Page 69 of The Woman Left Behind

She had to go faster.

She climbed out of the wadi and set off again, picking up the pace. The boots rubbed up and down on her feet despite the two pairs of socks she wore. She was sweating so much her socks were damp, anyway. Nothing she could do. She felt the blisters rubbing, felt the pain burning. She ran. She had to cut that time down.

She ran. She fell. She got up and ran again. Over and over. Her gasping breath burned in her chest. But every time she fell she used the opportunity to recheck her course, to catch her breath. Veering off course would be disastrous.

God, her feet hurt. The pain was crippling, so debilitating that tears stung her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. Furiously she ordered herself to stop crying, because she couldn’t afford to lose even that much moisture. She stopped, stood weaving back and forth. Could she pull her boots off, run barefoot? Yes, there were rocks and rough shrubs and all sorts of other things, but could that hurt worse than scrubbing her feet raw?

Yes, it could. Her feet were already raw, she could tell by the sharpness of the pain. If she tried running barefoot she’d be inviting massive infection in her feet. Her fault; she’d grabbed the wrong boots.

Run anyway. No matter what, she had to run anyway. Forget her feet. One step after another, that was all she had to do, take the next step, and the next, and the next. Five hours. She could get through five hours. She could focus only on the next step, the next yard, the next mile. She could because she had no choice.

She ran.

What was Levi thinking? Did it bother him that he’d left her behind, was he thinking of her at all, or only about getting his wounded men to safety?

She began crying again.

He’d told her, in words so plain there was no misunderstanding: she was the least valuable member of the team. And now he’d proven it to her.

How many miles? She stopped, tried to calculate how far she’d gone, but the numbers didn’t make sense. She couldn’t remember, but she knew the coordinates, knew the time. She felt the minutes passing, tick-tock, closer and closer, later and later. Any minute could be one minute too late. She concentrated, dug deeper.

Her feet were agony.

The next time she fell, she lay facedown in the gritty sand, the sudden transition from upright to prone so overwhelming her entire body went limp in relief. She thought about closing her eyes and going to sleep. How blissful that would be, and how easy, just go to sleep and forget about this pain, this spirit-breaking struggle.

The temptation was so strong that she forced herself to sit up and dig the compass from her pocket. She opened it, stared at it with blurred vision, unable to make the dial make sense. Blinking hard, she tried again. Still blurred. Shit. She closed her eyes and sat, sucking in deep breaths, trying to gather her thoughts. She had to do this or she’d die. She couldn’t quit, not now.

When she felt a little steadier, she opened her eyes and made herself focus. She painstakingly checked the compass, replotted her course, then did it again to make sure she had it right. Okay. She could do this. She clicked off the penlight... and realized the darkness wasn’t absolute any longer. The black was becoming gray—a dark gray, but still a definite lightening around her.

Daylight was coming. She was running out of time.

She got up and ran.

Her feet pounded in time with her thoughts.I can do this. I have to do this. Left behind. Left behind. Left behind.

Staying upright was harder now. She kept listing to the side. She stopped, sucked in air, focused once more.

“Don’t quit,” she chanted to herself, under her breath. “Don’t quit.”

She’d never quit anything. She couldn’t start now.

She ran. Her mind felt as if she was running, but her body seemed to be rebelling, going slower and slower. Hours. How many hours had she been running? Was it five hours yet? She’d estimated five hours, that was her target. If she could keep going for the full five hours, she’d be there. She couldn’t let herself think anything else.

The dark gray became a light gray, the rocky sand took on a reddish hue, like blood. She puzzled over the color, finally realized that she could see. She wasn’t running in the unending darkness now, time had worked its unending magic and unending hell, because it was running out, time was running out.

The terrain was rougher, there was more vegetation—not much, but enough to matter, because that meant if the guys were close by she might be blocked from their view.

Don’t quit.

“I won’t,” she promised, her tone broken, breathless. “I won’t.”

Something... a noise, barely heard over the harsh rasp of her breathing. A strange rhythmicwhump-whumpthat made her frown, because it seemed familiar but she couldn’t place it. Her instinct said to keep moving but the noise bothered her and she stopped, her head tilted as she listened to it. Whatwasthat? She’d heard it before, she knew she had.

Because she’d stopped, she dragged out the compass; it was habit now. Frowning, she stared down at the dial, the reading, concentrated.

The compass was wrong. She must have broken it. It said she was almost there, but she wasn’t, she was still alone and in Bumfuck Egypt, wherever the hell that was. No... Syria. She was in Syria. Bumfuck Syria. Ha! Egypt had a better ring to it.

But if the compass was broken, then she’d be here forever because she didn’t know how to find her way out.

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