Page 2 of Monstrous Rampage
“Humans have a great capacity for creativity and curiosity.”
Which was a nice way to say we were chaotic, nosy, and easily distracted.Wait, that’s me.I smiled wryly. “I wish I’d gotten a sample from that criollo grove before we left. I could write a hundred pages on those cacao pods alone.”
His eyes unfocused for a few seconds and then he clacked his beak. “The trees are too thick in this area for me to definitivelyidentify the same species using echolocation, but I marked a few possibilities. I sent the image to your device.”
My MacBook pinged and a jpg photo popped up. “Whoa, you can do AirDrop with your mind? That’s so cool. Oh wow, there’s a potential grove not far from here. Well, I’m not sure there are any roads in the area, but it’s a possibility. Thanks!”
The turquoise feathers fluffed up around his neck. “You’re most welcome. Would you like me to arrange for a car to be delivered?”
I grimaced and shook my head. “No, thanks. I never learned to drive, and I definitely wouldn’t want to try in a foreign country on mountain roads.”
“Maybe Axxol can jump us over to explore. We’ve got nothing better to do, right?”
Behind me I heard a loud exhalation of disgust. “What the fuck are you volunteering me for?”
I shrunk down a little in my chair and focused on my muffin. Axxol scared the shit out of me. I’d never get the image of him eating Dr. Snyder out of my head. Chomp. Blood everywhere. His bloody stump of an arm still around Natalie’s neck.
“A field trip,” Rizan said. “Just a quick hop to the other side of the lake.”
“Maybe a quick stop on the way to a new location.”
Rizan made a low chirp of surprise. “We just got here. You want to move again already?”
“In case you missed it, I put a big blue fucking bull’s eye right here on the map last night. Snyder won’t have missed such blatant phenomenon. For all we know, they’re already building an attack plan ready to deploy to our location, only this time, they’ll send everything they’ve got.”
“But he’s dead,” I blurted out. Axxol’s head whipped around, a mean snarl twisting his lips. His bald bullet head and gigantic shoulders made him look like a seven-foot-tall silverback gorilla.
“His human body is destroyed, but I guarantee that motherfucker is already devising a new plan of attack to steal Natalie and Akylla right from beneath our noses. Even worse, the bastard knows how we were operating. He knows we were monitoring any alien sightings, especially blue lights in the sky. Last night every living soul around the fucking lake saw blue lights.”
Rizan’s beak snapped sharply twice. “There are numerous reports in the local news of blue lights in the sky.”
I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out,“Why would you do such a thing?”I didn’t want him to chomp on me.
Luckily—or unluckily for him—Rizan didn’t have the same restraint. “Why the fuck would you blast the entire area with energy like that anyway?”
“I slipped, just for a moment. But it was enough.”
The way Rizan stared at him, eyes flashing, his beak partially hanging open, Axxol had just done the impossible.
He admitted he’d made amistake.
Focusing on my email to keep from snickering, I finished cleaning out my inbox and emptying my spam, when a new email pinged. The sender’s address alone made my heartbeat quicken. Dr. Ibarra from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, the largest and oldest university in the country.
Before we left the US, I’d emailed his department and asked if any of their research professors would have time to meet with us. I’d planned to badger Snyder into taking us on an excursion to Guatemala City if anyone would be willing to share an hour or two with us.
Dear Ms. Price,
Thank you for your interest in our research. I am presently vacationing in the Sololá Department but if you happened to be near Lake Atitlán, I would be pleased to meet with you. I’m staying in Santiago Atitlán today but will be leaving for Panajachel in the morning to fly out to Costa Rica. If you can meet today in the village, let me know.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jorge Ibarra
“Holy shitballs,” I whispered. “How close are we to Santiago Atitlán?”
“It’s the village at the bottom of the volcano,” Rizan replied.
Suspicion burned through me. What were the odds? We arrived yesterday, and this morning I got an email that one of Guatemala’s premier research professors was not only here but also was willing to meet with me? “Can you check this email? See if it’s legit?”
