Double Down (27 page)

Chapter Nineteen

It was hot, a searing burning heat. My first thought was, crap, if I was dead, hot was not good. Without opening my eyes, I took inventory. I still had a body because I could feel the heat burning it. I was lying on my side, hot rocks biting into the skin of my arm, the side of my face and the palm of my hand. Something about brimstone floated through my mind. I tried moving my fingers and then my toes. Everything seemed to be working. Experimentally I tried peeking out one eye, shutting it again quickly. It was too bright to see anything. Raising my hand to shield my eyes I tried again. No good. All I could see were blurry shapes, undulating and making me dizzy. I closed my eyes and rested until the nausea went away. My head ached and so did the rest of my body. I had to move. I decided to try rolling onto my stomach. A stabbing pain in my chest took my breath away and had me gasping. Okay, bad idea. My stomach revolted.

I lay there, my head resting on one arm, gasping for breath, trying to keep from vomiting. Images came back to me, my house on fire, running, riding in a car.

The last thing I remembered was riding in a car with Darryl Collins, no not Darryl, Joey Green, and his driver, Hugo. Darryl Collins, VP of corporate HR was really Joey Green of St. Louis, not just a sleazy woman chasing adulterer, but a murderer. My instincts had been right all along. Wait until his wife who married him for his English aristocratic bloodline found out she’d really married Joey the bus boy, who probably didn’t even know his father, let alone his bloodline. Except now, she’d probably never find out. Which brought me to the question, why was I still alive? Why didn’t Hugo shoot me? Wait, maybe I had been shot. Could that be what was causing the pain? Very carefully palms down, I raised up on my arms, scooting my knees underneath me. So far so good, if I moved very slowly I could stand the pain. I took one hand and probed the most painful spot. No hole. No blood. Just pain, like I somehow I’d broken, or should I say rebroken, a rib or two. I sat back on my haunches, taking shallow breaths. When I opened my eyes again, the landscape stayed in one place, bleak, barren desert for miles. No shadows, so the sun must be directly overhead, making it somewhere around noon. No wonder it was so hot.

My head was starting to clear. I must have been out for several hours. Remembering the phone, I pulled it out of my pocket. Of course, it was dead. There was no way to tell if my call had gone through now. It seemed unlikely since no one had come to rescue me. By now, they would know I was missing, but with no way of knowing where to begin the search, it could take days. I was on my own.

The side of my face and arm that had been exposed to the sun felt burned, the skin where I could see it, was red and tender. My mouth felt like cotton. For the moment, I was still alive, but in order to survive long enough to tell what I knew, I would need water and shade. I looked around. I’m an avid reader so I knew you could get moisture from barrel cactus or some kind of succulent, not that this information did me the slightest bit of good. This was the Nevada desert. The only plant life for miles was scrub brush, tumbleweed, and an occasional Joshua tree . . . not a succulent in sight.

So much for water, shade wasn’t going to be any easier. The mountains were miles away, and while the ground around me wasn’t exactly level, there were no dips or valleys deep enough to provide any shade. The few Joshua trees were more cactus than tree. What little shade they offered wouldn’t cover one arm, let alone my whole body.

I had no idea how far I was from civilization or the highway, far enough that I couldn’t see or hear any cars. Was I north or south of Las Vegas? Even if I knew which direction to walk, doing it barefooted would be extremely painful. Still, I couldn’t just continue to sit here in the scorching sun either. Pulling my sweat pants down so that they covered my feet, I slowly levered myself into a standing position. Once I stopped gasping from the pain, I could see a small gully about 50 yards off to my left that looked deep enough to provide some shade once the sun started to descend. Carefully I took one step and then another. While the sweatpants protected my feet from the scorching dirt, they did nothing to cushion the sharp rocks and stickers. Right about then, I would have given anything for a pair of shoes. Stepping on a particularly sharp rock caused me to twist painfully to one side. I staggered, but managed to stay upright. It was awkward trying to walk with the crotch of my sweatpants hanging so low. I wondered how teenage boys did it.

