Jungle Lab Terror Read online

  JUNGLE LAB TERROR

  Gustavo Bondoni

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2020 by Gustavo Bondoni

  Chapter 1

  Something landed on the floor of the hut with a wet thud. Philippe dragged his maimed leg behind him, shuffling over to have a look. He bent down and picked the item up.

  It was a wet paperback whose cover depicted a muscular man with his shirt almost completely torn away. Philippe smiled and turned to the creature that had dropped it there. “Good work, Chiffon,” he said. He patted its head and turned back to his visitors. “She brings me gifts, you see.”

  Two men occupied the only chairs in the shack. They looked on impassively, staring blankly at Philippe and at his creation. The smaller of the two, an Asian man with a round face and tight eyes, spoke first. “Impressive. It clearly has some reptile in there. Also some cat genes. But what else?”

  Philippe replied proudly. “Some elephant, though you can’t tell from looking at it, to improve intelligence, as well as a small amount of penguin.”

  “What for?”

  “Penguins are good at adapting to wide temperature variations. You could take this one with you to Siberia, and it would function just as well there as it does here in the jungle.”

  The Asian man’s name was Park Sun-Lee, and Philippe didn’t like the predatory way he was looking at Chiffon. Philippe tried to change the subject. “But this one is just a pet, a tame toy. If you’ll accompany me to the farm, I can show you some of the bigger specimens. Those will truly impress you.”

  Sun-Lee held up a hand. “Wait.” He turned back to the door and shouted something in Russian that Philippe couldn’t understand. Two men dressed in black from boots to balaclavas walked in, threw a net over Chiffon and pulled the creature away.

  Philippe’s heart sank. In the jungle, everything from the mosquitoes to the jaguars wanted him dead in some way, shape or form. Now, these men were taking his only friend.

  But he dared not contradict them. He could build another pet. An army of pets. One thing he couldn’t do was to revive himself if these men took things the wrong way. And he certainly wouldn’t escape if they decided to tell the French government where he was. Death would be preferable to that… the French had been after him for a long time, and wouldn’t be in the mood for niceties if they caught up to him.

  Sun-Lee watched him as if to see how he’d react. The Korean seemed disappointed when Philippe just shrugged.

  “As I said, there are more impressive creatures out back. Come this way.”

  They spent three hours among the cages and pens. Sun-Lee selected a few of the more easily transported creatures, which were sedated and placed in crates. A pyramid of cages awaited the return of the helicopter.

  Once done, they returned to the relative coolness of the hut.

  “What you’ve done here is quite impressive,” Sun-Lee said. “But I have to admit that I’m also disappointed. The reports I read about your work hinted strongly at the use of human elements in the mix.”

  “I… I don’t do that anymore.”

  “Ah. The trouble with the authorities?”

  Philippe said nothing.

  Sun Lee continued. “It must have been quite traumatic, what happened to you in Paris. Men coming into your house to arrest you in the middle of the night.” He shook his head and tsked. “From all reports, you barely made it out alive. And then, in Gabon. There were rumors that you continued along those lines. But, again, something happened, didn’t it? Dragons in the swamp, a little she-goblin. Strange stories these Africans spread, aren’t they?”

  Anyone could tell Sun-Lee didn’t care about the answer. Even the question was just a way to strut his knowledge, to tell Philippe that yes, they knew all about him, and that the source of the information wasn’t the French government because, if it had been, Philippe would already have been snatched by the C.O.S., to await trial in a high-security cell in Paris.

  He wanted Philippe to know that they had power over him.

  “What do you want?” Philippe asked when the silence grew too heavy.

  “Nothing. The animals you’ve given us will help our own lines of research immeasurably. In fact,” he turned to the man beside him, an impassive pale blonde man who’d stayed silent throughout, “Anton has brought you a gift.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “No. You don’t. From what I’ve seen of your setup, you are perfectly prepared to continue as you’ve been doing and creating the hybrids you like. You might need a fourth generation CRISPR editor soon, but other than that, your equipment looks good for another five years.”

  “Then what..?”

  “Anton has something you might be able to use, if you like. It’s a machine that allows you to copy a human mind onto… well, onto whatever brain you might have lying around. We could use it to put a different mind into your own head, memories and all.”

  “What would happen to me if you did that?”

  Sun-Lee shrugged. “We don’t know. Our labs are in Russia. It’s a wonderful country, where, if you have the right people behind you, you can act with remarkable freedom. But it’s not perfect. Even Russia has its limits, and experimenting on human minds… it’s still beyond that limit, I’m afraid.” He looked around the hut. “But here, in the Darién gap, in the middle of a jungle? Who’s going to come enforce the law? The Panamanians? I doubt it. They love the money you’re giving them from your exotic pet trade… yes, we know about that. The Colombians? They won’t send police in here in case it starts the drug war again. No. This is the perfect setup.”

  “I don’t experiment on humans,” Philippe said. It was weak. They held all the cards, and if they wanted him to experiment on humans, that is what he would end up doing.

