A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 165

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"How are you doing, old son?"

"No worries." Job's whisper was scratchy and faint.

Sean touched Matatu's shoulder, and he obeyed the unspoken command, instantly creeping out the far side of the culvert and disappearing into the scrub on the stream bank

A few minutes later the soft whistle of a night bird carried to them as Matatu gave the all clear. Sean sent Claudia ahead and gave her a full five minutes to get across the open ground of the cut line.

Let's go." Sean looked up from the luminous dial Of his Rolex, d and they lifted Job into the sling seat and started forward into the moonlight. The next hundred paces seemed like the slowest and longest Sean had ever covered, but at last they were into the forest beyond the cut line, and Claudia was waiting for them there.

"We made it!" she whispered joyfully.

three hundred "We sure have. The first mile was a romp, only they kept going more to go," he answered grimly, and Counting their paces against the second hand of his wristwatch, Sean estimated they were averaging two miles an hour. Ahead of tu selected the easiest going. He was always out of sight them, Mota them. At interin the forest ahead; only his soft bird calls guided vals Sean checked their heading against the stars, catching glimpses of the Southern Cross and its brilliant pair of Pointers through the forest canopy ahead of them.

y stopped once again and When the dawn paled the stars, the drink for the first time, two swallows each Sean allowed them to dia carried.

Then he turned from one of the water bottles that Clau his attention to Job's shoulder. The dressing was soaked with fresh blood, and Job's face was as gray as the ashes of a cold camp fire.

His eyes had sunk into dark sockets and his lips were dry and cracked, his breath whistling softly through them- The pain and king a dreadful toll.

loss of blood were to.

nd the bandage. He and Claudia exchanged Gently Sean unwou a quick glance. The destruction of tissue was horrifying, and the field dressing was caked into the wound cavity. Sean realized that would tear the flesh to which it had if he tried to remove it, he adhered and probably restart the bleeding. He leaned forward and grinned at him, a skull-like twitching back sniffed the wound. Job of the lips. "Steak tartare?" he asked weakly.

him, but he 41All it needs is a little garlic." Sean grinned back at had caught the first sickly whiff of corruption. He squeezed another half tube of iodine paste over the original field dressing, then stripped the plastic packaging from a fresh dressing and placed it over the wound.

Claudia held it in place as he rewrapped it with a new bandage from the medical pack. He rolled the blood-soaked bandage and stuffed it into a side pocket. He would wash it out at the first water they came to.

"We must keep going," he told Job. "We've got to get well clear of the railway line. Are you up to it?"

Job nodded, but Sean could see the dread in his eyes. Every step they moved him was an agony.

I'm going to give you another shot of antibiotic-I can give you a jolt of morphine at the same time?"

Job shook his head. "Keep it for when it gets really bad." He grinned again, a grimace that tugged at Sean's heart. He could not meet Job's eyes. "Show us your best side," he said, and made a performance of pulling down the trousers of Job's battle dress and darting the hypodermic needle into one of his glossy black buttocks. Claudia averted her gaze modestly and Job whispered, "It's okay, Claudia, you are allowed to look. Just don't touch, that's am."

"You're as bad as Sean," she said primly. "Downright vulgar, both of you."

They lifted Job back into the nylon sling seat and went on. By midmorning mirages shimmered and rose in glassy whirlpools from the rocky kopjes over which they were trekking, and tiny mo pane flies hovered in a fine mist around their heads, crawling into their nostrils and ears and eyes with infuriating persistence.

With heat came thirst and their sweat dried on their shirts and left irregular outlines in white salt on the cloth.

When they stopped at noon in the sparse dappled shade of an African teak, Sean knew they had all had enough and the worst heat of the day was still to come. They laid Job on a hastily cut mattress of dried grass, and he lapsed almost immediately into a state that was more coma than sleep, snoring softly through his dry, swollen lips.

IMe carrying sling had rubbed the skin from both Sean's shoulders, for he and Alphdnso had changed sides at each of the hourly stops. The harsh nylon straps had galled Alphonso as badly, and he muttered sullenly as he examined his injuries, "Before this I hated the Matabele simply because they are a flea-infested, thieving bunch of venereal apes. Now I have another reason to hate them."

Sean tossed him the tube of iodine paste. "Smear the muti on your grievous injuries, en stuff the empty tube in your garrulous mouth," he advise&Alphonso went off, still muttering, to find a place to lie downs.

Sean and Claudia found a hollow screened by a low hook-thorn bush a short distance from where Job lay. Sean spread their blankets to make a nest for them and settled into it thankfully. "I'm hushed."

"How hushed?" Claudia asked, and knelt over him to nibble his ear.

"Not that hushed," he qualified, and pulled her down beside him.

At sunset Sean cooked a pot of maize-meal porridge on a tiny smoker ess fire while Alphonso rigged the aerial and tuned the radio to the Renamo command frequency. There was a clutter of garbled, broken-up traffic on their wavelength, probably Frehmo transmissions, but at last they heard their call sign through the jumble. -Ngulube! Warthog! Come in, Ngulube! This is Banana Tree."

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