“Let’s try and make it back to the big tent,” she whispered to him, crouching low.
He hesitated, then nodded. He went first. Bending low slowed their progress, but they reached the entrance of the large tent alive and intact. Amanda followed him into the relative darkness of the shelter, and they both found piles of boxes and crates to hide behind. “Cami, Charlotte, are you okay?” She risked the question knowing that it might restart the screaming. And it did. It was definitely Cami because Amanda could hear Charlotte trying to calm her.
“I can’t take any more of this!” she screamed loud enough to hurt Amanda’s ears from several feet away.
“God damn, it’s like being in an airplane with a screaming child in the seat behind you,” Larry said through clenched teeth.
Amanda realized that if they had just kept going around the south side of the tent, literally only a dozen or so more feet, they could have put the majority of the large tent and its unopened cargo between the Hondurans and themselves. And as a bonus they could reach Cami, in which case Amanda could unleash Larry’s death grip on the screaming woman. “Larry …” Amanda’s whisper was easily concealed within Cami’s screams. “Follow me around the corner.” This time he saw the logic and nodded vigorously. Amanda hoped he was warming up his hand.
They sprinted out and around the tent, and again no shots followed. They spotted Charlotte on her knees in front of a red-faced Cami, who was alternating between wails and inarticulate screams. Larry veered towards the two nurses, and Amanda worked her way towards Bernice, who was awake on the ground and trying to throw things at her hysterical nurse.
“Bernice,” Amanda said, breathless.
A decade of concern fell from the older woman’s swollen face. “I thought it was Stephen all over again.”
“Not this time. Don’t know where they came from or who shot them,” Amanda said, her breath returning.
“Well, if she doesn’t shut up I’m gonna have you shoot her.” Amanda joined her on the ground, but her smile was cut short. A new crop of blisters had appeared all along Bernice’s collar line, and her pupils were widely dilated.
“Bernice, are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay. I’ve been shot, and if that fool doesn’t shut up it’s going to happen again.” Abruptly Cami was quiet. “Well, praise Jesus,” Bernice said. “Where the hell have you been?” She looked at Amanda with those frighteningly large pupils. Her IV with the morphine drip was still running, and Amanda was questioning whether morphine dilated or constricted pupils. She was fairly certain that it constricted pupils, which made Bernice’s condition all the more concerning.
“I moved Stephen’s body into the radio tent. Larry helped.” She studied Bernice closely, almost coming nose to nose with her, yet she didn’t respond. “Bernice, can you see outside?”
“No, it’s nighttime. Why are you asking such stupid questions?” That subtle shift in personality had reappeared. Amanda checked over her shoulder; the light was muted by the smoke, but there was no way any one with sight would mistake it for night. In a matter of hours Bernice had become blind.
“I’m going to check on Cami. You stay here and I’ll come back to get you when it’s safe.”
“Well, do it quickly,” Bernice said sharply. “An old woman shouldn’t be crawlin’ along the floor. Probably snakes out, and there are definitely spiders. I saw …”
Amanda crawled away, leaving Bernice deep in her own conversation.
“She’s calm now; Charlotte gave her something,” Larry said as Amanda approached the trio.
Charlotte looked back at Amanda. “Morphine. It’s the one thing that we aren’t going to run out of.” There had been a subtle shift in the power structure. Larry deferred to Amanda, and now so did Charlotte. “Bea died; so did Charlie,” she said in a purely unemotional matter of fact tone. Just for an instant Amanda wanted to slap her.
“What are we going to do about them?” Larry motioned towards the Honduran tents. “We can’t keep hiding over here. Our water supply and the food are on that side. Not to mention the generators are going to need more fuel in a few hours.”
“Do we need the generator on? What are we using it for?” Amanda asked.
“The bodies. Yesterday we put them all under a tarp and hooked up a cooling unit.” Larry seemed uncomfortable with their solution, but Amanda thought that it was rather clever. “There’s no more room under the tarp. I thought maybe we could use the radio tent. Problem is that I don’t think it will accommodate…everybody,” he said awkwardly.
“Doesn’t much matter if we can’t reach them,” cheerful Charlotte said.
“We’re all going to die out here,” Cami added pitifully as she briefly came out of her morphine stupor.
Amanda had had enough of Cami and took a step away. Larry followed and Charlotte redosed her friend. “I think Bernice is sick again. She can’t see and her rash has returned. I am not going to cower behind some boxes and watch her die. I’m going to sneak over there and see what they’re up to.”
“Do you have a death wish?” he asked.
“No,” Amanda said quickly—much too quickly to have fully considered the question. She had to admit that her behavior over the last eight hours was at odds with her personality. She was terrified of guns, yet now she didn’t feel comfortable without one slung across her shoulder. She was distinctly nonviolent, yet she had killed four men today and couldn’t muster a trace of guilt. She had threatened and intimidated Charlotte and Cami when they were rude and dismissive, yet in her entire life she had never threatened or intimidated anyone for any reason, and what was truly surprising was how much she enjoyed it. More to the point, all her life she had been somewhat passive, letting things happen to her, yet now she insisted upon directing events, even if that direction entailed risk. Did that equate to a death wish?
