It was hard to sleep with all that noise going on. Captain Gringo tried to turn over in bed and block it out. But he couldn’t turn and he realized he wasn’t in bed or even laying down. So he opened his eyes.
That seemed like a terrible mistake, but as his aching head cleared he kept his eyes open anyway. He was tied upright to a post in a firelit clearing. The sky above was pitch black, so he knew he’d been out for hours. The noise was coming from a nearby drum and the naked people squatting in a circle around him looked more like his idea of Black Caribs. They had nothing on but strings of seashells and mahogany skin oiled with butter or something. Their features were more Indian than Negroid but one guy had kinky hair, with what looked like a human femur through his top knot. Whoever was whamming the drum was behind Captain Gringo, out of his line of vision. He was facing what seemed to be the mouth of a cave in a low cliff of coral rock. The natives seemed to be’ expecting something to come out of the cave. They apparently hadn’t invited the zombies to the show, whatever it was to be. Captain Gringo glanced down. He still had on his pants and tarred boots. They hadn’t piled brush around the post, so they weren’t going to burn him at the stake at least. They’d ripped off his jacket, shirt, and shoulder rig. A damned mosquito was taking advantage of his bare chest and he saw other bites. They itched like hell, but he was in no position to scratch. His hands were bound tightly to his sides. He bent his knees to see if the stake had any give. It didn’t. He was stuck here until somebody cut him loose. None of his captors looked like they planned to.
Somebody must have signaled that he was conscious. The drum beat changed and the natives stared expectantly into the dark opening in the pale gray rock. Captain Gringo did, too. There was a teasing delay, then a figure moved out into the ruddy firelight and the natives gasped in awe. Captain Gringo gasped, too. He hadn’t expected a naked lady wrapped in the biggest fucking snake in the world.
She was a tall, shapely, jet black Negress with her head and everything else smooth shaven. Her ebony body had been oiled to gleam like patent leather and it contrasted starkly with the big boa constrictor coiled around her. She had the snake gripped just below its head, and it was hissing at her and darting its tongue as she blew in its face teasingly. He noticed she missed a beat while she half-pranced in place to the beat of the drum. She dug her nails into the snake with her free hand and adjusted the snake’s coil lower, over a hip bone. The monster was trying to squeeze the breath out of its tormenting mistress, but she knew how to handle it. It couldn’t crush her ribs if she didn’t let it get purchase. The boa’s tail thrashed in the dust around her dancing feet as it tried to find something to wrap around for leverage. The dance was more than show business. She was avoiding a coil around an ankle.
A male voice from someone he couldn’t see started chanting in a language he couldn’t understand. The tall black priestess swayed closer and their eyes met when she held the boa’s ugly head up to him as if for his approval. He said, “It’s swell. Now why don’t you put the fucking thing away?”
The chanting and drumming got wilder. So did the colored lady with the snake. She spread her feet and writhed sensually as she ran the snake’s head over her oiled naked flesh. One of the squatting Caribs was masturbating unselfconsciously while he watched her, sweat beading his brow. Captain Gringo didn’t find her act as sexy. It was too perverse. The priestess teased her own nipples with the boa’s darting tongue. The crowd seemed to be eating it up.
The woman was actually fighting with the creature now, and she was obviously as strong as most men. The tormented snake was mad as hell and trying to crush her, but she moved too cleverly and her skin was too greasy for the boa to really get a grip on her. She slid the head down her belly, thrust her pelvis forward, and slid the boa’s head between her greased thighs as the crowd gasped. It was too quick to be sure whether she’d really shoved it in her or not, but as she repeated the motion it looked like she was screwing herself with a fourteen foot boa constrictor, and enjoying it!
The snake didn’t like it at all. It was hissing and snapping its jaws, and since Captain Gringo knew the thing had some teeth, even if it wasn’t venomous, her act had to be a fake. That big boa really wanted to eat pussy, and the rest of her too!
The male chanter he couldn’t see suggested something new, and the big black priestess moved closer to him. The drum beats stopped and she sank to her knees in front of Captain Gringo, the boa coiled around her hips, and she held the head out in an attitude of prayer. Then he grasped what the next act was and said, “Hey, I liked it better the other way. Now you’re really getting dirty!”
The boa sensed freedom as it slid forward through her oiled palms. It darted its tongue out to touch Captain Gringo’s knee. Then it slid around and around, and as it unwound from the black girl’s hips, it started climbing him and his post like a stripe going up a barber pole!
