SONOFABITCH!

The light returned with a sick feeling of weightlessness, and he felt himself falling. He heard the splash before he felt the icy embrace of the water, and then he was sinking. His right foot hit something hard and twisted, sending electric shocks up to his knee, and then he was down, floundering within the heavy layers of clothing that had turned instantly from protection to deadly enemy.

His face broke the surface and he gasped spasmodically, drawing in some splashing water along with the life giving air. That sent him into a coughing fit and his face near back into the water. It was freezing!

Shivering wildly, he flailed for a moment longer before getting his knees under him, then lunging to his feet. No sooner had he done that, though, than he went straight down again. He’d twisted or sprained an ankle when he’d come down. He tried again, moving more slowly and favoring the bad foot. The water was only a couple or three feet deep, not quite to his waist. Small favors.

Now the wind was cutting through the soaked clothing, and his teeth were chattering. Fighting panic, he swung his head about wildly, trying to get his bearings. It was still mostly dark, but pearling towards his left side. The sun wouldn’t be around for a bit, then. Land on three sides, thank god. Shallow bluffs to left and right, and a beach to the fore about sixty feet distant. Behind him, open water. He couldn’t see the damned pack!

Now he had a decision to make. Did he try to find it before he made for shore and then have to come back for it, or did he look first while he was already out here? How long did he have before the frigid water and icy wind killed him?

The pack first, he decided. The air was damned near as cold as the water, and without the contents of that pack, he was a dead man either way. Swinging the rifle around behind him, longing for the support of the staff that he’d strapped to the ruck, he staggered around in a drunken spiral, supporting himself on his good leg while he swished through the water for the pack with the bad.

He located it finally and nearly went down again for his trouble. He’d caught it at the beginning of an arc, and smacked his ankle right into one of the frame bars. Reaching down with club fingers, he caught hold of one of the shoulder straps and leaned backward. After a fraction of a second of token resistance, it gave and slid along the bottom.

A couple more dragging steps and he could sort of see it beneath the surface. The water was growing more shallow the nearer the beach he got.

If only it were sand, he’d be in good shape. But whatever he’d landed in had been liberally salted with stones and pebbles of various sort and size. Because of the way he’d packed, he was risking damage to irreplaceable gear with every foot he dragged it. On the other hand, he wasn’t about to hoist the sonofabitch, so he’d have to risk it.

At a depth of about eighteen inches, he rolled the ruck over on its frame and started dragging it that way. It was a pain in the ass because the hip belt was digging into the bottom, but at least he wasn’t scraping the waterproof wrapping off and soaking everything inside.

He dropped to his knees the instant he’d gotten it out of the water, curling himself into a chattering ball. The sky was growing lighter, and he figured he was close on to dawn. By the detritus surrounding him, he determined he’d lucked into a low tide, or he’d have another couple of hundred feet to go. Screw it, this was good enough for now.

He let go the pack frame and unlashed the staff. Then he crawled around to the lower end and unlashed the bivvy, flinging it inland as far as he could manage. The rest, he’d come back for.

Hauling a flashlight clear of the parka’s fishbowl of a pocket, he shone it around the body of the ruck. The wrapping had taken a beating, and there were a couple of places where it had opened, but he didn’t see much contamination. Maybe he’d got one small piece of luck.

It took him the better part of ten minutes to gather enough driftwood and debris from the scrub covered beach to begin contemplating a fire. Peeling out of his wet gloves and parka, then his BDU blouse and hoodie, he huddled over the kindling and mashed down on the blast match with blue-tinged fingers. The bright shower of sparks dove into the bundle of beachgrass and caught. He blew on the ember and had it almost ready to bloom when it fell from his numbed fingers and went out.

Only the certainty that he had an audience kept him from crying out. Ramming his hands into his armpits, he tensed and untensed his muscles, trying to generate some heat. His fingers started tingling, and he huddled down over the corpse of the previous ember. This one caught, and he spent the next couple of minutes coaxing it to living flame and building it up.

There hadn’t been much in the way of twigs along the beach, or he hadn’t seen them, so he set up a little cone of heavier stuff and just kept feeding bundles of grass in under it.

The movement helped to warm him, and the fire, small as it was, was warming his trunk and combining with his body heat to dry him out. Steam was rising from him in a cloud, although his legs and feet were still frozen.

Once out of the water, he realized that it wasn’t as cold as he’d first thought. Thirty-five – forty degrees, maybe. Still well cold enough to kill him if he didn’t get on the rikki tik, but not so cold as to kill him in a couple of minutes.

The sun crested the horizon just as the first of the driftwood flared alight in his little hatful of fire, but he wasn’t fooled. It would take awhile for the warmth to start taking hold. Meanwhile, the tide was coming in, and he could see it lapping around the frame of the ruck. Much as he dreaded abandoning his cheery little lifeline, he had to get that thing clear of the ocean’s potential embrace.

