Las Hermanas

by Raedene Jeannette Melin

  Chapter Three

  Adi woke the next morning drenched in sweat.

  It’s not real, she told herself, trying to get the nightmare and the man’s face out of her head. She had been running from him in her sleep as he taunted her, but the feeling of his hands had been too real. “It’s just a dream,” she said out loud. “He’s not here.”

  Although she had been sleeping for hours, her muscles ached with exhaustion and as she stood, she was stopped by the pain shooting up her leg. She didn’t have to touch the wound to know it was infected. Her thigh was hot and the gash swelled with pus.

  Gingerly pushing herself off the floor, she left the hut and made her way down to the river. Not bothering to take off her clothes, she simply walked into the current, feeling every cut on her body as the water soothed her aches and pains. After a few minutes, she sat down, scrubbing her skin with sand as her feet floated underneath the surface. Finally clean, she dragged her water-logged body out of the river and walked through the trees towards the camp.

  The jungle had come alive with the morning and Adi listened as birds called back and forth to one another, their whistles and squawks filling the air. Spotting the tree she was looking for, she grabbed a small rock off the ground and sliced into the bark repeatedly until red sap oozed out. Holding a leaf underneath, the liquid dripped slowly, creating a small pile of sticky goo.

  Relief flooded through her as she smeared the sap over her thigh, covering the gaping hole. It was soothing, the sap killing the pain and infection as it sealed the wound shut. She rubbed it into every cut, scrape, and bruise, and when she was finished, more than half her body was red. Collecting a bit more, she wrapped it in the leaf and made her way back.

  By the time she got there, the camp was in complete chaos. Kids were scattered everywhere, crawling on the ground as they puked, their distressed cries filling the air. Unsure of what was happening, Adi sprinted towards the hut.

  “Benito,” she called as she entered.

  The silence that answered frightened her to the bone and she ran back out, panic filling her chest. Seeing someone jogging past, Adi asked, “Have you seen my brother?” She got no reply. Unsure of what to do, she ran around the camp, searching the shelters as the crying increased. She was about to give in to the hysteria when a small hand lightly touched her elbow.

  She grabbed him, pulling him close as his head smooshed against her stomach. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it pulsating through her thigh. Desperate to stop the throbbing, she took a few deep breaths, trying to slow it down.

  Benito took a step back. “You need to come.”

  Taking her by the hand, he led her across the camp and into a small, partially-closed lean-to. Upon entering, Adi saw Rodrigo and Pablo huddled around a boy lying on the ground.

  “Adi,” Pablo said, looking up hopefully when she entered. “Benito says you can help.”

  She ignored the angry glare from Rodrigo and approached, kneeling next to Salvador. He was deathly pale and his body was covered in sweat. He shook uncontrollably.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with him?” Pablo asked. “He was fine last night, but when I found him this morning, he was like this.”

  She didn’t reply as she continued to look him over. While his head was radiating with heat, his body was cold. When she gently squeezed his leg, he let out a small groan. She had just opened her mouth to speak when a girl burst into the lean-to.

  “They’re getting worse,” she announced as she walked in. She was older, about Salvador’s age, and had long brown hair that was hastily tied up into a ponytail.

  “How many?” Rodrigo asked, standing up.

  The girl shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve lost count. About twenty.”

  “We need to find what’s causing it.” Rodrigo paused. “Could it be the water? Maybe there’s something in it.”

  The girl shrugged.

  “What about the food?” Pablo asked. “Maybe some of it was bad.”

  Rodrigo let out an exasperated sigh and was about to say something when Adi interjected. “It’s not the water or the food,” she said as she stood, wiping Salvador’s sweat off on her pants. “It’s malaria. They all have malaria.”

  “How do you know?” Pablo asked.

  “If the water or the food was bad, they’d be puking, but they wouldn’t be shaking and sweating this much.”

  “So, because they’re shaking its malaria?”

