Anywhere but Here

29

They filled an aluminum cook pot with water from the creek and hung it by a wire from a tripod made of the longest arrows that Trent could find. He was afraid they might melt, too, the way the flames came roaring up from the puddle of molten wood, but he learned how to damp the fire down with a flat rock over part of the puddle before the arrows caught. He kept the end of a log sticking over the edge of the rock, providing a constant drip to replenish the pool, and managed to keep a fairly even fire going that way.

They got their folding camp chairs out of the pickup and settled in to soak up the heat. Donna got a box of macaroni and cheese out of the camper, and when the water started to boil, she threw the macaroni in. Stirring it was a trick, until Trent duct-taped a spoon to the end of an arrow so they could do it from a distance. The macaroni took longer to soften than the seven minutes the directions said it would; probably the effect of lower air pressure on the boiling temperature of water. It didn’t matter; they were content to just sit and warm themselves by the fire while it boiled.

Donna had brought two mugs and two packets of hot-chocolate mix. When the macaroni was done and Trent had removed the pot from the flames, she dipped the mugs in the pot and filled them with water before she drained the rest of it out and added a squirt of squeeze-butter and the cheese packet to the noodles. She put a little powdered milk in with the cheese and stirred the whole works together, and it came out looking and smelling surprisingly like macaroni and cheese.

She opened the hot chocolate packets and poured them into the mugs of hot noodle-water. Trent wondered how that was going to taste, but balanced against the extra time it would take to boil a fresh pot of water, he agreed with her choice. He hadn’t realized how cold he was until he’d started warming up, and he wanted something warm inside him right now.

It tasted pretty good. A little doughy, maybe, but that was probably just the power of suggestion. When Donna was done stirring hers, he raised his mug in a toast and said, “To Katata and Magalak, who gave us fire.”

“Hear, hear!” she said, and they clinked their mugs together.

The fire lit up the tree overhead, and a good swath of the meadow beyond. The pickup’s chrome bumpers and roll bars and door handles glinted in its light, and even its red paint took on a luster that hid most of the dents and scratches it had picked up in the last couple of days. It was amazing how much better things looked in the right light.

Trent looked for glowing eyes out at the edge of the firelight’s reach, but there were so many glistening raindrops on everything that he would have missed anything that didn’t move. He imagined he and Donna were being watched, though. As hard as this wood was to light, he figured fire wasn’t very common around here. He wished he could believe that the rat-cats would stay away from it, but the one he’d seen this evening had acted more curious than afraid of new things. He made sure his rain jacket didn’t cover the pistol, and kept his ears perked for noise. At least this fire didn’t crackle and pop the way a normal fire would.

He and Donna ate the macaroni and cheese straight out of the pot. The hot chocolate hadn’t killed either of them, so they didn’t figure the noodles would, either. Water was water, after all, and ten minutes at a full boil should have killed anything living in it.

The food tasted wonderful. “Why is it,” Trent said between bites, “that everything tastes better when it’s cooked over a campfire?”

Donna shook her head. Her blonde hair was wet and stringy but it still glowed like gold in the firelight. “I don’t know,” she said, “but it does. Maybe it’s because your taste buds are the only part of your body that’s not miserable.”

“Hey, come on. We’re warming up.”

“Thank goodness for that.” She turned to toast her left side for a minute, and Trent actually saw steam rising off her jacket.

After they finished off the macaroni, Trent took the pot to the stream and rinsed it out, then brought it back full and hung it over the fire again. “It ain’t a whole lot,” he said, “but it ought to be enough to wash up with.”

“My god, a bath, too!” Donna said. “You’re my hero.”

They sipped the last of their hot chocolate while the bathwater warmed up, and Trent experimented with various things in the fire, checking to see what would melt and what would burn outright. Arrows worked just the same as the other kind of wood, although the tuft of greenery at the end would burn like a torch if you stuck that end in the flames. It dripped flaming gobs of plastic, though, so you didn’t want to hold it upright. The waxy-leaved ground cover was actually wax, by the looks of it; it certainly melted easy enough, and the liquid burned just like the molten wood. The chips that Trent had busted off the slo-mo shells the day before took a lot more heat to melt, but they finally did, and the flame from that was an intense white. He tried leaves from the tree overhead, and he ventured out into the night with a flashlight to gather twigs off the bushes, all to the same effect. Everything he could find except rocks and dirt melted and burned when he gave it enough heat.

