Back in Desert Storm, during the ground war that would become known as Operation Desert Sabre, I learned about “the thirst” firsthand. Despite what you might’ve heard about General Schwarzkopf benching the Rangers during Desert Sabre, my experience was a little different and a lot more unofficial.
We arrived late to Sabre in a part of Iraq I can’t tell you about, and came across a bunker of Iraqi army deserters. Turns out they ran out of water, seeing as how a Republican Guard unit miles away held the only fresh supply. The Guard shot deserters on sight, so they took their chances in this dilapidated bunker.
We rolled up thinking we were in for a firefight. Instead, we found seven survivors out of an original 25. They literally crawled over each other to surrender to us. They barely had the energy to walk, except for one.
He kept in the back in of the bunker and seemed to move around just fine. We found him in a corner, hunched over a corpse, scooping blood into his mouth. The look on his face when we found him, it’s something I’ll never forget. Dark, dead eyes, like someone falling asleep in a movie theater. But not someone, though. Something. An animal. He never came back to reality. Never acknowledged we stood only a few feet away.
We tried our damnedest, but we couldn’t pry him away from that corpse. And I couldn’t see fit to shoot him to put him out of his misery, either. Because I knew if I ever came down with “the thirst” I’m not sure I’d do things any differently. Once it hits, it’s hard to pull you back out. Sort of like The Pit, I guess.
The other survivors refused to tell us what happened in the bunker. All they’d say is they ran out of water three days ago.
Three days. That’s all it takes for a person to lose all sense of humanity.
After coming back from the war, I stockpiled my apartment with water bottles from floor to ceiling. That helped with the anxiety, but not much. I knew the civilization right outside my window teetered on a glass pedestal that could shatter in two words: no water.
Most people go to grocery stores, take showers, drive cars and socialize without a second thought, convinced that deep down they’re good people with good souls and good intentions. And for all I know, they are those things and more. That is, until some essential part of existence goes away, like water.
Then, when it’s a choice between killing someone for a jug of water or watching their children suffer a slow death, they pick up the nearest weapon and find out how much blood sits inside their neighbors, the same ones they hosted for dinner the week before. Where went that good person with good intentions and a good soul then?
The answer is nowhere. Because it’s always there. That primal drive to kill. It just gets better at hiding the more progress civilization makes. We’re fooling ourselves if we think burying it in technology will keep it away. It doesn’t take much for it to come clawing back.
I watch Fiddler pacing and wonder if he’s headed in the same direction. His agitation isn’t helping matters.
“We’re going to die out here,” Fiddler says again.
“Do me a favor. If you’re going to talk like that, go somewhere else to do it,” I say and turn back to Biyu. I need to close the wound on her head.
Fiddler huffs something and stomps off out of view.
Fine by me.
“Hold still, Biyu. This might be uncomfortable,” I say and squat down next to her.
My fingers tie strands of her hair together to cinch the wound shut. It’s an old ditch medicine trick, but it works. I layer as many granny knots as her scalp will hold over each other. It looks like a bird’s nest by the time I’m done, but it’ll keep the wound closed until it heals.
“Give it a week or two. Everyone will be wearing their hair like this,” I say, staying positive.
“Thank you, Chase,” Biyu says as I hold the canteen to her lips once again.
“Now let’s take a look at that leg,” I say.
Through some miracle of physics, the bandana is still tied to her left leg. I leave the tourniquet in place and run my hand down her thigh, over her knee and down to her ankle. A part of me wanted to do this to Biyu in a different context, but the feeling has since gone limp.
Yes, I sleep around with my clients, but I like to think of it as over delivering. Except for the times I’ve under delivered, or delivered too early.
This is the only way I meet women anymore. You try keeping a social life after saving the world from reincarnated gods and ISIS goons. Or a family life, for that matter. Ask my 10-year-old daughter back in New York City, Ava, how that works out for her.
