Alter, Page 2

  That doesn’t happen.

  The jaguar’s tongue slides out of its mouth, wrapping around its snout before being withdrawn. There’s a moment of frozen stillness, and then…realization. It’s tasted the bloody liver residue on its nose.

  Ears perk up.

  The cat stands to its full height.

  And for the first time since we locked eyes, its gaze turns downward.

  Mouth open and panting, the jaguar surveys the bounty with which it has been provided.

  “Oh, thank God,” I exhale more than speak.

  The cat nudges a morsel of organ with its nose, tests the chunk with its tongue, and then snatches it up. Two quick bites and it’s gone.

  I cease to exist. Predator is now oblivious to prey. The cat lies on the forest floor, content to devour its meal.

  Wrapped in a humid blanket of fetid air that smells of blood and feces, I watch the jaguar eat. With each mouthful of human meat, the cat becomes more lackadaisical, subdued by a full belly. While it avoids the intestines, it plucks up one organ at a time, sometimes swallowing the meat whole, sometimes tearing away chunks.

  Muzzle red with blood and stomach full, the jaguar lolls onto its side. Cats are hard to read, but it looks pleased. Looks content. If big cats didn’t sometimes kill for the sport of it, I might be tempted to step outside and pet the beast.

  When the jaguar rolls onto its back, coating itself in the gore of its recent meal, I slide back from the window, hoping the creature will assume I’ve fled the scene while it ate. Slouching in the plane’s rear seat, coated in blood, I try not to weep.

  Try not to scream.

  Try not to move.

  The smell is beyond horrible. I breathe through my mouth to dull the odor, but all that accomplishes is to remind me that strong scents can be tasted, too. I learned that lesson, standing over my first med-school cadaver. It’s been long enough that I’d forgotten. A gag threatens to overtake me and reveal my presence to the jaguar, but I manage to free a handkerchief from my pocket. While it’s not clean, it is free of blood, and helps reduce the scent, and the flavor.

  Sweat trickles down my forehead. Over my sides. The jungle squeezes moisture from my body, wringing me out. There is water, and food, and clothing in the gear stowed in the plane behind me, but I dare not reach for it. Not yet. Not until I’m sure.

  Hours pass. I spend the time reflecting on what I will do with my life when I’m rescued. I’d like to say I’m the kind of person who can shake off something like this and stay on mission, but that’s not what will happen. I think I’ll go home to Massachusetts, to my nice family, and double my efforts at the food pantry I started five years ago. Probably what I should have done from the start. It feels wrong, giving up before I’ve ever started, but after this I don’t think Gwen would ever forgive me for staying.

  And people in need are everywhere, whether it be the Amazon jungle or the suburbs of Boston. Coming here was a mistake, and motivated by a selfish desire to be part of something that wasn’t just humanitarian, but also exotic. Something to brag about. A story to tell. The food pantry isn’t glamorous, but it feeds the hungry and maybe even saves lives. And there’s a lot I can do to improve things. Marketing expansion to improve donations. Drop off locations. Pick up locations. More volunteers. On top of seeing patients and family, there’s a lifetime of work in the pantry.

  Thinking about a future in which I’m safe buoys me for a short time.

  Then my thoughts turn dark.

  I see myself rotting in this tepid green hell. Plants grow out from my insides. Animals gnaw on my remains. A line of hard-working ants carry away the rest.

  I see my wife and daughter, sad and confused. At first, they’ll hope. But eventually, they’ll accept that I’m not coming back. They’ll move on. Without me.

  I’m lost.

  In the Amazon rainforest.

  No one knows where I am.

  I don’t even know where I am. I could have been asleep for ten minutes, or two hours. I could be an easy thirty-minute walk from civilization, or an impossible thirty-day hike. I know a lot about animals and healing people, but nothing about surviving in the wilderness I was foolish enough to believe I could make my temporary home.

  Hubris brought me here. Believing I could be some kind of noble savior. In the future, I will evaluate my motivations better. How can I truly serve others if I’m also serving myself, or my ego?

