by Ellis, Tara
A shot rang out. Another woman screaming, followed by a man. Another shot.
They were being attacked. Her friends, her family, was under attack, and Jess should have been with them.
As she started to run again, the familiar chittering from the jungle followed her.
Jess didn’t look back.
Chapter 18
PETA
Near Boa Vista, Venezuela
Peta traced her fingers along her collarbone, pausing when they encountered the bandage. She was still trying to process what had happened, while keeping things in perspective. It was much easier in concept than execution.
“You okay?” Jason asked. He glanced over from the driver’s seat, his face backlit by the dim lights on the old and weathered dashboard of the truck.
Peta studied his features for a moment, gauging where he fell on the concerned spectrum. He was hard to read, which was one reason why she found him somewhat frustrating. Another was his lack of communicating, and the fact that he was one of those rare guys whose machoism was something that came naturally, without a quest to prove it. It threw her off, and Peta preferred to be in control at all times. Both of herself, as well as the people around her.
How he correctly interpreted her inner turmoil by simply observing the way her hand fluttered above the wound, was disarming. As irrational as it was, it made Peta feel even more out of control, which in turn made her defensive. “I’m fine,” she whispered harshly, dropping her hand into her lap. She made a point of looking at Tyler, asleep on the bench seat between them, before meeting his gaze again. “It’s not much more than a scratch.”
“You know that’s not what I mean,” he pushed. Reaching out, Jason peeled a corner of the dressing back, causing her to pull away. “We need to make sure it isn’t getting infected. It’s been over twelve hours, so the first signs could be presenting.”
Shifting on the seat, Peta dropped the visor and flipped open the mirror, prompting a small light to turn on. Pulling further at the gauze, she checked for any redness or oozing, but saw none. “Like I said,” she huffed, pushing the mirror back up. “I’m fine.”
She stared out the window, resting her head against the cool glass. There wasn’t much to see, other than the dense rainforest rushing past, illuminated by the inadequate headlights. As she’d suspected, the landscape was changing drastically as their elevation rose slightly, the closer they got to the Suriname border. They were currently in another country called Guyana, which was sandwiched in between Venezuela and Suriname. They’d briefly passed in and out of Brazil at one point. Fortunately, the borders were left unmonitored so they hadn’t been stopped. Peta still hadn’t decided if that was a relief or not. The implications were telling.
Twelve-hours after their fight in the city, and it was painfully obvious by the last two places they stopped at that the devastation from The Kuru was complete. The few people they’d run into since then hadn’t been symptomatic, were completely distraught, and wandering aimlessly alone. Peta was curious as to why they hadn’t seen any other Cured, but it wasn’t a conversation she was ready to have. Much like the one Jason was trying to force on her.
“At least we found some sleeping bags,” she said, circumventing whatever it was he was going to say next. “Makes riding back there a little more tolerable. Until it rains again, anyway.”
The last house they foraged provided the sleeping bags, some camping gear, and more food. The dark rooms had been a perfect reflection of the rest of the world, and no one mentioned the three corpses lying in the bedrooms.
Jason grunted in response, not taking the bait to change the subject. “Look, Peta,” he said, his voice earnest. “I’m sorry. I understand if you’re mad at me.”
Confused, Peta’s face scrunched up as she tried to process his implausible apology. “Mad at you?” she finally sputtered, looking at him openly with frustration. “What have I done to make you think I’m mad?” She quickly shook her head and then waved a hand, like she was erasing the question. “Forget that. What am I supposed to be mad about?”
Jason raised an eyebrow and looked as confused as she felt, which went a long way to lightening Peta’s mood. “Because I shot a guy in the head three inches from your eye?”
Tyler stirred then, moving his head from the awkward angle it was laying at against the seat, to down against Peta’s shoulder. His left foot slid off the dash and fell onto the stick shift, but after a cursory glance, Jason didn’t try to move him. Peta was glad for the distraction, which gave her a few extra heartbeats to control her reaction and gather her thoughts.
