Rising slowly, she went to stand in front of it, the half-eaten apple in her hand forgotten. She had already rearranged the chaotic mess into something more symmetrical and meaningful. Gone was the string and silly pins to mark events. They didn’t matter. Gone were most of the print-outs for the various eruptions and quakes. What remained was an outer ring of reports that pertained to the MOHO, Yellowstone, and The Kuru. In the center she’d stuck the article about the Libi Nati, and a picture of the scientist behind its research; Dr. Eric Davies.
“Did you figure it out yet, Peta?” Madeline whispered, leaning closer to the image. Reaching out, she traced the outline of the doctor’s hand, which was pointing to the pool of pristine-water, surrounded by a lush jungle.
She knew the woman and her entourage had been in her house. That they were most likely the ones to have taken her work. The jeep in her garage had provided the details. In it, she’d found evidence of several people having traveled a distance, based on the garbage and empty water bottles. In addition, there was a map with the name and address of a gas station stamped on it. That alone would have been enough information for Madeline to trace the direction of travel. Except, she didn’t need to, because under the back seat was a hat labeled as belonging to Hill Air Force Base.
She was alive. Dr. Peta Kelly was alive and still following the trail that Madeline had laid out. Only, The Kuru intervened. Although the old Mads would have seen the pillaging of her home and being left for dead as a setback, she instead accepted the new opportunities her unique situation provided.
The ham radio set up on the table next to the laptop issued a burst of static, followed by some unintelligible sounds. Raising an eyebrow, Madeline strode purposefully back to the desk and stared at it for a moment before making note of the frequency on a pad of paper. It was a growing list, and she’d managed to communicate with some of them and record their locations, along with pertinent details of their circumstances. Her eyes then flitted over to the computer screen, confirming there was yet to be a response to the few choice emails she’d sent out. One of them was to Eric Davies. She would remain dead to ICONS and the US government, but she and the doctor had some unfinished business.
Clearly, she had been written off for dead by the organizations. Otherwise, the house would have been “scrubbed”. It was all perfectly fine with Madeline. It was best that way. It made things…easier.
Because she had a lot of work to do.
Chapter 3
JESS
Amazon Jungle near Kumalu, Suriname
Northeast interior of South America
Jess stood at the edge of the large, enclosed chicken yard for several minutes, staring at the carnage. She counted nine. Nine chickens torn apart and feathers scattered everywhere. The rest of the flock were still cowering inside the relative safety of their coop.
It had just happened. The squawking alerted Jess from where she was spreading hay for the cows and she’d immediately run over. Studying the mutilated limbs and how far the parts had been thrown, she took a hesitant step back and eyed the surrounding jungle nervously.
“What was all that noise?” Akuba called out as she ran over from the nearby gardens.
They were in what her dad used to call the “back forty”, although Jess had never really understood the reference. It was another cleared and fenced-in area beyond the backyard, behind the Van’s house and the barn. It was where the animals and gardens were maintained, as well as the additional buildings for the preserve.
Jess shook her head and wiped the sweat from her face. Though the sky was continuing to become thicker with a haze high up in the atmosphere, the weather was still a typical sweltering summer heat. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything. Whatever it was took off before I got here.”
Akuba stopped abruptly as she reached her side, and gasped before grabbing at Jess’s arm to pull her away. “This is the doing of a large predator, Lobiwan.”
Jess had to agree. While they lived in the jungle and there was always a certain level of untamed danger you wouldn’t find elsewhere in the civilized world, they adapted to it. Other than some standard precautions and extra awareness, she had never really thought of her life on the Libi Nati as unsafe.
What they were looking at was something different.
“What would have attacked them in the middle of the day?” Jess asked, walking backwards slowly with Akuba. It wasn’t so much that the chickens had been killed. Stuff like that was bound to happen periodically. A gate wouldn’t quite get latched or the coop door was left open at night, allowing an opportunistic weasel-like animal called a Tayra to get inside. There were several other small predatory animals they had to take measures against, but the current slaughter they were looking at didn’t fit any of those patterns. It was…violent. Violent to an unnecessary extreme you didn’t usually see in nature, and definitely not in the daylight.
The netting that was spread and secured over the top of the enclosure was still intact, so it hadn’t come from above. As they passed the gated entrance to the wire fencing, both women paused.
“There,” Akuba whispered, pointing at the broken wires.
Finding the point of entry certainly didn’t clear up any of Jess’s fear. The galvanized steel mesh fencing had been ripped open. Literally torn apart and peeled back from the ground, creating a
