Daybreak found them on the marshy neck in the middle of the peanut-shaped island. Prue said she felt silly being stark naked now that they were almost home free. Captain Gringo said they were far from home free and the nearest spur of the rail system was a good six or eight miles ahead. But the erstwhile missionary picked some plantana leaves and began to shred them for a skirt as they walked on. Captain Gringo said he was hungry as a bitch wolf and suggested she keep an eye peeled for something to eat as well as wear. He’d shared some sour sops they’d spotted at dawn with Prue, and while they’d eased his thirst they hadn’t stuck to his ribs. She said there were avocado growing wild in the jungle and he said it would be her job to find some. He had to watch the ground. He didn’t want to step in any more tar pits.
He’d shed the gummed-up boots and rolled the tarred bottoms of his pants up to his knees. So while he could walk better, he was getting his shins cut up by the underbrush. They had no machete and he had to bull through in the lead, sparing Prue’s long naked legs the wear and tear. She asked him why he didn’t look for a trail and he said, “Trails are where you meet folks, honey. Do you want to meet anyone without so much as a club in your hand?”
She shuddered and replied, “Pappa Blanco will be awfully angry when he finds us gone.”
“Yeah. So far I don’t hear any drums. Let’s hope he’s a late sleeper.”
Oddly, the light was better in the jungle at such an early hour. The low sun lanced through the tree trunks instead of trying to penetrate the dense overhead canopy. But it was still pretty murky.
They were near the area where he’d been jumped the day before. Captain Gringo told Prue to watch her step, and when he heard the loud buzzing of blue bottles he headed that way. Behind him Prue sniffed and said, “Something sure smells dead around here.”
They were both right. He found what was left of his machete man, Jose, half under a bush and completely covered with flies. The zombies had been carried off, if they hadn’t walked, but Jose had been left to rot.
Prue grimaced and said, “Oh, he’s all icky. Don’t touch him.” But Captain Gringo said, “Move back and weave your skirt or something. I’m hoping they thought he as icky, too.”
Jose had been hacked up some more since Captain Gringo had last seen him and the blue bottles swarming on the shredded flesh and bloody rags didn’t do a thing to make Jose more appetizing. Captain Gringo took a deep breath, bent down, and rolled the mess over. Then he grinned and said, “Jesus, even better!”
He rose, holding Jose’s shotgun and said, “I was hoping they’d overlooked his machete. He fell on his Browning and that puts us back in business. Hold this. I have to see if he has any spare ammo in his pockets.”
The girl grimaced but took the shotgun while Captain Gringo knelt again, muttering, “Sorry, Jose,” and started going through the dead man’s clothes. He found a couple of 12 gauge shells and a small gold cross. He sighed and said, “I’ll see this gets to your family, kid. I’d bury you if I had a shovel and the time, but I don’t have either, and what the hell, you wanted to be a soldier.”
He got to his feet putting the shells and cross in his own pocket, and Prue said, “This gun’s all icky, too.”
He took it from her and said, “Only on the outside, where it doesn’t count. I’ll wipe it off with leaves or something. For a girl who plays with snakes you sure are getting delicate all of a sudden.”
He led them on, Prue resuming work on her grass skirt while she walked, saying, “It’s not the same. Besides, I’m already starting to feel like it was all a nightmare. I can’t believe I spent all that time with a mess of bad bush niggers. Do you suppose they had me drugged or something?”
“You were acting pretty wild last night. They might have been spiking your food, but I think it was just propinquity. We all tend to act like the folks around us. Sometimes I catch myself acting more like a Latin American bandito than a West Point graduate. In a couple of months you’ll be wearing new hair and a dress and feeling like a missionary again.”
She said, “That doesn’t seem possible either. But things are coming back to me. We’re both American and once we get out of this mess we’ll remember that you’re white and I’m black and that … Jesus, you touched me, Dick! What kind of missionary gal fools around with white meat?”
“White missionary gals? Relax, honey. We’re a long way from Baltimore, even when we reach Utopiaton.”
“I know, but are you sure you want to have a black gal as your own there?”
