by Nathan Wolf
"We don't have a chamber pot," Alice scanned the contents of our tent for confirmation.
"Oh, no! Not that, that'll be gross," her eyes widened in alarm as I pointed to the stainless steel cooking pot.
"You have three choices: Pee in the pot, pee in your pants, if you wore any, or go pee with the pythons," I knew her dilemma wasn't funny, but I couldn't keep from chuckling.
Holding the flashlight aloft for illumination, I watched as she straddled our improvised toilet and squatted down. Alice let out a plaintive "yelp!" when her bare bottom made contact with the ice-cold stainless steel rim.
"Squat, don't sit, unless you want a frozen fanny," I let out a sympathetic laugh.
Alice made a face, stuck her tongue out, hunched down, and with a little grunt kicked her sprinkler system into high gear.
I scrambled to get dressed in the near freezing air as my scrotum tried to pull everything inside of me in an effort to keep the family jewels snug and warm.
My nuts were responding to the same instinctive response to the chill air which caused Alice's nipples to become stiff and hard when cold. Her body tried to protect the twin sisters from getting frostbite by increasing the blood supply to her milk outlets.
All of which made summer trips to the frozen food section of supermarkets such an interesting experience for voyeurs. Humans are hardwired to stay sexy and productive for as long as possible. How else could we have managed to survive the ice age? At least, that was my theory.
When I came across something, which sparked my curiosity, I often concocted a theory to answer the question, "Why is this or that like it is?"
I never bothered using Google or Bing to find out if my guesses were correct. If they were? Great. But, if they were wrong it would be proof I needed to get a life and stop wasting my time pretending to be smart.
Frankly, I wasn't eager to find out if I was expending brain cells binging on bullshit.
I was more awake than I wanted to be, so I left Alice to her business, retrieved my clothes, got dressed and headed down to the tunnel entrance. I wanted to check things out and snag some fuel for a hot cup of tea. Memo to self: I want caffeine with attitude. Make sure future survival kits include instant coffee.
The tunnel's entrance was wider and deeper than the rest of the cave and it was a relief to be able to stand upright without banging my head on a rock ceiling. While the air in our cavern was almost freezing, the temperature at the entrance was absolutely arctic. The snow trapped in the crowns of the saplings sparkled and glowed in the light of my torch. The storm had done an excellent job sealing our stone shelter from the weather, maybe too good of a job. The air in the foyer was as still as death. I grabbed the base of one of the smaller saplings, pulled it toward me, and pushed it out in an effort to break open an air passage. I could drag the tree inward without too much effort. But, when I tried to force it outward I could make no headway, even when I pushed with all my might.
It was like trying to push a pillow into a sand dune. I tried another sapling. Second verse same as the first.
I gave the base of each sapling a push. None of them moved. Our shield had become an airless prison. It was unlikely we were in any short-term danger of running out of oxygen. The real threat was being poisoned by carbon dioxide. CO2 becomes mildly toxic at a concentration around a percent or so. Eventually the atmosphere in the cave would go bad and we would die of carbon dioxide poisoning long before we ran out of oxygen. We needed to open an air passage to the outside. Pronto!
"Alice, can you give me a hand down here, I think we have a problem with our air supply," I leaned against the cave walls and used my feet to try to move another small tree. Zilch, Zero. Nada. The damn thing might as well have been a parking meter planted in concrete.
Leaning against the rock wall of the entrance, I caught my breath. My guess? Our sapling shield lay buried under the mother of all snowdrifts.
Chapter 16 – (Return to index)
The dark wall of snow sealing the entrance of the tunnel sparkled and glistened in the moving beams of our flashlights.
Alice paused for a moment to wipe the sweat from her forehead. After digging into the embankment for almost an hour, we had almost nothing to show for our efforts.
Time for a break," Alice leaned her back against the rock wall of the tunnel and rested her head against the stony surface as she pushed several stray strands of blond hair out of her eyes.