Or don’t. I’ll always be thankful she’s bright, but sometimes I wish she didn’t possess the same smarts when it came to me. She doesn’t fall for my bullshit, and can demolish me in five words.
“You don’t care about me,” Ava said not two weeks ago when we met in Gramercy Park on a rare visit allowed by my ex-wife.
Good lord, that cuts deep.
I can save the world, but it hardly seems worth it sometimes. Securing a new day for humanity isn’t the same as giving everyone a fresh start. I keep waiting for the world to show some sort of gratitude or have an epiphany, but no one seems to notice what a miracle it is to be alive. They continue working the same jobs. Paying the same bills. Making the same excuses. Struggling to wipe away a better view inside the juicer known as existence.
So I fuck my clients. I connect with someone and feel the shudder of appreciation travel from her into me, and me into her. It’s temporary, but it’s not nothing.
This time is different. My hand’s journey up and down Biyu’s leg is free from anything sexual. I’m checking for swelling. That would indicate internal bleeding, which would double down on this shitty situation. Thankfully there’s none. The wound is somewhere in the meat of her calf. Walking will be difficult.
She’ll lose the leg if the tourniquet stays on, so I loosen the bandana free. I’ll need it for collecting water later. Biyu’s jeans stick to her injured calf, acting as a bandage over the wound. So long as she stays still it shouldn’t bleed too much. I want to be sure, though.
I slip the ESEE knife out of its sheath and cut off a long sleeve from my shirt. It’ll have to do. The first aid kit is somewhere next to my missing .45.
“Keep steady pressure on the wound. It’ll prevent you from bleeding out,” I say.
Biyu moans as she presses the sleeve onto her calf. She’s more alert with some water in her, which tells me she’s out of the woods as far as shock is concerned. Even with her bum leg, she’s still more use than Fiddler right now.
“Wait here,” I say and get up. “I need to figure out where our guide went.”
“Wait here? Where would I go if I wanted?” Biyu says.
Her sense of humor is still working. That’s a good sign.
My parched throat rattles as I call out to Fiddler. It hurts to yell, and I know it’s only going to get worse the longer I go without a real drink of water in this summer heat.
“Maybe you should eat something,” Biyu says. “There’s a granola bar in my pocket if you want it.”
Her generosity catches me off guard.
“I’m fine. Save it for yourself for later,” I say. My memory pulls something up from Ranger school. “There’s this concept in survival called the Rule of Threes. A human being can only last three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food and three months without sex.”
Biyu’s too tired to notice the joke. “Three hours without shelter? We’ve been outside all day. I don’t understand,” she says.
“Hypothermia. It can happen anywhere, from the jungle on the equator to the big woods during the summer in Minnesota,” I say. “Which is why I need to find Fiddler. It’s going to get dark soon.”
I call out to him again. This time I get a reply, but it’s in the form of a gunshot.
8.
Fiddler bolts back into camp. “They’re shooting again,” he says. Sweat drips from his nose onto the dirt.
“Y
ou blew a lot of energy to find that out,” I say and grab him by the shirt collar. “Don’t leave camp again.”
“Stop acting like you’re the smartest person in the room,” Fiddler says and shakes free. He plops down against the side of a boulder and stretches his legs. “Your whole alpha male thing is a little transparent.”
“Oh, I can make it a lot more than a little transparent,” I say.
“What does that mean?”
“Here, let me show you.”
I drag Fiddler to his feet and knock him back down with a fist to the jaw. It feels terrific, but I know it’s not the right way to handle things. Fiddler isn’t the one shooting at us. He doesn’t want to be in The Pit any more than I do.
But it’s hard to keep my emotions in check when I’m thirsty, tired, hungry and stressed. I’m slipping further and further away from the social norms that govern the rest of the world with every shaky minute.
Fiddler goes quiet. He retreats to his cradled position on the ground, head between his scrawny knees. Him shutting down only makes him more of a liability.
