[Project Nemesis] Jungle Fever (13 page)

            The men walked
in, and she couldn´t help but flush at their nakedness.  They´d spent the
majority of the time spent together in their birthday suits, but to see them
move around comfortably and without any awkwardness, made
her
uncomfortable and awkward!

            She’d never
thought of herself as a prude, and she shouldn’t feel that way since she’d been
sexual with all three of them.  Still….

            They all reached
for some meat, some of it was very rare.  She looked away and grimaced slightly
as Armando picked up one of those pieces and started to eat it.  She saw him
glare at her, almost daring her to say something, but she held her tongue.  She
settled her head on her knees and clasped her hands around her calves.

            “
Chérie,
shouldn´t
you eat something?
”
Remy asked her quietly.  She shook her head.

            “If she wants to
starve herself, Remy, then let her!” Armando muttered gruffly.

            Rafael reached
over, grabbed one of the strips then handed it to her.  “Eat it, Yvonne, you
need the nourishment.  You need meat.”

            She shook her
head.  “I don´t want any!”

            “Tough, eat
some!”

            She glared at
him, but her stomach rumbled in rebellion.  Finally, she took a piece and
placed a small morsel between her teeth.  She bit into it but the feel of it in
her mouth made her feel sick.  She tried to spit it out, felt herself start to
slip, but swallowed when Rafael shouted at her, “Eat it, Yvonne!”

            She shook her
head and handed the meat back to him. Holding the back of her hand to her mouth
she tried not to be sick.  After a couple of minutes, her stomach settled but
it had been a near thing!  At least, she didn´t feel hungry anymore.  How people
could eat meat was beyond her.

            “Do you feel
okay?” Rafael asked, then at her nod, he continued, “I´m sorry I made you eat
it, but you do have to eat something, and there isn´t exactly a grocery store
anywhere nearby,” he paused again, watching her.  “Yvonne, I told Armando and
Remy about what you said earlier, we all agreed that we should tell you our
story as a thank you for your honesty.”

            “I´m sure you´ve
noticed the scars on my body,” Armando told her gruffly, “well I got them when
I was ten. I lived in Colombia with my parents, until one day the local cartel
came around and killed my mother and father.  The cartel had visited our
village before, and whenever they came around, my mother told me to hide from
them in case they visited our house.  I was hiding in the usual spot in our
house, when they practically demolished it with machine guns, I was lucky I
wasn´t shot.  When they stopped firing, I tried to get out but couldn´t, so I
had to crawl through the debris, a lot of which was glass.  Hence the scars.

            “My uncle, Rafe´s
father, came for me from the US when the neighbor that took me in and hid me
from the cartel, contacted him. We were both lucky to get out alive without the
cartel finding out.  I went to live with Rafe, we both joined the marines
together and got out at the same time.  I´d always known that when my service
was complete, I would return to Columbia to kill the bastards that murdered my
family.  I went back to my village, Rafe came with me, and we discovered that
they´d moved territory, they´d gone south to Chile.

            “They´d relocated
to one of the islands on the south-western coast. It didn´t take us long to
find them--we managed to kill the men, it was a bit of a bloodbath.  There were
a lot of them, and we were injured, not grievously, but an injury is an
injury.”  Armando stopped his story for a moment, running a hand through his
hair.

            “We had almost
reached our base camp, when a couple of black panthers ran out and attacked us--they
must have smelled the blood.  We managed to fight them off, but we´d both been
bitten a few times.  We didn´t think anything of it until a couple of weeks later
when we returned back to the US.  On the first full moon of our return, we
shifted, there are no words to describe how fucking scared we were, but there
was nothing we could do, nowhere we could go, and no one we could turn to for
help.”

            Yvonne touched
his arm in a comforting gesture, feeling the horror they both must have felt. 
“I can’t imagine going through something like what you both went through. 
First with your parents and then….  How is it no one found out about y’all?”

            Armando sighed. 
“We nearly got caught a couple times, especially that first time, we were
totally out of it, hadn´t a handle on the cats yet.  But after a while we were
safe.  We lived in Florida, so whenever we needed to run we drove out to the
Everglades, and ran there.  Rafael met a woman, he fucked her, and they got
pretty close.  One day we both went to the Everglades to run together, we
transformed, and the woman he´d been fucking was there.  There was a group of
men with her, normally we would have run from them, but now we know about the
pheromone, we realize that she used that to ensnare us.  They captured us, and
we were brought here to this island.  We learned at the facility that a couple
of the men had escaped--they´d obviously managed to run away to one of the nearby
islands, and they´d infected us with the virus when they´d bitten us.  We also
learned, that the woman, Katherine Adams, had been sent to Florida by the
Project on the trail of a couple of big cats they´d seen in the Everglades.  Minus
a lot of shit, that´s the story for Rafael and me.”

            Yvonne shook her
head, dumbfounded and astonished.  She didn’t know what to say, but she felt
great empathy for what they both had been through.  She understood now why
Armando was so distrustful and cold.  It all made sense, given what had
happened to his family and then him and Rafe.  She’d never condoned vengeance,
but it seemed the cartel was deserving of justice of some sort.  In the same
situation, had she had a family, she might have done the same.

