Amazonia Read online

  Then the oncoming pedestrians were no longer just walking along, but running.

  They broke rank, rushing past me on both sides, fumbling with their thatch umbrellas. Many of them were looking behind them, back at the beach. I dodged them and climbed onto a sidewalk bench for a better view of whatever had spooked them. From there I saw what looked like canoes landing on the beach, an entire flotilla of them! Fifty? A hundred? Figures sprang from the beaching craft, several per boat. Up the tan beach they charged, brandishing long slender spears. Even from here these people looked large. It looked like an invasion of warriors of some kind. I felt paralyzed, not with fear but with fascination. The first wave of invaders was already halfway up the beach to the boulevard. The flood of Playa Amazonians continued past me toward town.

  What followed happened faster than I could understand. First a flock of birds darkened the sky between the invaders and me. The frightened people of Playa Amazonia stopped and looked up toward the birds. In they sailed, slender and speedy. They dove gracefully in unison, hurtling with dizzying pace. The men and women and children all raised their y’aps toward the birds and huddled under their heavy thatch canopies. The birds whistled down, louder and louder. I scrambled off the bench and raised my y’ap, fell to my knees, and scrunched under it. Through a crack in the umbrella fronds I could see the skinny suicidal birds hitting everywhere at once, fast and close together, like raindrops in a thunderstorm—smacking into boulevard and sidewalks and against the thatch domes under which the people of Playa Amazonia and I had tucked ourselves. And I saw that these birds were not birds at all, but arrows. I held my camera up, just above the protective canopy of my y’ap, and used the motor drive option.

  When the first storm of arrows had passed everyone stood up and ran for town again. You can bet that I did, too. We had made it maybe a hundred yards when a second wave of arrows began their deadly descent upon us. Again we fell to the ground and brought our knees to our chests and hunched our shoulders and brandished the y’aps at the arrows. I shot more pictures, randomly, camera held above the umbrella like a periscope. An arrow cracked into the thatch and I felt its power. This second deluge of arrows lasted longer than the first. Then, suddenly, like fish in a school darting together as one, we were up and running. We had only gone maybe fifty yards before we fell and covered up again. I could hear the archers’ footsteps on the boulevard behind us. I was astonished to hear someone laugh.

  The warriors were among us. I lay curled and trembling behind my y’ap, peering out through one of the small square openings in the thatch at the carnage likely to come. I thought of my mother and father, and my younger sister, Mary Ann, all back home in the greatest country in the world, in California no less. I told them I loved them. It was hard to get perspective through such a small aperture, or to see more than the condensed, hyper-zoomed images you might see in a badly filmed battle scene. But this is what I saw through the tiny square that jumped and shifted with every rapid beat of my heart: large bronze women; brief leather dresses; smoothly muscled legs and arms; hair pulled up high, spilling over like fountains; handsome faces elaborately and colorfully painted; wild eyes shining through; high cheekbones and straight teeth; knives and bows; scabbards on belts and quivers over shoulders; bare feet.

  Suddenly a dark shin blotted out everything else, my y’ap was wrenched away, and I was left fetally positioned and looking up at my own certain death. From my lower elevation she seemed gigantic, a towering she-form glaring down at me. She held the knife—handmade flint, I saw—in her right hand. Her bow was slung over her left shoulder. Her eyes were dark and her expression, even through the vivid facial paint, was singular and unmistakable: she was looking for something. Her fountain of dark straight hair spilled forward as she looked down at me. Similar interviews seemed to be taking place all around but I was too afraid to take my eyes off her for fear she would run me through or slash my throat. She stared at me for a long moment. I wanted nothing more than to understand what she wanted, and to give it to her. Then she crouched and offered me her free hand, which I took, and she helped me to my feet. My legs quaked and my knees quivered. To maintain eye contact I had to look up. I guessed her to be six-foot-three. In one of those daft inspirations that often overtake people under great stress, I said, “I’m Austin.”

