I was faced with a difficult decision. The light was all but gone and I knew that the person I was following would either be seriously ill or dead by now. Should I wait until the morning, or risk searching in the darkness for either a body or a casualty?
I looked around as my mind tossed the idea back and forth. Blood in the vomit. Stomach wall dissolved. What were the odds of surviving it for these last 12 hours or more? I'd taught teams of special forces to act quickly, to drink plenty of clean water if they'd drunk something toxic, to dilute it and definitely not to induce vomiting, then radio for an evac. There was none of that here. Somewhere out there, in the black, someone was dying and as I checked the map I realised there was sod-all I could do about it.
I checked my map but by this time the night was prowling across the woodland all around me and I needed somewhere to lay up until morning. I checked my compass and walked slowly through the tall, wet grass in a roughly eastward direction until I hit the first of three stone walls. I crossed each one, checking my orientation before turning north for half a click - say eight minutes of slow, careful steps, then into the pine plantation for a minute or so until I had enough room to hang my hammock. I had the torch in my mouth now and I was so familiar with the contents of my pack that I was set up in no time. I lit a candle and by its light I climbed under my quilt and settled in for the night. I had little appetite for food and once I'd gotten into the warmth I was soon fast asleep.
If I'd dreamed at all then I woke the following morning with no memory of it. The first thing I was aware of was the slow, methodical dripping from a single leaf onto my tarp. I had a vague memory of rain during the night but the sun was peering at me through the canopy as I looked out from under my shelter. I didn't want to move. I was warm and I was groggy from a good nights sleep and it took me a few moments to recall how I'd come to be there. Only the weathered skin of my face was exposed to a gentle morning breeze and I was happy with that. The rest of me was snug, gently swaying and eager to stay put.
A long time ago, probably a few months before he died, my Dad took me out into the woods near the camp and we hung our hammocks in a patch similar to this one. The pines in a plantation were usually quite uniform, for obvious reasons, and yet, he pointed out, each one seemed to always grow in a strange, unique way that made no two look the same. Maybe it was the diffusion of light through the canopy or the refusal of each tree to grow exactly where it had been planted. Still, he'd said, you could tell each one apart if you had the eyes to see it. He'd loved the outdoors until his dying day, even after it had all changed and we'd become the last of the English. I think, perhaps, he was almost glad. He got to see nature claim it all back and I think it made him happy to see it.
Eventually I pulled an arm out into the cold and reached for my stove. It was an alcohol burner and it was filled with the product of my still which didn't burn as well as other mass-produced American fuels but it did the trick. I got some water boiling and led there, waiting, breathing, doing the every-day stuff that just being alive required. Then I turned my attention to finding what I was sure would be a corpse and not a casualty. I'd resigned myself to that fact as I'd poured my coffee grounds into my aluminium mug and rooted in my pack for the cold bacon sandwich I'd made the night before. I chewed it thoughtfully as the water came to a second rolling boil, then held it between my teeth as I carefully let the coffee cool off the stove. Coffee in the woods was a delicate matter and I'd perfected the technique long ago. I laughed aloud, remembering a team of US Rangers who'd been a bit of a handful early into their three week course. They'd found a new respect for me once they'd seen me make them a cup of 'Cowboy Coffee' as they called it.
I drank the strong, hot brew whilst I began to pack up, washing down mouthfuls of hard bacon and bread as I went. The birds began their chorus and fluttered in the tree tops above me, often sending small showers of rain drops down onto my head that had ricocheted off the points of the sharp pine needles. In a few minutes my stove was cool enough to be packed away and I slung the black sludge from the bottom of my cup before stowing that away also. Then with the bottom of my boot I dragged the trampled grass upright as best I could, replaced any of the debris as I'd found it and set off back the way I'd come. No traces.
I tracked my way back to the site of the vomit - a task I found much easier in the daytime, then searched the ground once more for spoor. I found my own boot tracks mingled with the walker's and began searching in an ever widening circle until I found another patch of blood-puke. It was to the south this time on the other side of a wall which is why I'd missed it. The walker had all but back tracked to this point and now the tracks went due south in a stumbling fashion, the distance and pace looking frantic and disorganised. Left and right they veered, sometimes turning back on themselves completely, other times stopping in one spot and pacing in circles to form a bare patch of muddy black earth. I followed them further and noted that the distance between steps was growing shorter and shorter until the tracks become less of a defined footprint but rather a smudged line a foot long as each shoe was dragged through the mud. It was the shuffle of someone too ill to stand let alone walk much further.
At the base of a huge oak I found her.
It was a young girl, 17 or so with hazel brown hair that feathered her pale cheeks in the soft breeze of the morning. She sat with her back to the great gnarled trunk, her legs splayed in front of her and her hands flopped loosely on the ground at either side. Her cheap waterproof coat was open at the zip and a greasy streak of bloody vomit ran down her chest and pooled in her lap. Her eyes were open and glazed, staring west in the direction of home.
