Chapter 698

Dessie and Phillip at The Waterfall Campsite

Dessie had managed to knock down a pheasant soon after it took off from directly in front of her. It was a snapshot, and she was amazed when the rock flicked across the pheasant’s head just as the bird leveled off. It was only stunned, but she finished it with a nearby stick.

That was luck, but I’ll take it anyway, she thought as she picked up the bird and turned toward their campsite.

Phillip had regained some moderate use of his body, but he was far from being able to defend himself. Consequently, she still left him zipped inside the tent lest ants or insects bother him.

As she unzipped the tent, he turned himself and struggled to move toward the door. “Here, let me help,” she said as she slid her arms under his shoulders and pulled while he pushed with his feet. His coordination was pitiful, but his pushing with his legs made it a lot easier to move him from place to place.

“You’re getting stronger every day, and your coordination is increasing as well. So maybe it won’t be too long before we can hike back to the castle.”

They both knew she was lying about his coordination, but neither was inclined to give up.

“As you can see,” she said as she motioned to the pheasant after getting her husband propped against a nearby tree, “we’re going to have pheasant for lunch as well as dinner tonight. I wish you had been there,” she continued with enthusiasm. “All that practice we did for the contest paid off, because I actually shot this one out of the air.” Then with a chuckle, “Granted, he wasn’t more than twenty feet away, and there was a lot of luck involved, but I hit him even if I did have to finish him with a stick.”

“Good shooting,” Phillip managed to mumble, the words barely discernable.

When she started to walk away, a thought struck, and she turned back to her husband. With a smile, she knelt beside him and leaned up to press her lips against his while trying to put all the love she could into the kiss. When she finished and pulled back, she could see the bulge in his shorts.

“Somebody still likes me,” she said with a smile. “But I have to clean our friend here and get a fire going. I don’t know about you, but that fish we ate for breakfast didn’t completely appease my appetite, so I think I’m going to go ahead and cook this guy. Sound good to you?”

Phillip managed to mumble something that sounded as if he agreed. Her breakfast fire had gone out, but she had plenty of kindling as well as some moss that she had found that was great to get a fire started. As soon as the kindling was burning, she began adding larger wood while continuing a mostly one-sided conversation with her husband. She had started fires so many times in the weeks they had been at the campsite that she knew exactly how much of what size wood to use to achieve the quickest results, and it wasn’t long before she had a good fire going. She would let it burn down to the coals she wanted while she prepared the bird.

Dessie sometimes skinned a pheasant instead of plucking the feathers, but she decided to pluck this one. It would save some of the bird’s fat which was attached to the skin. Phillip, who expended very little energy due to having so little control of his muscles, had more or less maintained his weight, but Dessie had lost enough to be easily noticeable. Finding the potatoes had made a tremendous difference, and they now had something to eat at every meal, but Dessie was frequently doing things, whether it was exploring the field for new foods, fishing, digging for worms, or dragging her husband to or from the tent — always something. Worry didn’t help her weight either.

In the time just after Phillip’s accident, Dessie had expected a hiker to come along, and she would be able to get help, but she hadn’t seen a single person in the time they had been here. She imagined that the terrain — the rugged hills and the big swamp in the direction of the main trail — had been a factor, but the Miadax heavy attacks to this side of Germany had probably stopped most hikers and backpackers from their sport, at least for the near future. Will anyone ever come this way again? Phillip is getting better, but very slowly. Oh, his leg seems to be completely healed, but he is a long way from being able to stand, let alone walk. We have to get out of here before winter. We don’t have any warm clothing, and we’ll die here if we can’t get out before then.

She even thought about building a shelter for them, but she knew she had little chance of building a decent one with the tools she had. My little saw is fine for cutting firewood into manageable lengths, but I could never cut a real tree down with it, and even if I could, I’m not strong enough to move it. Maybe I could make some kind of lean-to out of smaller wood that I could manage with my saw and hatchet. Even so, how could I fish in the winter cold while wearing only the light clothing we brought with us?