Once it was clear Tyler wasn’t going to wake up, Peta steeled herself and attempted to be as honest as possible. “I’m not mad at you, Jason. You saved my life.”
Not looking convinced, Jason pursed his lips and tried to say something, but Peta cut him off. “He would have killed me otherwise…or worse. You didn’t have any other option. And I don’t care how many times you’ve been forced to take a life in the past, I’m sure there’s always a personal cost.”
When he continued to stare straight ahead and a muscle twitched in his jaw, Peta knew she’d hit a chord. Perhaps he’d wanted her to blame him. To be angry. It was probably an easier emotion to deal with. “I blame myself,” she continued, wanting him to understand. To set him free from whatever guilt he was trying to place on himself. “If I had listened to you and left the gas, it would have never happened.”
Moving her hand involuntarily to the scar on her cheek, Peta’s voice dropped to a whisper as she stared out into the darkness and reflected on the deadly car accident that caused it. “I have a habit of thinking I always know what’s best. And it usually ends up with someone getting killed.”
After a long pause, Jason cleared his throat. “Maybe we can settle on agreeing that neither one of us are to blame? That we’re victims of circumstance, or whatever sort of psycho-babble would apply. I have a feeling we’re both familiar with the terminology.”
Chuckling, Peta found herself at emotional odds again. Relieved and comforted by his quick acceptance of their split perspectives, but thrown off by the ease with which he did it. “Sure,” she said, hoping it didn’t show. “I can go along with that. Except—”
Jason looked sideways at her when her voice trailed off. “Go on. You have a captive audience.”
Smirking, she shifted to properly face him, adjusting Tyler’s head at the same time. “I’m curious. I still don’t know how you came to be here with us on this ill-fated adventure and all. Somehow, I don’t think it’s the same reason as my God complex.”
“I think you’ve earned the right to whatever complex you choose to claim, considering where you were thirteen days ago.”
Peta squinted and made a tsking sound. “Flattery doesn’t work on me. And you didn’t answer my question. Things were crazy when we were getting the hell out of that lab, but I’m pretty sure you mentioned something about a daughter.”
His demeanor changing, Jason glanced furtively at her as his shoulders tensed. “I could tell you it’s because my dying friend gave me critical information from his death bed back at Harborview, in Seattle, that could help save the human population. And that I set off in search of someone to give it to, which led me to the CDC lab where we met.”
“You could,” Peta said, more intrigued than ever. She decided silence was the best offense. As it dragged out to the point of being awkward, she made sure her gaze never wavered.
He finally caved, and his shoulders slumped in submission as he forcefully let out a loud breath. “It would be partly true, but my goal from the moment I walked away from that hospital was to find my daughter.”
“At the Libi Nati Resort,” Peta guessed.
“Preserve,” Jason corrected. “It’s not a resort. Why do you keep saying that?”
Peta rubbed at her forehead as she thought it through. “The Libi Nati is a system of hot springs, so it’s possible we’re talking about two different places. Haven’t
you been there if you’re going to find your daughter? You must be familiar with the place. At least, more than I am. All I know is what I found online when I still had access.”
Another pause, but Peta was getting used to it, so she just waited for Jason to continue when he was ready.
“I’ve never been there,” he eventually said. Huffing like he was being tortured for information, he gripped the steering wheel and looked pained. “The truth is that I’ve never even met her. She probably doesn’t know I exist. The last time I talked to her...dad, I was threatened with a protection order and offered cash to stay away all at the same time. I didn’t take the money, of course, but it wasn’t hard to convince me that she was better off without me in her life.”
Peta tried unsuccessfully not to react, and grimaced before she could stop herself. She couldn’t imagine how the situation would ever get to that point. “What about her mom? What was her say in all of it?”
The silence lasted for more than a minute that time, and Peta had almost given up hope on the conversation, when he started talking again.
