Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

40 OUT OF CAPTIVITYwrong with my stomach. I couldn’t eat a thing. I was nauseous and apersistent, painful diarrhea was plaguing me. Tom was struggling asmuch as I was because of his injuries. Marc, being the youngest of us,and the least hurt as far as we could tell, was making better time. Ourline was being strung out, and for much of the march into the secondday, I couldn’t see Marc at all. I knew he was in front of Tom and me,but I didn’t know just how far. As night fell on that second day, I hadno idea how long it had been since we’d seen him.We marched until well after dark, stopped alongside a stream, andsat down on a rocky embankment on stones the size of a baby’s head.They laid a sheet of black plastic on the rocks, and that’s where weslept. In spite of the rocks poking my spine, I passed out pretty fast, butI woke up a while later when the rain came pouring down on top of us.I’d done enough camping in my life to know that rain is a usual part ofbeing outdoors, but it still piled insult on top of insult on top of injury.We moved under one of the guerrillas’ tarps to get out of the rain. Allnight long the sound the rain on the tarp and on the rocks was punctuatedby the sound of my guts spilling out of me as I vomited and shatevery couple of hours. I couldn’t eat, water would run right through meor right back out of me, and I knew on top of my ribs being broken andeverything else, I was getting dehydrated.In the middle of the night I turned to Tom, saying, “I’m real worriedright now. I’m at a point physically where I can’t make this.”Tom looked at me and he could see in my eyes that I was approachingmy breaking point. Neither of us knew what to do. The nextmorning, we set out again. As before, we marched upriver, battlingthe frigid water and the slick rocks. After a half hour, we clamberedup a bank and came to a road. Ahead of me and above me, I could seea series of steep inclines and switchbacks, but just looking at them,I knew I couldn’t do it. I collapsed onto the ground. Tom came upbeside me, a crust of blood and scab over his eye. I looked at him,