From behind a clump of cacti he woke up, still shivering, and patted the sand off his back. The eight am sun wasn’t strong enough yet although he could feel it warming his skin. When he looked at the tiny holes in his arm, he saw once again the needles and coloured things they’d fed into his blood stream, and the nauseating sensation it left him with after each treatment.
Then he remembered why he’d slept by the cacti clump. He stood up unsteadily and looked down the slope, trying to detect any movement among the desert bushes. He breathed in the refreshingly chilly early morning air, despite his aching bones and dry throat. He needed to find water and food soon, before it got too hot. Having decided to continue down the slope, hoping to find the stream he’d seen in the map the previous night, he took a step and stopped. Something glinted in the distance. Belatedly he lowered himself, using the cactus clump as cover and scanned the open slope. There it was again. Was it the reflection off a binocular glass? There was movement. He waited, now undecided. He couldn’t turn back and go up the slope. That’s where he’d come from. He didn’t want to return there. And now in front, he could clearly make out figures moving, spreading out. Dressed in dark clothes, several of them leading dogs, carrying weapons. Sweeping the valley floor, moving upwards. Searching.