Black Rain

A double click let her know he copied and she turned back to Verhoven. She now understood Hawker’s anger with the system, with orders and those who gave them. “When this is over, let me talk to him,” she said. “Let me try to explain it. I owe both of you at least that much.”

CHAPTER 40

Across the clearing, Hawker and McCarter entered the rainforest, passing through the scorched zone, where the Chollokwan fires had blackened everything bare, and reaching the lush green section just beyond it.

Wondering about his own sanity, McCarter turned to Hawker. “Tell me why we’re doing this again?”

“Those things kept coming from this direction,” Hawker said. “It became predictable. And some of them lingered here after they left the clearing. I want to know why.”

“What makes me think you already know why?”

“I don’t know anything,” Hawker insisted, examining the trunks of several trees and then moving deeper into the jungle. “But I have a theory. Their bodies are somewhat like insects, they have exoskeletons, incredibly strong but with simple joints. They took the body of the one I killed yesterday, presumably to eat it. Most predatory animals don’t do that. A lion will kill its rival but it won’t eat the body. Neither will hyenas or tigers. Sharks will—in a frenzy, when they’re biting anything that moves—but they’re also known to swim away from dead sharks found floating on the surface, as if the bodies are cursed. They even make a type of shark repellent from an enzyme found in dead sharks, because it contains a compound that triggers the flight response.”

Hawker’s eyes went from tree to tree and then to the ground looking for tracks. “But ants will eat their own,” he said. “So will roaches and all the other bugs of this world. They’ll carry the dead back to the nest and tear them apart like an old car for spare parts. So maybe these things are like insects. And if that’s the case, then maybe they follow pheromone trails. Maybe they came in and out on this path because one of them laid down a trail and the others just followed without even thinking. In and out on the same line as if it’s the only road home, like ants who’ve found their way to the sugar bowl.”

As he listened to the theory McCarter had to smile, “It takes imagination to think of it that way.”

“I suppose,” Hawker said, moving to the base of another massive tree. “But if it’s the case, then maybe we can set a trap for them—rig up some of Kaufman’s explosives and set them off when the bastards show up for their midnight snack. And if we can do that, enough of that, then maybe they’ll go off looking for easier prey.”

“There are a lot of ifs in that theory.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hawker said, examining the gray bark of yet another trunk. “The main problem is, they only show up intermittently on the scanners, but they’re not invisible, they’re just cold-blooded …” He stopped, having found what he was looking for. “And vertical.”

McCarter’s eyes took in the tree in front of Hawker. The massive Brazil nut tree had to be ten feet thick at the base. It soared upward for two hundred feet or more, its branches spreading through three layers of canopy, supporting nests and orchids and different species of animals at various levels, though nothing appeared to be living in it now. Its branches blotted out the sky in a pattern of overlapping shadows and multiple hues of chlorophyllic green.

“Vertical,” McCarter said, looking up.

Hawker nodded. “When we saw them in the cave, they were climbing around on the ceiling. And the one that took Kaufman went straight up into the canopy. Vertical. But our defenses are set up to look for the horizontal, the man on the ground. The heat sensors can’t see these things at all and the motion trackers only see them when they drop down. That’s why they seem to appear and disappear. But if we can recalibrate the motion sensors and point them up in the trees at the proper angle, then we can spot them earlier, and do something about it. But to do that we’re going to have to know how high they climb.”

McCarter examined what Hawker had found, deep gouges running up and down the trunk. The grooves began at a point five feet off the ground and tracked straight up, deep claw marks in the living wood.

“They must scurry right up,” McCarter said. “Like a repair man on a telephone pole.”

“Yeah,” Hawker agreed, “and we have to get up there and see how high. Give me a boost.”

Reluctantly, McCarter laid down his rifle and put his hands together, interlocking his fingers. As Hawker stepped into the hold, McCarter boosted him up and Hawker stretched and grabbed the lowest branch, then pulled himself up.

As soon as Hawker was in the tree, McCarter snatched up his rifle and checked the area around him. “How high are you planning to go?”

“As high as they went,” Hawker said.

McCarter glanced up as Hawker ascended through the branches. “How long do you think it’s going to take?”

“I’m not sure,” Hawker said. “Do you have an appointment or something to get to?”