Читать книгу The Colossus Rises - Peter Lerangis - Страница 11

CHAPTER SIX

INTO THE JUNGLE

IT WAS ONLY a short drop to the ground, but in my condition, I felt like I’d landed on iron spikes.

Sucking in air, I held back the urge to scream. I pressed my hands to my head to keep my brain from bursting. I had to be careful. I’d just had surgery and was a long way from recovery. Even just looking left and right hurt.

There wasn’t much back here: a scraggly yard of trampled soil and grass, some truck tire marks, a Dumpster. I was alone, and no one was coming after me.

Go. Now.

Each step felt like a blow. My ears rang. The distance from the window to the jungle felt like a mile. I was in full view of the windows on this side of the building. If anyone saw me and told Conan, I would be toast. Try as I might, I just couldn’t go very fast.

But as I stepped into the narrow path, I heard no alarm, no voices. Only the cawing of birds, the rustling of branches and leaves. An animal skittered through the grass, inches beyond my toes, barely making a sound.

Focus.

I hobbled as fast as I could. The adrenaline was pumping now, making me less aware of the pain in my head. The path wound around narrow gnarled trees. Thorns pricked my clothing and vines whipped against my face. The air was tinted orange in the rising sun, and droplets of dew sat like glistening insects on the leaves.

I don’t know how long I trudged like that—a half hour? an hour?—before all traces of coolness had burned off. My clothes were soaking wet with sweat and dew. Flies swarmed around my neck and ankles. I was slowing.

When my foot clipped something hard and sharp, I went down.

I let out a wail. Couldn’t help it. I took a deep breath to avoid blacking out. I had to will my clenched jaw open, to keep from shattering my own teeth. My eyes were seeing double, so I forced them to focus on where I’d tripped. It was a flat, disk-shaped rock, hidden by vines until my foot had torn away the greenery. A snaky line had been carved into the top.

I pulled away more vines. The rock was about the size of a manhole cover, covered with a blackish-green mold. But the carving was clear—a crude rendition of a slavering beast, a frightening eaglelike head with fangs.

It looked a lot like my Ugliosaurus.

This was freaking me out. I felt like someone was taunting me. I had to keep it together. There were carvings of mythical beasts all over the world—dragons and such. The kind of stuff that ends up in the museums of natural history. I didn’t care about that.

Look forward. Eyes on the prize.

The path was becoming narrow and choked. To my right, the black-topped mountain loomed over the trees. It seemed to be staying exactly the same size, which probably meant it was farther away than I thought. How far—maybe a mile, two? I felt like I was going nowhere.

I vowed to keep the mountain in sight, always to my right. That way my path would be straight. But straight to what? What if the next village was a half continent away? I had no idea how to survive in the wilderness—except from reading Hatchet and My Side of the Mountain, and I barely remembered those.

As I plodded on, the day grew darker. The thickening canopy blotted out sunlight like a vast ceiling. My ankle ached from the fall and my hands were bloodied by thorns. Overhead, caws and screeches rang out like playground taunts: Check it out! New prey! It can barely walk! The woods seemed to be closing in, dense and alive, rustling with the wind. Or maybe not the wind. Maybe hawks or a nearby pack of pumas or an angry cannibalistic tribe—or all, jockeying for position. First come, first served. A shadow passed and a buzzard landed on a branch above me, cocking its head expectantly.

“Not dead!” I called up. “See the moving mouth? Not! Dead!”

It didn’t budge a millimeter. It was waiting. Birds were smart. They knew where to find dinner. They could tell when someone was about to be killed.

My resolve was crumbling. I’d gone from get-me-out-of-here to what-was-I-thinking. Suddenly the idea of a zombie prep school didn’t seem so bad.

Time to bail.

But as I turned, I felt my heart drop like a coconut. I saw no trace of a path. The compound had long been swallowed up by the trees. The mountain was invisible behind the greenery.

The sun and the mountain. Those were the things that gave me direction. But I couldn’t see either one now.

“Help!”

My cry sounded puny in the wild-animal chorus. I stood, hoping that would help me get some more volume. “Help me!”

