Odyssey_Double Helix

by R. Patricia Wayne

  “There’s nothing wrong with my memory. And I didn’t attend to my wounds. Talia did.”

  Perhaps you had the name wrong. You sure it wasn’t Corporal Tate?

  “No, it wasn’t Tate. She and Talia look nothing alike. Tate was older, in her forties. Talia was much younger. Maybe twenty-years-old at most.

  Just a reminder. You’re under orders to answer EVERY question truthfully.

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  We shall see... We’ll come back to this question shortly. Now, tell us your version of what happened. Piece it all together for us. Begin with what happened after you discovered that you were alone. Keep going until I stop you.

  I didn’t know what to do at first. I felt jittery, anxious, almost panicked. All I knew was that I needed to find the others. So, I called out for Corporal Tate for a while, and then called out to anyone within earshot. After a long period of no one calling back, it seemed clear that I was on my own. I needed to do something. I decided I should try to locate the shuttle wreckage while I still could see smoke. Once the smoke cleared, I’d never find it.

  And the only problem with that plan is once I was inside the jungle, the overhead canopy would make seeing the smoke impossible. I decided to follow the stream and hope that it turned somewhere downstream of my position. If it did, perhaps I’d get closer to the wreckage. If not, then I’d at least be headed toward the sea. However far away that was.

  Following my plan, I returned the field knife to my boot, then started downstream. I had no more than began my trek when a blonde girl with a ranger backpack sprinted out of the jungle ahead of me. And with a Peacekeeper rifle over her shoulder. She was a little older than me. Her hair was up in the standard ranger ponytail, like my own, and she wore olive-green fatigues, just like I wore. Whether I recognized her or not, everything combined told me she was a ranger. And I was happy to see her.

  She trotted up and stopped directly in front of me.

  “You’re awake!” She smiled while grabbing my arms. “You still in pain?”

  My burns were stinging, but not necessarily in pain.

  “I’ll live.” That’s when I noticed the two stripes on her sleeve. “Do you know where we are, Corporal...” I looked at the tag on her chest to get her name. “...Corporal Scott?”

  “Basically. I’ve spent a lot of time in this part of Chiron’s Grove. I know it like the back of my hand. And you can call me Talia. What’s your name, ranger?”

  “Katee.”

  “You know the way back?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t worry,” she smiled, “with my help, you’ll get back to camp.”

  She then showed me her backpack, which revealed that she’d been scouring the jungle while I was unconscious. She had collected some of our MREs and bottled water, and had packed up another bundle of Aloe Vera leaves for my burns. Which meant we were fine for the moment.

  Being that I was only a year out of camp, I hadn’t fully learned all the knowledge I needed for a situation where my survival depended on the sketchy concepts and distant memories I had of my training. And patrolling the jungles in squads or platoons didn’t test our survival skills. And that was the entire point of the exercise.

  Fortunately for me, Talia knew what I did not. From what she told me, she’d been patrolling this sector since she was just out of training camp. Although that amount of time remained rather vague, based on her age, I gathered she’d been patrolling this sector for five or six years. Time enough to learn your way around... basically.

  And when I asked Talia if she’d found the wreckage, she said she roughly knew where it was, but she had been unable to reach it.

  “I tried, but the jungle’s too thick through there,” Talia said as she pointed off toward the black smoke rising into the air. “Every time I thought I was getting close, I would end up right back at the stream. It’s a lost cause.”

  “We need to try again,” I said. “There might be survivors.”

  “And we could spend days trying and still never reach it. Since food is a concern, we’re going to get ourselves out of here as quickly as possible. We’ll have a shuttle sent back to do a search and rescue sweep.”

  With nothing more to discuss, I nodded.

  “Follow me,” she said. And with that, she trotted back to collect her makeshift bowl and added it to her backpack.

  I did as she asked. But my acceptance of her plan wasn’t as much as I agreed with her priorities as it was I trusted her judgment. She seemed to be fully aware of where she was and exactly what needed to be done. That, and she outranked me. Her plan was my plan. And working together to solve problems was also one of the points of the exercise.

  A few minutes later, Talia led me into the wall of foliage near the stream and into the jungle. The very place she had exited from only moments before. And as I had been taught in camp, I continually snapped off branches and palm leaves at eye level, to make it easy for rescuers or other survivors to follow our path.

  And once the sun was hidden behind the canopy of foliage above our heads, I was completely lost and entirely dependent on Talia for direction. She was our only hope for survival at that point.

  The jungles may look beautiful with the rainbow of colors you can find in everything from birds to tropical flowers, but it’s like nowhere else on the planet. There it’s camouflage, hiding everything from the landscape to all the millions of life forms that inhabit the rainforest. For those unaware, it soon becomes apparent that the jungles are a densely overpopulated thicket of obstacles, creatures, and dangers. You can’t take more than a few steps in a straight line. It’s claustrophobic. You’re navigating around and through a continual thicket of trees, vines that hang from the emerald-colored canopy above, or tripping over the seemingly endless tree roots hidden by the floor of ferns and dead leaves.

