Chapter 52.
Death Valley
A death march across Death Valley.
Jimmy can’t tell if he’s been walking for two hours or a day. Time doesn’t work right out here. It’s just sun, glare, breath, footfall.
His mouth feels like sandpaper. His tongue feels too big for his teeth. Every swallow is dry.
His strap screen shows what he already knows: heart rate high, temperature climbing.
No coordinates.
No cache.
No mercy.
Two options scream inside his head:
Find water.
Get help.
But maybe the only way to get help at this point is for one of them to push the red button.
They have to find water—somewhere—as remote a possibility as that seems.
Jimmy once considered doing a video in the Great Basin Desert in Nevada. He scouted locations himself. But no heat he’s ever felt comes close to this hellscape.
I’ll die before I let any of the others die out here, he thinks.
Lopez has fallen down once. So has Marcelo. Jimmy caught himself on his hands and felt the ground scrape skin like concrete.
Then Alek calls out: “I have to stop.”
She pitches forward.
She’s strong and tries to break the fall with both hands. But still ends up face down in dirt.
Jimmy goes to her. He manages to get Alek into a sitting position. Marcelo takes off his shirt and wipes dirt, sweat, and blood off Alek’s face, hands shaking with effort.
Alek’s eyes flutter open.
“Leave me,” Alek says. “All of you, just leave.”
“Leaving here sounds great,” Jimmy says. “But we’re not abandoning you.”
Alek tries to push herself up. Her arms tremble. She fails.
“Jimmy. Just stop. You all go ahead,” she says. It’s spoken as a command. “Go now. Go!”
Jimmy points at her red button.
“No,” Alek says, somehow putting some snap into her voice. “I’ve made it this far, I’m not quitting.” She shakes her head. “Not happening. Not after everything. Not after—I’m going to finish.” She closes her eyes. “I’m going to win.”
“Okay, but we have to find water,” Jimmy says and looks around at the group. “And we have to find it now.”
His screen buzzes once.
A simple arrow appears. A coordinate. Finally.
But it’s not “water.” It’s not a map. It’s just a direction and a distance. 2.1 miles.
Jimmy smiles, finally some hope. “That’s the cache,” he says. “That has to be the cache.”
“I’ll go,” Lopez says.
They all turn and stare at him, shocked to hear Lopez sounding cooperative, for once.
“Somebody has to do it,” he says. “I’m used to the heat.”
He points off to the west. “That way. Looks like there was big rain out here last night.” He shrugs. “Who knows? If there’s a low wash, the cache will be there. Maybe water too. What do we have to lose?”
Lopez starts to walk away, headed toward the dunes to the west.
They let him go and start walking in the opposite direction, toward mesquite trees several hundred yards ahead.
Jimmy watches him.
He doesn’t trust him.
“You get Alek under those mesquite trees,” Jimmy tells Marcelo. “Shade. Even bad shade. Don’t let her sleep.”
He starts walking toward the closest dunes, forcing himself to pick up the pace.
He walks for ten minutes, maybe twenty—he’s lost all sense of time. If not for the dunes in front of him and the arrow on his screen, he’d be worried he was walking in circles.
Then he sees Lopez. On his knees, digging in the dirt.
Jimmy shuts his eyes, squeezes the sweat out of them, hopes that the sight of Lopez isn’t some mirage.
It’s not.
Jimmy walks up behind Carlos Lopez. He doesn’t make a sound. Then he speaks. Quietly.
“You weren’t ever coming back.”
Steven Noble