Ryker Read online

  “I’m okay,” he said. “But it’ll be slow progress if we can’t find another route through here. Do you want to talk to Pablo to see if he knows his area at all?”

  “I did,” she said. “It’s all new territory for him.”

  “Figures,” he said as he brought up a machete again. “This next section isn’t quite so dense though. Let’s get through it.” And they moved forward again.

  She almost didn’t want to raise her foot and follow him. Every muscle in her body ached. She wondered how much of that was the lack of water and food or just the lack of rest. She knew that tomorrow would be bad, but no way would she complain because they had to keep going. They had no other option.

  Finally, after another hour, Ryker slowed down and looked back at the others. “How are you holding up?”

  Andy surprisingly nodded and said, “I’m doing okay.”

  Ryker looked at Benjamin, who shrugged instead of being difficult. He had gone quiet.

  “How are you doing back there with Pablo?” he called out as loudly as he safely could.

  “I’m moving,” Benjamin said. “We’ve been at this for hours.”

  “Absolutely, and it’ll be hours more.”

  They all turned and headed toward the same pathway that he had carved for them. But it was distracting because, once the thought of a break had entered their minds, the whole group thought about it. She’d seen it happen time and time again. “We need to get another mile in,” she said to her team and kept up behind Ryker.

  He was right. This section was less dense. It was a lot easier as it went by. She could bend and push branches back and forth and manage to quickly move several hundred yards forward. Just as she considered that maybe they would be okay for the next while though, he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. He had his hand to his earpiece. She turned to him in surprise, and he immediately clapped a hand over her mouth. The others behind them were all frozen in place. She looked up at Ryker, and he motioned in front of them. He bent and put his mouth against her ear and whispered, “People.”

  Instantly, she froze and snuggled close to him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. She could feel the shakes setting in. The very last thing she wanted in her world right now was to get captured again. And she knew that the last time would be easy compared to the next time. She wanted to ask him a million questions but knew that no way could she make a sound.

  She heard laughter in the distance, and the sounds of many feet as they trampled forward. She twisted slightly to look up at him, but his ear was cocked, as if trying to figure out where they were traveling to and from. And, of course, that was important because, if a path was up ahead, then Ryker and company needed to utilize it as much as they could.

  What they couldn’t afford to do would be to choose a path where the guerrillas would likely come back through. They also didn’t know how many guerrillas there were or where they were all heading.

  Ryker pulled out a compass. He checked his bearings here and nodded, then tucked it back into his pocket. Manila had been following along herself on their own variants to make sure that they were heading in the right direction, but it was frustrating to know that a pathway was here that could handle at least ten people or maybe even twenty. The thought of an even bigger group of guerrillas made her insides curl.

  She could barely breathe for the humidity; several bugs worked around her face, and she didn’t even move. If they wanted a chunk out of her, they would take it, and there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to stop it.

  Just as one landed on her forehead, Ryker reached up and pinched it between his fingers and killed it. She shot him a grateful smile, and then he urged her forward and said, “I’ll go first.” Then he slipped past her but hung onto her hand. They watched in the distance as a large group of guerrillas carried on away from them. Their path originated from the right. He checked the direction of their path and said, “Well, we have a couple choices. We can follow behind them and possibly meet up with more of them or we can go in the opposite direction.”

  “Meaning, we go our own path?”

  He nodded. “I wouldn’t want to use their path at all. Anybody who can read trails will see that we came this way. Our footwear is very different from theirs.”

  She glanced down at her boots and nodded. “Then we keep doing what we’re doing.”

  But he studied the path and said, “It branches off up here.” In fact, they stared at what was a very heavily traveled path, almost like a small road in front of them. But this better path crossed from left to right, and the guerrillas had gone left, whereas Ryker pointed out a continuation of the path they were on that branched off ahead.

  She nodded. “As long as it continues where we need to go.” And, with that, they quickly crossed the well-traveled path and moved off on the tangent that went into the deeper brush. And seeing those guerrillas so close by, nobody was looking to stay here.

  When Ryker finally came to another stop, his gaze was alert and aware. Manila marveled once again at how much he managed to do. She struggled just to stay up with him and Miles and knew that Pablo behind her would be really struggling. She turned to the stragglers in line to see Pablo getting a break on this last section from Miles.

  “When did Miles rejoin us?” she asked Ryker.

  He only grinned.

  She looked between Miles and Ryker. “Is everybody okay?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Yes, but we’ll take a twenty-minute break,” Ryker said. “Up here.” And he motioned toward a set of large flat rocks. A lot of greenery was all around it, but there were places to sit.

  Manila scrambled up to the top of one and slowly collapsed. “It might be a mistake to stop though,” she groaned as she shuffled her body so that she lay on her back, with her feet completely relaxed.

  “Maybe,” he said, handing her water. “But we need to give our muscles a bit of rest too, so they can fight better when we need them to.”

  “Says you,” she says. “You’re Superman. Me? I’m feeling very much less than Wonder Woman.”

