Shadows of the Desert Read online

  Jason’s thoughts were far enough away from what he was doing that he was staring straight ahead as he walked, using his peripheral vision to navigate basic obstacles. This method of walking does lend itself to zoning, not to grace or agility. He was aware of the wash he was about to cross, and his unconscious mind had already determined that it would take no special maneuvering to manage it. It was uneven and only about a foot and a half or so deep; he stepped heavily into the wash with his right leg leading. Had the viper been of a smaller variety, and had Jason not been stepping downward with almost all his weight, he might have escaped injury. His walk had been of a brisk pace all day so he might have had time to quickly pass over or evade a smaller snake. His problem was, he felt the six-foot long snake under his foot the moment he placed his weight on its back. Not immediately knowing what he had stepped on, he hesitated while he was briefly unbalanced and totally unprepared. The snake was already whipping its upper half to meet its threat as Jason pivoted off his right leg and attempted to lift it high in an exaggerated fashion to avoid the head of the viper. His left foot came out and down and his right leg up, thus giving the large male rattler more room to strike. The rattler caught the meaty flesh of Jason’s right calf in mid-air. The resulting downward falling caused the snake to hold on and inject more venom than what would be typical.

  Jason was leaning down out of instinct to grasp the animal as it released. It had felt like a gunshot to his leg as the fangs, like two hypodermic needles, passed easily through the camouflage pants he wore and sunk in on the posterior of his right calf. He grasped his leg instead of the snake, thus avoiding further retaliation from the rattler, and fell straight and flat on his back holding his leg the whole time. The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt, and he wondered for a panicked moment if the jaws of the animal had broken his leg. He quickly dismissed this as his mind tried to take stock while he writhed in the sand. His breath had left him momentarily and he had a head rush from the strain of trying to scream. Once he did catch his breath, he did scream, this seemed to help him start thinking.

  The snake bolted upon release, kicking sand into the air as it moved with seemingly impossible speed toward the brush. Jason was in denial for a moment as he rolled to his back and half sat up. He simply could not believe a snake had struck him. He could not believe he had been so blind as to not see that monstrous son of a bitch before he had trampled it. He began to furiously roll up his pant leg to assess the bite. Almost his entire calf on the posterior side on the medial head of the muscle, was already red and swollen. The wound itself was raised from the flesh well over a half inch with two small punctures trickling a small amount of blood. Jason grabbed the wound and squeezed hard thus eliciting another blood curdling scream. Every dark hair on his calf seemed to be a nerve ending and he had to steel himself to squeeze the wound again. His boot ended about four inches above the ankle and the bite was another three inches above that. He had chosen those boots for two express reasons; the first being, he coveted the ankle support. He had spent six weeks in a cast on two different occasions due to a badly sprained left ankle; he did not want it to happen again while he was out hiking. The second reason was of course to protect from potential snakebite, he just had to go and get nailed by the Godzilla of rattle snakes, though.

  The acuteness of the pain in the localized area of the bite itself ebbed as Jason squeezed hard on it to milk out as much venom as possible. His face was flush, and his heartbeat was thudding so hard in his chest it grabbed at his breath and felt as though his entire ribcage was flexing outward. His lips were drawn in tight white lines, exposing clenched teeth as he squeezed so hard that his hands shook. He let off his leg and straightened his body a bit to tear the backpack from his shoulders and flop it gracelessly into his lap. He ripped the zipper back and shot his hand into the bag to find the bandana he had brought with him. He pulled it out and quickly folded it, grabbed it by both ends to flip it and twist it into a rat-tail to fashion a tourniquet, it had been meant to soak up sweat though a more critical application presented itself. He tied it off hard, too hard, just below the knee before grabbing his boot by the sole with both hands and pulling his calf up to his face. He put his lips to the wound and started sucking at it as hard as he could in brief intervals, trying to pump the venom-tainted blood out.

  Jason didn’t know if this would work or not, but he was going to try like hell, because in the back of his mind it occurred to him that he had no idea how far from the river and his campsite he had gone. This equated to what was potentially a great deal of trouble with a serious snake bite, even for a healthy, grown man. He put his foot down and used both hands to push and massage his calf from the tourniquet down to the wound before bringing it back to his mouth for another round of sucking and spitting like a hooker on nickel night. After several minutes of feverish work on the bite, Jason collapsed backward and attempted to calm himself. He realized all his efforts at first aid could backfire on him if he kept his heart rate too high for very long. He reached for his sunglasses, which had come off when he fell, put them on and laid back with his backpack for a pillow. He was still breathing hard from the fear and pain which had taken a sudden toll on him. Unbeknownst to Jason, the breed of rattler which had struck him was a South Western Diamondback, the largest and arguably most dangerous serpent in North America. His first aid efforts such as the tourniquet, were quite useless. Sucking at the wound helped only marginally; even the Sawyer Extraction Pump can only remove 15-20% of injected venom. Furthermore, this has never been proven to reduce the effects of a bite. The only truly effective first aid equipment is a set of car keys to get a bite victim to anti-venin.

