“Maybe you guys haven’t had enough of it,” Laura said. “Maybe it takes more than three doses to get hooked.”
“Do you think Jilly was hooked, Mac?”
I hated to say it, but I did. “Yes.”
“I wonder who else in Edgerton has tried the stuff and what they’re doing now,” Sherlock said.
“I’ll bet you Charlie Duck tried it. The coroner told me there was something odd in Charlie’s blood. He was going to run more tests. Maybe he even tried it on purpose to find out what was going on. He was a retired cop, remember.”
“Maybe that’s why someone killed him,” Laura said.
“That works,” Savich said, nodding as he ate a bite of banana.
“Mac,” Sherlock said suddenly, “you had that hookup with Jilly when she went off the cliff and you were actually in bed in Bethesda. You just didn’t understand it. Well, maybe it happened again. Maybe Jilly was just in your mind, warning you.”
“There’s really no other explanation,” Savich said, folding up the banana peel. “Unless you just dreamed it up because you were drugged out of your mind.”
“I was drugged for sure. Whatever it means, I hope it also means that Jilly is alive. Jesus, Laura, this is tough to take,” I said, leaning over to feel her forehead. “How do you feel?”
“There’s something crawling up my leg-on the outside, at least.”
I swiped off the salamander, who flicked its skinny tail, then flitted off into the undergrowth.
Savich was carving another feather stick with the scissors. The damned thing looked like a piece of art.
Laura moaned. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed. Her face was paper white, her lips were nearly blue. I shoveled more aspirin down her throat.
There wasn’t much of anything left in the first-aid kit. My eyes met Savich’s across her body. He was frowning. He was also holding Sherlock’s hand, tight.
We slogged through the mud at least another couple of miles before we stopped for the night.
Laura was about the same the following morning, weak, shaky, and feverish. The wound was redder, more swollen. There was no kidding anybody now. It was bad. We had to get her to a hospital. We were up and walking, Savich carrying Laura, by sunrise.
“Due west,” I said again, and began hacking.
We found a stalk of ripe bananas at nine o’clock. Savich tore them off the stalk to the accompaniment of screaming monkeys, whose breakfast we were stealing. I was relieved they didn’t dive-bomb us.
It was nearly noon when I smelled something. I stopped dead in my tracks, lifted my head, and smelled. It was salt, so strong I could taste it.
I started to let out a yell when I heard men’s voices, loud, not twenty feet away from us.
“Oh, no,” Sherlock said, and backed up, dropping everything except her AK-47. “How could they have found us? Dammit, it’s not fair.”
Savich held Laura, who was either asleep or unconscious. He didn’t put her down, just drew back so I could come up alongside Sherlock.
“They don’t care that we can hear them,” I whispered. “Are there that many of them? Have they fanned out?”
“I can smell the salt now, Mac. We’ve got to be near the ocean.”
The voice moved away. Then, to my shock, I heard women’s voices. Then laughter. Lots of laughter, yelling, more laughter. I heard screaming, but not in terror, screaming and shouting in fun, and all of it was in English.
Something was very strange here.
The thick foliage melted away, everything suddenly thinning out. I took the lead, my Bren Ten in my hand, Sherlock in the rear, Savich carrying Laura between us. We moved as quietly as we could. I saw a troop of green parrots flying from one banana tree to the next, a phalanx of green with flashes of red and yellow. The salt smell grew stronger, and the sun slashed down through the trees above us as the thick canopy above disappeared.
I felt a breeze on my face. I broke through a final curtain of green leaves and stepped onto white sand. Savich inched out behind me. I heard Sherlock suck in her breath. We just stood there, staring.