by John Bolin
“What are you doing!” Alex cried out, rushing to the girl’s side. “You’re hurting her!”
“Alex!” Father Javier shouted. “Be careful.”
Alex moved closer. Recognition flooded through her. “Tima!”
The girl on the bed turned her face and hissed at Alex, baring her teeth. Sweat from the girl’s hair flew in the air. Bloody foam covered her gums and lips. Her eyes were fully dilated and bloodshot. She shook her head violently and moaned.
Alex pulled back. She fought the urge to run.
The priest chanted louder above her.
She put her head in her hands. She struggled to appreciate the spiritual ritual, to give it a chance. She fought to find her center. Her inner Christ. The peace of the Buddha. With her eyes shut she noticed the slight swaying of the boat. She inhaled deeply of the incense. But something wasn’t right.
Tima stopped thrashing and hissing.
Alex took advantage of the stalled moment. She looked up at the priest. “Stop it, please stop it. This girl is an Indian, not a Christian. You’re scaring her. She needs a shaman, not a priest.”
The priest quieted his voice but didn’t stop.
Father Javier put his arm around Alex. “Please, Alex, once he has begun the ritual, he cannot stop until the girl has control. If he does, the evil spirits will enter someone else.”
“There’s no spirit,” Alex said. “At least not an evil one like you suspect. Look, if anything spiritual needs to be done, her own shaman should do it. Father, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But . . . don’t.”
Father Javier frowned.
“Will you at least take off the restraints?” Alex asked.
Father Javier looked over at Tima. The girl had relaxed. He looked at the other priest with the crucifix.
The older priest nodded and spoke to Father Javier in Spanish.
Father Javier turned to Alex. “He will stop if you insist. He says that he is at an acceptable point in the ritual and there is currently no danger to any of us. But he also says he must warn you that the prayers are not complete. The girl is not cleansed.”
“That’s fine,” Alex said. “Let her go.”
Father Javier gestured to the young priest in the plastic chair, and he stood and carefully removed Tima’s restraints. He backed quickly away from the bed once the straps were loose.
“See,” Alex said, “she’s fine.” She could feel her heart beating through her shirt. She could feel the sweat on her own forehead. She bit her lip and leaned over Tima.
The girl’s mocha skin was a bright contrast to the stark white sheet. Her hair, still uncombed and gnarled, lay around her bruised and cut face. Tima had been a bubbly teenager when Alex had last seen her. Now she looked older, harder. Her skin was scratched and covered in patches of dried blood. Even so, it was so good to see one of her beloved Mek. Tima turned her head toward Alex, heavy eyes slowly opening.
A long moment passed.
“Unwarha,” the girl said weakly. White sister.
“It’s all right, Tima,” Alex said in the girl’s dialect. “You’re going to be okay.”
Tima was still shaking. Her eyes began to dart around the room.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.
“Banhi jama rundhi,” the girl replied. I’m scared.
“It’s okay. You are safe now. You’re going to be okay. Can you tell me where you hurt?”
“Havi gnau reme yan ah.” We must help the others.
“The others?” They were alive? “Tima, where are the others? What happened?”
Tima’s face froze. She stopped shaking. “In the jungle.”
“Where?”
“What are they saying?” Blackstone asked behind Alex. He’d evidently moved forward from the door.
“I’m just asking her where she’s been,” Alex said.
“Well?”
Alex glared at him. “Please. Give me some space.”
“Sorry.” The doctor stepped back.
Alex turned back to Tima. “Where in the jungle are the others?”
“They are in the city in the mist, with the White Shaman.” Tima shut her eyes. “If they are alive at all.”
Alex was puzzled. “The White Shaman? Tima, who is the White Shaman? Where is the city in the mist? Can you take me to it?”
The girl’s eyes grew wide with terror. She clutched the sheet with her hand, nails digging in deep. “Umarh huna juni bahani.” They were trying to kill us.
“Who?” Alex said. “Who was trying to kill you?”
“The white men in the city,” Tima said through clenched teeth. “The White Shaman. He has all the others. It’s in me! They put it in me!” She tried to sit up, but Alex gently pushed her back down.
“What’s wrong?” Blackstone asked, clearly agitated. “What is she saying?”
Alex stepped away from Tima’s bed, her whole body shivering. “She . . . she said she’s hungry, and she wonders if you could get her something to eat.”
Father Javier sighed with relief. “Then she’s well. Perhaps she will recover with rest. We should leave her alone now.”
Alex leaned over and gave Tima a kiss on the forehead. As she did, she whispered into her ear. “Tima, what did they put in you?”
Tima leaned back toward Alex’s ear. She breathed slowly, then spoke. “They put the devil in me.”
Chapter 8
It was too dark to read. The Call of the Wild would have to call back later.
Peter Zachary put the paperback away and looked around in the evening light.
