persistent. Or talented. Or psychic. She often seemed to know, by instinct, where to look.
Maybe it’s the Sioux in her genes.
In spite of her uncanny abilities in the tracking department, we eventually lost all trace of the blood. By then, however, Kimberly had determined the general direction of his travels.
“He’s going for the stream,” she whispered to us.
“That makes sense,” I said. “He’s gotta have fresh water.”
“Why didn’t we go there in the first place?” Connie said. “We could’ve skipped all this. This place blows.” With that, she smacked a mosquito that had landed on the side of her neck. She said, “Yuh!”
Today was the worst mosquito trouble we’d had so far. They’d mostly left us alone, on the beach. They hadn’t even been a major nuisance during the few times I’d ventured into the jungle.
But today they were awful.
We had no 6-12, no Cutter’s, no Off!, no nothing. The insect repellents had come on the sea voyage with us, but had been left aboard the yacht when we set out on our picnic. An oversight that we paid for today.
We’d been slapping mosquitoes ever since leaving the beach.
Some of us had been, that is.
Kimberly didn’t let them bother her. Basically, she ignored them.
I tried to follow her example, but couldn’t stand the way the little monsters hummed around my ears and the way they tickled wherever they landed. They seemed especially fond of the injured area on the side of my face and on my ear. (Apparently, they dig scabs.) I was very glad that I’d worn my shirt—the pink blouse on loan from Billie. Also, Andrew’s big old shorts probably gave me more protection than I would’ve gotten from my swimming trunks.
Connie was wearing her usual T-shirt, but it was so thin and clingy that the mosquitoes nailed her right through the cloth. Her only safe areas were those protected by her bikini. If I haven’t mentioned it before, hers is the skimpiest of the three. (Why Connie, who likes to act the prude, would wear such a revealing swimsuit is beyond me. But then, when it comes to Connie, what isn’t? Maybe the T-shirt is her way of maintaining an appearance of decency.) Anyway, the top of her bikini consists of twin orange triangles and a few thin cords. Its bottom is what they call a “thong'—with a slightly wider strip in front than the one that goes up her rear. In other words, only a few very private inches of her body were safe from the attacking mosquitoes.
Billie, as usual, wore only her bikini. No shirt, and the swimsuit didn’t cover much. Even though hers had at least three times the fabric of Connie’s, there’s a lot more flesh to Billie. She seemed to have acres of bare skin, all of it shiny and dripping with sweat. She looked like a wonderful hot meal for the little bastards. But they left her alone.
I noticed this when we stopped in a sunny clearing to rest on our way to the stream.
“Aren’t they eating you alive?” I asked her.
“Nope. They never do.”
“What’s your secret?”
“When I was about five, I saved a mosquito’s life. Word got around. They haven’t touched me ever since.”
“She told me that story when I was five,” Connie said. “It’s such bullshit.”
Billie gave her daughter a big understanding smile. “Think what you like, dear.”
“I think they leave you alone ’cause they don’t like your smell.”
“You’re such a sweetheart.”
“You smell fine,” I told her.
Hell, I thought she smelled great.
“Thank you, Rupert,” she said.
“Whatever your secret is, I wish I had it. These things are driving me nuts.”
“All they want;” Kimberly said, “is a little of your blood. They aren’t asking much.”
“I’d just as soon keep my blood,” I told her. “You’re just letting them have at you?”
“Trying to fight them off is a losing battle. I accept what I can’t change.”
Connie smirked. “The bullshit’s thicker than the mosquitoes around here.”
I smacked a mosquito on my forehead.
After a while, we got moving again and came to the stream. We gathered along its shore, and looked both ways as if we’d come to a highway and were worried about getting struck down by a speeding truck.
No sign of Wesley or Thelma or anyone.
The stream flowed along at a pretty good clip, splashing over rocks, coming down from the high ground to our right. Looking to my left, I saw it running downhill toward our beach. I couldn’t see our beach, though. Or the ocean. Just trees and bushes and hanging vines—and birds swooping here and there. Not much of the stream was visible, either. About thirty feet away, it curved out of sight.
“Hold this for me,” Connie said. She thrust her spear into her mother’s free hand, then climbed down into the stream. She knelt, bent over, and cupped some water into her mouth. Then she started splashing and rubbing herself, apparently to soothe the itch of her mosquito bites.
The way she acted, it must’ve felt really good.
The rest of us still stood on the bank.
“How are you doing with that ax?” Kimberly asked me.
“Fine.”
“Want me to take it for a while?”
“No, really.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re just below the lagoon.” She stepped down into the water. Billie and I did the same. “It’ll be an easy hike from here,” Kimberly said, “but we’d better keep our eyes open.”
We crouched and took drinks, then just stood in the stream to wait for Connie to finish. I sort of felt like rolling in the water and rubbing my itches, too. But it was only a few inches deep here. I preferred to wait for the lagoon.
Connie took her time, as if she enjoyed making us wait. I didn’t mind much. It was just fine with me, watching her flop around all shiny and wet in her transparent T-shirt and her feeble excuse for a bikini.
Finally, she stood up. Billie returned her spear, and we got moving again.
We made our way single file up the stream bed. Sometimes we walked in the water, sometimes on dry rocks alongside it. It was much easier than trekking through the jungle. As we went along, though, the terrain got steeper. The stream tumbled down, loud and frothy. We had to climb, and sometimes leap from rock to rock. Luckily, things never got so steep that we needed our hands.
Kimberly had said it would be “an easy hike” to the lagoon.
For her, I suppose it was.
The rest of us had to stop a few times along the way.
Our last halt was called by Kimberly, which surprised me. Had she finally gotten worn out enough to need a rest?
Nope.
She sat on a rock. As she waited for the rest of us, she set her spear aside, took off the tomahawk hanging by her hip, and slipped out of Keith’s gaudy shirt. When we arrived, she said, “We’re just about there. I’ll go on up. You guys wait here, okay? I want to take a look around.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” I said.
“I’ll be in plain sight. Just up there.” She turned her head and nodded toward the higher rocks. “I want to make sure the coast is clear.”
We agreed to stay behind,
Kimberly climbed the rocks to the right of the stream. Just below the top, she scurried part way up the face of a large slab that was at about a forty-five-degree angle. Then she sank to her belly and squirmed the rest of the way.
She lay flat, her head up. For a long time, she didn’t seem to move at all. Then her head made small, slow turns from one side to the other.
The three of us watched her from below, and said nothing for a long time.
After maybe ten minutes, though, Connie muttered, “What the hell’s taking her so long?”
