“Only once. At least, they said it was snake, but who knows…”
Gabe just nodded, relieved that he seemed in a better mood, that shivering barely there. “I’ll cut it up… you have to gut it, right?”
“I guess… I have never done it on a snake before… must be a bit like fish?”
Gabe went outside and looked at that dead snake.Fuck…But he knelt and cut that soft belly up, the guts spilling straight away with stuff in there he didn’t want to see. He pulled at them, hard, almost throwing up at the smell. “Oh, God… Fuck…”
Damian stepped next to him and scooped those guts up. “Let me help.”
“Take them far… they stink.”
Washing the body in their seawater gathered in a plastic barrel. He then cut the meat up as best as he could, bringing some fire outside. “We need some sort of roast?”
“Bamboo? It won’t burn, anyway.”
“Yeah… good idea.”
They made a makeshift bamboo grill and placed the snake meat on it, waiting, watching the flames lick that dead flesh. Gabe’s heart flooded with pity for the animal.
He glanced at Damian. “Khm… I guess if we manage to hunt more, and maybe fish, we could make it…”
“Maybe…” Still thinking that they would be dead in days, that splitting headache not going anywhere, that vague nausea coating everything.Fewer tremors, though… maybe a good sign…
“It’s our third day, right? I scratched them on that tree, not to lose count… they might be looking for us…”
Damian pursed his lips. “Hardly… they must think us dead.”
“We could build a pyre on the beach, and write in the sand.”
Damian laughed softly. “Yeah… whatever… we’re not in a movie.”
Gabe pinched his lips. “Well, it won’t hurt at least to try something.”
“Yeah…” He grinned, his eyes in the flames. “Soon, my wife will be a rich woman.”
Gabe swallowed, slightly curious. “You’re rich… you were?”
Damian glanced at him, amused. “You don’t know who I am?”
“I checked your name on the passenger log.”Not to call you asshole all the time…
“And?”
“And? And nothing. You’re a celebrity?”
Damian laughed above his disbelief. “What? No… but I’m well known. You don’t read business papers? The Times perhaps?”
“Oh… no…”
“Bourne Land Development.” His eyes got a bit lost. “We did that project; it was all over the press. Stripping that sacred land or whatever? Some bullshit from locals, but we won in the end, even if they had slept for days in front of the bulldozers.” He laughed softly at the memory, looking up at Gabriel’s silence.
“You… you were behind that? Destroying Spring Rock?”
“Destroy? We built a five-star spa hotel on that spring; it was nothing before.”
“It was a wild spring, a sacred place for those people!”
He pursed his lips, vaguely irritated. “What’s that to you?”
