by Peter John
“Shit! Petros, I nearly crapped myself,” exclaimed Sarah. “Warn a person before you do that again.” Laughing, as much to relieve my own tension as at her comment, I hunkered down to our previous position.
“Sorry about that, without decent weapons, we have to pretend our bite is bigger than our bark, and our bark has to be the meanest bark in the neighborhood. We should probably get some sleep. You can sleep first, I will wake you later and you can guard for a while. I don’t know how long this simulation will continue the dark cycle, but I’m sure that won’t be our only visitor tonight.”
I was wrong. It seemed our strange disturbance had warned all potential predators to stay away and so we had a relatively unmolested night if you discount the mosquitoes.
Morning came with a suddenness. One minute I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face and the next, shadows of trees and foliage emerged into view around me. Sarah had woken me a few hours before to take the last guard shift. I had gotten little sleep overall, and I was feeling really hungry. I wondered if we should eat or if we could make the rendezvous without that necessity. Thinking about necessity, I hadn’t needed to visit the W.C. since I arrived. I guessed my body was being cared for, while my mind wandered around in never-never swamp. Something I was grateful for. If the military had simulations like this, they would be ecstatic.
I turned to wake Sarah. She was lying in the fetal position on the vegetation. Appearing as a huge lump of clay in the early dawn light. The muddy strands of her hair sticking out in every direction. Honestly, not the best way to make an impression, but then I doubted I was any better. Touching her shoulder, she startled awake. Glaring bleary-eyed at me. “Coffee and breakfast are served, Ma’am,” I said solemnly, trying to keep a straight face. Blinking mud and debris from her face Sarah groaned and did a stretch. Now we may have been covered in mud, but when Sarah stretches, she incorporates her whole body. Both hands stretched up and her mud encrusted chest thrust out. It was a sight to behold. She noticed me staring and covered her chest.
“Pervert!” she muttered, and I flushed. Yep, Caught. What can I say? I’m a guy.
Turning around, I said, “We should get moving before the predators of this place make us into breakfast. Isn’t it strange that everything else around here has hunger issues, and yet we don’t even get room service? I think I will lodge a complaint when we get back.” My corny joke fell flat and didn’t work as a deflection either. “If we get back,” Sarah intoned ominously.
“Oh my God!” Sarah exclaimed. I spun to see her cause for concern. She was staring at her arm.
“What?” I was still fuzzy from lack of sleep.
“Look, Petros, my arm is healed. Oh, and my leg too. It doesn’t feel painful anymore.” I moved over and wiped away the mud and protective layers I had put on the previous evening. Sure enough, it was completely healed. I even squeezed it for good measure but she showed no signs of discomfort. Her arm though, was still a little tender but the bite marks had healed over. I couldn’t be certain, but it seemed like there were some scars. I wondered if those would remain.
“Those must be special healing plants” I exclaimed. “Or else my spit has regenerative properties.” This brought a wry smile from both of us and she playfully punched my arm.
“I feel so refreshed and energetic. Do you think this simulation recharges and heals people overnight?” Pondering her words, I thought about it. Many of the Role-playing game’s I had played had that benefit. Especially if you rested, then you recovered health and stamina. It might explain why I didn’t feel so energetic having stayed up for most of the night.
“I think you are onto something there, come on, let’s get to that beacon. Maybe our controllers will reward us with information if we get there. My direction light is blinking faster, almost as if it is urging me on.”
Sarah nodded. “Mine too. At least we don’t have to hobble all day.” “Ah yes, now you mention it, I think we need to weaponized you.” I cleared the barrier I had constructed during the night. Some of the sticks I had used to support the structure were long and sharp. I broke off excess branches and had three relatively long stabbing sticks. Each about three feet long. The points weren’t exactly pencil sharp, but the ends were tapered where I had broken them off. Sarah meanwhile had taken off her makeshift bandages and gladly accepted two of the spears. I kept one and gathered up my staff.
