Jungle Fever

by Lexy Timms

  The researched in her stirred, interested despite herself. “‘Usually’?”

  “Usually. There are exceptions.”

  “So you don’t intermarry?” she asked, giving the damn vent the evil eye. Melinda had turned off the pheromone gas. What the hell was that thing doing on?

  “We’re not that close, genetically,” he said, his voice calm. Steadying. He knew that she needed him to speak right now, to keep her distracted. She loved him for keeping on like this, as though this conversation were the most important thing in the world, even though there were other, more important, things that needed saying.

  She loved him for many reasons.

  “We do keep strict marriage and birth records, just to be sure. Besides, there are more in the... old country.”

  Angelica snorted. Old country. “What, now I’m in a Godfather movie?” she teased. There was a long silence where the only sounds were the hiss of the air as it came through the vent and a slight rattle she couldn’t place. It was quiet enough that she’d not noticed it before.

  “I’m sorry that you got caught up in this,” he said after a moment.

  “I’m not.” Angelica smiled. Now that the rattle was heard, she couldn’t unhear it. “I think what we’ve done here is probably more important than all the work I ever did with Meadowlark, or Doctors International. Taylor, we had a chance to save hundreds of lives, to catch the bad guys. And we got to do it together. I felt like part of team, with you.”

  “You are.”

  She took a breath to speak. The rattle stopped. Thank goodness. “Taylor... I...” Wait, why did the rattle stop? She put a hand to her cheek. The breeze wasn’t blowing on her face.

  “What?” Taylor asked.

  “Wait a minute.” Angelica stood and walked over the vent. She looked carefully at the grate. She pushed against it. The rattle was coming from it. She shook it. It was loose.

  “Taylor, do you have a vent in your room?”

  “A vent?” She could hear him stand. “Not sure what you mean. There’s a...a metal tube coming from the wall. It’s where she dosed me before.”

  “No. I have an actual vent, a heating/cooling vent in my room. It’s like... I don’t know, three feet square.” She threaded her fingers through the grate and pulled. “Ouch!”

  “What happened?”

  She looked up at the dark ceiling overhead. “The grate is loose,” she answered, “but I’m not strong enough to pull it out.”

  There was a long silence. “Yes, you are.” Taylor’s voice was quiet. Patient. Letting her work it out.

  I have to learn how to think like the lion.

  She turned to the wall as if she could see him through it. She looked back to the grate. “How? How do I change without the pheromone?”

  “The same way you did the first time. The pheromone only made you want to. You did the rest yourself. Picture yourself as the cat. Start to bend over like you’re on all fours; pretend, like when you were little.”

  Angelica sighed and looked through the glass wall. Empty room. Apparently, Akisha had left when Melinda did, seeing no reason to wait around. She slipped off the gown and curled up into a ball.

  Clavicle fracture, ribs cracking, reforming... Frankly, she would have preferred to not have a full narration of each pain that stabbed and prodded her, but this was the part of her that figured out how to, well, how to cat. She let it alone.

  Moments later she blinked and stretched. The view was different. She was seeing the room from about what would have been waist-level when she was human. She looked down, examining her paw. For testing, she raised the paw and extended the claws. She stood, stretched, and rose on her rear legs. The extended claws slipped through the openings in the grate.

  She pressed her other hand—no—paw against the wall and pulled as hard as she could. The tough material of her nails kept her from injury, where her fingers would have been deeply sliced. The vent cover bowed and pulled. With a crash it gave way, and she fell backward, slamming into the table. With a roar she righted herself and turned to look. The grate was free of the hole, but there was no way she was going to fit into that as big as she was now. She licked her lips.

  “Angelica? Are you all right?”

  She walked to the glass wall and let him see her. She held eye contact as she shifted. It was still painful, but her body was beginning to understand its new state. The change went quicker, and the resultant nausea went away almost immediately.

