“And yet you didn’t manage to hit any of them,” Malakai noticed. He turned to Corbin. “Am I right?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Corbin replied. “And let’s keep it down. They could be near.”
“They aren’t,” Malakai said, walking about ten yards. “They went back up into the trees… here.”
“So there’s no telling where they went?”
Malakai bent to study a dark spot on the leaf mold.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he replied, and he started moving uphill to the north.
“Is that blood? Clancy asked. “That’s blood, isn’t it?”
Malakai pretended he didn’t hear her.
Following the blood trail wasn’t easy. The chimps kept changing direction, although they were generally moving up toward Mount Tamalpais.
The task became even harder when they came to the source of the blood, late in the afternoon. A chimp was curled into a fetal position at the base of a tree. Malakai approached with some caution, but judging by the amount of blood present beneath the ape, he didn’t think he had too much to worry about. His suspicions proved true when he nudged the chimp with his foot. He reached and grasped an arm, lifting it, and pulled.
The chimp flopped over on his back.
“He hasn’t been dead for more than a few hours,” he told Corbin. “Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet.”
“Gross,” one of the others said.
Malakai heard Clancy sob, and glanced in her direction. Her face had gone white, and tears were running down her face.
“I don’t understand,” she said. She stepped nearer the body. The chimp’s eyes were open and glassy, staring out of the bright world and into the darkness beyond. Clancy looked at Malakai as if there was some question he could answer.
Oh, for God’s sake, Malakai thought, and suddenly he was angry. She was upset about a dead ape? How many men, women, and children had he seen like this?
Ridiculous.
“I thought you weren’t using real bullets,” Clancy said in a shaky voice.
“That must have been the one that jumped me,” Flores muttered. “He just came out of nowhere, and I dropped my rifle so I pulled my sidearm. Pure instinct.”
Malakai shut out the rest of the exchange. He hunted around the vicinity some more, and then began moving north again.
The sun was well on its way into shadow—and he was on the verge of giving up—when he found a track. And then another. The apes had come back down from the trees—again, at night. He tried to picture the entire scenario. They had been driven down from the trees by the helicopter, and they ran into a detail wearing night-vision goggles. When fired upon by the ground troops they had gone back up into the trees, but only long enough to outdistance their pursuers. Then—against their natural inclinations—they had come back down.
That was—strange.
Near sundown they crossed a road, and after a bit of fiddling with his GPS, Corbin determined that it was the same road on which they’d left the Humvee, so he sent Flores back to retrieve it.
“We’re less than a mile from where we started,” he complained.
Malakai shrugged. What could he say to that? They weren’t trying to set a land-speed record. They were trying to find some very peculiarly acting apes.
He glanced at Clancy. She hadn’t said much since they had found the dead chimp. He could be grateful for that, at least. Her lips were set in a tight line, and she looked miserable.
He took Corbin aside.
“When Flores gets back with the truck,” he said, “why don’t you have him take the young lady back to base?”
“Hell,” Corbin said. “That sun’s almost down. Unless they’re over this next ridge, we’re all going back.”
“I’m not,” Malakai said. “I’m camping here.”
“Why? Do you think they’ll come back?” He looked around, as if the thought disturbed him. “We can be back at camp in half an hour, and be back here before the sun rises to pick up the trail.”
“I’m camping here,” Malakai repeated. “I don’t know this place, these woods. I need to become acquainted with them. And I may hear something useful. If there are hundreds of apes out here, they will surely make some noise. An orangutan call can travel a great distance, I’ve heard.”
“We have listening posts all over,” Corbin said. “I’m not under orders to sleep out here, and we didn’t bring any camping gear.”
“I don’t require company,” Malakai said, “or gear, although a blanket would be nice.”
Corbin hesitated.
“I’m not staying with you,” he said.
“That’s fine,” Malakai replied. He stepped away from the man, and searched around a bit, looking for a suitable site.
“I’ll be up there,” he said finally, pointing to a bit of high ground with a sheltered eastern side. With that, he began to climb.
He was gathering twigs to start a fire when he heard the Humvee arrive below, then leave. A few moments later he heard footsteps and looked down to see Clancy climbing the slope. She was carrying something in a bundle.
“They had some rain ponchos in the back,” she said. “We can use them as blankets.”
He nodded and continued gathering wood for the fire. Though he was determined not to show it, he was irritated. He had been looking forward to being alone with the night and his thoughts.
When he didn’t say anything, Clancy began helping gather wood. When they had cleared a space around the little pile, he produced his lighter to start it, she coughed up a humorless chuckle.
“Pretty sure this is illegal,” she said.
“No doubt,” he replied. He watched as the little flame fed on the smallest twigs and moved out to the larger. Then he sat on a bare spot, and stared into the fire.
Clancy sat directly across from him, but she wasn’t looking at him.
“You think I’m an idiot,” she said, after a moment.
He sighed.
“I think you’re naïve,” he said.
“I am that, obviously,” she said. “But I’d rather…” Suddenly she stopped.
“Rather what?” he asked, regretting it the instant he spoke. He wanted her to stop talking, not continue.
She watched the fire for a moment.
“I knew the chimp was dead when I saw its eyes,” she said, finally.
“Sure,” Malakai replied. “It’s easy to see when the life is gone.”
“It just seems to me,” she said, pausing, “your eyes are just like his.”
He poked a stick into the fire and watched the sparks weave upward.
“That’s quite poetic,” he told her.
“How did you get to be like that?” she asked. “What happened to you?”
“I was born,” he said.
“I know there’s been a lot of war where you come from—”
“Look, miss,” he said. “I’m here to do a particular job. I intend to do that, and nothing more. I am not an ethnographic subject for you to study. If you stayed here so that you could interview me, then you’ve made an error.”
“I just thought—”
“Think something else,” he said.
The fire was going pretty well now. He started arranging the poncho. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clancy spread hers and lie down. He lay on his back, staring up at the night. The clouds that had covered the heavens for much of the day were gone, and the stars were staring back at him. He remembered lying like this on Mount Virunga, with his uncle—so very long ago, it seemed. The constellations were different here, and Mount Tamalpais was hardly a mountain at all, so the feeling of familiarity was… surprising.
“I didn’t,” Clancy said, her brittle voice breaking the stillness. “Didn’t come up here to interview you. I stayed to keep an eye on you. You know something the others don’t, and you haven’t said anything about it.”