  Adi nodded. “It’s in their muscles. That’s what makes them tired and sore. Bad water or food don’t do that.”

  “But we’ve had malaria before,” the girl said, baffled. “It’s never been close to this bad.”

  “There are different types,” Adi replied with a shrug. “Some you barely notice, others hurt a lot.”

  “How can this many people have malaria at the same time?” Rodrigo asked angrily. “Even at our village, no one was this sick.”

  Adi didn’t want to talk to him. She had planned on never speaking to him again, but as the others waited for her answer, she relented. “That’s cuz we had Señora Reyes. She helped them before they got this bad.”

  “How?” Pablo asked. “Do you know?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you do it?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.

  Adi hesitated. While she knew how to treat them, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. It would take hours, if not days, and that was time she didn’t have. She needed to get away from this place. Her dilemma was interrupted by the feeling of a hand sliding into hers.

  “Adi,” Benito said quietly. “Help them.”

  As she looked down into the steadiness of her father’s eyes staring back at her, she sighed. “Put all the sick together,” she said. “I need a knife, a bowl, and a small fire.”

  Pablo nodded eagerly. “Ivanna, go.” The girl immediately left the lean-to. “What else?”

  “We have to cool their heads and warm their bodies.”

  “Okay, I can do that,” Pablo replied. “Rodrigo, give her a knife.”

  Adi turned around. Rodrigo was standing with arms crossed, a scowl on his face, not moving a muscle.

  “Rodrigo,” Pablo said louder with annoyance.

  Huffing noisily, he reached behind him, pulled out a knife and slapped the blade into her hand.

  Adi ran through the trees, searching for the right ingredients. She didn’t want to be out there any longer than she had to. Being alone in the forest made her anxious. It felt like the man with the scar was going to jump out at any moment. When she spotted the cinchona tree, its long trunk and bushy top extending upwards, she pushed her fear aside and got to work. She cut the bark off in short, thin pieces, and within an hour, she had enough. The next tree she needed was a bit more difficult to find, but after a few minutes of running around, she finally spotted one. The kamalame tree was quite large and had shaggy, red-copper skin that glistened in the sun. Peeling away the bark, Adi dropped the paper-thin strips into the bucket and ran back to camp.

  Over the next few hours, Adi didn’t stop, working as fast as she could to prepare the medication. The cinchona bark had to be dried and then smashed into powder while the kamalame peels had to be boiled and made into tea. As she sat grinding down the dried strips, she watched Pablo and Ivanna work under the lean-to, wiping the sweat from the kids’ bodies and trying to warm them. Adi remembered what it felt like to have malaria. Her muscles would clench and shake for hours while her head felt as if it would explode at any moment. It was like the earth was constantly wobbling and she could never get warm, no matter how long she sat in the sun.

  “Benito,” she said, calling him away from stirring the tea. “Bring this to Pablo.” She handed him a leaf full of freshly ground cinchona powder. “Make sure everyone gets some.”

  He nodded and carefully carried the powder towards the lean-to while Adi placed some more bark in the bowl and started grinding again. While the symptoms would soon die down, they would be back in twenty-four hours an
d Adi needed to strengthen their bodies before the next attack came. She was helping one of them drink some tea when Ivanna walked up and crouched beside her.

  “What does that do?” she asked after a moment.

  “Brings down the fever and helps with the pain.” Adi lowered the cup from the kid’s lips.

  “And the powder?”

  “Kills the bugs and relaxes the muscles.”

  Ivanna nodded thoughtfully. “Salvador’s feeling better. He wants to talk to you.”

  Adi followed her through the camp and into the small lean-to as the sun began to set. Pablo and Rodrigo were already there and they stood around Salvador, who was sitting on the floor, a blanket covering his legs.

  “Adi,” he said with a smile as she entered.

  She walked up and handed him a tin mug. “It’ll help the aching.”

