Annabel moaned softly. "It's so late, Riley. In a couple of hours the sun will go down."
"We'll leave in a few minutes," she assured. "The guides will take us up the mountain and this will be over. We're so close now."
Annabel continued to rock back and forth, Riley's arm around her shoulders for comfort, but all the while, Riley studied the members of their traveling group, trying to discern who she might be able to count on if things went wrong. The shivering in the ground told her bad things were bound to happen. All three guides had rushed to help the three men with the spiders. They didn't appear to be afraid of them at all. In fact, they picked some of them up very gently and turned them around.
She found the way the three natives handled the tarantulas fascinating. They clearly wanted to save them, not destroy them. The tarantulas seemed confused, turning in circles, avoiding the hot flames. Gary switched off the very efficient flamethrower and, like Riley, watched the guides gently managing the spiders away from everyone and back into the rain forest.
Not one of the porters had helped, Riley noted. They huddled close together, whispering. Her heart sank. They would need a couple of porters going up the mountain and at least two would accompany Gary and Jubal with their guide.
"Come on, Mom," she said. "We're heading out again. Drama's over. The guides dealt with the spiders, and we're back on track."
The ground shivered again. "We have to hurry," Annabel whispered. "Hurry, Riley." She glanced up toward the sky. The sun would be down in a short time.
Riley positioned herself directly behind her mother on the narrow trail the guides had chosen to make the last miles to the base of the mountain. She would argue with her guide later to keep going up the mountain. Right now, it was imperative that they just get moving. Annabel's agitation grew with every passing minute.
Ben and Jubal went in front of Annabel, and Gary chose to bring up the rear behind the last porter. Riley was grateful she was a good distance from Weston and Shelton with several people between them. Once they actually got started, the guides and porters hacking out the dense trail, Annabel ceased muttering and just walked, her gaze on the back of Jubal's shirt.
The whispers in their head started up an hour before the sun set. The sun had faded, bringing shadows into the rain forest, changing the appearance of plants to monstrous shapes. Riley could see the effects of the incessant buzzing in everyone's head. For her, the sound was faded and far into the background, but even her mother began to mumble a protest.
Perhaps because of the danger to someone she loved, Riley's senses seemed to increase with every step she took, along with awareness of her surroundings. She found herself seeing things she'd never noticed before. Individual leaves. The way the moss and fern grew and the flowers wound their way up trunks to the skies. For the first time in her life, she was wholly fascinated by the growth of the plants. She could hear the life force of the earth, a pounding beat that nearly drove out those soft meaningless whispers trying to invade her mind. For a few moments, as darkness began to drop its shroud, the surrounding plant life had seemed frightening; now it was exquisitely beautiful and even comforting.
The colors in the rain forest seemed far more vivid, even as night began to fall, flowers creeping up trunks and bursting across the ground. Moisture dripped, the sound musical rather than annoying. Riley felt as if the land she walked on recognized her for the very first time and was signaling acceptance of her presence. The hostility she felt was from an outside source, some subtle force she couldn't yet identify, but felt weaving through the forest like a disease.
Behind her, the porter Capa muttered in his own language under his breath, hacking at the tangle of vines and flowers springing up as Annabel walked. Riley was careful to step close to her mother, covering her tracks, so the porter couldn't tell the plants pushing through the thick vegetation hadn't already been there.
Her mother glanced over her shoulder, back at Riley, looking exhausted. She sent her daughter a small smile and mouthed, "I love you."
Riley felt a flood of love for her mother, streaming strong. She blew her a kiss.
Overhead, monkeys suddenly shrieked, so that the rain forest erupted into a cacophony of noise. The monkeys followed their every movement, running along the tree branches overhead throwing twigs and leaves. Some brandished branches threateningly and displayed teeth-another new phenomenon for Riley. In her experience, the monkeys and wildlife kept their distance.
Without warning, something landed on her back, driving her straight to the ground. Sharp claws gripped her shoulders, raking at her pack. She was hit again and again as more monkeys sprang from the trees, their combined weight knocking her backward. She heard Annabel scream and Jubal curse. The sound of Capa's chanting grew loud above the shrieking of the monkeys.
"Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη."
Frantic, screaming for Gary and Jubal, Riley fought to throw off the monkeys and pull out the Glock at the same time.
Chapter 5
Riley twisted out from beneath the pile of woolly monkeys, coming up on one knee, using a two-fisted grip to steady the gun. She couldn't see anything. There were dozens of gray and olive, red-brown and black monkeys between her and Annabel. The ones leaping on her mother had driven her back into the dense brush, and all Riley could see were the furry bodies in some kind of shrieking frenzy. She didn't dare shoot at them for fear of hitting Annabel.
Her mother screamed again, the sound terrified, reverberating through Riley's head. She scrambled to her feet, only to have another wave of primates slam her back to the ground. Each woolly monkey weighed close to seventeen pounds, and they dropped hard from the branches overhead, using their weight and sheer numbers to crush the humans under them.
The buzzing in her head, that awful chant, swelled in volume-in command. Han kalma, emni han ku kod alte. Tappatak ηamaη. Tappatak ηamaη.
She could hear the words echoing through her mind, over and over, a guttural, deep-throated chant, almost like the monks she'd heard in Tibet when throat-chanting. The sound disturbed on the most elemental level, raising the hair on her body, making her skull ache, flashing through her nervous system until she wanted to shriek like the monkeys.
Riley tried to roll away from the attacking creatures, but they stuck like glue, attaching themselves to her hair and clothing and pack, holding on as if their lives depended on it. As a rule, woolly monkeys lived in the higher elevations, farther up in the cloud forest, and they weren't threatening to anyone. They lived in social groups of up to forty, but the numbers dropping from the trees and attacking all members in their party were far more than forty.
Sobbing, Riley threw monkeys off of her, uncaring that they were using teeth and claws to drive her to the earth, and every time she hurled one away, they shredded skin. She rose to her feet fast, whirling in a circle trying to orient herself. The woolly monkeys were everywhere, an army of them, and the men were trying to fight them off, just as she was.
She kicked at them, and one sank his teeth into her leg, trying to drag her down just as she spotted the dense foliage where her mother fought off the crazed primates. The entire scene was surreal, unreal, a nightmare of violence and blood and screams. A gun barked behind her, and somewhere in front of her, another answered. She ran forward, kicking and swearing, sweeping a path clear to get to her mother. Twice she shot one of the monkeys in midair as they flung themselves at her face.
She ran toward the spot where she was certain her mother had been dragged. Annabel's screams were loud and shocked and horrible, an animal in pain, pierced through with utter terror. Riley couldn't see her through the screen of bodies. She had no idea where the porter, Capa, or Gary was, so there was no way to fire into the thrashing bodies of the primates safely even though every cell in her body commanded her to do so.
Woolly monkeys arrived in masses, far more than one troop of forty, dropping through the trees faster than the humans could get on their feet. The battle was something out of a horror movie, vicious and unreal. Her mother's screams abruptly stopped. Riley's heart jumped and more adrenaline flooded her body. The lack of sound was far worse.
Cursing, sobbing, Riley fought her way through the solid barriers of maddened primates to get to the place where Annabel had been driven off the trail. There was blood everywhere, dark pools of it. As she kicked away an aggressive monkey, a crimson arch sprayed into the air, splashing across the leaves of nearby brush, across tree trunks and the monkeys. For a moment she thought the monkeys were bleeding, but then she saw him. The porter. Not Raul, but his brother, Capa, chopping down over and over with a bloody machete.