"It should be about sunrise," I glanced at my wristwatch and back at the snow, searching for any sign of light from the outside. A faint glow would tell us where the snow cover might be thinner than the rest. No glimmer of light entered.
With a sigh, I leaned against the wall next to Alice and took a deep breath followed by another. My fingertips tingled with the same feeling I got when my arm falls asleep.
The blizzard and the drifting snow did an excellent job blocking the entrance. Digging in the drift would have been easier if it were not for the tangled branches of the young Aspens. The barren foliage and sticks acted like rebar in a reinforced concrete retaining wall. Running the Boston Marathon would have been easier compared to digging an air passage between all the woodwork.
"Dennis, it's getting hard to catch my breath," Alice's chest heaved as she inhaled a long breath. The annoying headache dancing in the shadows stopped hiding and announced its presence in a wave of pulsating pain keeping time with my beating heart.
We were on the leading edge of CO2 poisoning and like the canaries in a coalmine; we didn't have any place to go.
I kept pawing at the snow as I removed one handful of white stuff after another. I would dig a little and stop for a minute or two to catch my breath and dig some more.
Somewhere within the recess of my mind alarm bells sounded. A tiny part of my brain jumped up and down trying to get my attention. All rather annoying and I told myself to settle down and take a nap. A nap would be so wonderful right about now.
I rested my head on the arm I used for digging and took another breath. I will just rest here for a moment. Warm and cozy, a snow cocoon surrounded me in my new tunnel. Do butterflies dream when they sleep?
"Dennis! Dennis! Move. I got it," Alice's hands shook my body as she pulled me backwards toward her.
"Whatcha doing? This is no time to cut firewood," I rested against the warm snow as Alice crawled past me with a saw in her hands and took my her place where I had been digging.
"Son of a bitch! Grunt. God damn it! Ugg!" Clumps of snow mixed with twigs, branches and sticks flew out from behind her.
"Whatcha doing?" I asked again. My voice called from a million miles away.
"I'm cutting my way through the fuckin' snow. I'm not, awh fuck it, I'm not, God damn it! digging," she kicked a huge snow block bristling with sticks and branches out of the hole followed by more cursing and more snow and wood.
My field of vision kept getting smaller and narrower. How strange? I found myself in a tunnel looking at myself in a tunnel. I wanted to tell Alice to stop making so much noise and let me sleep but my voice was lost in the fog filling my head.
So warm, so restful. I closed my eyes in a cozy blanket of sleep when a blast of freezing air hit me in the face. What the hell? I inhaled a satisfying breath of fresh freezing air and another. I could feel the fog in my head clearing each time I inhaled.
Son of a bitch, she had done it. She had fucking done it! She opened a passageway to the outside.
Driven by the blizzard's gale force winds, a tsunami of sub-zero temperatures cascaded through the opening carved by Alice. Whatever body heat and warmth we retained under our clothing was swept away like sandcastles in the rising tide of Arctic air.
"We've got to warm, up" I put my arm around Alice's shoulders and pulled her close to me. Her body was shivering and trembling as much as mine.
Prolonged exposure to elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide wrecked havoc with our bodies and our minds. Trying to complete a thought was like wading through an ocean of mola
sses. I felt like I had been driven over by a Greyhound Bus.
From what I understood about CO2 toxicity, which was almost nothing, it would take Alice and I at least 24 hours for our systems to restore a healthy oxygen balance as we purged the excess carbon dioxide from our bodies.
With each breath we took, our breathing became a little bit easier. Trying to stand up was a different story. I made it to my knees twice before wobbling and falling over. Alice didn't fare much better, she swayed sideways and toppled over like a tree in a hurricane when she tried to rise to her feet. We were a mess.
Finally we got ourselves into sync and helped each other climb to our feet. Like two drunken sailors, we staggered off toward our tent with the beams of our flashlights leading the way.
