Chapter 6: Sick as a Dog

When the rain stopped I found out where the flying insects where as they came up out of the ground and were the size of a bumblebee. The whole place erupted with them and they attacked me with a vengeance. I got some relief by retreating into the cave and keeping it smoky.

The bad news was they didn't just bite, that would have been bad enough however they were doing more than that. They were laying eggs just under my skin and each bite had a small bump form. The odd thing was the bump was not red at first. Later they turned black as I got sick. The black meant the bugs underneath were maturing.

I was quickly very sick I threw up, could not hold anything down, and didn't feel like cooking or even moving. I knew I had a high fever. After two days of the flying bugs, they all just ablated to nothing. There were lots of buggy bodies lying around, but by then I was not curious enough to bother with them, I was sicker than sick. Evidently their adult period was just long enough to mate.

I forced myself to get up every morning and drink water at the river. After my first trip I stayed at the river since I knew I could not go back and forth much as sick as I was. Luckily it had not rained for a while and the inside of the hut had dried out mostly.

After a few days I started to feel better. I wanted to fish, but the small grubs I had been using seemed to not be around. I did manage to spear one fish and ate it raw. I didn't have the energy to start a fire. The raw fish was not fun.

About a week after the bugs swarmed I awoke one morning feeling a crawling sensation everywhere. I couldn't see very well in the pre-dawn light. My bites had erupted and I had zillions of dark maggots popping out all over. Without a thought I found myself in the river trying feverishly to wash the little shits off me. In no time I was surrounded by fish and they enjoyed my parasites greatly. It was all some great horrid circle of life.

By noon they were done hatching out and I looked like I had the worst case of acne ever. If left to their own devices, they would crawl onto the ground and dig their way down. If they were outside in the sun for more than a couple hours, they just stopped moving and died.

One odd thing, the holes did not itch. I seemed to heal up fine with no scarring a day or two later. Had the transformed form of parasites been my bait? Did they become more than one type of bug? I would have to learn how to avoid this next year and to learn more about what had happened.

I spent 2 days making new mats for my hut. The old ones where pretty bad off after being soggy during a month of rain and then having my dirty sick self there for a week and a half.

Some hunting proved that my darts were still working fine. It did take two of the darts to take out one of the large walking lizards. I gutted the thing and cut the head and paws off and left them behind. I dragged the carcass back to camp and commenced making jerky. My racks were trashed by the rain so I had to make new ones.

One afternoon I had a feeling to go somewhere. I wasn't sure what it was, but there was a compulsion of some sort for me to go back downriver a ways. I tried to remember if there was anything there, but could not remember what was down there. Eventually curiosity got to me and I knew I had to go see what was causing me this compulsion.

About three quarters a mile downriver I sensed I was to start inland. I had walked past this area before, but had not back into the woods from this part of the river.

I eventually came to a glade that is the best way I could describe it. There was an open area in the trees that had a solid wall of bushes just inside a ring of trees. There was grass in the glade. The odd thing was that the bushes and grass were the same strange shade of green. It was a bright iridescent green almost. There was a feel about the place like it was sacred or something.

What had brought me here? Then I noticed that on one side of the glade there was an interruption in the grass. I heard some shifting around from that direction. I walked over there and looked down into a small pit that was about five feet deep. At the bottom of the pit was a creature. I don't recall ever seeing anything like it. It looked like a small pig, but it had hair and the hair was maybe 6 inches long and red and brown in color. I had no idea what it was, but it was possibly a mammal and it was somehow able to make me come here.