First Trip: Get Up and Walk the Land 10
Dor was pounding at the rocky terrain and cursing the whole universe. His face was stained with muddy tears and muddy snot.
Waffle reached the injured boy first and started pulling him by the armpits while muttering in Arabic. If she was saying ‘I told you so,’ she was perfectly within her right. If she was saying anything else then she deserved to be counted among the saints.
“Ay! No! Stop! Kus emok! It hurts!” Dor cried.
Waffle let go and tried to push the rock. She dug her heels into the ground and heaved. The rock didn’t budge. Another whistle. Another thud. Yaniv looked skyward, pondering the mysteries of the universe.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Dor clawed at the ground in a futile attempt to crawl away from the source of his pain.
A stone painted pink and yellow impacted the ground with enough force to hurl clumps of earth into the air. Pebbles from the impact stung like beetle kamikaze.
Eran shook his confusion away and ran to help Waffle. Their combined strength was enough to move the rock a few centimeters. Feeling his muscles about to burst, Eran let go. The rock rolled back, squeezing a pitiful whimper out of Dor.
Tamar stood a few paces behind, helping the boys by illuminating the scene with her phone. Meanwhile, Yaniv took over the rescue operation.
“Okay, put this small rock here, it will help. Good, now stand here… On the count of three,” he paused at Waffle’s confused look, “Eh, thlath…” The ground shuddered with another impact. This time the stone was lime green and had purple snakes painted on it.
Eran ignored it. He wasn’t going to let some runt named after a breakfast food outbrave him. Dor provided moral support in the form of noxious gasses emitted into the air, as if saying, “move faster or die!”
“Onetwothree!” Waffle pressed her back against the rock and gave it her tiny all, her heels digging deep grooves in the ground as she struggled with the hefty missile. Yaniv and Eran added their full weight to the struggle against the obstinate stone.
The stone ball grumbled away, allowing Dor to free his foot. Another colorful ball smashed into the side of a hill and sent pebbles and dust into the air.
Eran braced for his friend’s foot to look like minced meat but it looked fine. The stone must have spent all its momentum on the initial impact and simply rolled on Dor’s foot. There was another whistle, but no thud this time. This stone must have passed over the hill and landed somewhere far away.
“We have to go!” Eran cried in a voice that was two octaves higher than he intended. “Can you walk?”
“Say, are you real?” Dor spoke through gritted teeth. He tried to wipe the long strand of saliva that dangled from his lips but only succeeded in smearing it all over his face.
Waffle tried to help Dor stand up. His face contorted and he hurled her away with a snarl. She lost her footing and fell on her butt. She instantly scrambled to her feet and squeaked something at the boys. A stone whooshed overhead. It was followed by the sound of splintering wood. Across the wadi, someone laughed.
Eran sighed. Oh, why did it have to be Dor? He was big and smelly and uncooperative at the best of times…
Yaniv seemed to read Eran’s mind. “Seems we need to carry this mastodon. Dor, wrap your arms around our necks. Ready?”
“Yeah…” Dor winced as the boys pulled him to his feet.
With one neck locked under each arm, Dor started limping after the girls, using the boys as crutches. Each time his injured foot hit a boulder or a root, he squeezed the air out of his entrapped friends, redistributing his suffering like a communist of pain. Waffle ran between Tamar and the boys like a shepherd trying to rein in her herd.
After a couple dozen steps, Waffle tugged at Eran’s sleeve and pointed toward a bare hillock some fifty meters away. Eran stared into the murk and succeeded in making out two humanoid shapes. The taller one bent down, picked up a ball from the ground and chugged it into the air. The familiar whistle followed, but there was no thud.
Dor followed Eran’s gaze and husked, “Whores,” in a raspy voice. Still holding Eran around the neck, he pulled the gun from his pants and aimed it at the figures.
The first shot was an explosion that drowned the ambiance of the night in monotonous ringing. Startled by the sudden noise, Eran nearly dropped his friend. We’re a tank made of flesh and bad decisions.
Dor was squeezing one round after the other. He infused each shot with his pain, frustration, and rage. Eran doubted the bullets could even reach the hillock, let alone harm the mighty stone throwers. They were, however, doing a marvelous job at deafening Dor’s allies.
Waffle pressed her hands to her ears and looked daggers at Dor. Eran expected the shooting to scare her, but it seemed only to annoy her. Tamar stuck her fingers in her ears. Yaniv flinched with each shot but otherwise displayed no emotion.
A searing hot casing fell into Eran’s shirt and rolled down his back, stinging him like a bee. Eran would have gladly thrown the shooting shmuck to the ground but Dor’s arm was wrapped around his neck like a smothering python.
Six, seven, eight, nine… silence. Thin strands of smoke dissipated into acrid stench. Eran strained his eyes to check the figures on the hillock. They didn’t collapse, flee or bellow in rage.
Instead, they started speaking.