... it was pleasant, walking along, thinking about reaching a destination soon. But this optimism soon wore off and we were thirstier than ever. Our wrists were swelling where the cuffs kept rubbing them, and it was all getting a bit too much to bear. We had to stop to drink urine again, and I was only thankful we managed to drink our own. I was aware that due to the amount of dribbling spillage, we’d been better off drinking each other’s liquid but I really preferred not to go there so I steered my thoughts in a new direction. A cluster of trees had just appeared on the horizon and we decided to head straight over there for a shady rest.

It took us a good while to trudge over there but when we finally arrived, we were pleasantly surprised. We found a few leafy trees and bushes, which provided quite a decent shade from the sun. We lay down to rest.

‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,’ Carl nudged me. He was sweating like a pig and so was I. In a way this was a good thing; it just showed we still had some moisture in us.

‘I’m getting such cramps, I’m not sure I can keep going,’ I said hoping we’d park it here for the rest of the day.

To this Carl replied that he was at the end of his tether to which I replied that I was too, and we decided to take a nap.

I had hoped to see my girl again, but I didn’t. I slept like a log and when I woke up, the sun was dipping to the west and Carl was sitting up, holding a finger to his lips to keep me quiet, and gesturing with his free hand towards the bushes to our left. A little brown piglet was rooting around in the ground there, snorting and not caring a fig about us. Carl and I looked at each other and I knew exactly what he was telling me.

We pounced on the piggy as one; Carl, being closer, literally threw himself at the little creature which let out a frightful high-pitched squeal, the start of a dreadful racket. Using the chain between our handcuffs as a sort of makeshift garrote, we strangled the piglet between us. It went down quickly and the noise stopped. We lay on the ground with the piglet between us, its blood streaming down its neck into our hands and it only seemed natural to drink it. It tasted warm and good and we were ecstatic to have it, as anyone in our position would have been.

We drank till we were full. As I was gulping down the pig’s blood, I felt alive like I’ve never felt before; I felt as if I were standing at the threshold of a new life, one filled with love and hope and many other good things, and I was so grateful to still be alive to experience this magnificent emotion. We took turns draining the pig. I watched Carl getting his fill, and I could tell that he was feeling the same; with each swallow he grew visibly better. By the time we’d sucked the piglet dry we felt on top of the world.

In that spirit we decided we’d try start a fire to cook the piglet. Carl had once been a scout and had been shown how to do it, but even though we had found twigs and leaves and took turns twirling the fire stick for a good while, we couldn’t manage it so in the end we decided not to worry about it and just eat the pig raw. We tore the skin on its belly and punctured the flesh with a sharp stick and then Carl managed to take out its heart and liver which we shared between us; and it wasn’t as difficult to eat these raw entrails as one would think. It even tasted kind of good. Anyway, the meat gave us energy and most of all hope, to keep going.

We set off west again just before the sun set, taking the piglet with us. We worked out a way of carrying the carcass without too much effort; we slung it over the chain that held our handcuffs together. It took some getting used to but we managed to coordinate our steps so the piglet wouldn’t fall and just kind of swung, with our walking rhythm.

We were in a much better mood than the night before so we passed the time talking. We talked about the things we were going to do when we got out of the desert, discussing our future as if we had one, as if getting out of this desert alive was a sure thing.

‘I can’t wait to take a bath. I’ve been dreaming about it since the dungeon,’ Carl said. He sounded very hopeful.

‘Me neither,’ I piped up just to make him happy, though a bath wasn’t my first priority. ‘Where do you think you’ll go when we get back?’ I asked him, meaning back to civilization, not prison. I knew neither of us had any intention of going back there.

‘Home,’ Carl replied after a little pause. ‘I’d like to go home. Haven’t seen my family for a long time.’

‘You gonna risk it?’ I was genuinely surprised. ‘Home is the first place they’re gonna stake out to catch you.’

‘There’s no risk in going home. Nobody’s waiting for us there or anywhere else,’ Carl replied. ‘Why would anybody be interested in us? They had us and they let us go. They let us go. Do you get it?’

I didn’t get it and said so. ‘We’re escaped prisoners. They’ll be interested, trust me.’

‘Let me explain something, Sonny,’ Carl replied. ‘We’re not escaped prisoners. We were let out here for a reason. You wanna know what I think? — I think they wanted us to go away, anywhere we like in this desert to fend for ourselves and survive or die trying.’

‘Preferably die trying,’ I remarked, recalling the shootings. ‘They shot at us, remember? Not a viable survival technique, was it?’

Carl sighed. ‘Think about it, man. We were shot at for a reason. They wanted us to disperse. They didn’t want us to be together as a team. That would have given us strength and a sense of safety. They couldn’t have that. They wanted to isolate us. That’s why we got shot at.’

I had to admit Carl’s side of the argument made sense. After all, if they wanted us dead, they could have picked us out, shot us, one by one. But they didn’t. They let us live; at least some of us ‘cause here we were, alive and walking.

‘Do you think many of the others survived?’ I asked.

‘Some. I’ll bet my life on it. There’s people out here, somewhere, walking like us.’

For some reason, I don’t know why ‘cause I didn’t know any of the other prisoners, I got excited thinking we could meet up some place with the other survivors. ‘You think we should maybe try to find them?’ I asked Carl, barely able to contain my enthusiasm for the idea.

‘Now what would be the point of that?’ he asked, sounding suspicious, weary or, I don’t know, kind of energy-depleted. I put it down to the stress we’ve been under.

‘I don’t know, maybe we could figure something out, you know, be stronger together, safer, like you said,’ I replied.

Carl shook his head, or at least I imagined he was shaking it ‘cause obviously I couldn’t see him in the dark. The sky was moonless and cloudy, and we were cold and getting colder.

‘Do you know any of the other guys?’ he asked me.

I replied that I didn’t, and Carl commented that it was a good thing.

‘Trust me, Sonny, we’re better off as we are, just the two of us,’ Carl said. ‘Think about our position, about the reality of what it would mean, having other people around right now. To begin with, we’d have to share the pig. You’d wanna do that?’

Once again, I had to admit Carl was right. We’d been in the desert for three days now and the piglet was the first animal we’d seen. That we were able to capture it and kill it was pure chance, a miracle really or a god-sent; whichever way you’d like to think about it, we couldn’t count on getting more food any time soon and what we had wasn’t going to last long. So yes, we were better off just the two of us.

We walked on a bit in silence, picking up the pace. I was thinking about this strange turn of events our lives have taken so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and I couldn’t find any logic in any of it so eventually I confided in Carl to see if he’d had an idea.

‘Why do you think we got let out here? What is the point of all this?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s a test of some kind,’ Carl replied. He sounded unsure, and pensive as if it also bothered him not to know.

‘It could be. Maybe we are being tested. I wonder what happens if we fail,’ I said foolishly. Deep down I was really afraid, of course, but I didn’t want to show it.

Carl laughed. ‘What happens? We die, that’s what happens.’