  But Sun-Lee surprised him. “Of course not. The tech is way too experimental for that. We would be grateful if you didn’t, in fact.” The Korean let a significant pause develop before continuing. “Of course, we’d be equally grateful if you’d try it out on a few of the larger-brained animals you build. Just to see what happens. And if you could send us an update every once in a while, that would be excellent.”

  So, he had his marching orders. “What kind of machinery are you talking about? It will need to be pretty robust to work here.”

  Anton pulled a small black suitcase from beneath his chair and opened it. Under a mass of diodes was a dark black plastic item. “The battery should last for a hundred applications,” Anton said. His accent was Russian, perhaps giving credence to the Korean’s words about their operations. “You just place the diodes against the skull the way it shows in the manual—it’s in English—and you press the red button. No need to turn it on or off or anything.”

  “And that will put a human personality into one of my creatures?”

  “Yes. Memory and all. It has the added benefit that the person loaded inside is experienced in switching to different brain architecture.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t test on real humans.”

  “I only said,” interjected Sun-Lee, “that the political climate in Russia doesn’t permit us to do so now.” He shrugged. “The dead past, as you say, is a different country.”

  Philippe looked at the suitcase in distaste. “Who is he?”

  “What?”

  “The man you’ve got locked in there. Who is he?”

  “Just someone who annoyed me. A man named Luca.” Anton’s gaze held no mercy. “But if you must know, he consented to having a copy made of his mind, so you shouldn’t feel too bad about it. Besides, the original is living a happy life somewhere in South America. He became a very wealthy man thanks to this.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Leave it over there.”


  The roar of a jet engine and rotors above their heads signaled the end of the conversation. Boxes were winched onto a black helicopter, followed by Philippe’s visitors themselves.

  He watched them go and returned to the dingy hut.

  Automatically, he opened a can of cat food, product of the small trade he did with Panama, before he remembered that Chiffon was on his way to probable dissection in Eurasia.

  “Damn.”

  He sat heavily on the chair vacated by Anton and stared at the suitcase. It looked like something out of an old movie, a shiny black hard-shell case with chrome accents. Somewhere inside was a human mind and memories, just waiting to be transferred to an animal brain… all for what?

  He didn’t know, of course. Sun-Lee and his ilk didn’t go around gratuitously sharing their plans. They just wanted the data, and the samples they’d already taken. And if something went catastrophically wrong, they’d send a team in to collect what data they could. His life meant little more to them than stealing his pet had.

  That reminded him of the book Chiffon had brought. He stepped over to the countertop where he’d left it.

  His first impression had been right. It was a trashy romance novel in Spanish, still soaked from being dragged through the marshes around Philippe’s camp. Mud trailed across one edge and what appeared to be blood fouled the spine.

  Philippe smiled. Chiffon could be a little aggressive in acquiring gifts for her master. He just hoped the lizard-cat had chosen to steal this particular book from one of the Colombian peasants that shared these woods and not from the Panamanian border patrol. Neither would incommode him in the long run, of course, but if she’d decided to rob the soldiers, there would be tedious questions.

  He looked at his bookshelf, a meter of novels salvaged from the jungle. How had Chiffon understood his love for books? He didn’t know. Maybe the elephant genes had allowed her to crack the pattern. Maybe there was something unknown in cat DNA or even penguins. He was pretty sure the lizard material was pretty much useless in that sense.

  He smiled wistfully. That was the nice thing about art. When you started, you never knew what you’d end up with.

  And he’d have to start again. The jungle would be lonely without Chiffon to keep him company. Maybe this time, he’d try a monkey gene… no. That hadn’t gone well last time. Maybe dogs. Yes, dogs were loyal and useful. And he’d always wanted to see how far spider genes could scale up. That was a start. The rest would come to him once he started working.

  Of course, he would also need to think about the abomination in the black suitcase. Not trying it was out of the question. The Russians had given him a very clear message: we found you once, and we’ll find you again if necessary. Running was no use, and it might just result in another nighttime visit from the French.

  He would have to think about that, too.

  But first things first. The book. It would be of no use until he cleared off the mud and dried it out. But simply applying heat to the moist volume would not serve. The paper would end up wrinkled, obviously having been wet. Ruined.

  No, the only choice was to freeze-dry it. That would leave it as good as new.

  Then he could read it, savoring the pages of a new and unknown volume.

  It certainly wouldn’t replace his beloved copy of Pride and Prejudice, lost in a mangrove forest in Gabon a lifetime ago, but it was a book.

  And, until the forest threw up a copy of Austen, it would serve.

  Chapter 2

  Max Cipreyes woke, every sense alert. He reached under the jacket that served as his pillow and pulled out a long-barreled .45 ACP, lovingly modified for him by a gunsmith in Cartagena who only worked with the most select clients.

  The man would no longer consider Max a select client, but the gun remained. He pushed the tent flap open with the barrel and looked out into the post-dawn jungle.

  “What’s wrong?” Serena asked sleepily.

  “Shh. I heard a noise in the trees,” Max replied.

  “So what? There’s noise in the trees every minute of the day and night.”

  “This was different.”

