60 BULLETS
The next morning showed no change at the death berry boils on my arm. I reapplied salve to the burning skin and wrapped it back up. The elderberry and mandarin orange spots were reddened with an anxious color, so I rinsed them off and put the two fruits in the no category. The mushroom which I was originally worried the most about was still going strong.
I had to choose which fruit to continue with because now they had to have days individually. While I was most looking forward to the rambutan, I figured I better go potato next because it was the largest patch and close to the truck.
I dug another up and rubbed the inside against my lip. Then I think tomorrow I hold a piece in my mouth, but don't eat and the day after I can eat a single bite if I still feel well. I looked at the potato with worry. At least I thought those were the steps. I really wish I had the internet on my phone right now to check for sure.
Making up an oatmeal breakfast from my cooker, hoping for a more filling breakfast today, I was down to ten water bottles. Today's main priority would be water. And definitely not deathberry water variety. If I needed to go far, I'd need the energy.
I had dumped the rest of the deathberry water but was really counting on being able to reuse the bottles with a good rinse. That was left to be determined though.
After a quick tidy to my food kit, I placed supplies in my purse and started down the mountain. Water runs down, so that's the best way to check. And from day one's hike I seem to remember a lake. I grabbed my walking stick and again made sure to press a trail behind me. Today I'd take a good hike. I'd imagine I could go three hours in this direction, might take me five back up, so I would have to be careful with my energy.
About forty minutes into my hike, I wondered about my family back home. Would they have realized I was gone by now? Would my farm animals be taken care of? I had a friend coming over, tomorrow I guess it would be, to post a video on solar ovens... Oh dang I wish I had my solar oven with me! A look up to the sky shown the bright yellow ball. I wondered if that was even my sun or a completely different solar system.
"Help!"
My head shot up at the sound. Was that a person!? Did I imagine it? I stopped to listen again but this time I heard that same scary bird screeching I'd heard before, though it sounded awfully close this time.
"Help! Help me! Anybody!"
It was a woman's voice!
"I'm coming!" I yelled back in shock, trying to track the sound.
Just then a large shadow passed over head and I turned to the sky just in time to catch four long lizard like tails with a club at each end passing behind the treetops. The screech sounded again and this time I had to cover my ears the roar was so consuming.
"Is someone there?" The voice yelled.
I started running again. "Yes! I'm coming! Where are you?"
"It's seen me!"
I darted around trying to follow her voice. "What has?!"
"A dragon!"
My footfall faltered for a step, and I looked back to the sky. "A dragon?" I tried to clarify.
"Hurry!"
I kept running and another shriek waved over the area from the beast, and I heard the wings whip into nearby trees.
I called out, "where are you?!"
"Here!" I saw waving from a figure crouching below a tree.
I ran forward and then caught eyes with the creature landing in the treetops above. It was very dragon like. Green and red reptilian skin. Wings a mix of bat and dragonfly. Deadly yellow eyes and long wavy ropes of antenna on a slender head.
The monster shrieked a song, its mouth held up open to the sky. Maybe it was calling others that lunch awaits. Well sorry dragon, you aren't invited to this meal.
I pulled the rifle off my shoulder and took aim for the neck. It hit exactly where I wanted, but the shot did not drop the beast. The monster shrieked in horror, blue spewing from the wound and it took again to the skies in a beat of whipped air.
59 BULLETS
But one less flying monster.
We both watched it retreating and my eyes widened to see the lake. It looked wide and as blue as the ocean, hidden within the tall trees it was hardly the hike I was expecting today. Now just to hope there weren't any deathberry bushes around to contaminate the water.
The woman then jogged over as my eyes were at the water.
"Thank you," she spoke timidly.
I looked her over. Petite Asian frame. Tight sweet eyes. Dark brown hair in waves down her mid back and spreading over her forehead in wispy bangs. Thin lips in a pretty red. Dressed in traditional light blue doctor scrubs.
"You're welcome. I'm Eleanor."
"I'm Jia." She inclined a slight bow.
"Nice to meet you Jia. Do you know what that thing was?" I looked in the direction it headed.
"No. Do you know where we are? I was headed home from work and then I was here."
I leaned on my walking stick and realized that the last fifty feet I hadn't been pressing in for a trail. Hope that didn't bite my butt on the way back to the truck. I shook my head no to her question. "I was driving home from the store. Me and my entire truck got transported here. I think it's a different planet. What do you think?"
She looked around nervously. "I had wondered."
I let out a breath. "Do you have shelter? Food? We can work together if you'd like."
"Yes," she smiled a wide grin. "I would like that very much. I slept in a tree last night. I do have some food, mostly rice. I had stopped at the grocery. Bags were in my hand as I came here."
I looked over the lake. "Is that water fresh? I haven't found any other clean water sources."
