by Zach Neal
An hour before dark, Pat came and got him.
“Come on. There’s a big confab. All concerned.” Pat spoke in a kind of short-hand sometimes.
“What now?”
Any fool could see they had too many men, not enough trucks, not enough water, and not enough petrol. They probably had barely enough food. It was the usual equation. The only question was who got to walk and who got to ride.
“That, my young fellow, is what we are going to decide.”
***
It had been a busy day and Sergeant Major was looking forward to a quiet evening with a bottle and a good book or something. He might put a record on the gramophone, although he had received one or two complaints about it. He was lucky to rate a room of his own.
His desk telephone rang.
With a glance at the clock, he picked up the piece.
“Yes? Bullen here.” Even as the words came out, he mentally kicked himself.
It was probably Monty himself, and if so, that was no way to talk to an unknown caller.
A cocky, opinionated bantam rooster of a man, Monty was getting the job done, and in a way that Sergeant Major Bullen thoroughly approved of—by not standing for slackers and keeping people on their toes.
The thoughts flashed through him in a second.
“Ah, Sergeant Major Bullen. It’s Haldimand over at S.A.S.”
It took a second, and then Bullen remembered.
“Ah. Oh, yes.”
“I’m afraid it’s not much. Foster is overdue. We have a half a dozen that are missing.”
“Ah.” Shit, in other words.
Bullen’s thoughts turned to Mariyah Khoudry.
Damn.
What in the hell are we going to tell her?
“It’s kind of early days yet, Sergeant Major Bullen, but the feeling is that he didn’t make it.” Haldimand’s voice was low and flat.
He’d seen it all before, too many times. They all had.
Bullen looked at the calendar, but of course he knew nothing.
“Very well. Ah.”
“Yes. I really don’t know what to suggest. The army has strict guidelines about making statements in such circumstances.”
Until the Army officially knew about the marriage, there wasn’t much Bullen could safely tell the girl. And until they found Foster, or anyone who knew anything about it, they could hardly accept her statements at face value. There were benefits, including citizenship, the pension, any of his life savings that might turn up, all of which must be disbursed (or not) to the proper beneficiaries or heads might roll.
It didn’t seem very fair to the girl, whether Foster had taken advantage of her or possibly she had taken advantage of him. Bullen was still wondering about that.
There was such a thing as love.
“It’s a bit of a sticky wicket, sir.”
“Yes. Look. If he turns up here in the next week or so, we will be damned sure to let you know.”
“Thank you, sir. Lieutenant Haldimand.”
“Sergeant Major.”
The men hung up, each to confront his own thoughts, each in his own way.
Sweat dripped down Bullen’s sides under his tunic. Flies buzzed in the window, and someone coughed incessantly in the office right next door. These were all trivial irritations.
As for Mariyah Khoudry, he had no idea of what he was going to do.
Shit.
***
They hadn’t seen an aircraft in the last twenty-four hours, and they had taken to traveling by day again. There was hope that they could make better time.
They hadn’t gotten very far, with men hanging every which way from the remaining vehicles. Seriously overloaded, truck or jeep, they kept bogging down. It was a sea of small dunes. The men had to get off and on, not so cheerfully after a while, as the night wore on. The sand channels, the mats, the shovels and the tow-wires were getting a workout.
At some point, when Owen was dwelling perhaps too much on their present misery, and then thoughts of Mariyah, and then Daniel, he’d started puking again. He fell away as the jeep they had been unsticking roared up and out of its present predicament.
He fell to his knees as the other men staggered to catch up.
On their brief stops for food and rest, he hadn’t been able to gag much down. Although the tea was welcome, even that was coming back up.
He was just getting over the worst of the spasms when the moon disappeared, a cold breeze began hitting the back of his neck and the first grains of sand began obscuring the limited vision.
He could barely hear the men up front as they argued and then came the sound of revving engines.
All of the light fell away and then it was upon them, driven down by the prevailing winds.
Owen got up from his knees and staggered forwards, desperately trying to locate them by sound in the swirling, gritty sandstorm.
He shouted and shouted but they didn’t seem to hear him.
***
Lost and alone, without even a canteen, Owen Foster wandered in the desert.
He missed his jeep, he missed Daniel, and Pat. He missed Mariyah, and he even missed their desert base, where you were either working on the vehicles, eating miserable food, or bored stiff.
He missed a lot of things, but if he ever got out of there, he wouldn’t miss the flies. Flies in the food, flies in the water.
The flies were always with him, even out here in the arid wasteland.
They were worse at the base of course. All those people around.
His gut was a knot. He’d been two days and three nights without water. He couldn’t count the days since he’d last eaten. His lips were painfully cracked. There was a lake up ahead. It wasn’t on the map. He knew it was a mirage, but it was in the right direction and the land was at least flat up there.
The most serious pain was in the legs and lower back. His calves ached from walking in sand. He hadn’t tried to sleep in quite some time, although the hottest part of the day. At night, something in his vision seemed to glow and shimmer and it was all bright and swirling even with his eyes closed. It was perpetually cloudless.
He knew better than to pray for rain.
It simply didn’t happen.
The hours of torment went on, and on, and on.
His mind wandered and he allowed it.
One place looked like another, just sand or rock or brush, and death lay all around him.
A scorpion scuttled out of his way as he approached and his long shadow fell over it.
It was coming up on sundown. Men had walked out of the desert before. He knew some of their names. He’d met some of them.
They were no different than he was. If you cut them, they bled.
He had a mental picture of Mariyah, patiently waiting for him to return, her and her mother. It was a reason.
Sundown lay not far off, and the heat haze shimmered with less ferocity.
There were still traces of wheel tracks in the sand. He’d come upon their camp the morning before.
They couldn’t have been making very good time.