The first time I fell, I laid there for several minutes waiting for the excruciating pain to subside. What was I doing? So what if I found shade? How long can a person live without water? I seem to remember seventy-two hours, probably less out in the sun. The last time I’d had anything to drink was over twelve hours ago. My lips were beginning to crack. Tears came to my eyes. No, I thought, I will not cry. I was already sweating. I couldn’t afford to lose any more moisture.

Why not just lie here, give up, and die? Unfortunately, that could take hours, maybe even days. The sun beating down on me made it too uncomfortable. With no other choice, I forced myself to get up. I would concentrate on one thing at a time. I needed shade. That was my goal. I forced myself to get up and go on. The next time I fell, I didn’t waste any energy feeling sorry for myself. As soon as I could, I got up and went on.

After probably more than an hour, I reached the gully. It wasn’t deep enough to sit up, so I laid burnt side down, with my face to the shallow dirt wall. I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up, shade filled the gully. It was still incredibility hot, but at least I could sit up while remaining in the shade.

All I could think about was water, fresh cold water poured over my face and trickling down my throat. I didn’t even have enough spit to lick my lips. Right now, I’d trade my soul for just one sip of cold, warm, or maybe even hot water. I remembered my mother telling me that when she was little and got hot and thirsty while walking with her mother, her mother insisted that sucking on a pebble would help. At the time, I remember thinking it was a stupid story and she was obviously extremely gullible. What the heck, it was worth a try. Maybe it would generate some saliva. Looking around I selected a small smooth stone, wiped most of the dirt off on my pants, and stuck it in my mouth. It was no drink of water, but it gave my mouth something to do.

Now rested, and shielded from the blistering sun, I had time to think. If there was a rescue party out looking for me, with so much area to cover, they were probably doing it by air. From several hundred feet up, I doubted anyone could see me sitting here in the shade. I looked around. Dressed in a white tank top and light grey sweatpants, I blended in with the landscape. How could I make myself more visible? I considered fashioning a large HELP sign out of rocks. That would mean walking around in the sun gathering large rocks. Aside from the thought of the pain I’d have to face, by the time I had finished, it would probably be dark and the sign would be useless. What else? If I built a fire, that might attract attention, except that I didn’t have any matches and no experience rubbing two sticks or rocks or whatever you were supposed to rub together to get a spark. I had trouble keeping my barbeque lit using lighter fluid. Still, if I could build a fire, unlike the help sign, it would be visible at night.

The only piece of equipment I had was a cell phone. MacGyver could probably turn it into a walkie-talkie, or use it to send Morse code. I couldn’t even figure out how to get the cover off to get to the battery compartment. Besides, it wasn’t metal, just silver plastic, totally useless.

I had to do something. It took me several minutes to work up the courage to stand again. Once again on my feet, I had to wait until the waves of pain subsided enough to allow me to take a breath. Concentrating on my memories of Tom Hanks in Castaways, I went in search of a flat rock, scraps of paper, and some sort of kindling. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about anything being damp. Huffing and puffing, I managed to drag a fairly large rock over near my shade. I longed to sit down, but I didn’t dare. Instead, I shuffled around, gathering up scraps of paper, and stashing them in a plastic bag I found snagged on a bush. Back at my makeshift campsite, I dumped the papers on the ground, and covered them with a rock to hold them in place. I used the plastic bag to shield my hand in order to drag over a tumbleweed.

Exhausted, I slid down on the ground and sat cross-legged in front of the rock. I took one branch of the tumbleweed, placed it on my makeshift hearth, and smashed it to bits with a rock, creating a small pile of tiny dry sticks. I placed the flat piece of wood I found on the rock and tried to create fire by rotating a stick on top of it. The stick slipped off the wood, several times. I swore. The stick broke. I swore again. I got another stick. My hands began to chaff. I swore, much more vehemently.

Finally, after what seemed like at least two hours, I managed to produce a slight red glow, which quickly died, long before I could stuff in a small piece of paper. I sat back and thought up new swear words. I needed something small to stuff in the hole. Running my hands through my hair, I noticed several strands caught on the ring I was wearing. Great, on top of being bruised, broken, and filthy, I was losing my hair. No, wait . . . hair that would be perfect. I unwound the strands from my fingers, and stuffed them into the hole.

