27. Chapter 24 – Marley
We were still here.
The cloud cover was lower today and the air swirled in thick, stifling pockets. A storm was coming, which meant rescue today was unlikely.
I’d taken Nikki aside when we’d arrived back to camp and handed him the gun without the story that came along with it. The knowing look and triumphant grin had only elicited a halfhearted punch, my cheeks the temperature of Mercury, but he didn’t question me further.
It hadn’t stopped him from snuggling into my back again when we lay down in our shared shelter.
I awoke to another hard rod against my ass, and a massive cramp in my side before Ambrose had cried out in his sleep.
Demons must have taken over my body because I’d dragged my mat to his and fell asleep beside him.
I started with the water duties as soon as a grinning Madman had roused me for first watch.
The heat between us hadn’t cooled a single degree, but neither of us acknowledged the previous day’s activities. I wasn’t embarrassed, but it was a distraction we couldn’t afford today. I only hoped no one else had noticed.
Another cloudburst had poured overnight, this time with a brilliant display of lightening, and I’d only just gotten the fire going again from the embers of some deep coals.
It sizzled in front of me as I boiled our tenth batch of collected rainwater between two metal travel mugs, which would provide just enough rations for the day.
It was an agonizing process. The higher altitude caused water to boil faster, but not hot enough to kill viruses until it was half evaporated.
It would be the worst luck in the world to survive a plane crash and a jaguar attack, only to die of hemorrhaging diarrhea from waterborne bacteria without the luxury of toilet paper.
I cautiously removed the bottle with two large sticks acting as tongs, and left it to cool. One 250-ml bottle per person.
I’d sweated that amount out alone in the last hour, but we could survive on one bottle of water.
For now.
Nikki had found a mango and a banana tree on the opposite side of our camp and filled two travel bags with semi-ripened fruit.
“Marley, can I talk to you for a minute?” Tessa’s nervous request broke through my thoughts. I looked up to see her normally jittery smile absent, a tearful frown in its place.
“Of course.” Careful not to knock over any of the jugs, I followed her to a private spot behind the shelters. “What’s up?”
“Nessie’s sick,” she blurted out, wringing her hands in front of her. “Like, really sick.” She bit her lip, hesitant. “She’s been pooping and puking all morning. Emergency room bad. I don’t know what to do.”
Fuck. The chunga palm. There was no doubt in my mind it caused her infection. We’d all eaten the same food, drunk the same water. That was the only outlier.
We had counted ourselves lucky no one had experienced any bad abdominal symptoms yet. I had nothing to treat them with—nothing in our kit or our packs. Or Charmin.
“You had ginger candies in your bag, right? For plane nausea?”
She nodded but looked around fretfully. “The madman”—she whispered the word—“took those a few days ago. I don’t know if there are any left.”
“If there are, I’ll get them,” I promised. “Grab a banana. It’ll help replace some electrolytes if she can keep it down. Go—check on her, and I’ll see what I can find.”
She nodded appreciatively, but it did nothing to staunch the hopelessness in her eyes.
I needed to corner the candy fiend and get them back.
It was a complete Band-Aid solution, but they could at least help with the puking.
If a banana or two could maintain her potassium, Vanessa would buy herself another day.
The pooping—I had nothing that could help that.
My stomach twinged at the thought of a gastro bug spreading. Nausea and diarrhea. I was avoiding saying the words out loud, but it didn’t make them less true. Without a quick rescue, Vanessa would die.
“Madman,” I called, seeking him out among the trees. “I need to talk to you.”
Nikki was applying antibiotic ointment to Danny’s leg with the plastic glove from the first-aid kit, but walking by, I could see it was wasted effort.
Danny’s wound had ulcerated, leaving a foul-smelling crater the size and shape of a squashed football in the center of his thigh.
He hadn’t touched his water or his fruit this morning, and the gray pallor of his skin was so pronounced he looked ghostly.
He was going to need intravenous medicine at the very least, but an amputation looked more likely.
My thigh scar pulsed with phantom pain the more I stared, remembering my own agony and infection.
I’d spent six days in the hospital, and only because I’d checked myself in. How long would it take Danny to recover? If rescue didn’t come tomorrow, he wouldn’t know.
“Madman?” I called again. “Do you know where he is?” I asked Nikki, who’d finished dabbing the gel and was carefully removing the tainted glove.
Irritation flashed through the light hue of his eyes. “How should I know?” he snapped, throwing the glove on the ground as if it had personally offended him. “I’ve been a bit busy.” He waved his hands around the camp for emphasis.