  “Thank you,” he replied, wrapping his hands around it. “Pablo tells me you’re the reason I’m feeling better.”

  Adi shook her head. “No, it doesn’t work that fast. It’s the bugs. They’ve stopped.”

  He gave her a weary smile. “And will they be back?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “About a day.”

  Salvador sighed and nodded. “How long will this continue?”

  “At least a week, maybe two.”

  He was quiet before he turned to Rodrigo. “How many are sick?”

  “Sixteen, including you.”

  “That leaves twelve of you to do everything. The patrols, the hunting, the cooking.”

  “We should stop the patrols,” Pablo said, grabbing Adi’s attention. “We don’t have the people. It’ll be hard enough finding food.”

  “No, we need the patrols,” Rodrigo replied, much to Adi’s relief. She was already uncomfortable with how long she and Benito had stayed. If the patrols stopped, there would be no one to warn her if the man was coming. “We can’t sit here unprotected,” Rodrigo continued. “We wouldn’t survive a surprise attack, not like this.”

  “Who’s gonna attack us?” Pablo asked. “There’s not a single person out there.”

  “Benito found us. There could be others. They could follow them here.”

  Pablo shook his head. “No, they can’t. I covered their tracks. There’s nothing to follow.”

  “Being unguarded is stupid. It defeats our entire purpose,” Rodrigo argued. “These kids came here because we told them we would protect them. I’m not gonna stop doing that just because some of us are sick.”

  “Some of us are sick?” Pablo asked. “More than half the camp has been puking their guts out. They have to be treated, and that takes time. We can’t waste it on pointless patrols.”

  “Okay,” Salvador said sternly, bringing the argument to an end.

  As Adi waited for him to make a decision, she tried to ignore the anxiety twisting her stomach into a hard knot.

  “We keep the patrols,” he said after a moment, relief washing over her, “but in four teams of two. Two for the day and two for the night. That will have to work until we get past this.”

  Satisfied with the plan, Adi left the shelter, found something to eat, and laid down next to Benito, eager to get some sleep. But when she woke the next morning, she realized that things were going to get much worse.

  •

  The sound of sickness filled her ears as she walked out of the hut. She looked over at the group of kids under the lean-to, expecting the distressed cries to be caused by them, but as the noise increased, she realised it was coming from the opposite direction. Following the groans across camp, she found Pablo, Ivanna, and a few others lying on the ground covered in vomit.

  “They’re all sick,” Rodrigo said as he walked up carrying a small girl.

  Adi reached out and touched the child’s forehead, but jerked her hand back. “She’s burning.”

  “I found her outside camp against a tree. She shouldn’t have been there.”

  Adi was about to reply when calls for help interrupted them. Turning around, she saw two kids walking into the camp carrying a young boy.

  “Take her.” Rodrigo placed the girl in her arms and ran towards them.

  Although the girl was only four or five, Adi struggled to lift her and she quickly carried her over to the lean-to.

  “We need to cool her off,” she said as Benito came out of the hut. She laid the girl down. “Cover her with wet rags and as soon as they get hot, dunk them back in the water. Okay?”

  Seeing him nod, Adi walked over to Rodrigo and the others. They were standing around the boy on the ground and he wasn’t moving.

  “What do we do with him?” one of them asked.

  Adi knelt down and examined him closely. She didn’t have to touch him to see that his skin was clammy and his clothes were covered in puke and sweat. He had been dead for a while.

  “We need to bury him,” the other replied.

  Adi looked at the dirt around them. While they buried the dead in her village, the ground here was different, full of roots, and the soft soil on top soon turned to clay. Digging a grave would take hours and they didn’t have energy to waste.

  “It’ll take too long,” Rodrigo said, echoing her thoughts.

  “What else are we supposed to do?” the first one asked. “We can’t just leave him to rot.”

  “We’ll float him.” They turned and watched as she stood. “If we make a raft, the river will take him away. That’ll be fastest.”

