Chapter 3 - The Empty Canteen
By the second day, the adrenaline had completely faded, replaced by a slow, gnawing misery. The basement was drying out, and the air was hot and stale.
Julian reached for the metal canteen hooked to his belt. He shook it. A single, pathetic drop rattled inside. He unscrewed the cap, letting the drop fall onto his dry, cracked tongue. It did nothing to quench the fire in his throat.
"Nothing?" Kaelen asked from the dark. He had turned off the flashlight to save the battery, leaving them in a deep, featureless blackness.
"Dry," Julian replied.
"Me too."
The silence returned, but it was a heavy, thirsty silence. Curn khát was unlike pain; it was a physical weight that pressed down on the brain, making every thought sluggish and distorted.
Suddenly, a faint, rhythmic sound broke the quiet.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Kaelen scrambled to his feet, his boots kicking up dust. He turned on the flashlight, its beam scanning the cracked concrete walls. In the far corner, near a collapsed support pillar, a rusted iron pipe was weeping. A tiny, slow bead of water formed on the rusty metal, hanging for a second before dropping into the dirt.
"Water," Kaelen whispered.
He rushed over, but the drip was agonizingly slow. It took nearly five minutes for a single tablespoon of water to gather on the pipe.
"We have to catch it," Julian said, dragging himself toward the corner, his bandaged leg trailing behind him like a dead weight.
Kaelen unscrewed the plastic cap of his own canteen. He held it steady beneath the pipe. They sat side-by-side in the dirt, their eyes locked on the glistening drop of water.
"You take the first cap," Kaelen said, his voice rough.
May you like
"No, we share," Julian insisted. "Half and half."
When the cap was finally full of lukewarm, rusty-tasting water, Kaelen handed it to Julian. Julian drank it in a single swallow, the water feeling like liquid gold in his parched throat. Then, they placed the cap back under the pipe, waiting in the dark for the next drop, their breathing synchronized in the quiet tomb.