Immediately, his eyes flashed with panic. “I’m so sorry, Marl, I’m a bit—I’m not myself today.” He ran his hands through his frizzy curls in obvious distress. “Please forget I’m an intolerable asshole.”
His snap had pierced through my heart, but the immediate apology soothed the scratch. He was on edge, of course. We all were. The man in front of me had only ever shown kindness and courtesy—he got a pass for being human.
“I don’t think any of us are ourselves, Nik.” I offered a weak smile as the symbol of my forgiveness. “It’s okay. But I need to find Madman.”
“He was here,” Brooks piped up in stilted English. They sat beyond the fire with Ambrose crafting more mats out of the long fronds. For what purpose, I couldn’t yet tell, but Ambrose was weaving with impressive dexterity, his tongue stuck out in focused concentration.
He was cute, this insufferable meathead, when he wasn’t making my life harder.
“I think”—Brooks pointed toward the direction of the plane—“he went there.”
“He’s probably just taking a piss,” the meathead called after me when I headed in that direction.
Well, it wouldn’t be something I hadn’t seen already. My cheeks flushed again, and I had to erase the thought from my mind entirely.
Foreboding grew in my gut when I recognized Diaz was also nowhere to be found. Thank God, I had taken the gun from Maddox last night.
Voices carried through the jungle as I rounded the bend.
“Why are you out here, cabrón?” The familiar, husky masculine tenor hissed between the rustle of leaves. “Why did you drug me and bring me to this hell?” A grunt, then a pained, choked sound. “Who paid you to do it?”
Halting in my tracks, I waited. It was my duty to protect my passengers—all of my passengers—but I wanted to know Diaz’s game, too. My cellphone, likely long dead in Ambrose’s electronics bag we’d stowed away, would have been so useful right now to record the evidence.
The voices turned to hushed whispers, giving me nothing. Creeping forward to get a better view with hopefully more audio, I barely caught myself from stumbling over an errant vine. Shit.
Closing my eyes, I counted to ten, then crept forward again. Within a few more steps, the vague whispers turned into a real sound stream.
“Do you know what I do to men like you, cabrón? I remove your eyes so you can no longer see me coming. Then, I shatter your eardrums, so you can’t hear me coming.”
Madman’s tone chilled my blood to ice, even in the incessant heat. “Then I beat you so badly, your bones become dust.”
I shivered as the chill became a chatter knowing he meant every word. This protective man who decided to bestow favor on me had been incarcerated for a reason. He was dangerous.
A gurgle surfaced over the sound of his threats, followed by a scuffle. A pained cry whistled through the trees.
“Then I remove each limb, until all you are is a carcass for the birds.”
Gravel filled his voice, each word as sharp as a stone. It was time for me to stop this before Diaz became our next victim.
I’d crashed a plane with no memories, and my copilot’s body was still missing.
I could still be deemed at fault and given my own prison sentence.
I was terrified when rescue came, they’d find some drugs we’d missed—I had no idea what the fuck I was doing in that department—which could result in another prison sentence.
To have a law enforcement officer’s death on my conscience would be just too much.
I rushed through the trees, snakes be damned, and stopped short at a tiny clearing.
Madman sat on Diaz’s back, grinding his face into the earth.
He’d wrapped his corded biceps around the grunting detective’s neck.
Two bricks of cocaine lay on the ground in front of them.
One had a half-torn plastic edge tied into a slim knot.
“Hello, Captain,” Madman greeted casually, his smile so cavalier despite Diaz’s lips and eye sockets turning a sickly shade of eggplant in his hold. “I found the missing cocaine from yesterday.”
Missing cocaine. I racked my brain for the answer and realized far too late. The drugs Nikki had dropped to the ground when we were attacked—the partially open one from the sprinkle we’d spread onto Ambrose’s wounds. I hadn’t even noticed they weren’t there yesterday.
Walking closer, I sized up the quivering Diaz mere moments from slipping unconscious. It was dark in here. The thick canopy filtered out all evidence of daylight.
“Release him, please.” I commanded, lowering to the balls of my feet, wary of any creepy crawlers slithering through the vines. “Just enough so he can talk.”
Immediately, Madman loosened his arm into a softer stance. Diaz sputtered so hard I thought he would asphyxiate. Then he turned his infuriated stare to me.
“Captain, as a member of the Brazilian Task Force, I demand that you release me at once.”