Path of Ranger: Volume 1

by RJ

  Bridgers took a second to make sure that he was fine. Then he released the clothes of the poor guy and pushed up to get on his feet. His head was slightly spinning, but mostly he felt good. A red stain appeared on the dead man’s white shirt. JB touched that spot to find a fragment that had spiked through the body. He looked at the poor stranger with gratitude, then he squeezed the stolen earphones in his pocket. A second after, the gangster turned around and walked away.

  The possibility of the tank’s explosion grew in JB's head again, so he hurried up. He wanted to run, but the feet wouldn’t move any faster. His left leg was limping, and a slight shivering appeared in both knees. Yet, no pain. JB was sure that his feet were healthy, despite that controlling them seemed an issue for the moment. Perhaps it was a shock after the fall. Soon, when the distance from the fuselage increased, the gangster looked back to see the whole picture. He noticed something from the new perspective. Those fires that seemed to him chaotic and random were made artificially. Each fire camp was surrounded by rock circle and a hand-made dispensers fed the flames with fuel. Someone had made that. And it felt like they were visiting that place permanently. There might be other surviving passengers, so there was a chance for JB to wait for them. Unless someone else had done that. And JB didn’t like the idea of a mystery combined with a full room of dead people. He had a bad feeling about that place. It was time get out of there before it was too late.

  The big guy was walking deeper and deeper into the jungle, slipping his way through the thick shrubs and tall trees. The destination wasn’t set yet, but it didn’t concern him much. There was no place to return anyway, nothing for him was left on the plane. The backpack that hung on his shoulder contained everything he needed to survive. The one question that did worry JB, though, was the mystery of where the missing passengers were.

  Meanwhile, Bridgers tried to use his cellphone. It didn’t help much, though, the signal was dead. One thing that seemed weird to him was that the device lost track of time and date. At first he thought some malfunction might have happened during the magnetic storm before the crash. But then he noticed that the other phone settings and data were accurate. That made no sense to him.

  JB wanted to see how much time he spent unconscious. Suddenly, he remembered that he had the mechanical watch. Perhaps that might still work. He took the gold watch out of the backpack. It was seven a.m. by Kiev time. That couldn’t be right. JB put the watch to his ear to check if it was ticking. It was. The next thing he looked at was the date. It was June the third. Two days passed after the crash. The gangster couldn’t believe it. Others, probably, had considered him dead and left him to rot inside the airplane. If there were any others.

  Walking through the jungle JB did a lot of thinking. There were some questions about what caused the crash, about those fire camps around the plane, and who might have built them. All those mysteries were stocking up in his head, going over and over through his mind. The rainforest seemed more dark and dangerous to him with each step. It wasn’t his territory. He was unwanted there.

  JB turned his head up to look at the sky, it was dark. Not a single star could be seen. The eerie wind blew and cold rain droplets started falling from the sky. That place was irradiating a sense of trouble. The gangster shivered.

  Drop after drop of cold water was falling on JB’s face. In a minute, the rain got so thick that it completely blocked the sight. JB couldn’t see further than five feet ahead. The wind decreased, but the rain noise that replaced it was much louder. It felt like a nightmare. It was hard to breathe. The gangster thought that all that water might choke him to death.

  In a while, the young survivor got a bit used to the situation. It was time to set the priorities. He needed a plan. First of all, he had to find a shelter. A dry and safe one, where he could warm up and wait until the storm passed. The second task was to find some other survivors. He could try to send a distress signal. The phone might work on the higher ground. The possibility was thin, but it was worthy of trying.

  Bridgers went on.

  The second hour passed since the big guy went into the jungle. He picked up a bamboo stick as a shredding instrument. His clothes were wet. And the cold got to his bones. JB's mood wasn’t the greatest, not desperate, but angry. His head still was figuring out what might have happened to the plane. Nevertheless, he accepted the crash as bad luck and was glad to be alive. It was the cold what troubled Bridgers the most. All he wanted was to get warm and have some rest.

