Boots
12 Oct
0800
Hours before fully awakening to rain on my face—again—I fell into a daydream phase of consciousness. It was getting cold and my bones had a chill to them that I had not felt since survival school in Rangeley, Maine. My mind wondered back to the POW camp and the stress inoculation.
The cold also made me think of Rudyard Kipling. In my tiny cell they played Kipling’s “Boots” poem over and over and over again. The narrator, speaking with a thick Russian accent, said, over and over: Foot-foot-foot-foot-sloggin’ over Africa—Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again.
After hearing that poem for hours and hours, I had memorized it in detail. Even now I can hear the raspy Russian voice saying it over and over again in an infinite loop in between training sessions. I woke up in the cold rain reciting “Boots” to myself over and over again.
Using the rain dripping off the oil pump, I refilled my water, drank, then refilled it again. I repeated this until I could no longer drink without thinking of vomiting. After a short while, I walked over to where I had set the trap to check on it, as well as to urinate. The trap was empty, indicating that I had to eat some of my valuable nonperishable food. Just as the rain began to subside I decided to build a small fire to heat a can of chili that I had been carrying in my pack for miles.
Using the hatchet, I gathered some dead wood from the other side of the fence and chopped it to a manageable size. I then dug a hole in the ground a safe distance from the oil pump and built a fire using the driest wood I had. I doubt that making a fire will ever be difficult, because of all the things that people have left lying around. Using my multitool I cut some holes in the top of the chili can so that I could hang the can over the fire to heat it. As the chili heated I surveyed the area with my binocs. There was no movement on the highway in the distance or on the other three sides of the fence.
I reached for my survival radio to hail anyone that I could. Since the crash, I have made every effort to conserve its battery power. As I pulled it out to select 282.8 on the handset I noticed that I had inadvertently left the radio in beacon mode from the day before. The battery was dead and I had no spares. I pulled the battery out of the device. The battery appears to be a proprietary type and I doubt I could ever find a replacement. I copied the output voltage and battery type to my journal and threw the battery over the fence to save weight in my pack. Anyone who has gone any distance with a pack knows that every ounce must be justified.
I intend to keep the radio in the event I can rig up power to it in the future. I am now cut off from anyone who could have been monitoring the survival frequencies.
After my morning flashback to survival school I started thinking about the big picture of survival. I knew that some remnants of the U.S. government remained. Aircraft carriers, possibly refugee tank convoys, remote military airstrips as well as Hotel 23. There must be someone out here who can help me get back. Communications with the aircraft carrier had been interrupted before my helicopter crash. Couple that with the stupid idea of researching the radiated dead and bringing them back to the flagship, one might consider that even the carrier could be overrun.
Overhead satellites are likely useless and spinning out of orbit. I know that the GPS satellites have failed already. I have not seen a living person since the crash and I have covered quite a few miles. If the patch of land that I traversed is representative of the rest of my journey, I will be in for serious tribulations. Even if only one percent of the population has survived, I figure I would have seen someone by now. Today I intend to leave a signal indicating my intended direction.
I’ll make a large arrow on the ground using rocks or whatever I have available to signal any surviving airborne assets my direction of travel. The only problem with this is that the aircrew that discovers the signal may decide that it is old news. Either way, I’ll take any chance I can get for rescue from this war zone.
The explosion that rocked the overpass is persistently on my mind. At the time I just wrote it off as good luck, but the more I think of what happened the more I realize that the odds of an explosion of old ordnance with that timing is unlikely. The buzzing noise I kept hearing was also present just after the explosion.
There have been some deer running about in the area. Chances are slim that they could elude the dead for any prolonged period. I plan to take one so that I can make my nonperishable food last longer while evading and making my way back south to Hotel 23. The rain has stopped but there is still overcast in the sky today. I am wearing my wool blanket poncho for warmth and I will continue my route south today along 59.
There are a few items that I need to find before I get too far south. I need a road atlas so that I do not find myself critically off track on my trip. Iodine tablets or another way to purify water is also a good idea. Regarding my current route, I have no idea if this road runs right into a medium-sized city or interstate exchange. I have had to reposition my gear so that my binocs are easy to grab. Before heading out in an hour or so, I’ll wipe down my weapon with the oil and old rag I salvaged from the sailboat. That seems like forever ago.
There’s no discharge in the war! RK—