He didn’t answer. She wouldn’t understand if he said he didn’t want to be saddled with any gal on a regular basis/Aside from limiting his freedom, it would be rough on any woman to be tied in with a drifting renegade with a price on his head. Prue didn’t press him. She was thinking of the snubs she’d been raised on back in the States. She was wondering, too, if she really wanted to be known as a white man’s pretty plaything. Her mamma had said dreadful things about that yellow gal everyone knew a white streetcar conductor was keeping.
They were over halfway to civilization now and the ground was firmer underfoot. He bulled through a bank of fern and stopped. Prue joined him in the waist-deep fern and said, “Oh, isn’t it pretty?”
They’d come to a clear crystal spring set in a little Eden where the sun shafted down to warm the water and white sand all around.
The trees and bushes around the spring were free of the slimy moss of the deeper jungle. He spotted the smooth copper bark of gumbo limbo and licorice-scented umbrella trees. There were sugar apples and sour sops. Best of all, a couple of native avocado. He walked around the water’s edge and reached up to pick some of the alligator-skinned fruit, saying, “These feel ripe, and the oil in them will make us feel like we’ve really eaten something more solid than sweet goo.”
Prue laughed and said, “I’ll still have soursop for dessert. This is such a lovely place, Dick. Can we stay here and rest a while?”
He started to shake his head. Then he shrugged and said, “I guess we can use a break. We’ll rest half an hour > or so and then make a beeline for the rail spur I told you about.”
Prue threw her grass skirt down and waded into the pool with an avocado in each hand. She sat down in the water and said, “Oh, this feels heavenly. Lord knows I needed a bath. Why don’t you join me?”
He leaned the shotgun against a kapok trunk, shucked off his pants, and splashed out to her. As he neared her she lowered her eyes and stammered, “Oh, I didn’t mean naked.”.
He hunkered down into the water and took a bite of buttery avocado before he grinned and said, “You’re. being silly. You’ve been running bare ass through the woods for years.”
“Women are different. They don’t have those old things waving about so wickedly.”
He said, “Hell, it’s out of sight and out of mind.” He put an arm around her and pulled her closer, adding, “Out of sight, anyway. You shouldn’t have reminded me of how we first met.”
She didn’t really resist as she murmured, “I wish you’d stop. I’ve sort of left that back there with the Caribs, too. I’m a missionary, damn it.”
“Well, let’s pretend we’re Adam and Eve in the Good Book. This time I killed the serpent and we don’t know shame, right?”
She laughed and said, “Those serpents sure did mess things up for everybody, didn’t they? It would be awfully nice if this was really Eden and we were really Adam and Eve, but—”
“But me, no buts, Miss Eve. In the here and now of Eternity we’re all alone in the Garden and maybe this time we’ll do it right. God knows that other pair sure messed things up.”
“I know. If this was real instead of ‘let’s pretend’, what kind of a world would you build, Dick?”
“Call me Adam. I think I’d start by getting rid of mosquitos. God said we had Dominion and had to name everything. So let’s just not bother with having mosquitos. We’d better not have lawyers or poison ivy, either. Your turn.”
Prue snuggled against him dreamily and sighed, “I’d have everybody speak the same language and there’d only be one race and nationality.”
“Black English-speaking Protestants?”
Prue laughed and said, “Pooh, I could do better than that if it was up to me. I think from now on everybody should be a nice shade of lavender. Lavender is my favorite color. We’d all start out even if everyone was lavender. Then maybe I wouldn’t feel so mixed up about you and me.”
He glanced up at the sky, saw it was still early, and threw his fruit away. He took her in his arms and kissed her. Prue resisted as their clean wet flesh pressed together in the crystal water, and then she sighed, wrapped her arms around him, and opened her thighs as he faced her, kneeling on the sandy bottom. He slid a hand down her spine, cupped her tailbone in his palm with two fingers between her slippery black buttocks, and pulled her on to his underwater erection. Her eyes popped open as she gasped, “Oh, it’s so cold, this time!”
Then she started going crazy and he was worried about drowning until he’d worked them into the shallows, where he could lay her flat on her back to do it right. She laughed aloud and said, “This is shameful! We’re wallowing like hogs in the mud, but I don’t ever want to stop!”