  Rodrigo was quiet before he nodded. “Go help the others,” he said to the boys as he picked up the body. “Come on.”

  Adi followed Rodrigo down to the river, collecting long, thin vines along the way. They worked quickly, gathering narrow logs and branches that were strewn across the jungle floor. Once they had enough, they placed the logs in the river and began stacking them on top of each other in rows, twisting the vines around the criss-crossed pieces.

  “We should save his clothes,” Rodrigo said. “We don’t have very many.”

  Adi was standing in the water, tightly wrapping the edge of the raft together. She looked over at the boy lying on the riverbank, but didn’t move. She had handled dead bodies before, forced to strip them of clothes, supplies, and anything else they could reuse at the village, but she had always done that with her sister, and as she stared at his pale face, she only saw Leti’s, her sunken eyes perfectly still in her grave.

  “Adi,” Rodrigo said, urging her to do it.

  She walked out of the water and knelt down beside the boy, unable to deny the feeling of dread as she began to remove his clothes. His body was already stiffening and every time she touched his cold skin, a wave of nausea slammed into her. She had managed to move his shirt up, but when she tried to lift it past his head, her eyes fell into his lifeless stare and suddenly, she was surrounded.

  She could barely breathe as the bodies piled up around her, the smell of their rotting flesh overwhelming her senses and making her gag. No matter where she looked, she couldn’t escape them, their cold eyes burrowing into her skin. She tried to push herself up, but her muscles refused to move and just as she was beginning to panic, she felt two hands grab her shoulders and shake.

  It took a moment for her vision to clear as the bodies melted away, but when it finally did, she found herself staring into Rodrigo’s worried face. She inhaled deeply but her stomach clenched and she turned and puked, just barely missing Rodrigo and the body.

  He said nothing as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but when she reached out towards the boy, his firm grasp held her in place.

  “I’m fine,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  He hesitated, but eventually let her go and returned to the raft.

  The air was still as they placed the boy on top and watched the current take him down and away. As he drifted out of sight, Adi felt Rodrigo looking at her, but she ignored him, unwilling to talk about what happened. It had seemed real—the bodies, the smell, the way their eyes latche
d onto her—and even though she knew it wasn’t, she couldn’t shake the frightening feeling that she was losing control.

  The day passed quickly as Adi and the others worked hard to treat everyone and gather supplies. When they finally finished, it was dark and she walked over to join them, sitting down heavily in front of the fire.

  “Is this all we have?” She looked dejectedly at the small collection of fruit beside her. While she was hungry enough to eat anything, her body craved something more.

  Rodrigo nodded. “We gave the last of the meat to the others. We’ll get more tomorrow.”

  Adi wasn’t so sure but didn’t bother saying so. She picked up a mango and bit into it.

  “We built sides on the lean-to,” Rodrigo said after a few minutes, “but we’ll still have to keep watch. The smell will attract animals.” They had tried to remove all the vomit, but they couldn’t keep up and the camp reeked of sickness.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Adi said, surprising him. While she was exhausted, she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  “You sure?” The other boys left the fire and went into the lean-to.

  She nodded and Rodrigo stood.

  “Here.”

  Adi looked at him standing above her and saw the gun in his hand.

  “Take it,” he said when she didn’t move, the handle pointed in her direction.

  Adi reached up, but the moment she felt the cold steel against her skin, the image of her mother’s bullet-ridden body reappeared and she jerked back, dropping the gun.

  “I don’t need it,” she said quietly, trying to hide the pain on her face.

  Rodrigo bent down and picked it up. She could tell he wanted to say something, but she was grateful when he didn’t and simply walked away.

  The night crawled by and Adi kept busy by checking on the sick and mashing bark and roots into powder. She was so tired her hand could barely hold onto the bowl, but she continued to work, afraid of where her mind would take her if she stopped. She was sitting against a stump, grinding bark into smaller pieces when the fatigue overwhelmed her and she nodded off to sleep.