Mom, I'm Bulletproof

Chapter 14: Origin Story, part 3

Amy wakes to find the painful sound has been replaced with the painful heat. She has no idea where she is, what time it is, or, most importantly, how she has survived.

The orange, billowy sand that had surrounded her in the last few minutes before she passed out is gone, and the sand she lies on now is brown and harsh, more like ordinary dirt than sand.

Her jumpsuit is ripped and torn, exposing her freckly skin to the desert sun. She throws off the jumpsuit, its heat burning just as bad as the sun. Underneath, she only has on her tank top, cutoffs and hiking boots. Her packs, including the ones with the suntan lotion and the bottled water, are nowhere to be found.

Amy stands up, dizzy, taking in her surroundings. This is not the beautiful desert she had been promised. This was dirt as far as the eye could see, with small tufts of spiky plants sprouting up here and there. Not only was it not beautiful, but there was no sign of any other human beings anywhere around. No buildings in the distance, no man-made trails, no planes in the sky. No nothing.

Amy checks her belt. The satellite phone is gone. She walks around in a circle for a few minutes, seeking for any of her gear that might have landed near her, but doesn't see anything. The spot where she had landed didn't look like any sort of landing spot, in that there was no crater or any sign of impact.

She has no idea how she survived.

Amy can only stand for a few seconds longer, and then has to sit down, the heat making her delirious. Her skin already feels overly sensitive, and she already knows this will be the worst sunburn she's ever had. Amy remembers from their pre-trip training session that the human body can survive for about three days without water. In this heat, though? Amy wonders if that would be shorter, as her mouth is already drying up fast.

Amy needs shelter. No tent. She'll need fire. No matches, lighter, flint, or magnifying glass. Food? The few sprouts of plant life don't seem very healthy. Water? It's the desert.

Amy decides to wait until the sun goes down. That way, she'll know which direction is west. Their plane had taken off flying almost due east. By some loose logic, that means she could follow the sunset in the direction she came. She plans to rest during the day and walk at night when it is cooler.

There's no sound in the desert, not even a slight breeze or bird in the distance. On the plus side, there are no vultures circling over her, either.

Amy stomach growls. She thinks she might die.

* * * *

Amy's plan of waiting for the sunset doesn't work as she had hoped. Between the hunger, heat exhaustion and the increasingly uncomfortable reddening of her skin, Amy finds it difficult to stand, let alone walk for any good length of time.

She reminds herself that the others must know something has happened, that they all saw her separate and fall apart from her instructor. They all saw her fall.

* * * *

The wind kicks up at night, and although it should feel nice on her sunburned arms and legs, it instead feels like thousands of hypodermic needles pressing into her skin all at once. Several times during the night, Amy thinks she's about to throw up, but doesn't. She wants to cry, but her eyes are too dry.

After a few brief and fretful bouts of sleep, Amy watches the sun rise. With it, the sun brings more heat, seeming even worse than the previous day. Despite her weakness, she renews her determination to find shelter, shade, something.

Surveying the ground and the landscape around her, Amy sees nothing she can use to protect herself from the sun. No huge boulders or hanging over-croppings or the like. The ancient riverbed that was supposed to be her home away from home during these five days was nowhere to be seen.

Amy falls to her knees. Her body shakes. She leans forward and presses her palms against the sand – no, the dirt – below her. Her hair dangles around her shoulders in unwashed, stringy clumps. She lies down, too tired to even think about unfair it is that she miraculously survived a fall from an airplane only to die alone in a desert.

She tries to say sarcastically, "Happy birthday to me," but her throat is too raw.

Just before passing out, Amy thinks she sees three men wearingloose-fitting black clothes in the distance, walking toward her. She thinks itis her imagination. 

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Next: Merely a point of view.