He struggled to free at least a hand, for God’s sake. He could see a strong adult could wrestle a boa, with hands free to shift the coils. But he was helpless. The snake and everyone else knew that. The naked woman rose to her feet to step back, hands on hips, to watch. She was a beautiful animal, but Captain Gringo couldn’t remember anyone he’d ever hated as much as he did her right now.
The boa slithered up him and he tried not to flinch as its oddly cool beaded skin caressed his naked torso and bound arms. Maybe if he held very still the fucker would mistake him for a tree?
It didn’t. They’d starved as well as teased this stand-in for Mambo Jumbo and he knew now how it was supposed to go. The symbolism was all too obvious. First Mamma Macumba shows everyone the snake god is her lover and then she feeds somebody to him! The coils were tightening and it was hard to breathe as Mambo Jumbo rose ever higher for a better look at his meal to be. Captain Gringo tried to gain a little breathing space by moving his elbows out against the constricting coils. The boa tightened its grip painfully, but he could just barely inhale until his arms gave, and that didn’t figure to be long. The night was young and nobody was in a hurry. The naked slut watching from a safe distance probably enjoyed a long last act. He wondered how often they’d done this to others. How often did you have to feed a snake, and where the hell was Mambo Jumbo going to put him? The boa was as big around as a man’s thigh, but could it open its mouth that wide?
“Apparently the snake wondered too. It raised its ugly head to his and started exploring his face with its darting tongue. The desperate and enraged American knew he was done for, but, damn it, if they wanted him dead they’d have to do it right. He wasn’t about to be swallowed whole by a fucking animated sausage!
He pulled his head back against the pole behind him. The snake moved in to close the gap. Captain Gringo’s head shot forward, teeth red in the firelight, and snapped like a trapped wolf. It even surprised him when he bit down hard on the snake’s head, and found himself chewing!
The boa contracted like a vise as it tried to pull its head out of Captain Gringo’s mouth. He felt his mouth fill with salty God-awful and sawed his jaw back and forth until things started to give. The Black priestess moved forward but froze as the headless end of the boa whipped away from Captain Gringo’s face to hose her with spurting blood. The natives were on their feet and shouting as the big snake settled in twitching coils around his ankles. Then Captain Gringo spit the head out, bouncing it off one of the woman’s proud black breasts as he snarled, “You dropped something, bitch!”
Naturally, they were going to kill him nasty now. But they’d already been killing him nasty, so what the hell.
But the big black woman held up her hand and started yelling in her native lingo. Some of the others didn’t like it much, but she seemed to be the boss. So a Carib cut the thongs binding him to the pole while the priestess said, in perfect English, “If you value your life don’t make a move. Are you listening?”
“Gotcha. What’s the play?”
“Just follow me. Don’t look right. Don’t look left. Let’s go.”
She turned and headed for the cave entrance. He stepped away and staggered after her, stiff as hell. A Carib spit at him, but he just kept going until the two of them were in the cave mouth, and he noticed none of the natives followed. He wondered if they knew something he didn’t.
The bald black girl parted some hanging curtains and he found himself alone with her in a chamber furnished with woven matting on the sand floor and some cotton pillows on a ledge. A big basket stood in one niche and the place smelled like snake. He grabbed the girl, threw her on the floor and sat on her, growling, “Answers. Fast. Or I’ll kick the shit out of you!”
“I had to do it!” She pleaded. “For God’s sake, I just saved you!”
“After you wrapped a fucking snake around me? Who do you think you’re kidding? Who the hell are you? Where did you learn to speak English?”
“You’re hurting me. My name used to be Prudence Lee and I’m an American like you.”
“You’re the weirdest American I’ve ever met, and I’m not talking about your complexion! You’re Mamma Macumba, right?”
“Yes. I just told them that your magic was even stronger than Mambo Jumbo’s. With luck I may be able to convince them I need you as my bodyguard.”
“Bodyguard, huh?” He mused, suddenly aware that he was sitting on a naked woman and keyed up almost to the point of hysteria. He started to unbuckle his belt and said, “Okay, let’s start by seeing how good a body you want me to guard.”
“For God’s sake, I’m a virgin!”
That was the wrong thing to say. Captain Gringo was pissed, but he’d never raped anyone before and almost anything else she could have said would have stopped him. But this was too much. Whoever she was and whatever her story, she was still shitting him.
Mamma Macumba struggled, and she was strong. So he slapped her face and said, “I mean it. I’ll punch your teeth out. I don’t know what your game is, but I’m going to have one last lay before I die.”
“I don’t want to, damn it!”
“I know you don’t. That’s why I’m going to enjoy it.”