A fuzzy part of my brain was engaged in trying to do a basic risk assessment. The math was so simple my foggy brain could do the calculations:
Hypothermia + CO2 poisoning = Death
"My God, I'm' freezing," Alice's teeth chattered in time with her shivering body. The sweat, which had drenched us while we were frantically digging ourselves out of the cavern, became a swarm of leeches sucking the heat out of our bodies.
"We gotta lose these wet clothes before we freeze to death," my teeth clattered like an old-fashioned typewriter. I stuttered and stammered so much I had to repeat every word two or three time.
Inside our tent, I ignored the chill as I raced to disrobe. My tee-shirt was drenched. I stripped it off and used it like a towel to dry myself off. I knelt naked next to Alice, removed her clothing, and toweled her shivering body off the best I could. I glanced at my watch; it was a few minutes after nine o'clock in the morning.
Without another word between us we slipped into the frigid sleeping bag and held each other as tightly as we could. For all the warmth we were generating, we might as well have been two ice cubes at the bottom of a martini glass.
Our hands caressed each other's bodies and bare bottoms as we used friction to warm the surface of our skin. After several minutes our shivering abated as we exchanged body heat.
Alice's body relaxed as her tension evaporated. We held each other in our arms as a deep restful calm surrounded us in the warm and comforting cocoon of slumber. I smiled. Butterflies do dream when they sleep.
Chapter 17– (Return to index)
Morpheus, the God of dreams wrapped us in a cocoon of dreams. But, when he did he forgot to include a bathroom. I awoke with a four-Alarm "urgent need to go" moment as my bladder trembled in an effort to hold back a flood of biblical proportions. It would be wonderful to wake up nice and slow like I used to do in my younger days.
I used to enjoy the delightful transition from slumber to wakefulness. No such luck. Personal plumbing issues is now at the top of my morning's To-Do List.
I groaned as I rolled away from Alice and felt around under the heap of clothes I used as a makeshift pillow. I breathed a sigh of relief when my fingers found my flashlight.
My sigh turned into a groan when I saw that each LED bulb glowed no brighter than a dying firefly.
Damn it! I forgot to turn it off before I fell asleep. In an instinctive reaction, I shook the flashlight as if that would be enough to wake up a few extra sleeping electrons. I examined my light for the traitor it had become. The Chinese manufactured flashlight carried a guaranteed battery life of 25 hours. No way the charge should deplete itself after a few hours of sleep. Friggin' imports. My little light is almost useless. A dozen lightning bugs would shed more light.
Hauling myself out of the sleeping bag turned out to be a real chore. My stiff muscles protested every move I made and my back was killing me. Payback for not having an air mattress. The atmosphere in the tent was rather brisk, a polite way of saying, "too damn cold."
First things first, I crawled naked past our sauce pan, a.k.a., chamber pot. Screw it! I didn't want to bother cleaning our makeshift toilet, besides we would need later to melt snow to replace our drink water. At the door to our tent I climbed to my knees. An upset bride once asked a famous advice columnist, "My husband insists on urinating in our back yard. Why does he do that?"
Her answer became the stuff of legend, "Because he can."
I shuffled forward and, plumbing in hand, sprayed the dry dusty ground of our cave with a monsoon of yellow rain, the first moisture in more than a hundred years.
Lighting a cigarette and holding my prick in my right hand, I glanced at my wristwatch. The time glowed a few minutes after 11:30 in the morning. Huh?
We slept for less than three hours? Then I noticed tomorrow's date in the tiny square on the dial's surface.
Holy shit! We slept around the clock and then some.
While I got busy irrigating the powder dry soil, goose bumps were busy marching in lock-step across my naked body.
Once upon a time those little bumps at the base of our body hairs served an evolutionary purpose. They helped us fluff up our fur to better insulate us from the cold. When we were threatened, the same fluffing mechanism raised our body hair and turned our ancestors into instant Chia pets, making us appear a bit larger to potential adversaries or hungry predators. That was then and this is now.
In the eons since, we’ve lost most of our fur and the bumps no longer keep us warm and fluffy. Instead, the zillions of goose pimples give our skin the appearance of used sandpaper. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?
