AMAZON TALES Sony-Louis Rollando When my dad lived in New Orleans, I used to sneak out to the docks. The docks were a real sight for a ten year old. A lot of men, drunken bastards, used to hang out there. Probably still do. There were always a few kids out there, and we'd always gang together, more for protection than any kind of friendship. There were always new faces, and always some old faces who just stopped coming down. I always figured their parents found out, and kept them away. Most of the docksiders were listless and gray, but there were some right mean bastards as well. Only a few of the bums would talk to us, mostly old sailors, I think. We always knew where they were. One I remember real well was a gray-haired old guy we called Patch-Eye. Never knew his real name, though we knew the name of an old flame of his -- he had her name tattooed beneath a picture of her on his right arm, though he'd never talk about her. Patch-Eye could just as well have been Pegleg. I guess he was missing a lot of his body, and back then cyber just wasn't as common as it is now. I suppose cyber probably never did become as common in the Confederacy as it has here. I haven't been home for well over a decade now. Anyway, Patch-Eye was still pretty good with his remaining eye. He could identify most any ship that came into the harbor, by name and origin, while it was still a sail, a smokestack, or an antennae array on the horizon. This was how most of his tales usually started. "See that ship out there? That's the Marie Celeste III, bound from Amazonia. Probably loaded down with fruit and nuts, and not a few of them fetishes." Few of us had ever seen any imported fruits. They were for people better than us. But most of us had been to a 'mamaloa' at least once, and seen their bottles and wands. Fetishes from the small jungles of South America, on the Pacific, were in sharp demand by the local witches. "I was down in South America many times," he said, "but only once in the Amazon. You kids've never seen anything like that." Actually, us kids had never seen much other than old drunks, muddy marshes, and yellowed, dying plants. Maybe that's why we listened so intently to him. "Yeah, It was the Jesus San Marcos, a huge clipper, sails like an ocean of their own. Captain Washman, he was the owner as well, he sold his house for that boat, and a better deal he never made. Last I heard, old Washout sailed it to Free Europe, or whatever they call themselves now, and was running the African coast. 'Yeah, we sailed the San Marcos to the mouth of the Amazon. The Captain'd hired out to bring back some hunters and their game. Me and the rest of the crew, we figured it'd be some monsters. The jungles have always been odd, but after the awakening, no place could outdo the jungles for wickedness. All the legends of the jungles came true -- the Rahara of the Yanoama, the snake-lovers of the Warao, Yoin of the Kaingang." Of course, none of us had been around during the awakening. We figured life before then must've been like life without electricity, or without computers. "What are they? The Rahara is a snake, bigger than an anaconda. They can sleep for days, and even weeks, letting the jungle grow right over them. But let someone try to walk over it, and the head will whip around and swallow them whole, tearing up the jungle to do it. The Yoin is a huge, man-demon. It grabs people in the night -- yes, even rats like you -- and shoves a knife up your ass to rip out your heart and intestines. It eats them, I guess it thinks they're a delicacy. 'You know, I've heard rumors that one managed to sneak away on a trade ship, and there've been some strange deaths in the quarters recently. I'd be careful if I were you." We didn't know enough to actually check the newspapers at the time, but I think he just made that up. "So we were headed into this green hell to rendezvous with these guys, and bring their captures back to New Orleans. We anchored the San Marcos well into the Amazon basin, and the Captain, First Mate, and a couple of hands, including me, we got into a big barge and made our way upstream with poles and oars. It was hot work. There was no breeze, and it was as humid and hot as it ever gets here. 'We all had shotguns, and one guy, John... John Yarbrough, he had an English longbow, just in case we ran into trouble and the guns didn't work. They don't call 'em dead zones for nothing, you know, and back then they weren't mapped out so well as today. Many a man's wound up dead thinking his rifle or cyber'll save him." Of course, the same's true even today. Ten years ago the scientists made a big show about knowing exactly where the zones would be, but those of us who had to use their theories quickly learned not to trust them too much. Sure, if they predict a zone'll be in a spot, it'll often be true. But not always. And even in a zone there'll be pockets of normality. And we still have no idea why they'll grow with the moon, some of them disappearing completely with the New Moon. Back then, though, we thought we knew everything. "On the way in we saw a huge croc. I didn't think they came out that close to the ocean, but that one was big as a sea serpent, must've been 50-60 feet long. 