  Jason was lying there, trying to estimate the size of the rattler though he had failed to get a decent look at it, all he knew was it had been huge. It had indeed been about six feet long, slightly longer than Jason was tall, the snake was an old and matured male which would have made an unmistakably identifiable rattle if it had been given a chance. He was fixated on the event, his mind re-running it over and back again. In Jason’s traumatized mind, he thought the snake had to have been at least nine inches in circumference. The head of the snake had been almost the size of Jason’s hand. He kept seeing the leathery brown, diamond shaped head clamped on his calf, the back of the snake arching with effort as the fangs had sunk to the hilt. There had been no time for a rattle as the snake had been surprised by Jason and acted defensively. It may have known Jason was in the area but sure as hell was not ready to be trampled. Jason was cursing lightly as he kept replaying having seen the snake rap its jaw around his calf muscle.

  After lying in the wash for about ten minutes, Jason had started to come up with a plan. He knew his leg would continue to hurt and swell to probably three times its normal size below the knee throughout the day and night. He realized that he would be slowed a great deal and as his watch indicated it was 5p.m. in the afternoon, he had already hiked for over five hours. He was freshly injected with venom in the hottest part of a mid-August day and was probably seven or eight miles or more from any help or civilization; peachy keen.

  He planned to take it awfully slow and he knew there was little chance of finding his way back to camp before nightfall. He tried to think of a good plan while his mind raced on issues such as, why had he been so stupid in the first place to have gone this far with no compass or map? He was also baffled how he had encountered such a large, cold-blooded reptile out in the open when it was over a hundred and ten degrees out. These were the kind of thoughts that get people killed when they are in tight spots. Water was going to be crucial and he knew it, his water bottle was almost empty and would not last to dark. Another stupid maneuver, the derisive little voice in the back of his head reminded him; who goes out into the desert during the summer with only a liter of water? To his own credit he had not planned on being out quite so long or going so far, though this could also discredit him with this little voice. The bottom line was, the demons Jason carried with him drove him out this far while unprepared, and not thinking rationally.

  His mind raced for the best solution to his sudden, unforeseen and profoundly serious dilemma. There was no good solution right at hand; he was going to have to do this the hard way. He was going to have to make immediate but slow progress back toward camp. When it was necessary to stop, he would do so. If it became obvious that he would not make it to camp by dark, he would have to rough it and take measures to get water. Food did not worry Jason as he would not be gone that long. Water on the other hand was something that the body will die without. The body typically has three days to survive without water, in the desert in August, that is not the case. Dehydration is also a very painful death and the condition is debilitating long before it is fatal. The thought of severe spasms in the diaphragm which make breathing impossible, abdominal cramps that double a man, severe muscle spasms and cramping that make movement cease did not appeal to him. All those fun things came with tremendous headaches, blurred vision and as you start to go out, there’s bouts of lost consciousness and seizures. Within twelve hours, and well within that time, of direct exposure to desert sun, heat and wind the symptoms become serious and almost certainly, fatal.

  Jason picked himself up at that point and inventoried his possessions. He had a four-inch blade Buck knife on his waist, a book of matches, and a nearly empty bottle of water. He also had a half-eaten sandwich, a roll of toilet paper; a zip lock bag for used toilet paper, sun block, and a baseball cap. Most of this was in his backpack and everything started to look a little brighter for him. He was getting over the initial panic of the situation and decided he had probably just been overreacting, the situation was bad but not unsalvageable by any means. He sat up straight and tall and tried to look around. He found, to his mild irritation, he was unable to make out any clear landmarks in his immediate field of vision. He stood up and once again attempted to acquire a significant point of reference. All he could really recognize was the area directly from where he had just come from. It took little time for Jason to realize the snakebite was going to hinder him a great deal more than he had given it credit for. Within three minutes of leaving the wash he had to release the tourniquet and tie it loosely to the bite itself. He was having trouble settling weight on the leg, which was making walking a bitch.

  The venom had wasted no time settling into Jason’s muscle tissue. In smaller creatures it has an almost paralytic effect as the tissue damage and irritation rapidly become too painful to bear. The venom then attacks the respiratory system as it seeps into the rest of the muscle tissue including the heart, which causes cardiac arrest and death. The nervous system is also attacked causing burning sensations all over the flesh, headaches and even hallucinations; Jason was on the road to an object lesson on its effects. Worry was creeping back in, his leg hurt like hell and the pain was dragging him down. He was not simply being slowed down; this was bringing him to his knees. He had read a little about snake bites, particularly about rattler bites and nothing he read led him to believe the effects were to be this intense for a man of his weight, even though he had lost weight recently he was still over a hundred and eighty pounds. He knew now why people were to stay still if struck, they probably could not do a whole hell of a lot else if they were hit in the leg.