The gummed-up boots were a problem, so he simply got his pants down around his knees, pinned her wrist when she tried to shove him off, and forced her to open her thighs as she closed her eyes and started crying. He said, “Shit, shy tears from a bitch who just jerked-off with a. fourteen foot snake?”
“I used to be a missionary,” she sobbed as he entered her. He growled back, “Don’t worry, we’re starting with the missionary position.”
She gasped as he entered her to the hilt. He was sort of surprised too. She was as tight as a frightened teen-ager despite her muscular, almost man-sized torso. He settled his naked heaving chest against her eggplant breasts and moved a little more gently as he frowned and said, “This is crazy. You really do feel like cherry.”
“Hurry and satisfy yourself if you must,” she sighed in resignation, as she added, “they’ll kill us both if anyone sees me like this. Can’t you see the only hold I have over them is awe?”
He knew he’d made a mistake. But he was halfway there with a beautiful woman and she was unconsciously moving her hips to help him. He pounded harder and exploded in her before he said, “Okay, you’re not a bitch, but this is still weird as hell. I’ll stop if you want.”
But she murmured, “Wait. Don’t. The damage is done and something is happening and … oh, do it some more.”
So he did. But he beat her again to a climax and she said, “I don’t think I can respond. Those cannibals outside make me so nervous and it really is my first time.”
He laughed and said, “They make you nervous? I thought you were queen of the whole shebang, Mamma.”
“I wish you’d call me Prue. Before you threw me down and leaped on me, I was about to explain this mess to you. Do you have a name, by the way?”
“Call me Dick. I’ll be good.”
As he rolled off, Prue sat up with a Mona Lisa expression on her dark face, and said, “We’ll see about being good together after we get out of here.”
“There’s a way out?”
“Yes and no, Dick. I can get us out of this chamber. This cave runs back under the hills for miles. But I’ve been afraid to make a break for it alone. Now that you’re here ... come on, pull those silly pants up and I’ll show you.”
He did what she asked but he frowned at her thoughtfully and asked, “Are you really going to help me escape, Prue?”
She said, “Of course, if you’ll help me. Did you really think I was here of my own free will?”
The fact that the Afro-American girl hadn’t tried to escape on her own made more sense as Prue led him through the dank maze behind her living quarters. They both had torches, though she hadn’t risked trying to get his guns back. So he could see the mouse-sized cockroaches and the moldy bat shit all over everything. The bats tended to flutter ahead of their approaching lights, but they sounded big as eagles. He asked Prue if there were snakes living in the caverns and she said she didn’t think so. He didn’t see why any snake in its right mind would want to either.
Running water had riddled the limestone like Swiss cheese but Prue seemed to know where she was going as she guided him around corners and over fallen slabs of slimy rock. She said she’d explored a bit, trying to get up her nerve to escape, and he noticed the smoke smudges on the roof.
The cave system was a big one and as they wound through it Prue had time to tell him her story, weird as it was.
Miss Prudence Lee had been sent down to the Mosquito Coast by a black Baptist congregation in Baltimore on a mission to the less frantic West Indians working on the Panama Canal. One gathered they were living in Papist error, and Prue had intended to convert them to well-scrubbed, sober Protestants. Her ship had run into a hurricane before breaking its back on the reefs off Nuevo Verdugo. The strong athletic missionary had been the only one to make it ashore.
The Black Caribs pulled her half-drowned body from the breakers, and she’d thought at first they meant to eat her. They may have thought so too. But Mamma Macumba had had other ideas.
Captain Gringo said, “Wait a minute. I thought you were Mamma Macumba, Prue.”
She sat on a rock to rest as she explained, “I am now. Or I was until a few minutes ago. You see, Dick, Mamma Macumba is immortal.”
“Honey, I don’t see shit.”
“Let me finish. I was shipwrecked nearly five years ago. The woman who was then Mamma Macumba knew she was dying. Cancer, I think. Jungle medicine isn’t as exact as people assume. Anyway, she took a fancy to me because I fit her picture of what a proud priestess should look like. I was her captive and she let me know it, painfully, the first time I tried to run away.”
He nodded and said, “I get it, now. She taught you the lingo and trained you as her replacement.”
“Yes. You know the rest, Dick.”
“The hell I do. When did this other Mamma Macumba die and leave you her business?”
“A year or so ago, I think. It’s so hard to keep track of the time with no calendar or watch.”
“Never mind exact dates then. The Pantropic Sugar Trust has been having a war with you during your time at bat. How do you explain a nice little missionary gal leading all those attacks? We’ll get to the spooky parts later.”
