Marine Lance Corporal Derek Temple decided not to become a skeleton sitting in a pump house. Eternity required a better view.
He crawled and rolled out of the pump house toward the big, rich guy house beyond, not seeing it half the time, relying on gravity to assist his water starved limbs.
The house was big. The steps leading up to the open front door, swinging and sagging on its hinges, were big. Getting up them was a battle of inches, not feet, millimeters, not inches. Did inches have something smaller? Milliinches? Microinches? Why was America the last country on Earth not using the metric system?
Oh yeah. Because we were the greatest.
We built the biggest houses with the biggest steps also. Measured in inches and feet, each step required a painful summiting until Derek entered the house and lay on soft carpet. Not hard, dry, waterless, rocky ground. Soft, luxurious carpet that smelled of mildew and salt but was still carpet.
Crawling on carpet was easier. Focusing his eyes was harder.
Nirvana lay on a square coffee table in the living room. Bottles and cans, cans and bottles. Water. Water was life. Life was water. Three milliseconds without water.
Derek made it to the coffee table.
Each bottle he upended was dry. He couldn’t read the labels. Couldn’t read the two large red X’s on the green bottles or the gold label on the clear ones. The cans were dry also, flecks of red sludge decorating the tops and some of the clear glasses scattered on the table. He focused on one can, his eyesight fading in and out, and read ‘V8’. V8 and beer? Who mixed V8 and beer?
And who left nothing for Derek?
He tipped up a third can and it was as dry as the rest, as dry as him, and there was nothing he could do. He threw it across the room and slumped over.
He decided he didn’t want his skeleton to be found next to this party either.
He looked around the room. One of the windows had to have a view. His mother always wanted her headstone to have a good view. She had told her kids eternity was a long time and she wanted a good view for it. Derek decided to make for a view.
As he ‘marine’ crawled along, his eye caught hope. A can under a couch. A can on its side and Derek would have bet money it hadn’t been opened. He made for it, lunged for it, his uncooperating hand striking the can and pushing it away from him, under the couch and out the other side.
But it rolled heavily. Music to Derek’s ears.
Hope gave Derek strength and he maneuvered around the couch and retrieved the precious can of V8. It was full.
He laughed. He laughed relief and foolishness. He’d never been more excited to drink something in his entire life. He sat up, resting his back against the back of the couch and held the can of liquid in his lap. One can to relieve his thirst, and then he would die. At least he would have a moment of relief.
He shook the can, you had to shake cans of V8 right?, and popped the top. The smell of salt and tomato juice wafted up and he put the can to his mouth, his tongue not knowing what to do, having forgotten over the past three days (three weeks?) how to drink. The liquid touched his lips and tongue when he heard a distinct voice.
It was as if the voice had come from right over his shoulder, from someone sitting on the couch he leaned against, from someone right there in the room with him.
“Prime the pump.”
He was crazy.
Derek knew he’d been hallucinating, but he struggled to his feet and looked up over the couch. Completely alone, save for the ghosts of the empty beer bottles and V8 cans.
But he’d heard a voice.
He looked at his can and he wanted to tear his hair out, he wanted to cry, he wanted to scream. He almost threw the can across the room but checked himself.
The problem, the trained marine inside his head told him, was that the voice was right. He could drink the juice in the can and die, or he could prime the pump and have water to live.
Water was life in the desert.
He could also save the private lying in the highway less than a quarter of a mile away.
If it hadn’t been for the private, he may have just drank the V8 and gone and sat in a windowsill overlooking the ocean and allowed death to overtake him. The thought of abandoning Private Sollers, of allowing him to die on the highway like some roadkill, made Derek feel guilty. Marines saved people. Marine helicopters rescued people from floods, rescued hostages from terrorists. Marine tanks attacked aliens, chasing them off, saving the world.
Derek had to save the world.
Derek had to save a helpless private first.
Derek had to save himself.
He wished he hadn’t opened the can, that the voice would have had the decency to speak to him before he’d popped the top. Pop! Pop the top! Top the pop! Top. Pot. Pop. Pop.
Pop was the same forwards and backwards.
Focus! he commanded himself.
He had to get to the pump without spilling the V8.
He stood right now, but if he fell, he’d spill the precious beverage. He had to crawl, carefully, bringing the V8 with him. He’d set it down, crawl a bit, then move it.
It was around noon, he estimated. The pump house was about forty yards away. Uphill. Maybe he could make it by nightfall. If he lived that long.
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