“I met her while I was on deployment. It was a total cliché. You know how it goes. It was a whirlwind romance, and I believed I was in love. I couldn’t stop thinking about her after I got sent back out.” Jason rubbed a hand through his hair and scoffed at the memories. “I tried to talk to her when I got back, but she ghosted me. I discovered years later by total chance that she’d had a child, and the math worked out. When I tracked her down, I found out she’d died in childbirth. Her husband at the time had claimed the baby as his own, but admitted to me that I was the father.”
Jason rubbed at his jaw and kept staring straight ahead. “The way it all played out, it seemed the best thing to do at the time was to walk away. It had already been five years. The guy was some bigshot scientist in charge of studying the hot springs, and he obviously loved her. She had a good life. It wouldn’t be fair for me to go marching in and screw it all up. I’ve kept tabs on her to make sure she was okay, but…I’ve always wondered what it would have been like to be a father.”
Peta sat staring at him, slowly absorbing the information. It was more than he’d said to her in the past three days combined, and she wasn’t sure how to respond. When he turned his head and cocked his chin while raising an eyebrow in an “I warned you” gesture, she laughed. “Okay,” she said, raising both of her hands in surrender. “I concede. I asked for it.”
Growing more serious, she leaned forward across Tyler’s sleeping form and put a hand on his arm. “I think it’s a good reason, Jason. What’s her name?”
His smile was genuine, and the rough demeanor was replaced with a gentleness as Jason stared back at her. “Jessica. Her name is Jessica.”
Chapter 19
TYLER
Suriname border, Courantyne River
“I think I see the river,” Devon shouted, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the rapidly rising sun. Even with the increasingly dense haze, it was still harsh.
Tyler twisted around and squinted, trying to see beyond the trees rushing by as his eyes watered from the stiff breeze. The road had followed the ocean for the past few hours, and they hadn’t been headed inland for very long. They had stopped at sunrise, less than two hours earlier, so that Tyler could swap out with Eddy and get in the back of the truck. It should have been Devon’s turn to sleep inside the cab, but he refused to leave Hernandez.
Feeling guilty, Tyler glanced down at the man who had helped him survive several impossible situations. Devon had ridden in the bed of the truck with Hernandez for pretty much the whole thirty-six hours they’d been driving. After only two hours of watching him struggle for every breath, Tyler was ready to bail. He couldn’t stand it. For some ungodly reason, it reminded him of a time earlier that year when his dad hit a dog. They’d raced it to the nearest vet, which on the island of Madagascar, was a really long drive. Tyler would never forget the horrible death sounds it made the whole way there, only to be put to sleep and out of its misery because there wasn’t anything the vet could do for it except end its pain.
Licking his lips and swallowing against the nausea that hadn’t gone away for days, Tyler couldn’t help but compare the two situations. Hernandez was dying. There was no way to pretend it was going to end any other way, so all they were doing was watching him suffer, the same way he had with the poor, pathetic dog.
“Oh, that’s just great,” Devon muttered.
Flinching, Tyler sat back hard against the wheel well and looked up at Devon, certain he’d somehow read his morbid thoughts. But the other man wasn’t paying any attention to him. He was still up on his knees, leaning against the cab of the truck as he faced forward. His thick hair was pushed back into one large mass by the wind as he searched the horizon.
Curious, and thankful for any sort of distraction, Tyler moved to join him. The activity woke Marty, who was sleeping quite comfortably on Hernandez’s legs. He raised his ears at Tyler and then chuffed before lowering his head again. He didn’t know if dogs could suffer from anxiety or depression, but he was pretty sure Marty was having as difficult a time as the rest of them.
Pausing, he rubbed the German Shepard between the ears before turning to see what they were headed toward. Devon had been right, and the river was definitely looming large. It was massive, and Tyler could already tell the brownish water was moving fast. There were even a couple of islands in the middle of it, and he guessed the far shore was at least two miles away. The problem was that there didn’t appear to be a bridge anywhere. They were rapidly approaching a large parking lot that the road dead-ended at, along the edge of the river.
