Jungle Blaze

by Lexy Timms

  Angelica judged her to be in her early thirties. Her doctor’s mind watched her with interest; she was very plump but she moved with the grace of a dancer. Her hair was jet black, but there were copious amounts of grey streaked through, creating swirls of highlights pulled away from her face and tied back into a bun. She had crinkles in the corner of her eyes suggesting she laughed often, but there was a deep sadness about her that Angelica couldn’t identify.

  There was something else, something that gnawed at her, but remained stubbornly just out of grasp.

  “Here ya’ll go!” she chirruped, leaning forward to refill their coffee. She disappeared to track down more cream for Taylor, returning a moment later, a testament to her efficiency. Satisfied that there was nothing more to be done for her customers, she grabbed a rag and a spray bottle and headed off to do battle against all dirt and disarray, whether real or imagined.

  Taylor waited until she was gone to answer Angelica’s earlier question.

  “This isn’t the first time for most of them,” he said under his breath, with a wary glance toward the waitress.

  May. Her name had been May.

  Angelica glanced at him, startled. She’d been trying to worry at the puzzle of the waitress and had nearly forgotten her question. “What do you mean?”

  “Let me amend that. It is for Harold and for me. But for my parents and most of the others, this is something they’ve done before.”

  Angelica nodded and returned to organizing her eggs. “I’m sorry, Taylor. I...”

  “Dad! Come out here quick!” May called, and reached for the remote. The cloying children’s host had been bumped for a news bulletin. The scrawl line said something about a small community having been quarantined by the army. It also gave the location of the community, a pocket of farms located in the Minnesota woods, fifty miles or so from Pillage.

  “I’ll be,” May said shaking her head. “And they’re not saying what they’re quarantined for.” She shook her head. “All I know is that if it’s something like that plague, I want to know so I can get my precious babies out of here.”

  “Ain’t no need for that,” the old man said, returning to the kitchen, uninterested in something so far outside of his world. “They got it all under control.”

  “...attorneys for the co-op have vehemently denied any such measures, and are demanding that officials provide a clear explanation for the interference.” The woman behind the desk froze, blinked, and waited. After an uncomfortable moment, another woman appeared on the screen. This one stood on a staircase outside of a large building in a city, presumably Minneapolis, and was surrounded by reporters.

  “There is zero evidence of any sort of threat or menace either to health or otherwise from our clients. The military has simply moved in without provocation and attempted to overrun a peaceful farming community, and we demand to know the reason.” She was then replaced by an artificially enhanced image of trucks and uniformed soldiers milling around the opening to the farmhouses and froze on a single image. “This is footage from a security camera outside the farming compound,” the newswoman said. “This man is Major General Willette.” The grainy image was replaced with a stern-looking man in uniform with enough medals to sink a small rowboat. “General Willette is a part of a research team from the Pentagon—”

  May switched off the TV. “Ain’t that just the thing?” she said, shaking her head, and went to refill their coffee to find that they hadn’t had a chance to finish the last warm-up.

  “Excuse me,” Angelica said. “I don’t mean to pry, I-I’m a doctor.” She stopped herself and smiled at May. “May I ask, have you been having any upset stomach lately?”

  “Wow.” May blinked. “I don’t know where you practice, but I think I want to come to you from now on! How did you know that?”

  Angelica felt Taylor’s hand on hers, squeezing. A warning?

  “Just an educated guess. You probably should get that looked at. Have your doctor order an Alpha-Fetoprotein screen.”

  “Alfa which, now?”

  “Just tell him you want an AFP.” Angelica smiled. Taylor’s hand was all but crushing hers.

  “Can we get the check, please?” he asked, all smiles, sipping his coffee with exaggerated cheerfulness, but clearly mad as hell.

  Chapter 11

  “What the hell? I can smell cancer now?” Angelica hissed to Taylor’s back as he crossed the street. He was still mad from the way he carried himself, rigid as a flagpole. Worried, too. That news report—everything was crashing down all around them, and she’d found a new skill.