Looking out at the swampy terrain I decided we needed snowshoes if we wanted to get anywhere, so with our bedding and the rest of the sticks I had used for the barrier we sat down and made the shoes. It turns out Sarah was better at this than I, and with deft hands, she had her snowshoes done in half the time I took. She then helped me and we made off towards the rapidly blinking light of our internal compass.
Sarah was perky and full of energy and I was lethargic and awkward. It made for slow progress. I wasn’t usually this moody, but the sleepless night was affecting me badly. After about an hour, I began to lag. Just focusing on dragging one mud encrusted foot after the other. We had spotted a lot of animal tracks, but besides a few alligators, lizards and fast furry things that didn’t keep still long enough for us to identify, we saw nothing that posed a danger to us. So when the strike happened, I hardly noticed except for a burning sensation on my calf. As the burning intensified, I swatted at it carelessly, thinking I was being molested by another biting insect. With all the mud and leeches on my body, I hardly cared. Except that the burning pain felt like fire.
“Sarah” I croaked. “I think something has bitten me.” She turned around now, about three or four meters in front of me.
“My leg, it's burning like fire. Something bit me.” It was then I noticed the viper.
My heart nearly stopped beating in shock. Its triangle head and forked tongue probing forward in threatening gestures. The body coiled and writhing to strike again. It looked like a Cottonmouth viper and it could be the only reason my leg was burning. With the surge of adrenaline came clarity, and I used the sticks I had to poke at it. Its strike was fast. Lightning quick. The stick jarred in my hand as it struck, then seeing it had an escape route as Sarah approached, it turned and slithered off into the mire.
Gasping I sat down in the mud and tried to clean the area on my leg where it had bitten. The two puncture marks were clear on the right side of my calf, bleeding freely and the burning sensation was extreme like someone was forcing a hot poker into my skin, branding my flesh.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I hissed. “That was a viper.” Sarah had come up to me and was staring wide-eyed at the bite.
“Quick,” she said, “we need to make a tourniquet.”
Through gritted teeth, I said, “First check that the snake has gone, and there aren’t any other bastards about. Knowing my luck a pack of wild MOFO’s will attack us at any moment.” Sarah beat the bush around us and made sure nothing was hiding in the undergrowth. She then got some vines and a short stick. Platting the vines into a rudimentary rope. She placed it around my thigh and using the stick, began to twist until the blood flowing from the bite slowed to a trickle.
Lying back as she did this, I wracked my brain on what I was supposed to do when bitten by a snake. I know everyone says, “Keep calm!” Whoever came up with that ridiculous notion had not had a snakebite before.
“You mustn’t suck it,” I said, and Sarah’s ministrations stopped, and through my grimace, I looked up at her. She was smiling and looking down at my nether regions. Realizing what I had just blurted out, I tried to push my loincloth down to cover my jewels.
“You big dope,” Sarah said, smirking. “I doubt they designed the simulation for THAT.”
Huffing a strangled laugh, I mumbled, “I didn’t mean that, I said 'don’t suck it'. 'Don’t suck the bite'. People used to cut the wound and suck out the poison. These days they say 'don’t do it' as it makes it worse. However
squeezing and extracting the venom can drastically reduce the affliction.”
“Wow, look at me,” Mocked Sarah, “all hoity-toity and proper definitions and all that. Look, I’m just a Jarhead. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. How can I help you? Do you need me to suck it?”
I looked at her through my scrunched eyes and saw the wry smile. She was still trying to deflect me from the pain.
“How often have I had this kind of conversation?” I thought aloud and burst into manic laughter. Sarah joined me, and we both laughed off the tension.
“Okay clean all venom from the area. Try squeezing the wound to extract as much poison as you can and then let’s get out of here. I for one, am sick and tired of this swamp.”
