Rogers ate one of the Oceanian ration tins as he walked, once he'd passed out of sight of the downed helicopter and cluster of miserable men he'd left behind. Inside of the tin, once he'd opened it, Rogers found a foil wrapped oblong about the size and shape of a dime-store paperback, a little plastic bottle containing a few ounces of clear, oddly greasy liquid, and a second foil wrapped packet about half the size of the first one.
The first packet contained some sort of compressed bread-like substance. Rogers did not know what it was but ate it anyway. It went down easily, vaguely fibrous and utterly tasteless. Like he'd just swallowed a lightly moistened cake of sawdust.
All the same it tamped down the hunger pangs a little bit. Rogers opened the second packet. Was cheered by the sight of dried apples, which he ate with gusto.
Twisting open the cap on the bottle, Rogers had to bite back a smile as he read the words written on the side.
Victory Gin.
He was reminded somewhat of the ubiquitous wartime habit of attaching grandiose titles to mundane things. Gardens had become Victory Gardens, schnapps Victory Schnapps (for the Germans at least), and so forth. It seemed that the Oceanians were no different.
He took a delicate sniff of the liquid inside but recoiled with a grimace. The Victory Gin smelled evil, like wood alcohol and the ethanol fuel that powered torpedoes. He pitched it off to the side, a trail of ersatz gin sparkling behind it like the tail of a comet. Rogers shook his head slightly in self reproach.
No…today was not the day he would take up drinking.
Not even if he had been zipped forty years into the future.
And what a future it was…
He checked the Oceanian map again, noted his surroundings and decided that he'd covered maybe four or five kilometers. Almost nothing compared to the vast emptiness of the wilderness that surrounded him.
He needed to find a road. Something that would lead him to civilization, so he could get an idea of just what this brave new world looked like.
So far all he had to go off of were the lunatic ravings of the Oceanians and the impenetrable babble of their propaganda books. Not exactly great tools for deduction.
Still, he'd managed to learn some things.
Oceania was definitely a dictatorship, its people had a fierce hatred of Canada and the United States, and they seemed to have occupied both. How long this had gone on for Rogers did not know, but he swore to himself that it would change.
If the free world had been laid low by the dark forces of totalitarianism then they wouldn't remain down for long. Freedom never could be contained forever.
The nearest road on the map was a little over thirty kilometers away, due southeast. Rogers checked his compass, adjusted his course accordingly, and kicked into a light jog.
The running was good. It blanked his thoughts, let him focus entirely on his surroundings, not on the terror and uncertainty welling up within him.
It was a stunningly pretty day out, the sky was almost entirely cloudless, the snowpack a glaring, flawless white. Around him Rogers could hear the movements of animals in their burrows beneath the snow, see tracks left by ptarmigan, ravens and rabbits.
He dropped into a little valley at one point, one frosted with pines and the gaunt, leafless forms of birches and oaks. Found a little stream and splashed in, wading downstream through its ice rimed waters for a half dozen kilometers before climbing back out.
Rogers practiced these evasion techniques with ease, almost unaware that he was even following them. But in the back of his mind the situation was being perpetually updated. Soon the Oceanians would come looking for him. That was an inevitability. And if he wanted to have even a fighting chance at survival then he'd need to make things difficult for them.
He wondered briefly if setting up boobytraps would be wise. He had the necessary equipment to create crude toe-popper mines (of the sort he might have scattered behind him if trapped behind Nazi lines in Europe), or little knee deep pits with sharp stakes at the bottom.
But in the end he decided against it.
The Oceanians wouldn't be tracking him by land. At least not primarily. Out here, in the wild, they'd be using their helicopters and jets to look for him. So sticking close to the thickets and valleys and trees would be wiser than scattering traps that likely wouldn't ever be tripped.
Still, he did make sure to double back every now and then, to make his tracks confusing to follow.
Just in case.
As the afternoon began to turn to evening Rogers stopped and found a sheltered position in the cleft of two hills. Down below him were a few dozen scrawny pines, up above was a rock and ice strewn cliff. He dug himself a rudimentary cave but was unable to make it too deep because of how little snow there was on the ground.
Next he trekked over to where the sunlight was still brightest and lit up one of the Big Brother books, using one of the binocular lenses he'd pried loose as a magnifier.
Soon enough he had a cheerful little blaze going. It wasn't really enough to keep more than the tips of his fingers warm, but the mere sight of the flames raised his spirits. He was alive and well, ready to take on the world.
Or die trying.