            Remy continued
after Armando had finished talking.  “I was a Seal, a lieutenant.  I was told
by my CO, that my country needed me to be a better fighter, so I was sent here.
 They infected me with the virus within a couple of days.  I was apparently
chosen, because I´d reached lieutenant at a relatively young age, they imagined
me heading this superhuman troop of soldiers.  Like I said, I was infected with
the virus, and I handled it pretty well, apparently that made me an even more
desirable candidate for the position of leader of the pack.  A lot of the other
candidates couldn´t handle the first shift, a few freaked out, cracked up and
went crazy.  Others handled it better, but they were never normal again, these
men, though, were perfect for the Project.  The soldiers were to be malleable,
easily brainwashed into mindless warfare.  They´ve not worked out how to do
that crap, but they´re working towards it, and this fucking pheromone takes
them one step nearer.  When the virus takes hold, it makes you really violent,
your body feels like it´s going to implode, you start reacting to all kinds of
shit, things that would never normally piss you off are like a trigger and you
shoot off.  It´s uncontrollable.  As soon as you make your first shift, the
cats that respond well, go AWOL, it´s the first sign that they´ve reacted
positively to the virus.  The supposed ´internal saboteurs´ line that they fed
you is bullshit.  The cats run off, but the majority of the ones that escaped
the facility, are smart and don´t go back, they also can´t get off the island.
So they´re stuck here in this fucking place, eking out their lives.  Apparently
the Project leaders have grown tired of waiting for their pussies to run back
home, and they´ve not only hired you, but created this pheromone to lure them
back to the facility.  The weaker cats won´t be able to help themselves,
they´ll go back and the mad professors will continue fucking with them.  They´re
probably going to ´exterminate´ me, if they get me back to the facility,” he
ended calmly.

            “What?” she
shrieked.  “My god, will they do anything?  Why doesn’t someone stop them?”

            “They’re
sanctioned by the government.  Biological warfare is cheaper than
technological.  Everyone knows that.  So no, there’s no one that can stop
them.  Not even us.  They’re very good at hiding their tracks, and who are we
to say what’s happened to us?  Society would brand us monsters, to powerful and
wild to be unleashed upon civilization.  They’d want to put us down and get rid
of the problem,” Remy said, ending on a long sigh.  Armando and Rafael nodded,
knowing the truth of his words.

            “They´ll kill me
if they find me. Let´s just say that I didn´t respond well to their attempts at
brainwashing, especially when they stopped me from going AWOL.  They put me in
a fucking cage and did some weird shit, but it didn´t work.” Remy shrugged.  “I
escaped with Armando and Rafael and killed two of the guards and mauled one of
the scientists... boo fucking hoo.”  He smirked nastily. “Do you know what
really sucks,
chérie
?  It´s irreversible, there´s no cure.”

            Yvonne was still
seated on the floor, with her chin resting on her knees.  At his words though,
she hid her face against them.  The hell they´d all gone through, it didn´t
bear thinking about.  The only way she could help them though, was to aid them
in their escape. “I came in by ship, if we can take control of it, then we can
all go back to our lives.”

            All three of them
stared at her oddly.  Armando asked her suspiciously, “Whereabouts was the ship
docked?”

            “At the south of
the island.  If we work together, I´m sure we can get you all off here.  I
don’t want to be here anymore than you do.  I’m an idiot for taking this job in
the first place.  I should have known it was too good to be true. ”

            “Why do you want
to help us now?  You´ve been trying to run away from us all evening!”

            She sighed.  “No
one deserves the crap you´ve been through, if I can help you at all,” she
shrugged, “then I will.”

            “How can we trust
you?” Armando asked her coldly.

            “I´ve no reason
to ´betray´ you, even if I had managed to run away from you, I wouldn´t have
told them anything about you, or led them to you.  I swear.  I do have
principles you know, those bastards are fucking with nature, how could I not be
against them?  Anyone with a conscience wouldn’t stand for this.  I’m not a
monster like they are!” she said vehemently.

            “What about the
300k debt to the IRS?” Rafa asked.

            She shrugged
nonchalantly.  “I´ll just have to go to jail or find some other way to pay it
off, won´t I?”  She smiled weakly at them.

            “Why would you
choose to help us when it would mean you´d could end up in prison or dead if
they find out?”

            “I-I like you, I
don´t want to hurt you or for you to be hurt by them.  I am compassionate, you
know, I can help my fellow man!”

            “I thought we
were monsters!” Armando sneered.

            “Oh for fuck´s
sake, Armando, leave her alone.  She wants to help, so fucking let her. We
might be able to get of this fucking island.  We haven´t done that great on our
own!  Maybe we need some insider information,” Remy defended her.

            “What harm can it
do to trust her, Armando?” Rafael asked.  “She didn´t fucking knock you
unconscious!”

            “No, but that was
before she knew the score,” Remy told him.

            Armando shrugged
and warned, “If she fucks us over, then it´s your fault!”

            “Come on, we need
to get some rest. We´ll have to work out a plan to get off this fucking place,”
Rafael told them all.

            “The pheromones
are still strong enough to possibly attract some of the weaker cats during the
night.  If two of us sleep with her and the third stands guard then there
should be no problem.  We’ll take turns keeping watch.  Tomorrow, we´ll have to
figure out how to either get rid of the scent completely, or how to use it to
our advantage,” Remy said. “They´ll be on the lookout for Yvonne as well, so
we´ll have to watch out for them fuckers.  Bastards.”

            “I´ll take first
watch,” Rafe volunteered, he was obviously still uncomfortable around her.
“You´re sure you don´t want any more of the meat, Yvonne?” he asked her
worriedly, “You need to eat,
muñeca
.”

            He sighed as she
shook her head and headed out of the cave.

            “What happened
between you and Rafe?  He´s acting like a mother hen.  I´ve never seen him so
maternal!” Remy joked.

            “Anyone with eyes
can see what happened, Remy!  Have you lost your sight?” Armando inquired politely.

            Remy shook his
head in amusement, so Armando continued, “Well, then, leave it alone.  We best
get some sleep.  Yvonne, you´ll have to sleep between Remy and me, you´ll
freeze all night otherwise.  We have a higher body temperature than you, so you
won´t be cold.”

            Armando rolled
his eyes as Remy waggled his eyebrows, and told him, “Stop pissing about.”