CW2, D.R. SMITH [little readers .TXT] 📗

was beginning to feel his heart pound to a degree that it felt as though it were about to leap from his chest. A combination of heat, direct sunlight, and a lack of water had produced a splitting headache the likes of which he had never before known.

“I’ve been through worse” Shane mumbled from between unmoving seared lips, causing one word to smear into the next. But it was a feeble attempt to build morale and bolster his will to survive. It was then that he decided to break for a few minutes beneath a rocky outcrop that provided a tiny patch of shade. Once unburdened from the weight of his backpack, he felt a faint urge to urinate. This he resisted as he would prefer his body absorb as much of the H2O as possible from the bodily fluid. He would otherwise be tempted to capture the salty unsanitary yellow liquid as a last resort source of hydration.

His mind was trying to calculate just how far he had come through the course of the day. Shane’s head began to move slowly back and forth as if to indicate a head shake… no… he cannot possibly figure his mileage covered. Glazed and scum covered vision now scanned the distant landscape in an effort to spot some man-made structure that might offer a source of sustenance and hope. He blinked and squinted in an effort to clear the filmy coating from the surface of his eyeballs. The vast rock and desert vista was too broad and far away for the naked eye to pick up any kind of detail. The waves of rising heat only made things worse as it rippled the image laid out before him. Bringing his binoculars up to his eyes, he again began a slow scan from left to right viewing the terrain just below the horizon.

He suddenly froze. Without moving the binos from their current focal point, Shane did a couple of slow squinting blinks. It looked real. A distant cluster of cubes… perfectly edged, square cornered, box-like forms that could not possibly be natural formations. These were manmade structures. Not only was this encouraging from a supply standpoint, it gave him renewed confidence in his navigational skills. Out of caution and considering the fact that he had encountered mirages before, he decided to make sure this was more than just a figment of his imagination. Trekking miles in the wrong direction chasing after an hallucination would prove fatal at this point.

In order to avoid kneading more grime into his already gritty eyes, Shane simply squeezed his eyelids down tightly for nearly 20 seconds. Issuing a mental prayer while they remained scrunched closed, he popped them open quickly in order to catch that moment when they would be the least saturated with foreign particles. His hopes were high that the distant tiny metropolis would not vanish.

To his complete joy and excitement, it was still very much there! Not a mirage. It was in fact real. All the physical challenges Shane had been confronting just moments ago seemingly melted away as a newfound spirit of optimism and a recharged heartfelt aspiration now enveloped his entire being. But in spite of all this invigorating enthusiasm, he was physically spent and could not lift himself to his feet. A small cactus plant that was a mere 10 feet out in front of him became caught in his line of sight.

“There” he spoke out loud. Breathing with difficulty and finding it taxing to just focus his thoughts with any symmetry, he continued “First I will make it to that spot right there”. It truly became a matter of one foot in front of the other. The phrase, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, flooded his mind. The ‘town’ he was seeing in the distance was at least 3 difficult miles from where he currently was.

Continuing with a one step in front of the other mental focus, Shane found himself within a half mile of the desert hamlet in only two and a half hours. The plan was to reach an observation distance that would allow him to watch the community for a few hours in order to ascertain whether it was inhabited by friends or foes. Although his water supply was down to a few gulps worth, the cooler night air and a period of inactivity would stretch that H2O out till morning. Now stationed behind a cluster of rocks, Shane felt hidden enough to roll out his sleeping bag and get some much-needed shuteye. As was his normal habit, he performed his nightly ritual of setting weapons and other critical supplies in positions that would be easy to reach in the case of an unexpected visitor. Stuffing his backpack up under his head, he finally snuggled up and drifted off to sleep.

 

“Hey buddy! I said wake up” the voice that was suddenly inserted into his dream shouted. His brows lifted without successfully opening his eyes. They felt glued shut. It was obvious by how tired he still was that he hadn’t been asleep too awfully long. A yawn and a shove from someone’s boot brought Shane into focus with reality. There were, in fact, two men standing directly over him with rifles draped over the inner elbow of their arms hunter style and a flashlight painting his face aglow and virtually blinding him. He must have fallen into a totally dead sleep if someone had been able to get this close to him without waking him up.

“Yer gonna havta come with us” a younger and less educated voice said in an almost conciliatory manner. Shane was now up on one elbow with his other arm crossing his forehead to shield his eyes from the glare of the flashlight. Squinting from both the beam spraying him and the fact that he felt as though he’d only slept about two hours, Shane now tried to pry out of them their intentions.

