Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2 by Elizabeth McLaughlin (best mystery novels of all time .txt) 📕

was the fact that I dropped a wrench right as I was tightening a bolt above my head. The heavy tool skittered down the metal surface I was working on and sparked, scaring the heck out of me. Sparks.

Theoretically all I needed to start a fire then was metal. Only one substantial piece of metal had accompanied me out of the shelter courtesy of Gabriel-the spade. If I could scrape the metal against something hard enough, I could make sparks. Most stones in the area should have been tough enough to withstand the force, but I had no idea which ones would do the job. Trial and error would have to sort that out. I hoped.

As for the stream in front of me, if there were more crabs, I had a food source. Food, water, and the possibility of fire. Not bad.

I returned to my meager campsite and set about the next important task. A latrine. I had a vague recollection that the toilet needed to be so many feet or yards from where you slept but no clue as to how far it should be. Far enough that there was no possibility of it poisoning your food or water supply, I guessed. I grabbed the utility spade from the duffel bags and put one foot in front of the other until I counted a sixty foot distance downwind from my tent. The ground had softened a little in the morning warmth and I dug a hole about a foot long and a foot deep. When I had finished it looked like I had dug a small grave. Romantic.

By now the sun had crossed the meridian of the sky and was headed westward. There was no way to pin the hour but it was probably early or mid-afternoon. Time was running short to start a fire and I needed one. Preferably a bath of some kind, too. After a lifetime of daily showers, the stench of my body was overpowering. I tore off a strip of fabric from the bottom of my pant leg and wandered back to the stream. Before attending to my own cleanliness, I set about gathering as many plants as I could and set them on the bank of the stream. The two largest rocks I could get my hands on accompanied them. Fire-starting supplies secured, I wet the strip of cloth and took my pants off.

Out of habit I looked around, knowing full well there was no one to see my nakedness. I dipped the already soiled cloth into the stream and scrubbed gently at my skin. The urine had dried my skin out and a rash was already starting to form. I had waited too long. Once I was satisfied that this was as clean as I was going to be, I balled up the cloth to deposit it in the latrine and went home. The armful of plants I had gathered looked promising; the tall grass would make for decent kindling and I resolved to test the leafy greens out as a possible food source. The biggest problem with starting a fire wasn’t lacking the ability to get it going, it was that it would die out as soon as flames formed. Even without wilderness training, I knew that I wasn’t going to sustain a fire overnight without wood. My only choice was to keep feeding the fire as it burned.

Several more trips to the river later and I had a sizable pile of kindling. There was no way to guarantee that the rocks I had gathered were hard enough. I needed a lot of force to create sparks and if I had chosen incorrectly, I would end the day with rock shards in my palms. The kindling I had gathered was mostly dry; anything that looked like it could burn I took with me. I lay the kindling as neatly as I could, the longest pieces of grass forming a neat base as I worked my way upwards. The sun was low in the sky—too low for my comfort—and the wind was starting to pick up again. I knew that I had the basic ingredients for fire in front of me, but my mind was too exhausted, or too anxious to put the pieces together.

Putting my back between the breeze and my meager foundation I hunched down and struck two of the rocks together as hard as I could. For a millisecond my eyes caught the sight of a spark but it hit the grass and faded. I struck the rocks together again and this time was rewarded with more sparking, but one of the rocks shattered. I cursed. Too many hours had passed since my last meal and there was no time to make it back to the stream for more rocks. Hauling the tent so it was perpendicular to the shelter’s entrance, I broke down my kindling assembly and started over. This time I wedged my remaining rock under my bare foot and lifted the spade high.

With a crack, sparks flew into the tinder and smoke started to billow from the bottom of the pile. I dropped the spade and fell to my stomach on the ground, blowing on the smoking brush gently to feed more oxygen to the fire. A small flame burst from the grass and I whooped, the force of my exaltation almost extinguishing the lifesaving fire. A little more coaxing and I had myself a small but sustainable source of warmth. The happiness that flooded my brain was a hundred thousand years old; the sheer relief of knowing that as long as the flames danced before me, I would live. I allowed myself a couple of minutes to relish in my triumph before ripping open another survival ration. The 3D printed goop inside was the best thing I had ever tasted. I even took a double dose of water in celebration.

The sun was setting over the horizon in a spectacular display of reds and oranges that