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Larra awoke to find
herself lying in a nest of shrubbery at the foot
of the large tree from which she had
fallen. Her right arm was throbbing
terribly. She moved her head
to look at her arm, or rather, she tried to move
her head. It would not respond;
she was paralyzed! She experienced
a brief moment of panic. It was
no small thing for a woman as beautiful and athletic as she was to find that
she could not move. But she calmed
herself. It would do no good
to lose her head in a situation like the one she was
in. Only a few yards away
was the Ullabomban
camp. She was lucky that when
she fell that she had landed in a thick patch of
vegetation. She could move her
eyes well enough to see that she was concealed on all
sides. She was even sheltered
from above by a roof of overhanging
leaves. She was confident that
Grey would return sooner or later and when he did he would be able to help
her.
She tried again to move. This
time she was sure that her foot had moved a few
millimeters. She could not be
certain because she had no feeling in any part of her body, but she sensed
that there had been a little movement.
Perhaps the paralysis was wearing
off. She tried
again. Yes, there definitely
was a slight movement of her left foot.
“What a dope!” she thought.
“I’ve been in tropical climates often enough to know that
you don’t touch anything you don’t
understand. I should have left
that caterpillar alone.”
But it was too late now. She
would simply have to try and find some way out of her present
predicament.
An hour passed, maybe more. Larra
had no way of telling. She could
not move enough to look at her watch.
But the paralysis had left most of the lower part of her
body. She could almost sit up
and could also move her head quite
easily. She continued to test
her movement. Another hour
passed.
“Where is Grey?” she wondered.
He should have been back by now.
She wasn’t concerned for his
safety. She was sure that he
could avoid any danger, but it was a bit of a mystery as to where he had
gone.
By now she could sit up and move most of her
limbs.
Everything but her right arm.
She could now see that her arm
was swollen to twice its normal size.
It was also incredibly painful.
Whatever toxin the caterpillar had injected into her, it had real
bite. She shook her
head. Again she reflected on
her stupidity in touching the creature.
“Live and learn,” she thought.
She became aware of a noise. It
was the sound of many bare feet moving in her
direction. Soon the sound was
right next to her. She lay very
still, hardly daring to breathe.
The Ullabomban camp was on the move and it had chosen to take the
trail that led right past her.
For several minutes the sound of marching men could be heard, and then they
passed and the sound died away as the Ullabomaban expedition faded into the
distance.
Larra attempted to struggle to her feet.
To her relief she found that she could
stand. She was quite unsteady
on her feet, and her hand and arm hurt like hell, but she was able to
walk. The question
was, which way should she
go? The smartest thing might
be to wait right where she was and wait for Grey to
return. On the other hand, he
should have been back long ago. It
was possible that he might have returned and not seen
her. She had been pretty well
concealed in the patch of brush where she had
fallen. It was also possible
that something had happened to him.
That was something Larra did not want to think
about. She had already lost two
lovers. She did not like to
contemplate the loss of a third.
Finally she decided that the best course of action was to continue
the way she and Grey had been moving.
That was the direction Klein had taken
Amy. She might be quite close
to her now. Perhaps also Grey
had gone after Klein after coming across his
trail. And so she started up
the forest trail, in the opposite direction to the path the Ullabomba had
taken.
She did not make very good time as she was not very steady on her
feet. She soon found that after
only a short time that she was sweating
profusely. “Probably, my
system is still full of poison,” she
thought. “I really need
to find a place to rest.”
The trail she was following entered a fairly narrow
canyon. The vegetation was less
dense here, but the canyon branched and
rebranched. “It would be
easy to get lost here,” she thought.
Perhaps it would be best to stop or even go
back. She wavered for awhile,
and then went on, but as she moved up the maze of canyons, she marked her
route by scratching marks into the rock walls as she
went. She had no intention of
losing her way.
A slow walk of about an hour brought her to the end of her
endurance. The poison in her
system was sapping her strength so that even relatively light tasks such
as walking tired her out. By
now she was panting heavily and the sweat rolled off her body, completely
soaking her clothing. She had
drunk most of her water and needed to stop and
rest. Stubbornly, however, she
continued to move forward. It
was almost as if the poison had made her stubbornly stupid as well as
tired.
Just up ahead was a small waterfall, tumbling down the canyon
wall. Larra shook her
head. She was seeing spots before
he eyes. The water looked
inviting. She would stop here
for a short while. Just long
enough to catch her breath and recover her energy a little
bit.
She sat on a rock by the edge of the falls, and scooped water over
herself. Thus it
was, that the sound of falling water masked the
sound of the intruder that came up behind
her. She heard nothing and did
not even realize that anyone was there, until a heavy blow on the back of
her head knocked her to the ground.
Stunned Larra tried to rise.
There was a second blow, and then everything went
black.
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