Boucenna's Walk
By EB
©2004
The cliff is not very far away when what's in his stomach decides to make an encore appearance. He's been nauseated for a while now – longer than he's realized – but this is the ultimate indignity. Piling on insult over injury: he had to force himself to GET this, now his body's throwing it away again?
What he throws up isn't much. Way less than he can imagine making him feel so goddamned sick. And he just keeps doing it, kneeling on the ground like a penitent, making his genuflections to the merciless implacable gods of the desert. Over and over again, until he's crying out in between spasms, it hurts a lot, his belly is killing him, spasming so hard on nothing.
It lets up a little, finally, and he sits back on his feet, slumped over, staring at the ground. Blood is dripping in fat blobs on the dirt. Probably his ragged lips, but when he reaches up without much interest he discovers it's his nose. So dried out the membranes are cracking, just like his lips. He tastes blood in the back of his throat, and that makes him heave a few times again.
He tries to cry when that one's done, but he isn't making tears anymore. God, he's so lonely. He's going to die out here. No one's going to hold his hand, or slip him a big bottle of water, or put their arm around him and tell him to rest, relax, it'll all be okay. Nothing's going to be okay. Nothing here, anyway. He can't do any more. He's all done.
"Come on, champ. Just one more." Dad grins at him, lifts his chin. He's tossing the ball from hand to glove, back and forth, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. There's no gray in his hair at all. "One more and we'll head inside, see what's for supper."
"Dad, I can't," Nick tries to say. His tongue lies motionless in his mouth, numb as if he's just gotten a monster shot of Novocaine at the dentist's. He shakes his head, and his dry eyes still won't tear up.
"Make you a deal. One more, and I'll bet you I can throw this all the way to the Smith's house. That's seven houses down, Nicky, end of the block."
Why would he want to do that? It'll hit something. Go through a window, or bounce off Mr. Adamson's shiny new Ford. Adamson's kind of an asshole, even though he minds his manners around Nick's father, the judge. That's what the kids call him. The Judge. Nick has a hard time envisioning his father as someone to be scared of. Respectful to, sure. You learned in the Stokes household what manners were. But scared? Nah. Those people have never seen his dad in that awful paisley bathrobe he wears on Saturday mornings. With egg on the collar.
But he doesn't get much time with his dad lately, and even if he's gonna pitch that ball practically into the next county, Nick will do his best to go retrieve it. Because that's what you do, when you love your dad. And Nick loves his dad, loves him so much sometimes it hurts inside his chest, aches like he'd swallowed something cold, way too fast.
So he stands up, and wipes the blood off his face, and nods. His father winds up, draws his right leg the way Nick's studied so much. The pitch is a thing of beauty. Pure, soaring, fast as a bolt of lightning. Arching into the air, flying straight and true.
"See? Now what'd I tell you?" His father grins, bangs his fist into his glove. "Still got it, I can still bring it, right? Now run get it for me, okay? I'll wait."
He's too tired. It's way too far. He can't make it. But he will. Somehow, he will. Because he wants to walk back in the house with Dad's hand on his shoulder, his too-skinny shoulder, not muscular like Cabe or Dad himself, not yet. But it will be someday.
"Okay, Daddy," he says in his garbled crispy-dry voice. "I'll go get it."
"Piggyback ride if you hurry."
"Okay. Deal."
He smiles at his dad, who's young and handsome and the best damn dad in the whole country, maybe the whole wide world, and turns to go get the ball.
"The dogs say we go west-southwest." Lt. Tabor points. "Constant radio contact, all right? Don't let this terrain fool you. I know it looks wide-open. But if you want shade – and that's what we think he's looking for, smart boy – you may cram yourself into a spot you'd normally overlook." He nods crisply. "So don't overlook anything. I mean it, folks, this guy's been out here about 36 hours already. It was 127 in the shade yesterday, and he's got no supplies, no water, no nothing. He's gonna be hurting, bad. So let's not make him wait any longer for that rescue. All right?"
The group is bigger than Gil has anticipated. Nearly eighty people, and sixteen dogs. It's a massive operation, and that's partly because Mike Carson's death has hit his colleagues like a full-body blow. It's in Carson's memory that these people have thronged out to an uninhabited section of Nye County, to try to save the guy Carson tried, presumably, to do the same for.
