THE GATES OF HELL
CHAPTER 6
The sun was high overhead when David opened his eyes. The air was so hot and heavy that it burned his lungs with each breath he took. As the day wore on, the temperature rose and breathing became more difficult. It was so bad that David finally passed out from the heat. The sensation of something crawling across his bare skin awoke him with a startled cry. He swatted at the huge spider that was crawling over his right arm, knocking it outside of his cage. .
"You okay, Davy?" Charlie asked anxiously, aroused from his own stupor when he heard David's startled cry.
"Yeah….just a spider crawling on me." David told him, taking a deep breath and trying to steady his ragged nerves.
"They been crawling all over me too." Charlie said "Suckers hurt when they bite too."
"I'll take your word for it." David muttered, trying to clear the cobwebs out of his foggy mind. He winced, his shoulders protesting any movement, the skin on his back burned and blistered from prolonged exposure to the sun. The muscles in his legs cramped from being forced to sit in one position for so long and David noticed the tremor in his hands. He could feel his body slowly shutting down and he was too weak to resist any longer. He closed his eyes and let the darkness creep over him once more.
The day seemed to drag on with no end in sight. But when night fell it was even worse. The darkness was overwhelming, covering everything like a blanket. And it was still hard to breathe. There was little relief from the heat; it was only slightly cooler at night than it was during the day. And what made it even worse was that the spiders and other critters that crawled over David in the darkness could not be as easily identified as they were during the daylight. It was impossible to do more than doze off for brief periods at a time. The excessive heat was sapping the last of David's failing strength and endurance. Death seemed preferable to this continuous torture with no end in sight.
A guard came early in the morning with a small cup of rice and water, their only ration for the day. Then they were left alone. The loneliness and isolation was almost unbearable. All David and Charlie had was each other, so they used that to hold on to their sanity. They talked about everything and anything they could think of just to pass the endless hours. David was glad he wasn't out here in this cage by himself without anyone to talk to. If he had been, he would have lost it by now from sheer loneliness.
David was listening as Charlie started telling him about the first girl he'd ever made out with. Only half of his mind was paying attention, the other half had drifted off. Suddenly, David felt a sharp burning sting on his bare ankle. Instinctively, he jerked his leg away from the unexpected pain.
"DAVY!" Charlie yelled in a frantic voice "SNAKE!"
By the time his words registered in David's foggy mind and he glanced down at his left leg, the snake had already crawled across his bare leg and found its way out of the cage. Through blurry eyes, David saw the two little puncture marks just above his ankle. A few minutes later, he began shaking uncontrollably and felt violently sick to his stomach. Even though it was mid morning and the temperature was crawling into the high nineties, David had never felt so cold in is life. Unable to lie down, all he could do was sit there hunched over in his usual position as the poison slowly seeped into his system. David's condition grew steadily worse as the day wore on. He could hear Charlie talking to him, trying to keep him alert and oriented, but he was too sick to reply.
The next two days were a blur in his mind and always would be. The only thing David would ever remember clearly was feeling so cold all the time and wanting to give up, to just curl up and die so he could stop the paralyzing cramps that twisted his guts into knots and the gut wrenching nausea that swept over him relentlessly. But his mind refused to let him die and slowly he started coming out of it. When he was coherent enough to start responding to Charlie again, Charlie told him that all he had done for the past three days while he was delirious was rant about home. His foot was swollen up to twice its normal size and was turning purple. He could barely move his left leg and his entire body throbbed with pain. He could feel himself burning with fever from the infection that flooded his system.
Late that afternoon, the guards came and took Charlie away. It was hours before they brought him back and when they did, it was obvious that he had been severely beaten. He managed to tell David that the Viet Cong had questioned him for hours wanting to know the location of their camps and their weapon sites. They refused to believe that Charlie didn't know. In retaliation, they had beaten him almost to death. The next morning, the guards came for him again. David watched helplessly as they drug him away. Only this time they didn't bring him back that day. Alone in his cage, David felt the terror seeping into every pore of his being when he realized he was now truly alone. He could feel his mind starting to slip away without Charlie there to keep him grounded in reality.
By morning, David felt as if he was teetering on the very edge of his sanity. He was afraid that he was going to start screaming and never stop. No longer held at bay, the terror inside of him felt like an iron fist curled around his heart. Suddenly, the guards came through the trees dragging Charlie's limp lifeless body between them. They threw his dead body down on the ground in front of David's cage, jabbering something he couldn't quite understand in Vietnamese. One of the guards reached out and unlocked his cage, hands reaching in to grab at him. With a whimper, David scooted as far into the corner of the cage as he could possibly get his eyes wide with terror. His mind didn't even register the sound of gunfire and explosions coming form the direction of the main camp. The two guards turned and ran back towards the camp, David momentarily forgotten. But that wasn't all they forgot. They also forgot to close the door to his cage.
At first, David was too scared to move, afraid that it was some kind of trick. But then his own survival instincts took over and David half fell, half stumbled out of the cage. He fell on the ground beside Charlie's battered body, too weak to escape now that he was free. As he looked at his friend's dead body and empty eyes, something deep inside of David snapped. Even though he was so weak he could barely move, somehow David managed to scrape a narrow grave out of the loose dirt in front of his cage using nothing but his bare hands and tearing loose every fingernail in the process. The hole wasn't very deep but it was deep enough so that he could bury his friend. It was the last thing he could do for him, the only respect he could show for Charlie. He never even noticed the tears that streamed down his face as he struggled to complete his task.
Relying on sheer will power, he managed to pull Charlie's body into the makeshift grave and gently covered him with dirt. By the time he had finished, he was totally exhausted and panting from the physical exertion. He collapsed on top of the grave and finally let his shattered mind drift far away from this place and all the horrors he had been forced to endure here.