Cold as he was, the couple of hundred yards from the water’s edge to the little hollow in the dunes where he’d kindled the fire seemed more arduous than the previous day’s hike. In many ways, dragging the pack was worse than shouldering it. Which he wasn’t about to do in his or its current condition.

The sun was full up and he’d made a couple of trips to the fire to warm himself and add fuel by the time he got the pack more or less where he wanted it. The wind was currently blowing in from the northeast, so that’s where he put it. The direction would probably change by day’s end, but he wasn’t particularly sure he still wanted to be here by then.

Meanwhile, he pried his combat folder out of a still soggy pocket and began carefully cutting the shrink wrap clear of the outer surface of the ruck. He’d originally had some idea of recovering the plastic film, but that idea had gone bye bye when he’d been dumped in the drink. The outer layer had been pretty well rendered useless for any sealing duties by its trip across the stones. Hopefully, there might be some salvage from the inner packets.

The first thing out of the pack was the heavy duty poncho shelter. Heavier than most of what he could have purchased for the trip for less money, he’d opted for a Canterbury woodsman’s rig instead of the lighter camping or sporting variants. For the moment, he draped it over himself, sticking his melon up into the oversized hood. The poncho was large enough to completely cover him and maximize the heat he was radiating, while stopping the ingress of wind.

From inside the tentlike garment, he fished around and laid hands on his secondary set of base layer. Pants, blouse, thermals, and undergarments. These weren’t wool, as he’d only brought the single pair, but they would be, he hoped, dry.

Using a smallish bundle of twisted grass as a core, he slowly unwrapped the length of shrink wrap he’d sealed them with. Everything he’d brought with him had been thus sealed. It was lighter than the packing most of the gear had come with, and waterproof into the bargain. The plan had been to make the packets and pouches he’d need to transport everything in once he was here. Looking around himself, that was looking like it might have been an overly optimistic plan.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Shucking out of the winter boots, and resting them beside the fire, he peeled out of the remainder of his wet clothing and slithered his still damp body into the fresh set. No time for congratulations, though. He still had to fish out the aid bag — really more of a compromise between an EMT bag and a full-fledged medic kit. He’d gone whole hog on the thing, since he’d no real idea of how long he’d be here, or how he’d replace things once they’d been used.

He popped a couple of his limited supply of Ibuprofen and chugged them down with canteen water. Feeling along his ankle carefully, he couldn’t feel any of the telltale signs of a break. Sprained, then, most likely. Not that a sprain couldn’t be just as bad in his current position. He dug into the pack for a compression bandage before his foot got so big he wouldn’t be able to get a boot on over it.

He wasn’t going to worry about boots just yet. The stripped down cleaning kit for the weapons was in one of the oversized ALICE side pouches, and that’s what he went for first. The rifle needed attention, particularly after having been dunked in salt water. The others should be fine, wrapped as they were, but this one had been exposed.

He gave this task a good half hour, rinsing it with clean water before applying the patches and oil. Boiling water would have been better, but he wasn’t in any position to accomplish that at the moment.

Rifle cleaned and reloaded, he set it aside and fished out one of the two pairs of regular boots he’d brought. One pair a year, he’d figured. After that, he’d be wearing moccasins. The first pair he put hand to was the one he’d worn for his hike, and that was a break because they still had the compression socks stuffed in them. Bob had apparently had them cleaned and the socks laundered. Good man... er... alien, that Bob.

He unwrapped the throbbing ankle and forced the compression sock up over it, rewrapping the compression bandage around it, trying to balance the need for blood flow with support. Getting the boot on over all the wrapping was exciting, and his face was kind of pale by the time he laced it tight. Then, just to be sure, he broke out some five-fifty cord and lashed a couple of sticks around his lower leg and boot. If that didn’t do it, nothing would.

As he started to warm, he had time to get mad. What the hell had that been about? After everything he’d experienced since Bob had first made the offer, he’d gotten kind of used to the idea that this grand council thing had been on the level. And then they’d dropped him in the fucking ocean! He was still working up a good rage when he remembered to check the watch. It had been flashing for quite awhile now, but he’d ignored it, figuring some idiot wanted him to practice water ballet or some other equally obnoxious stunt.

Due to a transport calibration error, you are compensated fifty points.

He groaned and lay back on the rocky dune, closing his eyes and trying to think calm thoughts lest he act out in ways inappropriate to the tender sensibilities of younger viewers.

Taking his feet was an adventure in itself. The fear that the ankle wouldn’t hold him was real, despite all his efforts. He’d brought exactly two weeks of food along. That ran out and he hadn’t made it inland to where the local food lived, he was a dead man.

He could try fishing, he supposed, but didn’t hold out much hope. He hadn’t brought anything along those lines beyond a couple of seine nets and trotlines, neither of which were sufficient for anything living in the ocean, always assuming he could get out far enough to reach anything that lived there.

Taking up the staff once again, he hobbled along the beach a ways, trying to get his bearings and picking up what driftwood he could lay easy hand to.

