Jamie Freveletti - Running from the Devil

“Not by El Chupacabra. Alvarado, wait!” Alvarado had wound up for another kick. “It was a woman. English speaking. She had a gun and ambushed us.”

“Was she United States Army?”

The man nodded. “She may have been. She was covered in mud and issued orders in English. The man translated to Spanish.”

“Where is the tall man?”

“He left with her.”

Alvarado stood over the naked man, breathing heavily, while a feeling of dread flowed into the pit of his stomach. He’d had a bad premonition about this job from the start, and now the unraveling had begun. He didn’t want to tell Luis that the tall man he obsessed over had escaped. Luis was perfectly capable of killing the messenger.

He untied the men and threw their clothes at them. “You fools will tell Rodrigo that you were incapable of killing an unarmed man and a woman. I’m not taking the fall for this.”

The men climbed to their feet. They stood there, eyeing one another.

“Let’s go. Rodrigo is waiting.” Alvarado turned around to return to the camp.

The lead man, without a shirt and dressed in pants that sported one leg ripped off to the thigh, grabbed a stick and swung it, hard, at Alvarado’s head. It hit with a loud, thudding sound. Alvarado dropped like a stone.

“Jorge, why did you do that?” The second guerrilla, this one lucky enough to be fully dressed, bent down to check for Alvarado’s pulse.

“You want to tell Rodrigo you failed? He’ll kill you in the last two seconds of the story. I’m not that stupid. I’m leaving here. Alvarado will be fine. When he comes to, he can talk to his buddy Rodrigo. Perhaps he’ll survive the conversation.”

“And where will you go, eh? That trail leads to the airplane, which by now will be crawling with American soldiers.”

Jorge wagged a finger in the air. “I will take the cutoff to the second encampment. From there I go to Cali, where I have friends.” He jogged off down the trail. After ten seconds, the other two followed. They knew that Rodrigo was not an option.

24

SUMNER’S FEVER BROKE AT DAWN THE NEXT DAY. HE SLEPT peacefully for the first time in eight hours. Emma dragged herself out of the tent to make her way to the stream. She was dizzy with sleep deprivation and hunger. She rinsed Sumner’s clothes in the stream and laid them on the space-age sheet in the sun to dry.

She filled the empty water bottle and laid it on the sheet as well. She’d once read in a scientific journal that the sun could kill all the bacteria in water if the water was in a clear container, placed in full light, and left for three hours. The writer had suggested the technique be taught to inhabitants of third-world countries. Emma had never dreamed she’d be using it for her own drinking supply. She rose to head back to the tent when a silver flash caught her eye. She made her way to it.

It was a discarded hubcap, half buried in the silt on the side of the stream. She pounced on it, pulling it out of the dirt. After a quick rinse in the water, it looked as good as new, albeit with a little rust on the edges. Emma scouted around for medium-size stones. She flipped the hubcap over and used it as a tray to hold the stones.

The heat sucked all the energy from her body. Emma’s own clothes were soaked through with sweat. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to be cool and dry. She grabbed a palm leaf, stripped, and waded into the stream. She used the leaf to rub the worst of the dirt and sweat from her skin. She used a stick from the neem tree to brush her teeth, pulled her clothes back on, and jogged to camp. She put the stones from the hubcap into the banked fire she’d made the night before and crawled into the tent to sleep.

Emma woke in the afternoon. Sumner was on his side, his face resting on his arm, looking at her. For the first time it seemed as though he was present, back from the remote place he’d inhabited in the clearing and the delirium from last night.

“How are you feeling?” Emma said.

“Thirsty.” His voice was a whisper, and reedy thin.

She reached out of the tent and retrieved the last of the water. “Drink it all. I have a new supply soaking in the sun.”

He emptied the plate and handed it back to her.

“Are the maggots still on me?”

Emma cut a glance at the bandage. It bulged, not from the slice, but from the maggots, which had grown to twice their size in the last hours. The bigger ones were working their way out of the gauze, probing through the webbed cotton with their heads. Emma did her best to act nonchalant.

“Still there,” she said in as cheery a voice as she could muster under the circumstances.

Sumner glanced at the bandage at the precise moment that a plump, fully grown maggot pushed its head through the cotton and wriggled free. It dropped off his shoulder onto the tent floor.

“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more revolting,” he said. Emma chuckled as she picked up the maggot and tossed it out of the tent.

“They’re making a run for it. Once they’re big enough to work their way out, they’ll fight to reach the surface, in this case through the bandage. When they drop to the ground they’ll search for a good hiding place, where they’ll move into the next stage of development. Eventually they’ll emerge as fully grown blowflies.”

“And the cut?” Sumner said.

“They’ll take the infection with them. It’s the pus that they ate that makes them so plump.” Emma ignored Sumner’s groan of disgust. “If we keep it clean with the alcohol, you should be okay. Can I have a look?”

He nodded and rolled onto his stomach. Emma inched the bandage up a bit. She could see pink skin under the nearest maggot. She replaced the gauze and patted Sumner’s arm.

“Looks good.”

Sumner gave her a bemused glance. “I’ve never met a woman who would willingly touch maggots.”

“I was a tomboy growing up. I loved bugs. I used to collect the discarded shells of cicadas. They looked just like the live bugs: wings, legs, eyes, you name it. I kept them in a box. My favorite I named Fred.”

Sumner smiled a small smile. “Your pet was a dead cicada named Fred?”

Emma nodded. “Fred was great. He was the only shell I ever found that even had the membrane that covered his eyes left over.”

“I can see how that would win over a girl,” Sumner said.

Emma laughed.

Sumner turned serious. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Afternoon, I guess.”

“How long have we been here?”

“Two days. You were sleeping, and I needed some rest, too.”

“We need to move.” Sumner struggled to rise. He pulled himself upon his arms, then dropped back down on the tent floor.

“Sumner, you should rest. You nearly died. I’m going to make an astringent tea that will help you fight infection.”

She flipped over the hubcap, filled it with water, and fished out the stones from the fire. Once they were added she hunkered down to wait. Within twenty minutes the water was steaming. She added cattails. After a few minutes she fished them out and placed them on her backpack to cool. Then she placed several neem leaves in the water and let them steep. She poured the resulting tea into the airline tray.

“Sumner, sit up a minute.”

Sumner struggled to sit, never opening his eyes. Emma braced his back. She put the airline tray to his lips.

“Drink,” she said.

He drank. He jerked his head back when he tasted the bitter liquid.

“What is this?” His voice was still hoarse.

“Antiseptic tea made from the leaves of the neem tree. It’s an amazing tree. The oil from it is like tea-tree oil.”

“Tastes like engine oil.”

“It will help bring down the fever.” Emma mentally crossed her fingers. She hoped her crude tea would help. Generally she would have waited to dry the leaves before steeping them.