With determination from Sarah and a lot of squealing from me, we did it. I could feel that something was wrong inside me though. The burning was not localized and seemed to spread up my leg with each awkward step. It labored my breathing and my body was sweating profusely. The tourniquet seemed to be working, so at least the poison was draining slowly into my system. Knowing it was a viper meant the poison was cytotoxic, so it would damage my cells in the general area of the wound more than anything else. It would not paralyze my nervous system but could affect my heart and internal organs.
There was nothing more to be done about it. I wanted to reach the destination without dying. We had to continue on. It was now my turn to hobble along as we made our way through the swamp. I struggled onward, discarding the snowshoes, as they didn’t work while limping. Sarah was next to me the whole time, dragging me, supporting me and sometimes pushing me. When the way was blocked, we went around or crashed on through. How many hours passed I could not say.
At last we came to a wide-open area devoid of trees. It stretched out for miles before us. A vast expanse of water with islands and sand-banks interspersed at random intervals. On either side of us were great clumps of reeds and vegetation and various muddy banks. I grimaced as the many alligators sunning themselves noticed us and slid ominously into the murky waters.
Our blinking beacon showed an island about half a click out. It would require a swim. A swim through alligator-infested waters. Perhaps it was the last straw of this obstacle or the effects of the poison and pain. I just sat down and wanted to give up. My wound was leaking blood. I needed to release the tourniquet, but I just didn’t care anymore. If I died, then maybe this simulation could end. Maybe I could find some peace. Maybe, just maybe I could find my eternal rest.
A sharp slap to my face made me come back to my senses. Sarah was shaking me after slapping me and holding some water in the cup of her palm. I sipped it with effort, and the cooling effect of the water sliding down my parched throat helped me gather my thoughts. I then indicated a large tree we had passed.
“Get some of those leaves and see if you can use them like a cup. I will need a lot more water and that will hold more volume than your hand will.”
“Also, we should probably not be drinking this water directly, but if you can make a sand sieve, using one of our loincloths, it might be okay.”
“See Petros, this is what I mean. All this survival stuff comes naturally to you, where did you learn it? You didn’t tell me last night. And by the way, there is no chance I’m taking off my loincloth, so we will have to use yours.”
Whether it was my condition or the harmless nature of her request, I told her. What harm could it do? It had started over 30 years ago anyway. Besides, I retired from the service more than five years before. There were no dangerous secrets anymore.
“Well, I was Special Forces in South Africa a long time ago.” I said, “After the ‘New South Africa’ fiasco, you know they rescinded apartheid law. It changed how the military operated and they disbanded my unit. I left before the fall and the British government took me in and then later Uncle Sam hired me as a consultant. It was a long time ago, and I had to hide my identity and origins. The US gave me a new identity and a new life. I retired about five years ago, after active service and consultancy for the best part of 25 years, but the training becomes part of you. Well, you know that, you were in the Marines, so you understand.”
Sarah eyed me speculatively. “Well damn! I think I’ve heard of you. You were helping the spooks in the Sandbox.” Sarah exclaimed, using the US term for Iraq. “There was some Rumint about an ex-South African Spec-ops consultant. They were never clear about what you did exactly, but I know some Delta Force guys, and they said you were a real bastard and they owed their lives to your training and intel dumps. I always thought it was strange because I never even thought a country like South Africa would have a special forces unit, not only that, but in the US military you either trained people or became part of active service, but seldom is there someone training others while still actively operating. Come to think of it, wasn’t your call sign… what was it again? I remember thinking it was the weirdest call sign ever. Oh, yes! It was Armpit.”
I smiled and then cracked up into a laughing coughing fit. After a short time I got my laughing under control and trying to downplay my notoriety, “Yep, you may have stumbled onto one of my secrets, and the name was 'Oom Piet’ which means ‘Uncle Peter’ but some Texan officer got the accent all wrong on the Afrikaans pronunciation, so when he said it, it sounded like ‘Arm Pit’. You know how the military is, that’s the definition of how nicknames are born. So I became Armpit. Although definitely, I was much less involved than what any of those rumors suggest.”
