First Blood

The night was very cold, and there were no insects sounding nor any animals moving around in the brush, just a slight wind that was rustling fallen leaves and scraping bare branches together. He hugged his outside wool shirt and shivered and then he heard the helicopter chugging up from his left, building to a roar, dimming as it flew off far behind him. There was another one behind it, and another to his right, and to his right as well, he heard the faint echoes of dogs barking. The wind shifted then, coming toward him from the direction of the lights down there, bringing with it the yelp of more dogs, and the accumulated far-off murmur of heavy truck engines. Since the lights had been left on, the engines would need to be kept idling, he thought. He tried counting the lights but in the distance they confused him, and he multiplied their countless number by the amount of men each truck could carry, twenty-five, perhaps thirty. Teasle certainly wanted him. And this time he was not taking any chance of failure, he was going to come with every man, every piece of equipment he could muster.

But Rambo did not want to fight him anymore. He was sick and in pain, and sometime between losing Teasle in the brambles and waking in this cave, his anger had gone. It had started to go even as the chase for Teasle had drawn on, him exhausted, wanting desperately to catch the man, not anymore for the pleasure of teaching him, but just so he could do it and get it over and be free. And after killing all those men, after sacrificing so much time and strength that he needed for escape, he had not even won. The stupid useless waste, he thought. It made him feel empty and disgusted. What had it all been for? He should have taken his chance in the storm and run away.

Well, this time he was going. He'd had his fight with Teasle, and it had been fair, and Teasle had survived: that was the end of it.

What kind of crap-screen is that you're throwing up now? he told himself. Who are you fooling? You were hungry to be in action again, and you were damn sure you could beat him, but you lost and now it's dues time. He won't be looking for you just yet, not in the dark, but by sunrise he'll be coming after you with a small army that you don't have a chance against. You're not going because he won fairly and it's over. You just want to get out while you damn well still can. Even if he's leading them all, right at the head in plain sight, you had just better clear out and stay alive.

Then he knew it would not be that easy. Because as he stood there shivering, wiping the sweat from his forehead, his eyebrows, there was a flash of heat from the root of his spine to the base of his skull, then a sudden chill. The sequence repeated itself, and he understood now that he was not shivering from the breeze and the cold. It was fever. And extremely high to make him sweat this much. If he tried moving off, maybe to see if he could sneak through that line of lights down there, he would end up collapsed. He was having trouble standing as it was. Heat - that's what he needed. And shelter, someplace to sweat out the fever and rest his ribs. And food, he had not eaten since he had found the dried meat on the body of the old man who had been washed off the cliff, however long ago that was.

He shook and swayed and had to put out a hand to steady himself against the cave entrance. This was it then, the cave would have to do, he didn't have the strength to find anyplace better. He was going weak so fast that he wasn't even sure he would have the strength to get the cave ready. Well then, don't stand here telling yourself how weak you are. Do it.

He picked his way down a strip of shale to the trees he had seen in outline. The first trees he came to had sharp branches from where the leaves had fallen, and that was no good, so he shuffled through the leaves until at last they changed to soft springy fir needles underfoot, and then he searched among these trees, feeling for lush branches that might easily be broken off, always careful to take only one from each tree so that it would not be obvious he had gone through here gathering them.

When he had five, the motion of raising his arms to break off the boughs became too great a strain on his ribs. He would have liked more, but five would have to do. He lifted them painfully onto the shoulder away from his damaged ribs, and worked back toward the cave, the weight of the boughs making him stagger even worse than he already had been. The climb up the slope of shale was the really bad time. He kept teetering off to one side instead of straight up. Once he lost his footing and slipped face forward, wincing.