Running from the Devil ec-1 Page 12

  “I was a damn sight better off than most of the others. I’m alive.”

  Emma couldn’t argue with that.

  “I’m Emma Caldridge.”

  She didn’t give the usual smile that accompanied an introduction. Under the circumstances, smiling was unnecessary.

  Thirty minutes later, Sumner dragged himself to a sitting position. After a few minutes sitting, he hauled himself up to standing.

  They started again. A sheen of sweat covered him. Emma warred with herself over whether she should ask him to wade into the stream to lower his temperature, or whether she should continue to drive him forward, away from any pursuers. She chose to drive him forward. When he collapsed there would be time enough to work on bringing down the fever.

  The heat rose to over ninety degrees. The path alternated between oozing mud and wet leaves. Emma plunged into a spiderweb, its sticky gossamer threads clinging to her face and hair. She saw the web’s maker, lurking at the edge. It was almost three inches across, black, and hairy.

  “Ugh. Sumner. A spiderweb. I hate spiders!” Emma spoke louder than she’d intended, a mistake, because noise carried far in the jungle. She clawed at the web with her fingers. Her frantic movements alerted the spider. It scuttled sideways toward her.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Emma plunged forward so fast that she tripped over a root. She jogged another couple of feet, all the while brushing at the web that clung to her arms and face, and then hauled up short just inches from another web stretched in front of her.

  Sumner banged into her back. He grunted.

  “Sorry,” Emma said. “We’ll have to go around this one.”

  She turned and came face to chest with Sumner. She looked up, and it took all her control not to gasp. It was as if Emma was staring into a death skull. Sumner’s face was gray. Drops of perspiration dotted his forehead, and rivulets of sweat ran down the sides of his face. His eyes had sunk into his head and dark, black circles ringed them. His lips were cracked and dry, strange because the air was filled with humidity and nothing in the entire jungle was dry, and when he exhaled Emma could smell the excess ketone bodies in his breath. She recognized all the symptoms of infection, dehydration, and malnutrition. Starvation and infection were causing his liver to oxidize his body’s fatty acids, a process accelerated by the strenuous pace she had set.

  “Sumner, can you continue?” Emma whispered the question. He looked at her through eyes that were glassy with fever.

  He nodded. Once. And then swayed a little. He straightened slowly. Emma turned and continued on, but now at a drastically reduced pace.

  An hour later, his legs gave out. Fever consumed him. Emma dropped the backpack and set up the tent. They’d gone only about an additional six miles the whole day due to the lack of a machete. At around noon gunshots had echoed through the forest a lot closer than Emma had hoped. Sumner’s collapse couldn’t have come at a worse time. Tears ran down her face, and her hands shook. Having company had felt better at first, but now she couldn’t leave him, and she suspected that the guerrillas were close.

  Emma stripped his shirt off and peered at the machete wound. The skin around the slice was swollen like a balloon and a dark, angry, red color. Pus dripped out of the slash. The wound smelled sweet, putrid, and thick, like decaying flesh. It was clear to her that Sumner would die unless she could find a way to draw the infection from the wound and hold his fever down while she did.

  Emma stripped Sumner’s remaining clothes off and carried them to the stream. She submerged them in the water, wrung them out, and placed them over the branches of a bush in the sun. She wanted the sun’s rays to burn off any infection that remained on the clothing. She heard a loud buzzing noise. A nearby bush seemed to vibrate with the sound. Emma took a cautious step toward it. The sound intensified. When she reached the bush, she saw the sound’s source. A dead capybara lay next to the bush. Hundreds of blowflies covered the corpse. The black mass stayed in constant motion, the flies moving and battling one another for position. New flies hovered over the body, plunging into the heaving mess and flinging themselves back into the air. Several buzzed around Emma’s head, dive-bombing close to her face.

  Emma batted at the disgusting insects. She waved her hand to knock them off the capybara’s body. It was then that she saw the maggots. The tiny, flesh-colored larvae writhed on the dead corpse, creating an illusion that the animal moved.

  “Perfect,” she whispered. “You guys are coming with me.” She rooted around for a stiff leaf and a stick. She found both a few feet from the capybara corpse. She scraped the stick across the body, using the leaf to catch the maggots that fell off. The flies buzzed at her angrily, hitting her in the face as she worked. Her hands were full, so she resorted to shaking her head, making her hair flick at the angry insects in an attempt to keep them at bay. Sweat ran down her face and into her eyes. A horsefly bit her on the arm and she yelped at the sharp, pointed sting. She gagged at the smell that rose in a gaseous cloud from the animal, the same smell attracting the flies and maggots that she viewed as worth more than their weight in gold. When the leaf was full of maggots she bent the edges together to form a pocket, grabbed the wet clothes, and jogged back to Sumner.

  He hadn’t moved since she left him, but his face had taken on an even darker red hue. Emma rolled him over gently. She took the first-aid kit from her backpack and unrolled the gauze bandage. She carefully opened her leaf over the machete wound. She knocked the maggots onto the wound, taking care to gently push them deep into the seeping slash. They attached almost immediately, sucking onto the inflamed flesh. She made sure that the youngest, smallest ones were the ones she inserted. She carefully wrapped the writhing mass in the gauze, loose enough to let air in, but tight enough to hold the wriggling worms against the cut. She knelt back to get a look at her work. The gauze undulated, but the maggots stayed in place.