'No, I don't know what that is in meters. Damn fools. Eat you for an hors d'oeuvre. Snap you clean away." You know, I'm leaving out the parts where we find him some whiskey, or roll over another drunk for some fedsticks.. Dunno. And I'm sure I'm still forgetting some things. Memories are the most deceptive creatures in the awakened world. So, here goes: He hacked up some phlegm. Some of the new kids left. Hm... Now, you're probably getting a picture of Patch-eye as an old, dying drunk. Okay, that's what he was. But he was a lot more than that to us. Most of the kids had no father, or if they did, he hated them. A lot of the kids had no parents at all. Patch-eye was by no means a father substitute, but he was someone who existed. I almost said 'a lot of my friends' instead of 'a lot of the kids,' but that'd be misleading. We stayed together for protection and order, not out of any need for friendship. You lose that real fast in the sprawl. He wiped his face, and took another drink of whiskey. "We beached the boats a few kilometers past the San Marcos. The savanna stretched right into the horizon. It'd been a lot easier to just bring the whole ship in, but that was against the law. It was still legal to hunt, though, cause the jungle was still screwy, and they were trying to regrow it. Crocs, for example -- we saw them everywhere, cause the Savannah favored them more than the jungle would've. I guess it was more an everglades than a Savannah, but not quite as much water. 'We made sure we camped far away from the river. We brought the rafts, put 'em on posts, and pitched the cots a foot off the ground. Made sleeping a whole lot easier. 'We got a message from the ship, that our contacts were further in, into the remaining jungle, another two or three days upriver. 'At night, the insects made more noise than a city street. To the south east, we saw what looked like the lights of a small city, but there were no cities here anymore. The only cities left in the Amazon were much closer to the Atlantic. I've heard rumors of dead cities inhabited by awakened animals and ghosts, and we were glad the insects drowned out whatever noises might be coming from that ghost city. 'In the morning, we pushed off again, poling slowly upstream. We passed another dead city, and as we passed I could've sworn the insects were speaking a barely audible Indian tongue. We, though, pushed on in silence." Oh yes, I almost forgot. He emptied a bottle of tequila. We'd found him a near empty bottle thrown away from a nearby bar. He spit the worm out, and it rolled through the cracks in the dock. I heard it splash in the bay. Big worm. He went back to the whiskey. "That night, there were fewer bugs, but more animals. What were once flying squirrels hopped like gliding rabbits in the tall grass and bush. A dragon or flying snake flew across the moon sometime early in the morning. 'The third day, we pushed up the Jari, a smaller river feeding the Amazon, and soon entered a new, low jungle. By night, the jungle was deep and dark. We got word from the trappers and the ship, and figured we'd meet up the next day. 'We were just about to sleep, when we hear this sizzling in the sky, like frying bacon. Fire fell from the trees. In another trip, among the Taka-noo, I learned that they're familiar with this, and blame a spirit sloth, whose shit is the source of all fire. We had to high-tail it out of there real quick. 'I never want to move around in the jungle at night again." We felt the same way about New Orleans. "And then, to top it all off, sometime around 4 in the morning, it starts raining, but the rain don't make it to us before it rolls around in the forest roof. By that time, the drops were green and warm, and felt like nothing less than a giant's piss. 'So, come morning, the sun starts heating the jungle up, and we're wet and tired. And there, as we round a corner in the river, are the trappers. So, we carried the animals back and made it to the ship by sundown. Now, you get out of here." What? "Nope, that's the way it happened." Absolutely not, and we knew it. Then some kid, I don't remember who (well, I remember who, just not his name. When we got a football game going, he was a good fullback), handed him a burger. God knows where it came from. "OK, so we see the trappers, and they've got this monster in what looks to be the flimsiest cage I've ever seen. I mean, it had good-sized bars, but this thing was huge." The kids up close moved back a bit to get out of range of the spray. "I had no idea what it was, but I knew it was awakened. Even in the jungle nothing like that was natural. 'It had long arms, like an orangutan, but it stood at least 8 feet tall. No, 8 feet huge. It was an off green, like the underside of a frog, and the head... the head was horrible. It was like someone upended a giant spider and stuck it on this thing's neck, the bottom side facing towards us, and a square, fanged mouth in the center. 'When it roared, it sounded like a dying elephant. 'That's not true. I've never heard an elephant dying. Only ones I've seen have been dead. 'Anyway, we round the bend and there this thing is, caged, sure, but for how long? John and I, we figure we ought to turn around right there. John's always been a smart one. I think he even went to college. He's probably back in England now. 