Swiping the sweat from my eyes, I tried again. This time I blew ever so gently when the wood began to glow. Eureka! The hair caught fire. Quickly pulling out a few more hairs, I fed those and some tiny pieces of paper into the embers. When those caught on, I added the tumbleweed sticks, gradually adding more and more until I had an actual fire. The wind started to pick up and I thought, No! Instead of going out, the fire got brighter. Elated I jumped to my feet, ignoring the pain. I stumbled around, gathering sticks and more tumbleweed. I wore holes in the bottom of my sweatpants. The smoke curled skyward. I would have jumped up and down if my feet hadn’t hurt so badly. I had a new career, Valerie Peterson, survivalist.

Finally, I rested in the shade for a bit, trying to keep downwind of the smoke. My one worry was that anyone seeing the fire would dismiss it as someone burning rubbish. Reluctantly, I decided I still needed the help sign. The pain in my ribs prevented me from carrying rocks of any great size, so I settled for lots of smaller rocks, making the letters about five feet in length. By the time I finished, my feet were bleeding, every inch of me ached, and it was almost dark.

Now all I had to do was keep the fire going, sit back, and wait. During the time I concentrated on building the fire, I’d only seen a couple of commercial planes fly over, high up in the atmosphere. I watched for the lights of a small plane or a helicopter flying much lower. Since the Bureau of Land Management owns most of the land around Las Vegas, I was hoping they would be irate to find that I had built a fire out here, and would send someone out to check on it.

Everyone in the BLM must have left at five o’clock because nobody came. Even though I kept the fire reasonably small, I ran out of sticks and nearby tumbleweed after several hours, forcing me to forage further and further away. Using a rock, I knocked down dead limbs from a Joshua tree. The full moon gave me enough light to avoid walking into the bushes or cactus, but not enough to be able to see the rocks I kept tripping over. Once, maybe twice, I saw the lights of a small plane fly overhead, none circled or came close enough for me to believe they had seen me. I don’t know how many hours I foraged and fed the fire before collapsing in an exhausted heap, and falling asleep.

The sky was purple, with the sun just creeping over the mountains, when I awoke. Every muscle in my body ached. My mouth felt as dry and dusty as the parched desert sand, my tongue thick and crusty. The fire had gone out. I’d left my house on the run late Thursday night. Now it was Saturday morning, and still no one had come. I had neither the fuel nor the energy to relight the fire. Finally, I allowed the tears to come. When I could cry no more, I gave up and went back to sleep.

I dreamed the wind howled across the desert, swirling the dirt into dust devils that rose high in the sky. I imagined I heard voices in the wind calling my name. They were too far away, and I was too tired to answer. I smiled when my imagination gave one of them the velvety voice of Delgado. In my dream, the clouds thickened and tiny raindrops landed on my lips. Without opening my eyes, I lifted my face to the rain, inhaling to catch the scent of wet sage, the smell of rain in the desert. The smell was wrong, pleasant and vaguely familiar, but still wrong.

Confused I opened my eyes. Staring down at me were two beautiful green eyes creased with worry and fatigue. “It’s about time you showed up,” I said and then I went back to sleep.

Chapter Twenty

Once again, I woke up in the hospital. Only this time no one was holding my hand. I tasted thick salve on my lips. It tasted awful, but it felt good. Nearby machines beeped and clicked. I could hear people talking softly in the background. I opened my eyes. Once again, clear liquid dripped from a bag hung on a metal pole beside my bed. Wires snaked through the openings in the hospital gown, attaching me to machines. However, instead of walls, drab green curtains surrounded the bed. Within the fabric walls of my cubicle, I was surprised to see my brother Eddie asleep on a chair beside the bed. Raising one arm, I could see the skin on my arms was blistered and peeling. I could only imagine how bad my face must look. I felt bandages around my rib cage and on my feet. Although a mess, I was alive. I’d survived.