Blood Runner

by Lou Cameron

  “You told Major Valdez where they were hiding! He’ll be hitting them with a whole battalion any minute!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Don’t be melodramatic. They just repaired the railway, and Valdez won’t be moving into the jungle before morning. I gave him very good directions, but, alas, he’s a bit slower than the unfortunate Colonel Maldonado.”

  Jenny shook her head and said, “I still think it’s a bit ruthless. I don’t see how you could do it.”

  “Really? I thought I explained. We have an agent with the Balboa Brigade. My instructions were to blaze a trail with the two vials I gave him. Moving at night, he daubed red paint here and there along the way. Moving by day, he marked their trail with phosphorus paint. It’s invisible in sunlight, but in the dark—”

  Jenny cut in with, “I’m not talking about the trail our double agent blazed. I’m talking about his life! You didn’t tell Major Valdez, just now, we had one of our own with the rebels he’s after! What happens when the troops catch up with him and the others?”

  “I imagine they’ll kill him, don’t you?”

  “But Basil, he’s working for us!”

  ‘Was, my dear. Past tense. We’re almost through, here. The soldiers will move in. Captain Gringo and Gaston Verrier will give them a good mauling before they go down. The survivors will limp out to proclaim a very costly victory, and I will sell their government the better weapons they need. As for our double agent, his job is finished as far as we’re concerned. Dead men tell no tales and all that rot.”

  Jenny shuddered and said, “My God, you’re a coldblooded little brute!”

  He smiled, put a hand on her breast, and said, “In bed, my dear, it’s permissible to simply call me Basil. I’ve finished playing God for now.”

  The sun popped up like a jack-in-the-box this far south of the Tropic of Cancer. Captain Gringo hadn’t figured out an escape plan yet, but Blanca seemed to have been tamed for the moment. He wondered, over breakfast, how long the novelty of being dominated would amuse her.

  They faced another long, dull day, and every time he broached the subject of moving north toward the coast Blanca told him he was crazy. They were safe, here in the central jungle. To the San Bias, one stretch of swampy greenery was as mentally stimulating as another.

  Captain Gringo and his friends were bored out of their wits. Gaston had a terrible hang-over and Sor Pantera looked utterly worn out. Captain Gringo was too much of a gentleman to ask whether this was from too much flamenco dancing or enough Gaston.

  Despite her aversion to bright sunlight, Blanca came from her hut to squat near her captive guests near the pond. She said, “Everyone must smoke themselves. One of my scouts tells me soldados are coming. They will be here soon.”

  The tall American blinked and asked, “Soldiers are coming and you think we should stand in a smudge fire?”

  Blanca laughed and said, “Not that kind of soldiers. ‘¡Hormiga soldados! Army ants! My scout says a large column is headed right this way.”

  “Kee-rist! We have to get out of here!”

  “For why? Los soldados won’t hurt you if you’re well covered with medicine smoke. They are very useful creatures. We San Bias welcome army ants to our encampments. Right now my scouts are putting out bait to lead them here.”

  “What in hell for? You don’t eat ants, do you?”

  “No. They eat everything that hasn’t been smoked enough to repel them. We smoke our skins. We hang our food on smoked ropes. The ants sweep over everything else like a cleansing flame. They eat the vermin in our thatch. They devour every scrap of refuse or filth. After they pass over us, you will see. There will not be a roach or a rat anywhere near here. If your friends spread their clothing in the path of the ants, they will clean them of lice and even grease spots. But we must hurry. If the ants find anyone unsmoked they will bite and sting. They feel like fire if they attack with either end. They have poison jaws and a stinger like a wasp.”

  Captain Gringo stood up, unbuttoning his shirt, and said, “Here we go again, gang. We’d better strip, smoke our hides, and do just what the Romans do. I’ve got a feeling the next hour or so is going to be sort of spooky!”

  As the San Bias happily piled green herbs on every fire the Balboas joined their host-captors in the smoke baths. The San Bias treated it like a lark. The guerrillas were less enthusiastic about the idea. Most of them had been raised on horror stories of the dreaded army ants. Had they had any choice in the matter they’d have been running for their lives. But as Captain Gringo pointed out, they had no choice. A poison arrow in the back was certain death. The Indians just might know what they were talking about.

