Roosevelt's Beast: A Novel (19 page)

An additional comfort: his Winchester, black and inviolate, swimming through the watery green.

Had it been five minutes since he’d left? Ten? Had he traveled twenty yards or thirty? It no longer mattered. All that mattered was keeping that sound in his left ear. Then, when the sound’s angle bent, he stopped and braced himself against the peeling bole of a laurel tree. Slowly, he turned back toward the sound.

And saw nothing.

A prickle of panic seized him.
Where the hell is it?

His eyes ranged up and down the lines of trees, looking for motion, a flash of color. He scanned the canopy’s upper stories, and he was just starting to retrace his steps when something flickered into his line of vision.

It was a head—pale, still, and astonished—attached as if by whim to an empty cavity. A tapir, Kermit thought. Only the barest chassis of a tapir, stripped to its component parts. And into that devastated cavity the Beast—if Beast it was—had plunged its head with the fervor of a lover.

There was a bubble, a shudder. Then, with infinite slowness, the creature raised its head. Kermit’s stomach contracted to the size of a pebble as he stared at that tangle of hair and blood and entrail, almost indissoluble from what it devoured. It was as if the creature, not yet sated, had turned to consuming itself.

With an obscene gargle, the Beast now lifted one of its own appendages and smeared it across its head. From the morass of tissue and plasma, a pair of eyes emerged. A shock of perception—
intelligence
—scanning the terrain.

Kermit drew back. Breathed in a draft of air and slowly expelled it. The Colonel was on the other side, concealed in some makeshift blind, waiting for Kermit’s signal. Now was the moment.

What had the old man said? “Let us pray we shoot true.” Kermit raised his tongue to his palate, but the tongue was dry, obdurate. It wouldn’t signal. He wetted it with his lips, then tried again. Nothing.
Nothing!
He took another breath, then tried once more, and this time his tongue unbent itself enough to emit a series of staccato clicks, which flew one after another through the leaden air.

It was the squirrel’s call he had been making all his life. Father would know it anywhere, but the
creature
—the creature had never heard such a sound before. It cocked its head, listening for more. Then it lurched upward and took a long step toward Kermit—when, from the woods behind, a shot rang out.

Father’s first volley. Not in the head, as Kermit had hoped, but the shoulder. Startled, the creature let out a shriek and spun around, frantically canvassing the vines and boles. Kermit raised his rifle, positioned the thing in his sights.

Now,
he thought.
Before it runs.

But its next motion was neither forward nor back but
up.
With a velocity so fierce it was as if the laws of gravity had been instantly and absolutely abrogated, the creature flung itself straight into the overhanging branches.

Kermit gritted his teeth, muttered an oath. Once the creature was in the canopy, there would be no tracking it down. But then he noticed that the noise above his head was expanding. Branches were shaking; leaves were raining down. The creature wasn’t retreating, it was merely seeking a faster and cleaner route to its next prey.

Kermit could just make out its outline, swinging from branch to branch with its one good arm, moving straight in the direction of the shot. Straight in the direction of the Colonel.

“Father,” he whispered.

And then he was bellowing.

“Father! It’s coming to you! It’s coming to you!”

Kermit stumbled toward the clearing, slamming into trunks, tripping on buttresses. He heard another shot ring out, but the creature, undeterred, kept thrashing its path through the leaves and vines.

“Father!”

A third shot. The canopy went still.

Kermit stopped, strained his ears. Then he heard a stifled cry. A human cry.

With the butt of his rifle, Kermit hacked and bludgeoned his way through the last three yards of undergrowth, and as he tumbled back into the clearing, the rays of sun came at him like knives. He rubbed his eyes and, through a caramel haze, saw …

Something that looked like his father, sprawled on the ground beneath a grunting bloody mass of fur and leaves.

Luz and Thiago had thrown themselves on top of the creature. They were pummeling it with their fists, pounding for all they were worth, and yet so little did they trouble the thing that it had only to shrug to fling them off—with such a sickening force that Thiago was left in a tiny ball on the ground and Luz sat half insensible against a tree.

Now the creature was free to focus on its prey. With horror, Kermit noted the mottled pink of his father’s face … heard the breath leaching out in broken measures.…

“No,” Kermit growled. “You won’t.”

