I could kill for some strawberries.
Strawberries and water.
And that ride to a doctor’s office, where painkillers are plentiful.
I should’ve been a Girl Scout. I should’ve done some orienteering or something super physical besides swimming. But instead, the closest I came to wilderness survival “training” was all that time I put in mindlessly consuming episode after episode of Man vs. Wild. Minh made fun of me for watching a show where a ripped dude drank his own urine to “survive.” According to her, if you have to drink your own urine (or anyone’s urine) to survive, then nature has already defeated you. But now, all I could see was vast arid land extending in all directions, and all I could think was how scared I was. Surrounded by dunes that appeared to be in constant motion, I couldn’t even concentrate on how breathtakingly gorgeous it all was. No … All I was capable of wondering was—would this be how it’d end for me? Would this be where I’d die?
“Let me have a look.”
I looked up to find Tommy standing over me. Not waiting for an invitation, he knelt next to me and reached out for my numb left hand, curled up against my chest.
“I’d rather not move it,” I protested, though I wasn’t sure whether my reluctance was due to the threat of more pain or the possibility of Tommy’s touch making me dizzier than I already was. I blinked hard. “It’s already much better,” I lied.
“Let me have a look. Please?”
Hesitantly, I nodded, and he reached out for my injured arm, gingerly separating it from my chest. I let go, allowing him to run his fingers over my skin, poking and prodding my sore shoulder area. I watched his face while he was too busy concentrating on my shoulder to notice. It was a rare unguarded moment when I could stare at him without getting caught. Interesting to know: Your crush on someone didn’t go away when you were near death.
The moment ended when Tommy let go of my arm and awkwardly placed it back against my chest. “Just a sprain. It’s not dislocated.”
“How do you know?” It came off whiny. I enjoyed Tommy’s attention and didn’t want it to end, the terrible circumstances of it be damned.
“Because you would definitely feel it every time I made your arm move.” He smirked and stood up to leave. He didn’t go far though—the arroyo was nothing but a ditch the size of a kiddie swimming pool—and returned carrying what appeared to be Minh’s scarf. “Here, let me.” Tommy knelt by my side again as he made a sling from the scarf to support my left arm. Once it was done, he walked away fast.
My mouth open in unsaid Thanks, I watched him retreat to the farthest corner of the arroyo. Then I noticed Luke staring at me. His eyes were dark holes and unblinking. He looked like a ghost stuck between two worlds, and it made my skin crawl.
We resumed our trek at the first sign of the sun nearing the horizon. With no food and no water since our dinner at the dig camp, I was losing my focus, my limbs getting heavier with each step. Our heavy drinking last night didn’t help the situation either.
Minh’s scarf served me well, and I thanked her for it the first chance I got. As we left the arroyo’s shade, my mind started to wander, my feet dragging against the sand. I was a mess. My friends didn’t look much better off. We were like an undead herd, our spirits cramped into bodies that were no longer able to move the right way.
Tommy assumed the role of our unofficial leader, but the longer I watched him, the more I could tell he had no idea what he was doing. When he thought no one would notice, he threw befuddled glances at his compass. Each time, he frowned. Was he thinking the same thought I was? How the hell did this happen to us?
From our ragtag group, Lori seemed the most out of place. During our reprieve in the arroyo, she had readjusted her sparkly headband, which held back her no-longer-very-slick hair. She was pouting like that was gonna get someone to come to her rescue sooner.
We had to stop by some thorn-covered bushes when Lori announced she needed rest. This rare patch of vegetation stood up against the sands, its silhouette spiky and unfriendly. By now, even Tommy knew it was useless to argue with Lori, so we just dropped right where we stood. Tommy lay down next to me and closed his eyes. Before I could overthink what his choice of a rest spot could mean, Lori demanded I come with her. Minh was already on her feet, and, staying together, we followed Lori behind the denser-looking section of the scrubland, where it reached our waists.
Without a word of warning, Lori pulled down her shorts and crouched.
“All right then.” Minh shrugged and shifted her weight from one foot to another, looking away from Lori’s stream of dark liquid as it turned the dirt ashy black.
Lori finished and stood up, giving us a withering look. “What? Are you judging my unladylike behavior, or are you waiting for a special invitation?” That provoked another shrug from Minh before she took a few steps away from us and squatted on the ground, though not without a certain ballerina-like grace. Feeling the peer pressure, I joined Minh but avoided looking down.