  There was less blushing this time. They were getting used to the sight of stark nudity, and Sor Pantera, having been passed around a bit and liking it, made no attempt to cover her hairy curves as she, too, disrobed to stand in the rising smoke. At Captain Gringo’s suggestion, they took more time and made sure of a heavy layer of the sticky soot. Missing a spot a mosquito might home in on was one thing. More than one or two bites from an army ant could make you sick as hell.

  In less than an hour everyone was the same color. Black. Even the albino, Blanca, looked like a very dark Negress with wild pink eyes. Sor Pantera was a rather awesome apparition with her lush curves clothed in soot and fuzz. Captain Gringo was a Greek statue carved in ebony and a little frightening when he smiled.

  Gaston and the other shorter guerrillas sort of faded in with the Indians. All looked a bit like imps from hell as they stamped about, reeking of smoke and black as ink.

  A scout ran in, calling out in his own guttural dialect, and took his place over a fire as Blanca explained, “The ants are coming. It is better if we all stay here in the open, near the water. If they fall on you from a tree or a roof they sometimes bite, even through the smoke.”

  Captain Gringo had a sudden thought as he remembered Blanca said the ants ate grease. He told Gaston, “We’d better get all our guns out here and hold them off the ground. Let’s keep the muzzles down and act casual, but—”

  “Merde alors! You expect these insects to chew up steel?”

  “Whale oil. Lard. Our guns are heavily oiled, or should be, in this climate. The bullets are coated with a mixture of beeswax and mutton fat. Some of the guys’ shotgun shells are greased cardboard and—”

  “Say no more! Even if the creatures leave not a scratch on the guns or ammunition, clean metal rusts in minutes in this humidity. Chino! Hernando! You there, Sanchez! Come with me. The rest stay here and smile nicely at our hosts, hein?”

  But as the weapons detail was just leaving, after a short explanation to Blanca, another scout dog-trotted in, waving his bow excitedly. Blanca shut him up as he was still sputtering and told Captain Gringo, “Soldados— many of them—coming right this way!”

  He frowned in his blackface and said, “Another column of ants?”

  “No. The other kind of soldados. About four hundred or more! This scout was frightened and didn’t stay to count. He says they just got off the iron serpent that crawls the shining path. He says they look like they know where they are going. And they are coming here. I think it is time for us to run some more.”

  Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Listen, Blanca. You put me in charge last night in the hammock and you later said you liked it. Let me take command of your warriors for the next few hours and I may show you some other surprises.”

  “You want us to make love to the soldiers? There are too many to fight!”

  “We’ve got to fight them! We’re running out of places to hide. We have some advantages they don’t know about. They’re overconfident. A good mauling may save my friends and teach them to leave you Indians alone.”

  Blanca thought, giggled, and said, “Very well. You give the orders and I will relay them. That way my people will think I know what I am telling them to do.”

  He called Gaston and the weapons detail back, adding, “Everybody move through the hu
ts into the trees. Pick up your weapons on the way. I want you spread out among the Indians, one gun to every four or five bowmen. We’re going to form a skirmish line facing back this way. Do you understand what I am saying, Blanca?”

  The bruja shouted orders in her own dialect and as the Indians began to move toward the trees with puzzled smiles, she told Captain Gringo, “The first part is simple. But what can our few guns and poison arrows mean against such a large party of soldiers?”

  “Damn little, all things being equal. There’s something funny going on. The troops have this encampment pinpointed. We’ll worry about how they did it later. They don’t know we know they’re coming. We’re all black with smoke and won’t be easy to see among the forest shadows. The soldiers will hit the huts first. They’ll think we’ve run off as usual, and start poking about for loot and clues. Let’s go. I’ll fill you in as I pick up the machine gun in your hut and set up my own position hi the jungle?”

  “What about the ants? I told you they might bite if we get under them.”