  Night descends slowly, and the jungle that has seemed alive during the day, blooms into a chorus of nocturnal creatures. The cacophony becomes a kind of white noise, drowning out anything distinct, as fully as the leafy canopy blots out the moon. Wrapped in a cocoon of sound and darkness, I close my eyes.

  And sleep.

  Upon waking, I’m greeted by the early morning’s light, a body in agony, and the unflinching gaze of death itself.

  3

  The jaguar freezes in the ruined, open front end of the plane with statuesque rigidity. I don’t know if it hadn’t noticed me or had assumed I was dead, but my sudden inhalation upon seeing it locks the cat in place.

  Cautious eyes drift toward me, but the rest of its body language remains unchanged. Right now, it’s not a hunter, probably because it has the top third of…Matheus—his name was Matheus—clutched in its jaws.

  Matheus’s face, locked in a rigor of surprise reflects how I feel, but I’m too afraid to express it.

  When the jaguar’s eyes meet mine, I just stare back, trying to not reveal my fear. Right now we’re just two predators separated by more meat than a jaguar needs to eat in a month. That the cat has come back for more so soon means it’s been a while since its last meal. But Matheus should do the trick. If the smell of blood in the air doesn’t draw more predators, I should be able to walk away unscathed.

  Unless the cat decides fresh meat would be better than day-old.

  While my heart is thumping hard, perhaps hard enough for the jaguar’s keen ears to hear, I fight to keep my outside expression indifferent. I lean my head back while maintaining eye contact, letting my language exude something like, ‘I don’t care. Take the meat for yourself. I won’t stop you.’

  The armrest beneath the cat’s paw starts bending outward. It pushes against the downward movement, but that just makes things worse. When the armrest gives way, it takes everything I have to not scream. To not flinch away, or barrel my way outside through the closed door. But I manage it, because I’m sure that anything other than confident stillness will result in my demise.

  So when Matheus lands in my lap, and the jaguar atop him, I lock up and crush the squeal in my throat.

  The cat is less relaxed. It flinches back, irate.

  Claws extend, and with two outstretched arms, the jaguar slap-scratches Matheus a dozen times, shredding what remains of his clothing and the skin beneath. The cat ends the barrage with two right hooks, the second of which breaks Matheus’s neck with a crack and cants his head at an unnatural angle.

  Fighting revolt, I push up on Matheus’s partial corpse and am caught off guard by how light he is. The body rises like a sacrificial offering, arms dangling to the sides, head lolling back. The cat takes two more swipes at the body, nearly filleting my arm in the process, and after getting its footing on the two front seats, sinks its teeth into Matheus once more.

  A growl from the sides of the cat’s cheeks tells me it’s time to let go. I pull my hands back and Matheus’s remains hover above me. The cat turns its head, moving Matheus away from me, and it catches sight of me once more. When it does, the cat freezes in place again.

  “Seriously?” I say, unable to contain my annoyance. “Just go.”

  When the cat’s muzzle flinches into a snarl and its ears fold back, I realize the depth of my mistake. I relax my posture again, wondering what I can do to get the jaguar to leave.

  Do nothing, I decide.

  Going against my instincts, I slowly close my eyes.

  Breathe, I tell myself, slow and easy.

  W
hen I hear thumping, my muscles tighten, but I don’t move. Don’t open my eyes. The sound is coming from the front of the plane, not approaching.

  My muscles start to shake, but I keep my eyes closed.

  When I hear a thump outside the plane, and then nothing, I count to ten.

  They’re the longest ten seconds of my life, knowing that at any moment, the jaguar could attack and disembowel me.

  But it doesn’t.

  At the count of ten, I pry my eyes open.

  Aside from me and the pilot’s lower two thirds, I’m alone.

  The panic I buried during the encounter grips me hard. Each breath is a quivering heave. Sharp tingling moves from my fingertips and up both arms. My heart knocks in my chest.