I approached slowly and undid the buckles of my pack, letting it fall softly to the ground. I approached at a half-crouch, stopped at her feet and looked at her plain features, her pale skin, her distorted expression. She'd died in pain, died alone and died very far from her own people. I wasn't a stranger to a dead person but all the same this one seemed particularly saddening and I sat on my haunches for a moment and digested the last few hours of her life.
The toxic water had destroyed her insides and by the time she'd have realised it would have already been too late. In pain she'd fumbled her way along, turning round at some point as if to try and return to the others, maybe to get some help, maybe out of regret or something. Then, when she'd realised it was over, she'd found this tree, turned towards the setting sun and thought of home.
I looked to my left, trying to imagine what she saw. All there was for me was an empty field and a few sheep on the hillside. She must have seen cities and skyscrapers and yellow cabs. Eggs easy-over and big cars. The American dream.
I leaned over and closed those eyes that saw nothing now. I checked her pulse, more out of habit than anything, and began to search her pockets for a letter or a photo, something she would have wanted sent back home. I found a small travel wallet on her belt which held her ID in a plastic case. Rebecca Silverman. Chicago, Illinois.
I stood up and looked around. I'd been right about the trainers but from the worn patches on her coat I could see that she'd worn a pack of some kind but it wasn't nearby. No doubt she'd dropped it at some point and I searched the area for over fifteen minutes before realising it wasn't there.
She'd have been in a panic. She would have opened her pack, torn it apart in the hope of finding something to stop the pain, to heal the sickness inside her and there it would be. A little scattered here and there. Frantic hope somehow hidden inside the canvas.
I stood looking at her frail form as I puzzled over what had happened until it hit me. She'd drunk the water because she'd been thirsty.
There was no other choice because she had none.
They'd taken her pack off her.
They'd taken her things and sent her off on her own to die.
I returned to my own pack and found two large orange sacks that I always kept in the bottom compartment with my poncho. I also took my duct tape on its little half-roll and returned t
o Rebecca, gently rolling her away from the trunk of the oak and onto the floor. I did my best to ignore the smell of her indecent death and removed the mud splattered trainers from her feet by cutting the laces with my knife. Then I lifted her legs into the mouth of the first sack, pulling it up to her waist before taking the other sack and pulling it over her head. I was grateful that her coat had buttoned cuffs and I fastened them together so her wrists were held in place on top of her stomach. Then I brought the mouths of the two sacks together and sealed them with the duct tape, doing three turns at the seam, her ankles and around her neck.
I gathered my gear and got to my feet before testing the weight of Rebecca's body in my arms. She was light enough to carry but the real weight felt like it was on my heart. She'd died here, alone, and I struggled to get the thought out of my head. In those situations there were always the feelings of remorse, of thinking I could have done more, maybe found her in time the previous night. But what could I have done? I was no Doctor and it was clear that she would already have been dead even if I'd have found her in the blinding darkness. The blame lay elsewhere, a few thousand miles away but it didn't stop the nagging in my head.
It was too far back to the Land Rover to carry her all the way and so I looked for a suitable spot to set her down where I could find her again. I walked back along the trail, back to one of the flatter intersections and led her against the wall. Then I marked the place on my map and set off at a quick pace in the direction of the tarn and the 'Rover.
I'd never really been uncomfortable around the dead. At 12 my Dad had me kill and skin a rabbit I'd caught in a snare. It'd been a big fat thing, all fed up for the winter and I could still remember the hot, wet guts as I'd followed his directions with my pocket knife and cut open its furry stomach. Then the cleaning of the carcass, the cuts of meat, the scraping and drying of its hide. A few years later my Dad had been sent south to find a couple of looters who'd gone missing near Manchester. He thought I was ready and asked me to come along and help. I'd never been out with him on a search before and I was eager to show him how helpful I could be. When we came across the first body he seemed proud of how I wasn't shaken by it, how I was eager to help move the slabs of concrete with the Land Rover's winch to free the crushed body of the poor man.
“Look,” he said, indicating the horrific mess the tonnes of rubble had made. “He must have died almost instantly. His heart was under all that. At least he didn't die slowly and in lots of pain.” Together we filled a couple of those orange bags with the broken man and sealed them with duct tape before putting him carefully in the back of the Land Rover. I could still see my Dad's gentle movements, carrying those remains as though the man were only sleeping. There were two more to be found - the US Army didn't know about the girl. She'd fallen down a hole in the road and been impaled on some re-bar. The other had been attacked by dogs and most of him was missing.
After that I saw the dead as mere empty vessels worthy of a little dignity and respect. Dad had never taken a moral stance, never preached about fairness or wept out of sorrow for them like I'd seen others do. He never raged at the tragedy or cursed the gods. In death he saw the same thing - the natural ending of a life which was as normal to him as the setting sun or the falling rain.
“You measure your time in days out here, son,” he'd once said to me. It took me a while to work out what he'd meant by that.
I returned to Rebecca's body just as the night was coming, crossing the fields where ever the 'Rover could fit through a gap in the walls. I wasn't concerned about the others hearing me - they'd be too far ahead now and the hills would deaden the sound of the engine. I lifted her into the back and covered her with a tarp before driving further on, aiming to reach a stretch of plantation where I could hang the hammock for the night. I considered sleeping in the 'Rover but I wanted to be fresh for tomorrow and the idea of trying to nod off in an uncomfortable driving seat didn't really appeal to me. Instead I pulled into a natural break in the hedge, grabbed my pack and locked the 'Rover behind me, heading into the inky black of the silent forest.
