I was bleeding badly, and kept one hand pressed down against the wound to try and staunch it, and tried as well to control my breathing, and keep from crying with pain. I began down the mountain again.
I first picked my way horizontally across the face, trying to find the path we’d taken up. I could not separate it from the darkness, or see even more than a few steps of the trail I was on, until I was eventually completely lost, and on a different side of the mountain from where I’d started. Every opening in the vegetation seemed like a trail and every clearing seemed like salvation, but all were cruel tricks. The only thing for me was to head straight down, and try not to end up in one of the deeper couloirs, which I might never escape. Each step fell into a deeper darkness, and I poked at the air first with my foot to find the slope, then at the soil, testing the ground, to keep from falling off the mountain. I was hopelessly lost by then, feeling my way back in the direction I remembered, hoping I would not get taken by the hyenas or wild dogs, or else fall into one of the holes. And what I knew about where I was headed was only gravity.
When the slope evened out, I found a place to perch and managed a tourniquet from my shirt, which was soon soaked through. There were a lot of ways for me to die on the mountain then, and I did not know which I dreaded most, and I did not wish to acknowledge my fears any further, for fear of conjuring them, or giving over to them more power than they already had. I heard lizards scurrying in the brush and then a bark in the darkness, and that fixed my fear on the hyenas. The cats would come one-on-one nobly, and I had the gun and if I missed it would be a quick death, but the hyenas and dogs would come in packs, ganging up to rip and pick little by little, until I succumbed. If I fell into a ravine there was at least the chance I would break my neck and lose consciousness. Time I would lose against eventually, if not that night. The bullet I already had in me. I kept heading downward into the brutal blackness, keeping watch for hyenas and wild dogs.
36
The base of the slope appeared through the fog sometime past midnight. I was caked in dust and muddied with blood, and the pain from the wound throbbed with each heartbeat. The clouds parted midway and the dense stars were high and bright in the sky, along with half the moon, which made the going a little easier, until I realized how far I was from where we had ascended, and how far I was from the lorry, where I hoped Sylvie would be waiting and safe. I rounded the lower reaches of the mountain in another hour, before I spotted the truck below me in the platinum darkness. It was only half a mile away, but there were a series of plunging crevasses in front of me, and no way to cross over with the pain in my shoulder, and that hand unusable. I wrenched the tourniquet tighter, as I sat down to rest and try to plot a way down. There was no certain passage from where I was that I could see. The only safe thing to do was to climb back up, until I found the trail we had taken before.
I stood wearily and climbed uphill another hour, before finally picking up a ridge wide enough to pass over without falling into one of the ravines. From there I descended the remainder of the way.
By the time I reached the truck it was near two o’clock, and Sylvie was nowhere to be found. I was dead with worry, and tried to keep my mind from running off with bad scenarios, as I searched the cab of the truck for the medical kit and checked around for a spare key.
I did not find keys to the truck, and the medical kit was half empty, with nothing of use for the gunshot wound. I was overcome by thirst then, and went round back to find water and my gear bag, where I had some painkillers Doc had given me. It would be light in a only few hours and I did not think they could head back down before then without my being able to see them before they spotted me. I calculated if I slept three hours, and set out for Sylvie an hour before light I could still keep out of their reach.
When I climbed up into the back of the truck I was struck hard by something crashing into me, and tumbled backward, reaching for the gun holstered in my waistband.
“I’m sorry,” I heard Sylvie gasp. “I thought they had caught you. They were so close.” She threw her arms around me, crying with joy but drew back when she saw how I winced in pain, as moonlight streamed into the truck through the open flap. “Did I hurt you?”
“Not you,” I told her.
“Let me see,” she said, pulling away in shock, when she saw my arm and how bedraggled I was. “You’re covered in blood.”
She touched my shoulder gently, near the wound.
“It is better not to touch it.”
“They shot you?”
“It did not hit anything major, or I would have known already,” I tried to comfort her.
“You are just trying to keep me from worrying,” she said.
“Worrying does not help.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Like hell.”
She found scissors and cut away my makeshift tourniquet, and made bandages from a clean shirt, and began to pour water from a canteen to wash away the blood, but I told her it was better to save the water. She began to redress the wound with the clean bandages, and I began to feel cold and clammy and parched. I was thirsty again and asked for the canteen, and drank deeply, until it was empty. She wrapped a blanket around me to help regulate my temperature, and refilled the canteen from a half-empty jug in the truck, and I drank half of it down, and swallowed the last of the pills.
We had not eaten since breakfast, and I had no appetite, but forced myself to eat an energy bar we found in our packs.
After that she fashioned a sling for my deadened arm, to elevate the wound, and make carrying the weight of it easier. There was nothing else for us there with the truck but danger. We refilled our canteens from the last of the water in the jug, found a bit of food, flashlights, a compass, and money from our packs, and started down toward the trees.
It was five treacherous miles to the lake by my reckoning. The hard night around us was infinite and deep, as we tried to keep watch for the predators and soldiers and whatever else might be out there in the jungle. I still had rounds in the gun, but not enough.
“From the lake we should be able to cross the border out of the country by water.”
“Do you think we will be able to find a doctor?”
“No. There are none in places like this, and if there was one he would either have fled, or else have some connection. But if we reach the lake, we can get one of the villagers to row us across.”
“I’m afraid.”
“We still have the pistol,” I said, calculating the chances of running into one of the rebels, or a predator that did not fear humans.
We were out of sight of the lorry by then, on the last stretch of fore mountain. Down below the tree line had come into view, and just after that a break, and a stretch of plain, where there were some structures visible.
“Look, there is a village over there,” she pointed.
“I think it is better if we avoid it,” I cautioned.
“They may be able to help us.”
“Or harm us,” I argued.
I did not want to take the risk, but we were not certain of our exact location or the lake’s, and I knew she was right. We oriented ourselves toward the village, and kept focused on it as we came down the last stretch of incline onto flat ground, where the village disappeared in the darkness.
When we were finally off the mountain, we began quickly as we could manage across the open plain, toward the cover of the forest. We had no sense of shelter as long as we were out in the open, and no advantage over anything else out there, except for the few shots left in the gun.