So they shared her first real orgasm, splashing like hell, and then he moved her up on the bank to do it some more as they dried off in the sunlight. By the time he’d sated himself, Prue was regaining her sanity and he thought when she started to cry again that she wanted him to stop. But as he half withdrew she hugged him to her damp dark breasts and crooned, “Don’t move. Just hold me. I feel so happy I could just die. Listen, darling. My heart is beating so hard I can hear it! Can you?”
He cocked his head and said, “Yeah, but that’s not your heart we’re listening to, it’s drums!”
Prue stiffened and said, “Oh my God, you’re right! That’s a cursing drum!”
“Never mind its manners. I make it two or three miles off, due south. We’d better get out of here. Pappa Blanco knows we’ve left home and wants us back.”
He rolled off and shucked on his pants as Prue got to her feet and tied on her skirt of shredded leaves. As he scooped up the shotgun, she said, “That drum is aimed at me, Dick. I’ve heard them do that before. That Pappa Blanco is mad/’
“Come on. We’ve got a good lead. Listen for branches breaking closer. Like I said, the drum is too far off to hurt us.”
As he led out, Prue sobbed, “You don’t understand, Dick. That’s a Macumba curse they’re sending after me.”
“Prue, you don’t buy any of that Voodoo crap, do you?”
She shuddered and said, “I don’t know what I believe anymore, Dick. I’ve seen things that both science and the Good Book says can’t happen. That beat is aimed to draw my soul back to Pappa Blanco. I feel scared and all watery inside.”
“Oh shit, you’ve been swimming and you’ve just been laid. It’s natural to feel weak in the knees at a time like this, even without a mess of cannibals and zombies chasing you. You’ll be all right in a minute, doll.”
He was wrong. Prue followed him another half mile before she sank to her knees and sobbed, “I can’t go on. I have to go back. The drums are pulling and pulling at me and I can hardly breathe.”
He stopped and faced the sound of distant drums. He knew it was useless to argue. The civilized part of her mind would agree that superstition only worked on people who believed in it. But Prue had been part of that tribal bullshit for a good five years. As a Voodoo priestess, albeit an unwilling one, she’d picked up a lot of Voodoo, Macumba, or whatever. He still felt pretty shaky about those fucking zombies, however they worked. Prue had seen as much and more, and hadn’t been as well educated as him to start. At best she’d washed ashore with a high school education, long on theology and short on science. This was no time to lecture her on auto suggestion.
He bent down and hauled her to her feet, saying, “Come on. I’ll carry you piggyback. But you’ll have to hold on so I can have my hands free with this gun.”
She sobbed, “Leave me, Dick. I know I’m done for, but at least you can get away.”
“Are you going to get on my back or not, damn it?”
“Honey, you can’t burden yourself with me. Face it, Dick. You’re nice, for a white man, but I’m only—”
He slapped her face and said, “Shut up, you mixed-up, pretty idiot. We’ll talk about feelings of inferiority later. Right now, two human beings have to haul ass out of here!”
Prue covered her face with her hands and began to bawl, hysterically. He muttered, “Shit,” bent, and picked her up to carry head down over his left shoulder as he made tracks, packing the Browning in his free right hand. Prue was a big gal and he knew Gaston would chide him for not being “Practique”. The rules of the game called for leaving the wounded and weak behind. But rules were made to be broken and he’d never forgive himself if he let anyone fall into the hands of those weird witch doctors.
Prue gasped, “I can’t breathe!” as he lugged her through the jungle head down. He didn’t answer. His own breaths were too short to waste on idle chitchat right now. He wasn’t making good time with the big Negress slowing him down. Her hips blocked his vision to the left and he had to swing his whole body that way from time to time to guarantee not being jumped from that direction.
He cut a foot on something but kept bulling through. Branches whipped his face and Prue’s bare bottom, and if they stepped in a tar pit that would be that. He was staggering on half-blind.
Another drum began to throb, closer and off to one side. He asked Prue what it was, and she gasped, “Directions. That’s a talking drum.”
