The shriek of steel on stone snapped Murdoch out of his reverie. He quickly disengaged the rotors and slowly backed up his rig. Standing in the cab, he caught a glimpse of mossy greys and scored, chalky whites through the tangle of partially chewed foliage in front of the masticator. “Shit,” he hissed, and shut everything down. He jumped down from the cab and cleared away the tangled underbrush to reveal a wall of weathered stone about two feet high.
“What the hell is it now?” came the foreman’s voice from behind him.
Murdock stepped back and shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Are those carvings?”
The two men leaned in to peer at the strange markings on the stones.
“Shit,” hissed the foreman. “That’s just what we don’t need.” He waved at a couple of loggers and pointed into the rain forest. “Scout up ahead and see how far this wall goes,” he yelled to them. “And somebody go fetch Spalding.”
“Assuming he’s sober,” Murdock added. “So what’s the big deal? If it was more than a few rocks, wouldn’t it have shown up in the surveys?”
The foreman snorted. “Hell’s bells, Murdock. We’re not even supposed to be here. You think the company paid for a survey?” He took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead onto his sleeve. “Where’s Spalding?” he yelled back down the track of the mulcher. “And where’d those log monkeys get to?” he asked no one in particular. “Want anything done around here, you got to do it yourself.” He disappeared into the forest in the direction the loggers had headed.
Suddenly alone, Murdock took advantage of the break to light a cigarette and sit on the stone wall. To either side of him, the other masticators continued to chew away at the dense undergrowth. The gentle slope of the valley allowed him to look back down the path they’d made the last few days, past the harvesters that were starting to pull down the trees too big for his rig, all the way down to the base camp. As he watched, he spotted Spalding starting to make his way up the broad swath of cleared forest. Murdock blew out a big cloud of cigarette smoke and studied Spalding as he approached, trying to decide how drunk the botanist might be. It had been Spalding who first told Murdock about this job, but the two men hadn’t spent much time together once they’d started. Murdock was on his rig most of the day, and there hadn’t been a whole lot for Spalding to do, so by the time evening rolled around the botanist was usually too drunk to have any meaningful interaction. Spalding seemed to be walking reasonably well, Murdock decided. Maybe it was early enough in the day for his friend to be tolerably functional.
“What’s the rumpus?” the botanist called out as he got closer.
Murdock stood to flip his still smoldering cigarette butt aside and cocked a thumb at the wall. “Boss-man wants you to take a look at this,” he said.
“Why--y?”
Murdock shrugged. “I guess he figures you’re the closest thing he’s got to an educated opinion. Looks like it might have some carvings on it.”
“I’m a plant guy, not an anthropologist.”
“Now see, there you go right there. I couldn’t even tell you what that is.”
Spalding grinned. “An anthropologist? They study cultures. People. In this case, really old people.”
“Old like in-a-nursing-home people?”
“Old like dead for a very long, long time people.”
“Ah. So, history shit, then.”
Spalding nodded. “Exactly. History shit.”
“That who made this wall? People dead a long, long time?”
“Don’t know.” The botanist squatted to take a closer look. “I couldn’t say for sure, but what little I
do know says there haven’t been settlements around here for hundreds of years. For something like this, maybe thousands. There can’t be too much of it, though, right? It would have shown up in the surveys.”
“Yeah, about that...”
Spalding looked up, but Murdock didn’t finish the sentence. “Ah,” the botanist finally said after a moment, and turned to look back at the stones. “I see. Of course. Nobody knows we’re here, do they?”
Murdock shrugged. “I don’t ask, they don’t tell me.”
“Hello, what’s this?” Spalding pointed at a roughly ovoid feature on one of the stones. “That look like a face to you?”
Murdock leaned in. “Maybe if I squint a little.”
“And those lines -- almost like tear tracks.”
“If you say so.” The two men stood back up, and Murdock took out another cigarette. “How you doin’ today, by the way?” It didn’t sound nearly as casual as he’d hoped.