"Oh yes," she bowed, her hair sliding around her face. "I have drank. It is lovely."
That was a relief. "We should head there first then. I have water bottles we can fill."
"My camp is at the beach too."
We then parted through the trees to the bank of the water and I knelt at the edge. "Sure it's clean?" I asked again.
"I have been drinking for a day. It has tasted pure."
"That's good enough for me." The deathberry water burned my hands in no time. I dug out my filter straw and began to drink. It was heavenly and delicious. It reminded me of the fresh spring my father brought water jugs to when I was little. The memory was lovely and sad. I'd never see my family again. Gone like that fresh spring.
I then took off the gauze and laid it across my knees and washed up my arms. The rest of the fruits passed the test and I needed to clean the burn again. When I put my arm in the water, the burning relief was almost crippling.
I cried out somewhere between pain and relief.
How would I be able to pull my arm out of this?
"Oh my," Jia exclaimed, eyes on my angry boils. "Your arm. What has happened?"
"Bad berries. I was testing foods to eat and they burned me. If you see long blackberries, don't even touch them."
"I will not," she assured then bent to take a better look through the ripples. "I am a doctor. Maybe I could help?"
"Don't happen to have any burn cream, do you?" I asked giving a sad forced laugh. With a cringe I pulled my arm from the water and showed it to her.
She eyed the wound. "It is very blistered. But not a large area. All we can do is keep it clean and covered I am afraid. Do not pop the blisters, that could advance infection." She looked behind to the woods. "There could be plants that would help with healing but being a foreign world, I do not know what to look for."
"It's okay," I gave her a smile. "I do have a salve back at my truck. Basically, oil beeswax calendula and some other herbs. I'm guessing it's better than nothing?"
"Yes, that sounds very good. So you do have a truck then? We can drive away from here?"
I started wrapping the wound back in the old gauze. "My truck crashed into a fallen tree. The lights still work, but the engine just clicks. But at the moment it is a good shelter. Have you seen anyone else?"
"No. You are the first. I have seen many different creatures though. Dragons and monkeys and rats and pandas." She pointed out to the water. "There is a strange creature in the water with one bulbous eye that goes above the surface, but it is afraid."
I hadn't seen too many animals and I'd always had an enclosure to be in. How awful would it have been to see those creatures while sleeping in a tree? "Did you want to go with me? Grab your things and I'll fill bottles."
She nodded and walked off to her spot while I packed my purse with full bottles. She came back with four reusable grocery sacks hanging in her arms.
"Why don't I take two of those, then we each can take some weight."
"You have a bag of water. That would be very heavy already."
The woman was no farm worker. She had a delicate frame, that would be crushed by this hike holding bags all the way. But I didn't want to dampen her spirit so I just shrugged. "I don't mind. I'm a farm girl. Used to carrying feed bags all over."
She eyed me warily and then nodded, handing over two of the bags.
"Can I ask what you've got in here?" I'd like to know what supplies we've got.
"Sure. Sure. It is a large bag of rice. A chili pepper, fish sauce, and four potatoes. I ate my other fresh food yesterday I'm afraid. In your bags are extra scrubs I took home to wash. I washed in the lake this morning. They are still damp. We should hang them up when we have a chance."
"We can do that." I started walking up the path I thought I took to get to Jia. "Keep an eye out for a line drawn in the ground and vegetation. I tried to make a trail, but I forgot the last bit as I ran over here. It will be much easier to find the truck if we can follow that line."
We searched for about twenty minutes before Jia yelled over. "I think it is here!"
I ran over and sighed in relief. "That's it. Let's go."
Heading up through the dense vegetation, she looked over to me with interest.
"What?" I asked nervously.
"It is just," she paused, "how do you know Korean? You are a very fluent speaker."
"Korean?!" I almost shouted. I got my bearings, looking around hoping I didn't remind a predator a snack was close. "I'm not speaking Korean. I'm speaking English."
Her eyes came down in a frown. "No. We are speaking Korean. You are speaking perfectly. No accent."
"No," I countered with a laugh. "We are definitely both speaking English."
She continued walking, eyes on the line scratched in front of us. "Maybe on this planet there is a Universal language."
"Wow. Uh, maybe?" If she was sure I was speaking Korean, and I was sure it was English, how would we tell? I just shrugged it off. We are on a different planet with weird moons, deathberries, and pterodactyl dragons. Who's to say a universal language isn't normal too. "So you were a doctor in Korea?"
"South Korea. Yes."
"Oh, sorry. I'm bad at geography." I apologized.
She laughed and told me the name of her city. The words she spoke actually sounded like a Korean name and my mind jolted, but she continued. "I worked in Ajou University Hospital. I was a pediatric surgeon. I finished my shift in the trauma room, stopped at the grocery, and on the way home was suddenly walking near the lake."
