Legend of the Amazon
Chapter 1
Disclaimer: I OWN nothing & CLAIM nothing!
Summery: Reports of missing children, animals & half-eaten corpses send Mulder & Scully deep into the Amazon in search of a creature whose existence has been denied for many years.
"Mulder, I hope that you can give me a reasonable & logical explanation as to why we are fighting our way through thick vegetation & braving hoards of bloodthirsty insects." Scully said as she followed him through the thick underbrush of the Amazon rainforest. "Are you telling me that you have never wanted to experience the beauty of the Amazon Rainforest?" He replied, his sentence ending in a grunt as he hacked at the dense vegetation with his dulling machete. "Somehow, I get the feeling that we're not here to experience the… beauty of the rainforest." She said flatly as she looked around, Mulder shot her a mischievous grin over his shoulder as he pushed through the undergrowth.
Suddenly, Mulder back peddled so quickly that Scully only just had time to dodge his retreating form. "What in the hell is the matter with you!" She said as she irritably stepped in front of him, she had to cover her mouth with the back of her hand to keep from bursting into gales of laughed when she saw the basis for his hasty retreat. "Mulder it's just a goliath bird eating tarantula, intimidating as they may look, they're harmless to humans." Mulder's body language told her that he didn't completely take her word for it as he nervously skirted past it.
They had been on their way for five minutes when they heard a rustling in the underbrush ahead of them. They exhaled sighs of relief when a human being casually appeared through the underbrush. It was a woman that looked to be in her late forties, she was carrying a bow & arrows. "You must be the FBI agents, yes? My name is Jaci, now follow me, it isn't safe to venture out into the forest without a guide these days."
"Why is it no longer safe to go into the forest without a guide?" Mulder asked over tea in Jaci's hut that evening. "The forest is never safe for those like you who haven't grown up living with its dangers, but now even the most experienced tribesmen will not venture into the forest alone. We have lost children, livestock as well as adults to this creature & still, no one believes us. They come & they tell us that it is crocodiles, or jaguars; but I know how the crocodile & the jaguar kill, these kills are not theirs." "We're going to need to see where the victims disappeared from." Mulder said. "Okay, but tomorrow, it is too late today, we'd never make it back to camp before the sun sleeps. Come, I will show you to the guest huts." She said as she beckoned them to follow her.
Mulder & Scully awoke a banging sound just outside their hut. "Make haste! Then the sun has awoken before you!" Jaci said. They walked out to fins her irritably twirling her bow between her fingers. "Now come on! The two of you are slower then slugs." She said as she led the way. Mulder threw Scully one of his boyishly amused looks over his shoulder; she rolled her eyes in reply.
"This is where the three children were taken a few months ago." Jaci said as Scully studied the area for any forensic evidence. "You waste your time; the forest's climate makes sure there is never anything left." Jaci said. "Scully." Mulder said seriously as he nudged her, she followed the direction he was looking to see something floating in the water. "It's a body; we have to get it out of the water somehow." Scully said as she looked at it through her binoculars. Jaci responded by tying a section of rope around a nearby tree, then fastening the other to one of her arrows. "Now, why didn't we think of that?" Mulder said dryly as he & Scully helped her heave the corpse in.
"What did you find?" Mulder said as he entered one of the vacant huts that now served as a makeshift lab. "I don't know, Mulder; he's been… squeezed to death, all of the bones in his body are crushed. Also, the condition of his skin leads me to believe that he spent some time in the… stomach cavity or something." "You know, for centuries there have been stories of giant anaconda capable of swallowing a fully grown man." Mulder interjected as he looked over the body opposite Scully. "Most large constrictors technically are capable of swallowing children up to the age of nine, or perhaps a small adult. The shoulders span of a fully grown man such as this one would be more then a mouthful for even the largest anaconda. The snake would have to be upwards of eighty feet to be capable of swallowing a human." "& why is that so unbelievable to you? Snakes continue to grow throughout their lives." Mulder argued. "Because to reach a hypothetical length swallowing this man would require, the snake in question would have to be close to seventy years old & even if it lived to be that old. It's highly unlikely that this animal would have even had the strength to attack something as strong as a fully grown human… what?" She said as she took notice of Mulder's amused expression. "Nothing, I just never knew you were such a reptile enthusiast." He said with wide grin. "I'm not; my roommate in collage was a Herpetology major, I helped her study." She replied as one of the villagers burst into their tent, gasping for air from a long run. "There has been another attack, according to this man, the victim managed to survive." Jaci translated for them.