  She made a small fire, burning the neem-seed pods that she’d collected when she’d gathered the leaves. They smoldered, creating an antiseptic-smelling smoke that repelled the mosquitoes. Emma now viewed them as a secondary problem. Mosquitoes carried dengue fever and malaria, two diseases that posed the biggest risk to humans in the jungle, but Emma felt they created the most damage with their bites that itched like crazy.

  Sumner tossed and turned and mumbled in his delirium. Emma found herself getting desperate again. She didn’t want to be left in the jungle alone, and she didn’t want to watch another human being die.

  She laid the wet clothes over him, focusing on his forehead and the area around the wound. When she was done she sat next to him and stared at the fire. She stayed that way for hours, watching the flames lick upward. Thinking about Patrick. God hadn’t spared him, and it looked as though He wouldn’t spare Sumner, either. She wondered if she would be next to die, or if He would allow her to complete the important thing she’d come to Colombia to do. She needed to set right the tremendous wrong she had done. She didn’t want to die before she did.

  The flame colors mesmerized her. The dancing shadows created by the light lent an eerie feeling to the night. She dozed, sitting up.

  Emma jerked awake when she heard Sumner start to moan. He began thrashing on the ground. She leaped up to stop his violent movements, which threatened to dislodge the maggots. Even feverish, Sumner surprised her with his strength. She tried to pin his arms to the ground to stop him from flipping over onto his bad shoulder. He pushed himself off his stomach with his arms. He looked around wildly, then lowered himself back down and rolled over onto his back.

  “Sumner, stop. You’re running a terrible fever from the machete cut.”

  Sumner gazed at her, glassy-eyed.

  “Where are they?” His voice was a whisper.

  “I don’t know. Near, I think.” Emma found herself whispering back.

  Sumner closed his eyes. He opened them again. “My shoulder burns.”

  “It’s horribly infected. I’m treating it.”

  “We need to
keep moving.” Sumner sat up. The clothes fell off his chest onto the ground. He looked down at them, as if he didn’t understand what they were.

  Emma placed her hands on his chest. “Lie down. On your stomach or the side opposite your shoulder.”

  He put a hand on her face. “Thank you for saving me back there.”

  “Lie down,” Emma repeated, keeping her voice soft. “I’ll take watch while you sleep.” Sumner lay back down. Within minutes he slept again. This time Emma dragged him into the tent.

  The morning came too soon for Emma. She’d slept next to Sumner. A shaft of sunlight shot through a slit in the tent door and bored straight into her eyes.

  She awoke with a groan. Every muscle ached. Her mouth felt woolly, and her lids were crusted with sleep. She scrubbed her fists into her eyes and focused on Sumner. He was awake, lying on his back, his head turned to stare at her.

  “Good morning.” His voice was reedy thin.

  “How long have you been awake?” Emma moved next to him and checked his forehead for heat. He was much cooler than the night before.

  Sumner tried to shrug. He inhaled sharply. “My shoulder feels like it’s being stabbed with a million little knives.”

  “The infection nearly killed you. I’m treating it.”

  Sumner raised his eyebrows. “How?”

  Emma hesitated.

  Sumner’s gaze sharpened. “How?”

  “Maggots. They’ll suck out the infection, eat the dead skin, leave the healthy skin alone.”

  Sumner stared at her. He shifted slightly. “Did you say maggots?”

  Emma nodded.

  Sumner blanched. “I’m afraid to look.”

  Emma smiled. “It’s covered by a bandage. You won’t see them.”

  Sumner took a deep breath and turned his head. Emma watched him take in the gauze, which still undulated from the writhing bodies. He groaned.

  “Ah, God, that’s disgusting,” he said.

  “But it must be working. Your fever is much better.”

  “It hurts.”

  “That’s perplexing. I’m not sure why it would hurt. Maggots don’t bite, they only attach and suck. Perhaps the wound rests across a bundle of nerves.”

  “How long?”

  “Forty-eight hours. But trust me, they’re all that is between you and a massive, systemic infection. If they do their job, you should be infection-free soon.”

  Sumner closed his eyes. “I do trust you.” In a few minutes, he was asleep again.

  23

  THREE HOURS AFTER HIS MEN LEFT TO KILL THE TALL MAN AND the diabetic passenger, Luis knew something had gone wrong. The three he’d sent were his best men, reliable in a way none of the other losers on his team could ever be.

  He waved over Alvarado. “The men have not returned and it’s almost noon. You go in and find them. The tall man has done something!”

  Alvarado’s reaction was quick. “Me? No! I have to watch sixty prisoners and thirty guerrillas, all without one brain between them. The tall man is dead by now, Luis. The men will return soon.”

  Luis advanced on Alvarado. “I said go. What are you afraid of—El Chupacabra?”

  “You know I am not. But who will watch these men when I am gone?”

  Luis pounded his chest. “I will.”

  Alvarado glared at Luis. “Fine. I will go. Just make sure that Manzillo doesn’t hear about me having to track more missing men. Last thing I need is more deserters.”

  An hour later, Alvarado found the diabetic man’s corpse and a pile of discarded clothes. Thirty minutes after that, he found the naked, bound men in the forest.

  He kicked each one in the head. They groaned through their gags. Alvarado yanked the piece of rag out of the nearest one’s mouth.

  “Tell me what happened. And spare me from the El Chupacabra bullshit.”

  “We were attacked—” The man’s explanation was cut short by Alvarado’s boot hitting him yet again.

  “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 las
t 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.”