The Hunter From the Woods (23 page)

“Yes. As you say. Yes.” Gantt crawled away from the rock. He lay down on the parachute on his right side, trailing blood as it dripped. He curled up into a fetal position with his hands folded under his right cheek.

An hour passed, during which the sun dropped to the horizon. The light turned deeper red with blue shadows. The air cooled as night came on.

“I’m burning up,” Gantt suddenly said. His voice sounded thick. “Burning up,” he repeated. He sat up, and in the red gloom Michael saw the glistening of small beads of sweat on the man’s ashen face. “Can I have some water?” 

“We have none,” Michael said.

“I must have water. My mouth…it’s not right.”

“We have
no
water,” Michael said carefully, for Gantt’s eyes were bright and wild with fever.

The ace put a hand to his forehead. “I’m burning up,” he said, as if this were news.

“Rolfe? Just lie down and be—”

“I must insist on water.” It had been spoken in German. “Would you deny a thirsty man?”

“Listen to me. Do you know where you are?”

“I’m…I’m…yes, I’m in the infirmary.” He nodded, verifying this illusion to himself. Again, he was speaking his native tongue. “I remember…I was flying. Then…there was oil on my windscreen. I couldn’t see. I knew I was going down. I jumped, and my parachute opened. What happened to my plane?”

“It crashed.”

“The lights,” said Gantt. “Why are the lights so dim?”

“Lie down,” Michael instructed. He decided to add, “Right there, on the bed.” He heard the clicking of the dice at his back.

Gantt looked around, obviously confused. He felt for something that was not there. “I don’t like it,” he said, in almost a child’s voice. “So dark in here.”

Some of the scorpion’s poison had gotten into his system, Michael knew. From what he’d read, there were thirty different varieties of scorpions in the Sahara and four of them were lethal to humans. The one that had stung Gantt was as toxic as a cobra. The venom could cause first high fever and hallucinations, then convulsions, and finally heart failure. It just depended on how much Michael had been able to get out of the wound.

“Yes,” Gantt said. “I think I
will
lie down.” He curled himself up again on his side on the parachute, and he closed his eyes.

Michael waited. He caught the boy watching him as the dice went back and forth.

A few minutes passed. Gantt appeared to be sleeping, his chest rising and falling.

He twitched suddenly, but it was a passing muscle spasm. Then he opened his eyes and sat up again, and now he glowered at Michael with an expression nearing rage.

“I
said
I need water. It is very uncivilized to keep water from a thirsty man. Do you hear me, sir?”

“Rolfe, there’s no more water.” Even as he said it, Michael knew it was hopeless.

Gantt was a wanderer in the desert beyond reason.

Gantt was silent.

And silent still, his dark-hollowed eyes fixed upon Michael Gallatin or whoever he thought Michael Gallatin to be.

“You can’t treat your patients in this manner,” Gantt said quietly. “These men here…they all deserve better, sir. They shouldn’t be so disrespected.”

Michael had no idea what situation the flyer thought he was in, or whether it had really happened in some way or was strictly fantasy. He saw Gantt’s hand go to the Walther’s grip.

“I want water. For all of us.
Now
.”

Michael spoke German: “Very well, then. You’ll get it. There’s a jug under the bed. Right there.” He pointed at nothing. “Reach under and bring it out.”

Gantt stared blankly at him.

“Under the
bed
,” Michael repeated firmly. “Right there.”

The dice stopped clicking.

“Thank you, sir,” said Gantt, and he leaned over to get the imaginary jug under the phantom bed.

Michael moved as fast as he could. He plucked the Walther from Gantt’s waistband and when the man looked at him, puzzled, Michael hit him as lightly as possible across the back of the head with the pistol’s grip. Lightly as possible, but hard enough to put him to sleep and quench his thirst.