The buzzard fluffed out its feathers.

That was when I caught the hint of a breeze. It tickled across my nose and pricked me with a summer memory—the deck of a ferry, a Nantucket shack with Mom and Dad, air so damp it glued envelopes closed.

I may have been from Indiana, but I knew the smell of the sea. Sea meant shore. A shore was a path along water. I could follow it to a port. Swim if I had to. Signal to a passing ship.

As I moved in the breeze’s direction, I came across a pile of charred branches and vines. Excellent. With dry tinder, bright sun, and a piece of flint, I could start a fire and send up smoke signals. I gathered some of it, used my shirt as a sack, and slung it over my shoulders.

I forged on, feeling stronger. I was going to make it! I thought about returning home. Dad would be so freaked. He’d get a job in town and never leave home again. We’d work together to expose this place. My brain would recover from whatever these people had done to it.

My head had stopped pounding. The ringing in my ears was totally gone.

Unfortunately, so was the sea smell.

I stopped. I hadn’t been paying attention. I sniffed left and right. I sniffed until I had to sneeze. But I had lost the scent. Completely.

I thought of retracing my steps, but they’d vanished in the underbrush. Looking desperately around, I saw a gap between trees. Animal droppings. The possibility of a path. In the distance I thought I could see a tiny, bright glint. The reflection of the sun against water?

My heart raced. I hurried toward it, thrashing through the thick brush.

And then something fell from the sky.

“EEEEEEEEEEE!” With a piercing scream, it hurtled into my path. I sprang backward. As it leaped toward me, I could see a set of knifelike teeth and bright red gums.

A monkey landed on all fours and stood chattering angrily. In one hand it held some half-eaten fruit. In the other it was jangling something metallic.

A set of keys.

I rubbed my eyes. I was seeing things.

The monkey didn’t seem to want to attack. Instead it turned its back and walked into the woods. I watched it go, feeling as if my beating heart would burst out of my chest. Just as I’d gathered myself, the monkey popped out again, scolding me. Waving into the jungle.

“You…you want me to follow you?” I said.

“EEEEEEEEE!”

I took that for a yes.

I tried to obey, but the thing was much slipperier than I was. It would disappear into the brush and then emerge exasperatedly with its hands on its little hips. Ahead, I saw the bright glow of a clearing—and the glint again. We were approaching it from a different angle. It wasn’t water. It was something in the middle of a jungle clearing, something metallic or glass.

I picked up the pace, sweeping away thatches of thorny vines. And then I saw it.

A helicopter.

I figured it had crashed long ago, a relic from some war. But as I neared, I saw it looked new and was standing intact. The words KARAI INSTITUTE were emblazoned on the side in purple letters.

KI—the same initials that were stamped on my shirt and the banner in my room. I had no idea what Karai meant. But “institute”? You didn’t call a hospital an institute. Some kind of laboratory, maybe. A place where smart people got together to have smart ideas. What was I doing there? Was I some kind of specimen?

I approached warily. The monkey had dropped the keys on the ground by the helicopter’s door and was jumping around, hysterically excited.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Fly it?”

The monkey clapped its hands and danced.

The only chopper I’d flown was in a video game. I escaped in order to get help, not get myself killed. Maybe there’d be something inside that could help—a map, a radio, a GPS device. Limping forward, I picked up the keys. “Thanks, bud. If I get out alive, I’m sending you bananas.”

I grabbed the handle by the helicopter door and pulled myself up. Standing on the platform, I carefully pulled the door open.

And I nearly fell back onto the ground.

In the driver’s seat was an enormous man in a short-sleeved shirt. His legs were crossed, revealing the thick, blackened sole of a bare foot. His arm showed a tattoo of the letters KI, made of intertwined snakes. As he turned with a sigh, a pair of steely green eyes peered out from a familiar, scarred face.

I said the only words my brain would allow. “I know you.”

Red Beard grabbed me by the arm and pulled me upward. With his other hand, he swiped the keys from my grip.

“Next time,” he said, “I shoot that chimp.”