That's when her savior brought the bloody shark jaw down on her like a guillotine. She felt the triangular, razor-sharp teeth slice into the flesh of her face and, more horribly, into the delicate jelly of her left eye. White-hot pain erased all conscious thought and she sucked in a breath to scream when the masked man jammed his machete into the soft spot beneath her sternum. Her body went into violent convulsions and she was consumed by bottomless rage and fury as Drew and Jamie reached her.

"Oh my God, Lindy," Drew said.

He might have said more, but she was on him like a shark, biting deep into his left cheek before he could finish his sentence. In less than a minute, Jamie was also infected. A small crowd of curious Ticos and gawking tourists had gathered around the shoreline, eager to find out what all the excitement was about. They found out.

It was not pretty.

   Chapter 20

He spun away from that hateful mask with no other thought than to run, to get away. He forgot his group, forgot everything in the extremity of his fear. He got no more than three steps when the Devil reached out and grabbed the strap of Manuel's binoculars.

Manuel felt his feet leave the ground and the strap cinched tight around his throat, choking him as the Devil wrenched it tighter and tighter, cutting off his air. Red spangles danced around the edges of Manuel's vision as he fought for air, clutching helplessly at the strap.

I'm sorry, Mama, he thought. I'm sorry I was bad. Then the strap broke, and Manuel tumbled down, falling awkwardly forward and head first into an ancient tree.

He rapped his head hard against the bark and sagged sideways against the trunk, dazed. A thick, musky odor filled his nostrils, accompanied by loud, agitated clicking, and the fear he felt as he looked into the masked face of the Devil. It was nothing compared to what he felt when he realized where he had fallen.

Horrible stabs of pain shot through his arm to the shoulder, a fierce numbing agony filling him. He screamed and pushed himself up and away. It was too late. He had no trouble at all remembering the English name for his attackers, as he was stung again and again, peppered with unbearable agony like the hot lead spray of a machine gun. Bullet ants.

As the tiny predators crawled furiously over his face and arms, blinding him with pain, Manuel jittered and danced in an agonized frenzy. When he felt the Devil's bloody machete rip open his belly, emptying him of organs in a single swipe, Manuel was almost grateful. But the pain did not end. Clearly he was in hell, being punished for every sin he'd ever committed. The oblivion of death was cruelly snatched away, replaced instead with a boiling, rabid fury unlike any he had ever known.

...

It was a musky, vile stench, combined with a butcher's shop undertone. And there was a weird sound too, a kind of furious clicking. He spun around and saw Manuel, their erstwhile guide.

Manuel's eyes were almost popping out of his head, weeping tears of blood. His belly was slashed open, globs of thick yellow fat and glistening organs twisted between his legs. Worse, if anything could be worse than that, he was covered with inch-long dark red and bristly ants. They swarmed over his face and his reaching hands, walking across the bloody surfaces of his huge bloated eyeballs and crawling in and out of his wide, contorted mouth. They lined the gash in his belly, excising neat chunks of his exposed organs with huge mandibles. Bob screamed as Manuel reached out and grabbed his wrist. A horrible, white-hot pain rocketed through his arm. He thought for a second that someone had shot him, that there must be police or something, but that thought and every other one was soon swallowed in a tidal wave of the most intense unimaginable agony that washed away everything else.

   Friday the 13th: The Jason Strain, chapter 22