Intro To Kate's Story

by Susan Cameron

First draft...here comes Kate...


Kate rolled onto her left side and partially unbuttoned her filthy shirt, reached into her bra under her left breast, and pulled out the sealed plastic bag that held a packet of lens cleaning tissues.  She looked at the clean bag in her sandy, blood-splattered hand and sighed.  Stop.  First things first.  The baby wipes... right pants pocket?... yes.

She rolled on her back again and cleaned her hands and the cuts on her face as best she could.  Head wounds, even superficial ones, bled the worst, and she'd splattered on her equipment.  She felt the blood trickle from the biggest cut on her forehead into her hair as soon as she released pressure.  Her fingers reconnoitered the wound and she knew she needed the tiny emergency tube of Super Glue in her pocket as well.  She'd learned about it from a Vietnam vet she'd once dated.  She pulled the split skin tight so the edges would meet, gritted her teeth and ran a bead across the wound.  She gasped for breath while the tears ran out of her eyes and mixed with the blood in her hair.  After she was sure the patch job would hold, she wiped away the tear tracks, destroying the evidence of her weakness.

Kate forced herself to sit up, still feeling dizzy and sick.  She was well-hidden in the bombed-out house where she'd taken cover, tucked in between piles of rubble.  She needed to inspect her equipment, but had to shut her eyes and wait for the nausea to pass.  Her beloved cameras.  Soldiers bitched about the load they had to carry, but she never did.  She needed to get back out there and do her job.  If she didn't, or couldn't, there was a pack of young, hungry photographers whining and circling and waiting for their chance to take her place.

She swallowed hard.  The nausea wasn't getting better, and she had to lay back down.  The heat of the sun pouring through the blown-away roof felt good for the first time since she'd arrived.  She drowsily felt her flesh and bones soften and sink and melt into the desert floor like a dropped ice cream cone.

"Where is she?  Where the fuck did she go?"

Kate opened her eyes.

"I don't know.  I don't know.  We are so screwed."

"Fuck.  Fuck.  They embed grandma with us and we fucking lose her."

"That's cold, man."  Laughter.  "Maybe she's like only as old as my mom."

"Oh, hell no.  From a distance, maybe, but up close?  She's fuckin' old, man.  She's so old, I wouldn't even fuck her with your dick."

"You got a cigarette?  I'll pay you back."

Kate smelled cigarette smoke.  It smelled good.  She hadn't smoked in forty years.

"We're the ones who're fucked if we don't find her.  How far can a skinny old lady get carrying all that shit around with her?"

"Hasn't she heard of a fuckin' iPhone?  Great pictures, man.  Nobody needs that other shit."

"You think she's dead?"

"I think we're dead if we fucked up and some famous old lady photographer's dead.  That's what I think."

"Famous?  Oh, fuck."

"Yeah.  Yeah, all the way back to when people read newspapers and shit.  My dad heard of her."

"So we're fucked."

They stopped talking, but the cigarette smoke still continued to drift over to Kate.  She breathed it in deeply, stretched, and winced.  Her cameras were fine, but she hadn't taken a complete inventory on her body.  She lifted her head and looked at her left leg, knee swollen to the size of her thigh.  Her cruciate ligaments had let her down again.  She was fucked, too.

Kate sat up and called out, "Over here, guys."

She heard one mutter, "Oh, shit," and heard their boots shuffling toward her.  She looked up, and there they were:  a tall blond, about nineteen or twenty years old, blushing so deeply that his face was the color of his acne; and a short dark-haired boy who couldn't look her in the face.

She smiled at them, these soldiers who could have indeed been her grandsons, and said, "Time for you to get me the fuck out of here."