Shaking the last drops off the end of my prick, I collected my thoughts.
At least I had one thing going for me; things could only improve. There is no place to go except up when you start your day naked and freezing your ass off while pissing in a pitch-black rattlesnake den. Right?
After taking one last drag from my cigarette, I used my thumb and forefinger to flip the butt away from me. Like a spent tracer round, the red streak sailed off into blackness before bursting into a shower of sparks as it bounced off the low ceiling of the cavern. Nice, a mini-fireworks display.
---
"Dennis, I can't believe you're so careless! How could you forget to turn off your light?" Alice stuffed her shirt into the waistband of her pants and glowered in my direction.
"I'm sorry. It's not like I left the damn thing on to piss you off. It was an accident," I finished lacing up my boots.
"Well, it was a stupid thing to do. Now we're down to one flashlight and one lantern," Alice brushed loose strands of hair out of her eyes.
Resisting the temptation to respond with a snappy comeback I only muttered under my breath, "Thank you, Captain Obvious."
"What did you say?"
"I said we need to get something to eat. We're hungry and cranky," I picked up two military style MREs.
"We have two choices. Chicken Pesto Pasta or Beef Ravioli. What's your pleasure?"
“Does one of them contain flashlight batteries?” Alice examined the MREs.
“How about this one? Maybe it’s a misprint. I’m sure they met to say, Chicken Pesto and Battery Pasta,” Alice shook the MRE.
I clenched my jaw and did a slow count to ten.
“Alice, you’ve already plowed this field. Give it a rest,” I zipped up my jacket, and picked up the Rayovac lantern along with our survival saw as I crawled toward the tent opening.
“God damn it! Don’t you walk out on me when I’m talking to you,” Alice called after me.
I stopped and turned back to face her.
“First of all, I’m not walking, I’m crawling. Secondly, you’re not talking to me. You are cranking and right now you sound like an old, ah, err, oh never mind.” Better my words remain unspoken then to spend the rest of my life apologizing.
“If we get stuck in the fucking dark, it will be your fault,” Alice growled.
I turned back to face Alice and took a long deep breath and did another slow ten-count.
“You can vent anytime you want and I will listen. Once. But, I draw the line at recycling. Like I said, you’ve already plowed this field. What’s the point of doing it again?” I search
ed Alice's eyes for any sign she understood what I was saying.
“Dennis, you don't understand. I hate being in the dark. Because of your carelessness, we're down to a single flashlight and one Lantern. That's not much of a safety margin,” Alice crossed her arms, shook her head side to side, and frowned.
“Alice, mistakes happen. When they do, we need to build a bridge and get over ’em. Look around you, there's nobody keeping score. You and I are the only living creatures within earshot. The snakes? They’re as deaf as doornails. They’re not listening, and they don’t care,” I gave Alice a hug and kissed her cheek.
“I’m frightened,” Alice’s frown melted as her lower lip started to tremble and tears appeared at the corners of her eyes.
“So am I. So, too, am I. Trust me, we’ll get out of this together. I don’t know how, but we will survive,” I said with more optimism than conviction as I gave her another hug.
Nature has a superb sense of timing. As our embrace ended, a faint glimmer of slowly brightening light radiated from the entrance to our cave.
Something was happening.
Chapter 18 – (Return to index)
Alice and I hurried toward the source of illumination like moths to a flame. A glimmering halo of white light surrounded the hole Alice cut through the snowdrift at the tunnel's entrance. I crawled into the air shaft that she excavated and punched through a thin cap of frost at the end and was instantly dazzled by blinding sunshine.
"Come here and take a look, Alice, you aren't going to believe this," I shouted over my shoulder as I emerged into the open air. The blizzard had passed us by and the heavy overcast it left in its wake was riddled with expanding patches of brilliant blue sky. The sun had broken through the clouds at the center of the largest patch of sky and blazed in magnificent glory.