“Right!” She said, drawing out the 'i’ sound, “So what did you do exactly? And what was so special it needed a name change? You aren’t some kind of assassin are you?”
And there it was, the one question they programmed me to never answer. Deflecting again, I said, “You see that driftwood on those banks? Do you think you could collect the bigger logs together and we make a raft? I for one am not keen on getting my arse eaten by alligators.”
“That’s a brilliant idea, Petros,” she smiled, “… or should I also call you Armpit? Don’t think I haven’t noticed you avoiding my questions again. But for now, I think we really need to get out of here. Have you noticed that the blinking beacon is blinking twice as fast?” Sarah was right; the blinking was so fast it was hardly discernible as separate pulses. Whatever event was about to happen, it would happen soon, definitely today. I didn’t want to stick around to find out what that would be, I wanted out of this Sim.
A while later an outraged scream echoed through the area. It was followed by splashing which startled me out of my reverie. I sat up and looked for Sarah immediately. With relief I saw her walking along the waters edge, dragging some driftwood stumps along the shore. I continued to look for the disturbance further out into the body of water. To my horror, someone, perhaps another player, was in a life and death struggle with a group of alligators, right in the middle of the lake.
His screams were gurgles now, as several of the beasts had his limbs and were not giving him any time to surface. And then suddenly it was deathly quiet.
The swirls of the alligators as they continued to shred their victim under water rippled the surface. It was both eerie and appalling. A small pool of dissipating blood the only memorial of his passing. I wanted to act, to do something, rush to rescue him. So what if my leg was messed up? He needed help. I could see the horror I was experiencing mirrored on Sarah’s face too. She was staring out over the ominous waters at the island we were supposed to meet and silent tears were falling from her miasmic stare.
“Sarah!” I called, “Sarah, don’t think about it. Suck it up. Whoever he was, he was just like us and they will revive him. Remember this is just a simulation.”
She turned to me then, coming back to herself stifling a sniff. “That could have been me, Petros, yesterday, that could have been me.” I could see that Sarah, as tough as she was, was also beginning to fray. These aliens knew
how to push our buttons. She turned to look at the spot where the man had disappeared. He must have climbed into the water a few hundred meters to our left and made for the blinking light without considering the alligators. It was a horrible way to go. I knew exactly how it felt to be dismembered by critters. We would likely join his fate if we didn’t get a decent size raft going. We bent to the task with determination until finally we had something that would float us across the water.
Picking the longest stumps, easily two and three meters long, I used them as the keel, placing the other branches perpendicular to create our raft.
The raft was possibly the ugliest, most useless looking floating device I ever had the misfortune to associate myself with, but needs must when the Devil drives, and that blinking light had suddenly become amber. Still blinking at lightning fast speeds. We were under the pump, being driven beyond our limits to achieve the impossible. My heart was so labored, my leg burned with every twitch, but I dug deep and persevered.
Sarah helped a lot. She was strong, strong-willed and determined. Some of those logs and branches she brought were waterlogged and heavy, but she pushed herself and eventually collected enough that could serve our purpose. The whole time we labored, the alligators observed us. Some would drift near but kept their distance. Sarah would poke at them with her sharp spear to discourage them. The biggest ones were happy to stay in the deeper waters, knowing it was just a matter of time before we ventured into their domain.
The design of the raft was interesting. Besides the usual flat base, I had made an ‘A’ frame, using groupings of logs, tied together with vines, all meeting, and crossing at the apex of the raft. There we bound them and inserted a rudimentary mast. At this pinnacle, we built a sort-of crow's nest. The place that sailors of old sailing ships used to climb to, to get a good view of the surrounding seas. This one wasn’t high, perhaps one and a half meters from the base. Then using interwoven vines, twigs, and sapling bark we build two nets that could hold us. The raft would keep us afloat, but the alligators would swarm it; Thus, if we were mounted above them, out of harms way, they could not get at us. It was a gamble, but we were out of time and there were no other options. This would have to do.
