Chosen
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Chapter 7: Awakening
He rose to his feet and looked up to the cabin, but it was clearly vacant. The only footprints he could see were the wide webbed tracks the River Princess left, circling around the long streaks in the sand he had left as she had dragged him out of the water.
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Switchblade circled the boat threateningly, weapons trained on it. Inside the cockpit they could see Mayhem at the controls, his Viper mask hiding his face. From the direction of São Miguel another boat was approaching at high speed.
Mayhem's voice came over a loudspeaker. "We're just here for a pick-up. We want those four crates you've so graciously recovered for us. Hand them over and no one gets hurt."
"Don't try anything," Trakker instructed. "Just let them have the cargo."
"But Matt..."
"We've lost one of us already. Just everyone do what they say and be cooperative."
The oncoming boat pulled up, driven by Malloy. Warfield stood on the deck cradling an assault rifle. Dagger hustled out and hitched the two boats together with the docking ropes. Piranha surfaced on the opposite side of the salvage boat.
"All right! You there! Yeah, you in the diving gear and you in the ugly shirt! Get those crates aboard!" Warfield shouted, pointing the nose of the rifle at Trakker and Hayes, and then at the German cargo.
Trakker pulled the diving mask on his head a bit lower to hide his face as best he could, and he and Hayes obliged.
"Who are they?" asked Maria, clinging tightly to her grandfather.
"Bad men," was Lopez's answer.
"I'm scared."
"Me too..." he whispered back.
"Thank you for your cooperation," gloated Mayhem as the last box was loaded aboard VENOM's replacement boat. "We'll have some positive things to say on your comment card. And give our love to the PNA."
Dagger undid the ropes securing the boats together and went to stand beside Warfield. With a departing laugh, VENOM pulled away.
Switchblade backed off and headed for the sky. Piranha submerged, dipping back into the murky waters.
Trakker sank to his knees and closed his eyes, the defeat hitting him hard. "How could I have let that happen? I'm so sorry, everyone. I'm sorry."
Hayes and Lopez were at their leader's side immediately. "Matt. It's not your fault. Things just happened." Sector emerged from the awkward hiding place he had found in a deck-side storage box.
"I let my guard down. Calhoun was kidnapped and now VENOM has the cargo back. I assumed they were gone—they always run away—and that left us completely vulnerable. And worse yet I risked our lives and our identities." He hung his head. "I've failed you all, especially Calhoun."
"Calm yourself, old boy," said Alex, watching the boat grow ever more distant across the waters. "We're not handing you Bruce's tanto yet. We know they're meeting with a buyer in Belem, and it's quite obvious that they didn't know who we were. If they had known, I'm sure they would have done a lot more than just take back the computer parts." He reached out and put his hand on Trakker's shoulder. "And as for Calhoun...well, I'm sure he's still alive."
"He's right, Matt," said Lopez.
"It's my fault the River Princess grabbed Cal!" blurted Hayes. "I...I joked that she could have him, and she must have heard." He looked to Maria. "She can hear through you, right?"
Maria nodded.
"If I hadn't said that..." His hands curled into fists.
"She wanted to help, but then she decided to trade the boxes in her river for your friend. She was desperate for him." And then the girl hung her head. "She told me how much she wanted him...how lonely she felt without a mate."
"I shouldn't have made him come along on this salvage trip. He really didn't want to," confessed Matt.
"Everyone stop blaming yourselves!" snapped Sector. "Hindsight is always 20/20. What we need to do now is get back to Macapa, get the vehicles, and go after VENOM again. Then tonight we'll go look for Calhoun," he said, taking over in Trakker's bout of self-flagellation. He grabbed his friend's arm and pulled him to his feet. "C'mon. It's not too late if we don't just sit around moping about it, chaps."
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Burns came to slowly. "I must have passed out or something," he huffed and looked around. The sun was setting in the western sky, an unusually fiery sunset incinerating the rows of puffy clouds above. He looked about, and found himself halfway up a riverside beach, a sloping stretch of sand between a thin strip of forest and a small channel of water. A dilapidated cabin stood at the top of the beach, and in the opposite direction, a sandbar blocked the channel from a large, still area of water...perhaps a lake...perhaps just part of the river. It was too small for the Amazon, but it could easily be a tributary or a smaller offshoot of the main channel.
