Just Deserts (9 page)

Next up I had to arrange my luxurious accommodations. I pushed the pack to one end and started to pull things out. All I really needed was my sleeping bag and the underpadding, and maybe I could use the pack itself as a pillow. I unrolled the thin foam pad and laid it out, and then put the sleeping bag on top, unzipping it. I'd just climb in and— First I had to kick off my shoes. I was amazed at how much sand spilled out of them as they flipped over.

Through the canvas I saw a light coming toward my tent. Then I heard the zipper opening and the light from Connor's headlamp flooded into the tent. He tossed in his pack and then sat down on the edge of the tent, leaving his feet and legs outside. He took off his shoes, turned them upside down and emptied them out before bringing them into the tent. He swung his legs in and then quickly did up the zipper, sealing us inside.

“It's going to be good to have a tent mate,” Connor said.

His voice was friendly and cheerful, and there was a big smile on his face. He wasn't being sarcastic. He was serious.

“I thought I was going to have to spend the whole trip sleeping by myself. Andy and Kajsa don't want to share a tent with me because they say that I snore.”

“Do you?”

“I don't know. I'm asleep so it's not like I would notice,” he said.

Great, just what I needed.

“But I don't think I could snore that loudly or I would have woken myself up,” he continued. “Probably nothing that will even bother you.”

This was getting better and better.

“But if it does bother you, just wake me up,” he said. “We'd better get to sleep. We're going to need our rest. Larson said we're going to do a marathon tomorrow.”

“Marathon as in we're going to travel a long way, or marathon as in we're going to do forty-two kilometres?” I asked.

“Forty-two kilometres,” he answered. “But don't worry, it sounds worse than it is. We did over thirty-five kilometres today, so how much harder could it be?”

The answer was seven kilometres harder, but that wasn't the answer he was looking for.

“Good night, buddy!” Connor practically sang out.

He lay down, so I couldn't see him through the mesh divider, and then he turned off his light, leaving only my headlamp to chase away the darkness. I snuggled into my sleeping bag, the light shining up on the canvas roof of the little tent. I shifted my body around, trying to find a comfortable place to settle
my foam pad into the sand. I quickly realized that comfortable was not going to be on the menu tonight. But I could make it dark. I reached up and turned off my lamp, and the whole tent—the whole world—was thrown into darkness.

I TRIED TO SETTLE LOWER
into the sleeping bag. I hoped to get low enough that I could wrap part of it around my head to cover my ears and try to block out the sound of Connor snoring. No, snoring wasn't the right word. I wasn't sure if it was the silence of the desert that made the whole thing seem so loud, or if he'd actually swallowed a chainsaw. Either way, it was an incredible racket.

Thinking about the other two sleeping in their tent made me a little angry and jealous, but then I realized that they were only a few metres away and the thin canvas of both tents wasn't going to insulate them from the sound. It wouldn't have been quite as bad, but it still wouldn't have been silence.

I was almost tempted to go outside to sleep. How much worse could scorpions or vipers be than this? No, scratch that thought, they could be a lot worse. There was only one possible solution.

I sat up and grabbed my headlamp, flashing it over the divide and into Connor's side of the tent. Any thought that the light would awaken him was wrong. He lay there on his back, mouth open, snoring so
loudly and so strongly that I was surprised the sides of the tent weren't billowing with each burst.

“Connor,” I whispered.

No response.

“Connor,” I said, much louder. Still no reaction.

“Connor!” I yelled. His eyes jerked open, and then he shielded them against the glare of the light and sat bolt upright.

“What's wrong, is something wrong?” he gasped.

“No, everything is all right … sort of … I had to wake you because you were—”

“Was I snoring?” he asked, cutting me off.

I nodded my head.

“Sorry, I'll try not to.”

“That would be appreciated.”

I turned off the light and settled back into my sleeping bag. There was silence—wonderful, golden silence. There was no snoring, no wind, no animal sounds, no traffic in the background or airplanes overhead, no voices in the distance, no faint sound of TV or music coming through the walls or drifting down the hall. I wondered if I'd ever
heard
so much silence before. Lying in the dark in my little nylon cocoon, I could have been in space instead of sharing a tent in the desert.