You could survive without food for more than three weeks. Without water? Three days. Maybe four. And the first sign of trouble? Dark urine.
What stopped me from falling into total despair was compartmentalization. As I forced my feet to move again, slipping on the sand and listening to my fellow strandees’ heavy breathing, my brain offered a shiny picture to distract me: my bed, fresh linens straight from the dryer, crisp and inviting. Oh, to run my legs against their coolness. The picture helped. But only a little.
The sun’s behavior was peculiar. We’d left the arroyo at first sign of sunset, but as we ventured farther from our place of temporary rest, the bright disc on the horizon seemed to fluctuate in size—shrinking or dilating every time I took a look at it.
Tommy’s frustration was clear in his voice. “I don’t get it! We’ve been moving for hours. There’s no way we could’ve gotten this far out during the storm. No way!”
His sudden outburst earned no answer.
My eyes drawn upward, I registered a black dot of a bird briefly swooping across the luminous sphere. It flew up, circling us from above. I heard its distant call, and another bird answered. Scavengers were gathering. Waiting for us to drop. What was it Hemingway wrote about vultures? Something about them being a sign of impending death.
During another rest stop, Lori was first to pick up on a weak glint of gold in the distance. She froze dead in her tracks and stared, pointing a finger at whatever was flashing at random intervals. “The high-rises of Dubai!… But how?”
We looked in the direction she was indicating and, indeed, there was a faint glimmer, pulsing weakly. Though it didn’t make me think “high-rises of Dubai” but rather a lone lighthouse stuck in the desert. But high-rises or not, we were all mesmerized until Tommy’s harsh voice jerked us out of our collective trance. “It’s a mirage. We need to move against the sun and away from those lights.”
“We’ve been going against the sun this entire time, and now the sun has changed its direction, apparently,” Luke snapped. “I suggest we stop going against the sun and go toward that light.”
It must’ve taken a lot of Tommy’s self-control not to scream back his response at Luke. “Do you know how many people died in the desert when they thought salvation was near? And I’m sure they believed until their final breath that what they saw was a human settlement or an oasis, but none of it was real. They died of dehydration and sunstroke!”
Minh, her nose and cheeks burning red from the sun, came to stand next to Lori. Swaying on her feet, she placed a hand on Lori’s shoulder but addressed Tommy, “We’re lost. Obviously, there’s something wrong with our sense of direction. We’re all hallucinating that the sun’s not moving the way it’s supposed to. We don’t know where we are, and this glimmer may be the only hope we have of surviving.” Their movements eerily synchronized, Lori and Luke nodded in agreement. Tommy rolled his eyes at them and then looked between me and Rowen, the only members of our group who hadn’t yet expressed views on the subject.
“I say we go toward the light.” Rowen nodded and crossed his arms over his chest, cutting off any attempt from Tommy to persuade him otherwise.
I found everyone staring in my direction, waiting for me to support or reject Tommy’s advice. I sensed that regardless of what I would decide, the group would go toward the glimmer. Our collective mind had been made up. And yet they were still waiting for me to weigh in.
I shaded my eyes with my hand and focused on that patch of sand at the distance where Lori saw what she thought was our salvation. I couldn’t deny there was indeed something there. It was a flickering kind of light, and now that I studied it, its pattern wasn’t like that of a lighthouse at all. Instead, it was random and sporadic in strength. Some blinks were longer, more intense. I wondered if it could be a piece of glass or a mirror dropped by some traveler. Or could it be a larger man-made object, a part of a roof or a wall, but reflective somehow? Solar panels? None of that explained the erratic pattern of the light though. But maybe whatever it was could give us shelter, possibly even hold some supplies. Was it irrational? My brain must’ve been fried if I was imagining a little house in the middle of sand-covered nowhere. Not just a house, but a house stuffed to the brink with canned goods and bottled water. And strawberries.
“If we were to vote, I guess those who wanted to go toward the light would win anyway,” I said. Tommy’s face changed. Speaking against him, even indirectly, made my stomach flip. But I didn’t owe him anything. I was trying to be realistic. I added in haste, suspecting what he might suggest next, “And I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to split up and go our separate ways.”