“I can’t leave Bernice like that.” They both looked down the tent and found an obviously disoriented Bernice crawling out, her bloody leg leaving a trail.
“I’ll help her get back into bed. Don’t get yourself killed and leave me alone with the sunshine sisters.”
Amanda hefted the rifle and walked back into the waning sunlight. She stayed close to the edge of the tent just in case the Hondurans decided to use her for target practice.
“See, a desire for self-preservation,” she whispered to herself as she reached the south end of the tent. This was her last real cover, and the next steps would give them a clear shot at her. The platoon’s third tent, the one she judged most likely to be occupied, was less than twenty yards in front of her, but it would mean running directly at men who meant to kill her. The only other option was to leap-frog to the radio tent, then the medical tent, and finally the first of the platoon’s tents—the one least likely to be occupied—where she would have to work her way down to the other two. Impulsively, she sprinted for the third tent.
Add that to the list, she thought as she raced across the open ground. She slid the last few feet into tall grass that effectively covered her, and waited for a response. I’ve never been impulsive, she thought, silently catching her breath. Decisions usually paralyzed her.
The absurdity of the situation hit her like a bullet. She was lying in the grass waiting for soldiers to come bursting out of their tent to shoot her dead, and all she could think about was how strangely she was acting. So many people had died around her in the last three days that death had become a matter of course, and she was stressing about how her behavior had changed? No more introspection until I get the hell out of here, she swore to herself.
Five minutes passed and she hadn’t heard a sound from any of the three tents. It was unnaturally silent. Not a creak, a snore, a cough, nothing. She crawled closer to the grey tent. It had a small flap and a mesh window. She held up a hand to the tent but it cast no shadow. She stood as quietly as her stiff joints allowed and then quickly lo
oked into the window. She didn’t take it all in but caught enough to know that she had nothing to worry about from this tent. Two bodies were sprawled against the wall facing her, a halo of blood above each upturned head. She looked again, this time longer, and confirmed the original glance. The only things living in this tent were the flies that flew in and around the faces of the dead soldiers.
She crept to the second and then the third tent. The entire platoon was gone. Seventeen men dead in four days, and that didn’t even include the soldiers from Tela. She turned to the left and found her contribution. The four corpses were only a few hours old, but already she could imagine that she could smell them. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and followed the mechanical noise to the smoking generator. An empty fifteen-gallon gas can lay on its side. She looked for more but only came up with three other empty containers.
“More good news,” she said ruefully and started back to the tent and the other four survivors.
Larry’s head appeared briefly over the crates as Amanda approached. Tentatively, he stood. “I take it that everything is secured?”
“As secure as they are going to get,” she said with a smile. “They shot themselves. That’s what we heard. They were pretty bad off, the infection I mean.” Amanda didn’t have to elaborate. “How is Bernice?” The sky was finally beginning to darken and bring this biblically bad day to an end.
“Angry,” he said and then started to push the obstructing crates and boxes aside. “I’m tired of this being in the way.” He managed to shift enough of them to create a corridor. “There, isn’t that better?”
“Much,” Amanda said, walking through to the medical side of the tent.
“I think that’s the most useful thing I’ve done since we got here.” He reached for her arm as she passed. “Amanda, I just wanted to apologize for what I said earlier. I don’t think you have a death-wish. You’re just trying to do what’s right for everyone.”
“Thanks, Larry.” She found his light grip on her arm somewhat uncomfortable and shifted out of it.
“Bernice wants to see you.” Larry’s eyes widened. “I mean she wants to talk to you.”
“Okay,” she said, turning away. One more thing for the list that I’m not thinking about, she told herself. She had always been a person who enjoyed physical contact. A touch of the hand, a brush of the cheek, and especially hugs. She had always loved getting and giving hugs, but the thought of a hug was just as disagreeable as she had found Larry’s grip on her arm. But I’m not thinking about this, she warned herself.
She skirted some boxes on her way to Bernice’s cot, but a sullen Charlotte cut across her path. “I heard what you told Larry. So what do you want to do about the bodies?”
Amanda looked over Charlotte’s shoulder and saw Cami asleep on a cot. Next to her were two bodies wrapped in blood-soaked sheets.
“There’s no more room under the tarp. Besides, the generator is going to run out of gas any minute.”
The weight of the rifle caused Amanda to shift it on her shoulder, and she restrained a very distant but enticing desire to use it. “If you and Larry could carry them to the radio tent?” She was proud of herself for phrasing it more as a question than an order.
“Fine,” Charlotte said, and stomped off like a petulant child.
Amanda turned the other way and found Bernice. “I heard you were back,” she said soberly. “I didn’t hear any gunfire, so I assume you didn’t get shot.” She had an almost accusatory tone.
“No, I did not get shot. I take it by your tone that you know what’s wrong.”
“Give me your hand.” Bernice was clearly angry now and Amanda knew what would come next.
“No,” she said pulling her hands and face out of range of the older woman’s flailing arms. “Stop it, Bernice,” Amanda commanded with enough force to get Bernice to stop trying to slap her. “I’m trying to see if you need anything.”