It was quiet in the only way the wilderness could be. The crack of the odd twig, the chirp of an insect or the wailing squawk of some far off bird sometimes broke the monotonous nothing, but it was something natural, something right as if the whole world had come to some kind of agreement over what silence should sound like, feel like, even taste like.
I worked in the darkness of the moonless night, feeling by instinct and routine for my straps, my carabiners and my cordage. I adjusted the slings, felt for the sag and moved onto my tarp. Meanwhile the thoughts of the following day faded into a tightly packed set of logical steps, devised more from a kind of muscle memory where the body went through the motions while the mind wandered the hills and dales of my native land. Before I knew it I was bathed in the dull glow from the stove and the silence was broken by the bubbling, rolling boil of water and the hiss of burning fuel.
I sat with my feet on the floor and my back supported by the side of my hammock, nursing a cup of hot nettle tea made from leaves I'd picked up earlier. I allowed the pungent aroma to settle in my nose, to submerge the mundane and immerse my mind in the natural. What else did I have to engage with? 5 simple senses and at that point all of them were tuned to the natural state of existence.
My Dad could barely stand to be indoors. If he was then it was always near a window - and we had many of them in our house and he'd always be looking through it, his mind off somewhere else, backward into some forgotten trail or forwards into the next stretch of unexplored dell, another field of emerald blades to be crossed.
I led there for a time trying to remember his face. It was difficult now. The memory seemed to be of a shape, a tall, broad shouldered figure in a greatcoat, his pack on his back, his faded blue woolly hat pulled down tightly on his skull and blonde spikes of hair escaping out from under it. But no face. A beard perhaps, but no features to remember. Not since his death. It's like I could only remember his essence, his actions and will, his true self, not the shell that surrounded it.
I dozed for a time, drifting off into a dreamless sleep. I woke at some point and crept out into the cold to pee before retreating back into the warmth of my top quilt. I could see no stars above me, no break in the dark purple sky and only the invisible threat of a storm.
When morning came I felt groggy but well rested. I boiled a cup of coffee and chewed on some dried strips of beef, watching the sky become angry and bruised as the sun fought with the coming storm. Evidently it lost because no sooner had I packed up my hammock than the heavens opened and my short walk back to the 'Rover turned into a battle with the elements. My poncho flapped noisily as I walked but at least I was dry as I clambered into the cab and started the engine, engaging the wipers and turning on the headlights. The rain beat upon the steel roof and made my ears ring. The wind shield was awash with the downpour and the wipers did their best. I decided to wait. There would be no rush. Wherever they were they would be held up too. Any shelter would have drawn them in and out of this chaos.
An hour passed. In that time I'd boiled another cup of coffee and sat drinking it, watching the glass steam up on the inside. There was plenty of fuel and so I left the engine idling, the blower on and the fans keeping the air moving. I ate a piece of hard flat bread and dunked a corner of it in my cup to try and soften it. I read some more of a book I'd brought with me, some fiction piece I'd found on Dad's shelf, then waited some more. I could always do waiting, especially waiting for the rain. It reminded you that you weren't in control which was always good to remember.
By mid-morning the downpour had gradually eased to a gentle drizzle. I set off, slowly at first until I reached a firmer track that was edged with great thickets of nettles and blackberry bushes that scratched against the sides of the Land Rover like hundreds of tiny claws. I pressed on at about 20 miles per hour, reaching the last of the woodland where the old world waged its silent war against the ruins of the new. It wa
s clear who was winning as I stopped in a village who's name had long since been forgotten. I could go no further in the 'Rover. The roads were little more than deadly tracks that often collapsed in on themselves if I so much as drove near to them. Underneath was a rotting maze of sewers which had crumbled from within taking much of the tarmac with them. Where there were enormous craters in the road vast bushes and weeds sprouted up, all reaching hungrily towards the sky. I would have to go on foot again.
I climbed out of the 'Rover and felt the cool touch of the rain on my skin. I closed my eyes for a moment and looked directly up, letting the droplets tickle my eyelids. It did the trick. I was more awake now and ready to go after sitting there with the heater on too high.
I refilled my water bottles and checked the rest of my pack just in case I'd missed something. I put a few extra orange sacks in the side pocket with another roll of duct tape and got rid of my rubbish. Then, after I locked up the 'Rover I set off in the direction of the city and began to look for their trail. I didn't expect it to be difficult. In the woods it was a little trickier - you couldn't always predict where someone might take a turn or decide upon a particular path over another. But in an urban environment it became more obvious. People tended to walk on the pavements despite there being no cars. Habit perhaps. They also favoured open areas out of fear and places that were familiar. Shopping streets, fast food chains, that sort of thing. They also couldn't help but touch things which was what I was counting on. The dust had settled here long ago and the slightest touch would be a huge spoor to track them with.
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