“Do you know what it’s saying?”
“Dick, I was reared in Baltimore. How am I to know what a fool Ibo drum is saying? I understand Carib and some Spanish. The inner circle powwows in West Africa lingoes. I reckon that talking drum is talking about us, but I don’t know what it’s saying.”
Captain Gringo stopped, lowered Prue to her feet, sighed and said, “I do. It said to head us off.”
He pumped a shell in the Browning’s chamber as Prue screamed and pointed to the long ragged line of figures ahead. He wondered what else was new. They weren’t the graceful shell-draped Caribs he’d been hoping not to run into. They were ragged-ass zombies. He hadn’t wanted to run into them either.
He said, “Let’s study this. Those whatevers don’t move fast. We can outrun them. The question is which way to run.”
Prue sank down to her knees again and covered her face. He muttered, “Oh shit,” and glanced back the way they’d come. There was nobody there. But that was obviously the way Pappa Blanco figured they’d be heading. The innocent trees might as well have had AMBUSH painted on them in big red letters.
He nudged Prue as the zombies sleepwalked toward them and said, “Listen to me, damn it! I’ve got their tactics figured, even if I don’t know how the details work. We have to blast through that skirmish line. None of them have any weapons but machetes and clubs. Pappa Blanco saves the good stuff for people who know what they’re doing.”
“Dick, I’m so frightened! I can’t look at them!”
“So close your eyes. Hang on to my belt and, for Pete’s sake, stay on your feet. I’m going to bust through a thin spot I hope I’m right about.”
She didn’t make a move to help herself. He swore, yanked her to her feet, and put her hand in place around his belt. Then he said, “Hang on, damn it,” and moved forward to meet the zombies.
He saw they were starting to slowly close ranks as he headed for what had been a break in their line. He drifted sideways, looking for another while, beyond the zombies, he heard another throbbing sound. He growled, “Damn,” but they were committed now. The nearest zombie was an almost white mestizo, holding a club. Captain Gringo said, “We’re coming through, friend. If you can hear me at all, get the fuck out of our way.”
The mestizo stared, slack-jawed, then slowly raised his club. Captain Gringo shot him in the face and ignored him as he staggered on, blind, thrashing the club in front of him. Captain Gringo crabbed to one side and got past the first one. Zombie number two was a Negro with a machete and wide, staring eyes. Captain Gringo blew his face off and cut the other way to avoid the blind rush. That was when Prue let go of his belt and fell sobbing to the jungle floor.
The Negro with the machete was bearing down on her, zeroing in on the sound of her sobs whipping his machete back and forth at waist level. Captain Gringo overhauled him and smashed the butt plate of his weapon into the base of the blinded zombie’s skull. That did it. He went down near Prue, with his legs still moving mindlessly. Captain Gringo grabbed Prue’s arm and hauled her upright while she babbled, “Oh, Lord have mercy!” and he said, “Shit!” They were circled now, so any way out was as good or bad. He only had three shells in the magazine. He dragged the- hysterical girl after him and picked out a likely target, waited this time until they were almost in contact, and fired into the machete-swinging zombie’s face. He was getting the hang of it now. A full charge of number nine buck at point-black range makes an awesome hash out of any skull, alive or dead, and the thing went down. He hauled Prue through the gap and yelled, “Move your Goddamned feet!”
Again they almost broke free -and again Prue fell helplessly to her hands and knees, and this time if he didn’t leave her he was done for. He turned, fumbling to reload the shotgun while they closed in on him from every side, and the drum like sound from the north drew ever nearer. Someone was singing in time to the oddly metallic beat, and Captain Gringo’s jaw dropped as he made out the words. Someone was singing, “Marchon, marchon, aux Liberte …”
It was Gaston, singing the Marseillaise off key to the chugging of a steam engine!
Captain Gringo picked Prue up and held her by the waist like a big football and charged to meet the sounds that made little more sense than anything else around here. He fired into a zombie’s guts just as it grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and wrenched it from his grasp.
Then he saw trees parting like the Red Sea before Moses, and it really was Gaston, perched atop a monstrous steam tractor, holding a machine gun while Gordo drove.