I nodded slowly. "I was driving and suddenly crashing over a forest."
"How do you think we got here?"
I sighed taking a large step over a grouping of pumpkin sized rocks. "I don't know. Aliens? Well placed worm hole? Twilight dimension?"
We continued talking about our families while we walked until I hushed her, hearing movement. I dropped my bags and readied my gun, hiding behind a tree and aiming at the noise. Jia followed, abandoning her bags and quietly darting behind me.
"What is ..." she tried to ask before I rudely shushed her.
Through the trees I could see a snake slither down in the air from a tree branch. It had a large almond shaped head out of proportion with its body and as I watched I realized why. It wasn't a snake. It was some plant head doing a dance. Then the almond head opened up showing a beautiful golden daisy, stamens glittering like diamonds. The flower was breathtaking and begged me to go to inhale its perfumed scent like a siren call.
Maybe I actually moved, but suddenly Jia's small hand was gripping my arm and pointing. Her hand was over her mouth, holding in her breath. My eyes darted to her point and I saw her panda creature. It was a large black and white grizzly bear with oversized teeth and two rows of fish spines along its back. My rifle set sight on it instead, ready to blow its oversized teeth straight from its head if it so much as looked my way. But it was moving lazily, on its way to the flower. The flower started softly bobbing up and down and the bears movements began to mimic the bobbing the closer it got to the dazzling petals. When the bear got close enough to the flower it stood on hind legs and placed its snout in deep to smell. Suddenly the petals closed around the bears face like a venus fly trap entrapping its victim. The bear swiped its paws out in alarm for only seconds before the whole thing slunk to the ground in a breathless sleep. The flower still closed around it.
Freak.
Okay. Avoid death berries. Avoid death flowers. Check, check.
I nodded that we should keep going and Jia and I walked again, following the broken path.
We got back to camp about an hour and a half later and I noticed something had been sniffing around the back of my truck. I imagined one of those ear rodents because one bag of chicken feed had been bit into, the contents sliding around the back of my truck. My eyes slid around the area, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. I then checked the sun's position in the sky. On Earth you can guesstimate the remaining sunlight in hours by hand widths to the horizon. It had been pretty similar here, so there might be two more hours until sunset.
I set to making up dinner for me and Jia. I put the dried meal to cook in the outer pot and a serving of rice in the inner pot. It would be nice to help the meals stretch with her bag of rice.
After dinner was left to cook, we set to work on figuring out how to get the wire and solar electric charger to work as a perimeter fence. I've used solar chargers for fences on the farm before, so I knew how to set them up, but at that point I'd had all the tools, handles, and correct fencing to use them. This time a youtuber and pediatrician would have to put their minds together to figure out how to connect regular wire to the components and get them around the perimeter and into some ground rod. We worked on it for two hours, but had no luck as the sun went down.
As nighttime came, we put the fencing down and got comfortable in the cab eating our dinner. We had placed the charger where we thought it would get sunlight throughout the day and left it. So hopefully in the morning it would already begin to charge and tomorrow we could figure the fencing wire out.
"What is this called?" She blew on the heated meal.
"Chili mac with beef. Over rice of course."
She smiled and took a bite. "It is quite nice."
"It's a hot meal. Out in this place I'm guessing anything of Earth food would taste pretty good."
As she brought another spoonful to her mouth, I noticed the ring on her pointer finger. A beautiful thick gold band with an oval aquamarine stone set in the band. "Pretty ring."
"Oh this one?" She held her fingers out. "I actually found it here. It was in the dirt where I landed."
"It's beautiful," I commented with a bite of my own meal.
She looked it over and then bent to take it off. "Why don't you have it."
"No," I halted her hands, with one of mine. "I can't take your ring."
"But you saved me from that dragon. And you helped me have dinner and a shelter now. I owe you much."
"I'm not taking your ring Jia," I said with a laugh. "I'm glad we found each other. It'll be easier to be out here with company." I held my arm out, now expertly wrapped. "And having a doctor around will be very nice."
"I suppose." She sighed taking another bite. "I wish I had all my supplies as you do. I would have better medicines to help heal your burn."
I shrugged with a grin. "Aww, don't sweat it. Not everyone can be a preparedness guru."
She giggled and went back to her meal. We played a few rounds of dots and boxes in my mini notebook then played an hour of games on our phones that worked without signal. She told me about her day to day life and I told her a few funny stories about the farm.
When it got late enough and a round of solitaire was over, I told her, "I'll take first watch. I'll wake you at two."
She nodded and put her phone on the dash, then we pulled the unzipped sleeping bag over us. She used a lump of her cleaned scrubs to make a pillow and leaned back at the seat. "Good night Eleanor."
"Night Jia." I turned off my headlamp hoping to conserve batteries and held the rifle close listening to any noises that disturbed the night.