Chapter 2

The boatman was right about one thing: it was not comfortable out there. It must have been at least ninety degrees, pouring rain beneath the moonless night sky. A fully-clothed hot shower from which I could not escape. There was nothing to be done but follow the remains of the trail. There was really only one way to go, a narrow strip of land winding in between soggy puddles of sucking mud. One wrong step and I would find myself suddenly schlorping knee deep in a slough of water covered with a thin layer of soil. The trail of solid ground snaked and coiled back and forth. After a few hours I was no longer even sure of which direction I was headed.

Every inch was a fight. Every step was a struggle. Gasping and heaving, I thrashed my way through the wet shrubbery. I pushed onward. I slipped under. At times I heaved myself upon the bushes and rolled forward, plunging down amongst the thorns to begin the push anew. Every leaf and every thorn clung to my wet clothes, their springy branches slapping against my face and dragging backwards across my skin before releasing with a sudden snap. My machete was useless. The underbrush was too soft. It absorbed the blade and then sprung back without a scratch.

Bolts of lightning, miles long, cracked constantly across the sky. Never was there a moment without the constant rumble of thunder. I looked up into the rattling tap of the endless rain to take my bearings. There were none to be had. The stars were invisible. Nothing but the looming hills of green bathed in the shimmering blue shine of the lightning.

The rain drummed ceaselessly all around me, and after a while there was no more solid ground. My boots sunk down into the water, then sagged and sloshed as I struggled forward. I was still hungry.

I never bothered to look at my watch. It felt like days. I trudged onward and onward. I wasn’t dressed for this. My poncho lay hours behind me, entangled in the thorns. I was already scratched and bleeding from every inch of exposed skin. But at the same time, I could feel my body heat piping out from the collar of my shirt as I strained and stretched through the bush. Anything more and I would have been suffocating.

My eyes were heavy with sleep, but I refused to rest.

My skin was puckered and chafed beneath my soaked clothes, but I made no effort to peel them away.

I had finally made it. Not to my destination, but rather to the point where nothing mattered. A complete overload of stress on every level, so refined and concentrated that everything canceled out everything else. My exhaustion took my mind off my discomfort, which in turn distracted me from my exhaustion, which in turn prevented my exhaustion from taking me down.

It’s tempting to fight the elements on a job like this. To pack extra socks, extra shoes, or even basic rations. To check the weather report or try to map the best route from satellite photography of the terrain. But it’s a fight you can never win. You’re always going to be miserable eventually. Every attempt to stave off the inevitable, every attempt to comfort yourself, only adds to your burden. Might as well suffer on your own terms.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t find comfort.

I was right earlier when I said there was always food if you knew where to look. There was no shortage of kudzu leaf out here. One hundred calories per cup. Not exactly the tastiest thing, but it would keep me going, and I would never run out. No point in trying to make a meal of it, I just began pulling leaves from a vine and washing them in the rain. It was on the third handful that I noticed an exceptionally stubborn piece of leaf clinging to the back of my hand. I shook my hand once, and then twice, and then suddenly the leaf skittered across my arm like a persistent trickle. I held my hand to my face just in time to catch a flash of lightning in the solid darkness, and in that brief moment I saw a cockroach go scurrying up my arm.

It had squeezed it’s way under the rolled-up sleeve of my field shirt before I could even react, dropping my flashlight and slapping my other hand on my upper arm. The roach squirmed and struggled, but finally I managed to pry it free from my skin and crush it through the fabric of my shirt. I felt it pop and then I squeezed even harder, crunching and rolling it in my hand. Finally, when I was certain it was dead, I released it and it went scurrying up my bicep and snuggled down into my armpit. A quick pinch in my flesh, and then a burning pinprick of searing pain.

I saw no point in holding back. I let out a primal scream beneath the drumming rain, thrusting my free hand into the pit of my arm and clawing frantically at the spreading circle of searing pain. It was a hot pain, a burning pain that could not be ignored. I didn’t even think to slide my hand under my shirt, I once again squeezed the roach through the fabric, desperate to tear it loose from my flesh. My breath finally ran out and as I sucked air in between my clenched teeth, I heard beneath the cacophony of the torrential downpour a low undertone of a gentle chirping, and just briefly the pain in my armpit stopped. I felt a low vibration in my arm, and then a quick squeal issued forth.

An answering cry came from the bush and then the air was filled with a buzzing hum. Another flash of lightning showed half a dozen roaches hovering all around me, and the next flash showed two dozen more. My arm flared up in pain again, and I screamed, and I heard the buzzing hum closing in all around me before my body was swarmed with a hundred little crawling shrieks. I slapped and pulled and one by one they dug in until I lost all sense and began frantically rushing forward, into muck and mire, rolling over thorns and trampling and jumping and then stopping to suck wet air as the rain slapped me in the face.

I managed to get one. It had sunk itself into the exposed flesh of my forearm and I was able to slap down on it. I felt its sleek, oily body pumping in my hand like a leech as it grew fat from my blood. I ripped it free and with both hands managed to tear it into two struggling pieces which I flung out into the tangle of bush. I massaged the lingering burn where it had bitten. It’s head was still lodged in my skin.

Dozens upon dozens of spots all over my body still burned and every instant it felt like a dozen new spots lit up. I was screaming, ripping at my skin, struggling and flipping over bushes, when I suddenly flopped down into an open patch of dry land and the resounding call of a brass horn forced itself into my ears.

It rattled my skull and sent shockwaves down my spine. My knees buckled and I hit the ground. The horn sounded again, except this time the note was carried for an excruciating length of time. But when the noise finally stopped, I noticed there were no new roach bites suddenly flaring up on my skin.

I tentatively groped my body. I didn’t feel a single struggling lump.