  After a while, JB got used to such conditions, and the surrounding bothered him a bit less. The prime focus went deep into his mind. He imagined the rescuers would find them, and he would sit somewhere near a fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate. The mind kept dreaming and the feet kept walking. As the jungle went thicker JB’s concentration snapped back to reality. It wasn’t the time for relaxation, hard work had to be done to keep him alive. JB paid more attention to the details, started looking more carefully around to find something useful there. Or to avoid danger at least, it was a wild territory after all.

  At some point, the memories appeared to come to the surface. Some pieces of information that he gained through his lifetime. Anything he might know about the rainforest or wild nature. He had never had such an experience in real life, but those documentary films about the deadly animals and other hazards of the non-human world were terrifying. Most of all JB was concerned about the bugs, or the arthropods (as he learned to think about them) with all their crawling, venom, and webbing. He even didn’t care that much about snakes. Perhaps the rain could be to his advantage after all since it had cleared the area of most of the animals.

  With a new focus the strength of his steps grew. More and more anger appeared in his eyes. JB knew what to do, and he knew how to do that. The time was of essence, he couldn’t afford to lose it. There would be another day to dream about salvation from above, that night he had to save himself.

  Two more hours passed. JB walked straight all that time in hopes of finding anything helpful. At least he thought that his path was straight. The severe cold and constant movement made his limbs go numb. His hands got so cold that he couldn’t feel his fingers, never mind move them. The bamboo sticks were glued to his grip. His arm was still hacking the vegetation with the same eagerness, but the gangster wasn’t sure it would last much longer.

  It was so darker there than he could imagine in his worst nightmare. It wasn’t visual images that directed Bridgers, but intuition. He wasn’t tired, although his athletic experience told him to stop for a pause. He didn’t want to, though. JB knew that it might be a long break. His body would probably shut down right away, that would be a bad thing since he was one step away from hypothermia. The loss of consciousness would lead to pneumonia, and then to death. JB had to find a proper place for a camp before taking a break. A dry and warm one just as he planned.

  When choosing a direction to go, JB went towards the mountain, which he saw from the crash place. The place looked like some kind of an island to him. Mostly because of JB's memories from 'Lost.’ But since the airplane moved through the Atlantic Ocean just before the crash, it made sense. So the higher ground seemed an obvious choice, scoping wise. The only thing he didn’t account for was the distance. He planned to be on the top in several hours, now it felt more like a several days of travel. At one point, Bridgers realized that the mountain wasn’t an option for a quick solution. It was time to start looking for a shelter right in the jungle.

  The task wasn’t easy. The rainforest became wet and cold promptly. But there was no other obvious choice. All that time JB was tearing forward through the jungle, leaving thousands of feet of a green nightmare behind. Now he had to slow down, to search for new direction. He finally stopped to look around. The rain curtain made vision impossible, same for the noise which blocked all other sounds. JB tried to focus, to look through the rain.

  Initially, his idea seemed pretty pointless to him, but he did it anyway. He froze motionless to concentrate
on one spot in front of him. The falling droplets, millions of them, made the effort almost impossible, covering everything else behind them. It initiated something inside Bridgers, a challenge against nature. He strained even more to focus on the far view that wasn’t hidden behind vegetation.

  At once it felt like the droplets got even bigger and moved slower as they were purposely getting into his way. That was irritating. JB felt a sparkle of anger. He wasn’t adapted to stuff like that, no city person was. Bridgers took a deep breath and raised his sight up, where a partial clearance of the dark-grey sky was. He looked carefully. All of the thoughts of failure were left aside. The picture was getting clearer with each next second. The rain didn’t seem that severe anymore. Soon something came up to his sight, a dark silhouette of enormous size. He raised his view up to identify that object. It looked like a huge tree. The rest of the trees seemed like dwarfs compared to that one. It became his new direction.

