“Oh my God.”
“Monktopus; bad news.” Chess lifted his gun but couldn’t fire. “No shot, no shot.”
The thing was holding the man in front of it, but Ben could sort of make it out. It was a huge greenish-gray bag, five feet across and sprouting short, muscular tentacles. At the end of each limb, they formed a type of fork, like a two-fingered hand or two-toed foot. The worst thing was the large lidless eyes that were way too intelligent.
“A what?” Drake said, trying to angle his gun.
The snared man’s face was turning purple and his tongue began to protrude. Even though the eyes bulged, they were panicked, and he was well on his way to being suffocated.
Ben lifted his gun and aimed — the thing seemed to know to use the guy’s body as a shield, and it waved the choking man back and forth in front of it.
And then it moved him a few inches too far one way and Ben fired. The shot took a fist-sized chunk of meat from the bag-like head, and blue blood splashed the surrounding foliage.
It screamed.
“Shit.” Drake took a step back.
It was an unnatural hellish sound like nails on a blackboard that made Ben grit his teeth. It threw the man at them and raised its tentacles, opening them like a flower and revealing a parrot-like beak underneath that was as long as his forearm. It snapped at him, angrily, and Ben fired three more times, hitting it again but only once.
Bizarrely, it swung away, as nimbly as an arboreal creature, and in seconds, it was gone. Monktopus, Chess had called it — a monkey-octopus.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Drake said, and his mouth stayed hung open. “What the hell was that?”
Ben turned. “Helen, could that have come from…?”
“The plateau?” She shook her head. “No way. Besides, the doorway isn’t even open yet. Nothing like that ever existed in the fossil record, or on any branch of evolution.” She snorted. “It was an octopus, for God’s sake.”
“Like I said, a Monktopus,” Chess said casually. “I thought you said you’d been in the Amazon before.”
“Many times,” said Ben.
“Me too,” Drake added. “And never seen anything like that.”
“They’re rare, but inhabit the darker areas of the jungle, and usually close to a water source. That’s where they lay their eggs,” Francis said and shrugged huge shoulders. “That looked to be an 8 to10-footer, but they can get even bigger.”
Ben turned to Helen. “They left the water.”
She nodded slowly, but her eyes were now scanning the treetops. “Theorists always speculated they would. They’re intelligent, strong, and adaptive.” She turned. “The theorists also speculated that if mankind didn’t exist, then cephalopods might one day rule the world.”
“All hail our new multi-armed overlords.” Chess turned and guffawed at Shawna.
A cough from the brush brought their heads around, and Shawna crossed to the Monktopus victim and stood over him. “Hey, whatta you know, he’s still alive.”
He coughed again and sat up rubbing his neck, but with his eyes screwed shut. He grimaced. “My eyes.”
“Yep, that’d be the ammonia; stings like a bitch, dunnit?” Chess said. “The damn monks are covered in it. Stops them drying out when they’re on land.” Chess clicked his fingers at Shawna. “Flush it out or he’ll be blind for days.”
Shawna tilted his head back and lifted her canteen over his face. “Shut your eyes, honey.” She first used her sweat rag to wipe his face off. “Now open them.” She then let water trickle over his eyes. She wiped them again. “Better?”
He continued to blink as he nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”
Ben went and stood in front of him. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“Nicolás Manduro… ” He coughed again and held out a hand. Shawna tugged him up. “Thank you again.” He turned to Ben. “I work for the Venezuelan National Institute of Meteorological Services.”
“You’re a meteorologist? What the hell are you doing all the way out here?” Drake craned his neck forward. “Are you insane?”
“Probably.” The young man grinned apologetically. “I forgot about the Monktopus. I don’t know why I forgot.” He sighed. “I came to investigate the source of the wettest season anomaly.”
“Great,” Ben said and exhaled. “Just great.” He immediately knew he was going to get stuck with the guy.
“The wettest what?” Shawna guffawed. “That sounds like one of your porn tapes, Chess.”
Chess brayed. “Private viewings only these days, babe.” They both continued to laugh.
“That’s enough,” Ben said. He faced Nicolás. “What are, were, you planning to do?”
Nicolás began to grin. “You’re going there too, aren’t you?”
“I asked you a question.” Ben gave him the ‘glare’ and the young man’s smile dropped.
“I plan to scale as high as I can on the plateau and plant some measuring equipment.” He frowned. “We can’t see it from a distance; it shuts out all our sensors. Need to be closer, I guess.” He frowned. “I think there’s something strange going on up there.”
“Yeah, din-o-sewers, according to these jokers.” Chess’ grin widened.
“You shouldn’t climb the plateau,” Drake said and glanced at Helen and then back at the meteorologist. “It’s too dangerous.”
“How do you know?” Nicolás’ eyes narrowed. “You’ve been there before, haven’t you?” He stepped forward. “I’ve seen something. Last time, 10 years ago, I saw a balloon entering, and then, I think—” He shook his head and then grabbed Ben’s arm, “—no, I know, it was attacked by something big. Like a giant bat, but as large as an airplane.”
“Ah, fuck.” Ben looked heavenward.
“You do know something,” Nicolás pressed.
“Yeah, we do. That was us in that balloon,” Drake said.
Chess, Francis, and Shawna became silent.
Ben turned to the man. “We lost a lot of people. Only a few of us made it out alive. And three of those four are right here. Believe me when I tell you it’s dangerous up there — deadly dangerous. You don’t want to go there. There’s more than just weird weather up there.”
Helen nodded. “He’s right, Nicolás. Maybe you can take your measurements from the base.”
“That is not possible.” Nicolás’ expression hardened. “If you’re going up there, then I’m going up there.”
“Nicolás,” Ben said. “The weather is not the anomaly. The weather is only a secondary effect from a magnetic comet that’s passing overhead.”
“I knew it.” He clapped his hands together. “A magnetic astral anomaly; it makes perfect sense.” Nicolás straightened to his full height of about five feet eight inches.
“It does?” Shawna frowned.
“Yes,” Nicolás replied enthusiastically. “Correlation between changes in amplitude of geomagnetic variations of external origin could account for the significant but temporary, weather fluctuations.”
“That was English, right?” Shawna looked impressed.
Nicolás nodded. “But I need to be up there for verification.”
Chess snorted. “Buddy, you nearly got killed down here. If only half of what these guys say is true, your life expectancy will be about five minutes from setting foot up there. Here’s some advice: fuck off home.”
“I’m going,” Nicolás said. “With you or without you.” He paused. “But, preferably with you.” He grinned sheepishly.
Shawna shrugged. “Aw, let the kid come with us. It’s his life.”