Jungle Fever

by Lexy Timms

  “Time. Why? Do we dissolve in daylight?”

  Taylor just looked at her.

  “Okay, I’m sorry, I just... I’ve never been a lioness before, and it’s starting to hit me.” She shook her hands as if they were wet. “I don’t...” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, just because I can change doesn’t mean I have to change, does it? You’ve told me yourself that you haven’t changed in years... so, I don’t have to if I don’t want to. Right?” She didn’t wait for his response. He was pretty sure she didn’t actually want to know. “So, how do we get back to camp?”

  The mate is cute. Do you want to tell her, or should I?

  He said it simply, because there was nothing else that could be said. “We run.”

  “Run?” She barked a laugh. “Run? Taylor, we’re miles away, barefoot, and going direct means through the jungle. No. No. No. And no.”

  “It’s the only way. We don’t have money, we can’t explain ourselves. We’re out in the middle of the night, about as far from the tourist traps as two Americans can get. They’ll shoot us as CIA agents.”

  “You are a CIA agent!” she hissed.

  He shrugged. “So, they’ll be right. We have to.”

  “Damn it!” She swore some more, half under her breath. Half of it was in Spanish. Taylor looked around, trying to see it as she saw it. They were standing off the road, near a stand of trees. The traffic was infrequent, leading her to question what time it was.

  “Fine!” she snapped finally and pulled off her shirt. She opened her pants and looked at him. “You’re not undressing?”

  “Well, I thought we’d get to the jungle first, but if you want to...”

  “TAYLOR!” She pulled on her shirt, face blazing, eyes snapping with fire. “That is not funny.”

  “It is a little bit.” He grinned.

  Angelica swatted at his arm and missed. “Fine. I had that coming. Whatever. Let’s just go.”

  Taylor turned and led the way into the trees.

  The difference between what was jungle and what was possibly landscaping seemed to be which side of the next road they were on. From Taylor’s experiences there was a certain smell to uninterrupted jungle, and this had it. He stepped gingerly off the tar and into the grass, slipping into the jungle’s edge. He looked at her and nodded and stripped.

  She gave him a measured look, waiting until he was naked before she took off her borrowed scrubs. In moments, two large cats bounded through the overgrowth and headed to the camp.

  Of course, if we’re seen at the camp, they’ll shoot at us, he reminded the tiger.

  Then we will not be seen.

  The cat was pleased to have his mate beside him. She moved well, her muscles flexed and stretched, her tail held high and proud. She was a lovely golden color, but most of all she was his mate and she could match him now in the run. She could hunt with him. Even stretch and prowl with him.

  The jungle stood in hushed appreciation of the two of them. All creatures silenced as they strode past, fear and respect keeping the night life from calling out into the cool air for their mates, for their lands. Each and all paid silent respect to the ghostly pads that clawed the ground and the majestic sight of the cat and his mate.

  Oh, brother. Taylor mentally shook his head. The tiger had an ego the size of a small continent.

  They spent hours in the jungle, running, resting, and running again. They crossed rivers and forded streams and ran when they had the space, walked cautiously when the footing was bad. Eventually they came to a far-off familiar smell, a certain mixture of oil and gas and blood and despair that could only be the camp.

  The cat snarled at his mate. She looked at him and blinked languidly. The other memory... no... Taylor laughed at him. The mate was feisty. That was good. He led the way to the smell and the jungle came to an abrupt edge; the trees and undergrowth had been torn away. Ahead were the shadowed shapes of the equipment and the copse of trees with hole where once lay Batu.

  He ran through the opening to the equipment and crouched down, the mate beside him. He felt a sharp jab and spun. She had sunk a claw into his shoulder. She blinked and turned her head away to the far end of the camp, drawing his attention to something she’d seen. He listened.

  Crying. A muffled curse and a muffled cry of pain. A running engine.

  GO! Taylor yelled. The tiger leaped and ran, the mate behind him.