  Jason had once watched a thing on TV called a rattlesnake rodeo. A bunch of crazy assed, red necks would get into a ring one man at a time with a bag and a metal instrument about two feet long with a hooked end, known as a pinner, to hold down the rattlers head. They would then grab the snake behind the head and throw it into a burlap sack. There were timed heats and the object was to get as many of these confused and terrified snakes into the bag as possible before time was up. He had been transfixed by sheer, morbid fascination that these morons would handle rattlers so recklessly. It became clear to him why other people watched it live. It was the same reason why most people will watch racing; for the crash, just like most people watch boxing not for the strategy of it but to see two guys beat the silly, drooling crap out of each other. People watched the rattler rodeo to see one of these simple bastards in the ring get bitten and sure enough, one of the damn fools was struck when he grabbed one of the vipers improperly. They showed a brief interview with the guy the following day; he was planning to compete once again, and his entire right arm and hand from the elbow down was swollen to the point of being bigger than the upper half of his arm. This was a man who had immediate access to professional medical help, a hospital and anti-venin. He did, in fact, compete that day though much of his speed was lost and it appeared some of his enthusiasm was diminished, perhaps out of fear of a bite on the same arm.

  Jason did not have access to immediate medical care or a hospital or anti-venin. Nor was the bite he suffered a rapid one from a smaller breed of rattler, this bite had been abnormally long from an exceptionally large specimen. Jason did not know it yet, but his first aid efforts were sparsely enough to help him by any true measure and his condition, due to his need to be ambulatory, would deteriorate quickly. It was taking him entirely too long to find the can he had passed. The winds were non-existent at the moment so it could not have gone anywhere but he was still having trouble. This trouble he was having with finding a can was beginning to present a truly terrifying question to him in the back of his mind. If you cannot find a can you passed ten minutes ago, can you find your way? Jason wanted the voice in his head to go away and die with haste. After forty minutes of hobbling and searching Jason came upon the can and flopped down on his rear next to it, letting out a triumphant sigh of relief.

  “See I’m not lost; I found the can. Fuck off.” Jason said out loud.

  It was somehow soothing to talk out loud to the mean little voice in his head. He could talk out loud, it could not, he was right, it was wrong. He brought the can up to his nose and sniffed at it, there was still the mild aroma of beef; beef stew to be precise. The preservatives in it had kept the can from stinking of rotten beef stew apparently. He collected the can and started to move slowly on. He was headed in the direction which seemed to be where he had come from. The fact he had no compass with him, though, meant he was flying by the seat of his pants. There was not much in the way of highly identifiable landmarks either, especially for anyone unfamiliar with the desert landscape. Identifiable or not, Jason had not paid much mind to what had been around him as he marched blindly into the belly of the beast.

  As Jason walked on, he felt the effects of the bite taking hold. He was not sure what was from the bite and what was from his mind, he was getting more and more frightened as time passed. His lips and mouth were beginning to tingle and go numb; he was also growing weaker, though he thought he might just be tired. He rubbed at his face to try and get some feeling back into his lips, the fact that his mouth was going numb scared the hell out of him and he wondered what would be numb, next. There was another worry coming on for him, the fact that things were looking very unfamiliar. It again could all be in his head, but he did not recognize a lick of what was around him. He stopped and pushed his hand down over the visor of his ball cap as though this would somehow enhance his ability to see great distances through his sunglasses. He licked at his lips; they were getting worse. As Jason went to take a step he failed to compensate for the pain in his right leg, he fell forward and fell hard. He pushed himself up slowly, grunting under the effort; he had been stomping around for nearly two hours since the bite but felt worse than from the effort of the entire day’s work prior. He also realized as he sat up that his fall had more to it than fatigue and pain in his leg. His head was swimming as he sat up; he was having dizzy spells. He peered toward an outcropping of rock which appeared to be only a few hundred yards away, just to his right. He could not ascertain if he had seen it earlier or not, he must have seen it though, as it was huge. He just could not tell. Jason mentally kicked himself hard in the ass while he gritted his teeth in frustration. Deanna would never have let this happen.

  Jason took over a half-hour to reach the outcropping, which he had decided to stop at for the night. He recognized traveling was speeding the venom to work. He also saw his condition was becoming more advanced and in a quicker manner than he had anticipated. Moving any farther could prove to be fatal, he decided. As he approached to within twenty or so yards of the rock outcropping, something caught his eye from the left. He looked over and saw the figure of a man approaching. He fell forward as he took a poorly calculated step and had to catch himself with his hands so as not to fall flat, once again. He was half laughing and yelling out before he was even upright again.