He'd forgotten what iced tea had tasted like - gotten too used to the bitter water he'd thrown down his throat to combat the dust and bile that built up there. He'd certainly forgotten what apple pie had tasted like - both slices large enough to make up a full half, crushed together with his bare hands to drizzle the sweet nectar down his throat. He couldn't chew comfortably with his cheek ripped open, so resorted to picking off pieces of the bread, squashing the meatballs, and drizzling the sauce down his throat like a baby bird.
When he'd consumed everything the terrorists had left for him, he folded his legs up, snapped open one of his first-aid kids, and dragged the weapon into his lap.
Gingerly, he probed his right cheek - the jagged hole in it screaming at him in pain - for debris in a little mirror. When he found none, he unwrapped a roll of gauze, lifted it to his face.
Bit down on his other cheek as he began to wrap.
When he was finished, his neck and face were mostly obscured with the gauze, leaving only a hole for his eyes and nose and half of one for his mouth. That was fine. He'd always had trouble speaking, anyway.
He changed the bandages on his shoulder and hand, discarded the med-kit when he was done. He flipped open his sketchbook to a fresh page, found his piece of charcoal - it was in three pieces, in a front pocket of his bag, but it was still functional - and drew a few quick, angry strokes on the large white page.
When he was done, he flipped it around, propped it next to the consumed containers of food. He took his Masden SMG in one hand, his Winchester in the other, secured his pack to his back, and walked back out into the great unknown.
The page of the sketchbook contained no drawing of a stetson on a fencepost, no landscape. Merely words - angry, rushed, human,
"But all sinners will be destroyed; there will be no future for the wicked."
Mourn us.
((Hansel Williams, Sudden Life))Mourn us.