  After an approximate distance to the tree was measured, JB squeezed his stick harder and rushed on. He ran through the jungle as a wild animal, avoiding the largest obstacles and smashing anything that he could. His feet were caught in the ground ivy from time to time, and he fell occasionally, but that was nothing. The hope of gaining a shelter was much stronger.

  The darkness and the speed wouldn’t let him take a good look around, to see the trees or the shrubs closely. Nevertheless, the felt some kind of hostility. A great danger was in that rainforest. JB could sense it. He wasn’t an expert in the jungles’ vegetation, but some of the plants seemed weird. Lots of the twigs were too thick and had sharp thorns on it. One wrong step could be fatal. With all that net-like ground ivy and flesh-cutting branches, some of the plants seemed predatory. The deeper the jungle was, the more JB hated it.

  The big guy kept running through the dark jungle. It was all the same: a thicket of plants, the cold, the rain. The process of cutting through became a small craft of JB's. His concentration of the path was holding. But some issues with his vision appeared over the time. Everything looked similar there, so eventually JB’s sight went blurring. Soon crisp silhouettes of plants, rocks, and other objects smudged all together. He lost his focus. But he was afraid to stop, the tiredness could drain his last muscle power. If so, Bridgers would be stuck there for good. He couldn’t stop.

  The giant tree was close, just a little more to go through. At least, JB was telling himself so. The man’s eyesight kept getting worse. All he saw by that time was a dark trace of that bamboo stick of his. Vertigo consumed his head. His thinking ability descended too. A break was vital, but his feet wouldn’t stop, not even slow down.

  Soon Bridgers realized that he had lost control over his body. It felt strange to him since he had a great deal of self-control. Something made him do that, something interfered with his consciousness.

  His speed was impressive but too high to control the movement. The body can’t move without the brain’s supervision. And his mind was certainly dealing with something else at the moment. In few a seconds, vertigo got interrupted by a sharp pain in his right leg. JB had stumbled on a large root of a tree. He snapped back to consciousness in a few feet from that spot, lying in a puddle of dirt. Half of his face was drawn in filth, and he didn’t felt like getting up at once. The pain in his leg was bearable, but mostly because of its freezing temperature. He stopped after all.

  Thousands of large droplets were falling on the puddle's surface where JB lay. They were continually splashing the water and dirt flew straight into his face. The mud got everywhere: in his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Breathing seemed impossible. He had to put himself together, to get back moving.

  Shortly after the fall Bridgers felt better. He rolled on his back and moved the backpack aside from under him. He opened his eyes to look at the clouds that produced that enormous mass of falling water. That rain was at least a half of JB’s trouble, but, still, he admired the beauty of it. He was lying in the dirt preparing to get up. When Bridgers raised his head to look around, something strange caught his attention. There was no thicket in front of him, yet there was plenty behind. The nearest ground was covered with an extensive root network. And not a single tree was there. Except one, the very tree JB was seeking to get to. He looked up to see that magnificent giant. It overcame any expectations.

  Jerry got up. When standing, his right leg hurt a lot more. Nevertheless, he didn’t care about that at the moment. The tree occupied his focus entirely. When he had looked at that gigantic thing enough, he walked towards it. Limping up through the dirt puddles his gait looked quite clumsy.

  The overall structure of the tree resembled an oak. It had a similar silhouette, a mighty thick trunk and a wide spread of branches and leaves. Yet, it was much greater than an oak. The branches started pretty close to the ground, not further than ten feet or so, and the lower layer of those lay almost parallel to the ground. It reminded JB a mushroom with all those dense leaves as a solid cap.

  When coming closer, he got caught up so much in exploring that he even dismissed the absence of the rain there. The sound of it still was there, but it didn’t pour on Bridgers anymore. Dry grass was under his feet. He looked back, the rain was still on, and never eased up. JB couldn’t believe that even such dense foliage could keep so much of water in it. It was another mystery that he would deal with. But another time, perhaps.