His rifle was already raised, his cheek was pressed against the stock, his finger was curled around the trigger.

Steady. Steady.

The bullet was so loud, it was as if it gutted the sky clean through. The creature screeched, grabbed its side, then tumbled over, rolling two or three times in the dirt before falling still.

For several seconds the old man lay there. Then, with a barbed groan, he levered himself up, squinting in the naked sunlight. “Have you … have you seen my—”

My glasses,
he was going to say. Only there was no time to finish, because the creature was erect once more—alive, yes—and flying straight in Kermit’s direction.

In his short life, Kermit had seen cheetahs, lions, antelopes, wildebeest. Never, never, never had he seen a creature—a wounded creature at that—move with such velocity. He had no time to reload, no time even to breathe or brace, so the collision, when it came, seemed to vibrate all the way down to his individual cells. When consciousness returned, he was flat on the ground, the creature was on top of him, pinning him to earth, rendering him just as helpless as the Colonel had been. His brain was clouded with pain. He could feel the creature’s saliva sting like acid against his face.

Well, there it is,
he thought.
Get it done with.

It was no different from how he’d felt in that river, the water speeding him along, all thought of rescue abandoned. He was resigned. Ready. But then he opened his eyes and found himself staring up into a pair of eyes so layered with anguish and fear that, in what he assumed to be his final moments, Kermit was visited with the curious desire to comfort his killer.

There, there. It’s all right.…

For some indeterminate length, they stared at each other. Then the world exploded around them.

It was a single shot, loud as a cannon in Kermit’s ear. The creature’s eyes sheeted over. Its frame rippled with spasms as it loosened its grip and tipped its head back. There was one last shot, and the weight fell away, and with a choked cry Kermit rolled himself up, already groping for his gun. In the clearing stood his father, pale and grim, the smoke curling from his rifle. Next to him, Luz and Thiago. At their feet, the still figure of the creature, its eyes popped open.

“God have mercy,” the old man muttered.

Luz knelt down by the creature and peered into its eyes.
“Morto,”
she whispered.

“No,” said Kermit. “Don’t—”

In the very next second, every orifice in its face sprang open, and from out of its midsection a great plume spewed, catching Luz squarely in the face, blinding her and throwing her on her back.

With one final spasm of energy, the creature flung itself at her. As they rolled across the ground in a hideous embrace, the cry that issued from the creature’s throat was more terrible than anything Kermit had ever heard. Rage and sorrow and terror and all the darkest emotions distilled into a wailing shriek that scattered every last parrot from the trees and left Kermit and the Colonel too transfixed even to lift their rifles. It was Thiago who kept his eye clear. Thiago who strode silently forward and plunged his bamboo dagger into the creature’s back. Drove it in again and again and again until, with a gurgle and a gush, the beast collapsed in a sodden jumble of limbs. Even then Thiago continued to plunge the dagger, like an axman felling a tree, each stroke a declaration of will—until Kermit caught the boy’s arm in mid-strike.

“Thiago…”

The boy’s face was clouded like a night sky. His knuckles shone white and veined around the bamboo shaft.

“Mamãe,”
he said.

Luz, virtually unrecognizable in her raiment of blood, staggered to her feet and drew him toward her.

“Meu bebê,”
she cooed, softly teasing the dagger from his fingers.
“Meu grande homem.”

The Colonel sank to his knees and lowered one ear to the creature’s mouth—or at least the part of its head that most resembled a mouth. For upward of a minute, he knelt there, unmoving, listening for a breath. Then, with a pair of light snaps, he declared:

“Now
it’s
morto.
”

14

“Why, Kermit,” said the old man. “You’re shivering.”

Of course I’m shivering,
Kermit wanted to say.
It’s freakishly cold.
He was actually following the trajectory of the breath from his mouth, expecting it to freeze in the air above him. But when he looked around at the others, he realized he was the only one trembling. Even Thiago was as still as a barber.

“And how is our brave lad?” asked the Colonel, lowering himself to the ground until he was looking directly into the boy’s face. “All well?” he asked.

Thiago, without even quite knowing what was being asked of him, nodded.