Spalding’s face went cold. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No offense,” Murdock said quickly. “Just haven’t seen much of you lately. Cigarette?”
Spalding stared at the extended pack for a moment before taking one. “I’m okay, I guess,” he finally said as he leaned into Murdock’s lighter. He took a healthy draw and held it briefly, then blew it out with a noticeable sigh. “Thanks for askin’, though.”
Both men turned at the sound of the foreman emerging from the forest. “There’s more of these as far as we checked,” he called out as he walked up. “Any idea what they are?”
Spalding shrugged. “Ruins? Obstacle course? Park benches of the gods? Who knows? I don’t think anyone knew they were here.”
“Well, yeah, we’re in the middle of the jungle.”
“Rain forest.”
“
What?”
“It’s actually a rain forest, not a jungle. Once we get further in, the canopy will block a lot of the sunlight and inhibit most of this undergrowth.”
“Whatever. So, why way out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Well,” Spalding thought it over. “It probably didn’t look like this when they built them. It’s a protected valley, with good water supplies. Whatever culture was here back then probably cleared the whole area. If it goes on as far as you say, it may have been a fairly large settlement.”
“Then why didn’t we know about it?”
“Don’t know.”
“And who the hell were they? Where’d they go?”
“Can’t say.”
“Well what
can you say?” The foreman was scowling. “And what is it I’m paying you for, again?”
“To show you where the trees are.”
The foreman looked around briefly, then back at Spalding. “We’re in a jungle,” he said.
“Rain forest, actually,” Spalding corrected.
“I knew that,” Murdock offered.
“Did you now?” the foreman asked.
The shriek of metal scraping stone turned their heads to see another masticator stop and then retreat. “Well that’s just great,” the foreman said. “We were already behind schedule, and now this.”
“I suppose a call to the Antiquities Department is out of the question?” Spalding asked.
“What do
you think?” the foreman answered. “The only reason we’re even in this valley is because the company wants it cleared for mining next month. The trees are just salvage to cover costs at this point.”
“That would be a No, then.”
“That’s a big goddamn No. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Murdock, go tell the other riggers to stand down. You two,” he pointed at the loggers who’d followed him in and out of the forest. “Go find something to use for flags and grab another half dozen men to mark the ends of every wall.”
“So we’re going to work around them?”
“With the brushcutters, yeah. But then we’re gonna dynamite the crap out of ‘em so the bulldozers can push the rubble out of the way.”
“Won’t that knock down a bunch of the trees?”
“Well, if it does, then it’ll be your job to tell us which ones to harvest and which ones to push into the burn pile. You gotta problem with that?”
Spalding shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
“Damn right.” The foreman headed back down towards the camp. “Antiquities Department, my ass...”
“I think you just made his day,” Murdock said.
“How’s that?”
“He finally gets to blow some shit up. You coming back to camp?”
Spalding looked around at the idle mulchers. “Not yet. I want to take another look at these carvings before we blast them into oblivion.”
“Suit yourself.”
Murdock woke up with a full bladder. They’d been drinking more than usual after dinner, and he quickly realized that he wasn’t going to get back to sleep without relieving himself. He stepped through the tent flap into the warm night air. Screw the latrine pits, he decided. The forest was close enough.
He stopped at the tree line and began to piss out the beer from the night before. It was rather a lot, and his mind began to wander as he waited to finish. He realized that he hadn’t seen Spalding since the afternoon, and wondered if the botanist was alright. A small, tinny sound against the stillness of the night caught his attention. It wasn’t any of the normal forest sounds, but something man made. He zipped up and headed back among the tents towards the campfire. He heard the guard’s snoring before he got there. The fire had burned down to a handful of glowing embers. By just the light of the moon, he couldn’t tell right away who was sleeping on watch, so he leaned in for a closer look. It was one of the locals, the one they called Camisaroja. Murdock could smell the beer on his breath. He gently shook the man’s shoulder, but there was no waking him. Murdock was debating what to do next when the sound came again, this time clearly from the direction of the equipment lot. “Want something done, you gotta do it yourself,” he thought. Cursing softly, he picked up the guard’s rifle and headed toward the noise. As he got closer, he could just make out the figure of a man in the moonlight, moving between the harvesters. “Who’s there?” he called out, but the figure disappeared without answering. “I'm gonna regret this,” he thought, and moved cautiously between the machines. Slowly he moved up and down the rows, listening for any further sound, but there was nothing. He was about to give up when he noticed an open engine panel on one of the bigger rigs. He was peering into its shadows when the voice came from behind him.
