Isolation & Fear (Damned of the 2/19th Book Seven)

Nobody

GPS Location Error
Inertia Navigation System Offline
Unknown Shelter
TIME/DATE STAMP ERROR
Unknown Time

Sleep left me begrudgingly, the fire in my guts waking me up. I moaned softly and felt a large heavy hand touch me shoulder. I woke up more and opened my eyes.

Darkness.

One hand slid behind my back, lifting me up. I cried out, the pain in my guts flaring, and something soft was put under my back and the hand lowered me down so I was sitting up at an angle without tensing my stomach muscles. Whoever was there pulled my blankets off, and the hands moved to my stomach. I tried to shrink back when I realized I was nude, but there was nowhere to go, and the hands were insistent. I felt fingers on my jaw, opening my mouth, and a piece of leather was pushed into my mouth. I bit down, and the hands moved back to my stomach.

I screamed while they changed the bandage, washed the wound, and rubbed it with some kind of salve. I was covered with sweat when they covered me back up, and the hands moved away for a long moment. Fingers fed me hot spiced meat. Venison. It tasted wild, feral. Broth was spooned into my mouth, then pieces of broth soaked bread. I felt a beard touch me a few a times, and wondered how long it was. I couldn't imagine Stillwater with a beard. Hell, I couldn't imagine him with a mustache. How long had he been up here?

The presence was looming, almost threatening. I wished I could see who it was, but I couldn't see anything but blackness.

The hands gently unwound the gauze from my eyes, then a soft cloth soaked in warm water wiped the salve from my eyes. The next part left me whimpering, trying to squirm away, but I knew it had to be done. Pulling my eyelids open and dripping eyedrops into them, followed by dapping salve directly on my eyeballs. Then my eyelids. Then a new bandage wrapped around my eyes. It made my eyes feel warm, almost sticky, but the pain from having the eyedrops and salve directly applied to my eyeballs quickly went away.

Again the presence moved away. After a bit, snoring started. Familiar snoring I'd heard in The Fort

The fire was crackling and I was happy I couldn't smell smoke. That meant that the fire had ventilation to keep us from suffocating.

Had Stillwater done all this himself? How long had he been up here?

I sat in the darkness, listening to Stillwater snore.

Where were we? And more importantly, when were we?

Operation Jumping Catfish
Lake Nyos Area
Near Wum, Cameroon,
21 August, 1986
2200

It was dark as the truck bounced over potholes and ground through the ruts, the headlights swaying across bushes and grass. Twice I saw dead African bulls laying there. Tongues out, eyes bloodshot, foam on their mouths, red stains on their fur. I didn't bother to ask the Cameroon driver to stop, I knew what had killed them.

The truck had no roof, no doors, but it was roomy enough in the back to fit all my gear. I'd put my gas detectors on the hood and the sides, set them for different gasses, and cranked them up to the max I could run without false positives. The CO2 detector was cranked up so high that I had to mount it on the grill because the exhaust from the engine, hell, breathing on it, would set it off. My armored J-Suit and extra tanks of O2 were in the back, along with my trusty flame thrower and extra tanks.

That had caused a bit of consternation when I'd unboxed it, assembled it, and loaded it into the truck.

The driver's eyes were wide and white in the middle of his black face. Not dark brown, not light brown, but actually black like I'd never seen before. His teeth were white and strong, and he had a cigar clenched between them. He'd pulled down the bandanna from his mouth when I'd told him it wouldn't do any good. Sweat poured down his face as we got closer and closer to Lake Nyos. He wasn't a superstitious man, or some ignorant dancing hut dweller, he was an official in the Cameroon government who was brave enough to drive me into a death zone.