“Little titan,” said the Colonel, jabbing him lightly on the jaw. “Let us speak not of Gunga Din, let us speak of Horatius at the bridge, yes! I do not traffic in hyperbole. And the doughty Miss Luz!” He dragged a handkerchief from his pocket. “The Fearless, the Indomitable. I hereby proffer you a means of cleaning your person.
Para lavar,
my dear Luz.”

She, too, nodded her thanks and began to wipe her face. The blood came off in thick daubs, like grease from a griddle.

“Obrigada,”
she said.

The sun had shut itself behind a cloud, and in the melt of afternoon, the clearing seemed to be liquefying and evaporating around them. From every precinct of the jungle, insects swarmed forth, gossiping over their newest feast.

And yet how strangely that feast now loomed. No matter what angle Kermit came at the carcass from, no matter how much he pored over it, he couldn’t put his finger on the part that didn’t
work.
Then he heard Thiago murmur:

“Pequeno.”

That was it exactly.
Small.
Ludicrously small. As though some prankster had crept up behind them, stolen away the Beast, and substituted this … tiny changeling, a fraction of the original’s size.

“Why, it’s no more than three feet,” whispered Kermit, kneeling by the creature. “Head to toe.”

“Most curious,” agreed the old man.

“More than curious, Father, we were—we were
helpless
before this thing. Utterly captive. Are we to believe this … this little
thing
created all this havoc?”

Kermit sat back on his haunches, squeezed his lids down to half-mast. “Luz,” he said. “Give me the handkerchief.”

Feeling a bit like a sculptor, he began to gouge away the layers of mud and blood from the creature’s head. With each stroke, more and more features revealed themselves: a short snout; a scraggly beard; a pair of wide-set nostrils; two rows of humanoid teeth.

It was Luz, peering over Kermit’s shoulder, who delivered the first verdict.

“Bugio.”

“What’s that she said?”

“A howler monkey, Father.”

“
Howler?
Are you certain?”

It was the eyes that gave it away finally. Solemn, dignified, ineffably wounded. It was a look no other monkey had.

“I don’t understand,” said the old man. “I’ve
heard
a howler before.”

All these weeks in the jungle had made the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition well acquainted with the cry. That shriek, fierce and guttural, penetrated for miles. Unmistakable, yes, and nothing like the unholy noise that still rang in Kermit’s ears.

“Well,” said the Colonel with an abbreviated sigh. “At least we know why it didn’t leave tracks. Howlers are strictly arboreal, aren’t they? It’s why we’ve never been able to kill us any.”

“They’re also vegetarian.”

“What’s that?”

“They eat leaves and berries, Father. Just like gorillas.”

“Ah, yes.” The old man pinched his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Apparently
this
howler begs to differ.”

Once more, Kermit studied the creature’s eyes, trying to remember how it had looked in its final moments, but the image was already blurring.

“There must be a scientific explanation,” said the Colonel. “It might have acquired some pathogen or disease. Hydrophobia, perhaps. I’ve seen rabid dogs become quite extraordinarily aggressive.”

“Have you seen a dog that could take down a jaguar? Devour it in minutes? Devour a full-grown man?”

“Well, not
yet
I haven’t. Confound it, though, Kermit, this is a new world, as you said. A new
species
, for all we know. I daresay our friends at the Natural History Museum would—hello, what’s this?”

Out of nowhere, it seemed, a stripe of blood had trickled down the old man’s left eyeglass, bisecting his range of vision.

“Gad,” he said. “These head wounds have a way of bleeding, don’t they?”

“Father.”

“Never mind, Kermit, it’s just a cut. Nothing to get womanish about.”

“No, it’s…”

A crater.
There was no better word for it. A hole the size of a silver dollar had been carved from the old man’s forehead—driven, as if by an auger, through the skin all the way to the subcutaneous tissue. Very nearly to the bone. Luz was mopping the wound, but the blood kept flowing, so she rustled up some leaves from the forest floor—mahogany and buriti and spiny fern—and, with quick fingers, tore them and ground them into a poultice, which she glued together with her own spit and plastered over the wound. The work of no more than a minute, and still the blood came streaming forth.