as we carried the raft to the river. It occurred to me that we hadn’t even tested it to see if it could support our strength, and that just boarding it would be tricky.

“You first,” she said.

Her muscles strained with the effort of keeping the raft steady against the riverbank. I took a breath, concentrated, prayed to whatever gods might be that I wouldn’t screw this up like I had screwed up crossing the first river, and crawled onto it on all fours. It rocked queasily but held me. I added a quick addendum prayer for no more hippos. I knew they killed more people every year than crocodiles.

“Go a little bit further,” Lisa ordered.

I reluctantly obeyed. Just as the raft began to tip precipitously in my direction, and I gasped with dismay, she stepped on beside me and quickly dropped to hands and knees, righting it. The shore drifted away; and as the last rays of sunlight slipped away from the earth, we began to coast downriver.

Our combined weight drove the raft deep enough that water seeped up between the logs. I grabbed a loose vine-end and wished we had built in handles. In the faint starlight I could make out the line of termination between water and air, but the walls of foliage on either side were like moving shadows, motion without form. At first the ride was remarkably smooth, almost like bobbing up and down in still water while the land churned past on rails.

I was shivering and starving and I hurt all over, but I commanded my brain to ignore my body’s distress signals. The only good thing about this mad Mark Twain journey was that one way or another it would be over relatively soon. All I had to do was endure for, I hoped, a day more at most. Unless we fell off the raft, and got separated in the darkness, and I washed up on the shore and found myself alone and nearly naked in the jungle. The prospect seemed terrifyingly plausible. I tightened my grip on the vine.