  “Among other things,” Taylor said. “Yeah.” He headed back to where they’d parked the truck and pulled out the key.

  “I thought we were taking the bus.” Angelica was confused. Suddenly, without any discussion at all, he was changing all the rules again. Since when were they running again?

  “We were,” he said unlocking the cab, “but that was before you started to change.”

  Angelica froze on the street. She checked her arms, her hands, what she see could of her legs and feet through the jeans and shoes she wore. She felt normal. She felt human. “I’m not...”

  “You are,” Taylor insisted. “Internally. Get in.”

  Mystified, Angelica looked at the truck and back at him. Taylor was acting like an angry parent and was casting her in the role of the belligerent and not too bright child. She suddenly felt tired. Tired of the fear and the stress and obligations of shifting. And tired of not being a partner so much as something that needed caregiving. Even his parents had done it, with that entire conversation this morning about taking her to the elders. Why was it no one ever just came out and asked her what she wanted to do? She wasn’t even being allowed into the discussions at this point.

  No way in hell was she going anywhere without some answers.

  “Explain,” she said stubbornly, crossing her arms.

  “Your olfactory senses shifted,” he said, glaring across the bed of the pickup at her. “Get in.”

  She stayed right where she was. “So, like a cancer-sniffing dog?”

  “Not as good, but yes. Like that,” Taylor said. “Get in.”

  “I am not changing.” Angelica dropped her bag on the pavement beside her. “And I’m not a child. Don’t treat me like one. I’m very sorry if...” she swallowed hard, “...if I’ve been the cause of your problems, or if I created problems for your family...” She glanced down and noticed she was shaking. She couldn’t stop the tremors in her body. Damn it. This was all his fault. Why wasn’t anyone listening to her anymore?

  Taylor came around the truck and wrapped her in his arms and held her. How could she hate someone and love them in the same moment? But the truth was she needed a hug, and so she leaned into his chest and put a hand on his arms and bit down on the rest.

  “Come on,” Taylor said after a moment, stepping away to pick up her bag and heave it into the bed of the truck. “Let’s go.”

  “No!” Angelica stepped away from him, staring at him through vision blurred by unshed tears. Here she’d thought that maybe she’d finally gotten through to him, to reach him, to be able to tell him all about the terror and self-blame she lived with every single day, but in the end she’d failed. In the end he wasn’t listening to her after all.

  She grabbed her bag and stalked off. The bag thumped hard against her thigh. “I’m done. I can’t live like this anymore. I...I don’t know, but I just...” She turned to him, her eyes searching for something, anything she could latch on to, something that she could use as a lifeline. Some way to save herself from becoming so lost that she forgot who she was inside.

  But to just get back in the truck? No. How could she go back to a life of running and panic and waking up in the middle of the night, frightened and alone and deep in nightmares she couldn’t tell anyone about? It was a hell. Taylor was her love, her soul-mate, but this had changed him, too. Somehow, she’d lost the conquering hero, the bold agent who had swooped in and
swept her off her feet.

  I haven’t seen that man in forever

  Or had he ever truly existed? Maybe it was just the way she’d wanted to see him.

  “I miss you. The real you,” she said quietly. But she couldn’t think what else there was to say, and so she turned and walked toward the end of town.

  “Wait!”

  “For what?” She turned around, still standing in the middle of the street, her sneakers balancing on the yellow line that divided the road. “For my exercises? For being reminded that I can’t handle what’s been done to me? What do I wait for, Taylor? Until I turn and can’t turn back again? What will you have me do?” She stepped up to him, trying so hard not to scream at him and lash out and say all kinds of things she would regret later. But at the same time she wondered if that was the key, the mysterious way to reach him that she hadn’t been able to discover thus far in their relationship. Her voice softened. “I understand that you had all the training, and all the prep time to understand what you were before you even sprouted your first whisker. I understand that you’ve had years’ more experience than I’ll ever have. I get all that.” She sighed and looked at the pavement as she struggled to collect her thoughts. “But I thought, I thought we were partners in this. When we—when I shot Dr. Johns, I did it to protect my love, my partner, my equal. When we ran through the jungle together, when we went through torture at her hands, when we searched for survivors and ran through the rainforest, we did it together.”