  And to make it even more unbearable, the humidity always hovers around 100%. It’s hot, sticky, and once the nightly rain shower passes, it just seems to get even hotter. You sweat, you stink, and you would like nothing more than to sleep during the days, but you know you cannot, for the jungle predators stalk the night, and that makes travel after sundown a bad idea. And yes, predators are an ever-present concern. If there are any predators nearby, they are aware of your presence long before you are aware of theirs. Just about everything that lives and breathes in the rainforest seems to be aggressive, hungry, and ferociously persistent when it senses a meal.

  As if it were alive, the rainforest devours and decays everything, including our weaponry. Keeping your rifle functional in the jungle is a constant, day-to-day struggle. The humidity eats at its electronics. The sticky grit that accumulates on everything makes even turning on your rifle a random event. Not something you want to deal with when your life is in danger. The rifle has to be cleaned a couple times a day or it’s useless.

  After just a few days inside the jungle, you start wondering if it ever ends. Day after day in this environment wears on your sanity and your morale. And sooner or later, you’ll realize just how insignificant you are there. You understand that humans aren’t equipped to survive on their own in a place like this because we are preyed upon by everything else. And that’s when you start to suspect that your odds of making it out without dying, or going insane, are astronomically small.

  Luckily, I had Talia with me to keep me sane. The first night, I noticed the corporal knew how to make a fire by rubbing sticks together. A skill I hadn’t learned, but a skill I was glad she knew. And in the warm glow of her fire, we ate an MRE, then she applied more Aloe Vera to my wounds.

  This relationship with Corporal Scott was odd for me. Up until this time, she had been quiet. We hadn’t said much of anything to one another since we started this journey. And the lack of mindless chatter was fine by me. In the rangers, most girls talked about meaningless shit just to hear themselves talk. Silence bothered most people. Most people bothered me. I wasn’t happy about being stranded in t
he jungles, but I’d have been even unhappier if Talia turned out to be a chatterbox. And I was fine not knowing anything about the woman sitting beside me that night.

  And after she finished applying Aloe Vera to my face, she offered me the rifle. “You can have this, Katee. It won’t fire. It could be useful if you can figure out how to get it to work.”

  In reflection, I believe that was Talia’s way of breaking the ice with me. Our lack of conversation was bothering her. And I think that’s why she gave me the Peacekeeper rifle that night. And kept attending to my burns. She needed me to interact with her.

  And after a quick inspection, I determined that the rifle was nonfunctional because it had been gummed up by forest grit. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. So, I promptly disassembled it and began cleaning it by the firelight, one piece at a time. I scrubbed the grime from the disassembled rifle parts with a flat rock folded inside a piece of fabric I had torn from the bottom of my shirt. And as I worked on the rifle, Talia spent the same time trying to get to know me.

  To be fair, Talia was already more than a walking companion to me. I knew I needed to remain on good terms with her, for we needed each other just to survive this arduous journey. And when she began a conversation, I felt obligated to remain friendly. I wanted to keep the peace with her, not to push her away like I did to so many other people.

  “Did you have many friends back at camp?” She asked

  “Not many.” I shrugged. “When something needs to be done, most people would rather sit around and bullshit about it instead of doing the work. Most people don’t like me because I don’t give a shit. I’ll tell them to get off their asses and help. If we left everything to a vote, nothing would ever get done. Fuck ‘em. I don’t need people to like me. When something is broke, it needs to be fixed. It’s just that simple.”

  “Do you have anyone special back in camp?”

  I blew the loose dirt off the disassembled trigger I’d been scrubbing. I held it up to the firelight, inspecting it closely. It was worn, but clean. I remember thinking whoever owned that rifle never took care of it. Something I would mention to Commander Graves once I got back to camp. A ranger is only as useful as their equipment. And a ranger’s equipment is a reflection of the ranger. These are things that were drilled into our heads in camp.

  Then, to answer the question at hand, I turned to Talia. “You mean a lover?”

  “Yeah.” Talia cringed like she was already sorry she asked.

  “No.” I returned my attention to the Peacekeeper. I fit the trigger back into the rifle and grabbed another dirty part.

  “Ever had a lover before?”

  The arcades were the syndicate’s illegal sex clubs back in the colonies. Since the day I discovered what orgasms were, I’d been saving all my allowance money until I had enough for a night of fun. Then I’d sneak out of the house to explore the virtual world where any sexual fantasy I could imagine would be fulfilled. But my excursions into sexual fantasyland didn’t last long. I got caught in an Arcade when I was thirteen. And that’s how I ended up in the rangers. I had been banished from the colonies and civilization for nothing more than being sexually curious.

  After being in the rangers for a while, that no longer bothered me. My new lifestyle was mentally challenging, physically demanding, organized, and full of adventure. I loved everything about the rangers. Well, unless you consider my opportunities for sex were now severely limited. In any case, Talia’s question caused me to think. Technically, in the arcade I’d had sex before, but not with a real person.

  “Do the arcades count?” I eventually asked.

  “No.”

  “Then, no.”

  “That’s terrible,” she said softly.

  “What about you?”

  “I haven’t either. Aren’t you lonely, Katee?”

  “Never.”

  “What about when you woke up at the stream?”