Luke scoffed before I finished talking, but I wasn’t sure whether his derision was aimed at me or at Tommy, who now looked defeated and deflated.
“Then it’s settled,” Luke said. “We all go toward the light.”
And so go toward the light we did.
Luke was at the forefront of our beeline now, followed by Lori, Rowen, and Minh. I was in the back, with Tommy reluctantly lagging behind, which, I guessed, was his way of expressing defiance. And what if he was right? I couldn’t stop wondering whether we were all headed to our deaths, moving deeper into the heart of the desert where no rescue effort would ever reach us.
Whatever it was that sparkled up ahead didn’t disappear as we traveled toward it. In fact, the faint glimmer grew bigger, soon starting to change color and shape. I could now distinguish a row of something like uneven sticks with bushy heads standing out against the overall mass of gold and … green? I know we all saw it—or at least saw something other than sand, sand, and more sand—because our footsteps picked up and then we were running in an awkward shuffle like a group of deranged animals that had gotten a whiff of fresh blood. Minh tripped and stumbled ahead of me. Slowing to a halt, I reached out to steady her while my eyes scanned the ground below. A small patch of white stood out against the dirty sand. Whatever it was, it was mostly buried, its uncovered surface bleached by the sun. Lori, Luke, and Rowen did not make a move to slow down until I yelled out for them to wait. I joined Minh, who was kneeling on the ground. She was running her fingers over the white object in the sand, her hands tentative yet shivery with eagerness.
“It’s a bone.” Tommy’s shadow landed on us sideways. Minh jerked her hand back and cleaned off her fingers on her pants. Tommy’s voice turned soothing, “Dead animals. Probably lots of bones around here, if you look close.”
An uncomfortable shiver passed through me, refusing to go away. The more I studied the bone fragment submerged in the sand, the more I thought something wasn’t quite right about its angle or texture. Hesitantly I brushed more sand off it, revealing more bones. Being my parents’ daughter meant growing up exposed to lots of books on archaeology and its related fields. Not to mention that Dad’s favorite pastime was to test me on stuff he was working on. One of his topics of interest had to do with calcified remains. In particular, how to distinguish animal remains from human ones at first glance. Only, back then I thought death was an abstract thing, not something I had to deal with, at least not any time soon. But here it was, before me. The presence of death, rude and unrelenting.
“It’s not an animal,” I said. Silence met my words.
I wondered if Tommy, an archaeology wunderkind, saw what I was seeing. The bones that were now partially released from the sand were porous and detailed. I could distinguish vertebrae bent at a certain angle before they disappeared into the sand. Only human axes had those particular curves …
“They’re human bones.” I lifted myself from the ground and shook off the sand, grateful I was wearing ankle-long pants and not ultra-short shorts like Lori, even though my legs were hot and sweaty.
I scanned my friends’ faces. Lori was eyeing me with suspicion from where she stood flanked by Luke and Rowen.
“We’ll never know what happened to this person,” I murmured, looking at the bones beneath me. The others must’ve shared my unspoken sentiment: Was this our fate too?
“Freaking hell,” Luke said, coming closer to where I was, his hand snaking awkwardly around my shoulders. Our shapes cast long shadows over the grisly find. I watched him as he let go of me and leaned in to pick up a credit-card-size object stuck between the bones. Luke cleaned his find of sand and dust and stared at it. “So that French dude who rescued himself from the desert? Did he mention if he had a friend?” he asked.
Luke didn’t address anyone in particular, so no response came. When he raised his eyes and deliberately met mine, I shrugged.
“Not that I can recall.”
“Well, looks like our Desert Man wasn’t all that alone in the desert.” Luke raised his hand so we all could see the piece of plastic he held in his grip. It was a driver’s license. Issued in Paris, France. To Alain Pinon. The photo was scratched up, but I could still make out the features of a dark-skinned man, his hair pulled back from his face.
“I wonder what happened to him,” Minh said, because someone had to.
My friends’ faces were grim as we watched Luke stuff the piece of plastic into the pocket of his track pants. We continued on our trek, moving toward the outline of what could’ve been a shining mirage. Only it didn’t disappear, didn’t waver as we approached. Instead, it continued to rise up higher and bigger, the massive scale of it becoming apparent, even to our tired eyes, half blinded by the sun.