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Back Jungle Up Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
  1. 1
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  29. 29
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  31. 31
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  40. 40
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  52. 52
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  63. Author’s Note

“Gina Jane,” I said. It was a play on G.I. Jane and one of a few pet names I’d been workshopping when Gina had up and left.

She laughed.

There was a loud throat-clearing. Gina and I turned.

Bill stood in front of us. He adjusted his tinted glasses on his nose, then said, “I hate to break up your reunion, but we’re going to cut off your heads now.”

Martin asked, “What are you going to do to the villagers?”

“Sadly, they’re all going to have to die. You see, when we tried to rescue you guys, we had quite the firefight with the villagers. And unfortunately, they were all killed. And, of course, we arrived too late to save all of you.”

“Why the women and children?” Martin shouted. “Can’t you leave them?”

“And risk them telling someone about us?”

“They’ve never left the jungle. And, even if they did, what could they tell? Please, I’m begging you, spare the women and children. Please!”

Bill said, “You should have kept your promise.”

Martin began to cry.

“What about the cure?” I asked. “All those people who could be helped by this bacteria. You’re just going to forget about it?”

“Well, yeah,” he said with a smile. “Like I said before, there’s no money in curing people.”

A montage of Lacy’s many flare-ups played in my head. Her two months of temporary blindness, when she could barely walk for three months, when she was dizzy for six weeks, when her left hand was numb for nineteen days. And then I thought of Clark, my beautiful, pudgy little man, with a one-in-forty-eight chance of developing the same disease.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said.

Bill smirked. “In a few minutes you aren’t going to have a head, so I don’t see how that’s possible.”

He made a good point.

57

57

tribal village
august 23, 4:28 p.m.
days since abduction: 18

I’m not sure if Bill was getting cold feet or if he and the soldiers were still figuring out the logistics of their soon-to-be massacre, but ten minutes had passed, and I still had my head.

Bill and three soldiers were gathered in the center of the village, partially hidden behind a makeshift wall of twenty spears sticking from the ground.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” I asked Gina.

“They’re probably drawing straws to see who gets to cut your head off.”

“I hope it’s Santiago,” I said. “He seems the most gentle.”

“None of them is named Santiago.”

“Oh.”

“They are named Benecio, Artibal, Juan, and Mico.”

“Is there anything you want to tell me about you and Juan? I see how you look at him.”

“You don’t even know which one Juan is,” she answered with a laugh.

“You missed me, didn’t you?”

She spread her thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart and said, “Maybe just a little.”