  When I was thirteen, I was approached by a pair of boys, close in age, but somehow far older than me. The smaller of the two said he knew me, that he was going to beat me to a pulp because of how I treated him in second grade. I claimed ignorance. I didn’t know him. I didn’t go to Beetle School. I lived on the far side of town. All lies, but convincing enough to get me a ‘I’m going to give you five seconds and then I’m going to fuck you up.’ I was fifty yards away by the time those five seconds were up, and in another five seconds, I was out of sight. Upon rounding the corner, panic set in. I’m not a violent person. Never have been. Not even in second grade. I don’t have the heart for it.

  Still don’t.

  The panic I felt on that day doesn’t match today, but I feel like that small boy again, not just afraid of the pain, but of the violence itself. Of the violence and wrongness of harming another person. I suppose that’s the other reason I chose to heal people over animals. People don’t deserve to be treated poorly. Don’t deserve to be abused, or bullied, or harassed, or discriminated against. Not even the worst of us. Human life is sacred. To be cherished.

  My stomach twists as the juxtaposition of this opinion coupled with the fact that I’ve now fed part of both pilots to a jaguar sets in.

  As the muscle twitches slow, the tingling fades and my pulse slows. My thoughts return to the here and now.

  Get out.

  Take what you can and leave.

  Before it comes back.

  A vision of the jaguar returning to claim a larger meal, growing frustrated that the rest of Matheus and his fellow pilot are held in place by seatbelts, and opting to take me instead, sets me into motion. Accessing the storage compartment from the back seat is a simple matter of pushing a button and folding the seat forward. Once that’s done, I lean into the tight compartment and recover my backpack, which contains food, water, clothing, and a bottle of Ambien.

  I open the side hatch, search for the jaguar, and then I toss the pack to the ground. I return to the storage compartment and find a satchel bag, a first aid kit and a machete. I take it all and toss it out the door with the same abandon that I’d flung the pilot’s insides. A third trip to the compartment reveals nothing more of interest.

  I’m about to vacate the plane, when I spot Matheus’s belt. A knife is sheathed on the side, covered in gore. The blade could be useful, but I’ve already got the machete. I recall him also having a canteen, but I can’t bring myself to search his body for it.

  Better to leave with what I have, and my life, than stick around any longer and risk it.

  I slide out of the Cessna, trying to be quiet, wary of the big cat. I scan the low-lying foliage and see nothing. Breath held, I hear nothing. The jaguar is either waiting to pounce, or has taken its meal someplace private.

  Confident I’m not about to be torn apart, I collect the bags and gear. My bruised and worn out body groans from the weight of it all, but I resist the urge to lighten my load. I’m alone out here, with no way to resupply. I need everything I carry, and since I don’t yet know which direction to walk, I just want to put as much distance between myself and the open jaguar buffet as I can.

  Making note of the location from which the jaguar attacked yesterday, I round the plane and head in the opposite direction. A downward slope helps me along, the earth squelching under my boots.

  I pause every few minutes, to listen. Other than buzzing insects and bird songs, I hear nothing. No sounds of pursuit. No signs of civilization. No people. Of course, out here, the only one of the three I’m likely to hear is the first. So I keep my pace steady, and never stop long enough for my muscles to grow tight.

  By noon, or what I think is noon, my body protests.

  Why am I trying to tell the time by the sun? I wonder. I can just check on—

  My phone!

  Heart pounding again, I reach into my pants pocket and all but tear the phone free. Despair takes root when I see a shattered screen, but Gwen’s screen has been broken for the past year. It’s ugly, but still works. I push the power button and nearly whoop when the screen glows to life. My thumb print grants me access, and then I look at the bars.

  None.

  What were you expecting?

  There could be hundreds of miles between me and the nearest cell tower. A satellite phone might have reached the outside world, or even the plane’s radio, but the former might as well not exist, and the latter was destroyed in the crash.

  Tears fill my eyes as Gwen and Juniper smile at me from the background image. I rub my fingers over them, inadvertently pulling down a menu. The sudden departure of their faces snuffs out my source of sorrow. If I’m going to see them again, it’s not going to be because I stood around doing nothing.

  So I keep moving.

  Heading nowhere in particular.

