“Need a pee,” Dean said, scurrying into the heart of a night-flowering bush, rich with the scent of oranges.
“Do you think we will need the rest of this thermite mixture?” Doc asked. “It weighs devilish heavy.”
“Might yet come in handy for us,” replied the Armorer, who was also carrying part of the ingredients. “It worked well enough, didn’t it?”
“In the end, John.” Mildred kissed him on the cheek. “Sorry. Don’t know what’s the matter with me today. Having trouble in the good-words department.”
Ryan began to walk along the path, glancing to make sure the others were following him. “Like I said, some hard walking to come. And everyone step light.”
THE MOON DRIFTED lower in the sky and the jungle grew darker, the shadows deeper.
It was a warm night, the temperature not falling below seventy degrees.
By the time the first glow of the false dawn was lightening the horizon, Ryan had brought them within a mile of the village.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Better than blood.”
Jak could hear the voice that kept repeating the three words to him, as though it were some sort of religious mantra. It had been speaking for what seemed to be hours.
“Better than blood.”
He wanted to scream at whomever it was to shut up. On and on, around and around.
“Better than blood.”
For some time, Jak had been aware that he was dying. The herbal poison that the natives had given him was working its claws deeper and deeper into his system. He had a memory, or it might have been a nightmare, that Ryan and the others had abandoned him.
Then he thought he’d still been standing up, or resting on a bed. There’d been a tingling like pins and needles in his fingers, in his hands and toes.
In his arms and legs.
“Better than blood.”
The words seemed to be whispered in his ears, like rats scrabbling behind the walls of an old house.
He couldn’t remember how long ago it had been since he’d gone blind.
Time no longer meant anything. It was just a word, an empty word in the hollow blackness that had been Jak’s world. He was lying in the dark, vaguely aware of the warmth and wetness at his groin.
“Better than blood.”
He wanted to stop the voice. Angered and on the edge of tears, Jak bit at his lip.
And the voice stopped.
RYAN AND THE OTHERS had burrowed deep inside a massive clump of flowering orchids. They had a rich scent that Doc said reminded him of visits to a crematorium, but they provided excellent cover.
Despite protests of tiredness from Doc and Dean, Ryan had insisted on leading the group in a huge circle, covering about fifteen miles during the hours of darkness, finishing to the north of the village, then closing back in again, until they were less than a hundred yards away from the steep-sided, flat-topped pyramid.
It was thirty minutes or so from full dawn.
JAK WAS AWARE of hands holding him, helping to move him to what seemed to be an upright position. But his body was stiff, his limbs resisting any attempt to bend. They were trying to get him to drink something, the edge of a pottery vessel pressing against his numb lips.
He heard words in a harsh, guttural language. Occasionally an odd English word would penetrate into the swirling mists of his dying mind.
“God,” had been one of them. “Hope” and “late” had been others.
DEAN WAS ASLEEP, lying curled up, hands jammed between his thighs, snoring quietly.
Doc had also given himself up to rest, lying in a similar fetal position, hands folded on his chest, eyelids twitching with REM.
Mildred smiled at the old man. “Look at him,” she said. “I don’t know how he keeps up. Tougher than last year’s Thanksgiving turkey. Now he’s got rapid eye movement, showing how he’s enjoying a good session of dreaming.”
Krysty lay back against a large moss-covered boulder, feet crossed. “That was a tough march.” She yawned. “Wonder how Jak’s feeling?”
Ryan moved to the edge of the cover, peering through the broad leaves, making sure that nobody from the village was yet stirring on the nearby trail.