  When done with his observation, the big guy paid attention to himself. The amazement on his face switched to discontent after examining his own appearance. He was wet, the dirt got everywhere; under clothes, in pockets, in cornrow braids. His t-shirt had tears in it, but his pants were thick enough to not suffer much. Each uncovered part of his body had scratches and bruises on the skin. Nevertheless, he didn’t feel that bad. Just needed to get some warmth.

  There was lots of dry wood around. Jerry gathered some bark, twigs and dead leaves in a fire pit. It looked pretty solid to him. The only thing that concerned him was how to light it up. Then he remembered the gift from the bartender, the branded gas lighter. He took the thing from the bag. To his surprise, the backpack was dry inside. The first several tries of lighting the fire failed. But with JB’s insistence the lighter worked after all. Soon he had a sweet heat source to rest around.

  The night went deeper and deeper, the rain kept going. Jerry sat near the fire, with his back resting on the tree’s trunk. He watched the jungle for a while. From where he was then the rain didn’t look that menacing and aggressive. It seemed comforting and pleasant now. The heat protected JB from the wind, he wasn’t cold anymore. He took off his clothes and shoes to put them near the fire for drying up. Then he paid attention to the injured foot, the toes hurt but weren’t broken. As always JB was glad for his choice of footwear. Those gumshoes could really take a hit.

  Each minute spent in warmth brought Jerry more and more peace. The pain got dimmer. And the sound of nature was lulling him to sleep. Everything seemed better now. JB passed out.

  THEY WERE 33

  Two days before…

  A headache. A weak, but very palpable headache was the first thing El felt when she awakened. The girl couldn’t think, her eyes were closed, and she didn’t realize yet that she had woken up after the crash. There was no clarity in her mind, no thoughts, just a soft continuous tinkling persisting in her head. She finally woke up.

  El was confused, she didn’t get where she was or what had happened. She couldn’t even fully feel her body. Something alien and irritating started calling for her unfocused attention. A soft light flashing reached her optic nerves through her closed eyelids.

  The consciousness was gradually coming back. She felt it was time to get up. With a bit of struggle, El opened her eyes. It was hard to accomplish but she gave her best try. Her eyelids were shaking and didn’t want to listen, perhaps it was her subconscious that wasn’t ready to face reality yet. Soon, her eyelashes went separating and her vision returned. The picture still was unclear, she needed time to adjust to the situation. There wa
sn’t nearly enough light in that pitch blackness. There were some random light flashes that occasionally emerged only to disperse just as easily. She needed some more time.

  Within a few minutes of staying still the sight of the girl, along with her other senses, fully restored. El took a good look at those flashes that had wakened her. The source was not far, several feet away, it was a short circuit from swinging cables that hung out of the ceiling. For some reason, El felt relieved.

  She remembered Tina, who was supposed to be somewhere around. The light from that sole dim source didn't nearly suffice to have a clear view. El moved up on the cushion to feel the next seat with her fingers. She found the bag, it was right there. After some time of searching inside the blond took out her cell phone to use it as a flashlight. This new light source opened the nearest space to her. El looked at Tina. The brunette was unconscious.

  Seeing her friend like that made El worry. Tina kept deadly silent, not a single noise from her. For a moment, El thought that her friend didn’t breathe at all. She scanned her carefully to see if there were any injuries. Tina seemed fine. El almost calmed down, but then she found a big bruise on the other side of Tina’s forehead. A large stain of blood stretched from it, throughout the head to the neck. It looked like she was hit by something heavy. El looked down to find a suitcase at Tina’s feet. There was luggage lying everywhere, this one could have fallen from the shelf above. The injury didn’t seem deep though, several stitches would fix everything.

  El put her hand on Tina’s shoulder to give her a small shake. She leaned towards her ear to say something.