Gantt lay on the parachute. His body began to convulse, the arms and legs twisting. For a moment it appeared as if, even unconscious, he was about to get up and go for the waterjug, but then he collapsed again and lay thrashing. Michael put the gun aside and got his sweat-stiff shirt. He knelt beside the man, and with difficulty due to the one hand forced the cloth between Gantt’s teeth. It might prevent him from biting his tongue off, or not, depending on how strong the convulsions became.

Then all Michael could do was crawl away and sit with the Walther in his hand.

He watched Gantt suffer, as the last of the light faded.

The convulsions became more violent. This hideous phase lasted about fifteen minutes before Gantt suddenly became still.

Michael checked his pulse. Weak. But the man was alive.

The night turned cooler. A group of jackals came nosing around, until Michael stood up and ran them off with a few stones. His Rolex showed the passage of almost three more hours before Gantt stirred and spat the cloth out and got slowly up on his hands and knees. He retched so hard it seemed his guts would spill out. Then Gantt moaned and cursed and said in a voice barely intelligible, “Damn, my head hurts.” He had spoken in English. After that, he curled down again in a fetal position and went to sleep.

Michael also slept. His last impression was of the boy, sitting cross-legged under the starry sky, the Commonwealth soldier’s dusty tam on his head and his face hidden by the keffiyeh. Whether he was asleep sitting up or not was anyone’s guess, but at least for the moment his left hand was motionless and the dice were silent.

Four

They reached the well when dawn was a thin streak of red across the horizon and the world was made of different depths of darkness.

How far they had come this night, Michael didn’t know. His legs felt ragged. His left arm was a dead weight. He had left his kitbag behind, to save his energy, but he carried both guns in the parachute pack and Gantt—weak and dispirited—had not protested. Every step Michael took might end in a stumble. But he’d kept going, one of three, walking right behind the boy and following behind him the Messerschmitt ace.

The well was not pretty. It lay up under an outcropping of rock and so was shielded from the sun. Uneven stones were built up around a small pool the size of a bathtub in a cheap hotel. Dried animal dung was scattered about where the jackals and wild dogs had unsuccessfully tried to mark their territory.

Pretty or not, the well was full of gorgeous water. Gantt’s cracked lips parted in a gasp of need and he flung himself forward past Michael and the boy.

He hung over the stones and pushed his face into the water. He reached in with both arms and splashed water over his head. He reached down deeper, into the cooler depths, and when his hands came back up Michael saw the entrails roped around them, and suddenly the gashed-open bloodless torso that the entrails had spilled from surfaced in front of Gantt’s face, and also bursting to the surface was a decapitated human head, mouth and eyes open, that bore the purple hole of a rifle bullet.

Gantt shrieked; there was no other way to describe the sound. He fought out of the blue entrails that bound his wrists, and staggering back he nearly fell over the boy, who also retreated—but in utter silence—from the grisly mess that fouled the well. Gantt went down to the ground among the animals’ leavings and clawed frantically at his own mouth until the blood ran from his lips.

Michael approached the well. He had already smelled the beginnings of putrefaction. Desert heat was not kind to a corpse. By the end of another day, the odor would even keep the animals from coming near. There was another scent in the air also: salt. He figured the water had been salted as well as fouled by human remains. He walked a few paces away and knelt down on his haunches to think.

He thought he understood the motive for this brutality. “The Dahlasiffa,” he said to Gantt, who had crawled on his belly a distance away and lay with his hands to his face. “They’ve poisoned this well to keep other tribes from drinking.” In the strengthening light, he found the camel tracks that led southward. “Their own village must not be far. They’ve likely got a well there. They’re probably demanding tribute from other tribes.” He stood up and looked over the hammada toward the south. A muscle worked in his jaw. “We need water, or we’re going to die.” He spoke to Gantt not harshly but firmly: “Stand up.”

“I can’t.” The other man’s voice was almost gone. “I can’t.”

“If you won’t stand up, I’ll stand you up.”

“Please…let me lie here. I can’t…dear God…I can’t—”

Gantt was interrupted by the hand that reached down and grasped the back of his collar, pulling his face out of the sand.