Gaston spotted him and the girl at the same time and opened up with the Maxim. Not at them, of course, but at the zombies snapping at their heels. Gordo stopped the tractor and Captain Gringo shoved Prue up over the eight foot wheels and Gordo grabbed her other end without being told. Something clutched at Captain Gringo from behind. He kicked and started climbing while Gaston fired the machine gun over his shoulder and spattered him with hot, spent brass. And then they were all up between the wheels on the locomotive-like platform and he snatched the gun from Gaston, saying, “You drive and I’ll shoot. I thought you were supposed to be in bed.”
Gaston said, “I was, until Gordo staggered in to tell us the Caribs had you.” He shoved Gordo away from the controls to say, “Attend this lady, who may be on our side. Where are we going, Dick?”
“Head toward those drums.”
Gaston nodded and opened the throttle, swinging the big front wheels to run over a zombie as Captain Gringo peppered a couple too close for comfort, but said, “Forget these guys. None of them have guns. The sons of bitches we want are using them as a screen and I think they’re over that way!”
Gaston shrugged, said, “Spoilsport,” and ran over another zombie with the spiked wheels, and smashed a tree at the same time. The tractor was slower than the locomotive it resembled, but it still moved a good six miles an hour, and Prue, down on the deck plates with Gordo, was safe for the moment. They had left the skirmishing zombies behind before Gaston asked, laconically, “Who were those gentlemen back there, Dick?”
“I’m still working on that one. Watch out for real stuff. I’ve been wondering what happened to the guns and ammo they must have retrieved from all those raids. The Caribs have the usual witch doctors, but I smell a white man leading them.”
From the floor, Prue protested, “Pappa Blanco is supposed to be a Macumba man, Dick.”
“Sure he is. Only you’ve never seen him and these tactics are too neat for primitive tribesmen to dope out all by themselves.”
Gaston asked, “Who is Pappa Blanco, and, while we are on the subject, who is this colored lady, Dick?”
“She’s Mamma Macumba, nee Prudence Lee from Baltimore. Miss Lee, may I present Gaston Verrier, late of the French Legion? How did you get Mab to let you out of bed, Gaston?”
“Mab? Ah, you mean the red-headed Irish nurse. She apparently left yesterday on the steamer.”
“What do you mean apparently, Gaston? Did Mab leave or didn’t she?”
“One must take certain things on faith, hein. Willie May, the black head nurse, said Miss O’Shay seemed upset by the primitive conditions and other perplexing qualities about this island. So, since she is not at the infirmary, one can assume she left on the steamer. I know I would leave on a steamer, if I had any place at all to go. Regardez those bushes over to your right, Dick.”
Captain Gringo fired into the oddly swaying shrubbery and the clump exploded into running Caribs. One knelt to aim the rifle he was packing, but a second burst blew him to red froth. A bullet spanged in return off the big rear wheel at Captain Gringo’s side. He elevated the Maxim to put a burst in the umbrella tree where he’d spotted gunsmoke drifting through the leaves. A tawny body fell limply out of the treetop to vanish with a big wet thump, and Gaston said, “To your left,” as the machine gun tap-danced hot lead in that direction and a howl of agony told them they’d both been right about leaves that moved when the wind wasn’t blowing.
They were coming to the marshy ground between rises now, and Captain Gringo warned Gaston to slow down. He fanned a burst of machine gun-fire ahead for effect. Then he said, “Hold it. Let’s listen.”
Gaston shut the throttle and the big machine stopped chugging and clanking as it went on building boiler pressure. The drums they’d heard had fallen silent, and the tall American said, “Nuts. How much range does this thing have, Gaston?”
Gaston looked at Gordo, who shrugged and said, “It will plough a hectare on one load of firewood, my Captain.”
Captain Gringo opened the firebox door, saw the coals on the firebed were three-quarters gone, and said, “We’d better pull back and feed this critter on the pressure we have.”
“Don’t you want to pursue the enemy, Dick?”
“I want to, but it’s a big jungle and I*don’t know where they ran. Let’s get our butts out of here before they stop running and come back for another round.”