  And I don’t stop until I have no choice, which is far too late. As the jungle begins to darken, my vision fades faster. I drop to a knee, confused and dizzy.

  I should have drunk more water, I think, and then pass out.

  4

  I wake beneath a waterfall, the cool torrent peppering my face. I gag and spit and shield my face, providing my eyes with a momentary reprieve. Just long enough to realize that the water is not falling from a river, it’s falling from the sky. And it awakens my thirst.

  I open my mouth and swallow gulps of the only water in the Amazon that doesn’t need to be boiled or filtered before safely drinking. When my stomach is full nearly to bursting, I push myself up. Mushroom clouds of pain expand and contract inside my head. Dehydration headaches are relentless. Ask anyone who has had a hangover. They’re the body’s way of saying, ‘Keep this up and you’re going to die.’

  Now that I’ve had my fill, all I really need to do is wait for my cells to rehydrate. Which is fine, because I can barely see ten feet through the rain. Aside from the hiss of falling water, the jungle is silent. Well, maybe not silent, but at least drowned out.

  Not feeling endangered by anything beyond a severe case of pruning, I move to the crook of a twisting, four-foot-tall root curved like a flag caught by the wind. The tree above diminishes the amount of rainwater pouring atop me and my gear, but it doesn’t stop the deluge. I have a poncho in my backpack, but I don’t bother retrieving it. I’d only soak the bag’s contents, and it’s too late. I’m already soaked through.

  Alone with myself in a jungle of white noise, my thoughts drift to home.

  Do they even know yet?

  I’m not sure what time it is, but I sense the sun somewhere above the thick clouds, which are mostly hidden by the jungle. The night has come and gone. I missed last night’s scheduled call. And someone must be missing the plane. And the pilots.

  My heart aches for Gwen. She’s a strong woman, fully capable of doing anything and everything without me. But she also loves me. Adores me. I’ve felt lucky since the day she agreed to marry me. The possibility of my being missing, or worse, will leave her feeling lost.

  I can see her, pacing the kitchen last night, dressed in a long T-shirt and panties—what I consider to be the world’s best lingerie—calling my number over and over. She’d be worried. And then angry. And then worried again. By now she’s probably desperate. She had my itinerary. Knows who my trip was
organized through, knows where I was flying from and landing. If anyone can track me down, it’s her.

  But I’m not the only one she has to worry about.

  Juni is three. And as the daughter of an attachment-parenting mother, she can’t be ignored for long. She’s not in pre-school, either. Homeschooling was the plan. It’s intensive and hard, but Juni is worth it, and on top of traditional schooling, we can teach her to be a compassionate human being.

  But how can Gwen do any of that while worrying about me?

  She can’t.

  I should have never come.

  The thought repeats like a mantra, coupled with, why am I here? What was I thinking? Can I survive this?

  My vision of Gwen shifts. She’s calling me. Worried at first. Then angry. Then Juniper needs her. To eat. For comfort. And while Gwen continues to worry, she doesn’t call again. She writes it off. This morning, when I still haven’t called, she’s got enough time to make one call, probably to me, but then her own duties become the priority. I might be her love, but Juni is too, and her responsibility.

  Gwen will eventually realize something has gone wrong, and will find a way to make those calls and spur people to action. Of that, there is no doubt. But the timeframe will not be as quick as I’d first imagined.

  Tonight? I wonder. Will she decide to take action after I’ve missed two calls? If so, she won’t be able to reach anyone until the following morning. And then how long to mount a rescue?

  Best case scenario, two days.

  And even then, how will they find me?

  They won’t.

  I can’t pin my hope of survival on Gwen. It’s unfair to her, and there’s really not much she could do.

  I turn my thoughts to Juni, and have to steer them quickly away. While my imaginings of Gwen were fueled by the woman’s strength, Juni is a child. A sensitive child. She’d be shielded from my disappearance for a time. But eventually, she’ll ask. She’s young, but smart. She’ll note that I haven’t talked to her on the phone. She’ll sense Gwen’s distress. Any time I think of her, my thoughts invariably turn to the moment she’s told that Daddy’s gone and he’s not coming back.