  “It’s too small for me as a cat,” she called back to him. “I’m not entirely sure it’s big enough for me as a human.” She looked dubiously at the opening. “I can’t exactly wear the gown, either.” She bit her lower lip. “Taylor, I have to crawl through the ductwork naked. What if she knows what I’m doing? If she’s got a monitor on us?”

  “She’d have been back by now. Maybe she can’t come because she’s working at the hospital. This might be our only chance,” he said softly. “You can do this. I’ll find us something to wear when we get out of here.”

  Oh, that is sooo not the point. I... ew... Experimentally, she pulled the table. It moved slightly. She arched back and convinced the stubborn metal to give almost six inches. It would have to be enough. She took a deep breath and stepped onto the table and shimmied into the hole.

  This is where I start quoting lines from Die Hard, right? Something about coming out to the coast? I can’t remember it right now...

  She pushed herself along. The going was hard. She’d thought a duct would be more of a smooth tunnel, but the joints in the pieces of metal scraped and clawed at her skin. Little pieces of flesh stayed behind, and though she couldn’t see she knew she was bleeding from a hundred different places. And there’s so much lovely dust to rub into those little cuts...

  Before she could run through all the high points of septicemia, she paused to look around. The area she was in let in light in spots. The ductwork was shabbily made; whoever built this place had scrimped on materials. Whatever breeze this was supposed to convey from room to room was lost in a hundred holes. In front of her the path ended. There were two options, as the ducts formed a ‘T’. Left, or right?

  As far as she could tell, Taylor’s cell and the nurses’ station were to the left. She wriggled until she turned and slid her shoulders into the new junction.

  Where she promptly got stuck.

  Chapter 21

  “Taylor...” Angelica half-cried, half-shouted. “I’m stuck! I tried to make a turn and...” She braced herself and pulled. The duct held, but she felt a fresh cut along her belly. She cried out. She tried to back out, but her shoulders refused to make the turn backwards. “Taylor!”

  The air became too close, too stale. The restriction of her arms, the tightness of her chest... Oh, this is such a bad time to discover that I’m claustrophobic. She slammed against the ducting as hard as she could, but only cut herself deeper. Taylor wasn’t answering.

  He can’t hear me. He really can’t hear me. I’m going to die alone in an air duct, naked. WHAT THE HELL! A brisk wind picked up, blowing down on her head and whistling when it streaked past her through the narrow hole she left between her and the corner.

  “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” she screamed. She tried to bang her fists on the side of the ducting, but she couldn’t move her arms. “GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

  Melinda said that, as a tiger, Taylor weighed over 700 pounds.

  Angelica stopped. She looked around. The lion was bigger than she was. Cats can get through a hole three-inches wide.

  She took a breath. How the hell do I know that? It made sense, in a way. That part of her was created to do the memorization of medical facts. She repeated, by association, every fact that she’d had to remember. It was logical that it would automatically be used on nearly everything.

  I think I’m about to do something I’ll regret. If there’s no room for me... But she was well and truly trapped. She took a breath and remembered what it was to be a lioness...

  This pa
rticular transformation was worse than the others. Without room to writhe, to set her body in different positions, the bones reformed and found there was little room. Her screams deafened even her, but the cat was strong and the body was young and resilient. And despite a hundred more slices where the metal tore into her skin she soon lay in the ducting, catching her breath, thankful for the protection of fur between her and the brutal seams that had torn her human flesh to ribbons.

  Now to get out.

  Her claws pulled against the metal, but the metal held. Her tail thumped and thudded on the floor of the duct. She stretched her rear legs past the turn and inched her way through the corner. She strained, moving slowly, one centimeter at a time, and managed to slide her rear legs past the corner.

  Relief so profound washed over her. She nearly wept, or would have if her new body had been built for such things. She was unstuck, but still unable to move quickly. But slow and steady would win the race, or else she’d learned nothing from fairy tales. She lay down a moment to still her frayed nerves.

