I woke to the evil stepmother of all headaches. For a while, I lay curled up in a tight ball. When I finally tried to sit up, my head hit something, touching off a fresh wave of pain and nausea. I lay still and focused on my breathing, trying not to vomit.
When the nausea had subsided slightly, I opened my eyes. I was in a room barely big enough to hold my coiled body-one of the doghouse-like buildings just outside the main camp enclosure: a punishment hut, I figured. Thin horizontal lines of gray light filtered in through the boards that formed the walls. The lines danced as I watched, merging and doubling, doing a slow, repetitive minuet that told me I literally wasn’t seeing straight.
I closed my eyes again and waited. Time doesn’t pass in the same way when you’re suffering from a headache that severe. While I lay there, it seemed as if I’d always been in that hut and always would be: There was nothing but the pain. It might have been thirty minutes or all evening for all I could tell.
Eventually the nausea and double vision passed, and the headache faded to the annoying little sister of all headaches. My face itched. I scratched, triggering a flaky rain of dried blood. My backpack was gone-I didn’t care much about the backpack itself, but I was cold, so the blankets and plastic tarp would have been welcome.
The punishment hut’s walls and ceiling were made of rough slats, like the ones used for wood pallets. Posts at each corner provided structure. The floor was ash, which was okay-it wouldn’t be the first time I’d slept on a bed of ash. A hatch had been cut into one wall. The hatch had a little play in it, as though the padlock didn’t hold it tightly closed. Maybe I could break one of the slats, force the door, or dig though the ash floor. But I didn’t have the energy to try anything right then. Instead, I slept.
I woke with a horrible crick in my neck and pain in the small of my back. Before I remembered where I was, I tried to stretch out and cracked the knuckles of my hand against one of the corner posts.
There was daylight outside now. Of course, the inside of the hut was dark, but enough light filtered between the boards so that I could see a bit. I heard noises from the camp, the muted murmur of fifty thousand talking people. By squirming around, I managed to roll over, putting my other side against the ash floor. I noticed there was dry blood on my boot-Captain Jameson’s, I figured, smiling.
I didn’t want to try to break out during the daytime, so I waited. At first, I hoped that a guard would bring water, my rice ration, or maybe tell me how long they planned to keep me in the hut. But the day wore on and nobody came. I got thirstier and thirstier, but I didn’t think I was totally dehydrated because I needed to pee.
I realized I couldn’t count on anyone to bring me water or food. Maybe they’d let me sit out here for a few days. I thought about it for a while and figured out a solution to my two most immediate problems.
To deal with the thirst, I dug in the ash. The hut had been built after the ashfall, so I could excavate a small tunnel under the boards that formed the sidewalls. Once I got my hand outside, I reached up past the ash layer and grabbed handfuls of snow. The snow wasn’t very clean once I’d pulled it through my ash tunnel, but I ate it anyway.
Peeing was the other problem. My captors had made no provision at all for hygiene. I dug a hole in the ash at one corner of the enclosure. I peed as carefully as I could into the hole-which wasn’t easy, since I had to do it lying on my side-and covered it with ash.
Then there was nothing to do but wait. I listened to the sounds of the camp, hoping I’d hear Darla. But either she didn’t try to yell to me, or I was too far away to hear her. The concussion and lack of food had taken something out of me; I found myself yawning and sleepy only a few hours later. There was no point in fighting it-the nightmares that haunted my dreams would beat the waking nightmare my life had become-so I let myself drift back to sleep.