Dirt.
When I woke up, part of my head was open and dried blood was making it hard to open one of my eyes.
Weeee, I thought. My brain ushered me back into the nonstop party my life had become and we clasped hands, gleefully skipping into the next set of excruciating bullshit.
A rock jutting out of the dirt wall was decorated joyfully with my blood, so, needless to say, I must have spent a good amount of time wailing on it with the front of my head. Speaking of my head, oh my dear sweet lord, it was throbbing like someone had rearranged my insides while I was out and left my heart where my brain should be.
Ow ow ow.
At first, the pain was so great I couldn’t even afford the brain cells to think about anything else. In my mental check out line, I was trying to pay the cashier with a stolen credit card, and he was looking right back at me, knowing there was no way in hell I was “Lorraine Washewski,” and slowly reaching for the telephone to his right.
It was quiet and kind of dark; the sun was either coming up or going down. Though I had no way of knowing what day it was anyway, so the passage of time was the least of my concerns. The most of my concerns should probably have been reserved for the high pitched howls that seemed to be getting closer and closer.
Are wolves attracted to blood? I thought. Because a lot of mine is out in the open.
I was starting to wonder if my brain and I were even on the same team anymore. All it ever did was hurt or make sarcastic remarks.
No time for that now.
A wolf was curiously poking it’s head over the side of the ditch.
When faced with certain death, the human mind begins to set up barriers of desperation between you and the falling piano, alien parasite, mythical beast, or whatever’s mulling over the benefits of destroying you. Even if it doesn’t make any sense, when you’re out of options, when you there’s just thin air between you and a set of jagged, chomping mandibles, there is no end to what the human mind can create to try and convince itself that you’ll make it out of this just fine; that in seven seconds, all of your organs will still be safely housed behind your skin.
But in its weakened, shattered state… my mind gave me nothing.
I stared up at that wolf. He stared down at me. And there was nothing but the distant rumble of traffic protecting me from what we both knew to be inevitable.
ka – POW.
In a turn of events neither I nor the canine adversary I had so readily invited into the afternoon’s proceedings saw coming, the wolf’s head exploded like an asteroid pulverizing the surface of a planet. Fur and wolf brains became all to plentiful down in the ditch.
The carcass slumped over the edge, spilling whatever woodland creatures and fairytale characters left inside him uncomfortably close to my feet.
My mind returned from vacation.
Holy crap that wolf is going to eat m–oh.
The next guest star to pop over the ditch’s edge was a man in full SWAT gear. He spotted what must have looked like a zombie in the midst of reanimation and thankfully did not put a bullet through my head.
“Eyes on! He’s over here!” he hollered at whoever was behind him. His attention returned to me.
“Sorry. That was supposed to be a warning shot.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Silence.
For once, I was reaping the benefits of professional medical care. Watching Leif do everything but staple a bandage to his hand at the rest stop had concerned me about future injuries, which at the time, didn’t figure to be as frequent as they apparently were.
We all sat in silence.
I imagined the insides of commando transport vehicles to be alive with frattish cheering, taunting, and chest bumps. Weren’t these guys supposed to be yelling gruff nicknames and their positions within the squad to each other so I’d know what the hell was going on?
There’d be Slick the sniper, Bulldozer the muscles guy, Tattoo the heavy weapons specialist, Twitch had something quirky and wild like a big knife, and uh… uh… Captain Hammershark was the only bad-ass son of a bitch in the Military who was tough enough to keep them all together.
Yeah. That’s what it was like.
Although seemingly it wasn’t. Nobody looked at each other. Nobody smiled. Nobody even tapped on the window to the driver’s seat and made comments of a sexual nature about somebody’s closest relative. I began to wonder if these guys had any idea what they were doing.
The one who had seen me first was seated directly to my right. If anybody was going to speak to me, I figured I’d start with him. We’d sort of bonded when he pulled me out of the ditch and I warned him that I may go catatonic at any second and get “bitey.” Although the look he had given me made me wonder why he had chosen to sit anywhere near me in the transport.
His two fingers went to his ear. Seconds later, everyone else did the same. Except for me, of course. I just sat there.
“Yes sir. We are on route.”
Ah, we were on route. Nope, that explains nothing. I decided that the best way to approach this new gang was to make use of my well known sense of humor.
“That wasn’t Clyde, was it?” I asked, elbowing him playfully.
For a second, he and I both thought he was going to twist my elbow bones in a way that would put them through my face. But instead, his eyes widened in shock.
He lifted his helmet visor. ”You’ve seen Clyde?”
“Nnnyyyynnnyy…” I replied, not sure which lie to tell next.
Without breaking eye contact with me, he made some murmured comments into his radio, causing all commando eyes to turn and look at me in unison.
“What’s your name?” he growled.
There seemed to be a lot of bullets or fists coming my way in the immediate future. Time to live out my fantasies before beaten or shot to be a bloody pulp.
“Russell Gunston,” I explained. ”I’m a professional snowboarder.”
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