“Being rained on all day doesn’t seem to affect it a bit,” he said. “It’s like water content isn’t even a consideration.”

“I wonder if a fish would burn,” Donna said.

“Jeez, I don’t know. We’ll have to try it.”

Donna turned to toast her back. She didn’t say anything for a while, but when she did, it was a bombshell. “What do you bet we won’t be able to eat anything that grows here?” she said.

He hadn’t even thought about that, but she was probably right. If life on this planet was made out of plastic instead of protein, there was no way their bodies could digest it. They might as well try to eat a PVC pipe.

“We haven’t tested actual meat yet,” Trent said. “That might be different.”

“It might. You gonna go fishing in the morning, then?”

“I don’t have to wait that long,” he said. He got up and went over to where he’d dropped the tarp and its cargo of slo-mo shells, and sorted through them for the heaviest one. “This one’s still got its innards.”

It took him a while with a screwdriver and a hammer to bust open the underside of the shell, and when he did, he wished he hadn’t done it on a full stomach. The insides were a gooey mess of slippery organs that stank almost as bad as the alien liquor. He held his breath and cut out a long, stringy slab of something that looked like muscle and speared it with an arrow, then held it out over the fire.

It sizzled at first and stiffened like regular meat would do, and when it got hotter it started to drip the way a steak would drip fat, but these drips looked suspiciously like the ones that came off wood. Trent took a closer look, and sure enough; it was just the end of the meat melting. He held it in the fire until it had completely dripped away, along with the end of the arrow.

“Not good,” he said. Not only that, but the odor was still strong in his nostrils, and his stomach was about to rebel. He picked up the ghastly shell and carried it to the creek bank, where he tossed the whole works into the rushing water and wiped his hands clean on the wet weeds, but when he sat back down by the fire, his stomach still felt queasy. “Gah,” he said. “That was a mistake.”

Donna didn’t look very good, either. “We’ve only got about a month’s worth of food,” she said.

“A month is a long time,” Trent told her. “We’ll have power again long before we run out. We can go look for another planet if we have to.”

She didn’t say anything, but he knew what she was thinking. If she could figure out where they were, then they wouldn’t have to look for another planet. They could just go home.

They huddled around the fire for a while longer, soaking up its heat for the long night ahead of them, and Trent’s stomach slowly began to settle. When the fire started to burn down, he said, “You want me to put another log on, or should we call it a night?”

“Let’s go inside,” she said, so they picked up their chairs and the pot of warm water and the bottle of fire starter and carried them in. They turned on the flashlight and set it on the countertop pointing upward, then closed the door and peeled off their wet clothing and took their bath, dipping washcloths in the pot of steaming water and rubbing themselves clean. The warm water felt great on their skin, but drying off with a fresh towel felt even better.

“I hope this rain blows over in the night,” Trent said. “I’m about half tired of it.”

“Me too.” Donna rubbed her hair with the towel, setting her breasts ajiggle. Trent felt himself responding to the sight, but his stomach was still not happy, and Donna didn’t seem to be in the right sort of mood, either, so he just toweled off his own hair and helped her set up the bed, piling every blanket they had on it this time.

Donna crawled in first, and he slid in beside her, ready to sleep, but she said, “I’m still wide awake. Do you mind if I read for a while?”

When they had first gotten married, he couldn’t sleep when she did that, but he had long since gotten used to it. “No, that’s all right,” he said. “Stay up as long as you want.”

She reached across him for the computer and woke it up from sleep mode, then switched out the flashlight.

“What are you readin’?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she said, holding the computer sideways so he could see the screen full of equations.

His stomach rumbled again, and he had to fight to keep the macaroni and cheese down. “Good idea,” he said.