He rose to his feet and looked up to the cabin, but it was clearly vacant. The only footprints he could see were the wide webbed tracks the River Princess left, circling around the long streaks in the sand he had left as she had dragged him out of the water. "Hello! Hello?" he called out, not really expecting to be answered.
He went up to the cabin, a one-room shack perched at the highest point of the land, and from here he could see he was on a small island, surrounded by water on two sides and impassable marsh on two. The cabin was perched on a set of stilts three feet higher than the ground in an attempt to gain some height above the seasonal floods. But the efforts weren't completely enough—a series of waterlines on the wooden walls revealed the fickle nature of the river.
Going inside, he found the place shabbily furnished with a table, a bed, a few cupboards, and a couple of chairs. The windows were hung with tacked up curtains of once-colorful calico, now long faded and weathered. A couple of pictures hung on the walls: one a rusted metal sign for a local brand of beer, the other a print of a young couple embracing, their nakedness concealed by creative posing and a wreath of waterlilies. An oil lamp hung from the ceiling over the table. "I see she spared no expense on the honeymoon cottage." Opening the cupboards he found some canned food, a few bottles of water, a few tools, some fishing tackle, mismatched tableware, and plenty of odds and ends. Upon examination he discovered the lamp to be half-full of oil, and on a high shelf carefully wrapped in a plastic bag was a large box of matches. Surprisingly the lamp lit with little trouble, the flame flickering and guttering at first but then shining steadily.
Burns went outside again and surveyed the island. He found a trail following the shoreline and a few rusted cans here and there, but no other signs of man. The area around the cabin was it for human habitation. There was a porch with a rickety bench at the front of the structure. A fire-ring formed by top half of a 55-gallon drum sat about halfway down the beach, and a grill rested atop it for cooking. As he began examining the contents of the outdoor cupboard a splash in the water caught his attention.
He rose and moved nervously down the beach. The water was dark now, the sun having set.
As a boy he had grown up with the notion of monsters hiding in his closet and creeping about under his bed. There was the "haunted house" three blocks over from the school, a crumbling, decrepit place, the stuff of pre-teen dares. Somewhere in the woods was the purported "Cave of the Convict" where an escaped murderer continued to indulge his bloodlust. Even the local swimming hole, a fairly recent oxbow lake, had a deep zone that only the bravest (or the most foolhardy) dared to swim across.
But here was a real monster. Not a myth. Not a legend. Not something conjured over boy scout campfires. He could see her lurking in the water with just her eyes and the top of her head above the river's surface. Freud would certainly have plenty to say about this.
"So you have me now," he huffed angrily at her. "Is this what you wanted?"
She rose slightly from the water, stretching out her long arm toward him, clawed fingertips pawing the air, beckoning him toward her.
"No! This is wrong!" He scolded. He turned his back on her and stomped up the sandy slope to the cabin.
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Trakker walked along the beach in his water-mocs until he came to the tree-trunk where he and Burns had talked that first night. Sitting down on it he again looked up at the stars. Rows of popcorn clouds dotted the sky. The moon was just starting to rise in the east.
The guilt over the day's incidents were chewing away at him inside, a long painful day that had begun with such promise and ended with such drama. At least they had beaten VENOM in the end, surprising Mayhem once again in Belem and managing to reclaim the cargo without much of a firefight. While their unknown buyer had gotten away with his identity intact, the man was going home without the prize he so wanted...wanted enough to keep VENOM around after the first skirmish. But the missile parts were now in the hands of the PNA and already headed north. "Those microchips have changed hands more times than a cursed diamond," Kennedy had laughed when told the story at the end of it all. He was not laughing when told of the loss of agent Calhoun Burns though. Quite the opposite in fact. "Tell me what you need, Matt. I can give you anything you want, but only for a week. After that my hands are tied."
Trakker looked out over the river again—the deep mysterious waters of the Amazon, waters that hid so much from the rest of the world. And then he stripped off his shirt and shoes and walked into the gloom.
He swam until exhausted, moving downstream, past São Miguel, past the next hamlet, then out to an island where he rested on a beach for a long time, quietly sobbing over the loss of Burns. "I've let you down, old friend," he wept.
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Chosen continues in Chapter 8: "Melusine"
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M.A.S.K. and all related concepts, characters, worlds, and events are property of DIC Enterprises, Inc and Kenner Toys. Original characters and story elements are property of E. Potter, writing under the pen name of Miratete.
This fic is dedicated to Ben Chapman (1925-2008), Ricou Browning, and Tom Hennesey (1923-2011)
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