Page 68 of Over the Top

In a few seconds, the tent went from being a bunch of nylon on the ground to a fully erected shelter. It barely came up to Chas’s waist, though. Appalled, he watched Gunner crawl in.

“Pass me the sleeping bags, will you?” Gunner called from inside. “They’re the black cylinders about the length of my forearm.”

“You mean these hard pillow things?”

“That’s them.”

Chas passed in the sleeping bags, which appeared to explode from their storage bags.

From inside the tent, Gunner said, “If you’re nice to me, I’ll tell you what all the noises you hear tonight are. Otherwise you get to spend the night wondering.”

“What noises?”

“You’ll see,” Gunner answered cryptically.

They ate sandwiches they’d bought during a fuel stop a few hours back, and Gunner tossed Chas an apple that he commenced munching. With intense distaste, Chas relieved himself against a tree as if he was eight years old again, and then crawled into the tent—on his hands and knees, for crying out loud.

“I feel like a freaking dog.”

“You’d make a cute puppy.”

“There is no part of this that I like,” he declared.

Gunner grinned as he unzipped his combat boots and set them just inside the flap. “Aww, c’mon. It’s not that bad.”

“I can see my breath,” Chas complained. “And the ground is hard. I’m gonna have bruises in the morning just from sleeping.”

“I put foam pads under the sleeping bags.”

Chas lay down experimentally. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Oh, you’d know the difference. You’d have pebbles and sticks digging into your back if I hadn’t.”

“This is barbaric.”

“It’s nicer than the way mankind lived for millions of years.”

“I, sir, am not a caveman,” Chas announced indignantly.

Gunner’s chuckle floated out of the darkness. “I put a bottle of water by the top of your sleeping bag for you. It’s deceptively dry in this part of the country. Easy to get dehydrated, especially when it gets cold.”

“Speaking of which, I’m shivering.”

“You have to mummy up your sleeping bag.”

“What the heck does that mean?” Chas demanded.

“At the top of your sleeping bag’s zipper, there’s a drawstring. Pull it until the top of the bag forms a hood around your head. If it gets really cold tonight, you can tighten it down until there’s only a tiny hole left to get fresh air through.”

“You do realize I’m claustrophobic,” Chas grumbled.

“Think of it as sleeping in a coat.”

Chas thrashed around, hating the confinement of the sleeping bag and unable to get comfortable on the hardallegedpad. He wasn’t at all convinced there actually was a pad beneath him. He could totally see Gunner not giving him one as a joke. He opened his mouth to accuse Gunner of that very thing when a haunting noise, almost like a ghost moaning, made him freeze.

“What was that?” he asked in a whisper.

“An owl.”

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