Page 44 of Final Approach

“Jesus, Marley, are you okay? You’re as white as your shirt.”

Says the man who was also as white as my shirt and was really shitty at following directions. I could feel the heat of his body, just an inch away from mine, and the scent of something citrusy clinging to his skin.

My heartbeat slowly rushed out of my ears as my body recognized we weren’t under a snake attack, which gave me strength to glare at the insufferable meathead.

“Why are you in here?” I hissed, stepping only slightly back from his close proximity. “Ambrose, do you want to fucking die?”

“Forgive me for thinking you were in trouble, oh supreme leader.” He scoffed and the honey in his irises cooled to brown in the shade of the trees. “I’m fucking here now, so let’s get this over with.”

He shuffled past me, carrying a small plastic bag—had that come from his pocket?—and tramped through the underbrush, clearly suicidal.

“Here.” He stopped in front of the largest avocado tree in the cluster,

The trees were tall, much taller now that we were beneath them, but heavy with their bounty. Ambrose gingerly reached just beyond his head to pull at the fruit by twisting it from its stem. There weren’t many ripe ones, but it would be enough to feed each of us for the day.

Gaze raking over the ground in front of me and barely satisfied with the lack of slithering, I stepped up beside him and wordlessly took the bag from his hand, holding it open for him.

He was clearly biting the inside of his cheek to hide his pain as he moved. What was this guy’s deal?

“You’re a stubborn ass,” I grumbled as we worked together in the stifling jungle heat, his distracting citrusy scent clinging to the air.

“And you’re really bad at insults,” he retorted, placing the final avocado in the bag. He gestured toward the riverbed behind us. “Get moving, Captain. And try not to trip this time.”

“Try not to bleed out from your bandages, you insufferable meathead,” I shot back, my anger enough to mask my snake fear while I stalked back the fifteen feet to the riverbed in record time.

“You already used that one,” he said tauntingly from behind me.

A shrill feminine scream pierced through the thick air, and my quick footfalls turned into a run as I stumbled toward the source of the sound. Ambrose was close behind me.

When I rounded the river bend, I found Tessa and Brooks surrounding Vanessa kneeling at the base of a tall tree holding her hand in front of her at an awkward angle. The outline of three six-inch needle-width spikes stuck out from her palm.

Chunga spikes. Fuck.

“What happened?” I demanded, kneeling at her feet to examine her hand. They hadn’t just pierced the skin. They’d embedded deep within the tissue.

“She fell,” Tessa gasped as her friend continued to scream. “She tripped and tried to use the tree to break her fall. What the hell are those things?”

“Chunga spikes,” I responded grimly. “Madman,” I called out behind me. “Can you bring me the first-aid kit?”

An instant later, he was by my side, carrying the bulky plastic box. I opened it and sighed at the meager materials we’d already half-used.

“Vanessa, I’m going to need you to stop screaming, okay? I’m going to remove these spikes and bandage you up, but I need you to calm down.”

I drew her palm into my hand to inspect it as our shocked passenger closed her lips but continued to issue guttural noises behind them.

“A chunga palm is that tree over there.” Pointing at the large, looming palm tree with one hand, I pulled out the pair of stainless-steel tweezers with the other. “It has a tall stem, and fruit at the top similar to a coconut palm, but see those spikes all over the bottom half? Those are more dangerous than a lot of other things out here. They’re laced with bacteria and fungi. If it's between falling on your face or a chunga palm, choose your face every time, okay?”

Gripping one spike between the tweezers, I yanked it upward, ignoring Vanessa’s cry. I inspected the wound. When satisfied nothing remained underneath the skin, I pulled out the second and third in quick succession.

Tessa wrapped her arms around Vanessa from behind and soothed her as I reached for the antiseptic wipes. Ripping off one tab, I first cleaned my hands and then used another to clean her wounds seeping with thin rivulets of blood.

My fingers hovered over the tiny tube of antibiotic cream. Danny’s and Ambrose’s injuries were far more severe, and our antibiotic cream was in very short supply. We were only a few days from rescue.

Playing God was my least favorite part of survival, but maximizing our chances had to be my priority. An infection through the bloodstream might take days to appear, but by then, we’d be rescued, and she’d have received proper medical attention.

What if she’d been infected with a fungus? The antibiotics wouldn’t work, and we’d have wasted a valuable resource. What if she was one of the lucky ones who never got infected at all?

As if of their own accord, my fingers bypassed the ointment and landed on the medical tape instead. The cuts were cleaned, the clear liquid of lymph fluid already working its magic to seal the skin. It was a risk I had to take.