“What’s this all about? Who are you guys?” Shane queried, trying his best to sound non-confrontational. Following his question and while waiting for their response, Shane’s hand that was still hidden under the back pack, began probing for his pistol. This he did as stealthily as possible. Unfortunately, the effort yielded nothing but additional information from his captor visitors… who obviously saw what he was attempting to do.

“If yer lookin fer dis here you can jus stop right now” he drawled out while dangling Shane’s 9mm out into the air by its trigger guard. The disappointment on Shane’s face was certainly evident and since his AR had been openly displayed, leaning against a nearby boulder, he was certain that it too had been confiscated.

“How about you just crawl out of your bag there and stand up real slow like” the first and older sounding man ordered. “We’ll be taking you back to our headquarters”

There it was. Headquarters. This was the tell-tale indicator that Shane had stumbled on a militia occupied town. This was exactly why he had positioned himself nearly a mile from the city limits of Rough Rock. This was what he had tried to avoid. How did these guys stumble on him out in this expansive desert terrain… and in the DARK no less? Just plain old rotten luck, he thought. He slowly bundled up everything he had left lying around his encampment and stuffed it into his pack. He was not feeling much better than he had been yesterday and since he had gone to bed without replenishing his water supply, he was still nearly dehydrated. Shane’s brain had begun its usual ‘think your way out of this mess’ process. At the moment, with two armed men escorting him across a wide-open desert area, nothing came to mind.

 

Although it felt as though they were walking at a fairly brisk pace, it still took a little over an hour to reach the edge of town due to the rugged terrain. Shane’s captors hadn’t bothered to restrain him in any way. They, like Shane himself, knew that if he’d run without his weapons and supplies, they would simply have to do nothing more than allow the desert and other drifters to deal with him. He probably wouldn’t last more than a day or two.

Rough Rock looked more like an abandoned military installation than a town. And in part… it was. Much of it had been used as an outpost for military exercises and maneuvers leaving behind bland green metal exteriored buildings that, after decades of fading, had begun to synergize with their surroundings. This government motif was partly interlaced with the pitiful housing the native citizenry had once dwelt in. It was American Indian alright, Shane thought. The homes were poverty-stricken ply-wood shacks that had been, over time, improved to somewhat acceptable house-like abodes. Everything about Rough Rock portrayed the failed clash between the interference of government and the unfortunate plight of an indigenous people.

Up the dark street just ahead of them, Shane saw an illuminated doorway beneath a cock-eyed Budweiser sign that swayed with an eerie squeak, in the faint desert night breeze. The door-shaped light that streamed onto the sidewalk and dribbled over the curb into the street, flickered occasionally from people passing in front of the opening. A sudden burst of laughter bounced down the empty avenue with a tinny kind of quality to it. Shane pondered as to whether these rednecks had been able to ration liquor out this long or had they built a still of some kind to produce their own. Either way, the din wafting from the retired bar and grill most certainly wreaked of drunkenness.

“Welcome to HQ!” older guy offered up as they passed through the well-lit portal. Shane’s presence caused instantaneous silence.

“Well what have we got here?” a voice blasted from a group in the corner. A chair could be heard scooting out from under its tabled position and its occupant was revealed as he rose above the seated crowd. His booted feet knocked down heavily on the wood floor and his size and accompanying weight made the impact even louder. It seemed as though he was intentionally making as much noise as possible in his approach. Shane immediately assumed this guy was THE guy.

He squared himself directly in front of Shane and, after looking him up and down, folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head to one side. The alligator skin hat and unshaven face worked in unison to create a character straight from a Crocodile Dundee flick. He was standing close enough that Shane could smell the beer on his breath. This prompted Shane to sneak a curious glance around the room. Sure enough… they not only HAD beer. They had several different brands.  

“Has this pest got a name?” Dundee asked while never taking his eyes off Shane.

“Well Buck… to be honest… we haven’t bothered to ask just yet”, the nervous younger man replied. For the first time, Shane could see what his captors looked like. Both men appeared to have given up on showers long ago. The older one sported an Abe Lincoln ‘no mustached’ beard while the younger country boy was actually clean shaven. Older dude was bulky and was hiding his belt buckle behind the flabby overhang. In other words… fat. Loser-the-younger was in really good physical condition… unfortunately. He appeared to be a ranch hand and had probably bulked up through heavy lifting and skimpy eating. Although Abe was far behind Cool Hand Luke physically, he seemed considerably smarter and could at least articulate a proper sentence.

Nearly everyone in the room was wearing either army green or some form of camo. The range of personalities was from the hairiest thing Shane had ever seen to pass for a human to a guy who Shane would have sworn was a bank president. The room held an odor of sweaty B.O., cigarette smoke, and beer and was dimly lit. Although the unopened Bud Lite cans sitting on the