  She leaned in to kiss him. “Max, you need to relax. There’s no one after us. There hasn’t been for months.”

  He was about to tell her the news from Bogotá, the announcement that the resistance would be taking up arms against the Colombian government once again, rekindling the fire that had been smoldering under suffocating peace treaties, but that would never go out as long as there was anyone alive in the country who understood how capitalism crushed the spirit and destroyed entire cultures.

  But there were more pressing issues. His followers would learn of the new state of affairs when they needed to. He peered into the foliage, trying to remember who was supposed to be on guard. Liliana, he remembered. She’d volunteered for the dawn watch, since she was usually awake by then anyway.

  So, if whoever was making the noise was hostile, they’d already gotten her. She wasn’t the kind to miss something big.

  Max crawled out of the tent, keeping his belly low to the ground and snaking behind a bush that offered a little cover. He focused his attention on a couple of small trees between the clearing and the stream they used for water. The sounds were emerging from there.

  He raised the gun and charged through.

  And checked himself just in time as three alarmed faces turned his way.

  “Max,” Emilio Vázquez said. “You scared the shit out of us.”

  “Yeah. Well you shouldn’t skulk around that way.”

  “I heard a sound in the trees.”

  “It was just us coming back,” Emilio replied.

  “They called out before coming in,” Liliana said. Then her eyes moved down from his head and to his bare crotch. She smirked.

  Max paid her reaction no heed. She’d seen him naked before, and she hadn’t been smirking then. Of course, he still wasn’t forgiven for having replaced her with Serena, but as long as she was loyal, she didn’t need to be forgiving.

  “All right,” he said. “So if there’s no problem, what’s with all the noise?”

  “Have a look.”

  Pablo and Emilio moved aside to reveal the carcass of an animal the size of a sheep. It had four legs and its head was shaped like a dog’s, but it was covered with white down from its clawed feet to about hip height. The animal’s back was bare of feathers, scaled like a lizard.

  “What is it?” Max asked.

  Pablo smiled. “Breakfast,” he said, pulling out a wicked tactical knife and burying it into the animal’s side.

  “Ugh. Make sure you clean it well,” Max replied. But he didn’t make any objections to the food itself. Meat was meat, and you got it where you could. People always thought the jungle was full of food, and it was true that fruit could be found if you knew where to look and what trees to climb, but large meat animals… not so much.

  He returned to the tent just as Liliana was emerging, dressed in green pants and a tight t-shirt, hair in wild disarray. He took her by the waist.

  “We’ve still got some time before breakfast is ready,” he told her. “And I’m pretty worked up after that tension.”

  He kissed her roughly. She returned it and allowed herself to be pulled back into the tent, already unbuttoning her pants as she moved.

  ***

  “It tastes like chicken,” Coca said. His real name was Pablo Escobar, a common enough combination, but one that, thanks to the famous 1980s drug lord, came with all sorts of narcotics-related nicknames. Hence, Pablo became Coca, short for Cocaine.

  Liliana tasted it cautiously, lip curled in distaste. She had her black, frizzy hair tied back in a pigtail, out of the way of her face. “Yes, it does. Kind of.” She chewed carefully, thinking hard. “What was that thing, anyway?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Max, do you know what it is?”

  “No clue. Good though.” It was. A little fire-blackened, perhaps, but the meat was white and just fatt
y enough that it tasted fantastic. “If we had some arepas and cheese… heaven.”

  Liliana wasn’t done, though. She crouched on a rock, her dark features screwed up in thought. “I mean it. Over the last few weeks, we’ve shot a bunch of animals none of us had ever seen before. Why?”

  Max shrugged. “We’re in Panama now. Different wildlife.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s the same jungle. The same goddamned hills. All the other animals, the ones we used to see in Colombia, are the same. Why would there be creatures we’ve never seen before? They can walk through the jungle just as well as we can. Better, probably.”

  Coca interrupted her between mouthfuls. Whatever his shortcomings, being squeamish about strange food wasn’t one of them. “This one wasn’t very good at moving through the forest. Tried to climb a tree when he heard us coming and he fell straight out. I almost felt pity for it.” He laughed. “Then I shot it. Boom. Right between the eyes. So we can’t eat the brains, I guess.”

  “Ugh,” Serena said.

  “Don’t say those things,” Liliana said. “Can’t you see the little princess is squeamish? We don’t want her indisposed to perform her special and important duties, now do we?”

  Serena didn’t reply, simply staring daggers at the other woman and drinking her coffee. Liliana shrugged. “Anyway, we shouldn’t have things here in Panama that we haven’t seen a million times in Colombia.”

  Max cut her off. “Maybe the Panamanians have laws protecting some of the bigger animals. Maybe they’re migrating from further north because of global warming. Just leave off already. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No need to get angry. I just think they’re weird, that’s all. I mean are they mammals? Birds? Some kind of lizard?”

  “They’re probably a mix, like a platypus. Do you know what a platypus is?”

  “Of course.”

  “There. At least these things don’t have beaks.”

  Liliana didn’t look convinced, but she knew enough not to make Max angry. “Whatever.”