  Andy chuckled as he sat down beside her. “Hey, we’re doing okay so far.” He glanced at Ryker. “How far do you figure we’ve gone?”

  “That’s the reason for the break,” he said. “We’re halfway.”

  Everybody stared at him in shock and then groaned.

  Ryker nodded. “We still have another good twelve miles to go.”

  Andy dropped his head into his arms and sighed as he said, “We can do it. It’s just the heat and the humidity.”

  “Exactly,” Ryker said. Then he looked down at her and asked, “Do you have any food?”

  She winced and shook her head. “I only have my work backpack. We lost our bags.” She looked at Andy. “They took your bags too, didn’t they?”

  He lifted his shirt to show his little belt pack. “They left my camera, which I thought was odd, but whatever. It’s the most expensive thing I brought with me,” he said. Then he reached down and continued, “I do have a little bit of gum.” He brought it out and carefully passed it around for everybody to have one. He put the empty package away.

  “There’s got to be something to eat on the trail.” Ryker glanced at Pablo. “What food could we find here?”

  It was about twenty minutes later that Pablo pointed out several trees with edible fruits. Ryker cut down several, following Pablo’s directions to test for the ripest of the fruits; they all indulged in soft and juicy maracuyá fruits.

  Manila loved the flavor, but it was the moisture she found herself constantly biting for.

  When everybody had eaten their fill, Ryker looked at them and said, “Sorry, it’s time to get going again. Next time we stop, we’ll be halfway from here to there.”

  “And how long will that take?”

  “At this rate, at least three hours. Unless we can pick up the pace …”

  At that, she hopped to her feet and said, “Well, nothing’ll solve this problem if we sit
here.”

  Just then Benjamin let out a shriek. He hopped off the stone to reveal a very small bug scrambling past.

  “Did it bite you?” Ryker snapped.

  Benjamin looked at Ryker in shock, his hands immediately checking, and he shook his head, gasping, “No, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you’d know,” Ryker said. “If not now, within five minutes. That was a special Colombian scorpion, and you’ll be dead soon, so, if you have any bites, you need to tell me.”

  “No.” Benjamin shook his head. “God, I want to go home. I want to go home before something in here kills me.”

  “We all want to go home,” Manila said. “We’re doing our best to get there.”

  “Says you,” he said. “You’re the one who wanted to be here.”

  “I wanted to be where the rocks were,” she corrected. “I wasn’t planning on trekking across the jungle like this, escaping many groups of guerrillas.”

  “Well, that’s why we hired the local guides, isn’t it?” Andy asked, looking at Pablo. But he looked a whole lot worse for wear. “I don’t know if he’ll make another twelve miles,” Andy said in a worried tone.

  She winced, not sure Pablo would either. His skin had taken on an odd color. She looked at Miles to see him staring back at her, his gaze flat. He already knew that Pablo’s chances were slim. He was willing to give it his all to give him an out, but she could see it already. If they couldn’t get to the coast and if Pablo didn’t get medical attention soon, Pablo wouldn’t make it at all.

  Ryker kept moving the group forward. He knew their odds of getting to the coast unscathed were slim, but he was willing to take every chance he could to get them there. Pablo was a bigger concern. Not only would it be hard to keep him up and moving, but he also needed medical attention that was likely already too late to save him. Ryker didn’t know what was going on with his system and whether the guerrillas had put something into his cuts, but Pablo’s energy was fading, and his color wasn’t good. Ryker and Miles had exchanged a few quiet words on his condition.

  As soon as they got to the next fresh water source, Ryker would clean out Pablo’s wounds again and see if they could do something else for Pablo. But, short of having any medical facilities, only so much was available in this part of the world.

  He didn’t know these native plants in terms of his own wilderness survival skills as much as he did those in the US and Canada. The plants here were foreign and vaster in variety. He had hoped that Pablo himself would know, but apparently, he was on his very first trip as a jungle guide, and that just made him dangerous. A little bit of knowledge was deadly. About half an hour in, Ryker switched places with Miles to lead the group, while Ryker stayed at the back with Pablo. As they moved forward with him urging Pablo along, he asked, “Why did you come on this trip then?”

  “My uncle urged me to,” he said.

  “Is this what you wanted to do?”

  Pablo shrugged. “Many people in the village do it, so I wasn’t against doing it.”

  “But your uncle thought you should do it?”

  “Yes, but then I was also in the way and just one more mouth to feed, when I should be bringing in money,” he said. “It’s normal.”

  “Of course it is,” Ryker said. “And do most of the tour guides do very well?”

  “Most of them,” he said. “At least the seasoned ones.”

  “And the unseasoned ones?”

  “Some come back. Some get caught by the guerrillas. Some are made to join the guerrillas. It’s hard to say.”

  “And were you expecting that to happen to you?”

  “No,” he gasped out as he landed wrong on the uneven path in front of him. “But I think my uncle was hoping I would.”

  And that just confirmed what Ryker was thinking. “Did he have any connection to the older guide, Alejandro?”