  That was another question that caused me to pause. I had never really considered loneliness a factor of anything. I had been born into a big family and never really needed, or enjoyed, the company of my sisters. I’d always been a self-starter. If things needed to be done, or if I simply wanted to try something, I just did it. And once I became a ranger, I wasn’t lonely there either. I was always in the company of a platoon full of rangers. Even in training camp, I was constantly surrounded by other girls. But, when I awoke alone at the edge of the stream earlier that day, I had briefly felt what Talia’s question meant. When one is alone, you can feel isolated and small, and more so in a place like the rainforest. For the first time in my life, I understood that loneliness was an empty feeling. And I hated it. I hadn’t realized how much being around other people energized me.

  “At the stream I was,” I replied, “but now I’m not.”

  “Then, I’m happy.” Talia smiled. “I’m not lonely anymore either.”

  That’s when I decided if we survived this ordeal, I hoped Talia would remain my friend. While I’d always kept a strong, tough-as-nails exterior, what I felt inside was sometimes very different. I wasn’t always the bitch I pretended to be. Talia seemed to know that I had that one moment of weakness even though I never showed it to her. That, and I was growing attached to the girl. She was smart, pleasant to be around, and good company. Which was also unusual for me. I often had trouble connecting with other people.

  And shortly after reassembling the now completely clean rifle, I tested it. And it still wouldn’t fire. That puzzled me. Unless it had been marinating in this jungle for years, what I had done should have worked. With a yawn of fatigue, I resigned myself to giving it another cleaning during the day. I’d need better light to find what I’d missed.

  At daybreak, I tried again, but the Peacekeeper remained utterly inoperable. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get it to work.

  During the next day of travel, a new routine had developed. As we hiked, we told stories, laughed, and we sang songs. Talia always led. I always followed. At that point, I noticed that she always seemed to know exactly where she was and the proper direction to head. Another skill that impressed me, which I could only attribute to her spending so much time in this sector. To me, once the emerald canopy overhead blocked out the sun, I had no clue which direction we were headed anymore, nor how long the days were. I was just glad that Talia was so knowledgeable.

  By the second night, there wasn’t much Talia and I didn’t know about each other. We had talked about everything that came to mind. And also on that second night, I noticed that Talia seemed different to me. As she applied more gel to my burns, her touch was noticeably more gentle. While her eyes stared deeply into mine, her fingers lingered and traced my face. With her fire’s romantic amber glow, and the serenade of insects surrounding us, I became lost in her pale blue eyes. It was a gaze that made my heart beat harder, and I liked feeling this close to her. There was no laughing, no storytelling, nor any talking that night. After we laid down to sleep, we laid there, staring at each other in silence until I eventually nodded off.

  On the third day, we had found a clearing with a twenty-foot waterfall relentlessly supplying a stream with crystal clear water. Giggling at the wonderful sight, we promptly stripped off our clothes and stood under the waterfall for a long while, simply enjoying the temporary pleasure of being both cool and clean. And in the jungle, one quickly learns not to waste golden opportunities. We then washed our filthy and stinking fatigues, then we sat under the waterfall as our clothes dried.

  “This is a good time to clean those burns,” Talia said. “Turn your head this way.”

  Without question, I turned and faced her. She began gently cleansing the dirt and grime from my wound with her usual gentle touch and handfuls of water. Something happened at that point. It’s hard to explain exactly what it was. It was more of a culmination of moments we had been sharing since we met. I couldn’t stop staring at her. Her eyes were full of longing, perhaps loneliness. And the longer
I stared at her, the hotter my core burned with desire.

  And when she eventually fanned her face with a hand, I knew she was feeling precisely the same thing I was. I knew what I wanted to happen next, so I took a deep breath and licked my lips. And then I placed a hand, gently, on her arm. And without breaking our mutual gaze, her hand found my waist. Then, as if we were both of one mind, we instinctively leaned into each other and our lips finally met. Wrapping our hands around each other, we pulled ourselves closer while the cool water rushed over our hot bodies. Then, our hands, our fingers, and our mouths removed the last barriers of intimacy between us.

  At that point, I had only known her a couple days, but it didn’t matter. I was no longer concerned about how long it took to get back to base camp. All I wanted was to keep spending time with Talia. She had completely captivated and enchanted me.

  In training camp, we all learn the basics of surviving in the jungle. They assume we’ll learn the more advanced techniques out in the field. But, that’s assuming we’re traveling in experienced groups, that we have sufficient supplies, that we have a rough idea of where we are. Which was no longer the case. It was just me and her and what knowledge we held in our heads. And what little supplies we had in her backpack.

  But, there are also things that the training camps purposefully don’t teach us about the jungles.

  What didn’t they tell us about the rainforest?

  Most everything wants to kill you.

  Within the first four or five days of our isolation, we had seen an anaconda, piranha, panthers, and several crocodiles. But, they were much easier to spot than the other dangers inside the jungles. Mosquitos carried malaria. The water in rivers and streams contained hazardous bacteria that needed to be boiled off before drinking. And if that wasn’t enough, simply eating the wrong plant could kill you just as quickly as everything else there.