The Andromeda Evolution Read online

  Dr. Nidhi Vedala was awoken in her hammock by a bloodcurdling shriek. Later, it was determined that the scream came from a Matis porter who had been impaled through the upper chest with a sharpened bamboo spear. Perhaps having heard a noise, the man had apparently gone to the camp perimeter and illuminated his headlamp.

  Inhuman roars, jaguar-like, resounded in the jungle for the next thirty seconds as the frightened team of scientists flipped out of their hammocks and into the dirt, blinking sleep from their eyes. Confusion ensued as the scientists and porters attempted to scramble to safety under a hail of bamboo-tipped arrows that fluttered into the campsite from all directions.

  Sergeant Brink had wisely placed his rugged frontiersmen in a perimeter around the less experienced scientists—both to keep the newcomers protected from prowling animals and to prevent them from simply wandering into the woods and getting lost. The nearly defenseless scientists strategically occupied the center of the camp, their hammocks radiating from the shared base of a walking palm tree.

  The Matis were first to face the danger while the scientists fumbled into partial shelter among the walking palms’ thick, stiltlike roots. Dozens of arrows were raining down around them, their needle-sharp tips coated with a poisonous curare plant extract normally used for hunting monkeys.

  After the first few volleys, Brink’s voice could be heard barking out hoarse commands. In moments, the small clearing around the great walking palm tree erupted into a cacophony of gunfire. The sharp smell of gunpowder and the pungent aroma of shredded bark and leaves filled the camp. The piercing crack of rifle shots and booming shotgun blasts reverberated almost nonstop for several deafening minutes.

  All of this noise was punctuated by the stuttering discharge of Brink’s snub-nosed M4A1 battle rifle. The lethal black weapon was lighter than standard-issue and outfitted with a Mark 18 close quarters battle receiver (CQBR)—a 10.3-inch barrel appropriate for the close-up nature of jungle warfare, a favorite among special forces units.

  As he crawled on hands and knees through the flickering light of muzzle blasts, Stone caught glimpses of the demonic, twisted red faces of devils. The monsters were scampering through the brush along the perimeter of the camp with long black axes held high. Remembering the smudge of red in his drone footage, Stone could now confirm it had not been a visual artifact.

  This was first contact.

  Faces smeared in red urucum paint, the devilish-looking warriors were in reality only men, small and agile, chests tattooed in solid black bars and hair coated with tufts of bird down. They were emissaries from an uncontacted tribe, and almost certainly the group who had been following and watching the scientists’ journey. They had warned the field team in myriad ways to go no farther into forbidden territory.

  Now it was too late.

  On examination of documented sightings registered by FUNAI in the preceding year, this group matched closely with a tribe known colloquially as the Machado—named for their use of rare stone axes. Having retreated to the Amazonian interior only a generation ago, this group would certainly have retained extensive knowledge of guns and their capabilities. This explains how they knew to use the trees as cover to avoid weapons that barked and spat bullets into the night.

  The Matis, who had until recently been in the same situation as their attackers, seemed to immediately recognize the indigenous tactics. They well understood the lethal stakes of this fight. Each of the Matis fired his weapon wildly into the jungle, emptying magazines and ejecting spent shells, filling the air with the rolling thunder of explosions.

  It was an impressive show of force, and that was the point.

  Sergeant Brink had been surprised to his core by the brazen attack. But his disbelief and fear intensified as the fighting continued beyond the initial barrage of gunfire. The noise and destruction were expressly meant to shock the enemy into retreat. Even having seen only glimpses of these ferocious warriors, Brink suspected that something was seriously wrong with them. Intertribal warfare in the deep Amazon was not unheard of, but attacks on Westerners were rare and almost never continued past an initial demonstration of overwhelming firepower.

  Worse, Brink understood that his command over the Matis scouts was tenuous at best. And as he watched in dismay—shouting desperate orders over the whip-crack reports of his own battle rifle—Brink’s worst fears came true.

  One by one, the guns went silent.