  Ahead were two men. One Taylor recognized as Durand and one he didn’t know, both of them armed. Around them clustered a dozen children and a few women. The refugees were being loaded into a truck. Some of them were crying. All of them smelled of fear. The cat resisted an urge to roar, knowing caution from years of experience. But the mate had no such inhibitions and made her voice known. The men grabbed for their rifles as the cat sprang on the unknown man. The mate reached for Durand.

  The children fled, screaming, and the man died under the cat’s claws. Durand and lion rolled in the dirt, fighting for supremacy. The fat man cried out and struggled to get away, but her claws cut deep, and in the end, he covered his face with his arms and sobbed his fear for the jungle to hear. She stood on his back and roared until he cried and the warm smell of urine filled the air.

  The mate climbed off of Durand and walked proudly back to him, tail in the air, swishing. She didn’t see what Taylor did, what the tiger did. The fat man reached for his gun, grabbed it, aimed it at the mate.

  There was no time to think, only time to react. The cat leaped from a standing position and landed heavily on the man’s arm. It snapped under his weight, Durand screaming loud and long, only to be silenced a moment later.

  In the end, Durand died, his blood gushing in the cat’s mouth. He turned to the mate. Her eyes were wide, disbelieving. She dislikes this, Taylor reminded the tiger. The lion disappeared into the night, bounding toward the camp in long leaps that would carry her there in minutes.

  He followed, outpacing her easily. Leading the way, finding the hidden dangers she didn’t understand yet. She would need to be taught. Men with bright guns circled the perimeter fence at night. As much to keep people in as predators out.

  The tiger’s tail lashed as he slowed to a stop just short of the entrance. He, too, was impatient and just wanted this night done and over with. He still felt the satisfaction of having stopped the bad man and allowing the women and children to go free. But there were still enemies out there that needed to be found.

  He crept up on the entrance itself, walking the perimeter carefully, testing the strength of the fence as he walked. The fence was put there to keep the refugees inside, to show them how close to the rest of the population they’re allowed to be. It’s not put up well.

  The cat hoped the memory was right and kept walking. He pressed against fence randomly and pulled to see if it held. Eventually, it didn’t. He leaned on that particular spot, moving back and forth until he fell through. The support hadn’t been set very deeply into the ground, and as a result the bottom of the mesh hadn’t been secured properly.

  The mate followed, though she’d lost some of the confidence she’d had earlier, and slunk low through the opening, ears flat against her head. She didn’t like the way the light from the buildings illuminated the grounds, and ran from shadow to shadow. He growled low in his throat, a reassuring sound, nudging at her with his head to lead her down the familiar paths, to the place where the mate had her den.

  The door to the building was partway open, the first bit of luck of the night. A fresh cigarette butt smoldered on the path, sending up an acrid, unpleasant smell. He sidestepped this, cautioned by Taylor that the smoker likely wasn’t far away. Sure enough, a sleepy woman wearing scrubs moved through the hallway, fumbling with the key to her door. She rubbed at her face tiredly and disappeared.

  The tiger nudged the mate again and pushed the door open the rest of the way, slipping inside and blocking it with his body to keep it from swinging shut behind him and effectively locking the mate outside. She fl
ed past him, body low to the ground, and led the way to the door to her own apartment.

  He followed, coming to rest beside her. The lion looked weary. She had thrown herself down on the ground, breathing heavily.

  He looked at her and closed his eyes.

  Moments later Taylor stood naked in the hallway. He stared at the door, one more puzzle needing to be solved. Angelica changed beside him, her hands trying to cover herself as she looked uneasily down the hallway.

  “Well?” she demanded as he hesitated. “Pick the lock!”

  Taylor smiled. His bare foot splintered the door jamb.

  Chapter 22

  They dressed quickly in the room, though Angelica remained quiet. Taylor didn’t press her but watched her with concern as she dug around and found a pair of jeans and a soft t-shirt. Comfortable things. Things she only wore when she was desperately homesick. She needed time to process everything. She only wished they had the luxury of time to do just that. He sighed a little when he looked at her and bent to tie his running shoes. She was glad that he’d stuffed the sneakers in his bag. She guessed they were for times when bootlaces might prove problematic.