He couldn’t sleep after all. It wasn’t Donna’s reading; it was his stomach, which had never recovered from the whiff of slo-mo guts. At least that’s what he hoped was the problem. They had used the local water for hot chocolate and to boil the noodles. If there was something wrong with that, too, then they were in even worse trouble than if it was just the food.

He struggled for over an hour to keep his stomach in check, but the nausea just grew worse until he finally realized he had about thirty seconds to choose his spot. He tossed off the covers and bolted from the camper, running a dozen steps out into the meadow toward the trench they’d dug for a latrine before the cramps doubled him over and he fell to his knees, heaving his supper all over the ground.

“Trent!” Donna yelled from the doorway. “Are you all right?” The flashlight beam caught him just as he heaved again, then the beam wobbled and he heard her take a couple of steps before she, too, lost her dinner.

For a moment, Trent thought throwing up might be the worst of it, but then he realized that his trouble wasn’t just in the front end. He barely had time to get his feet out of the way before his bowels cut loose, too. He heaved and groaned until he was sure he had no insides left, and then he dry-heaved some more. He could hear Donna doing the same behind him. They would both be sitting ducks if there were any night predators out there in the darkness, but at the moment he would have welcomed the release.

The rain was like little ice picks on his back. He finally managed to straighten up and take it on his shoulders, then after a couple of deep breaths he struggled to his feet and staggered back to the camper. Donna was a silhouette on her knees off to the right, the flashlight dropped on the ground beside her.

“Don’t come near me,” she said.

Trent couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m as rank as you are. I’m just getting us something to clean ourselves up with.”

“Oh. All right.”

He leaned inside without actually going in, felt for the paper towel roll under the cabinet, and tore off a long strip of towels. He tore that in two and gave half to Donna, then went back out into the darkness to clean himself. He felt surprisingly better now, despite the rain robbing the warmth from his body, better enough to get the shovel and bury their mess in the latrine.

Back in the camper, they dried themselves off and crawled into bed again, holding each other close for warmth.

“Do you think it was the water or the smell of that meat?” Donna asked.

“I don’t know,” Trent admitted. “It could have been fumes from the fire, for that matter.”

“I suppose it could have. It’s going to be a cold time if we can’t start a fire.”

“I’m more worried about it bein’ the water,” Trent said. He wondered what they could do about it if it was, and he realized there was one thing he should do yet tonight. He sighed and said, “Damn. I’ve got to go back outside and rig up the tarp and a bucket to catch rainwater while we’ve still got the chance. We don’t have any idea how long this rain will last.”

She apparently didn’t like the idea of going back outside any more than he did, but after a few seconds she said, “You’re right. I’ll help you.’’

They got dressed this time, and Donna carried the light and the pistol while Trent tied two corners of the tarp to the side of the camper that stuck out closest to the edge of the tree’s overhang. He angled it downward and tied the other corners to two arrows stuck in the ground, then positioned their five-gallon water bucket under the low end where rainwater would run off the tarp into it.

When he was satisfied that it would actually collect water, they went back inside and crawled into bed again. They were both shivering by now, and Trent’s hands were so cold he didn’t want to touch Donna with them, but it was pretty hard to snuggle without touching. Her hands were just as bad, so he finally said, “Okay, on the count of three, let’s just grab each other and get it over with. One, two—yow!” She had already put her hands on his back and stalled rubbing.

“Why drag it out?” she asked.

“All right, woman, you asked for it.” He laid his cold hands on her back, too. She flinched, but didn’t scream, which was a good thing since her mouth was right next to his ear. The relative warmth of her skin under his hands offset the feeling of ice-cold fingers on his own back, and after a minute or so her touch actually started feeling pretty good. That’s when she put her feet on his legs.

“Gah!” He jerked away, then forced them back into contact. “Damn, how can you be so warm on one end and so cold on the other?”

“Talent, I guess,” she said.

He shivered. “When we get the batteries charged up, let’s go someplace warm.”

“Deal.”

Provided they lived through the night, he thought, but he didn’t say that out loud.