  After his initial scream, the wounded Matis had quickly collapsed. His nervous system had been invaded by sticky black curare, a naturally occurring neurotoxin primarily employed to paralyze large primates during hunting expeditions. His body lay inert, the LED headlamp on his forehead still illuminating a bright slice of jungle floor. Meanwhile, in an act of silent cooperation, the rest of the Matis guides had quietly retreated together.

  Brink’s harshly shouted orders and threats had no effect except to further frighten the scientists still huddled among the roots of the walking palm.

  Continuing to risk life and limb on an inscrutable mission for outsiders would have made no sense to the indigenous mercenaries. Having been exploited for decades by various visitors to the Amazon, the Matis had much more in common with the Machado than with Sergeant Brink or the Wildfire field team.

  The guides, many of whom were related, would have been secure in the knowledge that in only a few days’ hike they could reach the ancestral maloca huts of their families in the deep jungle. In addition, a deep-seated (and well-earned) distrust of whites had left them suspecting that this mess had been caused by foreigners of one sort or another. Better to withdraw and let the situation take care of itself.

  Within six minutes of the attack, every non-native member of the Wildfire team had been left to fend for himself.

  Only Eduardo Brink was armed and capable of defending the camp. As the confident soldier stalked through the pitch-black jungle, he would have known that if he were to even be nicked by a poisonous spear point, the entire science team would likely be slaughtered.

  “Lights out!” Brink shouted.

  James Stone had turned on a flashlight in the center of the camp. The light only made him a target. Plus, it would interfere with Brink’s last-ditch plan of attack. The camp was quickly enclosed in darkness again.

  Brink crouched and wedged the butt of his battle rifle into the hollow of his shoulder, pressing his cheek against the cold metal. With a dirt-covered thumb, he flipped on the green-glowing AN/PVS-17 night sight. Normally, his night vision would be helmet-mounted, but this was supposedly a civilian operation, and his orders had been to keep the military hardware to a minimum.

  Scanning the walking palm tree in the amplified light of the rifle scope, Brink was glad to see the scientists staying together in the folds of bark. In addition, some enterprising individual had dragged over a few pieces of hard-case luggage to provide cover from stray arrows.

  Brink swept his night sight across the face of the open jungle, the glow tracing a green circle over his right eye.

  He began to discern the silhouettes of his attackers as they loped between the black stripes of trees. The sight of them was grotesque—the features he could make out were caked in gritty layers of red paint that appeared black in his sight. Beneath the mud, he could see cheeks, lips, and eyes that were twisted and deformed. The surface of their skin seemed to be erupting in gruesome dark splotches.

  Something was indeed very wrong with these men.

  The job of the sertanistas is to never harm the indigenous people they protect, even at the cost of harm to themselves. One of the most famous sayings among the FUNAI is actually a dire warning: “Die if you must.” But on this night, Brink was revealed to be a veteran soldier, not a conservator. Like most visitors to this place, he was not willing to risk his own life to protect this tribe who lived deep in the Amazon jungle.

  Brink was not, in fact, affiliated with FUNAI, as he had indicated. Instead, he was a seasoned veteran with a tenacity borne of countless clandestine opera
tions for obscure agencies in remote places throughout the world. Moving like a machine, he crept forward, scanning the jungle and occasionally squeezing the trigger of his battle rifle.

  Each shot was a death sentence—his aim was impeccable.

  Brink had been abandoned by his own indigenous mercenaries. He was outnumbered and facing annihilation in the form of primitive but deadly axes and arrows. Operating on a lifetime of soldier’s instinct, he employed superior training and a fifty-thousand-year gap in weapons and sensor technology to ruthlessly eradicate the threat before him.

  Stepping carefully through the jungle, rifle on the high ready and one eye on his scope, Brink fired at anything that moved. He was not worried about whether the target was a friendly Matis guide or a hostile Machado—he considered them all enemies now.

  In three minutes, Brink had nearly accomplished his objective.

  When the bite of a stone ax glanced off his shoulder blade, Brink spun and fired on instinct. His bullet punched a fist-size hole in the Machado before him and sprayed a blood mist over the waxy leaves of a nearby kapok tree.