  She looked at her own feet and grabbed for sneakers as well.

  In the meantime he was worried about her, but gentleman enough to give her the space she so desperately needed right now. When they were both dressed it was she who reached for him, placing a warm hand on his arm.

  “Durand,” she said quietly. It was hard to look at him. Even despite South America it was hard to come to grips with this side of him. “I was going to let him live.”

  Taylor nodded once. He knew.

  Of course, given a choice, she’d keep them all alive despite the fact that they’d done terrible things. She was also able to acknowledge that some things weren’t just practical. Or even advisable. But it didn’t make the decisions any easier. Or living with the consequences of those actions.

  She bit her lip, her head coming up so that he could see the things that haunted her eyes. “He would have killed me, wouldn’t he?”

  “Both of us,” Taylor agreed.

  “And he would have found the children again.” She shook her head, her stomach knotting. “Taylor, I still believe in the sanctity of life. I’m just not sure I’m a very good judge of it.”

  “I believe, too.” Taylor smiled. It broke her heart to see how sad the smile was. “But my life, your life, those children’s lives matter, too. And those kids will see tomorrow because Durand is dead.”

  She lowered her eyes and made one of the most difficult confessions she’d ever made. “I’m beginning to understand. I don’t want to. I want to go back to my innocence when I could be so sure that I was justified in my actions, and all people would be reasonable. I want to go back to my unshakable... to where I was so proud to be a healer, to where I felt so smug curing people and not hurting them. When did the world become so evil?” She shuddered.

  He took her in his arms and pressed her to his chest. “When this is all over,” he said to her, his chin resting on the top of her head, “I’m treating us to the best hotel this country has to offer.”

  She caught a laugh and choked it back down. “That might run into as much as twenty bucks, you know.”

  “Hell, I’m good for it.”

  She smiled though it was hard to do, and nodded once as she pulled back to really look at him. “We need to find Melinda,” she said, patting his chest. “But I can’t kill her, Taylor. I can’t.”

  “That’s okay.”

  He said it with another of those damned sad smiles that she was beginning to hate seeing. But he can. That’s what he means. He can kill. He’s had to. He may have to again. You need to reevaluate things, girl. You don’t have your safe little life anymore. You entered the real world. She looked at him, the love in his eyes, the sadness that lurked behind the happiness. But this is where he is. Where else would I be?

  They went through the room, throwing things into a bag in case they had to run or change again. One change of clothing each. In her underwear drawer, Angelica found a surprise. “TAYLOR!”

  He ran to her side. Both pistols were in the drawer, reassembled, cleaned, ammo already in the clips beside them.

  “Franco,” Taylor said, and his tone was positively gleeful as he inspected the weapons.

  “Wait. Franco was in my underwear drawer?” She looked hard at Taylor. “Ew! Why couldn’t he have left them in your underwear?”

  Taylor looked at her for a long moment. “Ew!” he said and handed her a gun. She shook her head but took it, tucking it into the back of her belt as he showed her. Thankfully he still had the butt holster, which helped a great deal after he adjusted it to fit her slender waist.

  They left the room, leaving behind months of her living there, and headed to the clinic. Did Melinda even know they’d escaped? Had she heard that Franco was in the hospital? She hoped the woman was on her rounds and too busy to realize what was happening elsewhere.

  This time of night, there weren’t a lot of people around. By sheer luck she stumbled across one of their newer volunteers, a young woman from Sweden who’d only just joined them. Someone who very likely hadn’t discovered any secret alliances just yet or gotten involved in any conspiracies.

  Hopefully.

  “Dr. Johns?” The nurse shrugged. “Yeah, she’s around. I take it her surgery didn’t go well.”

