wildracer (wildracer) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-05-01 12:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | jasper, z - 1st tribe - day 18 |
'Plan A'
Who: Jasper
Where: That bloody desert
When: Night and day and night again
Rated: PG, I guess
"All of us, all of us sing about it. All of us sing about it." Jasper chanted to herself. The sun was just over the horizon and she was pretty sure she was near the edge of the desert just due to the fact she wasn't baking to death already. It was a remembered song, only really coming to her in the dusty heat while she trudged towards her next goal - a cactus patch. The hard melons she had weren't going to last all the way out, and she wanted to save them just in case. "Must be some kind of planet, for all the people who can manage. All of us who can handle it, with all of this damage." She couldn't remember the second verse, so she hummed it instead. Honestly, Jasper remembered bar songs a lot better.
She cleared her throat, and took a small sip of the juice from one of her melons. God, that sun was hot. But she had another couple of kilometers, luckily what appeared to be downhill, before she got to the next cactus stand. And she could do that before the sun got too merciless. She started a light jog. And, in honor of Kenneth who wasn't there but what the hell? she started singing the (two) military cadences she knew. "Oh, mama, can't you see? The world is growing dark for me. Put me in a barber's chair. Snip snip and I had no hair. And if I die in a combat zone? Box me up and ship me home. Put me in a set of dress clothes. Comb my hair and shine my shoes. Pin my medals upon my chest. Tell my mama I did my best. Mama, mama, don't you cry. Marine corp motto is 'do or die'. I used to sit at home all day, letting my life a'waste away. Oh, then one day a man in blue said 'Son, I got a job for you. There's travel and adventure and loads of fun, and we'll even teach how to shoot a gun. There's room and board and a plate of food. And a brand new tailored business suit.." She paused and put her hands on her knees, panting hard. God, she was learning to hate desert runs.
"Okay. What other songs do I know?" She muttered, and picked up her jog again. A couple drifted through her mind, but they didn't have the pace she needed. Whatever. For a while she jogged in silence, but it was still a relief to get to the cactus stand. Which was actually bigger then she thought it would be. It stretched out for a distance, but there was still room between the cacti themselves that she could stretch out and sleep away the hottest part of the day. Deciding to move a bit further in, she started smelling... cinnamon? Or something. An unpleasant sweet-spice smell that didn't appeal to her at all.
Some ten, fifteen feet into the cacti, she saw what it was. It was, or at least had been, a man. It was definitely not alive anymore. It was gripped on tight to a cactus - long needs were pierced through its hands, and one of the arms was definitely dislocated and broken. Around its waist was a sandworm. The teeth that looked more like really rough plates were easily going through the soft skin of the man's belly, and up close the damn things were horrifyingly big, and the worm itself was hideously large. The only thing she could think of was that maybe the worm had followed him into the patch, gotten him, and couldn't crawl backwards because forwards was definitely not an option - the pointy plants just got thicker and closer together up there. Both corpses were in the slow, dry rot that the pharaohs of ancient Egypt had suffered in their tombs.
Jasper backed away from that. What was she going to do about it? What could she do about it? Nothing and nada right now. It was too hot, and she needed to sleep. She walked back to where the cacti was thinner on the ground, and laid down there, trying to ignore the smell. Sometimes, you just didn't want to think about what you were smelling.