Just to have something to keep her mind off things, she had scraped, stretched and dried the rabbit skins. Most were now soft due to the thick fur/hair, but only somewhat pliable. I’m certainly accumulating a pile of the skins, but I have little thread to sew with. Could I ever make something for us to wear against the winter cold? Hmmm, maybe I can cut strips of hide to use, but I won’t worry about that just yet. Surely Mia will eventually send someone to check on us.

Depressed, she sat staring into the fire until she realized that she needed to get on with preparing the pheasant for the spit.

The Castle

...”But what if they’re injured?” Karl asked.

“We have medical facilities with us,” Arlene returned. Then after a second, “Probably the best medical facilities currently on the planet,” she finished mysteriously.

“Let’s get started,” Selina impatiently said.

Arlene looked over at the seven-year-old genius, who, not so long ago, spoke as if she were a college professor teaching an advanced English class. Now, she had mimicked the speech of those around her to perfection. She was still the genius who continued to amaze them, but she had tried diligently to become ... one of them.

Dessie and Phillip will be in for a shock when she sits down to talk to them. But ... why haven’t we heard something from them? With all their hiking experience, why haven’t they returned? I hope this doesn’t turn out to have a bad ending. Selina could never stand it. She is too adamant that she is going to apologize for all the things she has done to her parents.

“What are we waiting for?” Selina asked impatiently.

“You will need water and food. Their food would have long since run out,” Mia said.

Arlene came to her feet. “We have MREs that will do for now and plenty of water.” Then turning to Karl. “Could we borrow your map? It’s better than the one we brought.”

“Certainly,” he hastily replied. “Just take the whole map book. There are more maps of the area in there.”

“Do you have room for me to go with you?” Mia asked.

“All the seats are taken, and there is only a small open space between them. If we took someone with us, there would be no place for Phillip and Dessie. Even so, they’ll be practically stuffed in there.”

“Look,” Glenda said, “is there any way to contact us when you find them? Our cell phones don’t work, but...”

Arlene glanced at her partner before she turned back to the others. As she took a small object from the collar of her uniform, “We each have a personal communicator. I’ll leave mine here. Ann will call you when we know something.”

Mia frowned as she stared at the button-sized object in her hand. “Are you saying that this is a radio?”

“Radio? No, but Ann will be able to communicate with you by using it. Should you wish to talk to us, just hold the communicator and say my name or Ann’s. It will contact us.”

Mia tore her eyes away from the tiny object. “Just keep us posted. We’re all about to go crazy with worry about them. Please let us know as soon as you find them. And when you get back, I want to know where your ... interceptor came from and that,” she finished as she nodded to the communicator.

Arlene smiled at Mia. “Could we use your bathroom before we leave? The ... facilities onboard our fighter tend to be, uh, somewhat less than private.”

When they were seated in the interceptor, Selina turned to Arlene. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Arlene asked.

“You very well know for what.”

“Anytime,” Arlene returned with a grin.

“Checklist complete,” the AI said a couple of moments later.

Arlene turned the map toward a camera while pointing to the various landmarks they had discussed during their conference. Then speaking to her partner, “Why don’t we follow their projected path at, say, a thousand feet?”

“Agreed,” Ann said somewhat hesitantly, “but I would like to try and find where they stopped on the first trip and saw the falls in the distance. That seems to imply that they found a high point — a hill — that was reasonably free of tall vegetation where they could see the beginning of the mountain and the falls. If we find the hill, maybe we can see the falls from there.”

“Good idea,” Arlene agreed. “Now I know why I love you so much,” she teased.

As their craft moved slowly out, Arlene put her finger on the spot Karl had indicated on the map and said, “So, the first place we try to find should be the place where they camped on their first trip ... here? They said it was a day’s walk from the castle. Somewhere along here,” she said while moving her finger over the map. “Once we find it, we’ll try to find the place where Dessie and Phillip saw the falls.”