They hadn’t found any water the first day, or any high ground. The area was uncannily flat. When their watches showed five in the afternoon they had made camp for the night. It had been three hours before the sun had set. They had taken turns guarding the camp throughout the night, and nine hours later the sun had risen. They’d adjusted their watches.
They we’re still making their way through the jungle. The compasses ensured they kept going in a straight line. They didn’t speak much – there was too much to think about. That is, during the moments when they weren’t busy scanning the area around them, tending to the injured Sarge, or setting or packing up camp.
Wherever they were, the place was almost as strange as the fact that they were there in the first place. The only sound they’d heard had been their own. No sounds of water, no wind or rustling of leaves, and no animal noises. Obviously the plants were getting water from somewhere – the vegetation was as lush as ever – but the ground wasn’t particularly moist, and once the sun had been up for a while any dew had evaporated.
At one point the emotions escaped the soldier’s discipline, and they had a discussion on where they were and why. Roth tried to kill the conversation and keep them focused, but when Buckley proposed his theory of it being a dream, tempers ran hot. They couldn’t agree on who was the dreamer and who were the dreams. Talk again fell to a minimum when they were done.
This wasn’t what Charlie had signed up for. Of course, he had accepted the risks of combat when he volunteered for service. He had been aware that he’d be put in an unfamiliar setting, far away from home. He had known that he would end up in unpredictable situations. He had realised there would be a chance he would die. But he hadn’t signed up for an explosion hurtling him off to a completely different part of the world, if not another world entirely. Charlie wasn’t just unhappy with his military service though, he was disgruntled with life. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for. This wasn’t anywhere near how the world should be working. According to the geeks and scientists, that is. People like Buckley. Self-righteous know-it-alls that pretended to know how it all fit together. Sometimes he had wanted to punch Buckley square in the face just because of the look of him, with his skinny frame and glasses. Knock some sense into him. Or out of him, as the case might be.
No, Buckley was a good guy, a good soldier. The situation was getting to Charlie; the stress was piling up proportionately to how much time he had to think about it. He reached for his canteen and took a sip of water. There wasn’t much left, maybe enough for another day if he was really disciplined.
