Page 1 of In Darkness and Dank

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Kittisak Amarin was certain that the Amazon rainforest was actually hell.

It was miserably hot, the sticky air soaked him within minutes, and at least ten different things in the immediate vicinity could kill him at all times. There were giant cats and snakes, not to mention the insects here, which had zero right to be as big as his damn head. No amount of bug spray seemed to deter them, and he couldn’t swat them because Professor Browning would yell at him about damaging a potentially undiscovered species.

Hell.

Absolute hell.

He’d come here to assist the professor as part of his final biology grade. After a few too many parties, Kittisak had fallen behind and was in grave danger of failing. That was simply not an option for him or his parents, who were paying for his tuition. He had begged Browning for a chance to turn in some extra credit to help boost his grade, but Browning had a much better idea.

Instead of wasting hours on monotonous papers for a few measly points, Kittisak would come with him on his research trip to the Amazon to assist him and then receive an A for his biology final.

Kittisak had agreed immediately.

The final was such a large percentage of his grade for the class that an A might bump him up to a B for the entire course. He’d heard about these kinds of trips before, and he hadn’t been the least bit worried. There usually were lodges for the students, they would only be out here for a few days, and it was basically a little vacation in a beautiful and lush rainforest.

Oh, how wrong he’d been.

So very wrong.

The first of the many horrifying discoveries was finding out that there was no lodge to be found.

No lodge meant no air conditioning, running water, or toilets.

The area of the rainforest they were traveling to wasn’t one frequented by tourists, and it was apparently crucial for Browning’s microbial research that they go into the deepest, darkest, and most miserably uninhabitable region of the whole place. They traveled up the river on a nasty boat and camped out by the shore in tents on rickety cots, and Kittisak’s personal hygiene was now at the mercy of one pack of baby wipes.

They’d come in the middle of the wet season, which was a fun way of saying that it rained every day and often without warning. Kittisak changed his socks constantly, he felt disgusting, and he didn’t think he’d ever be dry again. He had to check his boots every time he put them on because of course there was the risk of something crawling inside that might be able to kill him.

He was stuck out here for at least another month collecting tubes of dirty river water so Browning could test his theories about acidophilic bacteria and how they were affected by the heavy sediments carried throughout the tributaries here. Browning believed that the bacteria were drawn to areas of heavier sedimentation and may even be following the source all the way up to the Andes Mountains in Peru and Bolivia. If his theory held true, they would find more bacteria thriving the higher upstream they went.

This research was important because similar strains of bacteria are used in bioleaching, a process in which bacteria are used to extract valuable metals like gold, silver, and copper from low-grade ores. Browning received a generous grant to study the bacteria because a biomining company called Bio-Minex wanted to improve their current method for extracting copper.

At present, it was cheaper to traditionally smelt copper because bioleaching worked too slowly with that particular element. If Browning could prove the water with heavier sediment caused the acidophilic bacteria to metabolize faster, they could potentially create a more efficient process. Bio-Minex’s hope was to use this to finally gain a foothold in the very lucrative copper industry.

Personally, Kittisak was more concerned about actual leaches than bioleaching, but he was here as Browning’s assistant. He had to stay on for the full trip to earn that final A, and if he wasn’t so afraid of his parents murdering him for failing a class, he would have fled back home in a heartbeat.

His parents were far from rich, but they’d insisted on helping pay for his courses. They’d wanted to give Kittisak the best future possible, and being the first generation of his family born in America meant the pressure was stacked.

Kittisak’s parents had immigrated from Thailand to the United States a few years before he was born. They’d both worked hard to make a good life for him, and they were thrilled when he had announced his plans to attend college for a degree in botany. Kittisak hadn’t qualified for any scholarships because his grades were pitifully average, but his parents were happy to help pay as long as he promised to focus on his studies.

Though his entire interest in majoring in botany had been predicated on the desire to learn how to grow marijuana, he’d somehow managed to pass his freshman year with Bs and Cs. He tried to leave the partying behind as a sophomore, but he still had a lot of trouble saying no to a good time.

A few too many parties later, here he was in the damn Amazon chasing off giant mosquitos.

When Kittisak wasn’t worried about being eaten by something, he was dying of boredom. His cell phone didn’t get any service out here, and he couldn’t even play games on it because the solar-powered gizmo he’d brought along to charge it got too wet and fried. He hadn’t thought to bring any other form of entertainment, and he was left with talking to his traveling companions, who were as interesting as his wet socks.

Browning was a thin elderly man whose white skin was mottled with liver spots, and he had glasses thicker than Kittisak’s useless cell phone. The man got excited finding germs in dirty water, so having a fun conversation with him was out of the question.

Dr. Vancil Hutte was another scientist who specialized in microbiology. He was an employee of Bio-Minex and had been sent along to help Browning with the research. He was a handsome Black man in his fifties, but he got really excited over dirty water too, so he wasn’t much fun to talk to either.

Louis Denninger was also an employee of Bio-Minex, but he was definitely no scientist. He was buff, tan, and blond, and he was actually quite attractive, but he was unfortunately an absolute dick. Kittisak didn’t know what his job was except to carry around a big gun and try to boss everyone around.

Kittisak did everything possible to avoid him.

Denninger had two men who reported directly to him named Bissell and Zimm. They were hulking specimens from the humid swamps of Florida, and Kittisak sometimes had trouble understanding their thick accents. They were cousins of some degree and didn’t have a clear job except to be armed assholes like Denninger.

Oh, and just for an extra dash of fun times here in hell, they were both racist.

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