Bill Pronzini: The Other Side Of Silence

The odds were against him spotting her, even with the binoculars. The topography’s rumpled irregularity created too many hidden places; she might have wandered miles in any direction.

But he did locate her, and in less than ten minutes. Pure blind luck.

She was a quarter of a mile away to the southwest, in partial shade at the bottom of a salt-streaked wash. Lying on her side, motionless, knees drawn up fetally, face and part of her blonde head obscured by the crook of a bare arm. It was impossible to tell at this distance if she was alive or not.

The wash ran down out of the foothills like a long, twisted scar, close to the trail for a considerable distance, then hooking away from it in a gradual snake-track curve. Where she lay was at least four hundred yards from where he’d parked on the four-wheel track. He picked out a trail landmark roughly opposite her position, then scrambled back down to the Jeep.

His cell phone was in his pack. He dragged it out, switched it on. No signal. Sometimes you got one in the more remote sections of the Valley, sometimes you didn’t; out here, the ramparts of the Panamints must be blocking it. No emergency help, then. Whether she was alive or dead, it was up to him to deal with the situation.

It took him more than an hour to get to where she lay. Drive to the landmark, load his pack with two extra soft-plastic water bottles and the first-aid kit, strap on the aluminum-framed pack, and then hike across humps and flats of broken rock as loose and treacherous as talus. Even though the pre-noon temperature was only in the eighties, he was sweating profusely-and he’d used up a pint of water to replace the sweat loss-by the time he reached the wash.

She still lay in the same drawn-up position. And she didn’t stir at the noises he made, the clatter of dislodged rocks, as he slid down the wash’s bank. He went to one knee beside her, groped for a sunburned wrist. Pulse, faint and irregular. He didn’t realize until then that he had been holding his breath; he let it out thin and hissing between his teeth.

She wore only a thin, short-sleeved shirt, a pair of Levi’s, and worn-out Reeboks. The exposed areas of her skin were burned raw, coated with salt from dried sweat that was as gritty as fine sand; the top of her scalp was flecked with dried blood from ruptured blisters. A quick inspection revealed no snake or scorpion bites, no limb fractures or swellings. But she was badly dehydrated. At somewhere between 15 and 22 percent dehydration a human being will die, and she had to be close to the danger zone.

Gently he took hold of her shoulders, eased her over onto her back. Her limbs twitched; she made a little whimpering sound deep in her throat. On the edge of consciousness, he thought, more submerged than not. The sun’s white glare hurt her eyes through the tightly closed lids. She turned her head, lifted an arm painfully across the bridge of her nose.

Fallon freed one of the foil-wrapped water bottles, slipped off the attached cap. Her lips were cracked, split deeply in a couple of places; he dribbled water on them, to get her to open them. Then he eased the spout into her mouth and squeezed out a few more drops.

At first she struggled, twisting her head, moaning softly now: the part of her that wanted death rebelling against revival and awareness. But her will to live hadn’t completely deserted her, and her thirst was too great. She gulped down some of the warm liquid, swallowed more when he lifted her head and held it cushioned against his knee.

Before long she was sucking greedily at the spout, like a baby at its mother’s nipple. Her hands came up and clutched at the bottle; he let her take it away from him, let her drain it. The notion of parceling out water to a dehydration victim was a fallacy. You had to saturate the parched tissues as fast as possible to accelerate the restoration of normal functions.

He opened another bottle, raised her into a sitting position, then exchanged it for the empty one in her hands. Shelter was the next most important thing. He took the lightweight space blanket from his pack, unfolded it, and shook it out. Five by seven feet, the blanket was coated on one side with a filler of silver insulating material and reflective surface.

Near where she lay, behind her to the east, he hand-scraped a sandy area free of rocks. Then he set up the blanket into a lean-to, using takedown tent poles to support the front edge and tying them off with nylon cord to rocks placed at forty-five-degree angles from the shelter corners. He secured the ground side of the lean-to with more rocks and sand atop the blanket’s edge.

Casey Dunbar was sitting slumped forward when he finished, her head cradled in her hands. The second water bottle, as empty as the first, lay beside her.

Fallon gripped her shoulders again, and this time she stiffened, fought him weakly as he drew her backward and pressed her down into the lean-to’s shade. The struggles stopped when he pillowed her head with the pack. She lay unmoving, half on her side, her eyes still squeezed tightly shut. Conscious now, but not ready to face either him or the fact that she was still alive.

The first-aid kit contained a tube of Neosporin. He said as he uncapped it, “I’ve got some burn medicine here. I’ll rub it on your face and scalp first.”

She made a throat sound that might have been a protest. But when he squeezed out some of the ointment and began to smooth it over her blistered skin, she remained passive. Lay silent and rigid as he ministered to her.

He used the entire tube of Neosporin, most of it on her face and arms. None of the cuts and abrasions she’d suffered was serious; the medicine would disinfect those, too. There was nothing he could do for the bruises on her upper arms and along her jaw, the scabbed cuts on her left cheek and temple. Those weren’t the kind of injuries you got from stumbling around in the desert. They were more than two days old, he judged, already starting to fade. He wondered where she’d gotten them, if somebody had used her for a punching bag.

When he was done, he opened another quart of water, took a nutrition bar from his pack. Casey Dunbar’s eyes were open when he looked at her again. Hazel eyes, dull with pain and exhaustion, staring fixedly at him without blinking. Hating him a little, he thought.

He said, “Take some more water,” and extended the bottle.

“No.”

“Still thirsty, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Come on, we both know you are.”

“Who’re you?” Her voice was as dry and cracked as her lips. “How’d you find me?”

“Richard Fallon-Rick. I was lucky. So are you.”

“Lucky,” she said.

“Drink the water, Casey.”

“How do you know my…? Oh.”

“That’s right. I read the note.”

“Why couldn’t you just let me die? Why did you have to come along and find me?”

“Drink.”

He held the bottle out close to her face. Her eyes shifted to it; the tip of her tongue flicked out, snakelike, as if she were already tasting the water. Then, grimacing, she raised onto an elbow and took the bottle with an angry, swiping movement-anger directed at herself, he thought, not him, as if she’d committed an act of self-betrayal. She drank almost half before a spasm of coughing forced her to lower the bottle.

“Go a little slower with the rest of it.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I can’t do that, Casey.”

“Don’t call me that. You don’t know me.”

“All right.”

“I want to sleep,” she said.

“No, you don’t.” He unwrapped the nutrition bar. “Eat as much of this as you can get down. Slowly, little bites.”

She shook her head, holding her arms stiff and tight against her sides.

“For your own good.”