  That was when she discovered the ductwork wasn’t built to sustain the weight of a full-grown lioness. It crashed, rather spectacularly, falling from its moorings and swinging down as the metal bent. It tore off at the corner and dumped one large lioness onto the top of the nurses’ station. The blow of the fall impacted against her side and slammed her against the office chair behind the desk.

  Shattered clavicle, three ribs cracked. Possible traumatic pneumothorax... She coughed. A blob of blood splattered the floor. Make that a definite pneumothorax. The rib must have punctured the lung...

  Melinda, I hope you’re right about this.

  She could hear Taylor now. He was screaming her name. She tried to stand, to be human, but the pain lacing through her was exquisite. It was impossible to remember what she was supposed to do when white-hot fire lanced through her like that. She lay back down, trying to catch her breath. Okay, that didn’t work... just imagine. That’s what Taylor said, imagine.

  This time the ribs moved and mended. The organs shifted, reshaped, reformed, her breath came easier, then easy. Her legs grew, her fur replaced with soft skin. Angelica lay on the floor; the wave of exhaustion made her ill.

  I can’t keep doing this.

  From far away she heard him calling her name. Why was he so urgent?

  Then she remembered. It seemed incredible that she could forget.

  GET UP. GET UP. TAYLOR WILL DIE IF YOU DON’T GET UP.

  Angelica staggered to her feet, holding onto the desk. It was hard to hang on. She knocked Melinda’s clipboard to the floor. The pen followed.

  “ANGELICA!” Taylor shouted. “What the hell happened? Are you all right?”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice. Just open his door, that’s all you have to do, just... She walked to his door and spun the wheel, hard. She reached out to do it again and spun around. Akisha stood in the doorway, pistol in hand.

  She really wished she’d taken time to find another one of those blasted paper gowns.

  Angelica backed off, her back against the glass wall that had confined her for so long. Akisha smiled, cocked the pistol, and took careful aim.

  A white streak shot from the cell that held Taylor. The tiger reborn, leaping. He hit Akisha from the side, knocking the gun from his hand. It went off, firing into the ceiling as Taylor tore out the man’s throat.

  Angelica slumped against the wall. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see. Just wanting the whole thing to be over.

  She heard the bones crack, the sounds of his transformation. In a moment, he was next to her. He’d grabbed the gown from his cell and draped it over her. He had put the cloth back on his hips.

  “Did you have to kill him?” she asked, lifting her head to stare up into his eyes, those beautiful eyes she loved so well. One hand came up to cup his cheek, her thumb tracing the line of his jaw.

  “He was about to kill you.”

  “I know. Batu tried to, too. Maybe...” She took a shaky breath, and glanced over his shoulder at the body that lay just beyond. Two feet that would never walk again. Sightless eyes staring up at the fluorescent lights. He’d been a bad man, but he’d still been a man. “Can you maybe injure? Not kill?”

  Taylor stood and held out his hand for her. “Come on,” he said without answering her. “Franco needs your help.”

  She looked up him, at his hand. She closed her eyes for a moment, a brief, blissful moment. She nodded and took his hand.

  Franco’s wound wasn’t critical, but the blood loss was becoming so. She packed the wound, thankful that at least the medical cart in the room was well supplied. She didn’t want to think about why. She considered the wound itself, wondering how to stem further loss of blood. Right now, all she could do was leave it open. He’d need surgery. “I have to get the bullet out, and for that I need tools, anesthetic.” She looked at Taylor. “I would even settle for a set of scrubs to wear.”

  “We’re going to have to leave him,” Taylor reminded her. “Figure out where we are.”

  “He’s lost a lot of blood.” She looked back on the bed. “How do you expect me to...”

  “There’s nothing more you can do,” Taylor said, with a glance at the door. “Besides, help is on the way.”

  She blinked. “What help?”

  “Remember when Franco yelled at me about not killing Durand? When I was in the cell there?”

  Angelica nodded.

  “He had my satellite phone in his palm. He showed it to me. I held up three fingers, my speed dial number for help. He pushed the button and left the phone on. The cavalry should be riding to the rescue soon.”

