Life Blood---XXVII---Page No 98



As I watched him depart, hallucinations swirling through my
brain like furious fireworks, I had a bizarre thought. In an ancient
rainforest all things are still possible. The old fairy tales we grew
up with mostly took place in a deep wood where evil could lurk
unfettered. Today, though, the earth's forests no longer symbolize
the unknowable dark within us. Nowadays, the ogres of our
nightmares descend from outer space or even from our inner
selves, places we can't physically know or subdue. Here, though,
at this very moment, Steve and Sarah and I were marooned in a
thousand-year-old forest where horror still lived.
I got off the bed and steadied myself, breathing deeply,
forcing my brain to clear. Steve was wearing a shift, but his
clothes were hanging from a hook on the door. For a long moment I just stared at the bruises on his face.
"God, baby, what did he do to you?" No answer.
"Come on, love. Please wake up."
He didn't move, but his breathing was normal, not labored. I immediately decided I'd slap him around if I had to, anything to get him going and able to walk.
"Honey, wake up. Please." I pulled his feet out of the bed and
slid them around and onto the linoleum floor. I didn't know what
kind of sedative he'd been injected with, but if I had to shake him
out of it, fine. This was no time for half measures. "Come on."
I pulled him to his feet and dragged him across the floor to the
slatted window at the rear of the room, where the predawn sounds
of the forest beyond filled the air, mingled with the rain. What I
needed was a gallon of black coffee, but the wet breeze would
have to do.
It took ten minutes of working on him, with me barely able to
hold a grasp on my own reality, but then his eyelids began to
flutter. I kept talking to him, pleading and badgering, and when he
finally started coming around, I began to walk him back and forth
in front of the window.
Steve, I thought, I'm so sorry, so terribly sorry I dragged you
into this.





"Can I please lie down?" His timorous voice startled me, but it gave me a burst of hope. Come on.
"Baby, just walk a little more. Try to get the blood flowing and
flush the damned chemicals out of your brain."
        "Morgy, are you okay?" His eyes had finally started to focus.
And the first thing he asked about was me. I impulsively hugged
him.
"I'm going to be." I pulled back and examined him. "You know where you are?"
He grinned with only half his face, and I could tell even that hurt. Then he stared around the room.
"Tell you one thing," he said, "this ain't Kansas anymore. Last
thing I remember is, Alan and I were setting down. Then out of
nowhere, your Colonel Ramos and about twenty kid soldiers with
AK-47's were all over us." He groaned. "They took me and then
he told Dupre to get back in the chopper and disappear. I think
that son of a bitch tipped Ramos off we were coming. Then
Ramos worked me over and gave me an injection. About five
minutes later I passed out. It's the last thing I remember."
        Ramos. Was he going to kill us both, now that Alex Goddard
had gotten everything he wanted? I thought about it and decided
this was not the moment to share that possibility with Steve.
Instead I turned him around and lifted up his head.
        "Are you really awake?" I loved this poor, beat-up man. More
than anything, I just wanted to hold him.
"I'm not . . . but I'd damned well better be." He tried
unsteadily, to straighten up. "Morgy, before he put me away, that Ramos bastard was talking about me, and you, in the past tense. Like we'd already been 'disappeared.' He didn't know I speak Spanish. What the hell's going on?"
I wasn't sure how to tell him. But I was getting that super
energy God gives you when you realize life is no longer a game. We had to get focused.
"Baby, where's your passport?" I asked.
He looked around then pointed to his battered camera bag in the corner.
"It's in there. Or was. Central America. Never leave home
without it." He grimaced then lightly pushed me away and stood
by himself. "Jesus, do you know what they're doing? You were
right all along. They're selling kids in the States. That Ramos prick
is running the operation, not to mention Alex Goddard's slice of
the action. And somebody at the American embassy here is

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