“You hear me,” Michael said. “Loud and clear.” His eyes gleamed bright green in the dawning light. The sun was a red semicircle rising over shadowed mountains to the east. “You can handle a gun. So can I. The guns can get us some water. That means we live, at least for another day, unless the Dahlasiffa kill us first. But I’m thinking they’re not going to be expecting two men with guns. I told you to
stand up
.”

“I’m done,” Gantt gasped through his bloodied lips, his eyes swollen from the horror of what he’d just seen. “You go.”

“The odds are not good for one man. Not much better for two, but they
are
better. Now…you’re a soldier and so am I. We go out fighting. Do you hear me?”

“I can’t make it. Please. I’m done.”

“I’ll tell you when you’re done or not.” Michael gritted his teeth and tried to haul the man up but for all his best effort he didn’t have the strength. “Rolfe,” he said, “don’t die on your belly.” And he decided to add, “Your father didn’t.”

Gantt didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then he reached back and roughly pushed Michael’s hand away. He slowly rolled over and sat up. He pressed his hands to his face once more and rocked back and forth.

Michael heard the noise of the dice. He saw that the boy was throwing them onto the ground and then leaning forward to read the pips before they were collected and the process repeated.

“We have to try,” Michael said, though he himself was unsure they could even get close enough to the Dahlasiffa village to try. “We can think of
something
.”

“I’m too weak. I can barely walk.”

“Can you
crawl
?” Michael asked.

Gantt lowered his hands and looked up at Michael Gallatin. His eyes were deep sunken, dull and lifeless. It was a bad sign, Michael thought. A sign of giving up. He reached into the parachute pack, got the Walther P38 and offered the weapon to its owner. “Take it,” he said when Gantt hesitated. “Go ahead and blow your brains out, if you want to. I’ll bury you out here or you can join Hartler for a long bath.”

Gantt stared fixedly at the pistol. He frowned, searching for solid ground in this desert hell. The sun was rising quickly now, and the air was already hot. No breeze stirred a particle of dust.

At last Gantt spoke. “Why would I want to commit suicide?”

“It would be faster than dying of thirst. You still have some strength left. The village may be only a few miles away. Their well will be clean.” Something Michael had read suddenly came to him. “If I have to die today, I want to die fighting to live.”

“That makes not a bit of sense,” said the pilot.

“I know. It’s one of your quotes from your last article in
Signal
.”

In spite of his raging thirst and deadening fatigue, Gantt summoned a weak smile. “You’re a strange bastard.”

“Save your insults for tomorrow. For today, take this pistol and stand up. I’m thirsty enough to kill for a drink. Are you?” 

Gantt gingerly rubbed his raw mouth. Then he reached out and took the pistol. “Yes, I am,” he said, and with the greatest effort he got himself to his feet.

They aimed themselves along the camel tracks, with Michael leading the way, the boy next and then Gantt. As the sun steadily rose and the heat intensified the Englisher and German stopped to put on their face and head coverings, and then they continued southward.

They passed into a surrealistic landscape. The hard-packed crust of sand was brown with streaks of yellow. Emerging from the earth were huge ridges of wind-sculpted sandstone rocks standing twenty and thirty meters tall. Michael kept to the camel tracks, which led them through winding passages in the rocks.

It was difficult for even Michael to keep moving as the heat grew, so he knew Gantt was struggling. Every so often Michael looked back at the others; the boy was all right, though moving slowly, but Gantt was losing ground. The scorpion’s venom was surely still affecting him. Couple that with the shock of seeing Hartler, and it amazed Michael that the ace could put one foot in front of the other. They were helped by the find of some spindly cactus plants, which when cut open by the razor afforded a small amount of liquid squeezed from the stalks. Still, the need for water began to take over every thought for Michael, to push everything else aside, and he was fully aware that both Gantt and the boy were kindred sufferers. They did not possess the animal drive that kept Michael directed on his path to survival.