The boat stayed sheltered behind the branches of a fallen tree. Cynthia glanced up, checking to see if any of the branches slithered instead of swayed. She rubbed the back of her neck, wishing she wasn’t so squeamish about the local fauna. Though, in all honesty, she only felt uneasy about the wildlife that could kill her.

Peña and Fisher lay on the floor of the boat and pulled their hats down over their eyes. The way they could turn the hypervigilance on and off fascinated her. She wondered how they acted out in the civilian world.

She climbed out of the boat and walked onto the shore, staying in the shade of the trees. She sat on the dirt and drew her legs up to her chest, pulling the hem of the shirt down over her knees. From this vantage point, she could see both patients.

A large ant carrying a white seed ran past her. She moved her legs out of its way, then looked up at the sun, closing her eyes to its rays. It shone in a bright blue sky, and the heavy and humid air blanketed them. In another couple of hours, it would rain, freshening the air and momentarily cooling the world down.

She looked over as Captain Norton sat beside her. He laid his carbine rifle on the ground and wiped his face with a handkerchief. She could see the lines of worry and fatigue around his eyes and wondered what his face looked like without the red beard and the dirt.

“That beard has to be hot,” she said.

He absently rubbed it. “Not as bad here as in the desert.” He pulled an MRE pouch out of his cargo pocket and held it out to her. It contained more than twelve hundred calories, enough to sustain her for the next twenty-four hours. She smiled as she took it from him.

“Spicy penne pasta, vegetarian,” she read out loud. Glancing at him from under her lashes, she joked, “My favorite. How did you know? Was that in my file too?”

He grinned as he opened his own pouch with a long knife. He pulled out all the packets inside one at a time and slit most of them open. When he finished, he held the knife out to her, handle first. She accepted it and gingerly sliced open her own MRE pouch. The blade was astonishingly sharp.

“Just a guess. Didn’t feel like getting lectured about eating animal flesh,” he answered.

She snorted and imitated his actions, opening all her packets with the knife. She took the long brown plastic spoon out of her pouch, then extended the knife back to him. “I guess I had that coming. Though I’ll admit that I was dreaming about a juicy rare steak and something deliciously chocolate earlier.”

“Well, this is not that.”