No Place for Females

Chapter Four

I wondered in which direction I should go. I was a city girl, and apart from that one training course at Fort Jackson, I knew very little about surviving in the wilderness. Now, I wished I had paid attention during training, but it was wicked hot that day in South Carolina. I was more concerned about being eaten alive by fire ants than about listening to the instructor.

Ben told me that there were streams somewhere around here. I was bound to find one if I kept walking. At least I hoped so. I didn't know which way was north and which was south, but I could tell east from west, because of the sun. Though I wasn't a hundred percent sure, I thought that the base was east of where I now stood, because I remembered the sunlight hitting my face when I walked out of my tent in the morning. And my tent’s opening faced the entrance of the base. 

My tongue was starting to feel swollen. I needed to find water soon. I didn't even want to think about what I was going to do, once I had found a source. Afghan water was notorious for being contaminated with bacteria. I didn’t have any iodine drops with me, nor anything in which to boil the water.

Again, I was thinking too far ahead. Who knew if I was even going to find water? I was probably going to die out here, right? At least, that's what my father told me, right before I boarded the plane for my pre-deployment training.

"You shouldn't be doing this."

"Dad, we've discussed this. I'm leaving in twenty minutes. Can we please just have a nice visit before I go?"

He didn’t say much after that. I could see in his eyes the sense that I was betraying him. But I needed to do this, to get away for a little while. I needed to move forward after my mom's death. I knew his hostility came from a place of fear. Deep down, he was afraid that he would lose me, too. It had seemed ridiculous at the time. I was sure that nothing was going to happen to me.

The thing was, I wasn't even supposed to leave the base. I volunteered for the position for that very reason. They needed a volunteer, and figuring it would look good on my record, I raised my hand. Afghanistan was as far from California as you could get. After months of feeling helpless, as I watched my mother waste away, I needed a change. I needed to get away from there, to start fresh.

I was seriously starting to regret that decision right now. I shuffled along, my side settling into a dull ache that flared whenever I moved in the wrong way. Marcie felt like she weighed a thousand pounds. Twice, I was tempted to leave her behind. I had my nine-millimeter. But each time I considered it, my fear of the unknown kept her strapped to my back. My face hurt, and my head throbbed. I was getting the mother of all sunburns. Pain sucked.

"Pain lets you know you’re alive," Ben told me once. It was encouraging in a morbid way.

Keep walking, Jacobs, I whispered.

I tried to keep my mind off my pain by thinking about other things. Afghanistan was actually quite a beautiful country. It was a shame that war had torn so much of it apart. Though Helmand was mostly an arid landscape, I’d heard that in the spring, the desert bloomed.

Thinking about flowers brought me back to thinking about my mom. She loved flowers. I’d made sure that her casket was covered in them. She would have liked that. My dad was too broken up to do anything. I planned her entire funeral, right down to writing the obituary, and preparing most of the food. I realized now how numb I’d been, at the time.

I wondered what my dad was doing. Did he know yet? Would they tell him, or would they try to find me first? I didn't know too much about that stuff. They’d probably told us the procedure, but I didn’t pay attention. You never think, in a million years, that this’ll happen to you.