  “We’ll have to chance a few nips. The Army troopers haven’t smoked themselves at all. By the time they got here they should be nice and sweaty, too.”

  Blanca grinned like a child in blackface stealing apples and said, “Oh, that’s funny! The ants will start eating the soldiers alive and they’ll have to run away!”

  He smiled, too, a bit wolfishly, and said, “Not if I can help it! Let’s move it. I don’t know how much time we have, and I’d like a little camouflage set up.”

  The guerrillas and their Indian allies vacated the clearing by the jungle pool and after a time the birds began to sing more boldly for a time. Then a troop of howler monkeys began to scold to the west and a mustard-clad scout came out of the jungle with his carbine trained on the deserted thatch huts. He darted to the nearest one and took cover as a second scout who’d been backing him leapfrogged past him to a second hut. The first joined him, then, after consultation, trotted back into the trees to report to the main column that the village seemed deserted.

  Major Valdez and two company commanders came out of the jungle surrounded by other soldiers. Valdez barked some orders and as the soldiers began poking through the huts, ripping walls out with their bayonets, Captain Gringo watched from behind a pile of brush and told Blanca, “He’s dumber than we could have built him! Look at that! Nobody sent to set up a picket line along their flank. Nobody scouting more than a few yards into the trees. They’re acting like kids playing soldier!”

  “When are you going to shoot them?”

  “Let them spread out through the huts some more. I’ve got this Maxim trained to rake the length of the huts. I want to nail as many as I can with the first burst. Then, as they come unstuck, Gaston, down at the far end, will have a turkey shoot as they withdrew toward the tracks.”

  Blanca reached above him and the machine gun he’d braced across a log to move an overhanging branch as she said, “Don’t move for a moment. Some scouting ants are about to reach the ends of these twigs and drop off.”

  He grimaced and rolled his eyes up, expecting to see a few bugs. Then his eyes widened as he saw that the branch above them was red with a solid mass of crawling ants! They moved in a writhing stream past Blanca’s smoke-stained fingertips and began to ooze like flowing honey off the tips of the branches beyond them. The army ants dropped by clinging to one another in living chains rather than simply falling. They apparently kept body contact at all times as they marched through the forest. A rusty red curtain lowered between the muzzle of his gun and the abandoned clearing, and as he glanced to the sides, he gagged in horror. The entire forest floor as far as he could see was a carpet of crawling ants! He and the girl occupied a small island, protected by the smell of smoke that clung to their naked flesh. The American’s flesh began to crawl, protected or not, as he got his first good look at the legendary little horrors.

  Most were about the size and shape of good-sized ordinary red ants. Here and there, striding head and shoulders among the common ants, he saw big beetle-sized critters with bulldog heads and massive pincers. They’d apparently evolved to be the heavy artillery of the ant army.

  He wondered why they needed the bigger warriors. There were millions of the little bastards and any one of them could bite and sting like fire! The ants kept coming and flowing past like a spreading flood of drying blood, and it was hard to concentrate on the other more dangerous enemy out there in the sunlit clearing. The troopers were almost to the nearest huts now, and pitchforking the Indians’ meager belongings out through the thatch with their bayonets. They were hot and sweaty and frustrated. They’d probably chased San Bias before and knew they had a long, weary campaign to face in the next few days.

  Major Valdez came down the line between the huts and the pool as a soldier picked up Sor Pantera’s discarded skirt and held it up with a puzzled smile. Valdez said, “So much for the Balboa Brigade. They ran into this Indian camp and that was the end of them.”

  “But where are the Indians, my Major?” asked another officer.

  Valdez shrugged and said, “Who knows? Who cares? Our orders were to follow the blazed trail and wipe out the rebels. Since the San Bias would seem to have done it for us, we’ll reward them by burning out this rats’ nest before we move out.”

  At that moment a trooper ran out of a hut, slapping at himself and screaming, “¡Hormigas!” in an agonized voice.