Suddenly I
could
hear something, just one thing—the sound of my heart beating in my chest. I felt a rising anxiety. I sat back up and listened and looked
around. I had to fight the urge to turn my light on, or wake Connor, or unzip the tent and go out and find Larson or— Connor started to snore again.

A smile came to my face. I was still in the middle of the desert, in the middle of a bizarre experience, but at least I wasn't completely alone. I lay back down, snuggled into my sleeping bag again and wrapped it around my head to muffle the noise.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CONNOR, ANDY AND KAJSA
were squatting around a little mat sipping hot, sweet mint tea and scarfing down chocolate cookies and pieces of white bread slathered with marmalade as if they were starving to death. Actually, Andy ate as though he were pregnant with twins and eating for three. You'd have sworn he was having the last meal he ever expected to eat or had two hollow legs he was hoping to fill. It was like watching a well-mannered hyena feed. He was out-eating the other two combined.

Our strange breakfast featured three primary food groups: sugar, sugar and more sugar. I'd had a couple of the cookies and a cup of the tea, but I wasn't able to choke down any more than one piece of the stale bread. Probably the only thing that would have made it palatable was caviar, and I wasn't expecting anything resembling seafood.

I made a mental note—the finest beluga caviar would be part of my independence celebration when we got to Tunis. Maybe I'd even invite these jokers to
join me … well, at least to
watch
me while I ate it. Giving them caviar would be like casting pearls before swine.

What I really wanted more than caviar or tea or bread or cookies was a shot of vodka. It had been almost a full day since I'd had my last drink, and I knew from experience that this could be a bit of a problem. I held my hand out and looked at it—slight shaking. I tried to stop it but I couldn't. I felt a bit shaky all over and I had a wicked headache. Maybe that was because it was still cold out, and it wasn't like I'd had a great night's sleep or—

“Are you okay?” Connor asked.

His question startled me out of my thoughts. They were all staring at me.

“Yeah, you don't look so good,” Kajsa said. “You're shaking … are you cold?”

“Aren't
you
cold?” I asked, trying to deflect the attention. If there was one lesson I'd learned a long time ago, it was that you never let anyone see your weakness—never give up the upper hand.

“It's not that cold,” Andy said. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt while everybody else was wearing a jacket.

“Maybe I'd be feeling better if I could have gotten more than a few minutes of sleep last night.” That was another useful strategy: when threatened, the best defence is a good offence.

“You had trouble getting to …?” Kajsa let the sentence trail off and then looked at Connor.

“Sorry about that,” Connor said. “You should have woken me up.”

“I did, and it didn't do any good at all!”

“We'll switch tent mates tonight if you want,” Kajsa said. “That's only fair.”

“Fair?” I said. “I'm not really looking for fair. If things were fair, I wouldn't be here to begin with.”

My attention was caught by a movement—Larson had just walked into camp. He'd been gone when we woke up. I at least got some minor satisfaction out of the fact that this time I saw him coming. That was probably the best indication of how pathetic my situation was.

Wordlessly, with just a nod of his head, he came and joined the circle, squatting down between Andy and Connor.

“What does the route look like today?” Connor asked.

“There are sand dunes for the first ten kilometres or so. Then we break through to more hardscrabble, rock and salt flats.”

“It'll be good to get out of the sand,” Kajsa said.

“Still sand, just different sand mixed in with more rocks,” Larson explained. “There are side trails branching off continually, but the main trail is fairly well defined. About twenty kilometres along is a very
small oasis. Not much more than a well and a little bit of green.”

“A real oasis?” I asked.

“If it has water, it's a real oasis.”

“I can't wait for that,” Kajsa said.

“It should be a good place to rest midday, stay out of the sun. Make sure you hydrate, and fill your water containers for the rest of the day. Once you pack up, go that way.” He pointed in the direction he'd come from. “Just follow the main path until you reach the oasis.”

