Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

Boris gazed at the listening faces. ‘Guys, I’m kidding. This is too depressing, lighten the hell up.’

Adam said nothing; he wondered how he had ended up trusting his fate to this strange and mercurial man. A noise from the rear of the terrace disturbed the insecty silence. They all turned: Jessica was back, with the vet who was also a doctor, a laconic Australian. The vet allayed their questions: ‘Your friend is fine…’

Jessica stepped down on to the terrace, and gazed at them with a slightly faked triumphalism. ‘I told you I’m OK. Really.’

Boris squinted. ‘You are sure, bonita?’

The exchange was pointless. Jess was evidently determined to continue. Besides, as she said, what else could she do? Go back on her own?

Boris nodded. ‘OK, guys, I suggest we call it a very early night. Bob says we can sleep in the dorm, and then we leave first light.’

‘Wait.’ Nina lifted a hand. ‘I’ve been thinking. Something we gotta do.’

‘What?’

‘We should burn the receipts. We know everything now. We know exactly where my dad went, we have no need for them: if we burn them now no one could ever follow our path?’

Jessica nodded. ‘Yes. Very good idea.’

‘Because,’ Nina said, ‘the Zetas and Catrina are still out there. Who knows what details were in my dad’s notebook, and who knows what was missing? They could be riding the river right now. Burn the evidence so no one else can ever follow our trail.’

No one disagreed. Nina found her rucksack and she pulled out the receipts; Adam sourced a metal trashcan, Nina threw the chits and slips into the can, Boris flicked a Zippo, ignited one large invoice, and threw it in with the others.

The flames licked and thrived, and then they died. Then Nina made a glove with a T-shirt, and carried the hot metal pail of charred papers to the top of the stairs that led down to the river. She seemed so alone, standing there, silhouetted by her sadness and her grief, that Adam joined her. Together they shook the bucket and the ashes scattered in the evening breeze, fluttering tiny scraps of blackness scattering into deeper starlit blackness.

Nina murmured, ‘All life death doth end and each day dies with sleep.’ She put a hand to her saddening face. ‘Ach… I’m exhausted.’

They found the dorm, with its sextuplet of little beds. The instant he slipped twixt the clean scratchy sheets Adam slept, he was so tired.

When he woke he was so groggy he couldn’t work out why he had woken. It was still dark: why was he awake? Then he heard the horrible screeching. Everyone else was asleep in the little soldierly cots. Couldn’t they hear this? What was this horrible noise?

A noise rustled on his right; he saw in profile a figure, sitting up. It was Jessica. He could only see her eyes, wet and shining in the light. The rest of her was a phantom blur.

‘God, Adam what was that?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. ’

The screeching repeated. Human but alien. Horrifying.

It was as if he was a kid again, with his sister; two kids afraid of the dark, scaring each other with ghost stories. Except that this was real: there really were monsters out there.

‘Christ!’

A flash of scarlet in the dark afforded a second of relief. It was just macaws, squabbling in the trees. They sat there, saying nothing. The dark minutes dragged themselves along, and nothing else happened, and at last they slept once more.

The next time Adam awoke he realized at once what he was hearing: silence. The incessant rasping jungle insects had stopped, because it was dawn. The morning was already embroidering, with tints of blue, the pantherine blackness of the sky. Mist rose from the damp, chilly earth.

‘ Buenas dias. ’ It was Boris. ‘Wake the others. Let’s get going right away!’

This didn’t give them time to wash, let alone shower. But Boris was adamant. He wanted to get out of here right away. Nina and Jessica and Adam thanked the yawning scientists; then they shinned down the ladder and climbed on the boat and the stubbled captain turned the engine even as he drank a plastic cup of Jim Beam, and they chugged away, knifing through the dull brown silk of the waters.

The Ucayali jungle was, if anything, even thicker than the Amazon forests. The sun burned down on occasional and abandoned plantings of manioc; all else was seamless wilderness. Only the animal life enlivened the numbing monotony. Hoatzin birds in the trees; the odd pod of pink dolphins. Otherwise the jungle, for all its supposed life and biodiversity, evinced a paralysing and menacing sameness. There weren’t even any flowers. Just an intensity of green and repetitive trees, like the bars of an endless cage.

After six hours the captain pulled up at another pier. They apparently now had to walk. No one spoke. The anxiety and tension was making everyone silent. They were in headhunter territory.

The captain sent one of his noticeably unwilling deckhands along, to help. He was called Jose. He was so scared his teeth actually chattered; or maybe he was ill.

They trekked. The jungle here was pristine, and purely hostile. Every tree concealed something that stung, or pricked, or hissed, or bit. Lianas snagged the path. Adam grasped one liana to vault a fallen bough and immediately he felt the screaming pain of his error.

‘Jesus, Jesus fucking Christ!’ The liana carried a stream of army ants who attacked him, as one, racing on to his body, making him yell, and writhe, as they bit. ‘Get them off me! Please!’ It was a miraculous agony. He’d only touched the liana for a mere second and there were hundreds of them all over him, stinging and biting: he ripped off his T-shirt and flailed at them helplessly. ‘Shit!’

Boris took one big ant between thumb and forefinger and ripped the torso away from the head, which remained pincered to the flesh. Slowly and capably, he pulled several fiercely biting ants from Adam’s arm. Nina and Jessica helped.

‘Natives use the ants for sewing up wounds,’ Boris told them as they worked. ‘They get the ants to bite and the ant heads stay attached, closing the wound, very clever, very clever. Nature’s suture. Hurts like all hell though, doesn’t it?’

It took twenty minutes for all the ants to be plucked from Adam’s bleeding skin. He put his T-shirt back on; his back stung ferociously. Then the hike continued: endless and hot and painful. A sloth glared at them, half-dead, in the trees. Sweat-bees hovered, seeking the moistness of the human eye. Tarantulas reared up, absurdly demonic. Daring them to go further.

Nina said what they were all thinking. ‘This place is a nightmare.’

Boris chuckled. ‘Imagine what it was like for the conquistadors, eh? Hacking through here in full body armour, for months, for years, over thousands of miles. Those damn bastards were crazy. Some of them went real crazy, there was one totally loco conquistador called Perez Quesada: he was a real nice guy; he would slice breasts off the women, and chop off the noses and ears of children, for amusement. He killed babies so their moms could walk faster. As the expedition went on he started impaling the men — mainly because they weren’t scared of being hanged. He went further and further into the unknown, going crazier with every mile, him and his psycho friends, Juan Pedro de Grau — he went on to Mexico, married some wild queen — and Rodrigo de Cuellar: he was even more brutal… You know sometimes I wonder if the conquistadors found ulluchu? Mn? That might explain their extreme cruelty, no? Maybe — hey, look, look!’ He was pointing. ‘See that? It’s flor de quinde, the hummingbird’s flower. Bright red tubular flowers — Bastante bonita — probably psychedelic, but everyone’s too scared to try, and there: that’s the tree of the evil eagle. Borrachero, Brugmansia sanguinea, subspecies vulcanicola. ’