  She stared up at him, desperate to see something in his eyes that would have all the answers. “What changed?” She nearly wailed that question, all the grief and disbelief and concentrated fear that had plagued her dreams and every waking moment slipped through in that one question. “I lost myself, my definition of myself, everything I thought I could call myself. I have this gift that will curse me. And most of all, I lost you. Why?”

  “You didn’t lose me,” Taylor insisted. His expression was one of confusion. The skin around his eyes sagged, giving his face a haggard, sad look.

  Angelica sighed. “Why? Because you’re here with me? You’re not here. You’re on the road, you’re on the phone with Randall, you’re two steps ahead of the bad guys, but you’re not here! Taylor, I might become a lion and not come back. Can you grasp that? I might be stuck forever. And my best hope is in Nepal? People do not go to Nepal! You’re born there, or you visit as a photographer for National Geographic, but otherwise you do not go to Nepal!”

  “My ancestors...”

  “You ancestors left. For a reason!” She bent forward, burying her hands in her hair, scrunching the strands in anger and frustration, trying not to scream. “Taylor. Please...” She raised her head to look at him, truly look at him. “Please, come back. Just a little. I’m scared.”

  For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to come. She stood, her hand out uncertainly in his direction, waiting, her heart breaking with each second that it took him to move.

  Subdued, shamefaced, Taylor nodded and reached for her. She grabbed his hand in hers. That became a lifeline, a bridge across the chasm that the stress had created between them. She held on tight.

  “Let’s go,” Taylor said finally, drawing her back toward the truck. “We have a long drive...”

  You have got to be fucking kidding me.

  Angelica threw her head back and closed her eyes and counted to twenty. A benefit of higher education was the ability to do it in Latin.

  “Angelica?”

  “...decem, viginti.” She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Fine,” she whispered, her shoulders slumping, defeated. “Fine, let’s go...” She shook her head and reached for her bag.

  That was when the siren sounded.

  They looked back the way they’d come and saw a single police car, its lights flashing. It had given a single WHOOP of the siren and no more as it cruised up to them. “Get in the truck,” Taylor told her, pressing her behind him.

  I’m back being the Girl Scout in a forest fire! Damn him! All that and I was so sure he listened...

  Angelica stomped to the truck and dumped her bag in the back. Taylor stood waiting for the cop to draw even, his stance easy, hands out, showing he was unarmed. To a casual observer he was calm. His body language screamed that he was harmless. Only she, who knew him so well, would recognize the tension in his shoulders. She stared a long moment, remembering the gun hidden in the small of his back, hating the sick feeling that started in the pit of her stomach and spread. Her heart pounded in her chest, her hands unsteady, and cold.

  I can’t do this.

  They were far enough away that she couldn’t make out everything they were saying. The cop leaned out the window of the car, less like Andy Griffith and more like... well, someone with harder edges. Any second now his attention would shift to her and what would he see?

  Turning her back on the truck, Angelica started walking. There was no destination in mind, no hiding place where she could just disappear. If the entire U.S. military machine was swooping down in the form of one small-town police cruiser, then maybe this wasn’t the threat she’d thought it was.

  She needed air. She needed time alone. She hadn’t been without Taylor at her side for over a month. Funny, that used to sound like a sweet arrangement.

  Now it wasn’t. She was suffocating.

  There.

  It was surprising that in a town of fewer than 500 people, surrounded by woods, there was still the need for a municipal park. It looked like something out of a 1950s postcard. An old-style gazebo was in the heart of the grassy space, surrounded by a handful of benches. She pictured a band playing there, off-key, on summer evenings while children played on the swings and other equipment just opposite a small building that housed restrooms. But it was still early, and there were no children playing, no happy crowds to get lost in. Just a young woman walking her dog.