Bogart was steering again. They’d switched off several times during the day. Gator and Linc had piloted their canoes the whole day, though Skins had taken a brief turn in Gator’s boat. Afanzo was sleeping fitfully on the floor of the canoe, his moans having subsided hours ago. Peter didn’t know if that was a good sign or not, but either way they should be close to help now.
“We use motors now,” Skins said from Gator’s canoe. “Current here is too weak. If you want reach Iquitos tonight, we need motor. Lights, too.”
Peter called a halt. They beached the boats, and the men worked to affix small two-stroke motors to the back of the canoes and floodlights to the front of them as the last of the sun sputtered through the leaves and darkness settled in the trees.
The jungle was black as pitch when they slid back into the water. It wrapped around them like a casket. Echoes of birds and insects surrounded them as they sliced through the water. Bats danced across the surface, fluttering past the lights as they washed a path on the water. Everything now was strange and unnerving.
“You sure we should be out in the dark?” Linc asked.
“Not afraid of the dark, are you?” Gator said.
“No,” Linc said. “I’d just hate to have another Amazon creature find us out here in the middle of the night. I mean, we are in a boat in the freaking Amazon River.”
They all laughed. It helped release the tension Peter thought they were probably all feeling.
“I think we’ll be all right,” Peter said. “Not too much farther, huh, Skins?”
“Just little while now,” Skins said. “No worry. We safe in boats.” Then he added brightly: “Just no fall in.”
Linc started into a painfully long rendition of “Hey, Jude” on his harmonica. No one spoke for another hour.
As they moved up the river, Peter finally began to see signs of civilization. First came the rustic Indian encampments, followed by organized villages with homes made of thatch and palm fronds. The first villages were lit with campfires. Later ones boasted gas lamps and even electric lights. Peter wondered how deep into the jungle the Western world would eventually move.
A motorboat outfitted for late-night fishing passed by going the other way. Another boat glided by silently before shining a floodlight on the expedition boats. Peter noticed the light lingered on Afanzo in the middle canoe.
They came to a place where the riverbanks were clear of jungle. A f
ew dilapidated huts clung to the edge of the river, along with a few homes and small shops. A rotting dock floated in the brackish water. Small fires still burned with embers. Dogs barked. Peter even heard a car horn honking in the distance. Heads peeked out from dark windows.
The river widened more as they came to the main village. Here, a few cars rumbled down the roads, headlights punching into the night. Shops and bars still glowed. The place actually looked like civilization. Skins had said it was the last place a car could get to.
Skins pulled back on the throttle, and the boat slowed. “Iquitos,” he said, gesturing to the town.
A series of buildings were set alongside the river. There were open-faced huts that during the day probably sold crackers and fruit and detergent. Nearby was a sad-looking boathouse made from rusted corrugated metal. A dock bobbed in front of the boathouse.
But the most impressive thing here was the big white boat moored on the dock. A red cross was painted on the side of it. There were several doorways on the boat from which white light poured out, attracting a swarm of bugs. A few people scurried along the decks.
A floating clinic.
“This it,” Skins said. “Medicine boat. We get Afanzo there.” He eased his canoe next to the medical boat and killed the engine.
Peter took a deep breath of the pseudo-jungle air, a thick soup of moisture and rot and diesel fuel. He could hear a generator thumping nearby. The screen door to a small dockhouse on his left slammed, and a shadow appeared against the light.
Were they expecting us?
Peter jumped from the canoe and approached the figure. “Hey, we’ve got a—”
“Stop there,” a man’s voice said sharply. “This is a quarantine area.”
Peter heard a clicking sound he’d recognize anywhere. It was the sound of a gun being cocked.
In the ambient light the man’s face looked long and white and gaunt. Definitely not Peruvian. American, maybe. His eyes drooped from his forehead like they’d been stretched that way for a long time. He had to be fifty years old. He was wearing a pair of khaki travel pants and a white shirt with a red cross emblazoned on the chest pocket. He held a revolver in his right hand. No tremor in his wrist. He was used to the gun.
“Quarantined?” Peter said. “What are you talking about?”
The man didn’t move. He clicked on a flashlight and shone it across the boats. The beam stopped on Afanzo. “Who’s that? Is he Quichua?”
“He’s Peruvian,” Peter said, “but I’m not sure it’s any of your business.”
“He’s one of our guides,” Bogart said. “He was attacked by a jaguar and needs a doctor.”
The man relaxed a bit. He lowered the gun and uncocked the hammer. “Sorry about the gun. We’ve had an incident here. Everyone is on edge. Take him onto the shop. The main clinic’s on the second floor. One of the doctors will see him.” He turned around and walked away.
“Hey!” Peter said.
The man turned.
“What kind of incident?”
