Free The Magdalena Curse by F.G. Cottam Page A

cautiously, they began to edge towards it. Miss Hall indulged her exasperated sigh again.
    ‘Come here, Captain Hunter,’ she said.
    Even with Peterson’s assault rifle in his right hand, he thought it wise to obey her. As he got close to her, he began to smell the odour she gave off. It was sour and sharp, like rancid butter, he thought. The closer he got, the stronger it became. It was not like rancid butter. It was worse. It was like some rich, buttery cake spoiled by the intensity of heat and damp. It was all he could do not to retch. He had to overcome revulsion to get close.
    ‘No, Captain,’ she said with a yellow smile. ‘You are right. I was never pretty. Take off your tunic.’
    It was only when he did so that he realised his left arm was hanging, throbbing at his side. The adrenaline that had enabled him to help dress the Major’s wounds was entirely spent. He struggled out of his battle dress and saw that his arm, from elbow to wrist, was a suppurating mess of swelling and puncture wounds. The flesh was yellow and puffy and the pain from the bite intensifying all the time. He did not think they had any penicillin back at their makeshift camp. They had no antibiotics. The bite, he knew, was infectious.
    There were scarves of silk and satin coiled under Miss Hall’s whey-coloured double chin. She unwound one of these. ‘Give me your arm.’
    With effort, Hunter did so. He was very close to her. She wrapped the lower half of his extended limb in satin. She muttered something in a language he knew he had never heard spoken before. She closed her eyes and opened them
again and expelled a plump, fetid breath. ‘There,’ she said. She let the scarf slip, sticky with blood and puss, to the floor. ‘You have proof that I am more good than bad, Captain Hunter. My scarf is ruined. But your arm will be fully recovered in an hour or so.’
    He examined his arm. The limb looked ripe for amputation and the pain had not receded in the slightest. ‘A whole hour?’ he said.
    Her expression became petulant. ‘Yes. I cannot work miracles.’
    Hunter looked back towards where Peterson patiently bore the weight of their commander.
    ‘I can do nothing for Major Rodriguez. Even if I could, I would not dare undo what Mrs Mallory has done. She is much more bad than good, you see. I would not wish to cross her.’
    ‘Then thank you. I’m grateful for what you have done.’
    Hunter made to leave and then hesitated.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘There were some tourists in this region a few weeks ago.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘They vanished.’
    Miss Hall shifted on her throne. ‘Your travellers were food for her dogs. No more. As I have told you, Mrs Mallory is much more bad than good.’
     
    There was no sign of their men in the compound grounds in the daylight beyond the marquee. There was no sign of them either when they got back to their camp in the ravine two miles to the north. They made the most comfortable bed they could for Rodriguez in the tent that had been their command post. Hunter thought about their plan of attack. He thought about their shared embrace of comradeship. It wasn’t twenty-four hours since their airy philosophising about
cocaine cartels and their impact in the world, and the moral implications of armed forces opposing them. As Peterson busied himself brewing coffee, Hunter thought about the letter he had written his new wife in the event that he might not return from battle. The more he thought it over, the less anything of what he had just experienced had to do with soldiering. He had known tenacious enemies in the field, but he had never before fought men who could not be killed. Of all things, it reminded him of Beowulf , of the sorcery of the epic poem he’d read in translation, of the contents of the slim volume signed by Seamus Heaney occupying a treasured spot on his bookshelf back at home. His arm had stopped hurting, he realised. He rubbed it, knowing it had healed and that the power used to heal it