  At first, Brink assumed he was fine. The blow had only grazed the meat of his shoulder. While painful, it had not shattered any bones, and he still had free range of motion. He could feel a warm wetness spreading down his back and into the seam of his trousers. After a few seconds the feeling went away.

  Though Brink could not see it, the rivulet of blood trickling down his back had quickly clotted into a fine red dust.

  For thirty seconds, Brink continued walking, sweeping his rifle back and forth and finding no remaining targets. He kept one eye on the brightly lit scope, occasionally closing it and opening his other eye (still adjusted to the dark) to scan the area around him.

  Eleven minutes had elapsed, and every attacker lay dead.

  Seven corpses were sprawled among the trees. Five of them were the bodies of the devil-like Machado. The other two Brink would have recognized as his own Matis workers. Nevertheless, Brink’s mission parameters were satisfied.

  The scientists appeared safe, if terrified. The operation could now continue, with the field team easily reaching the destination in time to make the noon rendezvous the next day. At this thought, Brink leaned against a tree in relief. Lowering his rifle, he allowed himself a grim smile.

  He had cheated death yet again.

  The rueful smile was still on Eduardo Brink’s face as dawn broke over the jungle twenty minutes later. His body was found leaning peacefully against the blood-spattered tree trunk, fingers still wrapped around the grip of his battle rifle.

  Alpha and Omega

  IN THE PREDAWN DARKNESS, PENG WU HAD LISTENED from her hiding spot as the other three scientists scrambled to safety in the myriad roots of the walking palm. As the attack unfolded, Peng slipped out of her hammock and crawled to a large nut tree at the edge of the clearing. Drawing her PLA-issued combat knife, she crouched to make herself a smaller target, keeping a solid wall of wood behind her. From this strategic position, she resolved to stab anything that might come at her from the front.

  Peng had assumed that if the Matis failed to defend the camp and a final attack came, it would wipe out the helpless scientists who were clustered together. She did not intend to be among the victims. So she sat alone, blindly scanning the darkness and catching details through the lightning-strike flashes of gunfire.

  The close-packed jungle foliage deadened the barking reports of weapons. Occasional screams and shrill war cries seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. These sounds soon became more sporadic, eventually dying out altogether after ten long minutes. Peng listened carefully, tensed for a last attack. She heard only a final gasp of surprise, and guessed correctly that the noise had come from Sergeant Brink.

  Whatever had gone wrong, Peng was determined to figure it out first.

  As the other scientists began to compose themselves in the first gray light of morning, Peng carefully unfolded from her hidden perch. She noted a pale scrape of bark near her face, where an arrow had narrowly missed. Moving quickly and quietly, she crouch-walked to the camp perimeter, knife out and extended before her.

  Along the way, Peng spied several corpses lying sprawled among the underbrush and gnarled tree roots. The tree trunks and foliage had been blasted and shredded by bullets, leaves stained red with horror-movie spatters of blood and soft tissue. These bodies would bear more inspection. Even at a glance, the skin seemed covered in a reddish pigment that was clouded with blotches.

  Peng kept moving, giving the mangled bodies a wide berth. In the distance behind her, she could hear the hushed voices of the field team.

  Seconds later, she spotted Brink’s burly silhouette. He was leaning casually against the fat base of a rubber tree, holding his battle rifle on the low ready. The night scope projected a green circle of light onto his bicep.

  “Brink,” whispered Peng, stepping closer.

  Approaching from behind, Peng put out a finger to tap his shoulder but stopped before touching him. Something felt wrong. Unnatural.

  This was not Eduardo Brink, not exactly.

  Peng worked to contain a thrill of panic. She was reminded of being a little girl with her parents gone away on PLA business, left behind to face unknown rules and consequences. She had learned to distance herself from overwhelming feelings by treating the world like a game. Over the years, Peng had become a cool and methodical person precisely because she struggled with anxiety.

  Struggled, but never lost to it.

