Jamie Freveletti - Running from the Devil

And a corpse.

Emma’s hands shook as she held the pistol.

“Take off your clothes,” she said.

The guerrillas didn’t move.

“I said take off your clothes!”

This time she punctuated her statement with a kick to one man’s shoulder. He babbled at her in Spanish, clearly not understanding her.

“What in the hell am I going to do now?” Emma said, frustrated.

Sumner gave her a reddened stare before he turned to the guerrillas. He barked an order in Spanish, his voice hoarse. The men looked at him in surprise. He said the same words again, then knelt down and shoved the rifle into the face of one of the guerrillas.

Emma noted that whatever he said worked, because all three began to rip their clothes off. Sumner shot Emma a questioning look but said nothing as the pile of clothes grew.

“Keep the guns on them,” Emma said.

Sumner nodded. He still stared at her as if she was a creature from outer space. Then she remembered the mud that covered her body. She must have looked a fright.

“It’s mud. It stops the bugs from biting.”

Sumner said nothing.

Emma grabbed one man’s pants and took the pocketknife to them, cutting the pants into strips. She tied the arms and legs of each, shoved pieces of the cotton into their mouths, and wrapped another strip of cloth around to hold the gag in place. She grabbed the water bottle the guerrilla had dropped in his surprise. She held it up for Sumner to see.

“This is precious.” She shoved it in her backpack. She handed one of the T-shirts to Sumner.

“For you to wear. Your back’s a mess of mosquito bites.” Sumner took the shirt but made no move to put it on.

“Help me carry them off the path,” Emma said.

Sumner didn’t move. He continued staring at her. Emma felt her anger rise. Why didn’t he speak? Had he gone off the deep end?

“Help me carry them into the trees!” Emma made her voice sharp. “While I can’t kill them in cold blood, I would like to stop them from chasing us for long enough to get away!”

Sumner swung the rifle over his good shoulder, stuck the tail of the T-shirt into his waistband, and grabbed the nearest soldier by the armpits. Emma pulled on the man’s ankles, and she and Sumner carried him into the brush. When they were done, Emma stood over the corpse. She didn’t like to look at it.

“Should we move him?” she asked.

Sumner shook his head.

Emma hesitated. She didn’t want to touch the man, and she rebelled at the idea of leaving a human being sprawled on the path without any type of proper burial, but she would leave him if it meant extra time to get away. The anger she carried around with her flared, bringing with it a feeling of despair. She shoved the emotion aside. Most of the passengers on the plane were dead, this man was dead, and if she didn’t make a decision about moving him soon, another guerrilla would appear and then she’d be dead.

“Perhaps the body will reassure any tracking guerrillas that their buddies had completed their mission,” Emma said. “We’ll leave him here. Let’s get the hell out of here before someone comes.”

Sumner shrugged on the shirt. Then he nodded.

Emma shot him a glance. Perhaps he didn’t speak English? Well, she didn’t speak Spanish, so he’d have to do his best to understand her.

“I hate to go back toward the airplane, but following the rest is no longer an option. Once the others realize these guys are missing, they’re going to double back. I saw a small trail that branched off a few miles back. Let’s take that and hope for the best.”

Sumner looked at her but again said nothing.

“Come on.” She waved him forward.

He fell in behind her.

Emma thought that what they needed the most they didn’t have—a machete. She stepped gingerly over what was left of the dead man and started down the path at a slow jog.

Two hours later, shooting pains arced from her feet through her overworked calves and through her already fractured shin. Emma swore under her breath. The microscopic fracture hurt like hell, and the only way to cure it was to lay off running until it healed.

That’s not going to happen anytime soon, Emma thought. She grimaced and kept going, maintaining a grueling pace despite the stabbing pain in her legs and the load on her back. She noticed how Sumner struggled to keep up. His shoes were cut in several places and he winced with each step. He stumbled. He needed a rest, but they had at least four hours of light left, and Emma intended to use every minute of it to get some distance between them and the guerrillas. They passed a huge palm tree, and she stopped to stare at it.

“I’m a little surprised to see one of these,” she said.

Sumner stood on the path, his chest heaving. He leaned back to view the palm.

“It’s called a traveler’s palm. I didn’t think they grew wild in this part of the world.” Three more of the trees were scattered around in a semicircle, looking as if they’d been planted. “It’s pretty distinctive; see how the fronds are fan shaped and stick right up into the sky?”

Sumner nodded.

“When I tell you, put your mouth at the base,” she told him.

Emma walked to the first tree’s trunk, which was twenty inches in diameter. The fronds wrapped around it and overlapped one another at the base. Emma followed along the edge of a frond with her fingers.

“Put your mouth at the place where this frond meets the trunk.”

Sumner raised an eyebrow at her.

“Trust me. You’ll like this,” Emma said.

He kneeled and lowered his mouth to the frond.

Emma gently pulled the base of the frond from the trunk, and as she did, clear water poured from a channel between the frond and the trunk.

Sumner drank greedily.