That he was pretty far north was a given. While it seemed warm for January, the Gulf Stream might account for that. It flowed pretty far up the coast before veering out into the Atlantic. How far wasn’t a thing he kept in his head. That was what he’d brought the tablets for. Assuming that information had been entered. Internet service promised to be pretty poor here for awhile.

He was on some kind of point. The tiny inlet he’d landed in faced north out into a larger cove or bay, with open water to the east. East of him maybe a quarter mile was the ocean. He wondered idly where he had been supposed to land, and whether he was better or worse off than he could have been.

There were trees inland not too far off. Not many, and they weren’t much, but they were taller than bushes at least. He might get some useable wood out of them. With both legs under him, he’d be tempted to shoulder the pack and head off right now. With both legs under him. Instead, he was looking for some longish, smoothish pieces of driftwood, if he could find them. Otherwise he’d have to hike inland with just the axe and fell a small tree or two. What he needed for the pack right at this moment was some sort of sledge so he could drag it without tearing it up any more.

He didn’t want to go too far inland. He had plans for the ocean before he was ready to move on. But he did want to figure out just where he was. So he trudged up and down the beach looking for who knew what.

There were supposed to be maps, weren’t there? They’d promised him current, high quality maps and navigational aids. Of course, they’d also promised to drop him on a beach, not off one.

It was late afternoon before he stumbled across the shiny cairn. He was on his last pass before he called it a day, when the sparkle caught his eye. As he drew near, it resolved itself into a short flagpole, a bit over six feet tall with a silver pennant flapping from its upper quarter. At its base, stood a silvery tube about three inches in diameter and about eighteen inches long. There was a strap attached, by which he figured it was meant to be carried.

The flag had been placed along the rocky point, fifteen feet or so inland of the edge where it dropped into the sea.

There was an island out there about three-quarters of a mile. Long and flat, like an overturned boat. There was another almost straight south, maybe the same distance, maybe a bit closer. It was smaller, but equally unremarkable.

Looking south, south-west, and then west, he figured he had enough landmarks to get a position if he’d had any idea where to start. He got out one of the write in the rain pads and jotted down a quick outline as near as he could gather from ground level.

Hobbling back to his gear wasn’t pleasant. Proper treatment of a sprain was a day or two of rest, which he wasn’t doing. That would need to be addressed. Back at his makeshift camp, he figured out the clasps on the tube and withdrew the maps.

They weren’t bad. To make things better, whoever had packed the tube had included star charts, which meant that he could at least get a broad sense of where he was even without the sextant. Not that he was going to rely on that sort of accuracy. Now all he had to do was wait for some stars.

He was hungry as a bitch wolf. He’d been trying to nibble occasionally to preserve his supplies, but his stomach had grown too used to regular meals over the years.

Nightfall saw him still in his little wallow among the dunes, though he’d modified it some. With the e-tool, he’d deepened it and shored up the outer edges, and he’d covered over a corner of it with the poncho, now doing duty as a shelter. The fire had been moved up close into that shelter, and rocks had been piled behind it to make a reflector. The soggy clothes and parka were hanging from a rack he’d made of driftwood gathered throughout the day. He’d need to get the salt rinsed out of them pretty soon, but that would have to wait.

His ankle throbbed abominably, and he’d taken four more Ibuprofen over the course of the day. Calibration error! Hah! He had the ugly suspicion that somebody was trying to kill him, and he didn’t like it. Of course, that was probably just him being paranoid. What would be the point? Still, it remained likely that they’d dropped off the maps close in to where he’d been expected, and he’d dropped a quarter mile away. With that kind of radius, it had been about seventy-five/twenty-five the mistake would have dumped him into the North Atlantic in open water deep enough that he wouldn’t be likely to make it to shore alive.

The stars started to slink out of hiding and he lay back and watched for awhile, ears pricked for the sound of company that he didn’t really expect. As the stars continued to fill the night, he thought to himself that this display might almost be worth the trip in and of itself. He wondered how long it had been in his own era, since anybody had seen stars over the coast like this, for he was fairly certain he was somewhere in the Yankee northeast, and he remembered light pollution being a bitch out there.

By the time the night was well begun, he had enough stars out to start searching. It would have been easier with a better sextant, but the metal one with the magnified lenses had weighed three times as much as the plastic lifeboat/training unit he was using now. That was okay, his nineteen year old eyes could see in the dark like a cat, and it wasn’t like he was charting a course around the Horn of Africa.

The included star charts were pretty good, and with the north star as a jumping off point, he was able to get a pretty good fix on where he was. The news wasn’t good. He was somewhere northeast of what would someday be Boston, out on the northeastern tip of Cape Ann. If he had his bearings right, that island off to the east would be Thacher Island, and the smaller one to the south Milk Island. Which put that point where the game masters had left the cache as Loblolly Point, and the water they’d dumped him in as Loblolly Cove. Which, according to the maps, was plenty deep enough to drown him if they’d tossed him in even a couple of dozen feet further north.

“Be paranoid,” he told himself aloud.