  Angelica looked down at the soldier who had risked his life in an effort to save hers. “And in the meantime?”

  “Clothing,” Taylor said, his voice hard. This was the soldier speaking; a man who was trained in survival skills, she reminded herself. “Food if we can find it. Transportation, or at least a way to get back to the camp.”

  “We’re probably in an old abandoned building,” Angelica warned him. “The only thing anywhere near the camp was a hospital taken out of service years ago.

  “I’m not so sure we’re near the camp. Remember, Melinda wanted to move the coffee pot in here, but couldn’t move the fridge? The question is, why not? The only thing I can think is because it’s a shared fridge. No, this is a working facility of some sort.” He walked behind the counter and looked around. The duct had fallen over the counter and swung like a pendulum, one side still attached to the duct that ran along the ceiling. He looked under the desk and reached for something. He stood again, satellite phone in his hand.

  It lay crumpled in his hand. Taylor looked at the pieces and then looked at her. Angelica shrugged. “Sorry, I landed pretty hard.”

  He breathed out and dropped the remains. “Maybe someone heard us,” he said hopefully. “But in the meantime, we need to stop this—these experimentation, the slave ring, all of it.”

  Angelica held out her gown like a formal. “How?”

  He grabbed a fresh gown, the last of the packages, and slipped it on. “Tie me up,” he said with a wink.

  THE ELEVATOR DOOR OPENED on a busy scene. Apparently, the top floor was shut off from the public. The rest of the building made up for it. They walked through a crowded hallway, patients in beds in the hallways, some simply sitting on the floor leaning against the walls. Angelica took the lead, weaving past nurses too occupied to care about two more patients, though Taylor’s size and their white skin did cause a few double takes.

  The universality of all hospitals is that doctors spend their days at hospitals and have no time to do laundry or all the little housekeeping so necessary to everyday life. Thus doctors work in scrubs, easy, soft, universal, and someone else’s problem to launder. Storerooms are filled with them and, despite the press of people, were largely left unguarded. She only had to wait on the floor by the door to the supply closet and wait for an overworked nurse to run out with supplie
s. She then stuck a finger on the floor in front of the door to prevent it from closing, and she and Taylor slipped inside and changed into scrubs. There were some surgical booties to fit over shoes, nothing useful for bare feet, but at least it covered them from casual observers.

  They found an empty gurney and brought it to an elevator unchallenged. Upstairs they loaded Franco and brought him back down to the same floor and left him near the exit.

  “THIS MAN’S BEEN SHOT!” Taylor screamed. Angelica let out a wordless high-pitched wail as if she’d just seen blood for the first time.

  “What the hell?” someone yelled.

  “He’s been shot!” Taylor repeated. The man who had demanded they explain themselves rushed to Franco’s side.

  “This man is a soldier,” he stated unnecessarily, frantic in his movements, checking vitals. Already he’d forgotten them in his rush to save the patient. “Get him into the ER, now!”

  It was all Angelica needed to hear. She and Taylor fled from the building and into the gathering darkness. It almost felt easy. Too easy.

  They ran past the lights, past the rush of late traffic making its way through the dark streets. They were in a little finger of land that split two other countries. The refugees who fled there were huddled now, between two powers who rattled their sabers at each other and barked like two chained dogs while terrorists ran unchecked through the countryside.

  Only the fear of involving a disinterested country and the UN kept the two powers at bay, but such things didn’t concern terrorists and guerillas. They marched between all three countries with impunity. Being alone in the dark recesses of an unstable land was a dangerous prospect.

  “Now what?” Angelica asked. “We hail a cab and go back to my place for cocktails?” She was tired, frustrated, and more than a little freaked out still. Her look clearly said she needed to not think about what being a lion meant. At the same time, Taylor doubted she could think of anything else.

  “We have to get back to camp,” Taylor said, looking at the night sky. “We were taken after dark, so this has to be the next night. I’m not sure how much time we have before the sun comes up.”