Biyu shoots me a dirty look. I can’t let myself devolve like this.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Fiddler. “I didn’t mean to…the situation is just…”
“Fuck you, Chase,” Fiddler says from inside his knees. He sniffs like he’s crying. “We’re going to die out here. I don’t know anything about survival. Biyu can’t move. And you’re turning into a monster. We’re dead.”
“Not yet we’re not,” I say and strip off my bush jacket. “Let’s do an inventory. Then we’ll come up with a plan. Everyone empty their pockets.” Fiddler doesn’t move. “Look, I’m sorry about punching you, but let’s keep the forward motion going, OK?”
Fiddler comes back to life once he sees Biyu shovel out the contents of her pockets. He follows suit. I go through my bush jacket one pocket at a time, wishing all the while that mule had stuck around. We gather everything into a pile next to the cold coals in the middle of the camp.
The inventory isn’t as bad as I’d thought, but it’s not exactly Cabela’s, either. In the pile lay the granola bar, ESEE knife, a paracord bracelet from my wrist, a small ferro rod for sparking a fire I keep looped around my neck, a battery-powered Steripen from my bush jacket for sterilizing water with UV light that still works, Biyu’s canteen, the bandana and a bag of crushed potato chips from Fiddler’s pocket.
I remember loading my bush jacket down with as much “oh, shit” gear as it’ll hold. It’s probably scattered like breadcrumbs from the trail to here.
“That’s it?” Fiddler says.
“I’ve seen worse,” I say.
“Like what? All we have to eat are potato chips and one granola bar.”
“It’s not food we need to worry about. We’ll last long enough without it,” I say and sheath the knife. “We need to make a fire. Then we’ll see about getting more water.”
“The smoke, won’t the shooters see it? They’ll know where we are,” Biyu says. She props herself against the boulder.
“They already do, thanks to him,” I say and point to Fiddler. I watch him slip a potato chip into his mouth. “Hey, knock that off. We need to save those.”
“What, are we going to ration off chip crumbs?” Fiddler says.
“We’re not going to eat them at all. You’ll see in a minute,” I say. “We need to find some scrap wood. The drier, the better. Everything from the smallest to the largest pieces we can find.”
“Great. Hop to it,” Fiddler says.
“I don’t think so, buddy,” I say. “Since you were in such a rush to get out of camp before, I nominate you to gather the wood. Leave the potato chips here, please.”
Biyu backs me up. She nods at Fiddler. It’s two versus one, and democracy rules. For now, anyway.
Fiddler shuffles to his feet. “I don’t see why we need a fire in the first place. It’s 90 degrees out here,” he says.
“It’s fine now, but it’ll cool off at night. All we have to wear are sweaty, bloody clothes. Hypothermia isn’t just for the wintertime,” I say. “Now move it.”
Fiddler skirts out of view behind a boulder. It’s a win-win. If he comes back with wood, great. If the psychos with the guns shoot him, even better.
9.
“Dammit, boy. You treat your girlfriends like this, too? You find the first opportunity to unload and, bang, you do it without thinking twice,” Long Beard says to Orange Face. Together with Silent Man, they lay on their bellies at the rim of The Pit. Fiddler darts in and out of rock formations in a skittish dance below them.
“Matter of fact, I do,” Orange Face says. He works the bolt action with his free hand to chamber another round. It reveals the 14 tattooed on the bottom of his right wrist. There’s a matching design of an 88 beneath his left wrist.
“You need to learn to wait, liked I showed you kids how to do when we went squirrel huntin’ back in the day. Think of these bastards as big squirrels. Let them get comfortable and ease out into the open before pulling the trigger. You spook one off one branch, you spook them all off the whole tree,” Long Beard says.
Silent Man follows flashes of Fiddler through his scope. He loses count of the times the pale frame crosses the intersecting lines of the reticle. Bullets are faster than people, but patience is better than speed. One shot that hits is better than 10 misses. No need to be ostentatious about it like Orange Face.