  She set her hand on my shoulder and turned me around. I feared that knife. I had often read about terrified people losing control of their bowels and/or bladders but I did not. She had a smell that was musky but not offensive, like a patch of wild gourds. She continued turning me. When I came back face-to-face I saw that she had a questioning, analytical expression. As if she were measuring me. Or maybe trying to read my mind. Searching. She stepped back and made a circling motion with her knife and I turned around again on my own power, then, at her order, once again. When I came back to face her she grunted softly and a pained look crossed her bright, meticulously painted face. She put her knife-hand on my shoulder and eased me back to the ground. Then she trotted up-boulevard, toward town, through whole and broken arrows, where she joined her fellow warriors rousting Playa Amazonians, some of whom were standing and waiting for the procedure, while others still lay hunched behind their y’aps, bodies drawn up tight. I crawled under the sidewalk bench, pulled my umbrella closer up to cover myself, and waited.

  But not for long. A few minutes later the warrior women came flooding back down the boulevard toward the beach. They were trotting along, their bows over their shoulders, talking, laughing, making provocative gestures and sounds. Two of them clutched a young man by both his arms and he seemed to be struggling but not very hard. He appeared to be a tourist, like me. But unlike me he was a strong and very good-looking fellow. He looked alarmed but resigned as they rushed him past me toward their canoes on the beach.

  I found Mr. Troels still hiding under his desk in his office. I dragged him up by his shirt, pulling so hard it ripped at the shoulder seam.

  “You knew this could happen!”

  “Don’t be an ass, Mr. Fodder. How could I not?”

  “They kidnapped a tourist!”

  “Tourists are all they have left. They have already taken all the good young men from town. As I’m sure you noticed.”

  It struck me that I’d been passed over by the Amazons, found somehow lacking. I remembered the hard inspection that she gave me. Whatever that magnificent warrior woman was looking for, she did not find in me.

  “Why?” I asked. “What will they do to him?”

  “Whatever they want, I suppose. We assume they populate their nation in this way. And perhaps provide nutrition. We don’t really know much about how they live. No man has ever returned.”

  “How often do they come?”

  “The average is once every eighteen days.”

  “Amazons.”

  “Correct.”

  “Who you thought would be a good Authentic Adventures attraction?”

  “No, no, Mr. Fodder. The Amazons are no more than local colors—ask anyone! Just nuisances, like feral cats or bears of the campground. It was always our beautiful beach that I believed in most. What did you think of it?”

  I let go of him and went to the window and looked out. The canoes were disappearing into the flat silver horizon. The town seemed to be back to normal, except for the hundreds of arrows bristling from the sides and roofs of the buildings. I saw no blood and no injuries. Little groups of townspeople, most still holding their y’aps, had gathered on the street corners, looking back toward the beach and pointing, apparently recapping the events. A band of little boys raced through the streets, pulling arrows out of doors and walls, laughing, clutching thick handfuls of the stone-tipped weapons.

  Turning back, I glared at Mr. Troels with a fury that was new to me. “Get me out of here, Troels.”

  By the time I reached Caracas my phone was working. I used the layover to send photos and an email to Ivan. It seemed prudent to promptly share the horrors of Playa Amazonia on all my social
networks—in case anyone on Earth might be considering a trip there—so I posted the better pictures and a detailed version of what had happened. It was as good and honest a description as I could write. I felt that it was Conradian. Without the pictures, my postings would have been unbelievable if not absurd, but Mom and Dad’s camera had served me well. I thought how much Ivan would appreciate me saving his butt on Playa Amazonia. I imagined Ivy’s beautiful face smiling down at me in gratitude for exposing the fraudulent Mr. Troels and surviving this ordeal. They would probably ask me to dinner in an expensive Newport Beach restaurant, where I could admire Ivy and hear about my next fam trip.

  It took me twelve hours and two flights to get to LAX. I got into the very long US Customs line for citizens and checked my phone. The two texts from Ivan Slattery were brief and had been sent two hours apart.

  One: WHO TOLD YOU TO POST THAT SHIT, YOU WRETCHED SQUIRREL?

  Two: IT’S VIRAL! GET TO AAT HQ IMMEDIATELY UPON RETURN. NO EXCUSES!

  I was too tired and wrung out to care. I said goodbye to the idea of a nice dinner with Ivan and Ivy, but really, I wasn’t convinced it would really happen, then or ever. Strangely enough, I kept thinking about my rejection by the Amazon. What did she want that I didn’t have?