“That’s a ferry terminal,” Devon huffed, dropping back down into a crouched position, with his back against the cab.
“A ferry?” Tyler echoed, sitting beside him. Hernandez’s head was between them, supported on a pillow drenched with his sweat. He blinked at Tyler, and it took a moment for him to realize Hernandez was awake.
“Where…are we?” Hernandez croaked, sounding nothing like himself.
Devon didn’t miss a beat, and leaned forward so he could be heard over the truck and wind noise. “We’re coming up on the Suriname border, my friend. We’ve almost made it, if you can believe that. Should be at this hot spring place by tonight.”
Hernandez tried to shake his head in disagreement, but groaned as the motion caused an increase in his already unbearable pain. “Not…me.” His eyes flitted over to Tyler and he attempted to smile, but it came out more like a grimace. “I—” he gasped, unable to suck in enough air to speak.
Tyler wanted to run. To smack his hand on the glass of the back window and scream at Peta to stop driving, so he could leap over the side and run blindly into the jungle. To find a way to forget everything, and pretend like his mom, his dad, and Hernandez were still out there somewhere, happy and alive.
“Tyler.”
Tyler couldn’t ignore the plea from Hernandez, so he met the other man’s gaze. In that moment, he was forced to accept it all. The harsh, ugly, unimaginable truth of what he’d been through and what was still happening. Because it was still happening. The Kuru might have just about run out of people to kill, but the nightmare from the domino effect it caused was still unraveling. Combined with the seismic impacts from around the Earth, the future was anything but promising. No amount of daydreaming was going to sugarcoat that for Tyler. And it wouldn’t help him to survive it.
Tyler choked back a sob of acceptance as he reached for Hernandez’s hand. “I’m here.”
“Alejandro,” Hernandez slurred. He took another ragged, hitching breath. “Friends…call…Alex.”
A tear slipped down Tyler’s cheek and soaked into the soiled pillow case. Since the moment he first tried to pry the ensign’s name from him, it had turned into a game of wills. Tyler didn’t want to win that way. All he could manage was a small nod of understanding, and he squeezed Alex’s hand. His friend.
Devon took Hernandez’s oth
er hand as the truck pulled into the parking lot and slowed. “What can we do for you?”
“Pills,” Hernandez whispered, clearly exhausted from just uttering those few words.
Devon and Tyler exchanged a knowing look. He was talking about the Percocet Eddy had scored at the last house they stopped at. He’d found it in the medicine cabinet. A two-year old prescription with only six pills left.
Jason had broken one in half, and said Hernandez should be able to tolerate that dosage every four hours, without it further compromising his ability to breathe. According to Jason, too much narcotics did something to the central nervous system and slowed everything down, like breathing and your heart. While it seemed to help the pain in Hernandez’s head enough so that he could sleep, it obviously wasn’t enough.
“What about the pills?” Devon asked.
Tyler frowned at Devon, though he got why he wanted Hernandez to say it himself. It wasn’t something you could just assume.
“All—” another painful breath. “All…of them.”
The truck stopped in the middle of a cement lot with a scattering of other cars in it. Tyler was so distracted by the intense conversation, that he failed to see the woman approaching them until Jason jumped out and yelled at her.
“Hello!” Holding the Glock casually at his side, Jason stepped around and in front of the truck, placing himself in between them. “Are you here alone? My friends and I are just looking for a way across the river. We’re not going to cause any trouble.”
Tyler began scanning the rest of the parking lot, and a single structure at the far end, for anyone else. They’d all learned a very hard lesson about being ambushed. Eddy and Peta were already out of the truck and doing the same thing, both with weapons in their hands.
Tyler supposed anyone not already used to living in a tropical setting would feel even more isolated by the surrounding scenery. The rainforest was dense, and pressed in on all three sides, with the river the only outlet. Even that offered little relief to the impression of being closed in, since the banks were solid walls of foliage.
