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Member
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Southeast MI
Gender: Male
Posts: 8
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Survival--Part 2
I woke up once again, but this time it was the light of day that beamed on to me. My stiff, aching body laid flat on the hard floor of the cave. Water dripped on to my nose from above me, it was raining outside. Keaton was lying on the floor in the same place he had passed out the night before, and I saw Jonathon wrangling his backpack on to his shoulder, looking down at me with a determined stare. “Get up, we have a ways to go yet.”
“What about Keaton?” I looked over at my friend, not moving, barely even breathing.
“He’ll be okay. He has some head trauma so he won’t be able to come with us, but when we reach a town we can send for help” he said, trying to sound so reassuring, but I wasn’t buying it. It didn’t feel like the right thing to do, but it seemed as if we had no choice but to go on without him.
Jonathon and I kept climbing up that steep incline of rock and mud, never once pausing, probably out of fear that we might collapse and resign ourselves to the same hopeless fate as Keaton had done for himself. Hours passed and we just kept moving upward. Jonathon was ahead of me, but only by about six feet or so. After the incident with Keaton, we both knew it was a good idea to stay close, even though it was a pretty clear day, besides the downpour of rain that soaked our clothes and made climbing more difficult because it was nearly impossible to get a solid grip on the land.
My illness was escalating to the point of dementia. My body was barely able to perform the simple function of breathing let alone scaling a cliff. I couldn’t tell if the complete and utter saturation of my clothes was from the rain or the profuse sweat that my body was secreting as a result of the dangerously high fever that accompanied the rest of my symptoms. But I wouldn’t allow Jonathon to know, mostly because I knew it was important to maintain a sense of strength and control, even if it was all just an illusion. Any sign of weakness from either one of us could have meant the difference between life and death.
“I see something!” Jonathon yelled down to me. I was both surprised and delighted to hear a vague trace of enthusiasm in his voice.
“What?” I called up to him hesitantly. I wasn’t ready to give up my hopes yet.
“Looks like flat land, could be the top.”
So we continued to climb until at last I looked up and saw Jonathon disappear. He had heaved himself up and on to what appeared to be the top of the cliff. I frantically climbed until I too was able to place my hand on the flat muddy surface of what had been my greatest challenge ever. Jonathon’s hand grabbed my arm and pulled me up. It startled me at first, and then I realized what had happened. We had finally reached the top.
“Nothing, there’s absolutely nothing,” I heard Jonathon mutter under his breath. There was such a dismal, hopeless tone in his voice at that very moment. We had been pumped up with so much false hope, there was bound to be an eventual crash when we discovered that all of our climbing through all the elements, through the scrapes and bruises, illness and injury, that our salvation, our light at the end of tunnel so to speak, was nothing but a baron field atop a giant cliff of mud and rock.
“It’s just a field” I said in the same way that Jonathon had. I too had lost all hope, not just in the “things aren’t looking good” sense, but rather in the “every human instinct in my body tells me I am going to die out here” kind of way. Keaton was back at that cave miles and miles from us, probably hundreds of miles from any type of sophisticated medical treatment, and we were in just as hopeless a plight, without food, water, or any kind of direction.
Jonathon just walked around the top of the mountainous hill in a trance, as if his body wouldn’t allow the reality of our situation to fully sink it. He just walked around in circles, talking to himself, repeating the same three words over and over, “How could this happen?” Eventually I grew tired of listening to his inane ramblings and frantic movements so I plopped down, hitting the ground with a heavy thud. I folded my legs, crossed my arms, and lowered by head and began to pray. I had never prayed before in my life, but at that moment it seemed the most appropriate if ever. But just as I had began to ask the All Mighty to spare my friends and I, something took hold of me, a feeling, and I looked up to see Jonathon leaning over the edge of the cliff, ready to jump.
“No!” I ran towards him as quickly as I could in a mad dash to rescue him from falling to his death off that hill side. But it was too late, he had already jumped off, let go of all hope and allowed his body to commit the ultimate act of desperation and tragedy. When I realized what had happened I began to slow my pace, but still walking towards the edge, not knowing what to expect to see or hear.
I looked down and to my sheer amazement, I saw a revitalized Keaton holding Jonathon tight in his arms, clinging to the side of that hill, breathing heavily, a strange smile spread across his face as he looked up at me. “I’ve got him”, he said, pushing one last giant breath from his lungs. “I’ve got him”. At that moment, I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or if the most unlikely thing of all had really taken place. Either way I was delighted to see Keaton smiling, because somehow it told me everything would be all right.
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