And there are some who don't know Mike Carson from Adam, but who know Nick Stokes very well indeed. They're the people standing with Gil, the ones whose faces are tight with anxiety, brows creased with determination. They won't be leaving empty-handed. Nick won't walk out of here. But alive or not, these folks will be bringing him home.
Next to him, Catherine's expression is hard to read behind her heavy sunglasses. She's smeared sunscreen on her nose, and wisely wears long sleeves, but otherwise she's calm, implacable, steady as the proverbial rock. No one here knows she was weeping when Gil saw her an hour ago. Standing over the bloodstained place where Carson's body had been, mascara running, glasses dangling from her fingers.
She's not crying now. Neither is Warrick, or Sara, or Jim Brass. Greg Sanders looks as if he wants to, but won't let himself. His pale face gleams in the sunlight, young and scared and wary.
It's nearly two in the afternoon. It's blisteringly hot. Over 120, definitely. Nothing moves in this heat, but the foolish gallant humans. Nick has to be holed up someplace. It's the only answer Gil's brain will even tolerate, much less accept. The alternative is too much to contemplate.
At the time Nick's friends and Carson's colleagues are gathering for their trek through the dry hardpan of the desert, Nick is not, in fact, holed up. He's walking toward that elusive cliff, his gait looking distinctly like a guy's who's had about a dozen over the legal limit. Reeling, lurching, staggering. But moving forward. He's whispering to himself. The words aren't possible to understand, even if Gil had been next to him. Nick isn't really even aware he's talking. But in his mind the words are echoing, over and over again. "Just three more houses. Three more houses. Three more."
The group turns and faces southwest, and Nick retches absently and whispers, "Two more houses."
A couple of trucks shadow them as they walk. Carrying supplies for the searchers, and gear for the rescue they're here to perform. There are dozens of water bottles, sports drinks, boxes of sandwiches. Medical supplies, flares, extra batteries for radios. It's not just for Nick's sake alone. A place like this, you can't be too careful. A human body loses about a quart of water an hour if the temperature is 100 degrees. It's 124 right now. Some of the searchers are already looking seriously wilted. But hunting at night, while cooler, wouldn't be worth it. Too many chances for overlooking possibilities.
Nick doesn't have that long, anyway.
A familiar sense of calm has settled over Gil, while he walks, head swinging from side to side as he inspects the ground. It's far from his first manhunt. If they don't find Nick during the daytime, they'll use a helicopter tonight, look for heat signatures. But there's a problem with that approach, one that Gil knows as well as the sound of his own heart, thumping away in his ears. When the heat's as bad as it is now, things don't cool off at night nearly as much. If they resort to choppers, they'll be chasing a lot of boondoggles. He's seen it before. Finding someone is as much due to luck as diligence.
They have to find Nick now, in the next six hours. By tonight Gil doesn't think there will be much of a hurry any longer.
"Doesn't seem like so long." It's Shelly talking, about five people down the line from Gil. She doesn't sound like she's complaining. Just observing. "He'll still be okay, won't he?"
It's Greg who replies to her. Sounding not so young any longer, brutally frank. "Under normal conditions, sure. It can take up to two weeks to die of dehydration. But in the desert? Only takes a day or two."
Shelly doesn't reply, at least not loudly enough for Gil to overhear.
At his side Catherine sighs, and drinks her water. "How far could he have gone, realistically?" she asks him. Her voice is pitched low, not designed to carry. "Can't be that far."
"Nick was in excellent physical shape, starting out. With no supplies, no water – he still might have gone farther than you think." Gil pulled out his own water bottle and took a tug off it. "If he took shelter during the hottest parts of the day, moved during the night and early morning – and he didn't simply hole up in the coolest place he could find and simply wait, which I hope he did – then twenty-five miles? Thirty?"
"That far?" Her look even wearing sunglasses is appalled. "Jesus, Gil, we won't get that far on foot before nightfall."
"No," he agrees softly. "We won't."
She stops, turns to stare at him. "We've got the direction. Why don't some of us take one of those trucks and go on ahead?"
He meets her look equably. "Because we could miss something along the way."
"Let a couple of the dogs loose. They're freaking anyway, they smell him. We can track using the truck."
She's right. And a part of him wants to leap at it, at the same time another part says it's only a different set of problems.
But it's faster. At this crawl they'll never find Nick in time. And if they don't, what's the point to any of it?
He nods. "You're right. Give me a second."
He turns without waiting for her reply, searching down the line for Jack Tabor's lanky form.
cont.