It was really hard to tell if the camp had been made by his mates or not.
Probably—who in the hell else would be out here?
There were certain signs, cigarette packets and the like, that said British. That meant nothing, as he well knew, what with the black market and captured stores on both sides. He had to put it out of his mind, and to be fair his mind really had been wandering.
Someone was calling to him from the top of a small dune off to his right.
“You! You there! Stop.”
Foster turned and looked at the bearded figures, one head sticking out the window of some battered old truck. Some strange guy with ragged headgear and balloon sleeves and the ridiculous fez on his head was calling to him.
He raised a hand, wondering what marque of truck that was, with the driver and men in the back goggling at him in disbelief.
“Oh, hello. Lovely day, isn’t it?” Th
e words barely came out but he didn’t care anymore.
If they didn’t like it, that was their problem.
Turning his head, he marched onwards. There was a sudden painful jerkiness to his step. He must go on. But this was a new and interesting thing.
That was no mirage, he thought.
No, that had to be a hallucination.
Mirages don’t speak to you.
The fear was overwhelming when an engine roared up beside him, a man got out. A door slammed.
Something strong and hard grabbed him by the upper arm.
“You—you’re English.”
He was afraid—afraid.
He was afraid to look.
He was afraid to hope.
Foster was still walking, and the heavy weight tugging on his arm was enough to send him facedown into the hot sand.
“Go…to…hell…”
The sand clogged his mouth and he was so dry he couldn’t spit it out.
Only his eyes had water, the precious water flowed out of him.
That was no mirage.
This is me, dying.
Owen Foster wept, scrabbling at the sand with desperate fingers, willing his aching bones to get up…
“No. Please…leave me alone.” Death had stalked him long enough.
There was an excited babble of voices coming from all around and up above him. They all seemed to be speaking French for some reason. More hardened hands scrabbled at him.
Maybe the Catholics were right after all—or maybe this was hell.
They sure seemed like nice chaps and everything. Someone rolled him over.
Water, cool, wet, blessed water dribbled over his lips and tongue and then he knew.
For whatever reason, this was heaven.
Which was surprising, when you had a minute to think about it.
He couldn’t see a damned thing with the sun right in his eyes.
He wondered what would happen next.
***
A tall, gangling figure with a hat in his hand stood at the foot of Foster’s bed. Foster must have been asleep again. He came awake with a feral jerk.
“Sir!”
“It’s all right, Owen. No need to salute from a hospital bed.”
Owen slumped back on the pillows. He was in a military hospital in Cairo, still marveling at his miracle as all the nurses and doctors were calling it.
They said he had wandered off track, going forty miles too far to the south, and that Owen really ought to be dead right now. He was still in pain, and they were trying to put a little weight on him.
“Sir.”
“Yes. We’re glad to have you back. I’m just in town for a conference, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the chance to shake your hand.”
He took a minute and took care of that little detail. Colonel David Stirling, founder of the S.A.S., stepped back and saluted the figure on the bed.
He reached into the side pocket of his battle-dress jacket.
Stirling pulled out a letter and a small, oblong box.
“A bit of a gong for you, old boy. Congratulations. They really don’t give enough of these out, especially to enlisted men. I want you to know, Owen, that you wear this on behalf of a lot of other…really, really, good men.” He was deadly serious too.
Some of those men wouldn’t be going home, but Owen just might in his estimation. With a little luck.
The young man had a lot of good things going for him. His face was something to see when he opened the box.
Stirling proffered a letter-sized envelope and Owen dragged himself up straighter in the bed, even as a nurse hovered just outside the door. He set the open box and its official letter aside on the green metal bed table. His mother was just going to shit.
“Thank you, sir.” A medal.
Imagine that.
Stirling had another envelope.
“That’s also for you. Written permission to marry. Signed, sealed and delivered.” His smile was beautiful to behold, although Foster had gone a little pale in Stirling’s observation.
He was quiet enough. The young man was avoiding his commanding officer’s eyes, which could be forbidding when they needed to be. They were oddly compassionate, warm even, when Foster finally brought himself to look back into them. He nodded sheepishly.
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“And let me know if you want a transfer—we might want to keep you out of the limelight for a while. There is such a thing as too much time in the combat zone. We’ll let some other chap have a chance, eh?”
Foster’s jaw dropped.
“Oh—I don’t know, sir.” He stared, speechless. “I—I couldn’t.”
Stirling laughed.
“Well. You just think about it, all right? And I believe a Sergeant Major Bullen would like a little word with you.”
“Ah—yes, sir.”
Stirling nodded, and it was then that the nurse intervened. She came bustling in, all controlled fury but relatively harmless.
Their eyes met again and they exchanged some unspoken thoughts.
“Nothing to worry about. If Bullen give you any problems—he seems like a pretty good fellow, well, you just ask him to call us, right?”
Stirling turned.
“It’s all right, I’m going, Sister.” He turned back to an astonished Owen Foster. “Oh, and I believe you might have another visitor as well.”
Colonel Stirling, and Foster would never forget him in that moment, turned and then a warm, weeping Mariyah was there, falling all over him and smothering him in her embrace.
They were telling him that everything was going to be all right.
Everything was going to be all right. Somehow he just knew that.
So why in the hell was everybody crying?
His eyes were so wet that he could barely see her, but he could smell her, and feel her weight and her warmth and that was just going to have to do for the time being.
End
About Zach Neal
Zach Neal has been writing ever since he can remember. A forestry management professional, he prefers the outdoors to the office. He lives in the Halton Hills overlooking the Greater Toronto Area. He studied at the University of Toronto. Zach’s a single father of two healthy and energetic children. Zach’s boys, Aaron, seven and Jason, nine years old, mean everything to him.
> Zach Neal <