  “They were friends,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I got this opportunity. He would show me the ropes and help me to gain some experience.”

  “And do you feel he did that?”

  Pablo shot him a look. “Right now, I’m thinking my uncle paid him something to have me not come back,” he snapped.

  “Glad to hear your brain is working properly at least,” Ryker said smoothly, “because that’s what I’m thinking too.”

  Pablo’s face was grim. “I’m also not sure that the guerrillas didn’t do something else besides slicing me open pretty good,” he said. “My belly is on fire.”

  Ryker lifted Pablo’s shirt in an instant and said, “I’m looking for fresh water so we can wash your wounds again.”

  “There’s some sap we need,” Pablo said. “If we could find it, I can put it on the wounds, and it will help.”

  “Keep your eye out for it.”

  “I have been,” Pablo said. “The tree grows closer to the water though.”

  “Some fresh water should be coming up. We’ve been following the creek as it crisscrossed our path. It should be coming back around again soon.”

  Pablo nodded. “I hope it’s soon enough.”

  So did Ryker, but he didn’t want to say it out loud. He heard a shout up ahead, and, of course, that would be Manila. He tapped his comm.

  Miles said, “We have a creek coming up.”

  “Good. Everybody needs to fill up with water, and we need to wash Pablo’s wounds.”

  “Exactly. And I think I see one of the sap-bearing trees that we need for his wounds too.”

  “Did you talk to him about it?” Ryker asked Miles.

  “Yes,” Miles said. “I’ve been looking all along, but I haven’t seen it since we first left. But I think this is it.”

  Ryker urged Pablo forward and said, “We think we found the tree sap you’re looking for.” And as soon as they came up to the creek, the water rushing past the air visibly lightened. Ryker took a moment and took several deep breaths of fresh air, loving the light and clean moisture here. He looked at the others as they soaked their heads, washed their arms and faces, just trying to cool down. Even as he watched, Manila took a bottle of water and poured it under her shirt along her chest and her back. He understood the sentiment. They took the time to stop, even though it wasn’t the location that he wanted to push forward to, because, given Pablo’s condition, it was necessary.

  With Pablo stretched out on the ground and resting, Ryker quickly unwrapped the crude bandages that he had used. Then he handed them off to Manila, so she can rinse them in the cold water, while Miles and Andy collected the sap they needed. Although Pablo’s cuts weren’t deep slices, the edges of the wounds were puffy and angry. Ryker rinsed them, and then they quickly placed the sap along the edge of each and every one. There were seven in all. He shook his head and wondered at the cruelty. None of them were deep, but they were all at places that would cause a great deal of pain.

  With all of the sap now covering the open wounds, Ryker did his best to rebandage them. And then he helped Pablo off with his T-shirt. Manila took the shirt to the river and quickly rinsed and wrung it out and then brought it back. In the meantime, they washed his torso down, trying to reduce as much of his fever as possible. When helping him to sit up to put the T-shirt back on, Ryker saw the slice in his jeans. “Did they cut your leg?”

  Pablo looked at him in confusion.

  Ryker could see the fever building in his gaze. He motioned at Pablo’s leg. “It looks like your leg is cut. Is it?”

  Pablo stared down at it but didn’t seem to comprehend.

  Ryker was already pulling apart the cut edges of his jeans to see the blood and, indeed, something puffy and nasty-looking. He swore at that and took his knife, then cut the jean leg open a little bit more so that he could expose the area of the wound. It was more of a stab instead of a slash.

  They quickly cleaned it, while Pablo cried out in pain, but this was the one causing most of Pablo’s problems. It took several trips and another shirt donated by Miles to clean out the wound and then to cut it into str
ips for bandages but not before they liberally covered this wound in the sap. And, with that, Ryker tied the leg wound up tight again, using part of the T-shirt as a bandage and then part of it to wrap around Pablo’s leg and said, “That’s the wound we have to keep an eye out for.”

  Pablo nodded. “That would explain why I’m feeling so bad,” he muttered.

  “Well, you’re getting a fever,” Ryker said. “That’s not helping how you feel either. Unfortunately, we can’t stay here. We have to keep moving.”

  Pablo, immediately terrified that they would leave him behind, struggled to his feet. “I can make some more miles,” he said in broken English.

  “You could,” Ryker said. “But I think, for the moment, you’re better off if we carry you.” He motioned to Miles and said, “Take up the lead again. I’ll bring up the rear with Pablo.” They watched as he took several vines and laced them up under his thighs and around his butt, then around his waist while Pablo stared at him in surprise.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just in case you lose consciousness,” Ryker said, “I need a harness to hold you on my back.” Pablo wasn’t small by any means, but he certainly was dwarfed by Ryker’s size, and, within a very short time, Ryker had Pablo on his back, with the vines holding him half suspended in a harness.

  Then Ryker waved the others on and said, “I can do this for a couple miles. Let’s keep up the pace and get as far as we can. If we can reach the coast tonight, it’ll be a whole different story tomorrow.” And, with that, they headed down the same path again, this time following the trail across the creek and back over.