  “Another one?” Taylor looked at Angelica, who shook her head.

  “Do you know where she’s doing her rounds?” Angelica asked the orderly, mind already racing. She knew, then, that they’d escaped. She had to.

  “Strange thing. She wanted to go out into the camp and look for people there. It’s late, they’re all asleep; it really isn’t safe.”

  Taylor turned and ran. The door to the clinic slammed shut behind him. Angelica delayed only long enough to thank the girl before disappearing right after him.

  “Split up,” he said when she joined him outside. “I’ll go around to the left and follow that edge of the camp. You take the other path and we’ll meet on the far side. If you get there before me, WAIT.”

  Angelica nodded and headed in the direction he’d pointed.

  The camp was quiet. Dawn wasn’t far off but the people within the tents were still sleeping, though not as deeply as they would have an hour before. Because the night was warm, the sides of the tents were rolled up to let the air through, though the cots themselves were hidden behind mosquito netting, their inhabitants no more than dark shapes that murmured or snored in the darkness.

  My senses are sharper.

  Angelica paused once to listen, hearing the deep breathing of a woman sleeping a dozen feet away. How she knew it was a woman who slept she didn’t understand. How she could hear so many things, see so clearly even though the night was dark, with only a sliver of moon, she didn’t understand. The human side of her had been changed, too, in some subtle way.

  Am I even still human? If not, then what am I?

  It wasn’t time to worry about such things. She had a mission. She set her reluctant feet back in motion, forcing her tired body to keep going though she’d already been running all night.

  She was partway around her circle when a shape detached from a cot. Angelica faded back into the shadows and watched as Melinda smiled at a young woman and child. She looked for all the world like a compassionate doctor. Was she marking these two? Possible shifters for her experiments? Angelica began working her way over to her, careful to not get noticed. She looked for Taylor but couldn’t see him. People were stirring. The sun was coming up.

  She’d cleared half the distance to Melinda when a voice called out, “Doctor!”

  Angelica turned. An old man waved her down, one of her previous patients. His left hand was bandaged with a thick pad that was caked with dirt and filth. It needed changing. He smiled and held up his hand, gesturing to her that he wanted to talk to her.

  Not now. Please not now.

  Melin
da also turned at the call. She saw Angelica and her eyes grew wide. She spun and tried her best to run, but in the overcrowded conditions of the camp the best she could do was sidle through the beds and crowds of people rising to start the day. Unfortunately, Angelica couldn’t do much better. Her own progress was inhibited by a line forming, refugees needing to wash, that they might go to their shared duties within the camp. Breakfast would need to be prepared. Babies woke fretting, needing to be fed, to be changed.

  Life. The camp was so incredibly full of life.

  Angelica had made rounds through the camps once each day. Since Melinda was a surgeon she wasn’t as well known in the camps, and that was the deciding factor in the slow, bizarre footrace that followed. Angelica was stopped several times, people asking for advice, for fresh linen, for anything. Angelica was known, approachable. Melinda was nearly at the entrance to the camp.

  “Angelica!” It was Taylor, just coming into view. Angelica raised her arm and pointed in the direction of Melinda’s retreating back. Taylor raised his hand over his eyes and scanned the camp. He didn’t seem able to find her in the crowd. His expression was strange. Mystified. Worried.

  We lost her!

  Suddenly Taylor ran. But he took off in the wrong direction.

  It occurred to her that he was taking to the periphery of the camp, running the fence where few people were and making good time. She threaded her way back again and nearly caught up with him as he ran past.

  Angelica followed, forcing her tired body into a hard run as soon as she was able.

  She didn’t get far.

  “Doctor Truman!” Manchester called out, waving for her to join him.

  No. Absolutely not. I can’t have anything to do with him. She ignored him.

  “DOCTOR!”

  Angelica hesitated, more from habit than from any desire to respond to such brusque treatment. His face was bright red with frustration and he pointed, pointed to the ground in front of him as if she were a recalcitrant child being brought to heel.