Page 40 of Running Scared
Dean tore the scarf off and shook it hard before batting at the back of his neck, shaking out his sleeves, and checking the folds of where his khakis were tucked into his boots obsessively.And finally indulged in a good minute of shaking out a collective nap of the heebie-jeebies.
“Never mind,” Marcus said dryly, when Dean’s little performance was over.“I forget you can do that.”
“Do what?”Dean asked grumpily.
“Compartmentalize so completely,” Marcus said.“Put your discomfort in a box labeled ‘after my nap’ and then get all the oogies out at once.”
Dean grunted.“They’re like flies.They just keep coming back.As long as I don’t move suddenly or violently they don’t sting me.The scorpions are just doing their thing.It’s the stinging that’s the problem.”
And most people didn’t react badly enough to the venom to do more than suffer some swelling and discomfort.The ones that had been grouping and regrouping along the edges of their parachute tent were less venomous than bees.
But that could still creep a guy out.
“Sure, sure,” Marcus agreed.“Anyway, if you’re all clear—”
Dean gave his neckline one last pat down to make sure nothing had snuck into his shirt.“We are.”
“Then you need to see this.You told me you saw these trucks on the way in after I went down around ten, right?”
“Right,” Dean said, checking his pocket for scorpions before pulling out a tiny, deadly accurate pair of binoculars.“Are they leaving now?”
“All three,” Marcus told him.“They’re heading back toward town.I’m wondering, do they need all that food, water, gas, etc.for a day, or are those coming back in the next two to three days?”
“Why?”Dean asked.“Whatcha thinkin’?”
“I’m thinking Trojan Horse,” Marcus said.“One of us needs to take a bike to town and find the supply trucks—”
“Easy enough,” Birdie said, surprising them both.“They’ve got that creepy bleeding-heart insignia on the back.”Birdie waved a larger pair of binocs in the air, probably personal and wedged in Birdie’s parachute pack.“I’ll do it.”
“But Bird—” Dean objected, only Bird was already pushing Marcus’s motorcycle out of the shelter, the empty trailer weaving a little without the weight to pin it down.
“Don’t ‘But Bird’ me, young man,” Birdie snapped.“I can fill the bike’s tanks and the spare and have it ready in town, and I can let you in when that thing returns in the next few days.”
“Bird, we can’t—”
“You’ve got enough supplies to last the two of you a week,” Birdie said, looking at them over a hunched shoulder.“You didnotcount on feeding me, which is not your fault.Let me set the bike up as exfil and fill it with supplies.If I don’t come back in two more moonrises, or you don’t see my signal in the next truck delivery before that, assume I’m cheesed and do your thing, guys, but for now, trust me.”
Birdie gave a wizened smile, complete with a wink, and then asked, “Wait—do you idiots have any C-4?”
“Yes,” they both said, a little alarmed at the question.
“Awesome.Back in two days.”
And then Birdie was gone.
“Oh my God,” Marcus muttered.“That small irritating human had better not screw us over.”
“Oh no,” Dean said, certain of this at least.“You and me are Bird’s best bet at payback for the downed plane.I’m pretty sure Bird’s not going to letanythingget in the way of revenge.”He gave a grunt, and from far away, they heard Birdie start the engine.“Bird’s right anyway—the bikes have enough fuel to get us into townorget us to the compound.Not both.If Bird sets up the bike and supplies for exfil, we’ve got some options.”
Marcus grunted back.“But in the meantime, it’s us, in this pit, with the motherfucking scorpions.”
Dean nodded.“Hey, think we could rig sort of a platform with the other chute and some rocks?It would keep the little bastards off us?”
“Mmm….”Marcus cocked his head.“No, Dean.I think they’ve got nests in the rock face, and while we might be able to cover the rock face with the other chute, that would mean they were wriggling around underneath it.I think we should refold the chute and save it for anything else and settle in for a long July nap in the asshole of the Chihuahuan Desert.”
“Could be worse,” Dean said.“Could be Fresno.”
Marcus chewed on that for a moment.Fresno was a central California valley town known for its homeless population and its poor air quality—and its lack of access to any of the neat places that California was known for.
