A Kingdom of Our Own

Chapter Fifteen - Gas Station

Dalton slept soundly through the rest of the night. Harry meanwhile had no such luck, continually dropping in and out of sleep - Dazing, waking, dazing, waking, and so on. Not only was the ground hard and uneven to lie on, but the night was far from silent. He’d always imagined the forest, so far away from the human world to be a deadly silent place, but it was the complete opposite. Nature never rested. It stirred 24/7, with attack from predators higher up in the food chain imminent at all times.

Harry heard the low hoot of an owl and a tiny cry of an animal, perhaps being chased, or about to be eaten. Under all of this was the steady tone of the crickets and that’s what got to him the most. Oh what a loud and repetitive sound it was! If there weren’t so many of them out there, he’d have gone out there and then and silenced them for good.

A few more hours passed and eventually, Harry gave in with his bids for sleep and snapped more solidly out of his doze. His watch said quarter past five. It was dawn. He stood with an almighty stretch and stepped over the resting body of Dalton, still very much sound asleep, and exited the tent. He scrambled through the woods blindly until he reached a clearing with a small lake and sat by the edge of the water, watching the moon gradually fade away.

                                                  *

As morning arrived, the noise of the crickets began to lessen and the ominous shadows cast under the trees quickly evaporated. The air had the same sticky, sweaty feel to it, signifying the all but certain fact that the day to come, like the thirty ones before it, was going to be another scorcher.

As a kid he’d always quite enjoyed spending long days out in the sun, but after his short time of living the hard life on the road, he couldn’t help but sigh in dismay at the sight of the rising sun. His skin was red and burnt all over and with every moment that passed he was discovering new rashes and mosquito bites plaguing his body. That was the one thing he’d forgotten to take into account before leaving home. The true power of nature. It really was overwhelming, a fact that he’d never truly appreciated before, and why would he have? If he ever got hot and bothered before, he could just go and lay in his room for a while with the fan on. Not out here though. There was nothing to aid him here, no gadgets besides his bare hands.

He sat there for a seemingly timeless period, watching the ripples in the lake as noiselessly as he had watched Dalton with concern the night before. Long enough for his butt to start complaining if that makes it any easier to imagine. Then, when all the thinking got a little boring, he stood and took a long stretch, before starting to pack up camp for a speedy departure.

                                                  *

By the time Dalton awoke, Harry had already changed clothes and cooked a small breakfast over his camping stove.

He heard a rustling in the trees behind him and turned to see Dalton standing behind him, rubbing his eyes tiredly, his mouth stretched in a wide yawn. “Morning sleepyhead,” Harry said with a light smile. Then he turned back to the stove and pointed to it. “I used up the last of the waffles; I’ve left yours on for you.”

“Thanks, I sure could use one of those.” Dalton replied, taking a seat on the dusty ground beside his friend.

                                                  *

As Dalton ate up his share, his hands sticky with syrup, Harry strode back across to the lake and began throwing pebbles into it. With the odd one or two, he even managed to make it skip across the water, but most just plunged straight to the bottom with an almighty splat.

“How long before we run out of food?” Dalton called out in question, as he finished up the final scraps of his waffles.

Harry turned back to face his friend and shrugged. “A couple more days,” he guessed.