“What I need is to see!” Bernice yelled. “They keep telling me that I can’t see, and I keep tellin’ em I can.” She started crying, and as an exception to Amanda’s new rule of “no-touch” she took Bernice’s hand. “I know what’s happening and so do you. You’re a smart girl.”
“I have an idea.” She took the penlight that either Larry or Charlotte had left and flashed it into Bernice’s eyes. Her abnormally large pupils constricted briskly, and then slowly dilated again. “Did you see that?”
“I don’t know; maybe I saw a flash.”
The occipital lobes—the back portions of the brain—are the vision centers, and when they are injured in isolation the patient becomes blind but the person still maintains that they can see. The pupils, which are controlled by centers in the brainstem, dilate, but constrict normally when exposed to light. “Cortical blindness,” Amanda said.
“I don’t want to die like this, Amanda.”
“I don’t know that you’re dying and neither do you.” She tried to sound definitive and forceful but her true beliefs betrayed her.
“If you lie to me again I will slap you.” Bernice’s words were stern, without even a trace of her trademark playfulness. “I may not be able to see but I can still feel, and I feel these things burning through me.” She pulled down her collar, and the collection of blisters Amanda had seen earlier had spread across her chest and breasts. Tears started to flow down Bernice’s face. “You made me a promise a little while ago and I’m holding you to it.”
Amanda reached up to the IV and turned it up a notch. “Not yet, Bernice. Things could still change.”
“The only change that’s happenin’ here is for the worse.” She wiped her eyes, and Amanda was glad that Bernice couldn’t see the blood that she had just smeared across her face. “Ah, there it is ….Mr. Morpheuss,” she began to slur.
“It’s just to get you back to sleep. I promised you that you had to be on that road. I’ll stay with you tonight.”
Bernice opened her eyes and looked for Amanda. “I’m holdin’ you to it,” she said, and then she closed her eyes. In less than a minute she had begun to snore quietly.
Amanda went looking for her sleeping bag and backpack and found them not far from her first set of dead soldiers. She walked back to the tent as the light was rapidly failing. Larry waved to her from the tall grass just beyond the camp’s lights. He looked a little close to the fence, but there was no reaction from the soldiers in the jungle. She stretched out at the foot of Bernice’s cot, not bothering to look for Charlotte. Cami was snoring almost as loud as Bernice.
Amanda stared at the stars. This hadn’t been the worst day of her life, but probably the second. She rubbed the scratchy rash on the back of her left hand and a strip of skin peeled off, leaving behind red raw healthy skin. She quickly ran her hand over the rest of her accessible body parts and found that most of her lesions were in various stages of healing. It dawned on her that she hadn’t eaten in three days, but she didn’t feel hungry. She closed her eyes and her mind floated away to a happier time.
CHAPTER 12
The bang was just a backfire, her sleepy mind told her. Stay in bed; it’s so warm and comfortable. No need to wake up. Only, it wasn’t comfortable, and the screaming that followed was Charlotte. She wasn’t at home with her husband; she was wrapped in a filthy sleeping bag, lying in the dirt of Honduras. She opened her eyes and the thin light of dawn greeted her. She rolled over and saw through blurry eyes a figure running through the field and a second one on his knees in front of the fence. She kicked out of the sleeping bag and ran after Charlotte before she reached what could only be the body of Larry. Several soldiers began yelling and waving their arms, and another shot rang out through the morning air. Charlotte dropped to the ground and Amanda froze. Larry had been shot, his hands clinging to the chain-link fence as a large red stain expanded across the back of his shirt, but Charlotte was physically uninjured.
Amanda raised he
r hands and walked through the knee-high grass to the nurse. “Come on, Charlotte; there’s nothing that can be done now,” Amanda said, grabbing the woman’s arm and dragging her to her feet. She was crying loudly, and Amanda nearly slapped the woman. “Control yourself, otherwise we could be next.” She looked over her shoulder and saw that Larry had slipped into the grass, one hand still caught in the fence. The soldiers split their time between Larry and the retreating pair of women.
“He found me and asked me to look at something,” Charlotte cried as Amanda led her to a chair. “His back was covered by those damn blisters and he was bleeding. He asked for a shot of morphine and I gave him eight milligrams. I thought it would make him sleep, but he started running at the fence.” Her face was red, wet, and turned up towards Amanda, pleading like a child.
“There’s nothing more we can do for him. You have to be strong for Cami.”
“Cami’s sick. She’s going to die just like the rest of us.” She started to cry and scream at the same time, and Amanda was almost convinced that the time was right to slap the woman. Instead she grabbed her by the arms and started to gently shake her, but the disagreeable sense was so strong that she was forced to pull her hands back and let the woman cry. It took a minute before Charlotte could speak again. “I was up with Cami. After I gave her the morphine last night she never really woke up. So, early this morning I tried to wake her up.” The crying started anew and her thoughts came out in fragments. “But. She had them … everywhere. Even her eyes. Oh God, even her eyes.” Amanda stood and felt more than a little empathy. “And now Larry.” Her head dropped into her lap, and her tears started to turn to blood. She screamed again, and jumped to her feet, her face covered in blood. “What’s happening?”
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