'I have no idea how they captured this thing. They must've pumped it full of a keg of tranq. But as we get closer, we realize it won't be quite so hard to get it to the ship -- the cage is on pontoons, and there are real long ropes for tying it to their boat. So as long as it can't break out -- and we're hoping, hey, it hasn't broke out yet, maybe it can't -- as long as it can't break out, we're set. Lug it in, load it up, and go home. No problem. Piece of fuckin' cake. 'There's no way we can sleep, so we figure we might as well get started. They had a long canoe, so eight of us row. The captain and two of the hunters (I guess there were only two hunters, and the rest were grunts like us) trail behind on two boats, each connected to a corner of the cage; they're about 30 feet behind the cage, and I'll bet they were wishing they were further. The two hunters each had tranq rifles, and they're trailing behind at an angle, so they can fire if they need to without worrying about us. 'Cause if one of us gets tranqed, one of them'll have to row, of course. One thing I wasn't too sure on was what would happen if the cage started to catch up with us, because we were going downstream, after all. But I guess the canoe caught more current than the cage. That was one problem we didn't have to worry about. 'It was pretty easy going. The river was slow and steady, and we didn't have to work too hard. Coming out onto the Amazon was the same, though it got heady in some places. The Amazon's pretty wide, though, and all we had to worry about was keeping centered. 'And we made it. Past the dead cities and the talking insects, and into the basin. Had a bit of trouble loading it onto the San Marcos, though. One sailor got a nice gouge in his arm on that one. The ship's doctor had a hell of a time keeping it from turning green. And then, we pulled out and headed home. 'All through the first day and night it howled and banged on its cage. And the second day as well. But the second night... That night was dark. Probably we missed a storm further south. But I woke up that night, sometime after midnight, and I knew something was wrong. I felt like I did the time I got caught in the eye of Hurricane Gary. Like time just up and stopped. But I realized it wasn't like the hurricane at all -- I could still hear the waves punching up against the side of the ship, and there was a wind whistling through the sails. 'There wasn't an ounce of sound coming from the hold. I tried to wake up the guy next to me, but he wasn't there, and there was something warm and wet there instead. There was no light. I got off the bunk and woke up John, below me. We went up top, so as not to bother the guys sleeping. 'The captain and mate were up already. In the light of their lantern, I saw blood all over my hand, and then I got scared. Why we survived, I don't know. The captain had gone to the hunters' quarters to find out if the creature's silence was anything to worry about, and they were already dead, torn apart, he said. The thing had to be loose, and we had no weapons of worth to stop it. Not up here, anyway. Maybe, maybe the autos downstairs. 'Oh yeah, the tranq guns were gone. Washout asked John and I to go down and get everybody else up top. So we did. I was feeling too sick to think straight. Downside, John got his bow, and I woke up the two riflemen. Or tried to. One of 'em was dead, torn apart. The other one woke up groggily. I told him to get his auto, we had to get up. Then, John and I woke half of everyone else up -- the other half were dead. The creature had come through here and chosen half of us to kill. We were freaked. The rifleman began to understand what was going on, we just told him to follow us upstairs. 'Then he said he couldn't find his clips. He'd left one in and two taped to the sides before turning in -- he always did. But all three were gone, and so was his box. 'We heard something growl in the shadows, and we just shit our way topsides. All told, there were ten of us left. And the only weapon between us some knives and a single bow. We started lowering the lifeboats. Washout was against it at first, but we convinced him in seconds. There was no way we were going to take this thing on and live. 'We lowered the two lifeboats, and while we were doing that the captain convinced two others to help him lower the sails. Then we climbed down, and five of us in each boat. John was the last one down, covering us with his bow. Bravest man among us, he was. I've nothing against college folk. We rowed off, watching the ship sit there on the ocean, against a backdrop of one or two stars poking through the clouds. 'We were picked up three days later, half... trashed, by a Cuban fishing boat. 'Washout hired some guns and a ship to help him find his own ship. He'd bet a lot of money on that boat. They found his ship to, two or three weeks later. The creature was gone, but from what I hear, the corpses were all strung about from the yardarm, skinned to the muscle, and no carrion-eaters or insects anywhere near. 'I told you Washout brought his ship to Europe. Nobody here would sign on to a ghost ship."