She said, “Don’t you see I’m just a figurehead, Dick? I don’t run the tribe. I’m their, well, good luck piece or juju. I don’t even know half of what’s been going on. I understand there are civilized people living somewhere on the island, but I’ve been afraid, until now, to try and reach them.”
He saw she was about to start crying again. So he wedged their two torches in a cleft and sat beside her to comfort her. He said, “I’ll buy that, honey. But if Mamma Macumba is just a figurehead, who in blazes runs the outfit?”
“Brujos, witch doctors call themselves Brujos down here.”
‘“I know that. Are you saying there’s a sort of witch doctor clique directing things? Okay, who’s the head spook? Does he have a name?”
She shuddered in his arms and said, “Yes. They call him Pappa Blanco. I’ve never seen him; he doesn’t attend ceremonies. He’s said to live alone somewhere in the jungle and the others go to consult with him. He’s the one who makes zombies out of our enemies. Or I should say the Caribs’ enemies now. Jesus, Dick, what if they catch us and turn us into zombies?”
“We’ll be very upset. Get back to Pappa Blanco. Blanco means White. What’s a white man doing playing witch doctor, and why is everyone talking baby talk? Caribs have their own native language, don’t they?”
“Of course. But these have been converted to Macumba, and Macumba uses Spanish, French, English, and African words, just like the Catholics use Latin. I don’t think Pappa Blanco is a white man. I’ve never heard of a white Macumba priest. He paints his face white. They say he looks like a grinning skull, and even the other witch doctors are afraid of Pappa Blanco.”
“He’s making me a little nervous, too. What can you tell me about his zombies?”
She shuddered again and said, “They’re horrible. They say Pappa Blanco gets them from the graveyards of the Christians. He says it’s better to let them lead the skirmish lines so that real warriors won’t face bullets until the other side is confused and backing off.”
Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “Great idea. But how the hell do you suppose he does it?”
“I don’t know, Dick. I was only taught a few simple tricks. I know you think I was horrid with that snake, but I didn’t know what else I could do and—”
“Forget it. It was me or you, and you thought fast when you saw a chance to bail me out. Pappa Blanco’s not a snake charmer or a simple stage magician. He’s on to something really evil.”
She said, “I know. It’s wrong to disturb the—”
“Wrong? Hell, it’s impossible. They’ve shanghaied a bunch of derelicts and I’m starting to feel lousy about how I smoked the poor guys up, but, like you, I didn’t have much choice.”
“You mean they are not from the graveyard in town, Dick?”
“I doubt it like hell. But I’m sure going to check that out when we get back to town.”
The mention of town reminded Prue of something. , She said, “Oh Lord. I’ve gotten used to going stark naked , since I washed up among folks who do it all the time. But what are folks going to say when they see a white man walking out of the bush with a naked nigger gal?”
“We’ll find a fig leaf or something. The more important gossip is liable to be among the neighbors we just left. How long do you figure we have before they miss us, Prue?”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Nobody is supposed to come in the cave of Mamma Macumba and Mambo Jumbo. But you sure made a mess of that snake. None of the common Caribs will dare to peek, but—”
“Yeah, the witch doctors will wonder how you’re getting along with Mambo Jumbo’s unexpected replacement. Who was thumping that drum and, which way was he headed the last time you noticed? I couldn’t see the bastard.”
Prue said, “Oh, him. He was just a second class bad nigger. The others lit out someplace just before you woke up. You understand that sacrifice wasn’t my notion, don’t you, honey?”
“We’ve settled that. Keep going.”
“Well, when they brought you in, knocked out and trussed like a pig on a pole, the priesthood started to get ready to fix you good, and told me to get cracking. But then a runner came in and they said to start without them. I think Pappa Blanco wanted them for a more important gathering.”
“That makes sense. My friends are probably looking for me and he’s planning a reception for them. We’d better get moving, Prue. Even if we haven’t been missed yet, I’ve got to reach my guys before they walk into something nasty.”
He helped her to her feet, got the torches, and took the lead now that he had the smoke trail figured out. He asked her what the odds were that others knew of the far exit, and she said there were dozens of entrances and exits to the cavern complex. Apparently a big, pie wedge of coral had been shoved up out of the sea and eroded into a real puzzle under its cap rocks. He figured if they could get well away before daylight they had a chance. A pretty slim chance, but what the hell. Trying to shake off born jungle trackers on their own ground, unarmed and saddled with a frightened girl, beat the odds he’d faced just a few minutes ago with that fucking snake.