When he was finished, he sat back on his heels. A small smile played around his lips.

“Pretty neat, huh?” Emma said.

Sumner nodded, still looking at her with a whisper of a smile.

“All traveler’s palms collect water in their base. They got the name because travelers used them to drink. Pull another frond back for me, will you?”

Sumner repeated the procedure and Emma drank from the tree. She wiped her arm across her mouth.

“Let’s go.”

Emma started out at a brisk walk, and they kept that pace until sundown. She left Sumner sitting on the trail, collecting his breath, as she walked in a semicircle to look for a place to camp.

They should have kept going, but Emma didn’t think Sumner could make it. He still hadn’t said anything, nor did she. She preferred to focus on putting one foot in front of the other at a speed that would keep her ahead of any possible pursuers. Emma retrieved Sumner after she’d set up the tent and cleared a place to sit. He sank down with a sigh.

“Food,” she said as she handed him an airline package.

He barked a soft laugh when he saw the package but wasted no time ripping it open. The rancid smell of spoiling meat wafted from the tray, but Sumner didn’t seem to notice. He ripped at the meat with gusto. While he did, Emma pulled out the first-aid kit and walked over to inspect his infected shoulder. She lit the lighter in the darkness to have a look. The cut was eight inches long and filled with yellow pus.

“What caused this?” she said, although she already knew.

“Machete,” he said in perfect, unaccented English.

“I need to lance this and pour alcohol on it as a disinfectant,” she said. He stopped eating and stared at her, his eyes gleaming in the lighter’s glow.

“Can you hold the lighter? I don’t want to start a fire that would attract them.”

His hands closed over hers in the dark. His palm felt wet and clammy. Too clammy. He was working on a fever.

Emma dropped the lighter into his palm. He tried to flick the lighter on, but his slick fingers slid off the starter twice. On the third try he managed to light it. He held the flame while she used it to heat the knife. When it cooled, she pushed the blade into the oozing blister. He groaned, but didn’t move as she used the airline napkins to soak up the infection.

“Incoming alcohol,” Emma said. She poured a small amount over the wound. He groaned again. She covered the mess with a bandage and patted his arm when she was done. She sat next to him to eat her own filet.

Emma waved at the tent. “It’s supposed to hold two, and we’ll sweat to death, but it’s a lot better than being eaten alive by mosquitoes all night. You’re welcome to join me.”

He nodded again; his eyes flashed as they caught a shaft of moonlight. Emma crossed her fingers that he hadn’t gone over the deep end, and crawled into the tent. Sumner joined her a minute later. Their bodies lay against each other from shoulder to ankle. Emma moved as far away as possible, which in that closed space meant about two inches. She lay awake a long time, sweating, with the sounds of the night pressing down on her.

22

THEY WOKE AT DAWN AND ATE A LITTLE BEFORE HEADING OUT. Two bright red circles on Sumner’s cheeks indicated that he was feverish.

“Can you walk today? You look like you have a fever,” Emma said.

“Yes,” he said.

It was the last thing he said for the next eight hours.

The only bright spot in the day was when they found a stream.

“Oh, thank God, water.” Emma’s relief was profound. “We need to stay along this stream. If there are any villages in these mountains, they will be near it, you can bet.”

They spent the rest of the day following the river. As good as finding it was finding the cattails that grew alongside. Emma collected them as they appeared.

“We can eat these. What a great day!” Sumner raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Emma used a vine to attach them to the outside of her pack. Sumner watched her without interest. That his mind was elsewhere was obvious. Emma didn’t bother to try to snap him back to the present. Perhaps his thoughts consisted of things more pleasant than their current circumstances. Far be it from her to force him back to the grim reality they faced. It seemed they were to be forever silent.

By late afternoon, Sumner’s eyes burned bright, and the two spots on his cheeks expanded to cover his face and neck. Emma continued to march him through the jungle despite his rising fever. Each hour his cheeks grew more flushed and his eyes more glazed. The only thing that kept him going seemed to be sheer determination. Emma was familiar with the type. Endurance runners have the same undivided drive to push themselves against all reason. Except Sumner had a reason, a very good one. They could hear chopping sounds.

Emma knew from her many trips to search for medicinal plants that while the jungle foliage made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, it also magnified, rather than dampened, sound. It was a paradox she never could figure out. The chopping sounded close, but in reality the person making the sound could be miles away. While Emma knew this intellectually, she was having a hard time accepting it. Her adrenaline surged every time a sound echoed through the forest. Her mental state was deteriorating with each hour in the jungle.

Sumner stumbled, and this time he stayed down. He rolled onto his back and waved her off.

“I need a break,” he said.

Emma squatted next to him to wait. He had lapsed into his usual silence, but she felt compelled, finally, to break it.

“Your name is Cameron Sumner, isn’t it?”

He shot her his signature wary look.

“Yes,” he said after a long minute.

“Don’t worry, I’m not psychic or anything. I saw you hide your luggage from the guerrillas. When you left I retrieved it and read your business card. Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense.”