  Maybe that was what she needed all the same. Some time. A little peace and quiet. A moment without lions and tigers and leopards and drug tsars and generals and whatever else.

  Angelica headed to a bench, not seeing the gopher hole until it was too late. Her foot dropped into the pit and twisted; she felt the sprain and dropped hard, down on one knee.

  She felt the pain lace up her leg. Her foot felt as if it was dipped in acid.

  “NO!” she screamed, but it was too late.

  When confronted by illness or accident, the body will direct all available resources to heal or correct the problem. This astonishing ability to shunt calories or blood flow or anything needed to preserve the body is remarkable in that—oh, shit!

  “GOOD MORNING.” TAYLOR smiled his biggest smile and strode to the police car, keeping both hands in sight. The cops were the last thing he needed, and as of this moment he had no idea why he was being called onto the carpet. The only good news was that if this guy had any suspicion he had anything to do with that mess on the morning news, he wouldn’t be confronting him alone.

  Something else then. Play it cool, Taylor. Find out what he wants and then leave town all nice and quiet- like.

  “’Morning.” The man wore a uniform with the word SHERIFF emblazoned on one shoulder patch. He looked to be in his late fifties, and had a worn look about him. Yet he was cautious. A professional at odds with the small town. Taylor took him for someone who had, perhaps, taken this job as a way to escape a busier urban area. “Can I ask why you’re in the middle of my street?”

  “Just having a little lover’s spat. And I’m apparently losing again.” Taylor shrugged, only too aware that it wouldn’t take much to get called on a domestic just because this Mayberry cop was feeling a little bored and needed something to do. “We just came out of the diner over there.” He thrust out his thumb, pointing back at the restaurant where May and her father were undoubtedly watching the drama unfold on their little street, given the dearth of customers this early.

  Keep it cool. Let him know that we have money, that we supported a local business. Tha
t this is nothing to get excited over.

  The mate is walking away.

  Of course she was. Why would she start listening now?

  I have to deal with that later. Track her.

  “I know that it may not seem like much,” the sheriff was saying, “but this is a main road and I would appreciate it if you could take your arguments to the sidewalks.”

  “Yes, sir, of course.” Taylor nodded, trying to keep his face neutral when inwardly he was ready to drop- kick something into the next county.

  “Is that your truck?”

  Taylor looked at the rental and internally sighed. So much for not drawing attention to the vehicle. All he needed was for this guy to run the plates. He certainly couldn’t lie about it. The old man at the diner and the kid who’d had to read a manual to sell him a bus ticket had seen them pull up in it.

  “Yes, sir,” Taylor said, keeping his voice light. “It’s a rental, at any rate.”

  The sheriff nodded, thinking this through. “Well, you don’t seem to be indigent at any rate. Just keep to the sidewalks.”

  “Of course,” Taylor said and waved his thanks, heading for the truck as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He looked down at Angelica’s bag in the bed of the truck and let out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding. She wouldn’t have gone far without her stuff.

  Where is she?

  She’s close. I can run there quicker... oh, fine. Around that corner. She’s changing.

  Taylor’s head came up sharp. Changing?

  Taylor threw his bag and took off a dead run. He rounded the corner and spied a small park ahead, just past a bank that looked like it was built in the early 1920s, though it boasted two working ATMs built into the wall. The contrast to the building was jarring, distracting, and made him think of Las Vegas.

  Of Angelica, there was no sign.

  Cloth. There.

  That startled him. The cat was getting more and more active when he was in human form. To point out things he’d missed was disconcerting. But handy. Taylor raced over to the area indicated. He found her shirt, shredded. Her jeans had survived the transformation somehow, but the button was still fastened, and her shoes were also in remarkably good shape.