Vicky, Rita, and Lynette hike into a Mexican rainforest at the heels of the painfully loud Elsa. The aggressive bats are frightening, and nobody can identify the dinner meat, but the trip becomes a real adventure when a monkey flings a man’s hand at them.
Elsa politely asks her new friends to help find the hand’s owner.
That, or she’ll fork them over to a cannibal tribe.
Vicky, Rita, and Lynette tromp through the rainforest, enduring the tortures of nature. Rita is strong, tall, and leading the pack. Lynette is medium-height, but holding up well.
Vicky is short, sweating away her last drop, and sucking down inhalers. She is probably getting lots of attention from hidden predators.
There is no relief over dinner. None of the ladies can identify the glistening, oily chunks of dinner meat. Their hotel room is made entirely from bamboo and not the soft kind.
But their next excursion will be packed full of running, screaming, and flesh wounds.
Then the chopped-off hand shows up.
Rita is hysterical. Lynette is crazed. As for Vicky...well, the predators haven't gotten her yet. But the night is young.
Excerpt
(Unedited exerpt)
Lynette tripped and fell. I paused to turn back for her, but Rita grabbed my arm and pulled me forward.
“Her sacrifice will let us live! Run!”
She must have gotten back up, because ten minutes of lung-burning flight later, we all came to a stop in a tiny clearing.
I figured everyone was there by counting shoes as I bent over, sucking down albuterol and water alternately. Nobody screamed or swatted anything, so I guessed the bats were gone, too. The rain pattered gently on our heads.
“All right, ladies,” Elsa said between gasps for air. “Here are…bandages and alcohol pads. Very…sorry about that. I just have such a…hard time containing myself! Dang!! At least the…monkeys didn’t join in like…last time.”
“Monkeys?” Lynette sank into a squat, trying to sit, but probably aware of the little jaws that lived in the leaf litter. “We haven’t seen any.”
“They’re usually shy. But something about the bats sets them off.”
Rita stuffed another empty water bottle into her pack.
“I’d love to see some monkeys! Ow! Who threw that?”
She turned to Lynette, rubbing the back of her head. “I was only kidding about you sacrificing yourself. I was just getting ready to turn around and…Ow!”
Lynette shrugged. She hadn’t moved. But something else had, way up in the canopy.
Something with rotten fruit, a good throwing arm, and lots of like-minded friends.
Suddenly the greenery around us danced and shuddered beneath a solid rain of heavy, stinking fruit. Something foul smacked into the side of my head. The screaming started up once again.
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