  Backing away carefully, controlling her breathing, Peng glanced behind her. She was still alone.

  Slowly, she circled around Brink.

  The corpse was still smiling, eyes clouded over with gray flecks of a metallic-looking substance. It seemed he had leaned against the tree to catch his breath and then somehow been frozen there in death. Across his broad shoulders, Brink’s tan jungle shirt was ripped open. A small skin laceration was visible, partially hidden from view where it was pressed against the mottled bark of the rubber tree.

  His body sagged, but something was holding him upright.

  In this brief moment, Peng Wu was not foolish enough to touch the corpse. Instead, she hastily unzipped the interior pockets of Brink’s personal kit bag. As a former soldier, she would have known this compartment was where special forces troops often kept mementos, maps, and ongoing mission notes.

  Among Brink’s effects, Peng discovered a small waterproof packet labeled:

  * * *

  FAIL-SAFE—FAIL-SAFE—FAIL-SAFE

  * * *

  Unraveling the packet, she extracted a black plastic container about the size of a Zippo lighter. Inside this protective case was a vial containing a sickly-looking amber liquid. It would have been obvious to the former soldier that the thick fluid was some kind of nerve agent—a deadly and discreet poison.

  The glass vial was etched with the code word OMEGA. It was the final letter of the Greek alphabet, signifying the end of all things.

  The growing distrust between Peng Wu and the rest of the team had just blossomed into full-blown paranoia. Peng had hard decisions to make in these few remaining seconds alone. It was not clear who among her colleagues had retained her trust, if anyone.

  When Brink’s smiling corpse was discovered and searched by the rest of the field team later that morning, the Omega vial was no longer among his effects.

  In the Morning Light

  THESE WERE JUST MEN. NATIVE MEN,” SAID HAROLD Odhiambo, his voice somber. “More victims, among many.”

  Pulling on a pair of purple exam gloves, the Kenyan scientist stood over the muddy corpse of a Machado. The small man was sprawled facedown in the dewy undergrowth. With careful movements, Odhiambo turned the body over.

  The Machado’s cheeks were smudged with dried red urucum, his nostrils and lower lip pierced by bamboo shoots that splayed in a fearsome imitation of jaguar whiskers. These traditional adornments, subtly different than those of the Matis, confirmed the tribal
identity of the body.

  But that was not what most concerned Odhiambo.

  The man’s mouth, open in a pained snarl, was coated in a grayish, ashy substance. His upper lip was caked with it. Most disturbing, the skin of his face was scabbed in hexagonal patches of what looked like metal.

  “It appears to be the same material we found on the howler monkeys,” said Peng, watching from a distance. “Something farther in, probably the anomaly, has infected them. Infected this whole jungle.”

  At the top of the Machado’s bare chest, Odhiambo made another grisly discovery—the puckered, bloody hole of an entry wound.

  “He was shot down like a dog,” said Odhiambo, his voice cracking with emotion. “All of them were. Brink did this.”

  “Would you rather he hadn’t?” asked Vedala.

  Turning to Vedala, Odhiambo’s voice rumbled with deep anger. “If he were truly from FUNAI, Brink would never have shot them dead. Certainly not every single one. The indigenists are trained never to harm the indios bravos, only to scare them away.”

  Odhiambo looked away with tired eyes.

  “Die if you must,” he said, almost to himself. “But do no harm.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right,” said Vedala. “We still need to discuss our unfortunate Sergeant Brink. And I’ll need both of you to help with the examination, at the very least as a sanity check.”

  Nidhi Vedala could feel that her team was balanced on the knife’s edge of panic. They had all silently realized that they’d been abandoned by their native guides. All were mulling the constant threat of another attack. The situation was bleak, even without factoring in the existence of a deadly contamination event somewhere ahead of them.

  Quietly, Vedala was also considering the repercussions of missing today’s noon communications rendezvous with General Stern. She guessed that twelve hours of missed contact would likely result in a change of plans, giving the team until midnight to reach the anomaly and make contact. If the group was considered killed in action, Stern’s response would likely be drastic.