Invasive Species Read Online Free PDF Page B

was, a small forest squirrel, its fur mainly dark gray but with a rufous patch on its back.
    It stared at him, curious but seemingly unafraid, for a good ten seconds before it turned, revealing a thick, bushy tail, and disappeared into the tangle. Unseen, a second one greeted it with a chuckling call.
    Then the forest was silent again. Even the wind had died.
    Silent . . . until Trey took two more steps forward. Then he heard it, a sound that made the back of his neck prickle.
    Not a rustle like the one the squirrel had made. Not birdsong, or the crash of some large animal navigating the thicket of brambles ahead.
    No: a low humming, almost beyond the reach of even his exceptional hearing. He felt it, a vibration in his bones, in the tips of his fingers and deep in his skull, more than heard it.
    Moving silently, he came up to the brambles. The thorny branches wrapped around each other and the trunks of the nearby trees. Though their leaves were yellowish, scraggly, sickly, they were thick enough to block the view.
    Ahead, the humming sound rose in pitch and intensity, then quickly died away.
    Trey glanced around for some way to climb over the wall of brush, but saw none. The only way through was . . . through.
    He began to edge his way into the mass of thorns. One step at a time, clearing the tendrils away, letting them go when they were behind him. Feeling them tugging at him, restraining him, as if in warning.
    The smell was much stronger here.
    After a half hour, scratched and bleeding, he was almost through. Hidden by the ten-foot-tall stump of a dead tree, he stopped moving and, with great care, pulled away one last half-dead shoot and peered in.
    Circled by the wall of thorn bushes was a clearing measuring about twenty-five feet in diameter. The sandy ground within the clearing, as clean and leafless as if someone had just raked it, was molded into strange little hills and hummocks. Atop each mound was a hole, perhaps two inches around.
    For ten seconds, fifteen, Trey had no idea what he was looking at. Then something ejected a spurt of sand from the hole nearest to where he stood, followed by a tiny pebble and a piece of twisted root.
    And he did know. Partly.
    It was the home of a colony of some kind. But of what? The holes were far too big for any ants he knew of, any bees, any wasps. Maybe some minuscule mammal?
    Too many questions.
    He crouched down beside the stump to wait. Ten minutes later, the answers started coming.
    *   *   *
    IT BEGAN WITH a rustling on the opposite side of the clearing. At first little more than a slight, dry sound, like fabric rubbed between a thumb and forefinger. Then it grew louder, and a patch of brambles began to shake. Something big was coming through them, something that let loose with a moaning sound as it approached.
    For a moment it paused, as if resting. Then, with a last squeal, it burst through the brambles and staggered across the ground into the middle of the clearing.
    A monkey. A red colobus, and a big one.
    There was something wrong with it. As Trey watched, it stumbled and fell, lying spread-eagled on the ground for a moment. Then it struggled back to its feet, its legs shaking, and turned slowly toward him. When it did, he could see that the skin over its stomach was hugely swollen, as if it were carrying a large tumor beneath its fur.
    He drew a little farther behind the tree stump, then held his breath to stay as still as possible. He didn’t know what to expect. Would it panic if it knew he was there?
    When it turned its face toward him, he saw that its eyes were a silvery white. Was it blind? He couldn’t tell.
    The monkey took three wavering steps across the clearing before its foot caught on one of the mounds and it fell. This time it just lay there, its patchy fur rising and falling in time to its breath.
    Again something moved at the edge of Trey’s vision. He shifted his gaze to the nearest mound, the one whose