The man paused like he was deciding what to tell Peter. “A sick patient, maybe with a virus. We’re just being careful. It’s nothing to worry about.”
Peter wasn’t so sure, but he had other things to think about now. He and his men carried Afanzo up the ramp and into the medical boat.
* * *
“Is he going to be okay?”
Bogart nodded as he came down the ramp from the boat. Peter, Gator, and Linc were bringing the last of the gear onto the dock.
“Yeah,” Bogart said. “Infection was starting, but they’ve got him on antibiotics now. He’ll be fine.”
Peter set down the video camera case and sat on it. “What about Skins?”
“He’s already in town,” Bogart said, now checking Peter’s bandages. “We ought to have them look at you, too.”
“Nah, I’m okay.” Peter brushed Bogart’s hands away. “What’d Skins have to do in town?”
“He’s gone to rent a car. Wants to go get his parents to be with Afanzo. They live a day away and . . .” Bogart looked away.
Peter knew what that meant. “Spit it out. What’d you tell him we’d do?”
Bogart smiled. “Never could pull one over on you.” He lifted one shoulder. “Skins didn’t want Afanzo to be alone. I told him we’d watch over him until they got back.”
“What?” Linc and Gator said together.
“I don’t know, buddy,” Peter said. “I was hoping to be back home sooner than that.”
“Not to worry, chief,” Bogart said. “Skins has somebody in town who can watch him starting in the morning. We’ve just got tonight.”
Gator and Linc groaned.
“Hey, it’s not like we’re going to catch a plane out of here ’til tomorrow anyway,” Bogart said. He pulled clear plastic packages out of his pockets. “I figured you wouldn’t let the staff look at you,” he said to Peter, “so they let me help myself to their supply closet. Now sit back and let me get a new dressing on those wounds.”
Linc sat down on the dock beside Peter. “You hear anything else about that quarantine, Bogart?”
“Nope,” Bogart said, tearing open a plastic bag. “They’re pretty tight-lipped about it. But I did see a door marked ‘Quarantine.’ Just one door, though, so it’s not exactly an epidemic, I guess.”
“Well,” Gator said, with his iPod in his pocket and a sports magazine under his arm, “I might as well take first shift.”
* * *
It took some doing, but Peter, Bogart, and Linc finally found three taxies with enough room to carry all their gear and three drivers with enough English to get them to the front door of a cheap hotel in town.
The area around the hotel they chose was all crowded dirt roads and rundown cinderblock buildings. The night traffic honked stubbornly and spewed out unfiltered exhaust. A few people buzzed by on scooters. They were back in a city, that was for sure.
The hotel itself was a two-story plaster building tucked away behind an open market that sold fish, blue jeans, and hammocks. Tiny shops lined the streets, most of them simple shacks locked tight after dark. Others were still open even now. Peter spotted a shack selling dried meat, another vendor hawking tools, and one shop that was filled top to bottom with coffee beans. He wondered how any of the shops stayed open. The streets had some people moving about, but he didn’t see anyone actually buying anything. It was the kind of place where people wandered about waiting for something to happen.
Peter led Bogart and Linc into the small lobby of the hotel and stood in front of a long wooden counter. Peter paid for the rooms, and a skinny, dark-haired woman handed him a fistful of silver keys. It was getting late and they were all ready to crash, but not before getting something to eat. Also, Bogart had offered to take Gator’s place at the clinic after he’d grabbed a quick shower and dinner.
Peter’s room was on the second floor at the end of a hallway, near a set of stairs. The rest of his guys were down the hall. He twisted the key in a flimsy lock and opened the door.
The room was tiny, but he’d stayed in much smaller. It smelled like cheap detergent, which was fine by him—at least it was clean, and at least he wasn’t sharing it with anyone. The second floor was better for the view, but worse for the heat. The room was like a sauna. But after three years in the Middle East, he was used to the heat.
He closed the door, clicked the cheap lock, and walked across the tile floor. There was a window above the bed but no blinds. The bed was squeezed between two mismatched tables. He had a basic utilitarian bathroom off to the side. A wobbly chair and a small sofa completed the furnishings.
Standing in the middle of the room, Peter realized that his system was still doped with adrenaline, that it had been ever since he’d tangled with the jaguar. He felt strung out and exhausted. Like he’d really lived today.
He moved to the window and checked the view, careful not to be seen by anyone. He could see the entire market area twenty feet below him. Directly below th
e window, a man stood hunched over a cart of fish, the source of at least some of the stench in the room.
He peeled off his clothes and walked to the bathroom. There was no shower stall—just a spigot at five feet that would probably spray water all over the bathroom. He closed the door, peeled off his bandages, and spun the handle. Water pulsed from the shower head in a sloppy stream that splashed everywhere: in the sink, on the toilet, even on the door. The water emptied through a drain in the middle of the floor.