  Three long hours later, I walked into the Authentic Adventures lobby and the formerly neutral receptionist lit up with a huge smile. Ivy Slattery came bursting through the door with her arms out. Ivan was behind her, a hairy, dark blemish waddling across the red marble toward me. Ivy smothered me with hugs and cheek-kisses and all like that; Ivan threw his big arms around me and squeezed half my breath out.

  “The bookings!” he yelled. “The bookings! The bookings!”

  “They’re coming in from men all over the world, Austin,” said Ivy, with a very proud expression. It was the same expression she’d had after I’d impressed her father enough to get the job. “Thanks to you, we’ve got the Hotel Playa Amazonia booked for nearly six straight months. Solid!”

  I felt my mouth actually hanging open. “But…what about the arrows? The Amazons?”

  “You crack me up,” said Ivan. “To visit a beautiful beach, be spared from murder, and then be kidnapped by tall women warriors? For God knows what purpose? Few men can resist! Mostly older gentlemen are booking, but that’s fine—they can afford it. Now come in here, Houston. Ivy will show you how to book trips and get rich. When we’re too tired to print any more money tonight, it’s dinner at Villa Nova. On me!”

  My rise through the ranks of AAT was swift. My computer science education helped with the everyday technology that often befuddled Ivan and even Ivy. And my degree in comparative literature helped, too: I took over the copy writing, from ads to catalogues to longer, more literary pieces that went out to men’s magazines and directly to our more adventurous (prosperous) clients. After three months of AAT tourists going to and from Playa Amazonia, the only complaint we heard was: many called but few chosen. The Amazons turned out to be very discriminating about their men, which, weirdly—or perhaps predictably—made more and more men want to go. I’ll admit that most of our clients were not particularly desirable, in the classic sense. On the coattails of our success in Playa Amazonia, most of our other destinations boomed too.

  Of course the State Department got involved, what with the danger that we were sending citizens into. But our disclosures of risk were truthful, our contracts protected AAT from any responsibility for death or injury, and our lawyers were top-notch. After the men’s outdoor magazine honeymoon (Playa Amazonia made two covers), the liberal media went after us, briefly, but we had no injuries other than turned ankles, dehydration, and minor arrow wounds. (We required our guests to carry y’aps at all times. Mr. Troels arranged to have “AAT” woven into the canopies with black-and-gold painted thatch). Of course the more people we sent to Playa Amazonia, the more “friendly” the media became. Our most satisfied customers—the rare few to be “chosen”—had not one bad thing to say about the destination at all, as no one ever saw them again. A class action suit was filed by men who had traveled to Playa Amazonia—some as many as four times—and been passed over by the Amazons without even a second look. I knew how they felt. A judge threw it out.

  But like most overnight, blazing success stories, Playa Amazonia finally began to burn out. It was simple: the women had apparently gotten enough of what they wanted and stopped taking prisoners. Sensing the end, we at AAT raised our trip rates into the stratosphere, but the extravagant cost soon filled our junkets with rich tech-weenies (like me, but with billions), venal Wall Streeters, and other highly successful types who were really, sadly, not Amazon material. So the women stopped raiding altogether. You could hardly blame them.

  Ivy and I were married at the height of the AAT bubble. Shortly after the wedding, Ivan foresaw the bust and sold the company for $28 million to a young, seriously buff hedge fund manager who had been passed over by the Amazons five times. I understood his need to somehow be accepted by these women, and wasn’t surprised that after his cash buy-out, he spent an entire three months at Playa Amazonia—I mean right down there on the sand where the canoes might come up—living in a quickly constructed cinderblock “mansion,” oiling up and lifting free weights on the beach every day, making deals on his satellite phone, hoping for the Amazons to come.

  I felt for him. But I got mine.

  About the Author

  T. Jefferson Parker’s bestselling works have won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and two Edgar Awards. He is author of twenty-three novels, most recently Crazy Blood. He lives in Southern California.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Amazonia

  About the Author

  Mulholland and Strand Magazine ebook shorts

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2015 by T. Jefferson Parker

  Used by permission of the author

  Cover design by Keith Hayes

  Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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he author’s rights.

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  First ebook edition: September 2016

  Originally published in The Strand Magazine, 2015

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  ISBN 978-0-316-36133-0

  E3-20160806-JV-PC