“You’re up early. Or is it late?”
“Jesus, Spalding!” Murdock blurted out. “You scared the shit outta me!” He lowered his gun in relief.
“Sorry. What’s the rumpus?” The botanist’s voice was calm and measured as he turned on the flashlight he was carrying.
“Got up to piss and heard a noise. You seen anybody out here?”
“No.”
“And why are
you up?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Spalding paused for a moment, then added “I figured out what happened to them.”
“Who?”
“The people who were here before. The ones who built the walls.”
“That’s a neat trick,” Murdock said. “How’d you manage that?”
“In a dream.”
“That sounds like a story.” Murdock set down the rifle and took out a cigarette before offering one to Spalding.
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself,” Murdock said and lit up, blowing a pale cloud in the moonlight. “So spill it. What did you dream?”
“I’d been looking at the carvings all afternoon. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I was dreaming about the people who made them.”
“And?”
“I saw it all, Murdock. The whole thing. It was all there in the carvings. The growing community, how they kept clearing more and more of the valley, shrinking the habitat. Eventually the wildlife was forced to come into the settlements.”
“Is that what happened to them? The people, I mean.”
“No, it wasn’t the animals. It was what they brought with them. The parasites. The virus. The fever, and the blood. Oh God, the blood.” Spalding shut his eyes at the thought.
When it became clear that Spalding was finished, Murdock cleared his throat. “You’re starting to creep me out a little bit here, dude” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was just a dream, right?”
“No.” Spalding shook his head. “It’s not okay. And I really am sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything,” Spalding said, and brought his flashlight down hard across Murdock’s skull.
A bucket of water brought Murdock straight out of a dreamless sleep. He sat up and immediately regretted it.
“Easy there,” the foreman said. “That’s quite a lump on your head. You probably have a concussion. What happened?”
“Spalding,” Murdock remembered. “It was Spalding. Where is he?”
“Don’t know. Can’t find him. He’s been busy, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“See for yourself.” The foreman helped Murdock slowly to his feet. He was still in the equipment yard, but in the daylight he could now see that every rig had its engine panels open. “I thought you two were pals,” the foreman said.
Murdock took out his bandana and gingerly dabbed at the knot on his head. “So did I. What did he do?”
“Ripped out everything he could reach. Sparkplugs, wires, fuel lines, all gone. And not just the equipment. All the jeeps and trucks, too.” The foreman shook his head. “Just doesn’t make any sense. He had to know we could get replacements in a day or two.”
“Maybe not, boss,” came Camisaroja’s voice from behind them.
“Now what?”
“Can’t find any of the sat phones, and the short wave’s busted all to hell.”
“Well, don’t that beat all?” The foreman took off his cap and scratched his head. “Still, the supply flight’s due at the end of the week. He’s not gonna stop us from finishing.”
“No,” Murdock agreed. “Just slow us down, is all.”
“For just a handful of days? Why?”
“Maybe that’s all the time he thought was needed.”
“But for what?”
“I don’t know.” Murdock started to shake his head, but the dizziness made him stop. “I ... I just don’t know.”
The sound of something thick and wet drew their attention downward, just in time to see another fat, red drop splatter off of the foreman’s boots.
“Here,” Murdock said, holding out his bandana. “Your nose is bleeding.”
