Last Reveille by David Morrell

Author:David Morrell [Morrell, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

55

PRENTICE heard the scream and saw a trooper scrambling from a gully, his pants down, screaming. The man was running, stumbling, clutching his arm, but no sooner was he near one group of soldiers than he ran toward another, then another. His eyes were wide, his face white. He kept screaming.

No one moved. They just kept standing, staring at him as he ran and screamed. It was almost noon. They’d stopped to walk their horses, then to give them grain and water. The man had evidently gone down to the gully to relieve his bowels, and now it was registering on everybody what must have happened down there, people starting toward him as he swung in circles and clutched his arm and screamed.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Calendar was suddenly among them, grabbing the man.

“The damn thing stung me!”

“What thing? Tell me what it is.”

“I’m going to die!”

The trooper wrenched free, running once again, and Calendar stretched out his leg to trip him. The man fell sprawling in the dirt, his buttocks showing, his privates open to the air.

“I asked you what thing. Tell me what it is.”

“A scorpion!”

“What kind?”

The man was writhing, his face contorted by the pain. “What difference does it make? I’m going to—”

“Let me see your arm.”

Calendar reached down, pulling the man’s hand away.

Prentice stood beside Calendar, looking down. From wrist to elbow, the arm was swollen twice its normal size. The center of it was an angry, flaming red.

Prentice shivered. Several troopers gasped.

“It’s fine. You’re going to be all right,” Calendar said.

“No! I’m going to die!”

“You’re not! You’ll be damned sick for sure, but not enough to kill you. You got lucky. What’d you do? Go down to take a crap? You leaned back without looking, and the next thing you were stung?”

The trooper thrashed on the ground, nodding fiercely, moaning.

“Well, you could have been stung on your cojones. Then you would have been in trouble. Or on the side of your arm where the vein is. The main thing is the sting swelled up.”

The man’s face contorted as he moaned.

“Two kinds of scorpions. One’s a little straw-colored, streamlined job. It spreads its poison through your body, and it kills you. The second’s a bigger, wider kind, almost brown. The poison’s local. The sting swells up. You’ve got the second. If your arm was numb instead of burning, if it wasn’t swollen, then I’d say to worry. Someone get my saddle bags.”

Prentice nodded, doing what he was told.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.