“Fine, we’ll wait. Maybe they’ll be dumb enough to start a fire tonight. Then we can get in position and wait for the morning, pop the first one we see,” Orange Face says.
“Good idea, but I have a better one,” Long Beard says. He pulls sticks of jerky from a knapsack and offers them to his sons. “Time for supper. Made this from the deer we shot on the hunt last fall.”
“Those were good times. Reminds me of growing up at the old cabin, back when mom was still alive,” Orange Face says as he gnaws on a stick.
“Yeah,” Long Beard says. “Me, too.”
10.
Fiddler comes back unscathed with the wood. It’s not much, but it’s enough to get us through the night. Thankfully, the sun bleached the stray branches and sticks as dry and pale as Fiddler’s skin. They’ll burn easier.
Getting the fire going is another story. I grab the potato chips away from Fiddler once again.
“Don’t I deserve a reward? I got all this wood without getting shot,” he says.
“Eating without water is only going to kill you quicker,” I say and rub my forehead. It hurts even more.
“Then how about I take a sip instead? Come on, Chase. It’s been so long since I’ve had a drink.”
I don’t like him, but he makes a good point. I haven’t had any water, either.
“You spot any puddles out there?” I say and think of the Steripen.
“Nothing. Not a drop,” Fiddler says. “This place is like a desert.”
I look at the canteen, then to Biyu. She’s alert again, and she nods in approval. I give the canteen a shake. There are probably three big gulps left.
I unscrew the top and take the sweetest drink of water ever to grace my lips. It melts into my throat and shivers into every inch of my parched insides. My body shakes it feels so good.
“Try to leave some for the morning,” I say and pass the canteen to Fiddler.
He closes his eyes and takes a long drink, letting it sit in his mouth before swallowing. I take the canteen from him before he goes for another swig.
“I need more,” Fiddler says.
As if I need him to remind me.
“Wait until the morning. I’ll fill this canteen to the brim,” I say.
“How do you plan on doing that? I just told you there’s no water out here.”
“You’ll see,” I say. “Help me make the fire.”
I pull out the ESEE and break down the branches. Everything gets sorted into piles of tiny, small, medium and large pieces. This will make growing the fire easier. If I can get it lit, of course
.
That’s where the potato chips come in. Thank goodness they’re so bad for you. All that grease makes for an excellent fire starter.
I grab a handful of crushed chips and form them into a pile inside the cold coals of fires past. Next I shave curls of wood from one of the branches, cutting them so thin there’s translucent fuzz along their edges. That goes on top of the chips. The smallest sticks form a teepee around the pile.
Now for the tricky part. With Jack London’s To Build a Fire firmly in my mind, I fetch the ferro rod. It’ll throw a healthy spark, but it needs to strike against something hard, sharp and metal. Something like the blade of the ESEE knife.
I prop the ferro rod up on a stick next to the pile and step on it for a secure hold. Hunching down, I run the knife against the rod with a quick tug. A hot shower of sparks blurts onto the pile, but nothing ignites.
Shit.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Fiddler says. “I think you watch too much TV.”
I ignore him and try again. Same result. Plenty of superheated sparks, but no flame. I crack my knuckles and give it another go. Nothing.
Fiddler’s prophecy about dying out here might be true after all. With a fire, the odds of surviving go way up. The psychological boost alone can be potent, not to mention the ability to cook food, disinfect water, signal help, keep hypothermia and wildlife at bay, see at night and smoke out the fact it’ll be a while until any of us showers. I could even cauterize Biyu’s wound using a heated blade.
But without a fire, none of those things are possible. We’re just three suckers huddled against a semi-circle of boulders waiting to get shot.
“You want me to try?” Biyu says.
I want to give her a look that says, “Are you serious?” but I’m getting frustrated. And when I get frustrated, I screw up. Now is not the time to slip with the knife and cut myself or scatter the meticulous tinder pile.
Chase Baker and the Vikings' Secret (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 5) Page 3
