As the man wearily sat inside of an indent that was now providing him with some much needed shade he began to take inventory of what he had with him. The first thing he pulled out from one of his pockets was the security tag that he would use to get him into his lab. It read:
“Mr. Jake McCarthy”
“Clearance - Level 3”
“ID - 081245”
In the top right hand corner of the tag, a small picture of him showed that he had short blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and fairly defined jaw and cheekbones. Although considered good looking by some of his female colleagues, he still did little socialising outside of the work place given his introverted nature. That meant that when he wasn’t working, he was spending a majority of his time at home keeping himself occupied with various hobbies, mostly building and painting models of various planes, tanks, and on one occasion a city. While he was not antisocial by any means he prefered spending the majority of his free time by himself.
Putting the tag down, Jake pulled out the rest of objects that filled his pockets; his phone and wallet. Both of them completely useless out here in the middle of nowhere. Still it didn’t stop him from flipping open his phone to check for bars and sure enough it didn’t provide any pleasant surprises.
Sighing, Jake finally turned his attention towards the small bag strapped to his leg that he would now be attributing much of his survival towards. Taking inventory of it he found the compass he used previously, some waterproof matches, a flint and steel, a small plastic flask filled with water, a small flashlight, a signal mirror, an energy bar, and a couple of glow sticks.
Jake cursed his luck at not being able to find anything else he could use.
Why were there no signs of a crash?
Was I even in an accident?
There had to be one right?
“How else would I wind up out here”, he thought aloud.
Jake tried to think back to what happened before he woke up stranded.
“I was getting ready for work... running late so I skipped breakfast.” His stomach growled as if it were in agreement with him.
Jake also remembered the idle chit chat he made with the pilot as they made their way to the helicopter. After this though he couldn’t remember anything else prior to him waking up.
“So I obviously made it to the airport”, he said to himself as he began to pull off one his shoes to empty the tiny mountains of sand from each one. He was also still concerned about what happened to the pilots if there had been a crash as they could still be out there either unconscious or seriously hurt and unable to move. He was positive though that there were no signs of them around him however. Given that he had no idea where to begin looking for them, the heat that the desert continue to hurl at him, and his lack of resources, he felt that attempting to find them would be suicide.
With that Jake swallowed the little saliva he had left in his mouth and his thoughts again turned to staying alive. His watch and the position of the sun told him that it was noon, the hottest part of the day. The journey from where he woke to the base of the mountain had been hard enough, so he didn’t need his meager training to tell him it would be a bad idea to travel out into the sun again. He would have to wait until it got closer to nightfall.
As it was the only discernible landmark he had so far found and his only source of shading, Jake decided that he would continue to go west along the base mountain in the hopes that he could find a way around it. It was the wrong direction from where he would normally travel to his lab, but since he couldn’t even remotely recognise any of his surroundings, he couldn’t be sure if that was the right way anymore. His best chance now would be to find some remnant of civilization.
He also knew that while during the day it was unforgivably hot, the night would be a different story. As there was nothing around he could use to light a fire with save for the clothes on his back, he thought it would be best to carefully continue traveling through the night to cover additional ground and as a way to keep himself warm, using one of the glow sticks to light the ground and the ridge and compass to guide him.
Settling himself in for a long wait he opened up the energy bar and flask from his kit to have a small portion of each, rationing the rest for later.
At least I have the both of you to keep me company.
_____________________________________________________________________________
It had been several hours since the sun had completely disappeared and so far Jake had been making good progress by using his strategy. Although Traveling this way was tricky for him as he still managed to trip and stumble on more than one occasion. On top of that the chilling night air wasn’t helping much and it almost made him wish for scorching touch of the desert sun to come back.
In order to keep his spirits up and take his mind off of the cold, Jake started singing any song that came into his mind. However he had already gone through most of his favorites and by this point he was starting to run out of ideas.
“Now a woman who'll kiss on a very first date is usually a hussy,”
“And a woman who'll kiss on the second time out is anything but fuss-”
RAAAAWWWWWWRRRRR!!!
An ear splitting roar that threatened to crack open Jake’s skull suddenly erupted from the night sky. Wasting no time he cursed and jumped behind the nearest rock that was big enough to hide behind. There he sat frozen in fear, tightly clutching the green glow stick that still shone brightly.
The glow stick!
With shaking hands he desperately fidgeted and struggled to open the kit strapped to his leg and stuff it inside. Jake continued to breathe rapidly in panic, waiting for whatever made the monstrous noise to come looking for him. The seconds passed however and nothing happened.
Cautiously rising up from where he was hiding that he started to hear the slow and heavy sounds beating wings pound away at the air right above him and ducking back down slightly he tried to make out what it was as it flew off and away from his hiding place, but staring at the light that illuminated from the glow stick for last couple of hours had left him with poor night vision. From what he could make out though he could see it was big. Too big and bulky to be able to physically fly on wing power alone.