Julien Rodrigue

Heavy Hitter

Maggy, the bird who always comes to camp to say hello, signs a lovely song and wakes me up. It is a beautiful day. There are no clouds and the temperature is perfect. I go to the lake for a quick swim and to refill my water bottle. Today would have been hunting day if it wasn’t for the incident. I’ll have to rely on my nuts and berries for now. Looks like it rained last night, I can still smell the petrichor. I would love to go for a hike but my arm hasn’t healed enough yet. I have to rest. The wind is picking up and I’ll have to do everything possible to prevent another attack. An insight pops into my mind, I’ll use mud to mask my smell. Walking over to the pond I have flashbacks from that dreadful night. I was unprepared and half witted. If I had my gun none of it would have happened and I might have a bigger chance of leaving this place. Tomorrow I will go to the crash site and try to get the radio working again. I cover my clothes and exposed skin with mud and leaves. If I want to survive I have to think about everything and be extra careful. The wind is getting heavy and I can see thick clouds in the distance. To see what direction the wind is going in, I throw some leaves in the air. The leaves go west. At this point I can only think of one possibility - a storm. I quickly get my things together and go to the shelter. I used metal pieces from the crashed helicopter to fortify the hovel in case of situations like these. Onwards, I wait. An hour into waiting and the rain starts and it only takes twenty minutes for it to get heavy and another fifteen minutes for the thunder to start. I look outside for lighting and I see a bolt. To measure how close the center of the storm is, I count the seconds after the lighting bolt strikes until the thunder hits. It was twenty two seconds which means the center of the storm is twenty two kilometres away. I do this until I realize that the center of the storm is 3 kilometres away. In panic, I tense up my muscles and grind my teeth. The thought of me knowing the only thing I can do is wait calms me down. The tempest is so strong it starts to rip up my hovel leaving openings on the roof. The shelter was made on the side of a small cliff and my instincts tell me to back up all the way to the cliff. All the sudden I get this weird feeling that something is about to happen. I felt this feeling before but never like this. It’s as if I can tell my subconscious has to do with it. At that moment, for a split second I see a flash in the sky and right after hearing a loud crash everything goes blank.