  Captain Gringo muttered, “That’s it,” and opened up with the Maxim gun. He fired a long burst the length of the encampments, raking his bullet stream through the flimsy, crowded huts. As the Maxim sang its woodpecker song of death, the others opened up down the line and the jungle echoed to the crackle of a small-arms fire as the bewildered soldiers milled uncertainly. Major Valdez might have given a sensible order had he lasted long enough. But something glinted in the sunlight and a San Bias arrow thunked into his throat. He drew his pistol and went down, gargling blood and poison as he fired mindlessly into the dust between his buckled knees.

  Another officer took an arrow in the chest as the Indians zeroed in on the more interesting uniforms. A sergeant tried to rally his panic-stricken men, but Sor Pantera blew the top of his head off, cap and all, while, at her side, Gaston dropped three men in a row with his own deliberate fire.

  By now the wounded were crawling out of the huts, trailing blood and army ants, as the bulk of the survivors flattened out in the clearing and began to fire blindly into the trees. Captain Gringo let the barrel of his Maxim cool as he put in a fresh belt. Then he moved the muzzle to sweep the main bulk of the enemy, lined up in the open and partly shielded by the bodies of fallen comrades. An Indian, overbold, moved forward for a better aim and was picked off by one of the troopers. But the sight of a grinning jet-black naked bowman had been unnerving, and a couple of troopers rose to make a run for it. Gaston got one with his rifle as the other dropped with three arrows in him.

  And then, just as it was starting to settle down to an ordinary fire-fight, the ants moved out into the sunlight, following the scent of sweat and blood.

  The troopers tried. They hugged the ground behind piled corpses and poured a withering fire into the brush, but as the solid carpet of red ants moved in and over them, they broke.

  Men rose screaming, covered with stinging ants, to be put out of their screaming misery by a bullet or a flashing arrow. Some simply bolted blindly in any direction, as long as it was away from the creeping, scab-colored horde. Those running for the tracks to the east ran a gauntlet of fire, but some few made it simply because a missile couldn’t be everywhere. Captain Gringo began to fire again in short bursts, to save his precious machine-gun ammo for bunched-up targets. He piled up a dozen men near the far end of his firefield and let the Indians pick off the following runners who tripped or swerved around the clump of bodies. But as the ants swarmed over the dead and living between, most of the soldiers moved back and into the knee-deep water of the pool, shooting blind into the tree line from their
hips.

  It would have been a good move if the army ants were their only worry. But they made a tempting target standing upright in the water, and the Indians and a few guerrillas moved forward for the kill, screaming and looking like demons from hell. A few went down as the cooler troopers zeroed in on the God-awful-looking enemy.

  And then the piranha hit.

  Like the ants, the vicious little fish were not dangerous in small numbers. But there were thousands of hungry little man-eaters in the several acres of water, and the Indians had been starving them by keeping away the jungle creatures the piranha preyed on in the shallows when they lingered overlong over a drink. The water started boiling around the wading troopers and a man staggered screaming up the bank, his shinbones exposed in the blood mess of his chewed-up legs. He fell forward into the carpet of ants and vanished under them, writhing like a worm on a hot stove. Other soldiers simply vanished under the surface as the water of the pool churned in billows of what looked like tomato soup, boiling.

  Captain Gringo saw he had three quarters of a belt left and yelled out, “Hold your fire! We’re wasting ammunition!”

  As the crackle of small arms faded, the sudden silence was filled with the softer sickening sounds of swishing water and tiny chewing jaws. The victims had stopped screaming now. Far to the east a handful of surviving soldiers were running blindly for the railroad, scared out of their wits, not sure what in God’s name they’d run into, but determined to put as much distance between themselves and whatever it was as possible!

  Nobody could go into the clearing for a good four hours, even coated with repellent soot. The ants had gone out of their tiny minds over so much fresh meat and were piled six inches deep in places as they stormed in from the jungle. Carrion crows and vultures swooped down to contest the army ants for scraps. The crows were better at it than the vultures. One vulture was blinded by ants swarming quickly up its ugly beak and legs as it perched a few seconds too long on an ant-covered corpse. If flapped feebly across the ground, hissing in agony as it picked up more ants with every bounce, then flopped blindly into the water, where the piranha ate the ants and bird together.