“Aren't you walking with us today?” Kajsa asked. She sounded anxious.

“I'm going ahead. You'll catch me at some point. Just stay on the trail, stay together as a team, and everything will be fine.”

He sounded calm, and that seemed to calm her. I personally didn't care. I was fine with him not being around. I'd follow the trail. The only part of “guide” I needed involved marking the trail, and he'd already done that.

“See you later today.”

He grabbed a couple more cookies, stood up and walked away.

Andy got up. “Let's break camp. That oasis isn't coming to us.”

They all started toward the tents. I didn't. I walked toward the mat and took a handful of cookies. The
only thing I was going to put away was a little more food.

“You have to help break camp,” Andy said sternly.

“I have to do nothing I don't want to do,” I replied.

“But we're a team,” Kajsa said.

“We're a team?” I said. “I'm not wearing any uniform. I didn't join any team.”

She looked genuinely hurt. “It's just that we have to work together to reach our goal.”

“
Our
goal?”

“We're all heading for Tunis,” Connor said.

“Just because we're all going in the same direction doesn't mean we have the same goal.”

“You eat the food, you sleep in the tent, you help to break camp,” Andy said.

I popped a cookie in my mouth and slowly chewed and swallowed it. I was daring him or anybody else to do or say something.

Andy stepped forward, his eyes locked on mine. “Got it?” he asked.

“I'm going to Tunis. You three are welcome to tag along with me if you want.” I grabbed one more cookie and then got up and headed toward the tent. I'd help break down the tent. I wasn't going to agree, but there was no point in disagreeing. At least not yet.

IT WAS JUST AFTER EIGHT
, but the sun was already high in the sky and the heat was building on
the ground. I tipped the bottle back and drained the last bit of water from the bottle. I was amazed at how much water I was drinking. At least I wouldn't have to worry about getting dehydrated … although I hadn't gone to the washroom all morning. That was the other part of it. It wasn't enough just to drink if it wasn't coming out the other end.

Up ahead, Kajsa ran off and into the dunes while the other two waited for her. She didn't have the problem I had. As she disappeared over a small hill I quickly caught up to Andy and Connor.

“How's it going?” Connor asked.

“It's going,” was all I offered.

Connor looked happy and cheerful—it seemed to be his default facial expression. Andy didn't look nearly as happy. He looked annoyed, probably because they had to keep stopping for Kajsa's washroom breaks—and because it kept allowing me to catch up.

I continued walking, wondering how annoyed Andy would be now that I was in front of them. I didn't turn around to look at his expression or to let him see the smirk on my face. I wasn't going to admit it, but my need to keep up with them was greater than the fatigue in my legs or the pain in my feet. It had only been a few hours, but my feet were already starting to blister. I could feel one developing between my big toe and the next toe on my right
foot. Well, at least that was the most obvious one. I was pretty sure another one was developing on the back of my left foot right where the shoe rubbed. No shock there. New shoes and a long walk through sand would be the recipe for blisters.

I didn't turn around, but I heard them coming up behind, gaining on me. Quick bathroom break, apparently. It gave me great satisfaction to stay ahead of these “great” athletes, but I knew they'd soon overtake me if I didn't start to move faster.

I set myself a challenge: to stay ahead of them for the next kilometre. If they hadn't passed me by the time I'd taken a thousand steps, I'd win. Even when they finished ahead of me at the end, I'd still know that I'd beaten them part of the way. I dug in deeper, ignoring my aching legs and focusing on the numbers—one, two, three, four.

There was a strange calmness that came with the counting. It was almost as if, even though I didn't know whether I could walk that many steps, I knew I could count that many. How many would I have to count? Okay, if there were one thousand steps to a kilometre and we were trying to do forty-two kilometres today, then all I had to do was walk forty-two thousand steps. That seemed like a lot. Okay, since I had two legs, I only had to walk twenty-one thousand steps per leg. I'd start counting every second step as a “one” until I reached the goal.